May 16, 2013 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
Guy McPherson is a deeply kindred soul whose love for all life and sincerity permeates. Michael Sosebee knows how to make and shoot one Hell of a fine film. Brilliant editing. Exquisite music. Well done.
May 7, 2013 | Carolyn's Articles
When I began writing this article, a friend of mine had recently entered hospice. While I was finishing the article, my friend died. She was not in the same town as I, but during the past month, we had been able to speak by phone several times a week. Given my friend’s decline and death and its impact on me, I was not taken aback by Daniel Drumright’s essay “The Irreconcilable Acceptance Of Near-Term Extinction,” posted last week on Guy McPherson’s Nature Bats Last blog.
Jan 28, 2013 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
So in this time of catastrophe,
Perhaps we should turn to these lists.
And teach our children from them.
So that we may live.
Dec 27, 2012 | Carolyn's Articles
Whether it be the rotting, gray carcasses of bleak, boarded up city blocks of abandoned store fronts; suburban cul de sacs consisting of vacant, foreclosed homes; countless crumbling bridges and pot-hole-pocked roads; tasteless, thoughtlessly-constructed high rises; irredeemably scarred mountaintops; or charred forests ravaged by the worst fire season in recent memory, the landscape of our planet is becoming increasingly dull, drab, and downright dismal.
Dec 20, 2012 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
What are the elements of non-attachment that might be applied to coping with the knowledge of the inevitable collapse of organized society amidst the chaos of economic collapse and runaway climate change? What makes sense to gaze at, and what should we, for our own sanity, leave unseen? How can we be, and act, in a fully engaged, joyful, curious, productive, useful-to-others way, without becoming either “detached” (emotionally disconnected or inured) or exhausted?
Dec 12, 2012 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
Disaster per se need not lead to violence, as Rebecca Solnit argues in her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. She documents five disasters—the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; earthquakes in San Francisco and Mexico City; a giant ship explosion in Halifax, Canada; and 9/11—and shows that rioting, looting, rape, and murder were not automatic results. Instead, for the most part, people pulled together, shared what resources they had, cared for the victims, and in many instances found new sources of joy in everyday life. However, the kinds of social stresses we are discussing now may differ from the disasters Solnit surveys, in that they comprise a “long emergency,” to borrow James Kunstler’s durable phrase. For every heartwarming anecdote about the convergence of rescuers and caregivers on a disaster site, there is a grim historic tale of resource competition turning normal people into monsters.
Nov 21, 2012 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
We are in the early stages of a great unraveling, an epic collapse of the largest human civilization this planet will ever know. How are we to make sense of it? Maybe this little diagram can help.
Nov 11, 2012 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
“We have a national mythology that limits are always bad. In fact, we have a national phobia of limits,” wryly observes John Michael Greer: author, historian, conservationist, and proprietor of the popular weblog The Archdruid Report. “We need to get past that.”—Includes podcast interview by Chris Martenson
Oct 20, 2012 | Society In Decline
When it comes to our understanding of the unfolding global crisis, each of us seems to fit somewhere along a continuum of awareness that can be roughly divided into five stages:
Jul 22, 2012 | Collapse of Industrial Civilization
What in the paradigm of industrial civilization causes not only such grizzly violence of epic and epidemic proportions, but what in that paradigm causes us to so blatantly and blithely ignore the global warming-generated drought that is shriveling at least one third of this country? Are the two issues related?