Civilization after global warming

The End of the World As We Know It? The rise of the post-carbon era

In an exclusive new essay, political scientist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed presents a dramatic picture of the world we're about to leave behind, and the new possibilities ahead. He argues that the age of Carbon is coming to a close, and only a concerted effort can prevent an impending crisis on a global scale.

Only 500 generations ago, hunter-gatherers began cultivating crops and forming their tiny communities into social hierarchies. Around 15 to 20 generations ago, industrial capitalism erupted on a global scale. In the last generation, the entire human species, along with virtually all other species and indeed the entire planet, have been thrown into a series of crises, which many believe threaten to converge in global catastrophe: global warming spiraling out of control; oil prices fluctuating wildly; food riots breaking out in the South; banks collapsing worldwide; the spectre of terror bombings in major cities; and the promise of ‘endless war’ to fight ‘violent extremists’ at home and abroad.

This is from 2010, so he was a little off: "By 2018, converging food, water and energy shortages could magnify the probability of conflict between major powers, civil wars, and cross-border conflicts. After 2020, this could result in political and economic catastrophes that would undermine state control and national infrastructures, potentially leading to social collapse."

While we may not be able to stop various catastrophes and collapse-processes from occurring, we still retain an unprecedented opportunity to envisage an alternative vision for a new, sustainable and equitable form of post-carbon civilization.The imperative now is for communities, activists, scholars and policymakers to initiate dialogue on the contours of this vision, and pathways to it.

Any vision for ‘another world’, if it is to overcome the deep-rooted structural failures of our current business-as-usual model, will need to explore how we can develop new social, political and economic structures which encourage the following:

1. Widespread distribution of ownership of productive resources so that all members of society have a stake in agricultural, industrial and commercial productive enterprises, rather than a tiny minority monopolising resources for their own interests.
2. More decentralised politico-economic participation through self-managerial producer and consumer councils to facilitate participatory decision-making in economic enterprises.
3. Re-defining the meaning of economic growth to focus less on materially-focused GDP, and more on the capacity to deliver values such as health, education, well-being, longevity, political and cultural freedom.
4. Fostering a new, distributed renewable energy infrastructure based on successful models such as that of the borough of Woking in Surrey, UK.
5. Structural reform of the monetary, banking and financial system including abolition of interest, in particular the cessation of money-creation through government borrowing on compound interest.
6. Elimination of unrestricted lending system based on faulty quantitative risk-assessment models, with mechanisms to facilitate greater regulation of lending practices by bank depositors themselves.
7. Development of parallel grassroots participatory political structures that are both transnational and community-oriented, by which to facilitate community governance as well as greater popular involvement in mainstream political institutions.
8. Development of parallel grassroots participatory economic institutions that are both transnational and community-oriented, to facilitate emergence of alternative equitable media of exchange and loans between North and South.
9. Emergence of a ‘post-materialist’ scientific paradigm and worldview which recognizes that the cutting-edge insights of physics and biology undermine traditional, mechanistic conceptions of the natural order, pointing to a more holistic understanding of life and nature.
10. Emergence of a ‘post-materialist’ ethic recognizing that progressive values and ideals such as justice, compassion, and generosity are more conducive to the survival of the human species, and thus more in harmony with the natural order, than the conventional ‘materialistic’ behaviours associated with neoliberal consumerism.

Ecosystem Based Adaptation, - by, John D. Liu

In this presentation, John D. Liu describes and shows video of his long formative journey starting with the revitalization of the Loess Plateau in China. John later turned this experience into the BBC World Documentary, Hope In A Changing Climate. This is the Full Video of John D. Liu's presentation, Ecosystem Based Adaptation, The Great Work Of Our Time, that he presented at The Brooklyn Commons in New York on October 21st 2016. The Loess Plateau was a large, decimated eco-system and with an orchestrated community effort was able to be restored, a feet no one knew was possible before it started. John was transformed by this amazing restoration process and has been able to share it with many other countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda to help them repeat the success. John is continuing these efforts with the company Commonland which is developing restoration camps around the world.

An Anarchist Solution to Global Warming Author: Peter Gelderloos Date: 2010

An interesting and thorough take assuming the premises:

• Fossil fuel extraction and consumption need to come to a full stop.
• Industrial food production must be replaced with the sustainable growing of food at the local level.
• Centralizing power structures are inherently exploitative of the environment and oppressive towards people.
• The mentality of quantitative value, accumulation, production, and consumption — that is to say, the mentality of the market — is inherently exploitative of the environment and oppressive towards people.
• Medical science is infused with a hatred of the body, and though it has perfected effective response to symptoms, it is damaging to our health as currently practiced.
• Decentralization, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, and non-coercion are fully practical and have worked, both within and outside of Western Civilization, time and time again.

Farm bot An awesome and opensource project for automated farming. The hardware, the code, the documentation.

This has gotta be some hyperbole: "By our estimations, FarmBot Express can grow all of the veggies needed by one person, continuously, for less cost after 2 years than shopping at the average US grocery store. Meanwhile, Express XL can serve a family of four with an ROI period of just 1 year."

Yields

From a guy on the Facebook Deep Adaptation Forum:

Dan Matulich If you're not researching how to provide all of those things for yourself without fossil fuels, you're doing it wrong.

It doesn't take long.

Food: - Hugelkultur - Aquaponics - Permaculture - Korean natural farming

Shelter: - Earthbag - Cob - Straw bale - Aircrete - Rammed Earth

Power: - Vortex generators - Solar - DIY Rocket heater system - Geothermal

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What about water, man?! I guess there's those water filters that collect water vapor. There's likely to be more water vapor as our planet heats up.