I, don’t like John Michael Greer. I don’t like his Druidism, natural magic and Leftist ecology. To my mind, this is too much politically correct bullshit. Greer, though, believes that techno-industrial civilization is doomed because of resource shortages (he is a big peak oil man), and he sees the West, if not the modern globalized world, sliding down a “long descent (The Long Descent, (2008)), to a medieval future. But, he entertains hope of a regeneration, where a Greenie “ecotechnic future” can be built.
The long descent, which kills off most of the human race is modelled on the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which past historians say, was a long-drawn-out death. Greer simply models contemporary decline on that. But, there are a minority of historians who believe that Rome collapsed quickly – in generations, rather than over the course of centuries, and some believe that there was not really a collapse at all, but a “devolution.” Matters are indeed complex: G. W. Bowersock, “The Vanishing paradigm of the Fall of Rome,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, vol. 49, 1996, pp. 29-43.
Greer’s latest book, I hate to admit, is simply great. Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead, (New Society Publishers, 2016), is something like the book I would write. Climate change is real, although most Americans can’t admit it because they sense that it means that the capitalist/consumerist game is over; so is peak oil, resource depletion, species loss, biodiversity decline, and thousands of other environmental problems. Anyone of these problems is enough to bring us down, and we have them all coming at us at once.
We are fucked, and science and technology is not going to be a Deus Ex Machina and save us, just in the nick of time:
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Regardless of the decline and fall of Rome debate, Rome did not face problems which we face. Our high tech, mega-populated urban jungles are highly vulnerable, and most urban people have no survival skills. They will die off quickly.
For those who are skeptical about my talk of the coming collapse and its philosophical significance, Dark Age America is a good doomsday primer from the Left. The works of Guillaume Faye, such as Convergence of Catastrophes, (Arktos, 2012), can also be consulted. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.
See also:
[James LaFond Under the God of Things ]
Under the God of Things
Aren't you Australian? You should know that Mother Nature is the enemy, she hates her children and laughs when we perish. Don't you have a tree there that eats people and drives horses to suicide? Does the world really need that kind of biodiversity?
"...techno-industrial civilization is doomed because of resource shortages (he is a big peak oil man)..."
Complete nonsense. There's a group that have made and are using right now a new high power microwave that fits in a oil well hole. The microwave heats the water into steam driving the shale oil out. After the water is steamed away the microwave goes right through the rock, hits the oil and liquefies it making for even better recovery. In Colorado and the surrounding States there's over a Trillion barrels of oil. That's right a Trillion. This doesn't even count the billions and billions of barrels of oil that can be recovered from oil wells that have lost their pressure but still have 40% of their total yield left.
nextbigfuture.com/2016/12/microwave-oil-recovery-could-unlock.html
"...techno-industrial civilization is doomed because of resource shortages..."
More nonsense. With lots of energy we can make ANYTHING. Remember aluminum is really just portable electricity. It's takes a lot of power to separate the aluminum from it's minerals but once separated it's very useful. Same with Titanium. Carbon fiber is much the same but takes even more energy to produce.
There's even a new material called Nano-crystalline cellulose (NCC) that's almost the same strength as carbon fiber but grows in trees. We just have to separate it and the cost is far below carbon fiber. WAY stronger than steel.
All the worry over rare earth minerals are complete bullshit. The reason we don't mine these is they are tied up with Thorium and the government hassles the mines about the Thorium. We have LOTS. We could just gather up the Thorium and store it somewhere. It's radioactive but not so that it burns you up or anything. Mommy gov. stuff. Easily solvable.
cont.
Speaking of Thorium we can make reactors that CAN NOT EXPLODE like light water reactors. There's more Thorium on the planet than lead. There's a LOT. One small handful of Thorium will provide ALL the energy a person needs their whole lifetime. Look at the picture link. This much. ALL ENERGY for one person in a high energy Western lifestyle. Every bit.
i0.wp.com/25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m35fc4euwa1r8x2ybo1_1280.jpg
Thorium molten salt reactors are way more efficient and burn almost every last ounce of nuclear material. Thorium can even be mixed with nuclear waste from other power plants and it's burns that waste up also making it less radioactive. The Chinese, of course, are going balls to the walls and investing billions in the tech that America discovered. By a Jew no less the only decent thing they've done.
Global warming. I'm not as sure about this because many people are just outright lying. I know the warmers are cooking the record books on temperatures. They were caught and should be prosecuted for fraud. They haven't proven one damn thing that I can see. On the other hand is lots of CO2 good? I don't know. I do know plants love it. It's fertilizer to them. Makes them grow way faster. I've been told that a couple of good volcano blast produce more CO2 than the whole industrial revolution. I've not seen this disputed but it may not be true. Maybe it's a lie from the don't worry crowd. I'm inclined to say it's true because if it was a lie the whole entire media would be saying it's a lie 24 hours a day until we were sick of hearing it.
One thing not talked about is the Sun. The Sun is really the determiner of how warm it is. It puts out energy that hits the Earth in quantities that make our actions look like frivolous nothings. It's damn near gone out in comparison to earlier periods. There's little Sun spot activity. The higher the activity the warmer. The last time this happened we had a little ice age. It was brutal. Mass deaths from starvation. Remember the Thames in London used to freeze over? You seen that anytime? Hell no. Remember the pictures of Washington crossing the Delaware and the big ice chunks? That doesn't happen anymore either. If you want to panic that's something to panic over. All the Northern wheat fields would probably fail. Food prices would skyrocket and mass starvation would start. There would be really, really serious world wide starvation.
Societal collapse? Tough one. It does look bad and it's a lot of what James talks about here and Anonymous Coward talks about. Could go either way. I think the third world will collapse. It's true that a lot of the easy picking is gone. Industrial society is not for just the strong back anymore. It takes brains and the people who have them in the third world are doing every thing they can to abandon it. Could happen in the White countries if we don't abandon diversity worship. When we do could be some trouble but if determined we could push these folks out pronto. If determined. Too tough to call really. Deport the Jews then get back to me and I could tell you for sure.