Solutions

The inevitable question that is raised when anybody talks about things like climate change and alternatives to the amorality of capitalism and over-consumption, as I was doing here last week, is Okay, so what do we do about it? Sometimes, this question is asked in all honesty. Yes, I agree. What do we do now? Most of the time, though, it is considered the ultimate rejoinder: All you can do is articulate the problem. I've heard no solutions. There is nothing we can do. So, what to do when there is nothing to be done but continue to do what we have always done, but perhaps a bit more humanely?

Agreed, there is no solution in the sense that we now have a how-to list of ways to save the world. More important than the absence of any how-to, though, is the absence of will. If you talk about this stuff w/ most people, they get exasperated because you've not laid out the reasons and ways we can survive. What they want are ways we can all survive and still lead basically the same life we've been leading. That this is fundamentally opposed to the very critique of consumption never seems to dawn on them. (Example: people who talk about the electric car imagine a very happy world of zero emissions and high mileage, and a new world of economic growth and industrial expansion freed of over-consumpton. The problem with this is the amount of energy/consumption (& cost) needed to [a] completely redesign and rebuild the electrical grid, and [b] to create & maintain the new industrial market responsible for the production & distribution of millions of batteries, is so high, and so immediately necessary, that [at minimum] it will alter the playing field of who can afford to consume what is now even an average amount of resources.) If mathematics and geology are correct -- who can assume these things anymore? -- what is necessary is a fundamental change that not only changes the present, but in effect changes the past decisions that set us on this present path. Nobody wants to hear this, of course. It is the inconceivable.

What is not inconceivable, however, is that there is a solution to our problem. In fact, I think the end result of our consumptive ways is its own the solution. Our path has a terminus. There will be more famine. There almost certainly will be eco-catastrophes. There will be more disease. Lots of people, mostly poor, will die. The middle-class will become incredibly disenfranchised when the protective bubble of credit we've settled in is no longer sustainable, and incredibly dangerous when the reality we kept at bay seaps back into everyday life. The very same rich & famous we gawk at now may actually become the targets for aggression and resentment. And, where do the formerly coddled and now newly disenfranchised go for their succor but either identitarian movements that mistrust strangers and/or the awaiting rhetoric of demagogic religion & politics. All this seems unavoidable to me, and in a certain sense it does "solve" many of our problems -- in an absolutely dire way.

What's more. We are, I believe, beyond the point of stopping this. The most viable response now is to begin preparing ourselves for what comes after. People need to start learning NOW how to live in alternative, less-consumptive ways -- using their hands, learning agriculture, learning how to get by w/out driving, etc. I'm not so naive as to think or imagine a future anytime soon where people worldwide do these things and change our current situation, and reverse the course our history of bad decisions has set us on. But I can imagine our world being changed in such a way that we and our habits are forced to change. Making preparations now is imperative ... not to delay the future, though in some measure it might a little, but to prepare ourselves for its arrival.