To Collapse or Not To Collapse...

In the last semester of my undergraduate career, I took a course called “Climate and Civilization” with one of my favorite professors, Dr. Mitch Wagener. This course was the turning point for me in deciding that I wanted to enter the environmental field. Learning about how fast ancient civilizations have declined in the past, due to lack of resources, change in climate or other factors, made me start to think deeply about our own civilization. I was fascinated (and still am) about the limiting factors of our civilization. What is the maximum amount of people that our planet can sustain? What will we do when clean water and clean air are no longer accessible? Where do we move populations affected by droughts, floods and fires?

    After reading the first 3 chapters from “A Finer Future is Possible,” it put some of the questions I had into perspective. Hunter Lovins explains the boundaries that our planet has and what will happen if we exceed them in scientific, as well as economic terms. Much of what Lovins discusses in these chapters reminded me of readings that I did for my “Climate and Civilization” course and also work done by Jared Diamond.

     In his TED Talk, “Why Societies Collapse,” Jared Diamond discusses a 5-point framework that helps to understand collapse of society:

1. Human impacts on the environment
2. Change in climate
3. Relations with neighboring societies
4. Relations with hostile societies
5. Political, economic, social and cultural factors in the society that make it difficult to solve problems

Diamond uses this framework to discuss the downfall of the Norse civilization in Greenland and compared it to the society in southern Montana, where he spent much of his time. He stresses that although every society is different, we can learn from the decline of past societies in order to prevent decline in the present/future by comparing common threads. Some of these major disparities that Diamond says can lead to decline are available resources vs. resource consumption and economic outlays vs. economic potential--- which are also discussed in Lovins’ book.

I highly recommend Jared Diamond's book "Collapse: How Societies Chose to Fail or Succeed," if you're as interested in this topic as I am. I could write/talk forever about how much I admire Diamond, but I’ll just leave the link for the TED Talk here instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IESYMFtLIis

Question: Do you agree that it’s possible to change the system and avoid collapse (Lovins, 35) or is collapse inevitable?

Comments

[Sam Krasnobrod]

Collapse will lead to change. Or, put another way, the change in the system will be the collapse of the status quo. Every other species on earth will experience a period of boom followed by a bust; however, humans have not felt a bust on the species level. Even the economic depressions that occur every couple of decades have not changed the way humans live. To further beat a dead horse... I'd argue that for a species to truly adapt to a problem, the problem has to be as big as the species. Since the human race has spread across the planet, the whole planet would have to change dramatically for humans, as a species, for the system to collapse and need to be rebuilt.

[Alec Brazeau]

I think Sam really hit the nail on the head when he said collapse will lead to change. However, I wonder if it could go the other way as well? Would a systemic change of the size that Hunter Lovins is calling for cause the system to collapse? I know her Regenerative Economy concept is an attempt to change the system and avoid collapse, however, I fear that changing the entire economic system in the way she wants to could also lead to collapse. Of course, rebuilding after that collapse will allow us to achieve our end goal. What I am getting at is this: would changing the system in the way Hunter Lovins desires lead to a systemic collapse?