As Economic Growth Fails, How Do We Live? Part III
In With The New
Part III of As Economic Growth Fails, How Do We Live?
Image Credit: Dilmen (cropped) Wikimedia Commons
by Craig A. Severance
December 30, 2011
We need a map for uncharted territory as we enter this New Year, as the realization is dawning we are dealing with an economic crisis of an entirely different character than ever before. Our industrial civilization is reaching limits to growth, and we don't know how to live with that.
Part I of this series of three articles addressed the four major challenges we now face, there dubbed "The Four Horsemen of the Economic Apocalypse": 1) Too Much Debt; 2) Resource Limits; 3) Destruction and Decay of Infrastructure; and 4) Greed. Bottom line: this crisis is much deeper and more permanent than we've been led us to believe. "Recovery" to former patterns of growth simply won't happen. We must now adapt to new realities, as individuals and as a society.
Part II of this series, "Out With The Old", discussed the end of seven "Dead End" unsustainable practices that will falter and decline. We won't pay our unpayable debts or keep impossible promises. We can't keep importing more than we export and borrowing the difference. Our Empire will shrink back. Our use of fossil fuels will decline as we experience Peak Oil and Peak Coal . We must cure Sick Care. We will repeal laws that mandate opulence and forbid prosperity. Finally, we will "drop the shopping" for worthless junk and refocus on the best of what it means to be human.
In With The New: Seven New Ways of Living That Will Work. In this third and final article in this series, we will discuss seven new ways of living which we can adopt as economic growth fails. They are not revolutionary (revolutions never achieve their utopian visions because of something called "human nature"). Rather, they may allow us to "muddle through" the best we can right now with what we already know how to do.
We will do these things because they will work -- and we certainly need to stop doing things that don't work, and find new ways that will work:
Click here to read entire article.
Part III of As Economic Growth Fails, How Do We Live?
Image Credit: Dilmen (cropped) Wikimedia Commons
by Craig A. Severance
December 30, 2011
We need a map for uncharted territory as we enter this New Year, as the realization is dawning we are dealing with an economic crisis of an entirely different character than ever before. Our industrial civilization is reaching limits to growth, and we don't know how to live with that.
Part I of this series of three articles addressed the four major challenges we now face, there dubbed "The Four Horsemen of the Economic Apocalypse": 1) Too Much Debt; 2) Resource Limits; 3) Destruction and Decay of Infrastructure; and 4) Greed. Bottom line: this crisis is much deeper and more permanent than we've been led us to believe. "Recovery" to former patterns of growth simply won't happen. We must now adapt to new realities, as individuals and as a society.
Part II of this series, "Out With The Old", discussed the end of seven "Dead End" unsustainable practices that will falter and decline. We won't pay our unpayable debts or keep impossible promises. We can't keep importing more than we export and borrowing the difference. Our Empire will shrink back. Our use of fossil fuels will decline as we experience Peak Oil and Peak Coal . We must cure Sick Care. We will repeal laws that mandate opulence and forbid prosperity. Finally, we will "drop the shopping" for worthless junk and refocus on the best of what it means to be human.
In With The New: Seven New Ways of Living That Will Work. In this third and final article in this series, we will discuss seven new ways of living which we can adopt as economic growth fails. They are not revolutionary (revolutions never achieve their utopian visions because of something called "human nature"). Rather, they may allow us to "muddle through" the best we can right now with what we already know how to do.
We will do these things because they will work -- and we certainly need to stop doing things that don't work, and find new ways that will work:
Click here to read entire article.
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