<\/p>\n
Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be only?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Charles Dickens, \u201cA Christmas Carol\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u2026in The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis<\/i><\/span> (1924) [Freud] wrote the following: \u201cNeurosis does not disavow the reality, it ignores it; psychosis disavows it and tries to replace it.\u201d (p. 185) What psychosis replaces reality with is delusion\u2026.Psychotic delusion on the personal level becomes ideology at the group level; both possess the power to annihilate the Other \u2013 be it the foreigner or the domestic subversive.<\/span><\/p>\n Dmitri Orlov, \u201c<\/span>Peak Oil Oppositional Disorder: Neurosis or Psychosis<\/span><\/a>?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction.\u00a0 <\/span>It may be that in this respect precisely the present time deserves a special interest. Men have gained control over the forces of nature to such an extent that with their help they would have no difficulty in exterminating one another to the last man. They know this, and hence comes a large part of their current unrest, their unhappiness and their mood of anxiety.\u00a0 <\/span>And now it is to be expected that the other of the two “Heavenly Powers”, eternal Eros, will make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with his equally immortal adversary.\u00a0 <\/span>But who can foresee with what success and with what results?<\/span><\/p>\n Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I love Jesus, who said to us: Antonio Machado, \u201cMoral Proverbs and Folk Songs,\u201d Robert Bly translation<\/span><\/p>\n And the crisis of society is, of course, the crisis of organized religion too: religion is no longer valid as a hero system, and so the youth scorn it.\u00a0 <\/span>If traditional culture is discredited as heroics, then the church that supports that culture automatically discredits itself.\u00a0 <\/span>If the church, on the other hand, chooses to insist on its own special heroics, it might find that in crucial ways it must work against the culture, recruit youth to be antiheroes to the ways of life of the society they live in.\u00a0 <\/span>This is the dilemma of religion in our time.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n I want to say just a few words about the gravity of our collective situation, just in case there is any mistake about it.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n I think we all understand that human civilization, and this planet\u2019s diversity of life, have entered a severe, multifaceted crisis.\u00a0 <\/span>For human civilization, the crisis is unprecedented in scale (it is global), in dimension (it affects all human institutions) and in severity (there are no apparent limits).\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n As regards nature, the mass extinction now underway and the present very rapid accumulation of greenhouse gases and initial stages of climate change in the new <\/span>Anthropocene<\/span><\/a> epoch is not entirely unprecedented.\u00a0 <\/span>An apparent analog to where present trends (in emissions, deforestation, and above all arctic warming and melting) will lead unless they are rapidly reversed can be found in the <\/span>Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)<\/span><\/a>, or even the <\/span>Permian\u2013Triassic mass extinction event<\/span><\/a>, which killed more than 95% of all life on earth.\u00a0 <\/span>As mentioned in my October 23 letter to you, Thom Hartmann and his colleagues have produced an excellent video <\/span>wake-up call<\/span><\/a> regarding these matters.\u00a0 <\/span>The threat is very grave and very urgent, as perusal of the web site of the <\/span>Arctic Methane Emergency Group<\/span><\/a> will tell you.\u00a0 <\/span>The response of climate and<\/i> our weather (hence, storms, droughts and food production) to changes in fundamental variables like atmospheric moisture (now up 4%) and the extent of summer arctic sea ice (which may effectively vanish <\/span>as early as 2015<\/span><\/a>) is not linear<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>Earth\u2019s climate is inherently unstable, outside narrow boundaries which we have already transgressed.<\/span><\/i>\u00a0 <\/span>We must therefore promptly return to a stable climate before runaway geophysical events make it impossible to return.\u00a0 <\/span>Surely no monetary cost in such an effort is too great, since there are no technological means capable of supporting civilization and human populations under the climatic regime toward which we are certainly headed<\/span> if we cannot rapidly reverse course.\u00a0 <\/span>Specifically, we must reverse arctic warming.\u00a0 <\/span>It is quite possible that, to be successful in avoiding runaway climate change, we must prevent further arctic warming during the present decade.<\/i><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>This would require active cooling, a subject well beyond the scope of this letter. <\/span><\/p>\n Without particularly focusing on arctic issues, James Hansen and several others in an overview paper published last month attempt to quantify the overall greenhouse gas problem from a policy perspective, advising that global warming needs to be held to about 1\u00b0C and suggesting how to do, with a sobering reminder of the cost of delays, past and prospective.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n We conclude that human-made warming could be held to about 1\u00b0C (1.8\u00b0F) if cumulative industrial-era fossil fuel emissions are limited to 500 GtC (gigatons of carbon, where a gigaton is one billion metric tons) and if policies are pursued to restore 100 GtC into the biosphere, including the soil.\u00a0 <\/span>This scenario leads to reduction of atmospheric CO 2 to 350 ppm by 2100, as needed to restore Earth’s energy balance and approximately stabilize climate\u2026.Cumulative fossil fuel emissions through 2012 are 370 GtC and increasing almost 10 GtC per year.\u00a0 <\/span>The current emission rate would need to decrease 6% per year to limit emissions to 500 GtC.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>If reductions had begun in 1995, the required reduction rate would have been 2.1% per year, or 3.5% per year if reductions had begun in 2005.\u00a0 <\/span>If emissions continue to grow until 2020, reductions must be 15% per year to stay within the 500 GtC limit<\/span>, which emphasizes the urgency of initiating emission reductions.\u00a0 <\/span>(emphasis added)<\/span><\/p>\n (James Hansen et. al., \u201cAssessing \u2018Dangerous Climate Change\u2019: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature\u201d; <\/span>6 pp. summary and commentary<\/span><\/a>; <\/span>whole paper<\/span><\/a>) <\/span><\/p>\n Let us set aside the climate crisis just for a moment and consider the energetic basis of our civilization, specifically the transportation fuels necessary to run it.\u00a0 <\/span>The best official data available now show that conventional oil production peaked around 2008 and is now in terminal decline.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n A former British Petroleum<\/span> geologist has warned<\/a> that the age of cheap <\/span>oil<\/span> is long gone, bringing with it the danger of “continuous recession” and increased risk of conflict and hunger.<\/span><\/p>\n The first hammer-blow \u2013 the peaking of conventional oil production \u2013 has already fallen, quadrupling the price of oil and shocking our frothy finance system and the real economy so badly it has taken trillions of dollars in near-zero-interest loans to the biggest financial organizations just to maintain the ragged illusion of \u201cnormality.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n What makes our society and our nested economic arrangements very fragile is also what makes them very unjust, very environmentally destructive, and anti-democratic.\u00a0 <\/span>Our common problems have common solutions, but do not be deceived: there is no utopia, no better world, ahead.\u00a0 <\/span>There is a less-bad<\/i> world, if we choose it.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n In this country alone, millions of livelihoods, as well as prospects for tens of millions of young people to someday join the \u201cmiddle class,\u201d have come to what is very likely a permanent end.\u00a0 <\/span>There is no serious plan to get those livelihoods back.\u00a0 <\/span>There can\u2019t be without a radical commitment to substitution for the economic resources which have become limiting.\u00a0 <\/span>That change will involve financial losses \u2013 losses of power and status \u2013 for many of the people now running the show, so some (not all) of them resist mightily.\u00a0 <\/span>By and large the superwealthy would still be wealthy after the necessary transition, but that minor diminishment and flexibility for the common good is not part of everyone\u2019s moral code.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The nature of the resources we need now is radically changing, away from oil and gas, which will never again be available at prices low enough to re-start real (not fictitious, bytes-in-a-hard-drive) economic growth, and toward dispersed renewable energy and the human skill, wisdom and care it will take to manage a society which is no longer rich.\u00a0 <\/span>Surely everyone knows, at some level, that more and more of us must now \u201cmake our living by loving,\u201d as Thoreau put it.\u00a0 <\/span>The social contract, the environmental contract, must make up a larger and larger part of our economy, replacing mindless consumerism and the mindless mass entertainment that enables it, or else there will be no economy.\u00a0 <\/span>We must now turn to one another and \u201cspeak new words for the first time,\u201d as Gary Snyder put it so many years ago.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Surely everyone knows that all the new debt \u2013 aka claims on our children\u2019s productivity \u2013 will never be repaid.\u00a0 <\/span>When the U.S. shale oil boom begins to plateau and decline, a process that could well begin next year or the year after, or the year after that, as many industry analysts now understand, today\u2019s anemic \u201crecovery,\u201d itself the product of jiggered government statistics, will collapse.\u00a0 <\/span>How far and fast that process goes, and with what pauses and what turbulence, is anybody\u2019s guess, but one thing is certain: the rising tide of trouble will engulf the lowest stratum of society first (it already has), and then the next.\u00a0 <\/span>Already, the life expectancy in Albuquerque\u2019s richest census tracts is 28 years more than in its poorest.\u00a0 <\/span>(Thanks to the Albuquerque Journal\u2019s <\/i>Mike Bush for reporting this<\/span><\/a> research, apparently done by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies<\/span><\/a>, to be used by Peter Winograd of the UNM Center for Education Policy<\/span><\/a> in a lunch talk to be hosted by the Albuquerque Press Women<\/span><\/a> tomorrow, February 10.)<\/span><\/p>\n To see the future that is gradually spreading, just look at our poorest neighborhoods and rural regions today, not to mention at the refugees and riots in many countries today.\u00a0 <\/span>People aren\u2019t risking their lives in those demonstrations just to vote<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>People riot when they perceive that they have little to lose.\u00a0 <\/span>They want material<\/i> benefits and opportunities which they are denied.\u00a0 <\/span>They want respect, and dignity, and these come with a material as well as a social and political price tag.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This economic decline \u2013 so fast in historical terms it will be called a \u201ccollapse\u201d in retrospect \u2013 will probably be a good thing, because the way we live has unleashed a climate catastrophe which if not quickly reversed will<\/i> \u2013 not may<\/i> \u2013destroy civilization and most life on earth.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>This will happen very fast<\/i>, indeed it is happening now.\u00a0 <\/span>What we do in the next decade is likely to be determinative of the outcome on a scale of centuries.<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately, merely decreasing emissions, no matter how steeply, is almost certainly no longer enough.\u00a0 <\/span>We waited too long. What each of now does, or fails to do, has consequences that far exceed the apparent ambit of our lives.\u00a0 <\/span>Each of our voices is now more important than ever.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDoes the individual know,\u201d said Jung, \u201cthat he is the makeweight that tips the scales?\u201d\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Well, no, in our experience \u201cthe individual\u201d generally does not<\/i> know and many people do not want<\/i> to know.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>We are seeing a great deal of understandable fear in our communities \u2013 fear of information, fear of discussion, fear of commitment.\u00a0 <\/span>People are shit-scared, for darn good reasons, and many of you are hiding, whether you know it or not.\u00a0 <\/span>Scared you may be, just as we are, but please do not hide.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n We often hear, \u201cI can\u2019t do any more than I am!\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Jung does not imply doing more<\/i> and neither do we.\u00a0 <\/span>We don\u2019t need more<\/i>, we need less<\/i>.\u00a0 <\/span>And there is a problem with doing<\/i>, period.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cDoing\u201d generally means some variant of busyness.\u00a0 <\/span>Why can\u2019t we dispense with \u201cour\u201d precious notions of choice, 99% of which amount to mere consumer choice, and be willing<\/i> to set aside some of that slavery and accept<\/i> a degree of freedom?\u00a0 <\/span>There\u2019s no deferred gratification involved here.\u00a0 <\/span>The freedom is instant.<\/span><\/p>\n Neither does \u201cthe individual,\u201d in our experience, know why<\/i> she or he is that makeweight.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cThe individual,\u201d in our experience, in the United States, is generally very far from free.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cThe individual\u201d wants a certain political outcome but does not know that it is the wholly-accepted process<\/i>, not the outcome, which is the liberating and majestic experience.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Although the Study Group works closely with two branches of government and we litigate in the courts, we know these activities are not remotely sufficient in themselves<\/i> to save our country from its intensifying decline, compounded of factors very familiar to all of us.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Neither will mere reform<\/i> rescue this poor state from its downward spiral (\u201cWhither New Mexico, world capital of weapons of mass destruction?\u201d <\/span>Bulletin #167<\/span><\/a><\/span>, 03\/27\/13)<\/span><\/p>\n
\nHeaven and earth will pass away.
\nWhen heaven and earth have passed away,
\nmy word will remain.
\nWhat was your word, Jesus?
\nLove? Forgiveness? Affection?
\nAll your words were one word:
\nWakeup<\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n