Jack’s work 600 word summary

Watch Jack Alpert’s presentation “Imagining a Sustainable Civilization” from Feb 16, 2022

By Dr. Jack Alpert

Knowledge is imperfect. Every behavior does not produce expected results whether you are an individual or a nation. But some things are very determinant. If you drive your car until the gas tank is empty it stops.

If it stops in the middle of a desert with no water for hundreds of miles and no cell phone service and little chance of anyone coming your way — you made some choices that are going to kill you and everyone in the car.

Global civilization is a little more complicated than a car running out of gas in the desert. However, there is a good chance that when oil, coal, gas, and uranium energy deliveries decline and we don’t find the technology to make wind, solar, or fusion support us, we will be fighting each other over the last loaf of bread until at the end of this century only 600 million subsistence farmers survive and there is no path upward.

If the car – running out of gas in the desert – is a good representation of our civilization,

1. Why are we having trouble explaining it to the 7.8 billion people who are in control?
2. Is the car in the desert model the starting point to help us describe a viable global civilization?
3. Do we know which collected human behaviors would keep that new civilization viable?
4. How do we get people, living in this new civilization to take them?
5. How do we have the people living in our present civilization take the behavior that would avoid the expected on-course tragedy and transition from where we are to this viable civilization?

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Here are some of the answers on which I have been working:

1-minute video which puts economics into a context that might be useful in answering these questions.
Economics in 60 Seconds

4 10-minute videos which show how much we underestimate our civilization’s vulnerability to collapse.

1. Losing Our Energy Slaves (a big decrease in delivered energy)
2. Underestimating Overpopulation (overshoot caused by declining supports)
3. scarcity/conflict death spiral. (parts 1-3 of Overpopulation Means Civilization Collapse)
4. How the world works v2.0 (Why collapse)

A video that suggests that we cannot trial and error our way though this bottleneck. Instead we must steer using behavior that reflects conditions that don’t yet exist. (anticipatory behavior)
What collected Behavior Creates Sustainability.

Two text views of a target viable civilization.
What does a sustainable civilization look like.
Design for a Viable Civilization (outline view)

A 60 minute animation Feb 25 2022
Imagining A sustainable Civilization
(This is a beta. Critical comments welcome.
Final posting on Utube will have a different url.

Here are two videos which describe adequate contraction

1. How Much Degrowth is Enough? (based on energy)
2. How much population decline saves civilization? (based on soil)

This video helps determine the viability of any proposed civilization design
Sustainable Civilization Analysis Project 10 min video

This text Unwinding the Human Predicament describes two social contracts

1. one that shapes collected behavior to maintain a viable design once it exists

and

2. a second social contract that shapes collected behavior during the transition from our present civilization to one that is viable.

This video connects the structure of the human predicament to a process for installing the resolving social contracts.
Change the course invite video

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7 activities to help people understand the relationship between population and civilization viability.

ACTIVITY 1: Have each person on earth make a personal estimate of Who gets injured and when.
(small group discussions, class discussions, etc where each person creates their own estimate of how many people will die of starvation and conflict between now and 2100. If this number is tiny no change in the human course will occur. If the estimate is so large it includes everyone, the person might be motivated to change course — that is consider behavior previously thought to be completely unacceptable.

ACTIVITY 2: Introduce “Civilization Viability” as a curriculum — primary schools through college,
letter to faculty, deans, principles, and parents

ACTIVITY 3: Get everyone participating in the Sustainable Civilization Analysis Project 10 min video applied arithmetic as a way of understanding reality.

ACTIVITY 4: Jump start civilization viability thinking — view video
The Human Predicament and What to Do About It

ACTIVITY 5: Do the workshop that ties the videos and SKIL notes together.
Self Guided Tour of the Human Predicament and What to Do About it.

ACTIVITY 6: Become part of the Viability Discussion

ACTIVITY 7: Invitation to rank and participate in activities at Stanford Knowledge Integration Lab 2021

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Learn more at www.skil.org