2005 Series 3 Number 6 Page 16
What to do in a failing civilization.
David Delaney was a software engineer. In this essay, he asked whether civilization could adapt successfully to the degradation of its biosphere and depletion of its fossil fuel resources. [I would ask whether civilization could survive those events. Ed]
As it turns out, he thought civilization might be preserved, but only in select restricted regions. [One would say, then, only for a select few. Ed.]
The drivers for civilizational decline that he identified were things such as loss of biodiversity, ozone depletion, desertification, pollution, and climate change.
After much chewing of the lip, Mr. Delaney did come around to this concluding statement: “Overshoot and crash may so damage the biosphere and deplete other natural capital as to extinguish humanity, or to reduce humanity to a few bands of wondering hunter-gatherers. These possibilities are now beyond our control. We can only hope there will be enough world left to sustain at least a greatly reduced new civilization, and act to keep the struggles of overshoot from precluding even that possibility.”
[Mr. Delaney died in 2012 (obituary below. Ed.]
Link to | What to do in a failing civilization.
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