Edge of the Abyss
Thanks to author Lindsey Grant for this NPG paper, Edge of the Abyss. It will also be posted at www.npg.org.
As Lindsey Grant said in his cover email, the paper “reports on what we have learned in the past year about energy and climate, following up on THE AGE OF OVERSHOOT. I run into a certain amount of family resistance with these books and papers, on the grounds I am pessimistic. Perhaps the close of this paper provides my answer. It is realism, not pessimism. The age of fossil energy was an aberration. We must relearn to live on the sun’s annual budget. That can be done, but not if we continue to pursue growth as our ideal. And the issues are closing faster than we expected.”
Lindsey Grant Edge of the Abyss (PDF, 252 KB)
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April 3rd, 2008 at 6:34 am
Dear Lindsey,
Please accept my thanks for your great work, as well for the equally fine work of Donald Mann to whom you dedicated the book, THE CASE FOR FEWER PEOPLE: The NPG Forum Papers. In 2006, a friend of the “AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population” sent me a hardback volume of this veritable treasure.
Certain contributors to your book — John R. Bermingham, David I. Pimentel, Albert Bartlett, William R. Catton, Jr., Ken Smail, Paul J. Werbos, Tim Palmer and, of course, last and foremost, Paul and Anne Ehrlich — are among my heroes.
Very best regards to you, Bill and these other persistently courageous scientists,
Steve
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Dear Lindsey,
Is there even a remote possibility that the standard for determining what is real and true in our culture today is this: whatsoever is widely shared, consensually validated and judged to be ecomonically expedient, politically convenient, socially agreeable and religiously tolerated is true and real?
At least to me, it seems that good science is being ignored, distractions presented ubiquitously, controversy manufactured where it would not otherwise exist, or else silence allowed to prevail, when reasonable and sensible scientific evidence comes into conflict with what culture prescribes as real and true, based upon preternatural thought. We realize that science does present members of a culture with evidence of inconvenient truths from time to time.
With regard to the science of human population numbers, perhaps we have before us a situation in which contrived logic, linear thinking, material obsessiveness and a mechanistic world view, that we see pervading the predominant culture on Earth in our time, could result in the children recklessly charging down a “primrose path” at our behest only to be confronted by a colossal ecological wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has seen.
Despite our best efforts, could it be that our generation of elders is communicating with one another and our children as if we are living in a modern day Tower of Babel? Are we seeing evidence here and now of our spectacular failure to communicate reasonably and sensibly about whatsoever is somehow real, and to widely share adequate understandings regarding both how the family of humanity “fits” within the natural order of living things and what are the limitations of the planet we inhabit?
It appears that the human community is indeed in a serious multifaceted predicament, but only in part because of the objective biological and physical circumstances defining our distinctly human-induced predicament. The global challenges in the offing are further complicated by our failure to communicate effectively about the potentially pernicious results that could be derived from having recklessly grown, without regard to the limits to growth, a soon to become patently unsustainable, colossal global economy, one which we have artificially designed, conveniently constructed, and relentlessly expanded without enough conscious, intelligent regard for the practical requirements of biophysical reality.
Could it be that the current gigantic scale and unchecked growth of the global economy is unsustainably driving increases both in adamant per human over-consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers toward the point in human history when the willful, rampant, unregulated growth of consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species precipitates the collapse of Earth’s ecology, even in these early years of Century XXI?
Thanks for your careful consideration of these comments and questions.
Sincerely,
Steve