Orion Digest №13 — Finding Balance in the Face of Crisis

The causes of the climate crisis are clear — unsustainable growth in terms of what we produce and how much we use in order to do so. Making more than we need leads to a subsequent growth in population, which leads to producing even more of a surplus, and so on until we run out of space and resources, and we’re stuck with a large population that can no longer get jobs or afford to live, as well as a planet that cannot deal with both the capacity of humans and the method by which we produce goods. This, obviously, is a bad thing, for it spells the collapse of our current environment, and with it the conditions necessary for long term human survival.

So, if that is the problem, how do we fix it?

The problem of climate change is a war on two fronts — we must both fight the symptoms of the disease, as well as get to the root cause of it. If you have a rat problem in a house, you need to find a way to remove the rats, sure, but you also need to determine where they got in, so the problem will not persist — otherwise, you gain but a momentary victory. Just the same, while we need to focus on healing some of the damage, we also must make sure the practices that caused climate change in the first place are worked out of our society.

For alleviating symptoms, much of it comes down to understanding what we need and what we want. There are many modern comforts and distractions that we have lived without, and could live without once again, this time with the benefit of science to give us a leg up on the past. For example, mass transportation and non-polluting forms of getting around quicker are a bit more inconvenient, but help us cut back on the amount of motor vehicles in activity. Growing more of our own food may take more work than buying it directly from stores, but will decrease the amount of mass production that is needed to make readily accessible food. Really, products and services that we don’t really need take up much more resources than we usually think about.

And I don’t mean to say that every feature of our modern world is something we could do without. On the contrary, much of our modern technology and continuing innovation as actually shown improvement in decreasing the emissions it creates, and society has benefitted from many inventions over the last few centuries that have saved lives, connected us, and broadened our horizons. I will not advocate to get rid of computers as I write this from my laptop, but I think so many of the small things we overlook could have the biggest impact — I could live without sugary snack foods that come in boxes and plastic wrap, and make do with more natural foods, if it for the sake of the environment.

But to pin the blame on our consumption would be to ignore a much larger problem, and that is where we shift from the symptoms to the cause of the disease we seek to cure. For the Industrial Revolution didn’t just bring about an age of technological development — it brought about an age of societal development. The culture of capitalism orchestrated a constant need for growth, as well as an idea of elitism that persist to this day. Whether exemplified in capitalist economics, where the most powerful corporations try to get ever richer, or in nationalist politics, where countries and factions within them do whatever they can to acquire political and military power, we’ve developed a world of might-makes-right instead of equal and shared prosperity. While this may seem a separate issue from environmentalism, the two are intertwined.

To eliminate the cause of the climate crisis, we need to realize the necessary limits on our growth, at least until we reach a point in development where we can expand our economy and population with a greater pool of resources (something that would come about once we are a spacefaring people). To realize such a thing requires changes in both economic structure and cultural awareness — at this point in our history, we should realize that mutual survival dictates a need for cooperation, and that we must think of the greater good above our personal benefit. This doesn’t mean some should starve to conserve food — that is a misconception that is publicized to create fear against movements for eco-friendly changes.

In actuality, it means that the dream and quest for obscene wealth have no place in a world by the people, for the people, with around half of Earth’s resources in the hands of around 1% of it’s population. Instead of building a global society around empowering the few on the backs of the many, we could use those resources to aid both people and planet, to provide housing and food while helping damaged areas to recover and repopulate. And once that wealth is used to set us on the right path, we move forward not trying to produce as much as we can, but as much as we need.

From there on out, democratically run businesses — by the people, for the people — would produce needed goods and services, but a stable society would move forward in what we create, not how much we create of it — a focus on quality, not quantity. If we slowed down the exponential rate of our population growth, we could remain stable around where we are, and where we decrease our output and non-renewable energy usage, we could increase our study into eco-friendly technologies, using the rest period to better figure out a harmony between modern society and coexisting with nature.

For, in reality, we could exist much better than we believe we can if not pushed along by the expansionist nature of capitalism and nationalism. It’s not, as some fear, a dystopian vision of forcing people not to have children, of living in poverty without air conditioning or the internet or transportation, of having to live a primal lifestyle. Even now, we learn more every day about how we can integrate sustainability into our world, and the adjustments that the common citizen would have to make would be minimal. Every day, I’m sure you hear about things like ‘turning the lights off when you leave a room’, ‘making sure you don’t waste water’, and these things would really do well, if it weren’t for the elephant in the room of economic giants that produce bigger and bigger amounts of waste.

Besides, there are things we can learn from the past as well as the present. Appreciating the beauty of the natural world around us and exploring areas right outside our door that we take for granted can make Earth seem so much bigger than it appears to be when everything is all connected. Life is all about balance — too much to either one side, and we lose important parts of it.

I fear that, given the complexities of this topic, I may have rambled on for a while, so in summary, I will state the case plainly. The climate crisis is the biggest threat to humanity we have ever faced, and it is one we cannot ignore and must act swiftly to alleviate. However, the abolition of capitalism and the power of a world federation that knows what needs to be done could, with the right steps, set us back on a path to a brighter future, for if we know how we got here, we know how to take a few steps back. The use of the wealth of the upper class could easily provide short term solutions and plant the seeds for regrowth, and a cultural emphasis on simplicity and a less consumerist lifestyle would decrease our output and encourage healthier lifestyle and cultural habits, allowing us more time that we desperately need before we re-enter a period of drastic growth.

This is not to say that such solutions would be immediately necessary — hundreds of years of devastation upon such vital parts of our planet are not fixed overnight, and recovery would be slow. We may never truly undo the scars upon our planet, and one day, what we have done may finally catch up with us. But I have hope, for if we cannot stop it, we can at least slow it, and work together to find a way beyond the limits of Earth, to the stars and to new homes, carrying the lessons of past, present, and future with us. And, if we are able to truly enforce such meaningful changes in our society, perhaps it might not be too late after all. No one can know the future, but we can choose a bright path and have hope.

- DKTC FL