I liked your essay and I thought you brought up some really good points about how electricity changes everything about how people live their lives. It reminded me of a visit "up river" to a tribe in Central America years ago.
Some missionary group had set up a small solar system since the last time I had been there. Enough to provide power for a small refrigerator, some lights, and a television. The transformation of "after dark" life was striking.
Your observation about the "temporariness" of home solar installations was also extremely on point. This generation of pv cells has an ESTIMATED 20 year life span. Have you EVER owned anything for 20 years that didn't break at least once?
Even if it doesn't break, after 20 years ALL of these cells will have to be replaced. Across the ENTIRE planet. There is NO WAY we can produce solar on the scale necessary to power our world and yet ALL we hear is that "Renewables are the Solution".
In Diamonds book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive" he has a chapter on the Norse colony in Greenland that failed. Diamond describes is how climate change made the agricultural system that the Norse had carried with them from Europe progressively more impossible to sustain.
Year after year, every winter there was less food to go around and the population got smaller and smaller as people died from the effects of malnutrition and starvation.
Until the last desperate survivors probably built a boat, out of wood salvaged from abandoned houses, and tried to sail back to Europe. A trip they never completed.
What makes Diamond’s recounting of this story so compelling is that he shows these people didn’t have to die. The Greenland colony didn’t have to fail.
What everyone focuses on is how the changing climate made the Norse way of life progressively more impossible to continue. Until everyone starved to death and died. We tend to see this as a "tragic" battle of people against a tide they could not stem.
Diamond points out that they were not the only people in Greenland at the time and, that the “other people”, the Inuit, did just fine in the cooling climate.
What killed the Norse wasn’t the changing climate, it was their unwillingness to change and adapt to it. They were willing to literally die, before they would give up their European way of life and adopt the lifestyle of the indigenous people who they seem to have despised.
We don't need "renewables", in a vain attempt to cling to the 20th Century American "way of life". What we need is a vision of a "post industrial" way of life that doesn't suck.
The majority of Americans seem unwilling to entertain even modest changes in their lifestyle in order to slow the progression of the climate disaster about to engulf the world. Major social change is almost impossible.
The parallels to Diamond's book are indeed eerie (it has been a while since I read it, but my partner is reading the Thai translation right now, so I get to reexamine the chapters in discussions with her).
You're gonna like my next essay, since I'll write about agriculture becoming increasingly difficult due to the massive ecological and climatic changes we're currently witnessing. It's either adapt or die from now on, and we can learn a lot from indigenous societies who have successfully dealt with fluctuations in climate (and thus food availability) for countless millennia.
I wholeheartedly agree with this line here:
"We don't need 'renewables,' in a vain attempt to cling to the 20th Century American 'way of life.' What we need is a vision of a 'post industrial' way of life that doesn't suck."
Right on my friend. All of it. In my community in Oregon we have rules against lights at night. We love the night sky and it is still pretty great. And I agree . . . collapse is the best option, the sooner the better. That's a very hard one to say considering I have grand kids but for the long term health of wild nature, it makes the most sense.
That's a pretty sweet rule! If we would give other animals a seat at the table (and a voice to vote) the whole world would be a lot darker, I reckon. Also, I can totally understand your conflicted thoughts on the collapse, and I'm glad you came to the same conclusion. Nature as a whole matters more than any of our individual lives.
I almost closed the article with the chorus of a song sung by the Mbuti foragers of the Congolese Ituri Forest: "There is darkness all around us; but if darkness *is,* and the darkness is of the forest, then the darkness must be good."
I'm fully with you on the street lights, I mean I'm in agreement with everything here but especially the thing about street lights. It seems lighting means security and therefore extreme lighting is even more secure. Apartment blocks are the worst. Oh and now most Christmas lights are white so simply add to light pollution.
It's also sad to see how much Thailand wants to mimic the West. Everyone I know who has been to Thailand has something to say about how beautiful it is. While globalization makes the world easy to visit I fear it's also taking away the uniqueness of other cultures that make them worth visting in the first place.
I can relate... If I wouldn't be a guest in this country, I'd probably engage in some careful ecotage, busting flood lights throughout the countryside. But, being the only known environmentalist far and wide, this endeavor would be too risky for me. It wouldn't take people long to figure out that it was that hermit dude that hates progress who lives on the mountain without grid access.
We had friends visiting, and we realized that we can't recommend any more beautiful places to visit here in Thailand, because by far most of the best spots have already been spoiled by the mass tourism industry... And smaller, "secret" spots easily "go viral" in the social media age and are consequently overrun, like Koh Phayam. It all happens so fast, it's really heart-breaking...
And even places that have been spared by the direct impact of tourism develop at breakneck speed. The people themselves disregard everything that came before for a Brave New World of shiny pickup trucks, perfectly rectangular concrete boxes, manicured lawns, plastic flowers, and heaps of trash everywhere. Traditional life is all but exterminated by now. 21st-century colonialism and ethnocide happens through the manufacturing of "needs" by multinational corporations.
I liked your essay and I thought you brought up some really good points about how electricity changes everything about how people live their lives. It reminded me of a visit "up river" to a tribe in Central America years ago.
Some missionary group had set up a small solar system since the last time I had been there. Enough to provide power for a small refrigerator, some lights, and a television. The transformation of "after dark" life was striking.
Your observation about the "temporariness" of home solar installations was also extremely on point. This generation of pv cells has an ESTIMATED 20 year life span. Have you EVER owned anything for 20 years that didn't break at least once?
Even if it doesn't break, after 20 years ALL of these cells will have to be replaced. Across the ENTIRE planet. There is NO WAY we can produce solar on the scale necessary to power our world and yet ALL we hear is that "Renewables are the Solution".
In Diamonds book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive" he has a chapter on the Norse colony in Greenland that failed. Diamond describes is how climate change made the agricultural system that the Norse had carried with them from Europe progressively more impossible to sustain.
Year after year, every winter there was less food to go around and the population got smaller and smaller as people died from the effects of malnutrition and starvation.
Until the last desperate survivors probably built a boat, out of wood salvaged from abandoned houses, and tried to sail back to Europe. A trip they never completed.
What makes Diamond’s recounting of this story so compelling is that he shows these people didn’t have to die. The Greenland colony didn’t have to fail.
What everyone focuses on is how the changing climate made the Norse way of life progressively more impossible to continue. Until everyone starved to death and died. We tend to see this as a "tragic" battle of people against a tide they could not stem.
Diamond points out that they were not the only people in Greenland at the time and, that the “other people”, the Inuit, did just fine in the cooling climate.
What killed the Norse wasn’t the changing climate, it was their unwillingness to change and adapt to it. They were willing to literally die, before they would give up their European way of life and adopt the lifestyle of the indigenous people who they seem to have despised.
We don't need "renewables", in a vain attempt to cling to the 20th Century American "way of life". What we need is a vision of a "post industrial" way of life that doesn't suck.
The majority of Americans seem unwilling to entertain even modest changes in their lifestyle in order to slow the progression of the climate disaster about to engulf the world. Major social change is almost impossible.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and insights!
The parallels to Diamond's book are indeed eerie (it has been a while since I read it, but my partner is reading the Thai translation right now, so I get to reexamine the chapters in discussions with her).
You're gonna like my next essay, since I'll write about agriculture becoming increasingly difficult due to the massive ecological and climatic changes we're currently witnessing. It's either adapt or die from now on, and we can learn a lot from indigenous societies who have successfully dealt with fluctuations in climate (and thus food availability) for countless millennia.
I wholeheartedly agree with this line here:
"We don't need 'renewables,' in a vain attempt to cling to the 20th Century American 'way of life.' What we need is a vision of a 'post industrial' way of life that doesn't suck."
Word up, homie!
Right on my friend. All of it. In my community in Oregon we have rules against lights at night. We love the night sky and it is still pretty great. And I agree . . . collapse is the best option, the sooner the better. That's a very hard one to say considering I have grand kids but for the long term health of wild nature, it makes the most sense.
That's a pretty sweet rule! If we would give other animals a seat at the table (and a voice to vote) the whole world would be a lot darker, I reckon. Also, I can totally understand your conflicted thoughts on the collapse, and I'm glad you came to the same conclusion. Nature as a whole matters more than any of our individual lives.
I almost closed the article with the chorus of a song sung by the Mbuti foragers of the Congolese Ituri Forest: "There is darkness all around us; but if darkness *is,* and the darkness is of the forest, then the darkness must be good."
*The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light* by Paul Bogard is a great book on this subject.
Thanks for your writings, and for caring!
Thank you for the recommendation, I'll check it out. Always happy to expand my ever-growing to-read-list^^
I'm fully with you on the street lights, I mean I'm in agreement with everything here but especially the thing about street lights. It seems lighting means security and therefore extreme lighting is even more secure. Apartment blocks are the worst. Oh and now most Christmas lights are white so simply add to light pollution.
It's also sad to see how much Thailand wants to mimic the West. Everyone I know who has been to Thailand has something to say about how beautiful it is. While globalization makes the world easy to visit I fear it's also taking away the uniqueness of other cultures that make them worth visting in the first place.
I can relate... If I wouldn't be a guest in this country, I'd probably engage in some careful ecotage, busting flood lights throughout the countryside. But, being the only known environmentalist far and wide, this endeavor would be too risky for me. It wouldn't take people long to figure out that it was that hermit dude that hates progress who lives on the mountain without grid access.
We had friends visiting, and we realized that we can't recommend any more beautiful places to visit here in Thailand, because by far most of the best spots have already been spoiled by the mass tourism industry... And smaller, "secret" spots easily "go viral" in the social media age and are consequently overrun, like Koh Phayam. It all happens so fast, it's really heart-breaking...
And even places that have been spared by the direct impact of tourism develop at breakneck speed. The people themselves disregard everything that came before for a Brave New World of shiny pickup trucks, perfectly rectangular concrete boxes, manicured lawns, plastic flowers, and heaps of trash everywhere. Traditional life is all but exterminated by now. 21st-century colonialism and ethnocide happens through the manufacturing of "needs" by multinational corporations.
Interesting piece, thank you.
You won't believe how apocalyptic and outright *bat shit crazy* things are getting on this side of the planet... We're in for quite the ride!
Thank you for taking the time to read this piece!