The Aspen Project
“Aspen” is an acronym for “Attempting to See Past the Ends of our Noses”. A small group of folks in the mountains of British Columbia have written a brief description of the necessary elements of a sustainable civilization. They are using the Aspen Project to promote conversations and thought about the long-term, in order to accelerate a paradigm shift. The website: The Aspen Project. A search of Medium produced no results. The website dates from early 2022.
I am not a member, was just sent a mention of the proposed shifting of humanity’s paradigm and a link. Before reading the home page offering I read ‘About Us’ and all other submenu offerings and checked to see if they were affiliated with the Aspen Institute that goes back to 1949 (no evidence they are).
On the About page I learned that they “are located on the territory of the Ktunaxa people in the Rocky Mountain Trench in southeastern British Columbia, Canada.” I took an online course from the Gaia Education people (a much larger and better funded group). Students started with introductions and it was apparently obligatory to start by acknowledging the indigenous people your ancestors had stollen your land from — a form of virtue signaling practiced by some modern subgroups.
On the How You Can Help page, “If it [Aspen Project] resonates with you then please consider helping us propagate it, in whatever ways seem appropriate.” I don’t know if this Medium missive will, but critical feedback is likely, so….
I read up about the Ktunaxa Nation and their claims to territory going back over 10k years. Artifacts date from 11,500 BP and one archaeologist agrees that as he sees no discontinuities, the Ktunaxa were the original and only claimants of the territory stollen from them by Indo-European expansionists. Other scholars see evidence (language, culture…) that the Ktunaxa where expansionists from the Great Plains empowered by horses, driven into Canada by the Blackfoot with more horses, who took the territory in the early half of the 18th century from the indigenists who may or may not have taken it from those who took it from…. Humans are known storytellers (some stories are “better” than others if you think evidence matters).
Okay, so what about the Aspen Project? Is it anything like The Eden Proposition? To find out, I copied the home page offering and pasted below. Then I read beyond the first paragraph. Doing the copy/paste thing allows me to add notes in brackets. [I could use Notebook++ and save as a Note to File as I did for years, but the Medium editor works and posting isn’t much more effort than saving. Sharing is maybe to “give a penny for the Old Guy,” as I cite sources, or it is a waste of bandwidth.]
The home page:
Shifting the Paradigm
We have created this website [early 2022] to start a conversation about the long-term future of human society.
The proposal below describes a sustainable human civilization 200–500 years from now. It is intentionally brief and contains only those elements required to ensure the long term survival of our species and the rest of nature [by helping all expansionist humans to go away]. It has been developed in response to widespread pessimism and anxiety about the future of humanity in order to demonstrate that a sustainable civilization is attainable [i.e. is the condition that will come anyway if humans sidestep extinction].
Humanity’s current condition and trajectory [to global as distinct from regional overshoot] have no historical precedent and without a clear, widely-shared vision of a desired future [been done: Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future: Insights from 45 global thought leaders 2014: A review], significant ecological, economic and social deterioration is likely [is a fait accompli with more accompli likely]. This proposal can provide a goal, that if broadly accepted and endorsed, will create common ground, open new pathways, suggest new solutions, and restore hope for those working on pressing current issues [I can but hope so]. At a minimum, it provides a starting point for discussion about the long term future of our species [and bracketted words are my offering — let’s make it happen together].
We invite you to read the proposal and if you support the vision it outlines, share it widely. Visit our How You Can Help page if you want to get more involved.
If you have concerns or suggestions, please let us know [I’ll post this, but I presume no more than a few could like or share, nor will I endeavor to spread my prattle. Putting it on my website and elsewhere is enough. The Aspen Proposal website notes they have had over 20k unique visitors so far. In the last 12 years my offerings have had over half a million. I can count the number I know of who have read more than a few of my hundreds of website offerings, 576 Quora questions answered with 272k views, and over 400 Medium offerings in the last ten months with 4k views…, on one hand.]
The Aspen Proposal
In the future: (1)
- We will have learned to fit in with the ecosystem. (2) [In 500 years, likely, or the remnant population will be nearing extinction (or humans will be extinct). Post collapse, the people of the Indus Valley Civilization were on the downslope for over 600 years prior to regional extinction, and a depopulation of Earth from perhaps 9 billion could take longer.]
- By having smaller families, we will consciously and humanely reduce our population to 1 billion or fewer. (3) [Exactly what I propose, a rapid birth-off to 1 billion by 2100 with further degrowth to 35 million by 2150, followed by gradual decline or increase as evidenced by continued restoration of the planetary life-support system.]
- All our energy and food will be from sustainable sources. (4) [I.e is the condition that will come anyway, and, if room is left for Nature and humans focus on nature restorancy, Gaia may support as many as 35 million ecolate humans — but I could be wrong, maybe 7 million is too many.]
- We will have developed a steady-state, more circular economy. (5) [Energy is the real wealth and is not circular. We are converting all metals and minerals from concentrated, minable sources and dispersing them, with no possibility of illimitable mining (except of sea salt by evaporation, and some peat, wood, food…. We will descend to a steady-state biophysical economy of enough as renormalized animals (or go extinct).]
- The vast majority of the earth’s lands and oceans will be left alone, to manage themselves. (6) [I.e. the condition that will come anyway with or without humans persisting on the planet. The Anthropocene will end and all Anthropocene enthusiasts with it.]
- Our population will be dispersed on 6 continents to provide some resilience in case of a major meteor strike, pandemic or other natural catastrophe. [Or with a bit more warming, a 7th continent will be habitable.]
- With a smaller population and a greater emphasis on resiliency, trade in commodities between continents will be greatly reduced. (7) [Land transport has high energy costs, e.g. the Romans figured that transporting food by animal drawn cart 100 km doubled its cost, and pre-steam shipping, a large wind-powered war or merchant ship required about a thousand old-growth oak trees to make, and it will be well over 500 years, if any are allowed to grow, before more wind-powered trading vessels are again plying the seas to exploit remnant resources, e.g. people and stuff.]
- Bounded by the overarching principle of fitting into the ecosystem and by the understanding that all humans are members of one branch of the larger tree of life, cultural diversity will be valued and encouraged. (8) [That’s my story (if humans renormalize and sidestep extinction).]
- Different environments will continue to stimulate a variety of appropriate technologies and customs. (9) [Provided the variety of humans work to manage human demands on Gaian resources. If an expansionist form of human arises anywhere, they will spread. As omniscient conquerors, they will again become Lord Man, if only to despair of reaching our level of exploitation.]
- [Non-expansionist and ecolate] Humans will focus on meeting their psychological needs in the ways that have proven robust over the millennia [prior to the arising of expansionist humans 50k to 60k years ago]: i.e. through cultivation of relationships, art, music, humour, physical activity, meaningful work, connection with nature, spiritual exploration, etc. (10) [Exactly.]
- Humans around the globe will continue to participate in the cooperative exercise of learning about ourselves, the universe, and our place in it. (11) [Provided all viable societies (25k with population under 2k as viable implies viable group sizes) interact to support global governance, i.e. systemic management needed to oversee sustainable trade in renewables only, e.g. food, fiber, artworks, and prevent any form of expansionist human (e.g. today’s indigenous except for traditional San, Kogi, and Hadza) from metastically spreading to again create a global monetary culture such as the one we all live in, depend on, and serve as Anthropocene enthusiasts among whom some are less enthusiastic (e.g. some environmentalists) than others (capitalists and CCP members).]
Notes:
1. Likely, somewhere between 2 and 5 centuries from now.
2. Consider that “survival of the fittest” in regard to natural selection and evolution includes “fitting in” i.e. having a niche in a complex system that allows the whole system to function with a measure of stability. While many indigenous cultures are aware of this, humans as a whole are not fitting in right now, but we can, once we realize how important this is. [Expansionists on the leading edge of expansion, e.g. Indo-Europeans and Māori, are rapacious takers. After the taking of a region, those left behind as the leading edge moves on, must adapt as the centuries pass, e.g. Tikopians, or go extinct, e.g. the first Maltese. With the possible exception of the Tairona, all descendants of expansionist humans will expand when opportunity to do so arises (e.g. there are 7x more Tikopians living on Tikopia and off on other islands today than a century ago).]
3. Fertility rates are currently below replacement levels in many countries and it is expected that this trend will continue and expand as the lowest standards of living rise, women are empowered, education is improved and social safety nets strengthened. The target of one billion is somewhat arbitrary but seems to us a sufficient number to ensure humanity’s survival while allowing all other species to flourish. [On North Sentinel Island about 10 groups (viewable from fly overs) have lived in isolation for centuries (no one leaves and arrivals who can be — all so far — are killed or driven off. Their population is unknown, but 400 is a maximun, and 200 to 250 is likely. Longer term may require a larger population (a few thousand), and for hundreds of thousands of years the human population was in the 10s to 100ks, reaching a million or so by the Pleistocene. So 1 billion is orders of magnitude larger than needed and will continue to degrade planetary environmental productivity, continue species extinctions, and prevent new species from evolving to replace, over the next 10–20 million years, species that have already been lost to human expansionists, e.g. those associated with us expansionists, e.g. the 50 of 60 North American megafauna made to go away over the last 15k years.]
4. For the most part, we now see the wisdom of ending our relationship with fossil energy and are probably in the process of turning the corner on that one. There are a host of sustainable alternatives and these will no doubt be refined and improved as time goes on. Food production that depletes soils or aquifers cannot be considered sustainable and the shift to regenerative agriculture will continue. [The San as nomadic foragers live in a thriving regional food system as adaptive and evolvable K-strategists, while all expansionist forms of humans do not, so we should first learn from them, then consider permaculture, regenerative, organic, agroforestry, swidden, three and four field systems and agroecology claims experimentally to assess what works and why it works with a focus on energy inputs and outputs with results that can scale up. Irrigation adds salts to soil, is not sustainable apart from rare areas of annual flooding that removes them. Soil mining is not sustainable apart from swidden systems that fallow land 5–50 years — mining guano, sodium nitrate, phosphorous rock is not sustainable. Rice paddy agriculture with all human/livestock waste added to paddies, which gathers nutrients from outside the paddy and concentrates them there, is sustainable for rice production where paddies can be maintained without pumping. Expect that without fossil fuel inputs, food deliveries will decline over 100x. There is no alt to fossil fuels.]
5. We are now at least talking about circular economies, where materials are cycled rather than discarded, and this will be a great field for engineers and designers for the next century or so. Right now, there are few economists and organizations openly questioning the wisdom of economic growth so we still have a lot of work to do to make steady-state economics mainstream and to redesign our economies so they don’t need to grow. Economic vibrancy and a decent standard of living do not require continuous growth. [Groth ends, followed by degrowth. Mining of metals, minerals, materials, landfills… will end. As M.K. Hubbert noted, “Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know… I was in New York in the 30’s. I had a box seat at the depression. I can assure you it was a very educational experience. We shut the country down because of monetary reasons. We had manpower and abundant raw materials. Yet we shut the country down. We’re doing the same kind of thing now but with a different material outlook. We are not in the position we were in 1929–30 with regard to the future. Then the physical system was ready to roll. This time it’s not. We are in a crisis in the evolution of human society. It’s unique to both human and geologic history… Soon all the oil is going to be burned and all the metals mined and scattered.”]
6. The idea that humans have now or ever will have the knowledge and wisdom to manage ecosystems, is a silly conceit that needs to be abandoned. To quote one of Barry Commoner’s four laws of ecology, “nature knows best”. Leaving most of the planet’s lands and oceans alone, to manage themselves, is the most practical, cost effective and safe course of action for our species. [Right. The fundamental dogma of systems thinking, e.g. systemic management, is that we humans cannot control the nonhuman. — see Charles Fowler, Systemic Management, 2009, “Can humans manage other species, ecosystems, or the Earth…? No.” We expansionist and non-expansionist forms of human cannot control complex systems: “Systems can’t be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned.” — Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer. The systems we can design are socioeconomic-political systems that control us. Systemic design focuses on managing humans and their demands on Gaian recourses to remain well below carrying capacity, a condition that does not degrade environmental productivity (maximum empower of the system), nor prevent biomass recovery/diversity nor the evolution of new species, which will involve a human depopulation event, managed or not, to 0–35 million humans.]
7. While there may still be a bit of trade between continents there will be no need (with a population of 1 billion or less) to continue the status quo. The diversity of life on the planet is seriously harmed by the spread of non-native species and the diversity and vibrancy of human culture is diminished by the spread of globally uniform materials and products. Local production may sometimes be less efficient, but it produces greater resiliency and far more interesting cultures. [The condition is that the status quo cannot possibly continue. The diversity and vibrancy of all expansionist forms of human culture will end. Our 44 energy slaves working 24/7 (unlike prior human slaves) per capita (Americans are served by thousands) will be liberated. We won’t get a vote. Whether today’s modern techno-industrial form of civilization, the global monetary mono-culture is replaced by a far greater diversity of non-expansionistic renormalized humans, the next 500 years will likely tell.]
8. Cultural diversity is a buttress against any one culture screwing things up in a globally significant way. And it makes for a much more interesting civilization. Environmentally sensitive cultural tourism will flourish as the authenticity of different cultures recovers from the battering of globalism. But cultural diversity must be bounded by the overarching principle that we are just one species amongst millions, all of which are our cousins and they all have a right to thrive. [Nature doesn’t care whether my culture is interesting to other humans or not. Being nature centric, I don’t listen to human prattle. The concept of “rights” is a human social construct that means nothing to Gaia, so why should I care about asserting my rights?]
9. So the products we make and the technologies we design in Australia will be different than those we make in the Yukon. As will the rituals, celebrations, institutions, laws, etc. But they will all respect the reality of the need to fit in. [Understand or die.]
10. We actually know quite a bit about how to satisfy human needs (see Manfred Max-Neef’s Human Scale Development with its matrix of human needs and satisfiers) and are learning more all the time. Some of our knowledge has been acquired over millennia and now the study of evolutionary psychology is helping us understand how we evolved and why we feel and act in the ways we do. [Everything expansionist peoples think they know is likely wrong. Like the San, we should listen only to Nature and maybe to those who endeavor to listen to Nature, e.g. H.T. Odum, Environment, Power, and Society for the Twenty-first Century: The hierarchy of energy.]
11. Getting through the bottleneck of the next century or two and arriving at the place described in this document does not mean we will just hang out in some sort of stasis from then on. We have barely scratched the surface in our understanding of the universe and it may be, (assuming we can keep civilization chugging along for a few more millennia) that we will come to a new understanding of how it all works, and how we fit into it. But that is for our distant descendants to tease out. We just have to figure out how to turn our current trajectory around and give them that chance. [Such is a fair statement of the challenge of passing through what those who fail to live through the foreseeable bottleneck and those who do live long enough to successfully procreate will experience as ghastly. The assumption is that all forms of expansionist human, their culture and form of civilization will pass away. The old paradigm is replaced by one that works as Gaia alone determines. To underestimate the challenge of persisting has extinction as outcome. Assume that it is impossible to overestimate the challenge. Keeping our civilization chugging along has no viable outcome. “In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. That, in essence, is the higher service to which we are all being called.” — R. Buckminster Fuller.]
[The level of awareness is exceptional for anyone who is a product of today’s modern techno-industrial serving education (schooling) system. Almost all modernized humans manage to achieve a “not even wrong” understanding of the human predicament. I have an unposted article on Art Berman’s notes on the human predicament. I was waiting to add a new video by Jack Alpert, but I’ll post now to link to it.]