Shifting the Trajectory — 06: A Positive View of the Current Catastrophic Collapse Trajectory

Thanks to AZ Quotes for the nice collection of quotes by my father. There are several versions of this quote on the internet and I haven’t been able to find an actual citation. If not these precise words, I remember him saying something akin to them with a twinkle in his eye. I miss him.

In the Introduction to this series I anticipated an 8-year period ending in 2030, at which time it seemed likely to me that it would be possible to look back and assess the extent to which the collective efforts of those who are engaged in creating a safe and just space for humanity and all life on Earth have shifted the present overshoot and collapse trajectory in a positive direction. The fundamental question is: Can the dominant social, economic and governmental institutions, based on the questionable notion that exponential growth of human population was a good thing and the absurd notion that economic growth can continue indefinitely, be transformed or do they inherently contain the seeds of their own destruction? At this point in time I can see things going either way.

Since I began writing this series a year ago I have continued adding to a work in progress that compiles links to the work of organizations and individuals that are focused on shifting the current trajectory in a positive direction. I have also continued to monitor how environmentally, climatically and economically things continue to go from bad to worse by reading Justin Panopticon’s daily Climate and Economy, and more recently I’ve started following Alan Urban’s Collapse Catch-up and the excellent scientific analysis in Richard Crim’s Crisis Report, both on Medium. As I write this in early May, 2023 I’m not seeing sufficient momentum yet in the good works of those focused on shifting the trajectory in a positive direction to avoid a population collapse to a range of 500 million (my best guess) to 1 billion humans (James Lovelock as quoted in Vince, 2009), as shown in the simplified graph below.

Adapted from Reese et al. (2020:27). Note that the graph has been modified to show that loss of carrying capacity began before population peaked and is accelerating from the combined effects of human overuse of resources and human-induced climate crisis.

Before I shift the focus of this article on ways the collapse trajectory can be shifted in a positive direction, I’d like to offer a positive view of how the collapse trajectory might play out as a counterpoint to the dystopian futures that vie for attention in the written and visual media.

A Great Dying of Humans. There is no way I can put a positive spin on billions dying. We are already in the midst of a human-induced mass-extinction event of other species, though the adaptability that led humans to inhabit the most extreme environments on the planet after the retreat of the Wisconsin glaciation make it likely that the human species will continue. The most benign way I see for such a population reduction would be through a virus with a high human mortality rate that causes death quickly and infects the population democratically.

Indigenous Peoples and Like-Minded Folks Inherit the Earth. Perhaps the greatest testament to human resilience and adaptability is that, despite 500 years of direct and indirect efforts by western and eastern “civilizations” to dominate and destroy them, some 260- to 600-million indigenous peoples continue to inhabit the planet. They, and others whose original indigenous roots may be more distant, yet are focused on learning to live in relationship with others and the land at a bioregional level, will inherit the Earth. If this is how our future plays out I don’t hold any illusion that these folks will emerge unscathed from the great dying, yet I trust that our human capacity for love and joy would be carried though the monumental suffering.

Can the Trajectory be Shifted in a More Positive Direction? I have my own reasons for feeling that the answer is Yes, yet I acknowledge an answer of No is reasonable. As a way of explaining my “yes” answer, I’ll offer some personal historical context. Publication of my father’s classic paper The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth in 1966 first sensitized me to the the limitations of what he called the “cowboy economy.” In the early 1970s I began subscribing to Countryside and Small Stock Journal edited by JD Belanger. At the time he had a regular column titled CRASH: Current Reality As Seen Here. The 1973 Oil Crisis and the peak of U.S. oil production predicted by Hubbert’s Peak Theory around the same time reinforced the feeling that I would see a global economic collapse within my lifetime. 1973 also happened to be the year I began a forty-four year career as an environmental scientist specializing in environmental problems related to coal mining and use, and soil and groundwater contamination assessment and remediation. By the early 1990s everything I saw as an environmental scientist convinced me that we humans had passed the point of no return in the damage we were doing the planet through unsustainable use of water and forest resources, totalitarian agriculture, and ecosystem degradation through air and soil pollution and surface and groundwater contamination.

Fast forward thirty years to the present. Why hasn’t the collapse that I’ve been anticipating most of my life happened yet? Advances in technology are probably the main factor contributing to extending the growth phase of the human population overshoot curve. For example advances in geophysical prospecting techniques like 3D seismic tomographic imaging and advances in extraction technology added a second peak to Hubbert’s first peak for U.S. oil production.

The way a collapse might play out is more complicated than the simplified overshoot and collapse diagram presented above. My friend Neil Davidson, co-initiator of And Now What, provides a more nuanced graph that I have adapted to show my best guess where humanity is collectively at this point in time. The 2007–2008 financial crisis gave a premonition of things to come. The Cryptocurrency Bubble may well represent the economic counterpart to the peak of the human population overshoot curve, though many social, political and economic factors are contributing to the current global economic downturn.

Adapted from Davidson (2022). Thanks to Neil for permission to use this figure.

I respect Neil’s conclusion in 2022 that the positive trajectory that leads to 5 to 7 is no longer possible. According to this trajectory increasing disorganization (5) leads to system reorganization using new inputs (6), leading to a new equilibrium at a more complex level (7). I will hold in my heart the possibility of a quantum leap in consciousness that could lead to this trajectory at least as long as the human overshoot curve continues its upward trajectory (8.034 billion according to The World Counts as of the day I write this).

In the meantime, future articles will focus on the trajectory defined by processes 8 through 10, in which partial system collapse and fragmentation (8) lead to a less complex equilibrium level (9) established through anticipatory design (10). Stay tuned.

This series continues with: StT — 07: The All-of-the-Above Approach to Addressing Climate and Related Crises.

You can find an index of all articles at the end of StT — 01: Introduction

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