“…collapse isn’t inevitable, but depends on a society’s choices”. – Jared Diamond[1] I have argued elsewhere that our American way of life is not sustainable[2], and I have presented compelling evidence to demonstrate that America is on the verge of imminent societal collapse[3]. The purpose of the following paper is to make the case that we—all Americans—through our distorted worldview and resulting dysfunctional resource utilization behavior, are responsible for our “predicament”, and that we lack the collective will to take meaningful action to mitigate its catastrophic consequences.

by Chris Clugston on Energy Bulletin.

Reality

The reality is that we are running flat out on the highway to hell, and that societal collapse is imminent—possibly within 5 years, probably within 15 years, and almost certainly within 25 years. Our only rational course of action is to “get off” the highway—to transition quickly and beginning immediately to a sustainable lifestyle paradigm. The consequences associated with “getting off” will be very painful—significant reductions in our population level and material living standards—but they pale in comparison to the consequences associated with “staying on”.

As we’ve stated over and over. Those of us who get off now will be far better placed than those who try to stay on. While communities who have never left behind subsistence agriculture will continue to live reasonably comfortable lives (climate change allowing).

The Real “Inconvenient Truth”

Unfortunately, the probability that we will choose to modify our distorted worldview and our dysfunctional resource utilization behavior is essentially zero. We will not implement an American Cultural Revolution; and we will not opt to transition voluntarily to a sustainable lifestyle paradigm. As human beings, and especially as self-entitled Americans, we have demonstrated little capacity for self-limiting behavior—especially if it involves drastic reductions to some combination of our population level and material living standards.

We simply lack the collective will to reduce voluntarily our ecological/economic “footprint” to a sustainable size, and to live forever within the constraints imposed by that reduced footprint.

Instead, we will use the remaining ecological and economic resources available to us in futile attempts to perpetuate our American way of life at all costs, even as we encounter increasingly severe resource supply shortages and disruptions. Nature will inevitably intervene through disasters, disease, pestilence, and famine to force our transition to sustainability through societal collapse—unless we annihilate ourselves in the meantime through domestic and international resource wars.

We may have forgiven ourselves for being uninformed or misinformed; but Nature has not forgiven anybody…

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