What happens when you get the message of a fatality?
Psychologists have tried to describe the different stages of grief, from denial to acceptance, when people get the message of a fatality.
Our fatality is the "death" of "progress" - development grinding to a halt and GDP growth stalling - because resources are running out.
Our grief can have a variety of aspects. Loss of certainties. No future for our offsping. Fear of dangerous times ahead. Diminishing lifestyles. The vanity of past work. And other emotions.
Resources are all raw materials and energies we derive from nature, such as water, soil fertility, animals and plants, minerals and chemicals, a normal climate - and energy.
All our production requires raw materials
- such as water, soil fertility, animals and plants, minerals and chemicals, a normal climate - and energy.
Scarcities are increasingly evident in all sectors. But our leaders still behave as if the world were endless and resources infinite.
Not only must we find new and different stcocks and technologies to maintain our modern lifestyles, they say. We must also "lift billions out of poverty", provide access to electricity and modern amenities, so goes their story.
Despite the signs, the people in power positions are still in a deep, subconscious, stage of denial about the commencing end of the growth era. Daily life surely confronts them with the hard facts of continued environmental depletion and destruction. But they are either denying those facts or they are escaping into a host of techno-theoretic illusions.
Our energies fossil sunlight and real-time energy capturing and conversion by plants and machineryembodied
In view of the unavoidable collapse of modern society - do we have a choice?
What would happen if we would decide to no longer construct new motorways, tunnels, railways, new factories for more of the gadgets that deplete our resources and that will become obsolete after the end of the Peak-Oil era?
Whole industries will go bankrupt. Entire branches of pseudo-science, such as neo-con growth economics will close down. What will all these people then live of? Can we restructure, slow down, demechanize, relocalise fast enough, before energies and resources run out?
What will happen to our structures, the nuclear facilities, waste sites and stockpiles of nuclear war heads, once systems are breaking down for lack of energy?
What will we drink and eat when electricity failures will stop water supply systems, sewerage pumps, and hamper the just-in-time transportation of virtually all our necessities?
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