Occupy the Future!

Those who confuse the Arab Spring with the Occupation movement are making a big mistake.

The Arab Spring is a collection of revolts against dictators and totalitarian regimes that have been exploiting and abusing their citizens for many decades. As I write this, the people of Tunisia are voting for their first time. Ever.

The so-called American Fall is a very different thing. It is not the continuance of the same kind of revolutions we've seen in the Arab Spring. It's a different kind of movement. It's not a revolution. It's bigger: it's the brewing of many revolutions to come.

For a long time, the majority of people on this planet have been living in poverty. The vast majority of the people on this planet are in the lower economic class. They have been for a long time. They're use to being exploited. They're used to being bullied by multi-national corporations, and they used to the devastation caused by economic hitmen. In short, they're used to being plundered.

The Occupations are the beginnings of the coming middle class revolution. It is not the revolution. It's only in the past decade that the elite became so desperate that they really started plundering the middle class. Now that the middle class are being stolen from, they're starting to get annoyed. We (in the West) are not ready to go to war. Most of us still have too much to lose. A small minority might be ready, but not the majority. Certainly not the 99%. Not even the 9%.

But that number is growing. The flaws in the system that created the economic crash of 2008 haven't been fixed. Indeed, things have just gotten worse. The risks have simply been transferred from financial institutions to sovereign states. And the financial institutions have merged together to create gigantic monoliths - not only are they Too Big to Fail, companies like Morgan Stanley are now Too Big to Save. They can't be saved. Next time they collapse, major Western economies will crash with them. And we're not talking Greece or Iceland. We're talking Germany, Canada and/or the US.


The Occupy movement isn't going to utterly destroy the system, but it is the brewing of larger changes to come. And it is important. The Occupy movement is massive. According to the Guardian, the movement has had around 1.7 million participants worldwide. It's proudly boasting the involvement of people in 83 countries and 1500 cities. The tent city in Toronto has over-doubled in size in a week, and the protest at City Hall we saw yesterday was bigger than the week before.

Furthermore, the Occupation is a much-needed creative breeding ground. Like-minded people are coming together, networking, debating, and coming up with new ideas. It's a long time since Toronto has seen daily protest marches, and the number of NGO's and other social-advocacy groups getting involved is growing. They're also reviving some of the ideas from previous social revolutions. The Suffragettes. The Civil Rights movement. I suspect we are going to be seeing some big successes, resulting in some amazing changes.

However, very few of us want to collapse into either anarchy or primitivism. We value society. But not only that, there's great fear about the results that would come if society did collapse. And that fear is well grounded. Freedom is a double-edged sword. When there's too much freedom, the strong are free to prey on the weak. Sovereign States are meant to protect us from those kinds of predators (Ignatieff may not be a good politician, but he is a good political commentator). And given the abundance of multinational, predatory corporations, we need protection. Governments should be protecting us against this kind of self-bankruptcy, because individuals simply can't compete with (or keep up with) the economic attacks of the financial sector. It is the job of government to protects us from that, and yet most sovereign states have failed to do so. There's safety in numbers. But only if the numbers are aware of the attacks, and so able to defend against them.

Timing the Revolution

A big question I've been confronted with recently has been the timing of the coming collapses that we can expect. There's so many ways our current civilisation will collapse. Environmental degradation and massive climate change will be the biggest of these, and will result in the death of billions of people, drastically reducing human population from 9bn+ down to around 2bn or less. It will also result in the permanent extinction (extinction is always permanent) of over 75% of the species on the planet. Climate change scientists predict this will take place in 40-90 years, although to-date many effects of climate change have been occurring faster than the most pessimistic predictions

Fresh-water shortages will be felt more and more. There's already been conflicts in some parts of the world over water, and water has caused many previous civilizations to become extinct. The effects of this will simply increase with time. In Canada, we'll feel the effects of this once the US march across the border and take our water from us. I suspect that won't happen for another 20+ years.

Another major source of collapse will be oil shortage. Western society is built on cheap oil. The suburbs exist because of it. Our agri-business-based food production rely on it. Transportation depends on it. Given the ex-President of Shell has predicted the gas will be US$5/gallon by the end of 2012, the end of the age of cheap oil could be very close. Once oil is that expensive, a lot of our society will crumble. Mega-cities won't be able to cope with, among other things, the pressures of suburb migration. Plastic will largely stop being produced. Rail- and water-based transit will come back as the main way to travel. We'll need a lot of farmers, quickly - yet farming takes years to learn.

Edit: My math was wrong. $5/gallon is not that bad. I was thinking it was saying $5/litre. $5/litre would have massive society consequences.

However, people have also been predicting the end of cheap oil since the 1970's. We may still have 20-30 years left of it. Furthermore, we'll likely subsidize oil before it's $5/litre - i.e. we'll permanently lose societal capital (to the 1%) to pay for it. Many addicts bankrupt themselves to get another hit. This is an example of something the Occupation could stop.

But one of the other effects of expensive oil is the transfer of capital from the consumers to the drillers. This will exacerbate the economic crisis. The suburbs are so addicted to oil that they will keep paying for it as long as they can - meaning until they lose their homes (foreclosure takes 1-2 years), and until they're increasingly struggling to buy food (again, another 1-2 harvests). At that point, the Occupation will gain major support from the suburbs. But that will be too late to save many victims.

However, I have recently been around a lot of people who are expecting imminent collapse and revolution. I know that this biases my view. I also know there are a lot of people out there who are dedicated to keeping the current system going. More than 1%. Maybe as many as 20% of people in Western societies. These are people who own their house, and people who feel they are still increasing their capital (they just need to feel it to support the status quo). And those might be enough to keep the system going for longer. What do you think? How long do you give it? Is the Mayan calendar a correct (if self-fulfilling) prophecy?

Or am I just hoping for a non-existent apocalypse?

Please comment on my blog, not on facebook (though you're welcome to Like it there ;).

The Age of Fantasy

Almost a decade ago when I was attending the extremist Moody Bible Institute, Tim Sigler mentioned how the Age of Enlightenment would have been better named the Age of Endarkenment. At the time I wondered how he could say such a thing about the rise of systematic empiricism and reason, but now I'm coming to see that his position is increasingly common. Not only are the fundamentalist Christians giving up on reality, it is becoming increasingly obvious that humanity globally is entering the Age of Fantasy.

On of the ways humanity is giving up on reality is the increasing abandonment of faith in academia. Even intelligent people looking into subjects outside their speciality are often only able to find a terrain of conflicting 'expert opinions'. This leads people into a chaos of confusion, not knowing who they can trust about some of the most basic facts of life. Very quickly the falsities pile up, leading to frequent arguments based on ignorance (I'm sure you've encountered some). Only the very best of our kind will stop an argument to agree that neither of them know enough, and so return to research more.

George Monbiot recently posited the question: "Why does a crazy set of beliefs in one field seem to migrate into unrelated subjects?" He concludes his thought with the following:

To dismiss an entire canon of science on the basis of either no evidence or evidence that has already been debunked is to evince an astonishing level of self-belief. It suggests that, by instinct or by birth, you know more about this subject (even if you show no sign of ever having studied it) than the thousands of intelligent people who have spent their lives working on it. Once you have have taken that leap of self-belief, once you have arrogated to yourself the authority otherwise vested in science, any faith is then possible. Your own views (and those of the small coterie who share them) become your sole reference points, and are therefore unchallengeable and immutable.

Indeed, it is this leap into self-belief that so many have now taken. Adrift in the postmodern Sea of Uncertainty, people increasing settle for escapism and don't even try to find reality. And our world certainly does offer an array of fantastic escape routes - supernatural or virtual, temporary or ongoing. "Anything is possible in Second Life" claims the popular online game. Primitivist John Zerzan writes, "Immersive and interactive, [virtual reality] provides the space so unlike the reality its customers reject. ... It is 'less lonely and less predictable' than the life we have now. This inversion of reality is the consolation of the supernatural of many religions, and serves a similar substitutive function." As humanity looks to the extremes of religion and technology, the world around us gradually loses its existence.

John Dominic Crossan claims, "since the Age of Enlightenment has been replaced by the Age of Entertainment, the future clash would not be between science and religion but between both of them and fantasy." He continues, "In 1999 I never imagined, even as prophetic nightmare, the speed with which faith-based thinking would morph into fantasy-based dreaming to infiltrate medicine, education, domestic program, foreign policy, and even news reporting." That was in 2007. The shift to the fantastic has hardly slowed down since.

We're in a newly emerging age. This is an Age where fantasy seeps into every area of our lives. This is an Age in which every US Republican Senator denies human-caused climate change. This is an Age where people prefer to escape reality than face it. This is an Age of increasing confusion, increasing blindness, increasing non-existence. This is the Age of Fantasy.

GM Salmon Poisons our Future

Unfortunately the FDA is considering approving Genetically Modified Salmon. They're almost there, and if they approve it we could see GM salmon on supermarket shelves in 3 years. In many countries of the world (including the US and Canada), GM products are not required to be labelled, so the GM fish will stealth their way onto your table without you knowing. But there are significant dangers associated with GM technologies.

For example, the herbicide used on most GM crops (typically rice, soy and corn), RoundUp, causes birth defects if mothers are exposed to it during pregnancy, and the 'safe' levels are often found to be exceeded 10 times over. And that's just one well-documented example. GM life has been linked to cancer and other life-threatening diseases. But that's just the risks to you.

GM crops have never significantly improved yield (as promised), have not reduced the use of chemicals (as promised), have enslaved farmers economically and dramatically increased farmer suicide rates, have given rise to superweeds that are immune to common/safe herbicides, and have spread into the wild to pollute and damage natural habitats.

GM producers have narrow vision. They have repeatedly proven that profit is their God, and they will stop at nothing (including intimidation and even murder) to make money. They encourage mono-cropping (decreasing biodiversity and increasing habitat fragility) and deforestation, and their 'recommended' farming practices lead to desertification. They are destroying the fertility of the soils, and so are reducing the worlds' potential agricultural yields.

GM animals and fish will fall down in all the same areas. They are bad for humanity, bad for the planet, bad for life, bad for everything. Unfortunately the FDA is run/controlled by pro-GM lobbyists. They have no concern for the environment or human health. If GM salmon is allowed, we all get one step sicker.

The FDA don't even have a suitable process to determining the GM salmon's safety. They are using the animal drug safety procedure to approve this fish - now doesn't that make you feel safe!

One final warning: The approval of GM salmon will open the flood gates for more GM animals. We are witnessing the destruction of agriculture itself, and with it, the possibility of sustainable food production on this planet.

Moderation, not Freedom

"Freedom without limit ends up enslaving, because the strong are free to prey on the weak."

But surely you can't limit freedom, otherwise the freedom isn't real? Not true. Freedom is not an all-or-nothing, but you can discern levels of freedom spread throughout human experience. And when we cheer for total freedom, we end up moving towards totalitarianism, because the strong will abuse their freedom in order to enslave.

The cry of the Left today has to be for moderation, not freedom, because all too easily the cries for Total Freedom can lure us towards dictatorship, giving us a similar fascism to the political and social result of the Right.

We do need freedom, and freedom should be encouraged, but it should be encouraged at the communal and (carefully) the individual level. But freedom should be restricted, and at times quite heavily restricted, at the corporate the governmental level. Just as we should not allow our government to fall into fascism, we also must stop abuses of power that the biggest corporations and most influential people now wield. We must stop our enslavement through advertisements and (parts of) the media. We must restrict their freedom, so that we have the freedom to live meaningful, healthy and free lives.

This excellent lecture (mp3) by Andrew Simms at LSE details changes we need to make to the global economic system and ways that we could make them. It is well worth the 90min listen (although a little slow to get started, but don't be put off) - highly recommended!

Red Wine Carpet Stains

George Monbiot recently declared "We're losing." He was talking about those who are concerned for life on planet earth, and we are losing to those who wish to continue with the status-quo, regardless of cost. He also recently wrote,

Humanity is no longer split between conservatives and liberals, reactionaries and progressives, though both sides are informed by the older politics. Today the battlelines are drawn between expanders and restrainers; those who believe that there should be no impediments, and those who believe that we must live within limits. The vicious battles we have seen so far between greens and climate change deniers, road safety campaigners and speed freaks, real grassroots groups and corporate-sponsored astroturfers are just the beginning. This war will become much uglier as people kick against the limits that decency demands. (my emphasis)

This split, combined with the fact that we're losing, paints a truly daunting picture of the future. It's not that those concerned with life on earth will eventually win, and that we're just getting there slowly; it's that our arguments and policy proposals are failing, pollution is opened up more than it is being restricted, countries (even formerly nice countries like Canada) are breaking rules without feeling any consequences, bad infrastructure is increasingly built (like coal-fired power station), and wherever you look, we are losing ground.

Not only that, but we're losing time too - climate change is only going to speed up as Greenland's trapped carbon is released, along with other 'tippers' around the globe. We're not going to avoid a 2C rise. I doubt we'll avoid a 4C rise. There's too much power held by the expanders, too much momentum in their favour, too many ways to make profit from climate change.

For our future is one of violence and death. As fertile land turns to desert, whether through drought, vast temperature increases, GM crops or lack of healthy agriculture (e.g. soil being killed by reliance on petro-chemical fertilisers), the healthy land will increasingly struggle to support the (still) increasing human population. And starvation will ensue. But not only starvation. With starvation comes desperation. And desperation in a world with industrial military power (where there's lots of profit to be made) leads to war.

Of course, war will also come because the expanders want to gain increasing control over dwindling world resources - capital that can be mined and used once, and is then gone forever. But the expanders don't care - as long as they profit.

The human population is climbing close to 7 billion people. It is predicted to increase to 9bn. But the world cannot sustain us - it can't even sustain the current 7bn for long, and the rate at which we are expending and destroying global environmental capital (non-renewable resource use, soil-health decrease, fresh-water supply depletion, etc.) means that in the future we will be able to support even less. And by the future, we're talking the next 50 years.

My prediction, based upon all the evidence (from climate scientists, sociologists, global politics, even from seeing the (increasing) power of the climate sceptics), is that 7 billion humans will die by 2060. That could well be within my lifetime, and quite possibly be within yours. Of course, we may be some of the 7bn that die, and so never see it all, but that won't stop so many from dying.

The horror of our future is only starting to be realised, but horror it truly is. Now is the time to lay to rest your belief in an always-improving society, to challenge people's belief in the 'stability' of status-quo, and to start preparing for the worst of it. Now is the time to realise that red stains in the carpet are really not that important, and that although the future may contain wine (for there's always money to be made from alcohol/ism), carpets will become rare and expensive - a valued resource that you can't afford to replace. And so you will need to know that removing red wine from a carpet is really quite easy: dampen the carpet with a wet cloth, pour salt onto it, leave for a few minutes, rinse and repeat.

If you survive the future you won't be able to afford replacements. Reduce, Re-use, Repair, Recycle, Replace Make do!