I see the biggest obstacle to adaptation to the forces of decline both human and planetary is our techno optimistic obsession. Confront any modern green and what they tell you is tech solutions. We need more EV’s and renewables. We need energy storage and smart grids. These are mostly affluent educated people living prosperity. They are loath to consider degrowth with less modern efficiency and performance. I am not even considering the poor who are just concerned with surviving or the rich browns who don’t care as long as they maintain their affluence. This then become an issue of behavior on all sides. It is the most important obstacle to human advancement. If humans are going to advance it will not be with tech although tech can be a part of it. If humans are going to advance it is going to be with less affluence but more spiritual wealth. There is no other way on a finite planet at limits of growth with ecosystem decline. Meaning is spiritual wealth. The truth is meaning.
It is my opinion that the world both human and planetary is tipped into a decline process of succession. This is a force that is beyond human intervention. In other words, green tech strategies are not going to save us and in fact current strategies will just hasten decline albeit less than brown strategies of growth. So, for a TRUE Green to realize transformation there must first be acceptance of this decline and that tech is front and center the problem not the solution. Again, this is not to say tech is not part of the many mitigation and adaptation solutions. It naturally is because humans are a tech-based species.
Behaviors and attitudes through adapted education and lifestyles are the only means of a successful outcome of decline. Keep in mind success is less pain and suffering because the consequences are unavoidable. Humans are trapped in this outcome. The problem with this necessary behavioral adaptation is global regime of competitive cooperation of nationalism and tribalism. World governance that is a hair trigger away from global instability from competitive forces barely maintains itself except for people desire for affluence that keeps them cooperating. So, we have an overriding force of cooperation with an underlying current of competition at all levels. This means any reform to this human decline can only be tech and economic within the urges of nationalism. It must be growth related because degrowth policies which are absolutely essential are a surrendering of competitive postion.
I have been proposing a solution that is basically a socio-economic bifurcation but it will have to be on a regional or national level. It will only sell if it can be made to appear as strength not weakness. This means its true value will be diminished from the global ideal. This bifurcation is taking large amounts of the population out of the hyper modern and into voluntary simplicity. This would be done with guaranteed but frugal conditions of security of education, health, and living arrangements. The difference here is not just a living wage but a different life. A living wage just mothballs people. These people would become the buffer to the modern. They would be engaged in permaculture in its many forms with land and water stewardship but also small community assets. In effect these people would live with intermitency, seasonality, within the cycles of pre modern low carbon capture. They would be anchored in localism requiring low mobility strategies. Their freedoms would be localized and private property more minimal with more public commons.
Renewables would be part of this with micro grids but with the ability to export power because they can immediately adapt to intermitency because of lifestyle. They would be a source of food and water sustainability and this too would allow exports to the hyper modern. These people would then become and organic buffer and energy storage asset. The hyper modern would play their part by providing the production of needed consumables and emergency services of security. The key point is the hyper modern would be degrowth in a purification or distillation process where knowledge and production are streamlines but more potent with smaller population groups. The balance comes from the voluntary simplicity of the permaculture class. The devil is in the detail but the point being simplicity and complexity will have to coexist instead of the current trend of sustainable development of all.
I am not kidding myself. The current forces of growth will not even allow this type of bifurcation so it will be up to individuals and small groups to go into simplicity voluntarily in a dualism of green prepping. A REAL Green still lives in the status quo of the tech and growth obsession but uses it to leave it. IOW, decline and adapt in place in the voluntary simplicity of localism as the whole system comes crashing down over time.
REAL Green Adaptation 