REAL Green Adaptation

I don’t know what to think anymore.  A few years after 08 and the pseudo recovery I was a little stunned.  Look where we are over 10 years later and still ticking.  I become stunned in 15 with how the traditional peak oil message was dead and immediate financial doom a boy crying wolf.  I call current growth pseudo because this recovery is really just wealth transfer disenfranchisement.  Personally I think real aggregate growth that has value is negative.  Sure China built vast amounts and markets are way up in the west.   To me much of what we have today is malinvestment that can never make the return these investments are supposed to.  We have monstrous unfunded liabilities everywhere with the wrong type of demographics.  The poor of the world that are young can never make this up.  The ever growing young are part of the problem.  At some point overpopulation is a negative and we are there.   Taken together all this is a huge systematic farce. 

I had done some radical adaptation for this 08 event I saw coming.  I began preparing for it in 05.  I was fully onboard as a peaker and once the CB interventions occurred I somewhat radicalized.  I became stunned as shale change the peaker debate and as the CB intervention grew feet.  This CB interventionism has impressed me from the point of view of just how well it has managed to keep the global economy going.  This is everywhere also with the US, China, and Europe in on it.  The EM’s are riding this wave too.  It has changed the world radically but more like a frog boiling than a phoenix. 

The only thing I can compare it to is a Ponzi scheme retirement party.  I mean where the hell do we go from here?  The debt levels everywhere except maybe Russia are in the stratosphere.  Russia ain’t shit without the rest of world being healthy.  It is almost like MMT will be inevitable although the socialistic paradise is a farce.  The neo socialist pretend all it takes is money for prosperity.  They think the rich have real money.  This is not the case because most of the money the rich have is digital.  Most debt is bad debt.  The rich own the debt and it value is not real.  Nations have debt that is not real.  The individual with debt as their life is becoming more and more difficult.  Much of the collateral backing most of the global debt is compromised or nonexistent.  This is one big farce. 

I see things continuing to slowly decline until we either stop cooperating in cold or hot wars or a black swan disrupts confidence enough that a Minsky moment occurs where the individual stops the economic activity by ending his participation in the game.  Liquidity is the name of the game and real liquidity is peoples trust.  Hyperinflation could be the result too.  At some point people will stop believing in fiat currency.  There is not enough gold to matter.  Crypto currencies cannot cover the whole currency spectrum.  A cashless society is not possible everywhere. 

I have no clue what is coming other than like with energy we are in decline and consequences of that decline will not be pleasant especially considering the current pissed off human behavior of people everywhere always expecting more and getting less.  I have been watching the financial side of doom now daily for years.  I am too the point of scratching my head dumbfounded and in amazement.  How long can this shit go on?  How long can bubbles inflate and be controlled?  How long can the deception be propagated?  This is lies built on lies.  It is even more horrifying because the fate of billions rests on a string of lies.

The referenced article at the end of my discussion is on my favorite topic of REAL Green Deep Adaptation and the fake green trend in society.  Basically we have very intelligent people that are deceived as well as unintelligent that are being deceived by techno optimist wonders.  In the process these techno optimist are discarding the earth because they feel we are moving off of it in the future with space colonization and space based mining.  It is also a fake green narrative that we can be green and more affluent for those who still see hope for the planet with a new green harmony.  Natural harmony is not consistent with human complexity.  This is the deepest of FAKE green deceptions.

A great point made in this article is power maximization that is the dominant social narrative of globalism is the wrong impulse for society.  This is what is driving globalism.   This is a duel force of human nature with the competitive nature of human groups but also the cooperative impulse of increased shared affluence.  The power of this force is beyond management.  It is highly resilient but with brittle bifurcation points once the criticality of degrowth is reached.  So we have humans turning to maximum power principal to satisfy our competitive/cooperative urges of liberal democracy and market based capitalism in the face of global and planetary decline. 

What we should instead being doing is energy efficiency and conserving.  This means less competition in the name of more natural security plus a change in what we perceive as a cooperative namely increasing shared affluence.  Instead we should be choosing degrowth principals as forces to combat the destruction of the planetary web and earth systems.  This is then a shared understanding of less affluence not more.  These principals would have to first be behaviorally based with broad based education.  A crisis may deliver these ideas but unfortunately a crisis may be too late.  We would have to compete less through cooperation based actions centered on degrowth.  This than becomes the new dominant myth that drives our social narratives eclipsing the current corrupted liberal democracy and market based capitalist version.  Our smartest people must drive this message in unanimity so our political and economic leaders get the message.  Currently our smartest people are fake green techno optimist except a very few awakened ones.  This means there is science denial by our brightest in regards to solutions.  This is perfect for the status quo because it allows politician to make phony pitches that will make things great again and industrial leaders have a new economic growth avenue.

This article is preaching New Green.  This is a macro version of REAL Green.  REAL Green is local and individual in Deep Adaptation because it has come to the conclusion the top cannot change because of the self-organization of the system of globalism.  Globalism may adapt with increased competition of regions in a new multipolar reality both political and economic.  This is still competitive cooperation but with an adapted version with nationalism and regionalism in a balance of power basis. 

REAL Green says human behavior is flawed in its global overpopulation of a highly complex civilization.  This condition is not scaled properly so poor behavior is inevitable.  The power principal will always win in these situations because humans are deceived by techno optimism both the smart and the low intelligence masses.  It is not allowed to have a negative pessimistic narrative.  This is not a rule it is a disposition.  Pessimistic realism not only does not sell with the general public but our system of academia and scientific publication process does not accommodate such thinking.  If it is allowed it is mainly as material for critiques on why techno optimism is the future. 

This then means REAL Green is the way to adapt to a deeply flawed world individually and locally.  This means focusing on small groups locally to adapt to a global complex civilization in decline that cannot change.  This can mean small groups on the internet sharing ideas but the expression of real green is local and individual.  REAL Green is not for everyone.  REAL Green is for those awakened to decline.  It is for those who can practice Deep Adaptation of a collapsing world.  Many cannot and most will not be awakened to it.  You adapt to this condition by coopting it for your individual and local.  You use the status quo to leave it. You yield to greater powers and at the same time harness these greater powers as individual energy to create a better life boat for the coming decline.  This means relative sacrifice for the planet.  Some things you will do will not be green but the overall impulse is REAL Green.  It is also about hospices which is the preparations for death both of a way of life and increasingly of you and yours. e

“The New Green Revolution, a.k.a. The Grand Transition to… ?? – Part I”

https://tinyurl.com/y5kxxwqm     LIFEITSELF

“Dr. Nate Hagens uses Hawking’s ideas about Mars colonization in his Reality 101 course at the University of Minnesota to illustrate the point that human society is composed of tiny islands of high competence floating in a vast sea of narratives.”

“The nature of intelligence, expertise, reductionism, IQ, etc. seem greatly skewed these days in favor of quasi-idiot-savant experts who are lifted into prominence by being apparently right about some very narrow slice of reality.  There’s currently not much status which attaches to synthesis, because synthesis is antithetical to most extremely stimulating beliefs about reality and the future. And this won’t change anytime soon. We are left with a choice between offering a bummer message nobody really wants to hear, versus crafting a message that has utility to move society toward chosen goals.”

“A vulnerable world,” where Jorge argues that one cannot be a consistent positivist, if one is not prepared to treat the Earth as a disposable planet, only to escape to the Cosmos later. This escape temptation is expressed by a more ample and complex “anthropofuge” movement, a movement of flight from the human condition that we must take seriously, and which we have to resist.  So beware of this murderous cosmic narrative that justifies Gaiacide”

“This means they don’t bother to do work all the time and are less energy demanding. This is what I imagine the preindustrial way of life to be like. It is not as power maximizing and is more energy efficient and conserving. What I believe we need to be doing is comparing the energy systems of different types of human civilization—the endothermic and the ectothermic—and stop asking which endothermic way of life is most efficient.”  In translation, if we want to live in more harmony with nature or be more “sustainable,” we must behave more like the ectothermic animals and slow down at times.  Says me, a creature that  incessantly works on something around the clock, including evenings and weekends.”

“By the way, I really try hard not to hallucinate.  In Part II, I will show you how naive it is to think than the “New Green Deal” will allow us to continue our current lifestyles, just by other greener means. This, my friends in the developed, power and resource hogging countries is impossible.”

My REAL Green has come to the same conclusion as the referenced  article.  What we are facing and what will achieve a degree of results in regards to our many predicaments are beyond technology.  Wind, solar, and storage combined with EV’s is not going to save us. It can’t because the issue is growth itself and more precisely how we live.  Degrowth is essential to solving our many predicaments but this must be a managed degrowth.  This degrowth must be a combination of triage of bad aspects of the current growth paradigm and a hybridization of globalism and localism.  Some aspects of our civilization must remain global.  Some of the manufacturing and trade is essentially only efficient at the global level.  If we want to retain a degree of modernity then some globalism must remain a feature of this.  Then there is a movement to localism with less affluence at least in regards to consumption.  This does not have to be the case with the wealth a strong community can realize  but let’s be honest materially localism will offer less. 

This will in a sense mean a two-tier social structure with a technical and energy intensive sector and a lower energy local sector engaged in the gathering of solar energy from the land.  Solar and wind may be part of this but so will intermittency and lower power potency.  The important point is the local will have to be supported and protected from the inevitable inequalities of a global intensive structure.  The fact remains certain aspects of our modernism must have economies of scale, comparative advantage, global transport, and global capital.  If we can greatly reduce what is part of these global attributes then we can realize some degrowth.  So, the vital degrowth needed will be achieved by taking a significant amount of people out of the global network and place them in a localized setting.  This means a degree of control many may not be ready for.  It means some will have the privilege of movement and other forced to stay local.  This means the whole nature of capitalism and liberal democracy of individualism and freedom of choice will be upended. 

This points to the fallacy of the current wave of liberal and socialistic green new deals being discussed as our solution to extinction and so forth.  These platforms push an agenda of affluence with modernism.  They want growth but camouflage it as clean green growth.  Technology is front and center to this as well as sustainable equitable development.  This is wrong as a paradigm of successful change.  It may be better than unfettered market-based capitalism for most but it is still a failure in regards to the reality of the predicaments we are facing.  The net result will just be a wealth transfer arrangement to those behind greens and away from those not.  You may think that is fine but it really isn’t in the end.  What it in effect turns out to be is an elaborate lie that we can transform society into a clean green arrangement with growth. What happens is the same failures of growth and a new aristocracy.

Technology is not the answer but it is part of the solution.  Telling people they can have affluence and change is not correct.  People must realize we can only have change with sacrifice.  Degrowth which is the only solution to our predicaments means less affluence and less choices.  It means a majority of the global population must be localized in less affluent arrangements.  If the vital parts of modernity can be maintained like networks, storehouses of knowledge, and infrastructure there must be a group who can produce and maintain these structures.  This means two tier way of life.  Deciding who is allowed to be in what tier and where one get placed in his local is the devil in the detail.  Who will volunteer and who will be forced? 

This points to our last predicament and that is of human behavior itself.  If a two-tier world focused on significant degrowth is the only way forward then can we change our collective behavior to allow these kinds of change. This means draconian changes with forced change.  It means consequences that are not going to be fully understood.   There will be those who lose and many may lose everything.  That is the nature of consequences.  There is no easy way forward.  I do not think we are up to this and this is why my REAL Green is about deep adaptation.  Adapt locally and utilize the status quo to leave it while it is still robust and in charge.  The current system cannot last but while it does go local but use the status quo to make your local the best it can be.  This is a kind of acknowledgement of the failure of human behavior at the collective level that is leveraged to create a successful human behavior locally.  Both market-based capitalism and the green new deal of clean technology and growth is a failure.  These two systems will both compete and stall in the trenches of economic and social warfare.  This is what happens when the pie is shrinking and the chairs are pulled away, stalemate.

“A globalised solar-powered future is wholly unrealistic – and our economy is the reason why”

https://tinyurl.com/y6zbq5ap     the conversation

“So the first thing we should redesign are the economic ideas that brought fossil-fueled technology into existence and continue to perpetuate it. “Capitalism” ultimately refers to the artefact or idea of all-purpose money…The policies designed to protect the environment and promote global justice have not curbed the insidious logic of all-purpose money – which is to increase environmental degradation as well as economic inequalities…In order to accomplish economic “degrowth” and curb the treadmill of capital accumulation, we must transform the systemic logic of money itself.  National authorities might establish a complementary currency, alongside regular money, that is distributed as a universal basic income but that can only be used to buy goods and services that are produced within a given radius from the point of purchase…Re-localising the bulk of the economy in this way does not mean that communities won’t need electricity, for example, to run hospitals, computers and households. But it would dismantle most of the global, fossil-fuelled infrastructure for transporting people, groceries and other commodities around the planet.  This means decoupling human subsistence from fossil energy and re-embedding humans in their landscapes and communities…Solar power will no doubt be a vital component of humanity’s future, but not as long as we allow the logic of the world market to make it profitable to transport essential goods halfway around the world. The current blind faith in technology will not save us. For the planet to stand any chance, the global economy must be redesigned. The problem is more fundamental than capitalism or the emphasis on growth: it is money itself, and how money is related to technology.” cerun:yes’>>��2��$

There are two aspects to my REAL Green Deep Adaptation.  One is the hardware and energy side of a hybrid energy gathering effort combined with efficiency and conservation.  The other is the behavioral side of adapting and mitigating decline.  On the behavioral side the emphasis is on systems dynamics as a guide to a collapse process.  There is the physics of collapse which is available across the web in multiple site locations.  There is no shortage to the science of collapse.  How to deal with collapse is less straight forward and often sensationalized and extreme.  REAL Green Deep Adaptation starting point is individual and local.  This does not mean uninformed and withdrawn, quite the contrary.  RG stresses proactive research on the process as a daily exercise.  Know what is happening in the greater world but keep local perspective.  Far too often we get absorbed into global events and lose our way locally. 

RG primary behavioral function is acknowledgement of the collapse process.  This does not mean collapse is inevitable and the reason for this is we are unable to know this with certainty.  It sees a collapse trajectory based upon scientific research.  The time line is unknown and the degree and duration uncertain.  The acknowledgement is more the understanding through systems dynamics that collapse is a normal process in ecosystems.  The positive side of this adaptation is a better life with or without collapse.  Also collapse may visit the younger generation and some of the older generation may never see collapse.  RG says collapse is and always has been a human reality it is just recently the idea has been censored. 

Looking at the human ecosystem we see classic examples of thresholds being approached.  The collapse process found in our current civilization then is a call to action for individual and local adaptation.  This action is twofold with one being the mentality of preparing for collapse and the other is the lifestyle of this effort.  The mentality seeks to incorporate the concept of sapience as the foundation of choosing what to embrace and what not to.  Often it is what not to in this world of overwhelming possibilities that is the most important.  Do not pollute your local and your individuality with clutter.  Cleaning out the deadwood of distractions and unneeded things is a daily exercise which requires emotional sacrifice.  The mentality of deep adaptation is one of relative sacrifice.  This is a condition of living already in a collapsed world and not.  It is about utilizing the status quo that is not collapsed to construct your bulk work against collapse that requires a way of life is collapsed.  It is a collapse in place and beat the rush mentality.  The dignity of this comes from respect, honesty and the resulting meaning.  Relative efforts are key because extreme measures of leaving the status quo will hinder your ability to leave it.  You must navigate a tricky way of life that embraces the status quo because of work, family, and citizenship but also the effort of collapsing in place that is contrary to the social narrative. 

Relative sacrifice also concerns the degree of embrace of conservation and efficiency measures in the cause of planetary health.  RG is planet oriented as a spiritual add on to your higher power but this must be done relatively so one does not upend one’s life in the status quo that supports and nurtures your RG effort.  Relative sacrifice says tailor adaptation efforts around your status quo meaning and individuals.  RG will vary in the degree of effort that maximize the enhancement planetary health.  It is planetary health that is the ultimate basis of an add on to your higher power. IOW your personal power springs from the ground bellow you and the life around you. 

The next step to the mentality of RG is hybridization through salvage and triage.  A RG effort seeks to combine the new and the old ways of living and does this by focusing on salvage efforts of utilizing what you have in new ways.  RG uses triage to eliminate those items that do not have long term use and do not contribute to a RG doomstead.  Some items are out of place in one local but not another.  Rid yourself of play toys but one RG local’s toy is another tools so this effort is relative.  RG says make all your equipment and structures focused on RG efforts.  RG leisure centers on the RG effort and focused on the local.  It is influenced by relative sacrifice so a compromise of sorts is reached.  Your family will push you into travel for leisure but show resistance by pushing local efforts instead. 

In regards to the old ways RG refers to efforts at lifestyles of pre-modern times before fossil fuels and modern machines.  These times were more survival based as RG must be considering our current collapse process.  We have a wealth of new ways and things the key is to triage out those with no future because of low durability and little value to survival in a collapsed world.  Horde those tools and knowledge of both the old and new but use RG wisdom to pick and choose and relative sacrifice to fit this effort into your status quo world. 

RG behavior leads into the bricks and mortar of your RG local.  Locality and individuality is the key here.  There is no set templet for this part of RG.  You are your own expert and your local should be the guide.  Find out what is healthy about your local and enhance it with RG wisdom.  Local efforts mean staying local in relative sacrifice.  Your family and community will push you to leave your local so balance this tension.  Eat and live local is your starting point.  Build a RG monastery both abstract and physical.  A library of knowledge and a shop of tools is the basis of this RG brick and mortar.  It is the brick and mortar that begins the process of harvesting and gathering of low carbon solar energy that is found in both the living and nonliving world. 

“Collapse: The Seneca Strategy”  A Book By Ugo Bardi

https://tinyurl.com/yybdv8va

https://tinyurl.com/y4j7pytk    doomstead dinner

“My second book on the concept of “Seneca Collapse” (or Cliff, or Ruin, or the like) is nearly completed and it should be available from Springer before the end of the year. It is a sequel to my first book, “The Seneca Effect”, but this second one is thought as more easily readable “trade” book.”

“I used “The Seneca Strategy” as a title because the book focuses on how to deal with collapses rather than on the physics of collapses. It proposes a strategy that’s based on the Stoic view of the world revisited under the lens of system dynamics. It is the idea that you don’t try to force systems to do what you want them to do, a concept that Jay Forrester termed “pushing the levers in the wrong direction.”

“Table of Contents    Six Things You Should Know About Collapse    Collapse: An Introduction    Models of Collapse    Models of the Future: The Russian Roulette    The Limits of Models. Nightfall on Lagash    Why Models are not Believed: The Croesus Syndrome    The Science of Collapse    Complex Systems: The Goddess’ Wrath    The Power of Networks: The Ghost in the Shell    Living and Dying in a Complex Universe. The Story of Amelia the Amoeba.    The Practice of Collapse    The Collapse of Engineered Structures: For Dust you are and to Dust you Will Return    Financial Collapses: Blockbuster goes bust    Natural Disasters: Florence’s Great Flood    Mineral Collapses: The Coming Oil Crisis?    The Seneca Cliff and Human Violence: Fatal Quarrels    Famines, Epidemics, and Depopulation: The Zombie Apocalypse    The Big One: Societal Collapse    Apocalypse: the collapse of the Earth’s ecosystem    Strategies for Managing Collapse    Technological Progress against Collapse. The Cold Fusion Miracle that Wasn’t    Avoiding Overexploitation. Drill, Baby, Drill!    Leadership Against Collapse: The Last Roman Empress    Collapse as a Weapon: The Iago Strategy    Deception as a Strategy: the Camper’s Dilemma    Life After Collapse: The Seneca Rebound    Conclusion: The Seneca Strategy”

Electric vehicles are Fake Green.  People that drive them often have a cult fake green mentality.  For some reason they feel special to be driving electric.  Driving is the problem and the car culture is what has destroyed the planet and our species.  That said we are where we are and that is a car culture necessary for survival.  Electric vehicles are part of the solution to lowering our foot print if we are also pushing into renewables with vigor.  In many places we are doing this so this makes EV part of the solution.  Hybrids are part of the solution too because they fill many applications well.  Both EV’s, hybrids, and fuel cell technology need to be pushed and ICE vehicles slowly taken from the road.  Most of all our modern consumeristic mobile mentality reshaped instead of adapted with Fake Green fancy shit like EV vehicles.  Most EV are sold to the rich who are the biggest consumers of resources by far green or not. 

The Real Green approach is to go local.  In all fairness this does not work except for some but it should be an option governments around the world are pushing.  Subsidize low footprint lifestyles and green good behavior.  Eco communities could be certified and supported with economic protection.  Eco communities would voluntarily go low tech and simplify.  This means leaving normal life much as monks did in the Middle Ages with the difference being economic and environmental not religious.  Monasteries are a blue print for what these communities would resemble.  Eco communities engage in permaculture even more so.  Many poor in the third world are already there so policies should avoid disrupting what they have and an effort made to keep them from developing into a modern consumer. 

Industrial Ag is something we need to move away from at least partly for a lower foot print and food supply resilience.  Electric with renewable power is part of this.  Tractors can go electric and the greatly reduced transport these eco communities would engage in also electric.  These communities could pack the vehicle with people for multi tasked trips for supplies and sale of goods.  This would be a very low foot print compared to normal people who drive single occupancy vehicles EV or not.  These communities could be powered by renewables off the grid with a lifestyle adapted to intermittency.  Their surplus power if any sold to the grid along with their eco harvested food production. 

EV’s do not make you green.  Most EV’s are fossil fuel charged to some extent because the grid is not green.  This whole EV thing is in some ways a farce but they are trying and it is better than Trump Orange or Conservative brown that are anti-green and mainly profit oriented.  Real Green is planet oriented first.  We all know these activities have to make a return.  Wolves don’t survive if their rabbit catch was more effort than the meal gives. This is where the certification comes in.  An energy audit is needed to allow economic support and protection.  The EV cult mentality needs to be taken from Fake Green to Real Green for those who can and who in their heart want to dedicate their lives to the planet and the web of life.

This collapse process is systematic with multiple variables from planetary systems to human networks.  It is global and local.  It is a process and it will be exhibited everywhere without concern to agenda.  Science can tell us some of the details but now we are entering the unknown territory of a decline of a civilization never experienced by humans.  A civilization that is completely planetary including “All” cultures but also a digital nonhuman web.  Our false god, tech, is part of the answer but not a salvation.  Properly used tech will make the gradient less steep.  Tech can also make it worse if we are not careful.  We have to spend the remaining resources and the remaining global economy properly.  Unfortunately we as a global people are malinvesting the future as we approach the cliff.  We likely have some years left because this globalism is so robust.  We have some very potent tech with ambitious people.  There are still plenty of planetary resources to pillage.  What we do not have is wise and awakened people.  Behavior is the key but that is where we are making the least headway.  What we are doing is digging the hole deeper in regards to meaning with corrupted science and human narrative of increasing affluence. 

This is why I promote a Real Green Deep Adaptation.  This is an honest individual response to a force greater than human management.  Stop fighting this process and join it.  Join it means acknowledging decline and beating the rush.  Downsize with dignity which means lowering your footprint through meaning.  Practice relative sacrifice by accepting your place in all this.   Leveraging the power of the status quo to leave it.  Restore personal honesty as you try to restore a healthy nature to your local.  Relinquish the bad of consumerism and except lower affluence.  A natural resilience that comes with localization is the result of these actions.  Add to these actions relative sacrifice which is doing what you can per your unique situation.  This is a key because realistic actions are your best actions.  Ending the bargaining and dishonesty is the very first step.  Modest doom and prep is requires to avoid alienating those in your local.  Extremism of action and proselytizing doom is counterproductive.  Real Green Deep Adaptation calls for honesty of action with modest changes leading to relative change focused on the local level.

Science is a method to meaning but not the only human way to meaning.  This modern method and message are now so corrupted meaning is hidden in the haze.  Real Green science acknowledges the good and bad with honesty.  Leave existential guilt behind and stop pointing fingers in a hypocritical way.  Finger pointing is fine as long as you look in the mirror to what part you are playing in all this in humility and empathy for the bad actions of others.  Relative sacrifice also means relative judgement.  You can’t expect others to change.  This is about personal change.  You can’t blame others and expect that to make it better.  You can look around and point out what is wrong and which parties are dishonest as a map for your life but you can’t take that and play the justified and righteous.  Harness your surroundings and avoid being offended.  Get what you can from what is around you by avoiding the traps of the ego.  If you practice this way of life the planet will give you power.  This power comes directly from meaning.  You cannot use this power for personal means in regards to selfish and egotistical ends.  If you do this you will lose this planetary power.  What is called for is stoic Spartan action for the pain and suffering ahead that is the planetary reality of ecosystems in decline and localized failure.

This is about adding on to your existing higher power and way of life not discarding them.  You can’t completely rewire your basic meaning given you from nature and nurture.  The add-on is adapting what you have with existential honesty of the science of collapse.  The other add on is Real Green action which is a lower foot print by triage.  It is about making something through hybrid action of the old ways combined with current knowledge.  Most of all it is about going local.   The key to a local is finding a local worth making your last stand in.  The ultimate local is your life system so if you can’t leave your failed local then find your strength from within to create a hospice.  Some locals are immediately on the list of failure.  This last stand hints at the last add on and that is the spiritual one.  This spiritual add-on is the honesty of knowing there are no refuges from the coming planetary and human calamities.  This honesty will purify your existing higher power position.  No amount of physical or mental prep will save you.  This acknowledgment of death on its different planes is the final key. 

Not everyone can be awakened and those who are awakened accept the requirement of action.  This awakened state is beyond most humans and it cannot be faulted.  Nature calls on a few that have found a micro climate for growth within the dead zone of modernism.  Real Green Deep Adaptation is for the awakened ones who choose the path to meaning.  Once you have taken this path then you will go forth on the behalf of the planet and others locally.  You will create monasteries of meaning with knowledge and tools for those who come after.  These action create positive organic changes in your immediate natural ecosystem.  This coming global bifurcation could be an extinction event but it might be a new people that negotiate the bottleneck.  Plant the seeds that may lead them to wisdom and a chance for survival.

The idea of decline initiating a positive change is an important part of Real Green Deep Adaptation.  These principals need to be applied to global governance but they can’t.  This does not mean the what-ifs of Real Green Deep Adaptation principals applied to governance should not be discussed.   The purpose becomes understanding the predicament of human behavior we are in that points back to Real Green Deep Adaptation.   Responding accordingly leads to an individual response to center on restoration, relinquishment, and resilience which are the core of Real Green Deep Adaptation.

Restoration calls for honesty as the basis of human behavior as well as the restoration of scale through an individual’s local environment.  If this is projected to global governance then honestly acknowledging decline means more modest policy.  Spending and even talking about spending what you really don’t have is a failed policy longer term.  If all sides acknowledge decline then all those radical ideas on all sides that promote a false view of increasing prosperity will evaporate.  The results are a distilling out of better policy that will involve less but offer more value.  So honesty is the paramount policy but these days paradoxically honesty is a handicap.  Until the collective behavior acknowledges dishonesty both within and outside there can be no good policy.  Honesty applies to science and academia today with environmental policy since this is such a new and important force.

Another important point is a mixed economy based on decline.  What is in the public good and what is in the interest of individual good?  There must be a balance to the individual and the public.  The public good in a time of decline must focus on social harmony and good longer term fundable investments.  The individual good must be protected to promote productive individual effort.  A mixed economy based upon the better of each approach needs to be addressed to avoid extreme of either.  This points to “less” starting with those who govern.  Currently governing has become a springboard to affluence instead of service.  As long as those who govern now seek to get wealthy then our governing bodies will be corrupted.  This includes the corporate governance which today is blurred in arrangements of oligarchy and dictatorship. 

A second aspect of a mixed economy concern the planetary side of the equation.  We cannot fix what is broken especially when it is human behavior to begin with.  You can’t make a culture green that is based on growth in a time of decline you can only reduce the bad of it with adaptation and mitigation.  You can’t promote affluence with a green lipstick.  The only way to increase green is to lower affluence with less choices and less goods.  There are consequences to less with a system that requires growth and that is further systematic decay.  Honesty acknowledges degrowth and its nasty consequences both intended and unintended.  No pain no gain plays a part.  At the individual level less can increase resilience by an orderly downsizing of what is a macro trend of decline.   What is worse honest decline or dishonest affluence that is decline?  Honesty is always better this is especially critical for the individual.

Resilience starts with the restoration of honesty and in a time of declining prosperity involves relinquishment.   This then points to a key reality of Real Green Deep Adaptation.  The system is beyond this kind of proactive change and in tandem the public is without the capacity for this kind of change.   A crisis point changes this equation.  The crisis point of public change increasingly is likely at a systematic bifurcation point.  The short term benefits will always trump the longer term good when the local meets the global in a time of decline.  Individual success through wealth creation and accumulation will always trump better individual behavior in support of the public good in decline.  The important point is in a time of declining prosperity then we can expect dishonesty as human nature.  When prosperity is increasing the public good can be funded with an easy honesty.  We are in a time of difficult honesty.  This is called survival and it is an instinct of life. 

This human predicament then becomes call to be a beacon.  The Real Green Deep Adaptation beacon focuses locally and with your significant others.  This realization of decline then offers you a radar to yield to destructive forces.  It also offers you stealth by using the system to leave it.  Actually advancing your local through the principals of Real Green Deep Adaptation makes the overall system better.  Multiple grass root efforts at restoration, relinquishment, and resilience makes the entire planetary system including the human system better.  The top is hopelessly corrupt so if you are seeking meaning then you will stop looking outside your local for answers.  This does not mean abandoning your responsibility as a citizen it just means rejecting those parts of the process that impact your personal efforts at Real Green Deep Adaptation.  You remain an active citizen that calls into question the entirety of the status quo in regards to increasing affluence at the same time you use the status quo to improve your local.  This activity is then about triage of the bad and a hybrid of the old ways and utilization of the best of the modern.  Our destruction of the planet in the pursuit of growth and knowledge has found many best practices.  Not all is bad.  Take these hard-won truths and apply it to the old human ways that humans used to survive for centuries.

REFERENCE ARTICLE

“The management of hardship”

https://tinyurl.com/y4l7dcae    surplus energy

“GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS IN AN AGE OF DETERIORATING PROSPERITY…The first of these is the insanity which says that no amount of financial recklessness is ever going to drive us over a cliff, because creating new money out of thin air is our “get out of gaol free card” in all circumstances…The second subject is the very real threat posed by environmental degradation, where politicians are busy assuring the public that the problem can be fixed without subjecting voters to any meaningful inconvenience – and, after all, anyone who can persuade the public that electric vehicles are “zero emissions” could probably sell sand to the Saudis…the third issue, the tragicomedy that it is contemporary politics – indeed, it might reasonably be said that, between them, the Élysée and Westminster, in particular, offer combinations of tragedy, comedy and farce that even the most daring of theatre directors would blush to present.”

“The first is that prosperity issues have risen higher on the political agenda, and will go on doing so, pushing other issues down the scale of importance.  The second conclusion, which carries with it what is probably the single most obvious policy implication, is that redistribution is becoming an ever more important issue. There are two very good reasons for this hardening in sentiment…The need for redistribution is reinforced by realistic appraisal of the fiscal outlook. Anyone who is aware of deteriorating prosperity has to be aware that this has adverse implications for forward revenues. By definition, only prosperity can be taxed, because taxing incomes below the level of prosperity simply drives people into hardships whose alleviation increases public expenditures.”

“With prosperity – and, with it, the tax base – shrinking, promising anything that looks like “tax and spend” has become a recipe for policy failure and voter disillusionment. This said, so profound has been the failure of the centre-Right ascendancy that opportunities necessarily exist for anyone on the Left who is able to recast his or her agenda on the basis of economic reality.  Tactically, the best way forward for the Left is to shift the debate on equality back to the material, restoring the primacy of the Left’s traditional concentration on the differences and inequities between rich and poor.”

“This, it is to be hoped, can lead to a renaissance in the idea of the mixed economy, which seeks to get the best out of private and public provision, without pandering to the excesses of either. Restoration of this balance, from the position where we are now, means rolling back much of the privatization and outsourcing undertaken, often recklessly, over the last three decades.  Both the private and the public sectors will need to undergo extensive reforms if governments are to craft effective agendas for using the mixed economy to mitigate the worst effects of deteriorating prosperity.”

“First, a useful opening step in the crafting of new politics would be the introduction of “clean hands” principles, designed to prove that government isn’t, as it can so often appear, something conducted “by the rich, for the rich”.  Second, it would be helpful if governments rolled back their inclinations towards macho posturing and intimidation.”

“We cannot escape the conclusion that the task of government, always a thankless one even when confined to sharing out the benefits of growth, is going to become very difficult indeed as prosperity continues to deteriorate.  There might, though, be positives to be found in a process which ditches ideological extremes, uses the mixed economy as the basis for the equitable mitigation of decline, and seeks to rebuild relationships between discredited governments and frustrated citizens.”

I have been on the track of honesty about renewables for some time now.  Renewables are transformative not a transition.  The understanding of this difference is the key to the future.  If this is true then the key to the future is “Deep Adaptation”.  The reason Deep adaption is the key is the failure that will come with the integration of renewables and our inability to meet climate targets as a result.  The economic implications are a basis of this failure.  The Deep Adaptation agenda calls for resilience, relinquishment and restoration.    https://tinyurl.com/ya2jnu5z    “Deep Adaptation:  A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy.  The author, Jem Bendall, is more concerned with climate than the economy and energy.  Real Green looks at all three as a convergence of decline along with overpopulation and overshoot and it forms the basis of a platform that finds its home in the individual in a local with action that provides meaning.  The basis of the Fake Green message today is renewables are our salvation.  My Real Green platform says fake green is dishonest science when we honestly study all three decline convergence forces. 

Deep Adaptation calls for resilience which can be described as a combination of adaptation and mitigation of decline forces.  Relinquishment is a very important part of Deep Adaptation in my Real Green Platform because this is where the honesty comes in.  Fake Greens believe we can have our cake and eat it.  We can transition without losing affluence.  In fact fake greens say we will be more prosperous with more fantastic tech.  How often do we hear these days “energy is not a problem” from our Techno optimists?  Relinquishment means embracing less.  The key is less.  For proper adaptation and mitigation less must be central.  Systematically this is suicide for the status quo so if we do seek less affluence then we will see a bifurcating global system.  Of course that bifurcating situation is at the top and the top has no intention of less in fact it wants more.  The problem is a finite planet will give the top less eventually so beat the rush and decline now with less.  This means we must focus on resilience if we hope to adapt to less. 

Restoration is a key to both the natural and human and its focus is local.  The local must be restored with an alternative human footprint.  The mechanism is a hybrid of the new and old technologies but it is much more than technologies.  The key is behavior over tech.  This new human myth that is based on the old is about returning to a smaller scale with travel, consumption, and energy harvesting and gathering.  This is juxtaposition of the status quo that is delocalized, modern, and high performance based.  Real Green says collapse in place and beat the rush.  It says this is personal and with small groups.  It admits the top cannot be reformed except in niche areas and on the margins.  Competition and consensus means a diversity of ideas on solutions cannot be reconciled at the top.  The Paris Accord is a sick joke but completely understandable with Real Green.  Crisis of disequilibrium will hasten the pace of decline such that conflict will be yet another decline convergence variable.  Leave this process and go local as best you can in a delocalized global world.  Leverage the delocalized global to build your local while you can.  The delocalized global is robustly fragile meaning it is resistant to change until it shatters from its unsustainable needs.  There is not much time left to leverage this powerful force.

The behavioral key is relative sacrifice because of the inconsistencies of emotions that occur with acknowledging one’s oversized footprints with one’s ability to change.  Change what you can locally and with significant others.  This Real Green Platform is an add-on to your existing local and the meaning you get from your higher power.  What it does is orientates the planet and a new human behavior into your life system that will be locally based and with its primary concern being significant others.  Real green calls for salvaging what is around you and triaging out bad behavior and unneeded physical and mental distractions.  The key here is relatively or in other words the best you can because you will be torn apart with inconsistencies of being required to be in the status quo but being focused on leaving it. 

Real Green is about levels of awakening.  The highest level of course is getting to the point of building a monastery of knowledge and physical things to be seeds for a future.  The future is for someone else if the planet allows a reboot post collapse of modern civilization.  This also involves the relative again because the higher you become awakened the more humble you become much like a monks of old.  A Real Green monk would be a combination of an ancient shaman, Benedictines, and Taoism.  I covered the three because it is the synthesis of the three ways that is a road map to planetary harmony of the human sprit.  The humility comes from the power the planet will bestow on you.  This power is not traditional human power of control it is more power that meaning brings.  Once this meaning is used selfishly it is lost. 

Deep Adaptation principles in the Real Green platform of honesty and action is the key to the individual’s preparation for an uncertain future.  It is not a political platform that fits national or international goals.  It will not work at these levels.  It is meant for concerned individuals and locals as an orientation for behavior and tech.  It is about wisdom of what knowledge to use and most importantly in this culture of consumerism and vast amounts of knowledge, what not to use.  Real Green action will not save you but it will offer you a less bad way down.  Embrace it and find meaning. 

“Renewables Are Dead”

https://tinyurl.com/yyn7pbfv    automatic earth

https://tinyurl.com/y695nxsa    der Spiegel via google docs

“Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany €32 billion ($36 billion) annually, and opposition to renewables is growing in the German countryside. “The politicians fear citizen resistance” Der Spiegel reports. “There is hardly a wind energy project that is not fought.” In response, politicians sometimes order “electrical lines be buried underground but that is many times more expensive and takes years longer.”  As a result, the deployment of renewables and related transmission lines is slowing rapidly. Less than half as many wind turbines (743) were installed in 2018 as were installed in 2017, and just 30 kilometers of new transmission were added in 2017. Solar and wind advocates say cheaper solar panels and wind turbines will make the future growth in renewables cheaper than past growth but there are reasons to believe the opposite will be the case. Der Spiegel cites a recent estimate that it would cost Germany “€3.4 trillion ($3.8 trillion),” or seven times more than it spent from 2000 to 2025, to increase solar and wind three to five-hold by 2050.  A total expenditure of some $150 billion per year, every year from 2025 to 2050. On a rapidly failing project. Note: the numbers are “flexible”: just above, it says “Over the past five years alone, the Energiewende has cost Germany €32 billion ($36 billion)” , and seven times that is much more than $150 billion annually. Later in the article, the author says “Germans, who will have spent $580 billion on renewables by 2025 ..” General rule of thumb: it will cost much more than any estimate will tell you.  Between 2000 and 2018, Germany grew renewables from 7% to 39% of its electricity. And as much of Germany’s renewable electricity comes from biomass, which scientists view as polluting and environmentally degrading, as from solar.  Of the 7,700 new kilometers of transmission lines needed, only 8% has been built, while large-scale electricity storage remains inefficient and expensive. “A large part of the energy used is lost,” the reporters note of a much-hyped hydrogen gas project, “and the efficiency is below 40%… No viable business model can be developed from this.”  Meanwhile, the 20-year subsidies granted to wind, solar, and biogas since 2000 will start coming to an end next year. “The wind power boom is over,” Der Spiegel concludes.” s focus is loc�V`��N

The positive of this article is too little too late but restoration should still be part of the agenda.  Relinquishment is a much needed part of any footprint lowering agenda but this goes against sustainable development.  Sadly sustainable development is anything but sustainable.  What relinquishment means is stopping affluence in both the wealthy developed world and the poor 3^rd world.  Part of this braking on affluence would be disrupting global consumerism.  There are trends in global consumption that are not sustainable and definitely not related to the efforts of conservation for a lower footprint.  This braking of affluence needs to be in both the poor and wealthy parts of the world because this is the only way it will work.  The latest trend is the 3^rd world claiming they should be allowed to be rich too but this only ends any chance of lowering the impact of the destructive human footprint.  One needs only see what China has done to the world by its build out of a high consumption middle class which is the equivalent of the US population.  To make this work all sides rich and poor must cease and desist now.  The situation is such that no side can downsize without pain.  Just because the rich world is rich does not mean it has room to decline.  The systematics of this mean no side can take much more pain because of rigid boundaries of change. 

If nothing else we need to stop growth.  The problem with this is again the systematic side of growth that is now embedded in the system itself.  It is not clear how much degrowth either voluntary of not the system can handle and still survive.  This makes policy even more problematic if governments would even agree to cease and desist growth.   What we see any more is the corrupted wealth transfer of sustainably development to the poor parts of the world.  The reality is sustainable development is just exploitation though a late stage corrupt capitalism where the 3^rd world sees only small gains for a few wealthy elite and a siphoning off of the rest to corporate entities.  The poor remain poor and lately in a Chinese debt trap.  It used to be American and European traps but now it is mostly Chinese.

This then points to honesty that decline is inevitable and nothing can be done but deep adaptation.  We can increase reliance in the face of decline by adapting both materially but even more with behavior.  The key here to a manageable decline in the face of possible systematic bifurcation is behavior.  This can’t only be material.  In any case the likelihood of the corrupt global leadership making the right decisions is very low even once a serious crisis is upon us.  It will likely be conflict instead.  This then points to Real Green which take the approach of the individual pursuing personal Deep Adaptation.  This is the only real force of change that can mitigate the decline ahead.  Deep adaptation indicates a planetary awakening.  If enough people that can change do change then real change will be registered.  Even so this change will not be enough to matter.  It will just lengthen out the terminal nature of the coming decline and eventual collapse. 

This is where honesty comes in with behavior.  The top is not only unable to address change properly but the best minds are also in denial.  Many are in denial of the basic science we can call them orange after Trump who personifies this denial.  Yet, even our best scientist and academia are in denial with solutions.  The extremist fake green left think renewables are the answer and this is delusional.  The fake green left want their cake and eat it.  They preach green and affluence.  Renewables will help but they won’t save us.  The real issue now is squarely with behavior.  We have tech that can make things less bad but we do not have the behavior to properly employ tech.  This is why those individuals who are awakened and can change should change.  Not all awakened individuals can change.  It is vital those who can change take the plunge.  It is a plunge because it means a radical departure from the status quo.  It can be done in a relative way according to one’s ability both materially and mentally.  This is where Real Green comes in.  Practice relative sacrifice.  Do it locally and with relinquishment.  This means avoid the best you can the corruption of the status quo drive to a fake and unhealthy affluence through consumerism. 

Part of this change is restoration of the environment but also the building of monasteries of knowledge and tech for the coming dark times.  It is about lifeboats for those awakened.  These lifeboats should be local.  Forget about donating to global causes focus on your local.  The key is for awakened individual to have tools and knowledge for locals to adapt once crisis sets in.  This is also about hospices for the significant others of the awakened who will not make it.  This is about ending the denial of death that the unawakened sidestep.  Of course the success of this real green deep adaptation is dependent on the pace of this decline into collapse.  This process may have a degree and duration that even the good behavior of Real Green can’t adapt to.  In that case it is still heroic and meaningful to have tried.  If there is a silver lining to a Real Green in a complete collapse it is the meaning that comes with honest effort.

I have been following this Red/Green movement as a lightning rod for my REAL GREEN platform.  I am seeing the Red Greens run into inconsistencies with their Socialist calls to action.  They are honest with the science but dishonest with the results.  Basically my Real Green position is Eco honesty.  We can’t reform what we have and save the planet but we can do deep adaptations to mitigate the worst.  The fake green of the Red Green movement is a distraction from focused efforts.  The Red Greens will sacrifice all for an idea and in the end do more damage than good in my opinion.  The only way forward is managed decline and it appears the only managed decline can be properly applied locally and in small groups.  It means a hybridization of old and new technology.  It also means triage and relinquishment of assets and lifestyles.  It means collapsing in place in localism and thereby beating the rush.

The beauty of my REAL GREEN platform is it is an “add-on” to your existing political and spiritual positions.  I say “MY” but really it is many ideas from very smart people I have gathered together in my version of meaning.  I am not telling you to change what gives you meaning.  I could give recommendations because I have my own but that does not mean they will adapt to yours.  I am telling you to add-on REAL GREEN to your existing way of life.  Real Green calls for relative sacrifice that jettisons existential guilt as well as the blame game.  These emotions and personality tendencies just cloud the focus needed.  This call is not to say guilt and blame are not justified it is saying at this point they are fruitless uses of your energy. 

The focus needs to be on negotiating the unsustainable with technics that make you more resilient and sustainability.  This is only about “more or less” not “is”.  Relative sacrifice is the key because it “fits” you into the status quo as you attempt to leave it.  You are stuck with family, friends and community.  You cannot change them and you cannot leave them without dramatic efforts in many cases.  Often drastic actions have negative outcomes.  Some of the young and the lucky ones can make dramatic change and should.  They should because they can and the goal is ultimately meaning.  The status quo is meaningless so it should be left.  Science is telling us what is wrong.   Honest Real Green science says we are trapped.  Relative sacrifice says live your status quo life but with an ulterior motive that is Real Green of leaving it.

The ulterior motive is meaning.  The basics of intelligent human activity is meaning.  Our existential predicament of the duality of the ego drives a quest for meaning.  Many cannot attain this level and those who are within your group need to be supported with relative sacrifice.  Only 10% or less of the population is awakened to real meaning with many being followers, not smart enough, and or psychopathic narcissists.  If you are smart and awakened then you do not feel superior or you are not Real Green.  The reason being ultimately Real Green is planetary meaning not your meaning.  This means if you are awakened and ready for action you will have to do things that go against Real Green meaning because of relative sacrifice.  You have no choice but to be less than you could be because of your significant others or your compromised local.   A few can bug out and find remarkable meaning.  Those who can’t this means tiny steps with sacrifice. 

If you are going to lower your foot print then Real Green calls for you to sacrifice with less affluence.  The sacrifice also is with not lowering your footprint because of your family, friends, and community and this time the sacrifice is Real Green meaning.  You will engage in activity that makes you feel bad because it is meaningless.  You will feel like you are going against your Real Green values.  This is where you reflect on relative sacrifice to jettison guilt and avoid the blame game.  Ultimately Real Green is about planetary meaning found locally and with significant others.   Many of the significant others and your local will not be Real Green.  It then becomes your meaning to make meaningless a little more Real Green.

“Ecosocialists debate the Green New Deal (continued)”

“Continuing our discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the Green New Deal proposal, and how the left should respond.”

https://tinyurl.com/y4lwpuo9    climate and capitalism

“Citing Vaclav Smil, Bernes states that replacing current US energy consumption with renewables would require at least 25-50 percent of the US landmass being devoted to solar, wind, and biofuels. Considering the encroachments on land by ranchers, farmers, timber companies, home developers, et al, it appears that capitalist growth—even made kosher by renewables—will hit a brick wall before long.  At the heart of the Green New Deal, there is a Sisyphean contradiction:  “The problem is that growth and emissions are, by almost every measure, profoundly correlated. The Green New Deal thus risks becoming a sort of Sisyphean reform, rolling the rock of emissions reductions up the hill each day only to have a growing, energy-hungry economy knock it back down to the bottom each night.”

“Without using the term “de-growth”, Bernes’s conclusion certainly is consistent with what Jason Hickel and others have written. I find it to be eminently reasonable:  “We cannot keep things the same and change everything. We need a revolution, a break with capital and its killing compulsions, though what that looks like in the twenty-first century is very much an open question. A revolution that had as its aim the flourishing of all human life would certainly mean immediate decarbonization, a rapid decrease in energy use for those in the industrialized global north, no more cement, very little steel, almost no air travel, walkable human settlements, passive heating and cooling, a total transformation of agriculture, and a diminishment of animal pasture by an order of magnitude at least.”

“In the DSA magazine for Winter 2019, Huber’s article “Ecosocialism: Dystopian and Scientific” took aim at the “de-growth” current within the ecosocialist movement that he described as a dire threat “to scare us into action.”  “Our dystopian future is seen as a product of industrial civilization. For many ecosocialists or left green thinkers, the science is so dire the only option is a wholesale rejection of industrialism This, I would argue, leads to some fanciful (even utopian) ideas of what comes next. Degrowth theorists imagine a ‘decentralized’ future society, ‘where resources were managed by bio-region—a participatory, low-tech, low-consumption economy, where everyone has to do some farming…’  “Richard Smith argues for a socialist program of ‘managed deindustrialization’ without fully explaining what that would actually mean. Last year in the New Left Review, Troy Vettese argued for austerity (or what he called ‘egalitarian eco-austerity’): the program includes energy rationing, compulsory veganism and turning over half the planet to wild nature (a proposal he takes from reactionary sociobiologist, E.O. Wilson).” un:yes’>