The precautionary principle may turn out to be one of the most important ideas from the last century. http://www.sehn.org/precaution.html
"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof. The process of applying the precautionary principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action." - Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, Jan. 1998
Of course, the Boy Scouts of Amerca simply sums it all up in two words: "Be Prepared!"
People have recently begun asking me how I come to be accurate in my predictions for the future of our society. It seems like a dumb question, but I rarely say that. I also rarely wonder why so many people fail to notice what I find obvious. So, here's my try at an answer.
"Sit, be still, and listen, because you're drunk and we're at the edge of the roof." Rumi
Drunk?! you might exclaim. "I'm a sober as a judge!" I could rest my case right there. Judges, like almost everybody in our culture are toxically addicted to oil, as "43" once famously acclaimed. And he should know!
That established, I asked myself how I came to be accurate, in order to better understand what seemed to be obvious. I know that my interest is probably rooted in some really obscure personal trauma, perhaps even in a past life. I don't want to enter into that kind of speculation since it quickly becomes absurd; as absurd as I find that few others seem to be able to do it.
I wasn't always like this. But I've been a player in the survival, environment, energy, and sustainability game for several decades because of enlightened self-interest. I love living and I have a great-granddaughter. They are two more great possibilities.
I have occasionally likened what humans are doing to the world to a game of Russion Roulette with a revolver that has half of the chambers loaded. We spin the cylinder and point the barrel at our grandchildren.
We point it at my grandchildren. At the least it is fundamentally unfair. At most, it's a crime against humanity. On another scale it's a crime against the planet. It's certainly a crime against my grandchildren and a cause for my strong reaction.
Since the perfect storm might break in my lifetime my survival instinct has me paying close attention. I'm continuing to learn as much as I can. I've noticed handwriting on the wall and I try to make sense of it. I think I love to write about it to test my power of observation and conclusions. I also love to exclaim, "lookit, look what someone wrote on the wall!". It's likely that some of my wounds haven't yet healed. Two more reasons why.
I hereby confess the obvious. None of my most fundamental conclusions are original. I've done a few original things with them and filled in a bunch of blanks. There are still a lot of missing pieces in this puzzle. But a picture is emerging that is recognizable. As time passes I notice that I'm not the only one reading the wall or coming to the same conclusion. Perhaps we're reaching a critical mass of readers. If so, it may be in the nick of time.
Aside from "the wall" I use the work of geniuses, living and dead as baseline sources. People like Albert Einstein (E=you know what), R. Buckminster Fuller (Utopia or Oblivion), The Dalai Lama ("Because we all share this planet earth, we have to learn to live in harmony and peace with each other and with nature. This is not just a dream, but a necessity."), M. King Hubbard (Peak Oil bell curve), Freud (psychology), Jung (the human shadow, archetypes), Rachael Carson (DDT), John Todd (Living Machines), Sylvia Earle (The World is Blue, Mission Blue), Chris Martenson (The Crash Course), and NASA Goddard's Jim Hansen (Storms of my Grandchildren). Each has a written a sentence or more on the wall. Each sentence relates to the others. I find it hard to argue with the likes of Einstein and Carl Jung, Hansen and Todd.
Of course I read the papers, and listen to news on the radio, TV, on the street. I don't usually buy the Thursday New York Times, I prefer the Tuesday edition. Last week , though, a headline above the fold caught my eye.
It said, "A Perfect Storm? Investors Grab Silver Linings: On Off Chance of a Total Collapse, a Little Insurance." On the "Off Chance " of WHAT?? On the front page of the New York Times? ABOVE THE FOLD??? A business and economics lead story?
I'm not waiting for it to get to the front page of our sleepy, pretentious, local papers. Like most US papers, they're still running an unbalanced stable of right-wing climate denying, "business as usual" columnists like Phyllis Schlafly, Walter Williams, George Wills, and Cal Thomas.
In the body of the article it says, "Investment professionals have a new pitch: The sky could soon be falling." While Greece took a step back from the brink on Wednesday, the possibility of a default remains a fear. Europe's debt crisis, as well as natural disasters and political uprisings, are prompting investors both big and small to seek out investments to protect their portfolios in the event of economic Armageddon." Lookit! Look what they wrote on the front page of the New York Times!
Armageddon! Protecting portfolios in the face of any Armageddon is an oxymoron. Just notice the lead photo above the article in question. Bloodied Greek demonstrator in chokehold administered by a Grecian Imperial Storm Trooper. Where is the reaction and response to this? I can't even find the original article when I Google it today, although I could last week.
When this kind of handwriting on the wall moves to The Times, it's time to do something about it. It's probably time to get out of Dodge. Yet even with familiar crises like a hurricane, one in four say they will ignore warnings. A significant percentage of Katrina victims stayed behind and according to some accounts, over 4000 people died .
An unfamiliar crisis like a global economic meltdown will require a more complex response than a simple coastal evacuation. The percentage ignoring warnings could be much higher. Coastal evacuations are generally led by people who remember how bad a category five hurricane could be. The number of people alive today that were adults during the "Great Depression" is vanishingly small. They would have to have been born in 1908 to be 21 when it hit.
Add to that, an exponential crisis that approaches slowly and requires a novel, timely, community wide response and the temptation to ignore it until it is too late. The toll then rises higher.
This perfect storm is a "Black Swan". It's three crises coming together all at once: the economy, the environment, and energy. Two of them are Black Swans in their own right. The world has never before had to deal with the end of cheap oil. Once it happens, the survivors will likely never have to do it again. It's vaguely like being downtown in a big city when a plane crashes on top of a train wreck during a magnitude 9.1 earthquake at rush hour. The impact of the highly improbable can be devastating when it occurs. Not everyone is hardwired to respond appropriately.
I am alive today because my family saw the handwriting on the wall in the late eighteenth century. They got out of Western Russia and Eastern Europe while the getting was good. They didn't wait to pull a Warsaw Ghetto or Masada ploy. I admit that deep down I usually prefer comfort of the consensus trance to having the bejesus scared out of me. But my interest in survival trumps all that. I've already survived a couple of events that few get to face.
There's nothing complex here beside my interest in discovering what's going on, and where it can lead. I leave a little room for miracles and surprises. As I move through time I test prior hypotheses against reality and adjust. Viola! Never certain, but increasingly sure, it comes in handy when making plans for tomorrow. And I never make just one.
If there is a point to this, I think that most of us are capable of doing the same. We, who are alive at this moment in history, are the progeny of survivors of eons of evolution. If we can't do it it can't be done. If we don't do it there will likely be a great pruning of the gene pool. We've already squandered a half century of warnings. We've had enough good data for two decades and the best option, strategies of fiscal responsibilities, will save us a lot of money even if Armageddon doesn't come. We managed Y2K.
In terms of planning for the future, isn't it better to be planning for a probable future than for a future based on a consensus trance? As Amory Lovins said, "It's better to be approximately accurate than precisely wrong." That most don't seem to care, or are afraid to face their fear, may, be a symptom of the kind of thinking that got us in this situation.
If there's another point here it's that I don't want to be the only survivor. I want as much company as possible. I need as many people, talents, memories, and ingenuity if I hope to survive with a minimum of dislocation and discomfort. I will need doctors, lawyers, Indian Chiefs, masons, machinists, and carpenters, chemists, ministers, actors, and zoologists.
Anyone who has taken Chris Martenson's Crash Course will attest there is ample evidence that humanity is headed into terra incognito. The belief that the next twenty years will be anything like the last twenty is as untested as it is an unproven assumption. It's the same as the belief that cheap oil would be available forever or that the ocean's fisheries were inexhaustible. The current assumptions are just as dangerous, if not far more so. For they are the same as the assumptions faced by the people who could quickly galvanize us all, but have ignored all the others. According to psychiatrists and psychologists, doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is a definition of insanity. Let's not follow the crazies. We've been doing it for too long as it is.
The Titanic provides us with a powerful lesson on hubris and the consequences of ignoring the precautionary principle. This especially true where waters are uncharted and the weather forecast is for dense fog. If we fail, these times will likely be remembered as "the age of stupid."
Predictions, as Mark Twain’s one-liner says, are especially difficult if they are about the future. That's a better reason to attempt prediction, and to enlist the help of those with a proven track record. Of course, the kings and queens of this technique, besides John Naisbit, (Megatrends, etc.) and Nassim Taleb, (The Black Swan), Chris Martenson (The Crash Course), are Donella Meadows, Jorgan Randers, and Dennis Meadows (Limits of Growth: The 30 Year Update).
Here's what Jim Motavalli, editor, E/The Environmental Magazine and editor of Feeling the Heat: Dispatches From the Frontlines of Climate Change, says. "Confirming many of the trends outlined in The Limits to Growth three decades ago, we are now 20 percent above the Earth's carrying capacity, and on a collision course with unsupportable population growth, biodiversity loss, runaway climate change and global food and water shortages. With even the Pentagon warning that global warming could pose more of a threat than terrorism, it's time we paid serious attention to the sustainable prescriptions outlined in Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Global Update.
Although first written mainly to an American readership, Megatrends proved to be true in anticipating major shifts for the whole world. Christoph Keese in the Financial Times said it well. "Once a decade, sometimes more often, a book about the economy is published that becomes a bestseller immediately and changes the relationship of people to economics. His predictions were astoundingly precise."
Megashocks is a successor based on 36 global risks identified by the World Economic Forum in 2009, from which (they) have identified eight risks particularly important from a science and technology perspective. “These include oil and gas price spikes, pandemic influenza, biodiversity loss and extreme weather events related to climate change.” Good grief! Can it all be said more plainly?
Taleb's title, "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" almost tells it all. It's summarized on page xviii of the prologue. You can read it on Amazon. The internet is a Black Swan. And, it's only beginning to evolve. We ain't hardly seen nuthin' yet!
In conclusion, there is a lot of handwriting on the wall, and a prudent person would do well to pay close attention to what it says. There are vocal deniers and their assertions and beliefs must be tested against existing data. Sometimes I pray they are right, but I don't believe our leaders can pull the hat out of the rabbit. The usual tricks won’t work this time around.
Yet denial is the first and most powerful human response to catastrophic news. Denial is not simply the province of the lumpenproletariat. Very few of us are immune. One reason is that to make an appropriate response requires the kind of effort that rises to being a royal pain in the ass. It's not like going into the storm cellar and hoping your house and barn will survive the tornado.
This kind of news, when understood, usually requires immediate action and the abandonment of previous concerns and distractions. Doing that is rarely much fun. Besides, humans have a lousy track record on responding to long-range threats.
But acting in response to legitimate warnings is rewarding. Just look at the videos of the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Look at faces of the people who survived. Look at the videos from Banda Ache. It's not about the death toll, horrific as it was. It is in the survivor toll where the lesson of the precautionary principle comes to life.
It's appropriate to repeat that sage meme. "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof. The process of applying the precautionary principle must be open, informed and democratic and must include potentially affected parties. It must also involve an examination of the full range of alternatives, including no action." - Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle, Jan. 1998.
In June 2003, the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco became the first government body in the United States to make the precautionary principle the basis for all its environmental policy. A decade later, with far supporting more data in, it seems appropriate for all of us to adopt that wise and prudent policy. The future of our grandchildren is at stake. Although I'd gladly die to save them, I'd prefer to live and do the best I can for as long as I can do anything at all.
I call on and unite with all of the grandparents of the world to act in the name of our children's children. I especially call on the grandmothers, who have long sensed this coming. I call on all of you who are contemplating having children or are already pregnant. And I call on you who understand what a pain in the ass acting appropriately will be, but are mature and responsible enough to get involved anyway.
And to the rest, just don't get in our way.
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