Collapse... or transformation?

Financial firms out of business, student loan companies bankrupt, $116 per barrel of oil, bee colonies collapsing, airlines in turmoil, thousands of Americans losing their homes... are these the first signs of collapse?

A couple of years ago, I was seated on a bus next to a right wing, neo-classical economist. Both of us were stunned to see how differently we viewed the world. We were talking about Kerala, India, a socialist state that I had read about in Bill McKibben's book "Hope, Human and Wild." McKibben uses Kerala as an example to illustrate how it might be possible to reduce consumption and still have a high quality of life - Kerala has a low GDP but high rates of literacy, life expectancy and other quality of life indicators.

The economist took a different view. Kerala saddened and puzzled him. How could a place with such high quality of life indicators not develop economically? This exchange bewildered both of us. The economist asked me why it would be necessary to reduce consumption or economic growth - why that would be a good thing. 'Because,' I explained, 'I am worried that our current rates of consumption will outstrip the world's resources.'

'But Malthus [who, about 200 years ago, predicted that population growth would outstrip our ability to grow food] was wrong,' argued the economist. 'We are capable of sustained economic growth.'

I argued that 200 years or so is not enough time to discredit the basic premise of Malthus - that infinite growth is not possible in a finite system.* I had recently read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond. 'The Anasazi lived in the American Southwest for much longer than 200 years,' I explained. 'They are no longer there today.' Easter Island, the Maya, the Greenlanders, the Anasazi, they all probably took the same short-sighted view that we do now. Collapse is possible - 200 years is not long enough time to disprove that.

Diamond defines "collapse" as "a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time." Sometimes I sense that colleagues/students of mine almost look forward to collapse - they see it as the only way to regain a balance with natural systems. But I challenge them to accept the moral consequences of that. What does it mean, from a moral perspective, to look forward to a drastic decrease in human population size? Disease, war, freezing in the dark? Maybe that doesn't evoke empathy if it occurs in the distant Third World (though in my mind it should), but what if it's your own grandmother or your own child? Certainly, this Earth is overextended. It is our challenge to find an ethical and moral way to bring ourselves back in balance - to move away from a collapse towards a transformation. Either way, I feel we are on the brink of great change.

I was feeling pretty grim about the state of the world when I first woke up this morning. Then I checked my email. 7 unread messages. One was from the Front Porch Forum, a community list-serve for my neighborhood, the Old North End. One of the posts advertised a "Lawn to Garden Workshop" inviting community members to "transform 2 neighborhood lawns into veggie gardens in a hands-on workshop." Cool! I checked the next email, from my friend Elaine. She sent me this video, of UVM students and staff this past Friday commemorating the anniversary of the Waterman take-over and 20 years of student activism and engagement by freezing in place for 5 minutes. It's pretty inspiring.

Are these the first signs of transformation?

Last Sunday, the Youth Group led the service at the Unitarian Church I sometimes attend. The teenagers began the service by reading quotes on change, one of which stuck in my mind: "Change is not necessary. You do not have to survive."

Collapse or transformation? We decide.

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*Not that I like Malthus - he was classist and some of his ideas were downright loony. He is also at least partially responsible for environmentalists' obsession with population growth. Not that population growth isn't a problem, but it is over-emphasized, placing the burden of environmental problems and solutions disproportionately on the Global South. We must recognize that consumption is also a problem and take responsibility for curbing it.