MARTESON'S LIST

Martenson thinks that some good can come from a massive cutback in fossil fuel use. I am doubtful of this.

He says:

Here’s my message to the world: If we don’t stop the destruction of the planets ecosystems, we’re totally screwed.

So it’s time for some honesty. No, we’re not going to save anything at all by driving sexy electric cars. Instead we need to reconfigure our lives so we are not driving so much or at all.

We need to stop washing topsoil into the sea and begin farming in ways that build soils and store carbon.

We need to wean ourselves off of eating fossil fuels.

A lot of bullshit jobs are going to go away, themselves merely an artifact of surplus energy and the false belief that a 40-hour work week is some sort of honorable necessity.

Retirement? That too was an artifact of surplus energy and it’s already crumbling as an idea for the vast majority of US citizens who lack any retirement savings and depend on pensions and Social Security that simply won’t be there.

But mostly we have to give up on this crazy idea of infinite growth on a finite planet. That’s a relic of our system of money, and the sooner we do away with debt-backed fiat money the better. It was a passable idea in 1913, it’s a disastrous idea here in 2018.

None of these changes are going to be easy, but fibbing to ourselves and white-washing the “solutions” and understating the risks harms the cause.

A proper intervention requires unflinching truth.

So let’s have that discussion.

I expect that the end will be pretty much the same, regardless of what we do (or try to do). The Earth will recover from climate problems. Humans may not be a part of the recovered Earth, however. We don’t really know.

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