"...it can sometimes feel like a foretaste of hell on Earth." Indeed - your first two paragraphs reminded me of a so called 'science fiction' novel by John Brunner titled The Sheep Look Up, which didn't directly mention climate, but it did talk of the growing human population and the subsequent demands placed on Mother Earth. Another from the same author was Stand On Zanzibar, both being pretty dark predictions.
Our predecessors learned how to live with nature, and I'm a firm believer in the idea that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But it seems there's not enough profit to made that way
Thank you for bringing up John Brunner. It's fascinating how many environmental "predictions" from the 1960s and 1970s now feel less like fiction and more like reportage.
I also share your sense that many traditional societies understood something we have largely forgotten: prosperity depends on maintaining the systems that sustain life. The tragedy is that practices which conserved water, moderated heat and protected soils were often discarded not because they were ineffective, but because they generated less immediate profit than the industrial alternatives that replaced them.
Perhaps one of the great tasks of our time is to rediscover that old wisdom and adapt it to modern realities before the bill for ignoring nature becomes impossible to pay.
You may be right. An economic system built on perpetual growth sits uneasily on a finite planet.
What interests me most, however, is that nature does not care about our ideologies. Soils, forests, water cycles and climate impose limits that every society must ultimately respect.
Perhaps the real question is whether we can relearn those limits—and act on them—before they are imposed on us by ecological decline.
One of the things I appreciate about the Savage Minds site is the ability to hear voices from other countries never get mentioned in our main stream media here in Australia never speak of. Thank you for you voice.
"...it can sometimes feel like a foretaste of hell on Earth." Indeed - your first two paragraphs reminded me of a so called 'science fiction' novel by John Brunner titled The Sheep Look Up, which didn't directly mention climate, but it did talk of the growing human population and the subsequent demands placed on Mother Earth. Another from the same author was Stand On Zanzibar, both being pretty dark predictions.
Our predecessors learned how to live with nature, and I'm a firm believer in the idea that if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
But it seems there's not enough profit to made that way
Thank you for bringing up John Brunner. It's fascinating how many environmental "predictions" from the 1960s and 1970s now feel less like fiction and more like reportage.
I also share your sense that many traditional societies understood something we have largely forgotten: prosperity depends on maintaining the systems that sustain life. The tragedy is that practices which conserved water, moderated heat and protected soils were often discarded not because they were ineffective, but because they generated less immediate profit than the industrial alternatives that replaced them.
Perhaps one of the great tasks of our time is to rediscover that old wisdom and adapt it to modern realities before the bill for ignoring nature becomes impossible to pay.
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to rediscovering that old wisdom is capitalism, and I don't think capitalism can be reformed. It's too late for that.
You may be right. An economic system built on perpetual growth sits uneasily on a finite planet.
What interests me most, however, is that nature does not care about our ideologies. Soils, forests, water cycles and climate impose limits that every society must ultimately respect.
Perhaps the real question is whether we can relearn those limits—and act on them—before they are imposed on us by ecological decline.
One of the things I appreciate about the Savage Minds site is the ability to hear voices from other countries never get mentioned in our main stream media here in Australia never speak of. Thank you for you voice.