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• Possible Futures: TEOTW(AYKI)
  • Possible Futures: Introduction
  • The Fate of Earlier Societies
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  • Dire Projections
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Possible Futures: Dire Projections

Our path to a smaller, slower, and simpler future could be steep, and navigating it will be challenging at best. The future will be not a pretty place, at least for a long, long time.

James Howard Kuntzler, The Long Emergency (2005): Blunt analysis of how we got here, with the unavoidable result of a period of generalized, chronic contraction and the collapse of globalization. Considers a human die-off to be probaby unavoidable. Recommended.

Carolyn Baker, Sacred Demise (2008): Takes as her starting point the coming collapse of modern industrial civlization—uncertain timeline, but deep and hard. Emphasizes the need for emotional and spiritual preparation—not religion but returning to our humanness (our relation to nature and to each other), which has been stripped from us over the centuries of “development” and civilization. She certainly doesn’t sugar-coat things, and expects a significant die-off, but she hopes that the seeds of a better future can be planted.

What a Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire (DVD): An intensely personal, difficult movie that grapples with Peak Oil, climate change, extinctions, and the end of the Age of Abundance.
Realistic >> optimistic, which will be disturbing to most viewers, but perhaps the times call for a statement like this.

Peak Oil "adverse" scenario, Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum (Mar 2009): She postulates a very rapid decline in oil production (i.e., asymmetric peak) and drastic effectds on humans.

The Millenium Project's "Political Turmoil" scenario (one of four energy-based scenarios for the year 2020 from this global think tank).

James Lovelock, The Vanishing Face of Gaia (2009): Focuses strictly on climate with almost no discussion of energy resources or economic challenges (but fully recognizing the impact of population growth). Bleak outlook that sees unavoidable population die-off in the 21st century. Weakened by his tedious history and defense of Gaia hypothesis; not a must-read.

The Olduvai Theory: Energy Population, and Industrial Civilization, Richard Duncan, The Social Contract (2005/06): A very bleak view of the 21st century. I certainly hope things don't turn out this way, but....stay tuned. [click in upper-right corner to download PDF w/figures]

The Thermogene Collision, Jay Hanson, The Social Contract (2007): An even bleaker view of the near future, from the host of dieoff.org.

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