Andrew Nikiforuk Sums Up

He is perhaps Western Canada's greatest journalist and prolific author, an expert on such things as energy politics and climate change. Today he was invited to present this year's Southam address at the University of Victoria. It was also available as a webinar on Zoom.

He began his remarks with a quote from Kurt Vonnegut written during the Bush-Kerry campaign of 2004.

"[We] have now all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system in fewer than 200 years, mainly by making thermodynamic whoopee with fossil fuels."

Much of Nikiforuk's presentation was stuff that you might have read on this blog dozens of times going back several years. He talked of "overshoot," mankind's relentless overconsumption of Earth's resources that are today being exhausted at 1.7 times their sustainable capacity. By 2050, he said, we will need the equivalent of three planet Earths of resources. 

The author maintains that our global civilization isn't heading for collapse, we're already in the throes of collapse.  All we have left is a "technosphere" instead of the biosphere of centuries, millennia past.

He focused on conversations we avoid having. Overpopulation is one. We won't talk about it because it brings up issues we don't want to address, things such as colonialism or greed. We won't talk about our energy slaves - how we have come to depend on cheap fossil energy to do work that once would have required hundreds, perhaps a few thousand slaves for each of us. The sheer enormity of that might give us pause to reflect on the wisdom of our ways.

Nikiforuk spoke of the Jevons Paradox.  It occurs when a breakthrough in efficiency, an ability to meet demand with fewer resources, instead triggers an increase in demand for ever more.

Climate change? The author sees that as a symptom of our addiction to perpetual growth. Like an addiction to powerful drugs it will end our lives but we show no interest in stopping. We tell ourselves lies about growth, our devastating overpopulation and how the acession of the technosphere ends in totalitarianism.

His remedies? He doesn't have any solutions but he urges people to withdraw from the technosphere whenever possible; become rooted again in the natural world; dig a garden, walk into the forest, clean one part of a stream, get your hands dirty; and, above all else, defend the value of creation, nature against the cult of perpetual growth.

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One reader said that Nikiforuk wasn't much as a speaker. Well, he was today. I expect U Vic will post the address on YouTube and, when they do, I'll post a link here.

Comments

  1. Northern PoVNovember 18, 2021 at 8:24 AM

    "withdraw from the technosphere whenever possible; become rooted again in the natural world; dig a garden, walk into the forest, clean one part of a stream, get your hands dirty;"

    unfortunately I agree

    but it is only a from of 'personal therapy' to cope with the existential depression, not an effective remedy for the climate/environment/nuclear dilemma

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibNovember 18, 2021 at 4:16 PM

      As I listened to Nikiforuk's "prescription" I realized that was what he was getting at. We may have reached a point where effective solutions are now foreclosed options. There'll be no resetting the clock, no return to that better time of a half century ago. This is our new reality.

      Delete
  2. TrailblazerNovember 18, 2021 at 11:29 AM

    Overpopulation is one. We won't talk about it because it brings up issues we don't want to...

    We have know of population growth issues for at least forty years.
    It was not a 'problem' until the west realized that the population explosion was predominantly non whites who's reproductive numbers are much less or non existent.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibNovember 18, 2021 at 4:10 PM

      I think it's silly to suggest overpop is a problem only because it's predominantly non-whites. But that's a common enough narrative. Groundless but common.

      Delete
  3. TrailblazerNovember 18, 2021 at 5:27 PM

    It was not a 'problem' until the west realised that the population explosion was predominantly non whites.

    I did not say I agreed with the observation.
    I do say that racial prejudice has a huge influence on current thought.

    TB

    FWIW, anthropologists have suggested the first Britons were dark skinned blue eyed!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Disaffected LibNovember 18, 2021 at 6:05 PM

      Sorry, TB, but I don't buy that racial prejudice business. Not for a minute. We're just spectators in this, unable to influence these overpopulated regions. Have you heard them complain that we're interfering with their choice of path? Every people has the right to die off if that's what they want. That, however, doesn't mean we have to entertain migration as a solution to the outcome.

      Delete

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