There is a scene common in cartoons when one of the characters runs off a cliff and somehow fails to notice they are hanging in the air. As soon as they look down, the law of gravity is mysteriously restored. This is precisely the situation in which humanity has put itself today. As the abundance we inherited is exploited and depleted, people will begin to notice they are hanging in the air. It will take the form of a series of shocks: the end of cheap oil, the extinction of species including fisheries and wild game, and the ever rising price of food. As the energy crunch begins to impact petrochemical based mechanized food production, we will be subjected to the whiplash vagaries of global warming -- rising sea levels, deforestation and desertificiation. Civilization is no exemption from being part of the biosphere.
Extinction events can be so unpredictable. You know what is going to happen, you just don't know quite how it will unfold. When ecosystems begin collapsing, hidden dependencies are revealed. Pests thrive while favoured species roll over and die or turn and bite the hand that isn’t feeding them. Unintended consequences abound. Race, gender and beauty, wealth, power and privilige, the usual trappings of status in society will lose their cachet. The day belongs to the nimble and the lucky. And luck, of course, is that happy coincidence of planning and circumstance, which is the province of the forewarned and the ruthless.
From our vantage point in the belly of an economy that regards even cancerous growth as progress, it is difficult to discern the shape of the ecologically responsible, long-term viable society we must create. What is clear is that the transition to our future ‘Permaculture’ will be the biological and sociological equivalent of growing wings. Prepare to fly!
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Last modified November 28, 2005