On the idea of Top Down vs Bottom Up solutions, It appears
that both fail to relate to what will be possible in a world of decline and
localization.
Since the current form of trade and commerce depends on cheap
fossil fuels, it will be crippled by rising energy costs. This will eventually
bankrupt nations and lead to revolution or dissolution as they are forced to
localize.
From the Bottom Up perspective, it forgets the true
dependency of the masses. It only works when there is enough land in the
locality to support the population living on and around it. Food will become
very local.
But that assumes we survive the mass exodus that will occur
as food stops being imported into major cities and their starving masses begin
to spill out in search of anything edible.
It will be amazing if deer and boar survive the decline.
So from a resources and ecology point of view, neither
approach can work for the amount of people currently living on the planet. The
complexity and energy requirements of that kind of governance would not be
possible. Culture is the only thing that can provide any hope. But it will not
avoid the pain.
Small farms, permaculture projects, and other natural food
production oriented lifestyles and the people those systems support will be the
only thing that survives. There will be no city or urban lifestyle where
electricity powers almost every aspect of daily life.
Water and food and the ability to utilize and transport them
ultimately determine what is possible for civilization. There is a definite
maximum at which we could utilize the most sustainable and hospitable areas of
the planet in an agriculturally formed lifestyle. If we were doing more then
simply trying to find a solution for our cultural paradigm and instead,
thinking about a solution for the long term, we would be focusing more honestly
on what is possible by cataloging what is available in finite form and
renewable form.
Let’s get the numbers, but I am afraid the numbers would not
provide the answers needed to walk the current population through the resource
bottleneck. This is the reality that we must accept. Once we do, more
reasonable approaches can be made as to what is possible in the long term, and
how we can mitigate the crisis in the meantime.
The primary goal is to increase organic, sustainable
agriculture and thus increase the amount of people occupied with that
particular activity. This is where culture plays an important role. We can
pretend that we can keep being a culture of consumers, or we can accept the
culture that is available to us via our realm of possibility.
But alas, the current culture is deeply engrained in the modern
human psyche of developed nations. Often people speak as if humans never have or
could survive without the luxuries of only the last century. Given the entirety
of the human experience, our modern experience is a mere exception to the rule
of what has been and is possible for life on earth.
In the evolution of life, there are many dead ends, and
Industrial Man is only one.
