Reinventing Collapse - The Soviet Example and American Prospects (Dmitry Orlov)
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Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (William R. Catton, jr.)
Reinventing Collapse er en klassiker. Orlov er morsom uten å bli flåsete, innsiktsfull uten å være belærende. Han vokste opp i SovjetUnionen (SU), men har bodd og arbeidet mesteparten av sitt voksne liv i USA (US), så han kjenner begge verdener godt. Blandt veldig mange interessante poenger han har å komme med er den grunnleggende observasjonen at SU og US er veldig like. Selvsagt også veldig forskjellige, men mange av forskjellen er bare propaganda - og SUs demonisering av US var svært lik US' demonisering av SU. Begge var teknologisk-industrielle imperier; forskjellen lå først og fremst i organisasjonsmodellen. Og Orlov er overbevist om at det er en relativt uviktig forskjell; SUs fall bør ikke sees på som et bevis for at US' organisasjonsmodell "seiret" og SUs "tapte", men som en advarsel: Hovmod står for fall. US' fall tar han for gitt:
I therefore take as my premise that at some point during the coming years, due to an array of factors, with energy scarcity foremost among them, the economic system of the United States will teeter and fall, to be replaced by something that most people can scarcely guess at, and that even those who see it coming prefer not to think about. This stunning failure of the collective imagination is the specific problem this book seeks to address. (s 15)
(Annetsteds sier han at årsaken til SUs fall var at sovjetisk oljeproduksjon gikk utforbakke - bratt.)
Orlov er en skikkelig russisk bjørn på Amerika:
Most alternative forms of energy - solar, wind, water, nuclear, garbage incineration, gerbil wheels or hot air piped in directly Washington - will have only a small overall impact. The United States will not have enough energy to keep its economy functioning. There is also not enough energy, nor enough time, to build a different, more energy-efficient economy, on the same scale as the present one. The best alternative by far is to reduce energy consumption by progressively shutting down all non-vital parts of the economy, while commandeering and redistributing resources to uniformly provide for the welfare of the entire population. Since such a revolution is not politically possible, the only remaining alternative is economic and political collapse.
My conclusion is that the Soviet Union was much better prepared for economic collapse than is the United States. America's economy will evaporate like the morning mist.
[...]
Economic collapse has a way of turning economic negatives into positives. The last thing we want is a perfectly functioning, growing, prosperous economy that suddenly collapses one day and leaves everybody in the lurch. Luckily, there is little prospect of such a scenario. (s 104 f)
Observasjonene om "Drugs and Alcohol" er også et sitat verd:
To a Russian, being drunk is almost a sacred right; to an American, it is a guilty pleasure. [...] The Russian can get furiously drunk in public, stagger about singing patriotic songs, fall into a snow bank, and either freeze to death or be carted off to a drunk tank. All this produces little or no remorse in him. Based on my reading of H. L. Mencken, America was also once upon a time a land of happy drunks, where a whiskey bottle would be passed around the courtroom at the start of the proceedings and a drunken jury would later render a drunken verdict. [...] When the economy collapses, hard-drinking people everywhere find all the more reason to get drunk, but much less werewithal with which to procure drink. In Russia, innovative market-based solutions were quickly improvised, which it was my privilege to observe. [...] In all, we should expect drugs and alcohol to become one of the largest short-term post-collapse entrepreneurial opportunities in the United States, along with asset stripping and security. (p 147)
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Collapse er også en klassiker; utkom første gang i 1980, og kalt den beste boken om emnet av minst en kommentator på TODs "linkfest". Bokens uttalte mål er å frambringe et paradigmeskifte - det gamle paradigmet er vekstparadigmet fra "The Age of Exuberance" (roughly, pionertiden i USA); det nye, det økologiske paradigmet. Vi ser ikke verden bare gjennom øynene, sier Catton, men også gjennom våre idéer... paradigmet. Den første delen av boken snakker om vekstparadigmet, dets historie og svakheter... den andre om det nye, økologiske paradigmet. Det gis masse referanser, og tonen i boken er definitivt intellektuell. Det er mye interessant her, men bokens skop er bredt, så det er begrenset hvor dypt inn i materien den trenger... Dypest og mest interessant er beskrivelsen av The Age of Exuberance; Catton er i utgangspunktet sosiolog, og det merkes. Til å være en bok som forfekter et økologisk paradigme, snakker den veldig lite om økologi, annet enn å hamre inn på annenhver side at mennesket er et dyr som alle andre og er underlagt de samme naturlover... et standpunkt jeg deler, men det blir litt for mye misjonering og litt for lite argumentering og opplysning for meg.
Jeg kommer forhåpentligvis tilbake til Collapse her i et essay med mine reaksjoner på boken... men foreløpig, en av de mer interessante passasjene, en diskusjon av Malthus:
Malthus did indeed err, but not in the way that has been commonly supposed. He rightly discerned "the power of population" to increase exponentially "if unchecked". He rightly noted that population growth ordinarily is not unchecked. He saw that it was worth inquiring into the means by which the exponential growth tendency is normally checked. He was perceptive in attaching the label "misery" to some of the ramification of these means. Where he was wrong was in supposing that the means worked fully and immediately. (That this was his error has not been seen by those who reject his views.)
[..]
Despite Malthus's belief to the contrary, it is possible to exceed an environment's carrying capacity -- temporarily. Many species have done it. A species with as long an interval between generations as is characteristic of ours, and with cultural as well as biological aspects, can be expected to do it.
[...]
By not quite seeing that carrying capacity can be temporarily overshot, Malthus understated life's perils. He thus enabled both the admirers and the detractors of his admonitory writings to neglect the effects of overshoot -- environmental degradation and carrying capacity reduction.
Innlegg
