Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumIntegrators and Specialists
This is something I've been noticing for a while now.
Hence, I believe we need a new way to categorize sustainability activists. Here's my proposal. I propose we start by dividing the universe of so-called sustainability activists into two groups: the 'Specialists', and the 'Integrators'.
Integrators:
An integrator can see, for example, that as oil production peaks and then drops, and that causes the 'growth only' economic system to become badly stressed, and then we will see many countries turn to reactionary political parties, who will then enact policies that negatively impact climate-change mitigation, and that climate change combined with dwindling oil, water shortages, phosphorous shortages, and a rapidly growing population, will cause food shortages, which will ignite class conflict, resource wars, chaos, and starvation. Each individual trend exacerbates the many other trends in a complex web of negative outcomes.
Specialists:
Specialists, on the other hand, focus on one trend and often ignore, or at least downplay the effects of the other trends. Specialists like alternative energy advocates, who believe that a massive effort to deploy wind turbines, etc, will solve our climate problems - but then ignore criticizing our 'growth only' economic system which will simply use the cheap energy to drive even higher levels of consumption, causing faster NRR depletion, soil degradation, more population growth, and eventually food shortages.
So here is the critical distinction between the two groups: The fundamental difference between Integrators and Specialists is the presence of an agenda. Integrators do not have an agenda - other than trying to understand our challenges and trying to find a way to raise the alarm. Specialists, on the other hand, are defined by their agendas.
Notice how most of the optimists are found within the "Specialist" camp?
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hunter
(38,309 posts)"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." --John Muir
bananas
(27,509 posts)Funny how his example of an "integrator" is really a peak oil "specialist".
Also funny how his example of a "specialist" is really an "integrator" - most alternative energy advocates also address the economic issues, for some reason the author ignores and downplays this.
The website itself is a "specialist" website - it "specializes" in overpopulation,
and has a very clear agenda - exactly what it complains "specialists" do.
It's a perfect example of psychological projection.
From the front page of that website:
About this website:
Climate change, energy depletion, food shortages, resource wars, species extinction - these are not the problem, they are only the symptoms. The singular root problem that causes all these horrifying threats to mankind is overpopulation.
So - logically - the solution that will eliminate these threats is simply to reduce the population of humans on this planet to a sustainable number.
Yet, no one proposes this obvious solution. No one is even willing to discuss it.
It is the Elephant in every room.
Except here.
Of course, his solution ignores the fact that even a small population of humans would be able to live unsustainibly.
It's just another bullshit website.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Our incredible ability to innovate, coupled with our lack of sapience, is the problem.
"Bullshit website" just means "I disagree", right?
bananas
(27,509 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Does focusing on that root cause make you a specialist? I would claim it doesn't, so long as the set of issues you're trying to address is multidisciplinary and you take a cross-discipline approach to it. Much of being an "integrator" is one's mindset - not isolating problems in different domains, but taking their interactions into account. Beyond his focus on overpopulation, what makes you think he's a specialist?
