My point is not over whether or not an individual can currently live productively within a truly sustainable resource footprint but rather over the legacy we are bequeathing to the future. If you were burning a hundred tons of carbon a year but in doing so assuring thousands of years of future human history, would that be wrong? I do not think it necessarily would?
The population and resource consumption aspects must necessarily self correct with collapse (population crashes, easy resources are depleted) - thus the question is what happens to those people who must inhabit what is left on the other side of collapse? Cutting a few tonnes of carbon dioxide a year is worth doing, I grant - but it has a much smaller effect than preparing resources, skills, knowledge, strategies etc for those people who must inhabit that future?
In this respect the actions of an individual are not necessarily the same between looking out for our species in the future, and trying to achieve a sustainable basis today (though I would argue the two paths ultimately converge).
ccg, I hope that I did not understand your post well. So please read my following comment not as critics but as some input, which perhaps could help you to explain the "collapse vision" also to poeple like me who fear the time of collapse and do not believe in a more sustainable time after collapse.
I think the debate can be valuable, certainly I can try to explain my perspective better (in case you don't read to the end, I'd like to say your response was very well presented and argued).
What you wrote about "burning carbon now for a better future later" reminds me to the last IPCC reposrt WG3 and the track resulting in only +2°C: We can burn a bit more now since we consider our grandchilds to get some of the CO2 out of the atmosphere: As if they would not be busy that time struggeling with AGW, fighting the conflicts and getting some food they are also asked to produce some char coal not for barbeque but to bury it beneath the earth! Such statements are doomed politics - they are a flimsy excuse to stay lazy today while keep feeling good.
I don't think that was what I meant exactly by what I said. What I meant was that if energy (even finite fossil fuels) were being consumed to ensure the very long term (thousands of years) future for our species - I think that could be OK.
But today we burn fossil fuels to ship clothing half way around the planet. The clothing is of such low quality it lasts only weeks. It is made by people working in virtual slavery. Does this activity add any value to the long term future of our species? No - and it is releasing carbon dioxide and thus any who participate in it (most of us by the way) are murdering my and later generations by their actions.
If you consume fossil fuels to air condition or to heat your household? Do you deliver any long term benefits to our species, does this contribute anything to your descendents to come in the future? No, it does not - your selfish creature comforts murder them and destroy their lives, without even offering them the chance to represent themselves (and again there is no virtuous ground for most people here).
So certainly there are a very many ways we can consume finite fossil fuels that add absolutely no long term value to our species and it's prospects into the future - and indeed serve to make us complicit in murder (and I do not exempt myself here, to be clear).
Suppose however that you did something with that energy instead and provided something for those people in the future, however? Could that not add long term value to our species? Suppose (just for example, not necessarily a good example) you created thousands of knives from a fancy alloy (some stainless alloys would possibly work) that would not perish over time. In the event of collapse, those knives potentially represent a highly valuable asset for your descendants (and potentially other people).
If collapse occurs, do you suppose I would be then more favourably disposed to a person who can tell me they "cut their emissions to 2 planets worth" or to a person who can tell me "I prepared tangible things for those people who must live through this part of our history"?
And if collapse did not occur, we still should build our tools durably to minimise their long term footprint - so little harm was done?
What kind of resources, skills, knowledge, strategies should we prepare for our descendants if not some carbon to be burn, some left over space for CO2 in the atmosphere and some prooven skills to life with zero emissions? So what else than zero emission can be a usefull goal right now?
What else can be a useful goal? How about contingency planning? How can you (or anyone else) presume to assure me that collapse can be avoided and these problems solved?
Let me take a simple analogy - let is presume that civilisation is a house, and it is on fire. We are talking about fighting the fire and keeping the house standing (continuing as we always have).
So tell me this - what if the fire is too advanced and we are unable to put it out? Then the house will burn down, yes? Collapse will come.
Does it not then make sense to think of other plans? To ask what we can do if the house does in fact burn down? Can we not save some few key possessions from the house to make our attempt to build another easier? Should we not think how we can try to build a better house so that we don't burn down again? Indeed if we did manage to put out the fire, having a better house would still make sense...
Although such efforts must necessarily detract a little from fighting the fire, they become immensely valuable if the battle is lost and the house falls. They become
all that is left. I am not saying we should not fight the fire, only that I believe the fire is too advanced and our abilities too limited to have a certainty (or in my view even a reasonable expectation) of success and thus we must consider how to improve the outcome if the house burns down.
I actually want to tell you two things, which are surely apparent to everybody here. But I miss them in all the collapse scenarios:
1) some risk analysis for collapse scenarios is needed
I have done my risk analysis - but it involved significant amounts of thought and reading over a prolonged period of time. Actually - a lot of the results of that effort (my risk analysis if you will) are scattered throughout many of the countless posts I've made on this forum.
I get the impression JimD has also coherently sat down and thought through a lot of this. Who else has - to such depth - I am not sure? (any takers?)
2) How and why should it be easier possible to life sustainable in/after a collapse than now? No way.
Why should it be possible? It will no longer be a choice. For tens of thousands of years humans were fairly sustainable (although even the discovery of fire and organised hunting did not always result in sustainable behaviour, our population was so limited we were arguably still sustainable).
It is not a question of "can humans live sustainably", as assuredly we can - if we live as animals as we once did. It is a question of "can we achieve knowledge, technology, and higher populations" and still be sustainable. I happen to believe that we can - I just don't think we can do it from where we are now without going through collapse first. It is not a path I want (except on particularly bleak days, but you should take into account my circumstances and the strains I live under to understand that), but I think the path may now be unavoidable.
* It could be, that human nature will not change during collapse. So we will end up quite close to where we are now. History example from WW2 collapse in Germany: Poeple with some power before the collapse where first in power again after - it took to '68 to get them out. I would expect that poeple able to most efficiently extract the last ressources would make it most likely through the collapse. Thus collapse would select the wrong poeple for sustainability.
I agree entirely, with one caveat.
If collapse is allowed to just occur and ignored as a risk and not planned for, then certainly, It think you will be right. The most vicious and ruthless will initially do very well.
If however we come up with a strategy for collapse, do we not have the opportunity, in theory at least - to change this? Can we not try to select the outlook, behaviour and strategy of at least some groups responding to collapse? If this is done to a high enough quality, it is not theoretically possible those groups can be what carries our species and civilisation forwards instead? What I am trying to argue for with CCG is really a matter of ideology, of perspective. It isn't about trying to persuade everyone that they should set up a boat or even a high mobility strategy pitched at the absolute worst case outcomes (that stuff just happens to suit me personally).
I am trying to encourage people to think of the future, that's all. To consider that they have the moral obligation - and the power (including through using fossil fuel energy if circumstances justify it...) to make a difference that can reach out across countless future generations.
Or of course, they can also turn the air conditioning down and the heating up, or they can say to my and future generations that "at least they didn't put quite so many tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere". What will that count for later if collapse comes? Nothing more than a nice story - particularly if someone else burned the fuel/wealth for something more frivolous instead and no net difference was made to the world.
* Even if we globaly agree on zero emissions e.g. until 2050 - when first signs of collapse surface, I am sure that poeple will skip their emission goals trying to save their lives. E.g. instead of peacefully deliver the land in USA to sustainable native indians, Amish and perma-culture poeple I assume they will dig all the coal and prepare for war...
This is all too likely, I'm afraid to say. That's exactly one reason I think collapse is virtually inevitable.
However, this is a condition that can be taken into account for planning purposes in terms of developing post collapse strategies. It's one reason I personally favoured a high mobility approach (coming from a high population density nation far above carrying capacity and not feeling confident of being able to negotiate the probable conflict that entails).
* Maybe the idea of a "purifying collapse" making a sustainable paradise possible is just some opium for us poeple like any religion? Could that collapse idea prevent us from any serious action necessary right now by giving some hope for a better future after all of our prophecies became true?
I do not expect human nature to fundamentally change just because of collapse. I do believe that suitable ideologies can be selected with a view to trying to boost their chances of dominating post collapse.
I do not think there is time to get suitable ideologies in place before collapse, because there is very considerable resistance to such things, particularly by the more affluent people reaping the short term benefits of their murderous activities (and I mean affluent in the context of a billion people going hungry each day).
And no, I do not think collapse ideas can rationally distract us from action right now. Rationally, I argue the very opposite - I am trying to encourage people to
act. If we just sit back and think that somehow by some miracle things will be better post collapse? That is a ridiculous idea.
I should be clear that I expect the later part of my life (if I survive at all) to be back breaking endless misery. I expect the lives of at least a few generations afterwards to be no better, and hundreds if not thousands of years to pass before quality of life can return to anything like the affluent peoples of today know it (but on a sustainable basis if the plans can be made to come to fruition). And all of that will require endless work and action. Inaction assures only failure - whether you act to prepare for collapse, or you act to try to prevent it.
* And as last point: How could it be easier in a doomed future to get sustainable than now? Right now we have the peaceful situation and all the ressources to transit to sustainability. E.G. in Europe and USA it is easy to come to 0 emission in a short time now. Right now it would only break our economy but not the basis of our life. That will certainly change in future. So we have to life the sustainable life now to give something real to our children and not only nice suggestments and a rotten world. You may say: That is impossible for some reason. But as the crazy green ideas of our parents became green-BAU in our current society the crazy perma-culture/bio-dynamical ideas are getting mainstream now, too. We are on the way to transit from green-BAU to "Amish-BAU" now within a generation, if collapse will not kill that transition...
In the ashes after collapse, it is easier to be sustainable in the sense that there is much less choice. If one is not sustainable enough, one dies (resources will be much less plentiful). Right now the biggest obstacle to sustainability as I see it - is the typical westerner (especially as affluence rises, but probably actually most of the westernised populations - which also serve as an aspirational goal for most of the other populations).
However, I should be clear - I am not arguing for collapse as a route to sustainability.
Of course it would be better - much better - if we could transition our civilisation to a truly sustainable platform without collapse occuring.
I am however arguing that I think the probability of collapse happening is high enough that we need to plan for it to try to improve the outcomes for our species in this event.
I also believe green-BAU is a bit like you said in your question about "collapse purification" - it's a nice belief to let people bounce around and to buy into to justify inaction on their part. The belief that somehow we will solve all these problems and can continue to live as we have until then. More on this presently.