How has it come to this? Climate Change and The Future of Planet Earth

How Has It Come
to This?
Climate Change and
The Future of
Planet Earth
A Small Survey of the Big Picture:
Climate Crisis, Biosphere Collapse,
Breakdown of Civilization as We Have Known It,
and How to Prepare and Survive
by Karen McChrystal, MA
HIDDEN SPRINGS PRESS

How Has It Come to This?
Climate Change and The Future of Planet Earth:
A Small Survey of The Big Picture
Copyright © 2019 by Karen McChrystal
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in
any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the au-
thor, except for brief passages in connection with a review.
Cover image by Kadir van Lohuizen: Arctic image shows how ice
melt is creating the New North.
Editing by Lindsay Blackman
Hidden Springs Press
Santa Monica, California

Contents
PREFACE 1
INTRODUCTION 4
CLIMATE CHANGE AS THE
OVERARCHING DRIVER OF CHAOS 5
GLOBAL WARMING MAY BE TWICE WHAT
CLIMATE MODELS PREDICT 7
BLUE OCEAN EVENT 11
OUT OF CHAOS, A NEW ORDER 14
DEEP ADAPTATION 15
HOW DID WE GET HERE? 17
THE ECONOMIC GROWTH IMPERATIVE 17
WHAT CAN BE DONE NOW? 24
THE GREEN NEW DEAL 25
SUCCESSOR CIVILIZATION 30
PERMACULTURE 33
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES 36
BANKING AND CURRENCIES 37
ECOVILLAGES 38
CONCLUSION 39
REFERENCES 44
ABOUT THE AUTHOR 48

1
Climate Change and The Future of Planet Earth:
A Small Survey of The Big Picture
PREFACE
By now, most people are aware that climate change presents a dire
threat to human civilization. But they don’t understand just how dire.
International organizations and mainstream media continue to say
that we have about ten years, maybe more, to start doing something
about it. In my view, it’s already past the midnight hour to start doing
something.
It is my deep love for our precious planet and my growing alarm
about the existential threat to humanity that has motivated me to try
to contribute to efforts to prepare for a better possible future for hu-
manity.
In my view, it’s already too late already to “save” ourselves from
crisis. Not only is climate change accelerating and multiple tipping
points could be reached within a few short few years or have already
been reached, but also because of the CO2 which will linger in the
atmosphere for several hundreds of thousands of years. Most people
don’t know that only between 65% and 80% of CO2 released into
the air dissolves into the ocean over a period of 20–200 years. This
means that once in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can continue to
affect climate for thousands of years. (Carbon Brief, Jan 2012)
Thanks in large part to rampant disinformation, partisan news
sources, and social media’s tsunami of fake news, ignorance rules
the day.

2
As someone who thinks in terms of whole systems, holistically, I
think that every aspect of our society needs to be considered before
we can make any effective changes to the way we live, or the way we
can survive. Lifestyle changes, putting solar panels on one’s roof, ab-
staining from hamburgers, recycling one’s plastic, etc., will not make
enough of a difference. It’s good to do all these personal lifestyle
changes, but also consider the bigger picture, including agriculture,
energy, infrastructure, how resources can be used sustainably.
As a long-time student of social sciences (BA in political science,
MA in clinical psychology), economics, environmentalism, and a
good deal of physics, I understand how profound was John Muir’s
statement, way back in 1869: “When we try to pick out anything by
itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
Those who do have some idea of the seriousness of the climate cri-
sis are often afraid to face the facts – straight, no chaser. Once one
does wake up to the bigger reality, a big adjustment will be required
– at the level of psychology, spirituality, and social identity. Many,
including myself, have gone through a period of deep grief, then
deep sadness about the impending end of civilization as we have
known it. My personal experience is that while my own sense of the
impending crisis motivated me, starting in the late 1990’s, I schooled
myself objectively in the scientific literature, the better to contribute
to efforts to mitigate and adapt to the coming changes.
The seeds of the destruction of the capitalist world were apparent
early in the 20th century. Now, everything is up for re-evaluation and
reconfiguring, from capitalism (late-stage, unregulated global mo-
nopoly capitalism), to energy, agriculture, to population, how much
we can extract from nature, to the belief in endless economic growth,
to national and global political systems.
The psychologist in me is convinced that humans have the capacity
to evolve. Early in my career(s), I experienced how people could be
inspired to exceed themselves, not only in abilities and performance,

Karen McChrystal
3
but in radiant creativity and love. I made it a lifetime mission to
explore the further reaches of human ability and levels of understand-
ing. What sustains me now, psychologically, spiritually, and intellec-
tually is the hope that out of crisis can grow new understanding at a
humanity-wide scale. Humans will, if only a small percentage, rise to
the occasion and understand how to lay the groundwork for the next
stage of human evolution, society, and sustainable successor com-
munities. At least, this is my hope.
INTRODUCTION
This paper includes top-level summary statements regarding the pri-
mary factors driving likely near-future societal chaos. Also included
are a number of citations from experts and scientists in the fields of
climate change, economics, and sustainability. For the most part, I
prefer not to paraphrase the citations, as the subject is complex and
doesn’t lend itself to simplification. My studies of these topics, on
and off for two decades, have led me to the view that civilization as
we have known it cannot long continue. The purpose of this paper
is not to add to the growing list of alarming climate-related disas-
ters and those that loom, but rather to help people better understand
how we got here, and why the civilization we have known cannot go
on for very much longer. Then we can hopefully apply what we’ve
learned, as wisdom, to better prepare for the oncoming climate cha-
os. And we can plant the seeds of a successor civilization, starting
with sustainable, resilient communities which can be enfolded into
the future successor civilization.
When humanity has enough new understanding of reality, a more
highly evolved level of awareness emerges and can serve to overturn
obsolete forms.
The idea of emergence of the new is now prevalent among many of
the more aware people. One of these is Ralph Metzner, an American

4
psychologist, writer, and researcher. He sagely opined the following
in early 2016, in an interview by Will Shonbrun:
As presently constituted, global civilization cannot
survive. It will either collapse or change completely
in its key relationship to all other life on planet Earth.
Or, perhaps more likely, both things will happen – total
collapse of existing power and economic structures,
coupled with massive human population die-off – and
slow, halting emergence of something new, the outlines
of which are barely discernible. How many people in
the High Middle Ages could foresee the changes that
would come with the Industrial Revolution? And the
political changes that came with the French Revolution
and with the liberation of the American colonies?
… But I tend to think that a massive population reduc-
tion from the current 7 billion to about half that num-
ber is highly probable within the next couple of hundred
years or sooner, along with the more or less complete
destruction and uninhabitability of large segments of the
planet’s surface. (Metzner, 2016)
Storms, floods, droughts, and other environmental catastrophes not-
withstanding, my view is that the human race can continue its evolu-
tionary journey, if only with a greatly reduced population. The archi-
tecture of change supercedes individuals’ determination to maintain
their independence from the essentially interdependent whole.
Climate Change as the Overarching Driver of Chaos
Over the next ten years there will certainly be increasingly extreme
weather patterns across the globe. According to the Energy Policy
Institute at the University of Chicago, on our current trajectory,
climate change is expected to intensify over the coming decades.

Karen McChrystal
5
If no policy actions are taken to restrict greenhouse gas emissions,
expected warming would be on track for 8.1°F (4.5°C) by 2100.
Strikingly, this amount of warming is actually less than would be
expected if all currently known fossil fuel resources were consumed.
Were this to occur, total future warming would be 14.5°F (8°C),
fueled largely by the world’s vast coal resources. (Energy Policy
Institute, 2017)
Incremental fixes are utterly insufficient. Even if a global price on
carbon was established, and if our governments invested in renew-
ables rather than subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, we would still
come up woefully short.
As Jeremy Lent reminds us,
The harsh reality is that, rather than heading toward
net zero, global emissions just hit record numbers last
year; Exxon, the largest shareholder-owned oil company,
proudly announced recently that it is doubling down on
fossil fuel extraction; and wherever you look, whether
it’s air travel, globalized shipping, or beef consumption,
the juggernaut driving us to climate catastrophe contin-
ues to accelerate. To cap it off, with ecological destruc-
tion and global emissions already unsustainable, the
world economy is expected to triple in size by 2060.
(Lent, April 8, 2019)
Regardless of government policy changes, or lack thereof, many mil-
lions of people will become climate refugees, added to the already
growing number. As well, the global social fabric will be further rent
by civil unrest due to food and water shortages. These impending
disasters are fully anticipated by governments around the world, with
the exception of a few leaders who are blinded by their own igno-
rance and short-term thinking. However, even the wisest leaders can-
not do anything much more than enact mild measures for reducing
greenhouse gas emissions.

6
Global Warming May Be Twice What
Climate Models Predict
According to NOAA, the Earth has warmed about 1.1°C since the
beginning of the Industrial Revolution, around 1750.
2017 was the 3rd warmest year on record for the globe.
(NOAA, Jan. 2018)
2018 was the hottest year on record for the globe.
(NOAA, Feb. 2019)
Here is one of the better assessments, albeit conservative, of expect-
ed continuing increase in global temperatures, at the current rates, by
Berkeley Earth, a California-based non-profit research organization:
At the current rate of progression, the increase in
Earth’s long-term average temperature will reach 1.5°C
(2.7°F) above the 1850-1900 average by 2035 and 2°C
(3.6°F) will be reached around 2060. The increasing
abundance of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due
to human activities is the direct cause of this recent
global warming. If the Paris Agreement’s goal of no
more than 1.5°C (2.7°F) warming is to be reached,
significant progress towards reducing greenhouse gas
emissions must be made soon. (Berkeley Earth, 2018)
There are a number of uncertainties in the science of warming, due
to there being many interacting factors and feedback potentials – fac-
tors such as what humans will do, mostly in terms of emitting green-
house gases; how the climate will respond, both through straight-
forward heating and a variety of more complicated, and sometimes
contradictory, feedback loops. Current climate models are at best not
yet sophisticated enough relative to the immensity of the task.
David Wallace-Wells, in his 2019 book, The Uninhabitable Earth,
echoes the position of a growing number of climate scientists that

Karen McChrystal
7
our current climate models may be underestimating the amount of
warming we are due for in 2100 by as much as half.
In other words, temperatures could rise, ultimately, by
as much as double what the IPCC predicts. Hit our Paris
emissions targets and we may still get four degrees of
warming,meaningagreenSaharaandtheplanet’stropical
forests transformed into fire-dominated savanna. The
authors of one recent paper suggested the warming could
be more dramatic still – slashing our emissions could still
bring us to four or five degrees Celsius, a scenario they
said would pose severe risks to the habitability of the
entire planet. (Wallace-Wells, 2019)
According to an international team of researchers from 17 countries,
even if the world meets the 2°C target, future global warming may
eventually be twice as warm as projected by current climate models
and sea levels may rise six meters or more. The findings were pub-
lished June 2018 in Nature Geoscience.
Climate change will be happening much more rapidly and destruc-
tively than most scientists expect. What they underestimate is how
quickly the compound factors amplify each other.
Observations of past warming periods suggest that a number of
amplifying mechanisms, which are poorly represented in climate
models, increase long-term warming beyond climate model projec-
tions, said lead author, Prof. Hubertus Fischer of the University of
Bern. (Fischer, 2018)
The chances of limiting global temperature increases to 2 degrees
Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) within this century are “swiftly
diminishing,” in the judgment of Achim Steiner, executive director
of the United Nations Environment Programme. This goal was
endorsed by governments in 2010 as a “safe” maximum to avoid
the worst consequences, although some regard it as still too high. Yet

8
under current government policies, global greenhouse gas emissions
still will be 8 to 12 billion tons higher than the maximum allowable
in 2020, likely leading to a warming of 3.7 degrees Celsius or worse.
The International Energy Agency (lEA) projects that current policies
could raise temperatures by as much as 6 degrees Celsius.
The risk researcher David Spratt, in conversation with Christian
Mihatsch, October 2019, provides the most up-to-date assessment as
of current writing:
Climate change impacts will be larger than commonly
thought, for there is a high probability that the climate
will react to continuing emissions with a four- or five-
degree Celsius jump in temperature. If humanity follows
the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC), it can only limit global warm-
ing to 1.5 degrees Celsius with a 50% chance of success.
And lurking under two degrees of warming are tipping
points, from which further heating could not be stopped.
The IPCC entrusts the survival of human civilization to
the outcome of a coin toss. For David Spratt, of the Aus-
tralian think tank Breakthrough - National Center for Cli-
mate Restoration, that is too risky. Instead, he calls for a
mobilization of society as a whole – as in a war.
Mr. Spratt, what is the problem with the reports of the
IPCC?
The IPCC is too model dependent, that’s the main prob-
lem. Some elements of the climate system are linear and
can be well predicted. But there are many non-linear
events – tipping points where the system goes from one
state to another. These can only be modelled poorly. And
we often do not know that we have crossed such a point
until after it has happened. The laws of physics are not

Karen McChrystal
9
interested in our forecasts – and even below two degrees
could be tipping points from which global warming itself
increases further. These feedback processes of the cli-
mate system are also difficult to model. For example,
the IPCC does not consider enough the climate conse-
quences of thawing permafrost soils. As a result, negotia-
tors in the UN climate talks depend on IPCC reports that
do not convey a correct view of the future.
You also criticize the IPCC approach to risk management.
Risk is calculated as a probability multiplied by the dam-
ages. But talking about three or four degrees of warming,
the damage is overwhelming. In a four-degree scenario,
billions of people will not survive. In this case, the dam-
age and thus the risks are beyond quantification. Normal
risk management that compares numbers then becomes
irrelevant. Normal risk management means we do it the
best we can, and if we fail – perhaps because we have
several plane crashes due to a software bug – then we
learn from our mistakes. But if we crash the climate sys-
tem, destroy civilization, then we can not learn from our
mistakes. You only do that once.
The collapse of the climate system is an existential risk,
and dealing with such risks requires a different approach.
In international climate policy, it is currently said: We
have a carbon budget that allows us to reach the 1.5
degree target with a 50 percent chance. But we would
never board a plane if we only arrive in half the cases.
Nor would we fly at a 66 or 80 percent probability. But
this is the method in international climate policymaking.
On our current trajectory climate change is expected
to intensify over the coming decades. If no policy and

10
enforcement actions are taken to restrict GHG emissions,
expected warming would be on track for 8.1°F (4.5°C)
by 2100. Strikingly, this amount of warming is actually
less than would be expected if all currently known fos-
sil fuel resources were consumed. If all the known fossil
fuels were to be consumed, total future warming would
be 14.5°F (8°C), fueled largely by the world’s vast coal
resources. (Brookings, 2017)
In a Nov. 27, 2019 article in Nature, seven climate scientists
summarized the evidence on the threat of exceeding tipping points,
writing that tipping points “more likely than was thought, have
high impacts and are interconnected across different biophysical
systems, potentially committing the world to long-term irreversible
changes”. (Lenton, et al., 2019)
The tipping points include the following:
• “Several cryosphere tipping points are dangerously close”...
“West Antarctica might have passed a tipping point”...
“part of the East Antarctic ice sheet – the Wilkes Basin
– might be similarly unstable.”
• “Models suggest that the Greenland ice sheet could be
doomed at 1.5 °C of warming, which could happen as soon
as 2030”.
• “We might already have committed future generations to
living with sea-level rises of around 10 metres over thou-
sands of years. But that time scale is still under our control.
The rate of melting depends on the magnitude of warming
above the tipping point.”
• “Other tipping points could be triggered at low levels of
global warming… a cluster of abrupt shifts between 1.5 °C
and 2 °C, several of which involve (Arctic) sea ice.”

Karen McChrystal
11
• “Biosphere tipping points can trigger abrupt carbon release
back to the atmosphere.. Permafrost across the Arctic is
beginning to irreversibly thaw and release carbon dioxide
and methane… the boreal forest in the subarctic is increas-
ingly vulnerable.”
• “Estimates of where an Amazon tipping point could lie
range from 40% deforestation to just 20% forest-cover
loss8
. About 17% has been lost since 1970.” (Spratt, 2019)
The future is not absolutely determined; only the broader probabilities
may be foreseen. The variables of human will and consciousness
always come into play. We don’t know what human beings are
capable of in novel circumstances. It is possible that those who
survive the coming chaos due to cascading and devastating effects
of climate change can band together cooperatively to re-build new
communities and possibly be wise enough to adhere to principles of
sustainability and respect for Mother Earth. But civilization as we
have known it will likely not continue. As Dr. Rupert Read says,
...this civilisation is finished. The only way in the hard
times to come that it might appear to persist is if we
manage to transform it beyond recognition… That trans-
formed civilisation would in no meaningful sense be the
same civilisation as ours. (Read, 2018)
Blue Ocean Event
White surfaces like ice and snow reflect about 80 percent of the Sun’s
energy back into space. This is known as “albedo.” Once that white
ice disappears, the darker ocean and land will absorb 90 percent of
that heat, accelerating global warming. Every year for the last thirty
years, there is less Arctic ice in the summertime, and sometime soon
– probably in the next few years – there will be no ice at all. Ocean

12
once frozen white turns warm and blue, and then we will have what
some scientists are now calling the Blue Ocean Event. When all the
ice in the Arctic Ocean melts, the Arctic Ocean will get warm, just
like the drink in your glass on a hot day.
Based on trends charted by Paul Beckwith (physicist, engineer, and
part-time professor, with a focus on abrupt climate system change),
by 2022 there will be an ice-free August, September, and October in
the Arctic, and by 2032, no ice, year-round. Then heat build-up will
be greatly accelerated.
From my analysis, my best guess is that the BOE will hap-
penin2022.TherewillbeessentiallyNOseaiceintheArc-
tic Ocean for a few weeks to a month in September, 2022.
After this BOE happens, then what will follow in sub-
sequent years? I think that by BOE+2 years the Arctic
Ocean will be ice free for August, September, and Octo-
ber. By BOE+4 years it will be ice free for 5 months, and
by BOE+10 years the Arctic Ocean will be free of sea ice
year round.
During this decade of gut-wrenching transition, our cli-
mate and weather patterns will be profoundly disrupted,
chaotic, and unstable, for example presenting enormous
risks to our global food supply. (Beckwith, Sept. 2018)
Land changes temperature under sunshine much more quickly than
ocean. With no ice to cool the sea surface, the atmosphere will expe-
rience a rapid spike in temperatures. This heat will quickly drive
a series of positive feedback mechanisms, including the release of
methane from terrestrial permafrost and sub-sea methane hydrates,
wildfires, and the breakdown of natural carbon sinks, such as tropical
forests and phytoplankton populations.
I agree with Guy Lane that today’s 1.1 degrees C warming since the
Industrial Revolution will be quickly supplemented by an additional

Karen McChrystal
13
two, three, four, five, and more degrees over the period of just a
few years. This will lead to the failure of monsoons, droughts in the
world’s food producing regions, the collapse of marine fisheries, and
rapidly intensifying extreme weather events.
And I think it highly probable that, as Lane says, the global economy
will collapse and millions of people will be enveloped in drought,
famine, and conflict. The resulting wars and revolutions will create
mass-migrations and exact a terrible toll on human life and nature.
Millions of people will perish through heat waves that
will increase in ferocity, year after year. Maybe 50,000
this year; 500,000 the next year; and going up in mul-
tiples every year. The machinery of the modern industrial
state will crumble, and the world’s 450 nuclear power
stations will become vulnerable to natural disaster and
sabotage. Many plants need only to lose mains power
and the back-up generators for them to melt down,
burn up and release vast amounts of radiation into the
air and water, as happened with Fukushima. If this hap-
pens, the overheated atmosphere will fill with radia-
tion, ensuring that there will be nowhere to hide for air-
breathing organisms – such as humans. (Lane, 2018)
[For a comprehensive summary of scientific literature on climate
change, last updated October 2018, see
http://sustainablelivinginstitute.org/topic-areas.html]
There will be no place to run to, essentially. Few territorial regions
will be spared severe effects of climate change. In the U.S., it is likely
the northern half of the country will be better off than the southern
half.
Here is a 2018 assessment of what are forecast to be the areas, glob-
ally, that will be least affected by climate change:

14
Even with the inherent uncertainty in the pace and poten-
cy of these overwhelmingly negative effects of climate
change, safety from it all is only likely in a handful of
countries – those that currently have mild climates, that
are wealthy and resource-rich, that have good healthcare
systems,thataren’tpoliticallyunstable,andaren’tlikelyto
experiencedangerousweatherextremesonaregularbasis.
That leaves us with a pretty short list, then: Canada,
Northern Europe, New Zealand, and perhaps Japan, for
example. Wait, what about the Land of the Free – the
wealthiest, perhaps most resourceful nation on Earth?
Isn’t this a safe haven? Actually, no, not quite.
You can’t simply say that the US is the safest place to
live in this sense; any Americans fighting through hurri-
canes or wildfires can tell you that. Oregon may be some-
what free of climatic extremes, but Florida is constantly
threatened by them. (Andrews, 2018)
Out of Chaos, a New Order
It serves to remember that there are higher ordering principles. When
a system is stable and secure, it’s very resistant to change. But when
the linkages within the system begin to unravel, it’s far more likely
to undergo the kind of deep restructuring our world requires. Out of
extreme chaos, new designs emerge and higher orders of self-orga-
nization. Ilya Prigogine, 1977 winner a of Nobel prize in chemistry,
philosophized about self-organizing systems and how, when driven
into far-from-equilibrium conditions, some systems do not just break
down; they generate new structures that pull higher forms of order
out of the surrounding chaos. When a system is driven beyond equi-
librium, the subtle interconnectedness that lies latent beneath its sur-
face can sometimes emerge to reshape the system itself.

Karen McChrystal
15
Living systems evolve toward increasingly complex organization,
and, in humans, leading to increasingly complex minds. (Combs,
Goerner, 1997)
Concordance emerges from the organizing patterns hid-
den behind apparent chaos; thus, the evolution of man-
kind progresses despite the apparently aberrant signals
of individuals at any given moment. Chaos is only a
limited perception. Everything is part of a larger whole;
everyone is involved in the evolution of the all-inclusive
attractor Field of consciousness itself. (Hawkins, 2014)
Life, as a planetary process, is a negentropic (also called syntropic)
force on Earth creating collaborative abundance by increasing diver-
sity and complexity to improve healthy ecosystem functions which
in turn create not just planetary bioproductivity but the overall condi-
tions conducive to life.* (Watson, Apr. 5, 2019)
Similarly, human societies with their economies and technologies
evolve and organize into new orders, some more resilient and sus-
tainable than others.
_______________
*Negentropy, or negative entropy, is the opposite of entropy. In an
organism the degree of internal disorganization is entropy and the
level of internal organization is negentropy; also called syntropy.
_____________________________.
However, what we are now experiencing is a phase of chaos, as our
living systems have been so altered by having been pushed to ex-
tremes by modern civilization. Life itself persists, as has been ev-
idenced in previous geologic ages and previous societies. As long
as there is life, living systems will continue to evolve, at the same
time as they will be forced to adapt. The results of this process will
unfold. The optimistic view is that human society will continue in

16
some form, however radically different from the civilization as we
have known it.
Deep Adaptation
A “new order” will likely be what grows out of efforts to adapt in the
face of climate chaos. A new order will have to be founded on prin-
ciples of sustainability and resilience, not of eternal growth.
There’s a growing discussion among sustainability experts and cli-
mate scientists about “Deep Adaptation,” which assumes coming
societal collapse and proposes adopting measures for “resilience,
relinquishment, and restoration.” This approach conceives of resil-
ience of human societies as being the capacity to adapt to changing
circumstances so as to survive with valued norms and behaviors. If
we assume social collapse is inevitable, the question becomes, what
are the valued norms and behaviors that human societies will wish to
maintain as they seek to survive?
Deep adaptation, says Bendell, will involve more than “resilience.”
The second area of this agenda is “relinquishment,” which involves
people and communities letting go of certain assets, behaviors, and
beliefs where retaining them could make matters worse.
“Restoration” involves people and communities rediscovering atti-
tudes and approaches to life and organization that our hydrocarbon-
fueled civilization eroded. (Bendell, 2018)
My own view is that, as Lent has said, clearly this civili-
zation must be left behind, but the way in which we leave
it, and what it’s replaced by, are all-important. An uncon-
trolled collapse of this civilization would be catastrophic,
leading to mega-deaths, along with the greatest suffering
ever experienced in human history. This is not something
to view lightly. By focusing on structural political and

Karen McChrystal
17
economic change, as well as moving toward a culture
that sees humanity as embedded integrally within the
natural world, we can move toward deep transformation.
The latter, while it may not be adequate to remedy our
present ills, can help us retain a semblance of a healthy
planet that may carry over to be part of successor com-
munities and societies. In agreement with Jeremy Lent, I
trust that work done now, as deep transformation, can lay
the groundwork for an ecological civilization.
(Lent, Apr. 4, Apr. 15, 2019)
How Did We Get Here?
For a long period, a growing economy, fueled primarily by oil, but
also by coal, brought benefits in terms of health, happiness, and ful-
fillment. Infant mortality rates fell and life expectancy increased.
Welfare states appeared, along with health care, education, and reli-
able infrastructure. But now, generally, and especially in the west-
ern world, the economy has grown beyond a certain per capita size,
while benefits have stopped increasing and even started to fall.
While economic growth has brought higher living stan-
dards and jobs for many people, along with tax revenues
for governments, it has been achieved at the cost of de-
pleted soils and aquifers; degraded lands and forests;
contaminated rivers, seas, and oceans; disrupted cycles
of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorous; and more. In
short, economic growth is not an unqualified good. And
these environmental costs, along with the social costs of
unequal growth, can be substantial. (Victor, 2013)

18
The Economic Growth Imperative
An economic system, now global, that has an inbuilt imperative to
pursue growth no matter the cost, has brought us to this stage of
existential crisis.
As Jeremy Lent writes,
The primary reason for this headlong fling toward
disaster is that our economic system is based on perpetual
growth – on the need to consume the earth at an ever-
increasing rate. Our world is dominated by transnational
corporations, which now account for sixty-nine of the
world’s largest hundred economies. The value of these
corporations is based on investors’ expectations for their
continued growth, which they are driven to achieve at
any cost, including the future welfare of humanity and
the living earth. (Lent, April 9, 2019)
As Lester Brown, head of the Worldwatch Institute, has written, belief
in the indispensability of economic growth, while deeply rooted in
governments virtually worldwide, is quite recent.
The common view that growth has always been an im-
portant objective of government is mistaken. That growth
is inextricably bound up with human nature is an even
greater mistake, if it makes us think that there really is
no alternative to economic growth. Understanding that
growth is not a necessary goal of government policy is
critical if we are to imagine alternative economic futures.
(Brown, Lester, 2015)
For a summary of current literature on the limits to growth:
http://sustainablelivinginstitute.org/topic-areas.html

Karen McChrystal
19
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a
finite world is either a madman or an economist.”
~ Kenneth Boulding
Even the conservative IPCC warned we need to radically remake the
world economy in less than 12 years. This is no simple matter, of
course. First, it is important to understand how and why the global
economy has reached critical limits and created a number of distor-
tions which have been disastrous to the public good.
Lester Brown, environmental analyst, founder of the Worldwatch
Institute, and founder and former president of the Earth Policy Insti-
tute, explains:
The larger question is, If we continue with business
as usual – with overpumping, overgrazing, overplow-
ing, overfishing, and overloading the atmosphere with
carbon dioxide – how long will it be before the Ponzi
economy unravels and collapses? No one knows. Our
industrial civilization has not been here before. Unlike
Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which was set up with
the knowledge that it would eventually fall apart, our
global Ponzi economy was not intended to collapse. It
is on a collision path because of market forces, perverse
incentives, and poorly chosen measures of progress. We
rely heavily on the market because it is in so many ways
such an incredible institution. It allocates resources with
an efficiency that no central planning body can match,
and it easily balances supply and demand. The market
does, however, have some fundamental, potentially fatal,
weaknesses. It does not respect the sustainable yield
thresholds of natural systems. It also favors the near term
over the long term, showing little concern for future gen-
erations. It does not incorporate into the prices of goods
the indirect costs of producing them.As a result, it cannot

20
provide the signals telling us that we are caught up in a
Ponzi scheme. (Brown, Lester, 2009)
Another of the big reasons for the precariousness of our global econ-
omy is the dominance of private banking, which hoards interest and
profit for the sake of shareholders who are often completely removed
from the communities where the banks are located. Public banking,
on the other hand, sees interest and profits from banking as belong-
ing to the community, and issues inexpensive credit. The latter en-
ables resources to flow to industries, enterprises, and public services
that promote social goods and economic security for all.
(Brown, Ellen, 2014)
The second big reason is that chartered corporations presently, under
capitalism, have to keep growing. Tied with this, central banking
and the financial sector lock in this growth imperative. The reason
for this is that money is created by banks as interest-bearing loans,
so debt grows exponentially as time goes on (the compound interest
formula is exponential).
Under our present system, U.S. currencies are not earned into exis-
tence. They are lent into existence by a central bank. This means
any money issued to a person or business has to be paid back to
the central bank, with interest. For one business to pay back what it
owes, another must go bankrupt. That, or borrow yet another 1000,
and so on.
As Douglas Rushkoff has said, “An economy based on an interest-
bearing centralized currency must grow to survive, and this means
extracting more, producing more and consuming more.”
(Rushkoff, 2009)
It is not possible for every debtor to pay their loans with interest when
the money supply does not grow except by the creation of more debts
by the banks. This creates growth.

Karen McChrystal
21
Every actor in the economy must then compete for that
insufficient supply of money in order to keep from de-
faulting. Hence, they must do all they can to expand pro-
duction, sales, and profits. They must control their mar-
kets, both markets in which they sell their products and
markets in which they buy their inputs.
That is why the environment is being destroyed, the social
fabric is being torn asunder, and the economic product
is being increasingly maldistributed. This monetary sys-
tem requires that there be many losers. (Greco, 2007)
Further, as Ellen Brown explains,
Currently, 35% to 40% of the money we pay for goods
and services goes to interest, paid out to bankers, finan-
ciers, and bondholders, which explains how wealth is
systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall
Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense
of the poor, not merely from “Wall Street greed,” but
from the inexorable mathematics of our private banking
system. Exponential growth in financial sector profits
has occurred at the expense of the non-financial sectors,
whereincomeshaveatbestgrownlinearly.(Brown,2013)
Modern economies depend on a thriving financial sector, and the
U.S. finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sector now accounts
for 20 percent of GDP – compared with only 10 percent in 1947.
The growth of the finance sector is in large part due to growth in
diversity of investment instruments and fees generated by essentially
moving money around without producing any real wealth. The
“financialization” of the economy is a big conributor to income
inequality, growing household debt, and the instability manifested in
the 2008 global economic crisis.

22
Herman Daly has written that, in a sustainable economy, lack of
growth would negatively affect interest rates. And therefore the
financial sector would probably shrink:
[That is because] low interest and growth rates could
not support the enormous superstructure of financial
transactions – based largely on debt and expectations
of future economic growth – that now sits uneasily atop
the physical economy. In a sustainable economy, invest-
ment would be mainly for replacement and qualitative
improvement, instead of for speculation on quantitative
expansion, and would occur less often. (Daly, 2005)
As of the end of 2017, the wealthiest 1 percent of American house-
holds owned 40 percent of the country’s wealth, according to a new
paper by economist Edward N. Wolff. That share is higher than it
has been at any point since at least 1962, according to Wolff’s data,
which comes from the federal Survey of Consumer Finances.
(Ingraham, 2017)
As of October 2019, according to the annual Credit Suisse Global
Wealth Report, the millionaires of the world, who account for just
0.9 percent of the global population, now own nearly half of the
planet’s $361 trillion in wealth while the bottom 56 percent of the
population owns just 1.8 percent. (Credit Suisse, 2019)
Extremes of wealth inequality lead to failed states, leading to civil
unrest and war, and massive migrations of people fleeing these states
It is foreseeable that by mid-2022, several hundred million people
will have perished, from not only casualties from ongoing warfare
in many countries, but also due to climate chaos, drought, and
starvation. After a couple of decades (barring long-lasting nuclear
radiation and fallout), the surviving global population could well be
reduced to about 2 billion, what it was in 1927. Two billion happens
to be the number of people several scientists have said would be
sustainable, in terms of Earth’s resources.

Karen McChrystal
23
Among other scientists, Paul and Anne Ehrlich of the Center for
Conservation Biology at Stanford University and Gretchen Daily of
the Energy and Resources Group of the University of California-
Berkeley said that the optimum human population is a third of that
at present.
Until cultures change radically, the optimum number of
people to exist on the planet at any one time lies in the
vicinity of 1.5 billion to 2 billion people, about a third
of the present number. (Daily, Ehrlich, Ehrlich, 1994)
In a 2012 interview with John Vidal, Paul Ehrlich said that we face
catastrophic or slow-motion disasters unless population is brought
under control and resources redistributed. “The optimum population
of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of
a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people.” (Vidal 2012)
The Ehrlichs are by no means alone in voicing alarm over the size
of the global population. Here is a statement from the Overpopula-
tion Research Project. Patricia Dérer, a member of the project, says
the optimal population should stay in the vicinity of 1.5 – 2 billion
people:
“What Is The Optimal, Sustainable Population Size of Humans?”
Apart from constraints due to carrying capacity, other
criteria should be considered. We can define the optimal
population size as the size that produces the best results
according to explicit goals or targets. Targets chosen in
the well-known study of Daily, et al.3
include sufficient
wealth, access to resources, universal human rights, pres-
ervation of biodiversity and cultural diversity, and sup-
port for intellectual, artistic, and technological creativity.
Estimating the amount of energy to satisfy these human
needs while keeping ecosystems and resources intact,
they calculated the optimal population size in the vicin-
ity of 1.5 – 2 billion people. [...]

24
In the beginning of this period [1961-2009], the world had
a substantial ecological reserve. That disappeared after
about 10 years, and since then we have been operating
in deficit mode. Today the demand for resources exceeds
the available supply by 50%. (Dérer, Apr. 2018)
The numbers for demand compared to supply vary, depending on
how measurements are made. But by all measures, humanity has
been consuming far more of the Earth’s resources than can be re-
plenished at a rate that will keep up with usage.
As Jason Hickel, anthropologist, author, and a fellow of the Royal
Society of Arts, reports,
[...] While 50 billion tons of resources used per year is
roughly the limit that Earth’s systems can sustain, the
world is already consuming 70 billion tons. At current
rates of economic growth, this will rise to 180 billion
tons by 2050. Maximum resource efficiency, coupled
with massive carbon taxes, would reduce this at best to
95 billion tons: still way beyond environmental limits.
Green growth, as members of the Sustainable Europe
Research Institute (SERI) appear to accept, is physically
impossible. (Hickel, Sept. 2018; Dittrich, et al., 2012)
As the European Commission (for the European Union) reported, in
2017,
If present trends continue, human demand on the Earth’s
ecosystem is projected to exceed nature’s capacity to
regenerate by about 75% by 2020, and by 100% (meaning
that we would need two Earth planets to meet human
demands) by 2030.
Humanity currently uses resources at a rate 50% faster
than they can be regenerated by nature.

Karen McChrystal
25
Global demand for materials has increased ten-fold since
the beginning of the 20th century and is set to double
again by 2030, compared to 2010.
What Can Be Done Now
Some experts have argued for more work on removing carbon from
the atmosphere with machines. But the fact is, the current technol-
ogy needs to be scaled up by a factor of 2 million within 2 years, all
powered by renewables, alongside massive emission cuts, to reduce
the amount of heating already locked into the system.
(Wadhams, 2018).
Biological approaches to carbon capture appear far more
promising (Hawken and Wilkinson, 2017). These include
planting trees, restoring soils used in agriculture [...] Re-
search into “management-intensive rotational grazing”
practices (MIRG), also known as holistic grazing, show
how a healthy grassland can store carbon. A 2014 study
measured annual per hectare increases in soil carbon at
8 tons per year on farms converted to these practices
(Machmuller et al., 2015). The world uses about 3.5 bil-
lion hectares of land for pasture and fodder crops. Using
the 8 tons figure above, converting a tenth of that land
to MIRG practices would sequester a quarter of present
emissions. [...] It is clear, therefore, that our assessment
of carbon budgets must focus as much on these agricul-
tural systems as we do on emissions reductions.
(Bendell, 2018)

26
The Green New Deal
Representative Ocasio-Cortez’s proposal for a Green New Deal has
many laudable aspects. They include the following:
• Removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere
• Reducing pollution
• Restoring natural ecosystems through proven low-tech so-
lutions that increase soil carbon storage, such as preserva-
tion and afforestation
• Overhauling transportation systems in the United States to
eliminate pollution and greenhouse gas emissions from the
transportation sector as much as is technologically feasible
• Upgrading all existing buildings in the United States
and building new buildings to achieve maximal energy
efficiency
• Building or upgrading to energy-efficient, distributed, and
‘smart’ power grids
• Innovative forms of financing, such as setting up a network
of public banks to finance it directly, modeled after the
New Deal, and through much higher marginal tax brackets
on the rich and corporations, going back to what we once
had in the United States. The revenues could be used to
finance a massive shift toward solar and wind power.
An investment at the level of 2 percent of GDP does not need deficit
spending. Assuming there is the political will for such a program, it
could be financed by replacing dirty or socially useless investments
(and there are many, starting with armaments). If there is no extra
spending and debt, then there is no need to stimulate growth to pay
it back. (Kallis, 2019)

Karen McChrystal
27
However, since the Green New Deal does not, as of yet, propose an
ecological revolution with a broad social base, it is, at best, just the
entry point to such wider, eco-revolutionary change. If it does not
spark an ecological revolution, its effect will be nil.
(Bellamy-Foster, 2019)
Another key problem with the Green New Deal is that doesn’t
acknowledge the need to transition our economy away from its reli-
ance on endless growth. The Green New Deal narrative, as it stands,
risks reproducing – unless carefully framed – the hegemonic ideol-
ogy of capitalist growth, which has created the problem of climate
change in the first place.
Paolo Solón wrote,
Systemic alternatives cannot be reduced to a list of
good practices. All good practices must deepen and
transform themselves to become systemic alternatives.
Without this evolution, which is not exempt from crises,
contradictions and conflicts, a good practice may end up
being captured by the system which it once aspired to
change. (Solón, 2019)
In the 2017 book by Paul Hawken, Drawdown: The Most Compre-
hensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, there’s a
good list of remedial actions – impactful measures already in exis-
tence. These are measures, actions, that make sense to take regard-
less of their climate impact since they have intrinsic benefits to com-
munities and economies. They improve lives, create jobs, restore the
environment, enhance security, generate resilience, and advance hu-
man health. Each solution is measured and modeled to determine its
carbon impact through the year 2050, the total and net cost to society,
and the total lifetime savings (or cost). (Hawken, 2017)
Bendell agrees with Hawken, inasmuch as a massive campaign
and policy agenda are needed to transform agriculture and restore

28
ecosystems globally. However, Bendell’s outlook is more gloomy
(though he’s not predicting doom).
It will be a huge undertaking, undoing 60 years of devel-
opments in world agriculture. In addition, it means the
conservation of our existing wetlands and forests must
suddenly become successful, after decades of failure
across lands outside of geographically limited nature
reserves. Even if such will emerges immediately, the
heating and instability already locked into the climate
will cause damage to ecosystems, so it will be difficult
for such approaches to curb the global atmospheric car-
bon level. The reality that we have progressed too far
already to avert disruptions to ecosystems is highlighted
by the finding that if CO2 removal from the atmosphere
could work at scale, it would not prevent massive dam-
age to marine life, which is locked in for many years due
to acidification from the dissolving of CO2 in the oceans.
(Mathesius et al., 2015; Bendell, 2018)
The destruction of the climate and the ecosystem has gone so far
and for so long that now it is too late to stop the looming existential
disaster and ensuing chaos. Some environmental and climate
scientists have been warning about this for decades, but their voices
have been too little heeded.
In a paper published December 10, 2018, Dr. Rupert Read, an
academic, teacher, author, and a Green Party politician in England,
offered three options, all of which assume this civilization as we
have known it is finished:
Possibility number one is that we manage to transform
civilisation. A transformed civilisation would absolutely
radically alter the entire basis of pretty much everything
that we do. The kind of transformation we’re talking

Karen McChrystal
29
about is a lot bigger than, for example, just a large-scale
conversion to renewable energy. We’re also talking
about radically reducing the amount of transportation of
goods and people around the world. Radically relocalis-
ing. (Scott-Cato, M., 2013) Changing our farming prac-
tices profoundly and the entire nature of our agriculture,
radically reducing the amount of meat that we eat. And
much more. It would be a total transformation the likes
of which we have arguably never known, certainly not
since history began.
I hope that that happens and – probably like many of
you – I’m actively working to make it happen. But [...]
it would be a bold person who was prepared to commit
to the thought that that is going to happen – that we’re
going to make it happen, and that we’re going to make it
happen quickly enough. It would be a very risky bet to bet
everything upon that kind of completely unprecedented
transformation, and on overcoming all the vast vested
interests and ignorances and stupidities and lazinesses,
and so on and so forth which stand in the way of it. For
such a bet would occlude attention and resources starting
to be devoted to take seriously the question, “What if
we fail?” How then could we make things less bad for
whoever follows us.
So that is why I think we simply have to consider further
possibilities.
Possibility number two is a successor civilisation after
some kind of collapse, and that, it seems to me now, is
what we have to start to think is likely to happen. Or
put it this way: actually, some versions of this possibil-
ity are now very likely to be the best scenario we can
realistically hope for or plan towards (because possibility

30
number one is going to be so very hard to carry off). [...]
Unless we are incredibly lucky or incredibly determined
and brilliant (or almost certainly both) we are facing,
almost certainly, changes around the world which are
going to bring an end to this civilisation with extreme
prejudice. So we need to think about what comes after
it. We need to think about it now, and we need to start to
work toward it; because there are many sub-possibilities
within possibility two, and some of them are very ugly.
The successor-civilisation could for instance be largely a
matter of warlordism. We have to try to do what we can
to prepare our descendants for survival and for a new
civilisation which will be worth the paper it is written on.
Possibility number three of course is simply total col-
lapse.And in a way there’s not much that needs to be said
about that. It’s obviously highly, utterly highly undesir-
able! I’ll just say a tiny bit about it. There are various dif-
ferent forms that it could take. It could mean simply there
is no more civilisation, but that there are a few people
hanging on here and there. (Read, 2018)
As of this writing, there is rising popular pressure for emergency
measures to meet the challenges of climate change on the scale need-
ed. The groups involved include the Extinction Rebellion, student
strikes, and former Secretary of State John Kerry’s star-studded cli-
mate coalition, launched Nov. 30, 2019. The new group is called
World War Zero, which intends to evoke both the national security
threat posed by the earth’s warming and the type of wartime mobi-
lization that Mr. Kerry argued would be needed to stop the rise in
carbon emissions before 2050. While 2050 is very late in the day, it
might at least result in significant efforts at adaptation. (Friedman,
2019)
There is no shortage of ideas on what can be done in the face of
climate change, to at least mitigate its effects.We simply are not doing

Karen McChrystal
31
what it would take! The underlying reason is that under capitalism,
there is a growth imperative. Good climate policies would put brakes
on growth. Growth has already been far outstripping the gains made
from renewable energy.
Successor Civilization
All those who can think coherently and wisely can be enlisted in
efforts to lay the groundwork for what is to come next – the next
stage of human evolution, for those who can survive. Coherent
thinkers will be those who can lead the way to a sustainable future
for the human race. Why is this so? The more coherent our thinking,
the more powerful our influence is on other people and in the world.
This power to influence comes from several levels of our overall
consciousness.
By coherent thinking, we mean orderly, logical, and aesthetically
consistent thinking – thinking that is not cluttered and distorted by
emotions and fleeting distractions. When a thought or argument is
written down or expressed with rigorous logical reasoning, it’s im-
possible to misunderstand. Further, if it is truthful, as William Blake
said, “The truth cannot be told so as to be understood and not be
believed.” (Blake, 1975)
Integrity is necessary for the individual’s influence to be powerfully
transmitted. And the intention must be aligned with the highest good.
If a person’s intentions and/or thinking are based in a desire to harm
or coerce others, the transmitted effect will be weak to nil. Nega-
tive intent is disintegrative and degenerative, within the individual’s
“force field,” or electromagnetic brain-waves and scalar field.
(Byrd, 1972, 1984, 1991)
Assuming that maybe two to four billion people survive the devasta-
tion of climate change, we can hope for a successor civilization. It

32
may be that some cities will survive, or perhaps only well-prepared
resilient communities.
Australian environmental scientist and sustainability specialist Guy
Lane is more pessimistic:
It is conceivable that [...] maybe a billion people survive
and re-establish something that approximates the civili-
zation that we once had. The climate would be danger-
ous for thousands of years and there would be much less
nature around. The Great Barrier Reef would be gone as
would theAmazon Rainforest, for example. The sea level
would continue to rise, reducing year-by-year the amount
of land above water. There would be constant surprises,
such as landfills getting washed away in floods, spilling
tens of millions of tons of plastic waste into the largely
lifeless ocean, or nuclear power stations melting down
and burning up. (Lane, 2018)
A successor civilization will resemble nothing like what went before,
except for sustainable communities that were established earlier and
survive. A new civilization will need to be organized communally, as
well as sustainably, to have the best chance for resilience in the face
of the widespread destruction wrought by climate change and all its
consequent effects.
The first requirements for resilient, sustainable communities are, of
course, a reliable source of clean fresh water and arable land. Loca-
tions near large bodies of water can be less subject to heat increases,
as bodies of water change temperature more slowly and can keep
nearby land areas cooler. There are other requirements for sustain-
able communities too. These include housing and shelter, political
structure and governance, healthcare, education, energy and fuel,
and manufacturing, to name a few.

33
Communal living has many requirements, not the least of which is
provision for food, water, and shelter. Much has been learned, much
experience gained thus far about cooperative and communal living.
There are many current and historical examples that can be studied,
and preparations can be made in advance, before any anticipated
societal collapse.
Farming, agriculture: The best way to ensure sustainable farming
and agriculture (apart from biodynamic farming*), is permaculture.
Permaculture optimizes working in harmony with natural ecosys-
tems. Abundant literature and case studies are available, all easily
accessible online.
___________
* Biodynamic agriculture is a form of alternative agriculture very
similar to organic farming, but it includes various esoteric concepts
drawn from the ideas of Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). Initially devel-
oped in 1924, it was the first of the organic agriculture movements.
___________
Permaculture
The late Bill Mollison, an Australian researcher, author, scientist,
teacher, and biologist, is considered the father of permaculture.
Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than
against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation
ratherthanprotractedandthoughtlesslabour;oflookingat
plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treat-
ing any area as a single-product system. (Mollison, 1980)
Permaculture centers around whole systems thinking, simulating or
directly utilizing the patterns and resilient features observed in natu-
ral ecosystems. Permaculture is being applied in a growing number
of fields, from regenerative agriculture, to rewilding, community,

34
and organizational design and development, whatever the size of the
community.
Important to note: Permaculture incorporates planning for low-
energy systems, which may well be most practical in successor
communities.
Mollison said the requirements for successful permaculture are
passive energy systems; adequate climate control on site; future
developments planned; provision for food self-sufficiency on site;
minimal external energy needs; wastes safely disposed of on site;
low-maintenance structures and grounds; water supply assured, con-
served; and fire, cold, excess heat, and wind factors controlled and
directed. (Mollison, 1979)
Here are a few of the critical principles of permaculture, excerpted
from Mollison’s “The Principles of Permaculture”:
• For every critical need, provide for multiple ways of meet-
ing that need. Critical needs are water, food, money, heat-
ing, toilet, congeniality, social/political power.
• Have a backup plan. Provide for the unexpected – drought/
flood, economic depression, etc.
• Have diverse ways of getting your needs met.
• We remember that all other creatures in our shared
ecosystems are needing to get a yield, and so we invoke
the “Share the Surplus” ethic, and plant extra. Design for
surplus.
• A monocrop may yield an abundance of one product, but
the combined yields of a polycrop on the same space will
be more.
• Electricity: Photovoltaics, and grid, or PV and wind/hydro
power.

Karen McChrystal
35
• Trade: create barter and local currency groups, grow more
than you can eat, and stay in the money economy.
• Polycrop to provide plants with many avenues for pollina-
tion, pest protection, nutrients.
• All energy comes from the sun. Since energy is lost with
every transaction, we need to get as close to the origin as
possible – that is, the sun itself, and plants – to meet our
energy needs.
• Energy cycles through our system and then it’s gone,
whereas minerals can recycle forever in a well-maintained
soil.
• We want to catch “exotic” energy – that is, energy coming
from offsite and moving past, convert it to energy we can
use or store, and cycle it through our system as we need it.
• We want to grow our own renewable energy – that is, plants
and animals for our consumption.
• Waterwheels.
• Winter storage of tubers & other food.
• Masonry stoves.
• Passive solar design of buildings.
• Small livestock – energy available with no storage
necessary.
• Ecoforestry: creating renewable energy for the future,
woodlots.
• Small is Beautiful, E. F. Schumacher [Intermediate Tech-
nology Development Group]: promoting small, simple,
local, human-powered technologies.

36
• Permaculture is generally biology-centered, not techno-
centered: we want tools and technologies that help liberate
us from dependency and grant autonomy and self-reliance
– things that we can build and maintain with little external
assistance.
• Appropriate technologies may include solar, wind, wood,
biomass and water-driven equipment for generating power,
pumping water, and heating hot water.
• Consider medium-tech: maintaining and riding a bicy-
cle, using a refillable pen, using a razor with replaceable
blades, and substituting other nondisposable items where
disposables were used.
• Other appropriate technologies may include equipment
to design permaculture sites (such as computers and soft-
ware), large earth-moving equipment, cartage services,
and other “largescale” items which would tend to be used
once, in the implementation of the design, but not on a reg-
ular or daily basis.
• Be aware of the challenges in providing technology to un-
developed countries. Who will fix it when it breaks? How
much access to consumer culture do we want to be respon-
sible for providing?
• Appropriate technologies should be reliable, high quality,
well designed, low cost (when possible), durable, reparable,
capable of economic yield, adaptable to many functions.
They should have high EROEI (Energy Return on Energy
Invested) and low EMERGY (embodied energy).
For every by-product from one element, plan to have a productive
use for it in another activity.

Karen McChrystal
37
Co-operative and symbiotic relationships will be more adaptive in a
future of declining energy; however, we have a cultural disposition
to see and believe in competitive and predatory relationships, and
discount cooperative and symbiotic relationships – in nature and in
culture. (Mollison and Holmgren, 1980)
Sustainable Communities
Economist Brian Davey recommends the following practices for cre-
ating resilient, sustainable communities:
Reorganising the domestic and local economy around sharing:
The point about groups of people sharing domes-
tic and household arrangements and space is that it is a
more economical use of resources and one response
to the declining resource availability of contraction. It is
unnecessary that everyone has their own laundry facili-
ties, cooking, food store and transport. There is greater
security in being part of a larger community too.
[Sharing can include] public transport infrastructures.
Shared cultivation space as in community gardens and
community supported agriculture. This would involve
re-thinking and adapting community educational, train-
ing and community leisure provision at a local level –
particularly as what are needed are not just tools but in-
structions in how to use them. (Davey, 2015)
There are presently new forms of community, multiple work roles,
micro-economies, reconciliation movements, ecovillages, co-hous-
ing communities, and transition towns. There is a growing number of
diverse initiatives for restoration of the Earth, moving from physical
growth to non-physical forms of development. (Elgin, 2009)

38
Banking and Currencies
In communities that have managed to sustain themselves in the face
of climate change, for a time local currencies can be used. These are
much more efficient than barter economies, given the awkwardness
of bartering what one happens to have or produce for something one
needs or wants. Local banks, along the lines of “public banks,” as
described in detail by Ellen Brown, can work well.
(Brown, 2013)
At some future point, communities may want to link their econo-
mies with a type of centralized banking system, one more like linked
public banks. The current centralized banking system, namely, the
Federal Reserve System (not really a Government bank, but rather
a private bank, with certain federal restraints) has contributed sig-
nificantly to extreme economic inequality, and therefore has to be
re-thought.
Ecovillages
An ecovillage is an intentional, traditional, or urban community that
is consciously designed through locally owned participatory pro-
cesses in all four dimensions of sustainability (social, culture, ecol-
ogy, and economy) to regenerate social and natural environments.
Presently, there are around 10,000 of these communities on all con-
tinents. While there is no one way of being an ecovillage, there are
three core practices shared by all:
• Being rooted in local participatory processes
• Integrating social, cultural, economic, and ecological di-
mensions in a whole systems approach to sustainability
• Actively restoring and regenerating their social and natural
environments (Global Ecovillage Network, 2019)

Karen McChrystal
39
A wonderful example is the EchoHaven community in Calgary, Can-
ada, which includes energy-efficient homes that have passive house
and net-zero design.
• EchoHaven has preserved over 60% of the existing natural
landscape
• Reduction of 50% of grid power compared with an average
home
• Zero greenhouse gas emissions
• Rainwater harvesting
• All homes will meet minimum EnerGuide 84 (original
standard) (Ecohaven, 2019)
As climate chaos deepens, “growth” will take on an entirely new
context, and limits to growth will be recognized as imperative. A
number of economists and scholars have said that even without eco-
nomic growth, a range of desirable economic, social, and environ-
mental objectives can be achieved.
From a sustainability perspective, what matters is an
absolute reduction in throughput and land transforma-
tion degrading the soil and destroying habitat. These are
necessary conditions for sustainability. Achieving them
through strict controls that reduce throughput and rebuild
ecosystems may well require a reduction in the rate of
economic growth. It might also entail a period of de-
growth until the economy’s burden on the environment,
in rich countries to start with, is sufficiently moderated.
The main lesson [...] is that we should not shy away from
measures necessary for sustainability on the grounds that
they will undermine economic growth.
(Kallis,Kerschner,Martinez-Alier;Victor;Alisa,Demaria,
Kallis, 2014)

40
Conclusion
For a long period, a growing economy brought benefits in terms of
health, happiness, and fulfillment. Infant mortality rates fell and life
expectancy increased. Welfare states appeared, along with health
care, education, and reliable infrastructure. But now, generally, espe-
cially in the western world the economy has grown beyond a certain
per capita size, benefits have stopped increasing and even started to
fall. We’ve seen a rise in stress, congestion, crime, pollution, noise,
ugliness, boring work, and lack of community. Growth as capital-
ism has produced it, population growth included, causes ecological
damage and leads to climate change – the greatest threat to human
civilization.
There is no practical solution for preserving civilization as we have
known it. Ecological damage and climate change have gone too
far. While many will fight till their dying breath to sustain the stan-
dards of living to which they’ve become accustomed, they will not
escape the consequences of human-caused damage to the biosystem,
nor will the rest of humanity. However, mitigation of the effects of
climate change are possible, and people who have prepared them-
selves ahead of the worst changes, with resilient communities, tran-
sition towns, and the like, will fare much better than those who are
unprepared.

Karen McChrystal
41
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48
About the Author
Karen McChrystal, M.A., MFCC, is an author and interdisciplin-
ary researcher. She is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief for Hidden
Springs Press, based in Santa Monica, California. She is also the
Executive Director and a founder of the Sustainable Living Institute,
a non-profit organization based in Santa Monica, California.
Her undergraduate studies were done at Stanford University, where
she received a BA in political science. She completed a Master’s
degree in Clinical Psychology at the Western Institute for Social Re-
search, in San Francisco, California.
After graduating with a BA, she worked as an investigative journal-
ist and was an editor/managing editor for various print publications.
After receiving her Master’s degree and MFCC license, she had a
successful private practice as a psychotherapist for thirteen years.
She then worked in the burgeoning Internet industry as editor for
online publications. For the past fourteen years, as owner of Hidden
Springs Press, she has been helping other authors publish their own
books.

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