toward a green enlightenment

Toward a Green Enlightenment

by Craig Collins, Ph.D.

Cosmology is a fancy, yet useful, word for “the big picture.” Cosmologies provide a grand story explanation for how the world/universe works, how it started and where it’s going. They are sweeping explanatory maps that attempt to help people get their bearings in a complex and confusing world. Some cosmologies provide a basic understanding of the human condition: who and where we are, where we should go from here, what problems we'll face on our journey, and how to overcome them. Thus, a useful cosmology helps us know ourselves as human beings more deeply; provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of our current way of life; and shows us how to improve it. It directs our collective attention and common energies toward overcoming the major crises plaguing modern life and guides our efforts to shape the future. While many cosmologies are based on science, religious cosmologies use god(s) as their starting point for explaining the world. Other cosmologies are essentially secular and political in nature—they are called ideologies. Scientific, religious and ideological cosmologies are all based on some underlying view of human nature and our role in the grand scheme of things.

Cosmologies are uniquely human. We seem to be the only creatures both capable of creating cosmologies and needing them to thrive. Yet cosmologies should be approached with a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism. All cosmologies must embrace some sweeping generalities in order to distill a relatively uncomplicated worldview from a far more complex and confusing reality. This distillation and simplification process alone—although essential to any "map-making" process—provides ample justification for skepticism. In order to make the cosmological map easier to read and increase its popular appeal, critical elements of reality can be overlooked or distorted in the distillation process; this inevitably reduces its accuracy and undermines its ability to guide us through the treacherous currents of life. Yet, unless the cosmological map is easy to read and makes the journey seem worthwhile, it won't guide anyone anywhere.

Cosmologies are a lot like friends. We need them, but we should choose them wisely because a bad friend can be worse than no friend at all. Like friends, cosmologies have a profound impact on our behavior, for better or worse. Since every cosmology seeks to govern our daily behavior by shaping our identity and claiming the allegiance of our hearts and minds, they are not neutral or ineffectual. They attempt to convince us that they possess the most

Collins Green Enlightenment

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accurate explanation of who we are; where we're going; and how best to get there. The cosmologies we embrace and oppose in our daily lives have a deep impact on the kind of life we live and how we affect the world around us.

Consciously embracing and advocating one of the many historically renowned cosmologies can be dangerous. Throughout history people have been persecuted and even exterminated for their religious and ideological beliefs. Thus, most people shy away from openly endorsing unpopular cosmologies. Instead, people usually quietly assimilate a personalized version of their society's dominant cosmologies. For example, by adulthood most Americans have been culturally immersed in a cosmological potpourri of Classic and Contemporary Liberalism, Modern Conservatism and Judeo-Christianity. Although there are tensions and contradictions between these contending worldviews, their basic tenets are compatible enough to be accommodated within mainstream American political culture. In varying degrees, all of these cosmologies embrace the capitalist economic values of private property, economic liberty, and the free market as well as the Enlightenment political values of representative government, individual rights, freedom of speech, and some measure of political equality.

Even in societies that profess respect for individual rights, diversity and tolerance, it can be dangerous to advocate cosmologies outside the mainstream. Yet, there is always a significant segment of any society that is dissatisfied with, and critical of, part or all of their society's dominant beliefs. In the United States, Communists, Anarchists, Socialists, Mormons, Atheists, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Native American Spiritualists and a host of other groups have been jailed and persecuted for their cosmological beliefs. Conflict and even war between people with different belief systems are as old as human history.

Although this may be a disturbing notion, we cannot avoid this conflict even if we profess to reject all cosmological affiliations. Those who insist they embrace no cosmology are simply kidding themselves. From birth, our most fundamental attitudes about others and ourselves have been conditioned and shaped consciously and subconsciously by the cosmological notions embedded in our culture and our minds. Everyone who is consciously interacting with the world employs a cosmology that shapes their identity, no matter how inconsistent, capricious or muddled. We could not sensibly function on a daily basis without making certain basic assumptions and judgments about human nature, our place in society, how the world works (and should work), and what behaviors, values and ideas we endorse, reject and tolerate in others and ourselves. These assumptions and beliefs are the essence of each person's cosmology.


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In fact, a strong case can be made that the most dangerous cosmology of all is the one that is assimilated unconsciously and thus remains unexamined and unquestioned at the conscious level. How much damage has been done by people who have unconsciously accepted the notion that people of color are subhuman; that women are inferior to men; that God is on our side and our country is always right; that technology will solve all our problems; that nature is an endlessly exploitable cornucopia; or that people should be judged by what they own, not who they are? Although some people openly profess and advocate these beliefs (and others flatly reject them), many more simply accept them subconsciously, behaving as if they were true without ever questioning these notions in themselves or others.

If cosmological beliefs are necessary and unavoidable—and their potential dangers can only be magnified by pretending they do not affect us—the wisest approach to cosmologies is to examine them carefully, especially those that have become deeply embedded in our unconscious attitudes and daily behaviors. In this way we can gain more clarity and control over which beliefs we make our own, which we reject, and why we have made these choices.

In this spirit, the following contribution to an emerging Green/ecological cosmology is offered. Green spiritual and political philosophy has been germinating for several decades now but it is still in its infancy. Many of the fundamental premises which form the skeletal framework of any developed cosmology are still unclear and under debate. However, the need for greater clarity on these basic premises becomes ever more pressing as the global industrial system becomes mired in escalating militarism, mindless growth, political corruption and environmental collapse. Greens cannot assume that the deepening crisis of industrial civilization will inevitably give rise to the peaceful, sustainable, democratic societies they would prefer to live in. The kind of society that will replace a crisis-ridden, decaying global industrialism is still undetermined. The ecological vision of the future will have to compete against a host of less savory ideologies and political movements that posses none of the moral reservations about violence, tyranny, oppression, exploitation, corruption, and opportunism Greens embrace. Can Greens foster an ecological enlightenment capable of responding to these challenges?

The world's most influential ideologies are premised upon basic assumptions about human nature and history. These assumptions give rise to a particular vision of the best form of government, the ideal society and how to go about achieving them. For example, most of the Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th Century embraced a view of human nature that was individualist, inventive, self-interested, and rational. Classic Liberals saw history as a


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progressive evolutionary process of individual rationality overcoming primitive tribal superstitions and Medieval Absolutism, and liberating scientific rationality and innovative self-interest to the betterment of all mankind. These commonly accepted Liberal ideological premises guided their revolutionary struggle against the feudal monarchies of Europe and gave them a vision of the kind of capitalist republics and imperialist global relationships that would replace them. Whether an Ecological Enlightenment eventually replaces the Liberal Enlightenment will depend, in part, on how well Greens address these same basic questions. Without growing clarity on who we humans are, how we got into this mess, and how we can learn from the past to guide us into the future, Greens cannot hope to germinate a powerful social movement capable of leading the transition toward a more peaceful, democratic, sustainable future.

Human Nature: The Green View

The Green view of human nature begins with the basic assumption that we humans are part of the animal kingdom—highly intelligent social primates. We live in societies that are embedded in, and dependent upon, the complex web of ecological relationships that sustain life on this planet. Human character is shaped through a complex interaction between our genetic/biological heritage and our experiential environment—both cultural and natural. The human capacity for cultural evolution—learning and passing on knowledge through language, especially written language—has partially liberated our species from the slower pace of biological evolution. Cultural evolution has accelerated the pace of human history relative to the more leisurely pace of biological evolution that governs the development of other creatures. It has also changed the fulcrum of this evolution from the anatomic attributes of our species to the cultural attributes of our societies.* Instead of the primary engine of change in our species being the biologically based process of natural selection, it has become a culturally based historical process whose evolutionary dynamics are heavily debated and only partially understood. However, this historical process of cultural evolution appears to be closely linked to the conveyance of collective knowledge, social organization and technological innovation and proficiency from one generation to the next.

The ability to consciously collect and pass-on knowledge to future generations is intimately connected with another highly developed human characteristic—time awareness. Deep awareness of past, present and future has had a profound impact upon our species. It has forced us to confront and reflect upon the nature of life and our own mortality; filled us with wonder for the unfolding universe; sparked our curiosity to discover the forces shaping it; and * This could change drastically if genetic engineering technologies allow us to alter our genetic make-up.


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encouraged us to ponder our place in "the grand scheme of things." These qualities have given human culture (especially our scientific and spiritual endeavors) a profoundly cosmological character.

Time awareness and the capacity for cultural evolution appear to be both a blessing and a curse. They allow us to analyze, reflect upon and learn from our personal and collective pasts; to plan, set goals and shape (but not control) the future; and to wonder at the beauty and mystery of nature at the same time we struggle to bend it to our will. Yet, because we realize that, ultimately, we can never be the masters of the universe or even our own fates, our species is characterized by a deep angst regarding death and what (if anything) comes after it. For this reason the human psyche is strongly inclined toward fear and insecurity. Our religions are preoccupied with the fear of death and developing imaginary explanations of the "afterlife" to reduce and/or manipulate this fear. In fact, the fear of death and the promise of an everlasting blissful afterlife for devoted believers have long been the primary methods used by religious elites for securing and maintaining the spiritual fealty of their followers.

A basic premise of Green cosmology is its commitment to honesty. It does not seek to gain a following by distorting reality. If people choose to adopt a Green cosmology, it will be because they see Greens trying to seek and speak the truth and shunning opportunism and demagoguery. This commitment requires Green cosmology to take an open-minded, agnostic position on the existence of an afterlife, gods, and goddesses—since there is no way to prove they do, or do not, exist. Green cosmology must openly admit ignorance in this regard. However, this ignorance can be liberating because it is combined with the recognition that many people need a faith-based belief system; further, it permits individuals to freely embrace or reject these theological doctrines as a matter of individual choice. Finally, by preventing Green cosmology from rejecting or endorsing any deity or faith-based belief system, agnosticism forces Greens to assess each religious worldview on its own practical merits. For example, does it teach reverence for the planet and its creatures? Does it discourage mindless consumerism and selfish individualism? Where does it stand on the problems of class exploitation, race and gender oppression and bias?

For many Greens, when it comes to the fear of death and the hope for an afterlife, embracing the ecologically obvious provides adequate peace of mind. Our life and death are intimately and inseparably linked to the larger, continuous life-death-rebirth cycles of our planet. We cannot know for certain what becomes of that unique spirit/soul that energizes our bodies in life. However, we know that death recycles our material bodies to create new life;


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therefore, it seems plausible that this may be true for the life force that energizes us as well.

Toward a Green View of History

Of utmost importance at this point in history is an understanding of how human civilization has come to its current ecological crisis and how to handle it. Some Greens are committed to the notion that a fundamental change of consciousness—an ecological epiphany—is all that is necessary to open the eyes of human kind and set us on the path to sustainable salvation. For them, history is of little practical value; it cannot help us out of this mess. Therefore, they believe Greens must simply foster a new ecological awareness and enthusiasm for making peace with the planet. However, other Greens feel history has much to teach us. They are convinced that many of the underlying causes of our current crisis are the result of complex underlying historical forces and unintended consequences that are only partially understood and require far more than individual consciousness-raising to alter their destructive impact. For them, a deeper understanding of history is vital for illuminating the path away from ecological calamity.

Most of our everyday behaviors are short-term, practical responses to the way our society is organized—work, school, family. Yet many of these small, seemingly inconsequential, everyday behaviors are environmentally devastating when everyone does them, over the long run. For example, many people have become aware of the dire, long-term environmental impacts of driving. Some have decided to bike, walk, or take mass transit to school or work. But American society isn’t organized in a way that makes not driving a practical choice for most people no matter how much they’d prefer to stay off the road. As long as millions of people live in suburbs connected to workplaces by miles and miles of freeway, no amount of mere consciousness-raising will allow them to use clean, sustainable modes of transportation. Most people are compelled to get behind the wheel whether they love or hate driving because it’s the only convenient way to get around.

In fact, our society is organized to make it convenient for us to behave in ways that are profitable for automakers and other businesses in the short-run, yet wasteful, environmentally devastating and extremely hazardous to our health and survival in the long run. Powerful business interests work overtime to shape our daily choices by making the most convenient option for most of us the most the most profitable option for them. Only when society is organized to make the most convenient, immediate choices identical to the most healthy, environmentally benign, long-term choices (instead of the most profitable choices) will most peoples' lifestyles, behaviors and attitudes become “Green.”


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As long as the profit motive dominates transportation policy, resources use, production, consumption, waste disposal and community development policy, most people will be actively discouraged from choosing sustainable lifestyles and no amount of consciousness-raising will make more than a moderate dent in this process. In other words, averting ecological crises requires more than just raising individual awareness, it requires transforming the systemic, social and economic forces that shape our daily lives.

Even the limited goal of raising awareness is seriously inhibited by the systemic imperatives of corporate media in a capitalist economy. Clearly the sophisticated communication technologies of modern society have the potential to foster enthusiasm for healing our planet. But in this society the media’s central purpose is not promoting education, awareness and activism, or even providing information and entertainment. Corporate media’s profits depend on delivering huge audiences of potential consumers to the advertisers who sponsor their programs, from superbowls to sitcoms. Advertising is the cash cow of the entertainment and information industry. Advertising is designed to promote consumption, which is both the father of economic growth and the mother of most environmental problems. Of course, astute advertisers try to resolve this conflict by selling us on the idea that we can promote economic growth and solve our environmental problems by purchasing green products. Buying green is not a bad idea, as long as we’re not just buying green hype. Yet ultimately an economy addicted to greater consumption and unlimited growth is incompatible with the planet’s ecological limits. Therefore, the greenest consumers are those that consume the least--a proposition that sends shivers down an advertiser’s spine and tremors throughout the economy.

Getting “unstuck” by transforming environmentally destructive social policies requires political power and technological and social innovation, not just “Green enlightenment.” Nevertheless, ecological awareness weaves the cultural network for fabricating a cohesive political movement dedicated to transforming our society and healing our planet. But, in addition to a revolutionary Green cosmology, this movement will require an understanding of how political power is achieved, used, and lost; how powerful opposing interests can be outmaneuvered, neutralized and overcome and how wasteful, decadent social systems can be replaced with healthy new ones.

Gaining power and using it properly is not only difficult and dangerous; it is an enormous responsibility. Wisdom informed by a deep familiarity with history—its hidden opportunities, patterns and pitfalls—will be essential. Even those with the best intentions can produce unrealistically disastrous strategies and polices without this historical wisdom. It is in this spirit that this


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preliminary conceptual framework for a Green understanding of history is offered.

Ecology, Social Structure, & Historical Epochs

Humans, like all living creatures, can only survive by borrowing energy from the surrounding ecosystem for food and shelter. In all human societies this energy withdrawal process (what Karl Marx called production) is accomplished with the aid of tools/technology. These technologies are designed to extract, control, collect, store, transport and convert specific sources of environmental energy (living and non-living) for human use. Therefore, every society's primary survival relationship is between its energy withdrawal process (its technologies and work patterns) & the ecological niche it exploits. Because this energy extraction process is so basic to human survival, it has had a profound and pervasive influence over our social structures, cultures and belief systems. In short, a society’s way of life shapes its values and beliefs.

Humans have exploited 3 broad types of energy niche throughout history. Each fundamental type of niche requires a qualitatively different set of technologies, social structures, and cosmologies. Of course, within these fundamental types there is a wide diversity and variation on this basic theme. Nonetheless, human history can be characterized, so far, by three fundamental ways of life—hunting & gathering, agricultural & pastoral, and mechanized—each defined by a distinct set of technologies & lifestyles specifically fashioned to exploit the environment in a different manner.

The Hunting & Gathering Epoch

For well over 90% of our time here on earth, all humans lived in hunting & gathering societies (a tiny percentage still do). These foraging cultures generally consumed an energy niche composed of wild biota—the plants and animals native to their habitat. The tools and work patterns varied widely within this foraging mode of survival; spears & harpoons, digging sticks, scrapers, bows & arrows, fishing nets, and traps were all technologies designed to exploit a local ecosystem's natural stores of wild flora and fauna. But, despite this obvious diversity, the universally small size and relative simplicity of these societies was required by both the caloric ceiling afforded by the natural stores of energy available in any given habitat and by the abiding need for mobility. A sedentary village life was unsuitable because, with few exceptions, wild sources of food were not concentrated enough in any one place to sustain human life.

The cosmologies of these small mobile, foraging cultures varied greatly. However, they all held at least two characteristics in common. First, they were animistic—they attributed a conscious spiritual life to all living and non-living


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forces in their universe. Second, the Earth (meaning their habitat) was considered sacred—the mother of all life. The creatures that were given prominence in any particular culture's cosmological order depended upon the specific ecosystem and energy niche it used to survive. It is no accident that the indigenous peoples of the North American plains exalted the buffalo or that the native Americans of the coastal Northwest revered the salmon, their very survival depended upon these species. Other species that possessed qualities and capabilities highly valued by a culture were also endowed with great spiritual power. Among the tribes of the coastal Northwest, the grizzly, the osprey and the orca were exalted for their fishing and hunting prowess and the spirit of one of these creatures would often be invoked as the tribal totem. Thus, the cosmologies of all hunting and gathering cultures reflected their total and direct dependence upon—and reverence for—their natural ecosystem and especially the particular plants and animals that sustained them or showed them how to survive.

The Agrarian/Pastoral Epoch

Even if they eventually came to occupy the same territory as earlier foraging tribes, agricultural societies exploited a qualitatively different energy niche. Farmers dramatically altered—domesticated—their ecosystems by creating their own habitats. The solar-powered life cycles of select plants and animals were modified and managed to increase the energy flow for human use. This was done at the expense of those wild species of plants and animals considered "weeds", "pests", and "vermin", because they hindered the farmer's ability to withdraw energy from the agricultural process. Detrimental or competitive species were eliminated or marginalized, beneficial ones were nourished, protected, harvested, and selectively bred in unnatural abundance. This process of domestication demanded more human labor, but it had the potential to dramatically increase the amount of energy available to society. Thus, because agricultural society had both the need for more labor and the capacity to increase in size, humans and their domesticated animal and plant populations grew dramatically. Because energy was now drawn from tilling and/or irrigating the soil, society became settled—“rooted” to a specific territory instead of nomadic. Also, its behavior patterns became more seasonal, repetitive, and based on traditional patterns of cultivation.

The increased size and complexity of agricultural society required more specialized, routinized, collectivized and stratified modes of social organization to manage the energy extraction process. This was especially true of river based agricultural societies that depended on the construction and maintenance of extensive irrigation systems of dams, canals, levees and dikes. Those who engineered and managed this process gained exceptional power because of their


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unique position in the management, planning, control and mobilization of the production process. Their control over the supply of surplus grain and their strategic capacity to deny water to those who refused to submit to their hierarchical dominance increased their coercive power. However, to minimize the need for coercion and maintain social cohesion, agricultural elites relied mainly upon religion to sanctify their authority and reinforce the social behaviors the masses must adopt to sustain this way of life—sacrifice, obedience, conformity and cooperation.

While the cosmology of each agricultural society was unique, they all held some characteristics in common. The natural forces governing the fertility of the agricultural process—the seasons, the sun and moon, the rains, rivers and even the volcanoes—were endowed with spiritual power and significance. In addition, since human intelligence and foresight were essential to dramatically alter and domesticate the surrounding environment and predict and adapt to climatic variation, agricultural societies were the first to create goddesses and gods by projecting human intellectual, emotional and physical characteristics upon natural forces. The priests and priestesses that managed the agricultural process were supposedly uniquely favored by these gods. In some religions, they were considered demigods themselves. Sacrifice and obedience were necessary to keep them happy. The spiritual message of agrarian-based religions was based on conformity, cooperation, sacrifice and obedience to authority—all of the behaviors necessary to sustain an agrarian system managed by a religious elite. It was dangerous—in this life and the afterlife, and both personally and collectively—to ignore or disobey the moral codes of behavior laid down by the gods & goddesses through their priests and priestesses. Punishment for disobedience usually came in the form of "natural" disasters—crop failures, drought, flood, pestilence, famine, and disease. And, indeed, these were the ultimate repercussions of a poorly managed agricultural society.

Sacrifice was a key element of all agrarian cosmologies. Most of the religions of this era stressed the need for humans to sacrifice something of great value to the gods in order to avoid their wrath and gain their assistance in preventing personal and social catastrophe. This was an effort to gain some measure of psychological security and "control" over an environment that was both mysterious and potentially devastating. The profound insecurity of being at the mercy of nature's wrath was reduced if the deities that controlled these forces could be placated with the proper sacrificial rituals. The notion of sacrifice was also a lever of social control over the collective labor process. Religious leaders could induce humble obedience and great personal sacrifices from their followers in the form of religious offerings and labors if god's grace in life and the afterlife was their promised reward. It was this ability to induce


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sacrifice and cooperation that raised the wealth and mobilized the labor to dig canals, build complex networks of dikes, levees and aqueducts, and construct roads, great pyramids, magnificent palaces, and awe-inspiring temples.

The Industrial Epoch

Mechanized/industrial societies exploit a non-renewable carboniferous energy base (coal, oil, natural gas) to electrify society and replace slower paced wind, water, human and animal powered technologies with machine technologies. With access to the tremendous amounts of energy stored beneath the earth, this high-energy society leaves behind (at least partially and temporarily) the slower pace of life constrained by dependence on the seasonal energy cycles that reproduce plant and animal energy. Using the electric light and the steam engine, factories were even able to avoid the work cycles imposed by day and night and changes of season. Industrial society had the energy to work around the clock, rain or shine, 365 days a year, turning out commodities in enormous amounts and at an incredible pace, and transporting them around the world in a matter of hours. Of course, with this giant storehouse of carboniferous energy at its disposal, industrial society became even larger in size and far more complex than agricultural society. In addition, industrial society's capacity to exploit tremendous stores of fossil fuels provided it with the illusion that, for the first time, humanity was no longer dependent upon nature.

To adapt to, and take advantage of, the increased pace of the petroleum-powered production process humans adopted methods of production, distribution, and exchange that were flexible and efficient. Efficiency and flexibility were best served by allowing the profit motive to govern the pace of production and market mechanisms, like supply and demand, to allocate resources—including human labor. Human labor was reduced to a commodity, and its unique creative nature was subordinated to the repetitive, fast-paced, mind-numbing dictates of industrial production.

Because carboniferous energy is so rich and highly concentrated, it has the capacity to do far more work than the minimal labor needed to simply extract it from the earth. Since extraction costs were so low for this abundant source of rich energy, fossil fuel powered machinery was much cheaper than human labor. Also, machines didn’t complain or go on strike. Therefore, industrial bosses endeavored to automate production as much as possible. Automation had the added advantage of embodying many of the most complicated aspects of production in the machines rather than in the skills of the labor force. By dumbing-down the labor process and concentrating the skills in the machine, management made workers more easily replaceable. Of course, this reduced


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labor’s bargaining power because unskilled workers were more easily replaced in the event of a strike.

This rapid, impersonal, dumbed-down, highly automated, market-driven production process, while extremely labor-efficient and flexible, is highly resistant to social control even by those who are nominally "in charge" of society's most powerful economic and political institutions. To stay in business or keep their jobs, workers, managers and CEOs must conform to the disciple of the machine, the profit motive and the market. This requires the mindless acceptance of labor efficiency, relentless growth and constant consumption. The entire industrial system appears locked into a process of non-stop acceleration with no particular destination. Instead of a means to an end, growth is an end in itself.

Many people continue to embrace religious cosmologies that imbue life with a higher meaning during the industrial epoch because of the deep sense purposeless, powerless, alienation that accompanies labor exploitation and mindless, repetitive, production and consumption. However, the cosmologies that grew out of the industrial period are primarily secular and political in character. These secular, more political, cosmologies became known as "ideologies.” Most of them openly lauded the supremacy of humans, rationality, and science over nature, spiritualism, and theology. Modern Conservatism, Classic & Modern Liberalism, Socialism, and Communism all assumed, and extolled the virtues of, boundless industrial "progress" and reduced living ecosystems to vast cornucopias of lifeless natural resources. Instead of holding either nature or deities as sacred, these industrial era ideologies worshiped the gospel of growth and placed their faith in technology and science.

While ignoring the resource and ecological limits to industrial growth, each of these ideologies offered political rationales for ever-escalating rates of production and consumption. For some, like modern conservatism and classic liberalism, the purpose of pursuing limitless growth was primarily individual—expanding access to personal wealth and liberty. For others—like Marxism, socialism, and modern liberalism—the purpose was primarily social: ending poverty, oppression, scarcity, war and class exploitation; promoting peace, prosperity, equality, democracy and social justice. But whether the purpose was individual or social, endless economic growth was assumed to be both possible and necessary. This is the most basic dividing line between all of the industrial era ideologies and Green cosmology. Greens begin by assuming that limitless economic growth is both impossible and unnecessary. This belief is deeply grounded in


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the Green interpretation of the constantly evolving relationship between human society and the natural environment.

Energy, Vital Functions & Early Social Structure

To insure their survival, all societies must be able to withdraw energy from the environment and direct it toward three primary vital functions: 1) production; 2) reproduction; 3) protection. Without the ability to perform these three functions, no society can survive.

Production: As mentioned above, production, the process whereby society extracts & transforms raw environmental energy into forms fit for human consumption and use, is the primary process of survival. For humans, this process has been carried out through cooperative social effort (labor) and the use of tools/technology.

Reproduction: In order for any society to survive past a single generation, it must maintain a constant enough energy flow to reproduce itself. This means there must be adequate energy to permit both sexual and cultural reproduction. Adequate numbers of new members of society must mature to reproductive age and become capable of culturally assimilating and passing on the accumulated storehouse of knowledge and skills essential for maintaining society's energy flow. Thus reproduction means raising each new generation to take on the responsibilities of parents and grandparents.

Protection: Society has also found it necessary to protect and defend itself, and its energy base, from "predator forces"—both human and non-human—who threaten the life of society and its vital energy sources. Defense from microscopic energy parasites like bacteria which cause illness and disease in humans and their domestic plants and animals has required knowledge of nutrition, hygiene, plant and animal biology and the healing arts. Protection from the elements has required knowledge of architecture and clothing. Defense from attack—human or animal—or confiscation of vital resources has required knowledge of weapons, warfare, and fortification.

Society's earliest divisions of labor: The earliest and most fundamental divisions of labor grew up around these three vital functions and were based on the genetic/biological differences between men and women, young and old. However, in earliest tribal cultures these functions were not strictly divided along gender or age lines. Strict


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divisions did not promote the kind of unifying bonds necessary to keep small foraging societies working together smoothly. Nevertheless, tribal societies were not strictly gender blind and egalitarian. While all members of the clan were valued and respected, those with greater experience and wisdom (the elders) were held in higher regard. Also, because tribal societies were so dependent on the mysterious reproductive powers of women, women were generally considered more central to tribal life and survival than men.

Gender & Production: While both men and women were involved in the production process of foraging societies, divisions of labor differed from culture to culture. Most tribal societies depended more upon plant gathering than hunting for their primary source of calories. Gathering was usually the primary province of women because they were often pregnant, nursing, or watching out for toddlers and could not participate in hunting parties. Also, the need to treat the maladies of infancy made women more aware of the vast, subtle and complex healing properties of many plants. Men engaged themselves mainly in hunting and fishing. In most societies this division was not strictly observed. Generally, societies that depended on hunting (or fishing) for their main supply of energy gave men greater prestige than those that primarily supported themselves through gathering, but nearly all early foraging cultures were matrilineal, women-centered societies.

Gender & Reproduction: The strictest divisions of labor were in the area of reproduction. Here, women were clearly central. For thousands of years it was not known that sexual intercourse produced children. Thus, fertility was considered a magical power belonging to women alone. This reproductive power made women the center of all kinship relations. Nearly all foraging societies were matrilineal; and a young man left the tribe of his mother and sisters to marry into the tribe of his wife. Women were the center of tribal life. The older women, matriarchs, were the most respected members of the tribe and often the tribe's most revered spiritual leaders.

Gender & Protection: Because women were the source of new life, their lives were considered more essential to tribal survival than men's. Thus, in most tribes, women were not expected to risk their lives as warriors. Also, men were generally more experienced in the use of weapons and were never burdened by pregnancy or nursing infants. For all these reasons, the warriors—those who defended the life of the tribe and its energy niche—were usually men, although it was not uncommon for women to be warriors as well.


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In the other area of tribal protection—from disease and illness—women were primary. More often than not, it was women's knowledge of the healing properties of plants and their intimate knowledge of pregnancy, childbirth, and the maladies of infancy that gave them superiority in the healing arts. Although men were often healers and shamans, it was usually women who performed this function.

Explaining Social Change: The First Great Transition

For over ninety percent of our time on earth, humans lived in small foraging societies. To understand why, after millions of years, foraging societies around the earth began to transform themselves into settled agricultural societies within a relatively short period of historical time, it is important to understand what was happening to the ecological niches of these foraging cultures.

It took hundreds of thousands of years for tribal cultures to spread out over the globe, but eventually most of the habitable energy niches (bioregions) were “spoken for.” This epic migratory expansion was driven by climate changes and slow but relentless population growth. Despite efforts to control population through herbal contraceptives and abortions, cultural restrictions on intercourse, and infanticide, every society had a natural incentive to preserve the life of its infants and guarantee its reproductive survival. As long as bountiful habitats were accessible, tribal division and migration could handle overcrowding in any particular area. But eventually most areas became overcrowded and tribes began to compete for hunting grounds and to over-exploit their bioregion's stores of wild plant and animal energy. This growing scarcity, increasing competition and slow degradation of habitable ecosystems could be intensified by climate changes that made some ecosystems even less habitable. Eventually this situation became unsustainable for many foraging peoples and elicited a response with profound historical repercussions.

Resource depletion and territorial competition encouraged warfare, and consequently a rise in the stature of men and the importance of weapons. This spurred the development of ever more sophisticated technologies of warfare and hunting and gathering as each culture endeavored to protect its territory and develop more intensive methods for expropriating its energy stores. As game became less plentiful and more wary of humans ever more sophisticated implements and strategies were needed to hunt them. Thus we find a steady improvement from primitive stone tools and weapons to more sophisticated traps, bows & arrows, and fishing nets. Many of these implements doubled as weapons of war.


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As the wild plants and animals that formed the energy niche of many foraging cultures became depleted and their territories hemmed-in by competing tribes, hunger set in. Women began to use their knowledge of plants to raise crops for the first time. While foraging tribes were well aware of how to cultivate plants, this kind of hard labor was considered unnecessary as long as there were plentiful stores of useful plants growing naturally. But as wild sources became scarce, women supplemented them by raising crops, usually in fertile, constantly irrigated, riverbed soils. In addition, shrinking supplies of wild game were supplemented by domesticating animals, usually goats (and sometimes cattle and oxen), for their milk and meat—and (for bovines) their labor. Often, herding was thought to be the work of women (and children) who could feed young stray goats breast milk to keep them alive and whose babies could benefit from goat's milk, which was much like human milk, if their own supply of mother's milk was low.

Thus, in fertile river valleys around the planet where the conditions for agriculture were optimal, demographic pressure and the depletion of the "wild" ecosystems eventually induced foraging tribes to supplement hunting and gathering with horticulture. The technologies and work patterns associated with farming were fundamentally different from foraging because they exploited a domesticated energy niche that ultimately required a qualitatively new way of life. Once again, since women were most familiar with plants, raising crops, and domesticating animals, they became more central to these early Neolithic horticultural village societies. However, farming societies that found themselves in constant competition with their neighbors and engaged in frequent warfare developed a tendency to elevate men into positions of power and authority.

In a few areas of the planet where agriculture was difficult but the conditions for herding were excellent, like the vast grassland steppes of Eurasia, hunting and gathering were replaced with nomadic, horse-riding, pastoral cultures instead of farming. The first cultures to domesticate goats, sheep and horses harnessed this new energy to vanquish and drive out other cultures and to migrate over wide expanses of grassland herding their goats and defending their vast pasturelands on horseback. These mobile cultures were smaller, simpler and less diverse than settled agricultural societies. However, they became more adept at using the most powerful weapon of the agricultural epoch—the horse. This was only true for Eurasian herding cultures because there were no horses in the Americas.

The Emergence of Patriarchy, Classes, & States


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The earliest, agrarian, village-based Neolithic cultures were usually matrilineal, goddess-worshipping, societies that remained relatively peaceful and generally egalitarian until they became threatened by each other or conquered by those hunting & gathering tribes which had turned to horse-mounted warfare and pastoralism as a way of life. Unlike the matrilineal agriculturists, these warrior/pastoralists were male dominated social systems because the predominantly male skills of equestrian herding and warfare were prized above all else. Originally, these two kinds of cultures were geographically isolated from each other. The early matrilineal agricultural societies evolved in fertile, easily irrigated river valleys like the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Mississippi and the Yellow & Yangtze rivers or around the fertile Mediterranean Basin; while the horse riding pastoralists occupied the grassy steppes of northern Eurasia. However, as each type of system expanded, collisions and conflicts multiplied.1

Domesticating horses gave the highly mobile, male-dominated pastoral clans a decisive military edge over agrarian cultures that could be raided and plundered or exterminated and their lands taken for hunting or herding. When they came into contact with agricultural settlements, mounted pastoralists would either loot and destroy them if they saw them as competitors for land, or parasitically raid them for stores of grain (and women). As their numbers grew, both their power and need for land grew. Eventually, instead of merely raiding agricultural societies they began conquering them and imposing themselves as the ruling caste, taxing and exploiting peasant labor but eventually adopting many of their settled, more "civilized" ways. Thus, male-dominated, class society emerged, at least in the Eurasian land mass, primarily as the result of warfare, conquest and the imposition of a culturally militaristic patriarchy upon more peaceful, matrilineal, agrarian cultures. This was true even for those agrarian cultures, like the Minoan civilization on island of Crete, who were protected by the sea and never completely conquered by their nearby, more warlike, patriarchal rivals. To successfully defend themselves, they too had to rely on the military prowess of men, thus elevating their own warrior caste to the dominant position in society. In this manner, both the Greek and the Minoan civilizations were slowly transformed from matrilineal to more militarized, patriarchal societies.

This historical scenario does not fit the New World. Horses were not native to the New World and were not introduced until the Spanish conquered the Aztec Empire, which, by that time, was already strongly patriarchal in nature. At the time of the European invasion, most of the Americas were

1 Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future.


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covered with small foraging cultures of diverse types. However, long before the European invasion, many sizable agricultural societies had inhabited the New World (the Hoden Oshoné or Iroquois Confederacy of the Northeast, the Olmec civilization and the Anasasi and Pueblos of the Southwest, the Cahukia Mound Builders of the Mississippi Valley, etc.).

Finally, the New World also had a few large, patriarchal, elite-dominated agrarian civilizations—the Aztecs, the Mayas, and the Incas. Somehow these civilizations had become patriarchal—ruled by a caste of male warrior/priests—without having to do battle with, or be conquered by, armies of equestrian warriors. Despite the apparent differences, the rise of patriarchy in the New World is based on the same fundamental underlying process whereby male dominated, class-divided societies became prominent in Eurasia. Male dominance, in both New and Old World foraging and agrarian cultures was caused by intensified competition for resources and an ever-increasing reliance on warfare for both defensive and offensive purposes. Successful warriors were not only able to defend their society's established territory, but expand and conquer new land and possibly enslave its population. This process invariably raised the status of men to inordinate positions of military, political, and spiritual power while disenfranchising women and creating subordinate castes of slaves and servants.

Even in times of prolonged peace, once any dominant civilization encompassed a sizable slave or conquered population it must be prepared to suppress revolts from within. The need for permanent institutions of social control and coercion, including a standing army supported by taxing the domestic peasant-farming population, is necessary to maintain this type of social order. Thus, the earliest states, in Eurasia/Africa and the New World, were born for the same basic reasons: territorial protection and expansion and the suppression of domestic unrest.

The Demise of the Agrarian Epoch

As agricultural and pastoral societies emerged and spread out over the planet around 6,000 years ago, they marginalized and exterminated many foraging cultures. The remaining foraging cultures were considered "barbaric" and sub-human by agricultural civilizations. However, by the twilight of agricultural epoch there were still many foraging, fishing or semi-horticultural cultures, especially in the New World, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Despite their superior numbers, higher technological levels, advanced military capabilities and attitudes of superiority, many agrarian civilizations rose and fell in a relatively short period of time. While more powerful rivals


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conquered some, many collapsed because the climate altered their environment or they simply over-exploited and degraded their forests and topsoil. Often societal collapse was induced by a combination of these primary factors and many secondary ones as well. Expansive agricultural civilizations soon exhausted their energy base by deforestation, over-grazing, and the depletion of their topsoil and water supplies. Within a few hundred years they became highly vulnerable to abrupt climate variations, crop failures, famine, internal revolt and external conquest.

Occasionally, collapse was temporarily averted by military conquest and further expansion. This empire-building expansionism worked until it reached its ecological limits. Often, supply lines from the fertile periphery to the depleted imperial core became so long and vulnerable they were impossible to protect from raiders and "barbarians". Eventually—when the armies necessary to suppress unrest, protect the empire's borders and guard its supply lines nearly consumed more energy than they extracted, transported and protected—even the greatest agrarian empires, like Rome, collapsed from over-extension.

Even the most enduring agrarian civilizations, like the Chinese and the Egyptian, experienced cyclical crises and near collapses, only to re-emerge. The underlying reason for their repeated re-emergence is linked to their location on land kept perpetually fertile and irrigated by the work of the enormous rivers that flow through them. Floods, droughts, crop failures and famines threatened successive Chinese dynasties. Their vast hydraulic system of dikes, dams, levees and irrigation canals went through periods of over-silting, mismanagement and disrepair by imperial rulers. Yet the foundation for rebuilding their civilization was always there—the relatively abundant, river-fed, perpetually fertile land. The less access an agrarian society had to the restorative powers of fertile river valleys the more vulnerable it became to permanent collapse from limited access to water, erosion, deforestation and topsoil depletion.

In the century prior to the Industrial Revolution, the entire agrarian epoch was approaching a critical socio-environmental threshold similar to the ecological-demographic crisis that lead to the first great transition from the foraging to the agricultural epoch. Under extreme duress in the final century of the Agricultural Era, the global rate of technical innovation had begun to revive after a long period of relative techno-environmental stasis. Despite increased interaction between agrarian societies and rapid advances in agricultural technology, deforestation, topsoil depletion and serious demographic pressures were pushing agricultural civilizations from Central America and Eurasia, to the Middle East and Europe to the brink of environmental collapse.


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In Europe, despite enclosure and the intensification of farming technologies & methods, there simply wasn't enough fertile land to raise sheep for clothing, grow grain for bread, and still have enough virgin timberland left over for wood—society's most versatile and rapidly disappearing energy source. Thus, population growth, combined with timber famine and land scarcity, intensified the territorial competition between west European monarchies and fueled military rivalries. Of course, this only further accelerated the pace of resource depletion, especially the felling of forests to build rival navies.

Europe was technologically and culturally backward in many respects compared to China and the Islamic world. However, the absence of a unified European political system produced intense political-military rivalry for territory between the continent’s many monarchies as well as an emerging highly competitive market economy relatively free of domination by any single, unified political authority. This intensified trade and military rivalry spurred rapid innovation in the areas of transport and weaponry resulting in the invention of rifles and cannons mounted on fast moving sailing vessels that could reach, vanquish and conquer any other society on the planet. Resource depletion and the rising cost of warfare drove European states to explore the world in search of gold, spices, slaves, land and other precious resources. With the most advanced weapons in the world, these explorer-conquerors subjugated and enslaved other civilizations, pillaging their wealth and enslaving their people to supply them with the resources to finance their incessant continental arms race. Global supply lines eventually sustained several competing expansionist agrarian/colonial empires crowded onto the continent of Europe.

Despite dramatic demographic fluctuations due to the "importation" of several devastating plagues and diseases from other continents (especially Asia and Africa), Europe's rebounding urban population continued to tax the continent's resources. Energy in the form of water power, and especially wood, had become scarce and expensive. European manufacture was dependent on either wood burning or waterpower. Both were in extremely limited supply. There were only a finite number of ideal locations near rivers where currents could be harnessed to power machinery and the entire continent was experiencing an extreme timber shortage.

European forests were disappearing at an alarming rate. Wood was not only industry's primary energy source; it was used for heating, cooking, housing, wagons, carriages and, of course, ships. Nowhere was this timber famine more acute than the British Isles. After clearing its own forests, England began importing timber from Scandinavia and its New World colonies and slaughtering whales by the thousands for oil to fuel its growing economy.


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Desperate for a new source of cheap energy, it was here that a solution to the timber famine was found that would fundamentally change the world—the mechanical exploitation of fossil fuels.

Coal and the steam engine allowed European civilization to overcome the resource and energy bottlenecks of the agricultural epoch for the first time in history and enter the industrial epoch. Once carboniferous energy was tapped to power the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, the factory and a vast electrical grid, industrial civilization quickly metastasized, subduing and consuming the entire planet in a few generations.

What Lessons Can Be Gleaned From Our History on this Planet?

One clear lesson that can be gleaned from history is that many civilizations have collapsed by fouling their own nests. Further, demographic pressure and resource depletion lie at the core of the major historical transitions from foraging to agriculture and from agriculture to industrial civilization.

An Increasing Pace of Growth, Exhaustion & Crisis

It appears that both the foraging and the agricultural way of life were relatively stable for many generations; eventually, however, both fell into serious ecological crisis. For the small, relatively egalitarian foraging societies this crisis did not mature for many thousands of years. Perhaps this is because the mechanisms driving it were based on the slow pace of gently rising population pressure, gradual shifts in climate, the accompanying scarcity of hunting grounds and the depletion of wild plants and animals. While the agricultural epoch may seem long and relatively static compared to the hectic 2 centuries of modern industrial civilization, the agricultural epoch was much shorter than the foraging epoch. This is because the agricultural epoch produced new forces that accelerated the pace of population pressure and resource depletion that hastened its own demise:

• Agriculture required more labor (both human and animal) than foraging and generally produced more calories to feed this labor. Thus, unless populations were kept at or beneath carrying capacity, agriculture had the potential to deplete the soil and the stocks of timber it required to sustain itself. Yet limits were seldom put on population growth because the short-run need for laborers tended to outweigh the long run need to limit population.

• By creating a storable surplus of grain and requiring higher levels of labor organization and management, agriculture tended to encourage the development of an elite class of priests, overlords, monarchs and military men who were not directly involved in farming. This elite protected society and its surpluses from invasion and plunder, led the rituals that promoted soil


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fertility and abundant harvests, and directed the labor process from above. This elite had to be fed. In fact, it was quite common for the agrarian elite to exhaust the land and the peasants beneath them in an effort to live an ever more opulent lifestyle.

• The above dynamics often led to war as elites depleted their homelands and went in search of new territories to exploit. Warfare consumed even more resources because armies had to be fed. Successful conquests used conquered territory to temporarily feed an expanding class of warrior-kings; however, vanquished efforts at empire building usually resulted in total social and ecological collapse.

Although agricultural civilization introduced these additional dynamics that tended to hasten the advent of ecological depletion and crisis, industrial civilization went much further, much faster. It introduced qualitatively new economic forces that accelerated the pace of boom and bust past anything the agricultural epoch had witnessed. By technologically tapping the earth's vast rich stores of fossil fuels the pace of industrial society took-off. With abundant supplies of fossil fuels to overcome the energy limitations of agricultural life, the masters of this new industrial technology tore down the traditional political and religious barriers to rapid production for profit. The credo of the new industrial elite—whether capitalist or “communist” was: KEEP GROWING! THE BIGGER, THE BETTER!

Today, rival economic and political units—multinational corporations and nation-states—dominate the hierarchical power structure of this high-energy globalized civilization. Locked into a system based on intense national and corporate competition, where wealth and military might are derived from this petroleum-powered capacity to create and destroy, neither political nor corporate elites appear willing or able to free themselves from the systemic compulsion for constant growth. Beneath this system’s corporate, political and military elite lies a large class of middle managers, educated professionals and skilled workers who form the consumer base of this global system. This relatively affluent middle class is reluctant to abandon their media-hyped culture of over-consumption. Though many partially recognize the serious social and environmental downsides of pursuing this lifestyle, and a small minority has voluntarily embraced a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle, the vast majority continues to court bankruptcy in order to buy into the dream of “living large.” This is unfortunate, because behind the chic facade of affluence and power the entire system is rapidly devouring its ecological foundations like a voracious serpent eating its own tail.


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Pushed by the invisible hands of supply and demand and the competitive drive to maximize profit, the hyper-metabolism of industrial society has required and fueled global rivalry for expanding markets, as well as new sources of energy, raw materials and cheap labor. In just a few centuries, fossil fuel-powered global tentacles of resource extraction, transportation, production, processing and consumption have pillaged and polluted the entire planet. By the middle of the 20th century, this system was teetering on the brink of nuclear annihilation and marinating in its own toxins. Today, even the “successes” of high-energy global industrialism are morphing into ecological nightmares. Over consumption and over population are driving thousands of species to extinction and shredding the very web of life that supports human survival. Meanwhile, the skyrocketing combustion of petroleum around the planet is beginning to drastically alter global climate patterns with potentially disastrous results.

It is highly unlikely that modern industrial civilization will last another century. In fact, it is already poised on the brink of self-extinction. Its once-abundant power supply of carboniferous energy is rapidly disappearing and, by most accounts, will become effectively exhausted over the next 50-100 years. In many ways this is fortunate because fossil fuel combustion—which is responsible for the most dangerous forms of air, water and land pollution—is beginning to disrupt the biosphere to the point of threatening human survival. Further, the demographic growth, resource extraction, industrial pollution, urban sprawl and toxic wastes of modern civilization are destroying the habitats of countless species. The current rate of extinction, which is estimated to be between 10-100,000 species a year, is already faster than the period of mass extinction that buried the dinosaurs. For humans, this amounts to playing a perilous game of ecological Russian roulette because no one can predict how far this mass extinction must go before the ecological web that supports human life unravels beneath us.

Although industrial civilization has permitted millions of people to live relatively affluent, comfortable lifestyles and has permitted thousands to become unbelievably rich, billions have hardly benefited from global industrialism while, for millions more, life has become substantially worse. Nothing has been more destructive to life at the bottom of the industrial system than the global transition from solar-based, localized subsistence and local-market agriculture to fossil fuel based, global, export agriculture. This process has displaced and uprooted rural communities all over the world, especially in the developing nations. These uprooted farming families have migrated to the cities desperately looking for scarce, low-paying jobs. They have become the


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cheap labor of the modern global economy. Their desperation keeps wages low throughout the global system by undermining the bargaining power of labor.

In the developed nations, bankrupt small farmers--unable to compete with petroleum-powered, government-subsidized industrial agriculture--have abandoned rural life and migrated to the cities looking for work. In the US, they provided much of the cheap labor that allowed industry to abandon its unionized, relatively well-paid, Northern workforce by moving to the South. This poorly paid Southern workforce has been kept docile and un-unionized by the constant threat that industry may move again; this time to poorer nations like China, Brazil, Mexico and Thailand where an even more desperate landless workforce scrambles for survival in the urban slums surrounding all of the Third World’s major cities.

Meanwhile, a small handful of giant agro-industrial corporations have assumed control of the global food chain. Their control over the technologies of petroleum-based mechanization, fertilization, pest control, food storage, marketing, processing and transport—combined with their access to vast pools of financial credit and government subsidies—give them an unfair advantage over the world’s declining number of small farmers. For now, this advantage has meant enormous profits for corporate agri-business and ruin for small farmers, while the middle class stills enjoys a relatively affordable supply of highly processed, industrially grown, genetically engineered foods from all over the world. But is this food system healthy and sustainable? Or will it soon run out of energy while it poisons the land, water and air with its wastes?

Understanding the Great Leaps of History:

The Role of Necessity, Opportunity, and Capacity

In a few brief centuries, industrial civilization has rushed toward the brink of an ecological crisis it took agricultural and foraging societies thousands of years to reach. Can the careful study of past ecological crises help us find a way out; or at least give us some idea what the way out looks like and where and when potential emergency exits may appear?

As the brief overview of history presented so far indicates: necessity is indeed the mother of invention. The agrarian epoch did not replace the foraging epoch until a severe ecological crisis necessitated a dramatic shift in lifestyle. People are reluctant to give up a familiar, time-tested way of life and replace it with a new one unless they feel there is little alternative. Hunter-gatherers had been aware of how to grow plants and domesticate animals long before they adopted the settled, agricultural way of life. As long as there was plenty of wild plants


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and animals to sustain life, there was no point in going to all the trouble of domesticating them.

Likewise, it had long been known that coal could be burned for fuel, but going to all the trouble of digging it out of the ground was pointless as long as there were plenty of forests nearby to supply more clean-burning wood. Also, as long as there was plenty of wood and water power, there was no need for steam engines to power factories, and, as long as there was plenty of land to provide horses with hay there was no need to lay miles of track and build steam-powered railroads to haul coal and other goods into the cities. Thus, it becomes clear by examining these two great historical transitions, that necessity played a major role in both of them.

However, if we look closer and ponder the question: "Why did these transformations happen where they did?" we quickly realize that necessity was not the only factor at work here. Was it sheer coincidence that agriculture emerged in the crowded river valleys of the Fertile Crescent? Here, where relatively dense populations of hunter-gatherers found the agricultural lifestyle relatively easy to adopt, necessity met up with another important condition—opportunity. No plows were necessary, minimal irrigation was required, and rivers constantly replenished the soil’s fertility. All of the first major agricultural civilizations were located in fertile river valleys that provided the techno-environmental opportunity to make the transition to a settled farming life with minimal effort.

Likewise, no matter how hard-pressed for timber a society becomes it cannot make the transition to fossil fuels unless they are there to be found. Many areas of Europe (and the world) were short on wood, but nowhere will you find a greater combination of necessity and opportunity than the British Isles. Here the timber famine was most serious; and here too coal could be found in great abundance not far underground. Thus, the English had both the necessity to find an alternative fuel and the opportunity to profitably mine its vast coal reserves with a minimal application of mining and mechanical technology.

However, some astute historians have pointed out that China was short of timber and had discovered large deposits of coal that they had begun using as fuel 700 years before England. Thus, if necessity and opportunity were all that was required to make the leap to industrial civilization, why wasn't China the site of the industrial revolution? The comparison between England and China is instructive because it alerts us to a third critical factor involved in the process of major historical transformations—capacity.


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The iron masters of North China fueled blast furnaces with coke in the first decades of the 11th Century, thereby solving the chronic fuel problem in the tree-bare landscape of the Yellow River Valley. Historian William McNeill reports that:

"Within a relatively small region of north China, on or adjacent to bituminous coal fields...[iron] production went from nothing to 35,000 tons per annum by 1018. Large scale enterprises arose...employing hundreds of full-time industrial laborers,..."2

However, according to McNeill, China's iron and steel industry had decayed by the 12th Century and "by 1736 the once busy blast furnaces, coke ovens and steel manufactories were abandoned entirely,...Production was not resumed until the 20th Century."3 Thus, despite the pressures of timber scarcity and over-population, China turned her back on a ready supply of fuel (coal) and a valuable source of construction material (iron & steel). Why?

Unlike England (and the rest of Europe), China was a large, unified political system with few serious rivals or enemies. The feudal emperors of China had the power to dominate economic activity within their borders and they kept a close watch on the merchant/industrial class that had the potential to erode their monopoly on power. McNeill says that the Chinese state was the sole buyer for iron, and that as long as its policies favored rapid technological development and expansion of iron and steel production, the coal and steel industries grew. However, if government policy changed, production could be halted easily. McNeill believes that the Sung Dynasty cut-off support for iron and steel production because it feared the growing power of a group of industrial entrepreneurs who appeared to be allying themselves with a cabal of treasonous military leaders against the dynasty. With no other market for steel, the minute the dynasty stopped buying, the industry died. What factors gave Chinese dynastic rulers such economic and political omnipotence? Why were they so unwilling to experiment with change?

Unlike feudal Europe, which was divided by many small fiefdoms in constant rivalry with one another, China possessed a long history of unified dynastic political rule. This unified system was based on an extensive system of hydraulic agriculture: a vast network of dams, levees, dikes, drainage projects, canals and flood control systems designed to maximize the area devoted to agriculture. Without this extensive water management complex, these relatively arid river valleys would not have produced much food; but with irrigation, yields were high and relatively stable. Thus water constituted the most valuable

2 McNeill, Pursuit of Power: 27. 3 McNeill, Pursuit of Power: 33.


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resource in China's agricultural energy base; and managing and maintaining its flow was the key to political power.

Managing China's vast, complex hydraulic infrastructure was the centerpiece of each dynasty's widespread, yet centralized power structure. Agricultural surpluses, in the form of taxes, allowed Chinese emperors to build a powerful bureaucracy of administrators, religious leaders, scholars, generals, and tax collectors. The emperor and the state were all powerful. Total submission was demanded from those at the bottom. Nevertheless, the Chinese system was a relatively well-administered, top-down structure of villages, under provinces, under urban administrative centers connected by efficient networks of roads, canals, and rivers.

By controlling this vast hydraulic infrastructure a long succession of Chinese dynasties dominated the East Asian land mass and squelched any rivals to their extensive political power. This political system, once in place, was extremely resistant to change. A qualitative transformation of China's energy base toward fossil-fueled industry was precluded by both the extreme costs of maintaining the traditional system and the dynasty's power to squelch any rival technologies and their promoters.

European history, in sharp contrast to China, is one of political fragmentation and rivalry. Based on a system of rainfall agriculture and lacking any vast, complex infrastructure as a foundation for establishing political domination over the entire continent, European feudal politics was characterized by many small, weak, rival kingdoms that were scarcely able to control the local landed nobility or the growing merchant class. Rivalrous European monarchs found alliances with the merchant-manufacturing class useful as a source of credit, resources, innovation and colonial expansion.

Over taxing merchants and suppressing manufacturers could easily drive them into an alliance with political rivals across the border. The survival of European monarchies became increasingly dependent on their ability to channel and maximize the benefits of trade and manufacture to increase their economic and military power by establishing colonial empires—a system known as mercantilism. Eventually, this conflict prone, fragmented system allowed the industrial-merchant class to challenge the landed aristocracy’s control over European states.

In this setting, the British royalty saw coal-powered, steam engine technologies not as a threat, but as a benefit in their rivalry with other nations. The fate of the British crown became dependent on an alliance between coal powered factory owners and the landed gentry. Instead of suppressing the use


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of fossil fuels and the industries they powered, the landed gentry and the British government teamed up with them to expand and protect their empire from rival European monarchies. Unlike China, Britain possessed the capacity to embrace fossil fuels and use them to advance its political interests.

To summarize, the opportunity to exploit untapped energy resources (like coal) will only be realized if society possesses the political capacity to seize, rather than suppress, this opportunity. If this political will is discouraged or stifled, the final factor that allows great historical transitions to unfold may not emerge.

It is this historical convergence of ecological necessity, techno-environmental opportunity and political capacity that determined the historical time and place of the major transitions from foraging to agricultural society and from agriculture to industrial civilization. If this hypothesis is accurate, it may prove useful to examine these waning decades of industrial civilization in order to locate the convergence of these factors once again. At this point in history it appears that the convergence of fossil fuel scarcity and ecological crises (necessity), the technological expertise necessary to adopt of alternative energy sources (opportunity) and the political support for embracing a renewable/solar mode of production (capacity) is most clearly emerging in places like Western Europe, Japan, and perhaps China.

The primary political/military hub of the current world system—the United States—has the technological opportunity to move away from fossil fuel based civilization. However, the necessity factor is subdued by America’s lack of the extreme fossil fuel scarcity based on its own carboniferous resources and its military control over global petroleum reserves. Also, the capacity factor is restrained by the powerful retrograde influence over American politics wielded by the coal, oil and automobile industries (as well and the military/petroleum complex). The combination of politically subsidized cheap oil and political resistance to promoting renewable energy technologies keeps the United States far behind the cutting edge of the coming sustainable energy transition.

In the periphery of the current system, the necessity factor is very prominent in the poor nations that lack fossil fuel resources. However, these poor countries do not have the technological opportunity to respond to this scarcity by tapping solar energy. In addition, some of these countries are major oil exporters. These petroleum exporters possess none of the 3 factors needed to embrace the transition to a new historical epoch.

Thus, it is the technologically rich, petroleum poor, politically innovative countries of Europe and Japan where these three factors may converge to


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promote an avenue of escape from a dying system of carboniferous industrial capitalism. It is also possible that China could move rapidly in this direction if its political leadership has the foresight to abandon coal, which is causing serious environmental and health problems for Chinese society despite its relative abundance. However, China’s political stability is based on the promise of continual, rapid economic growth. The Chinese middle class is already approaching the size of America’s. This cannot continue without rapidly expanding China’s combustion of fossil fuels.

Renewable energy cannot sustain China’s growth engine. Thus, the Chinese government would have to abandon its commitment to exponential growth and adopt economic and ecological sustainability as its fundamental priority in order to provide the political capacity needed to respond to its escalating ecological crisis with a concerted commitment to building a solar-powered, steady-state society. At present, such a policy reversal seems remote. Yet, the politically directed nature of the Chinese economy provides the potential to reverse course and move quickly in a new direction if such a reversal was ever adopted by the country’s political elite. Because of China’s enormous population and powerful economy, the future decisions made by Chinese leaders will have a major impact on the fate of the entire planet. Green Theory & The Demise of Industrial Civilization Green theory contends that modern civilization lives on a life-support system of non-renewable carboniferous energy (coal, oil, natural gas). Since the industrial revolution, slower paced wind, water, human and animal powered technologies have been replaced by carbon-powered technologies that have accelerated and electrified modern life. With access to the tremendous amounts of concentrated energy stored beneath the earth, this high-energy society "leaves behind" (at least partially and temporarily) the slower pace of life constrained by dependence on the seasonal energy cycles that reproduce plant and animal energy. Using the electric light and the steam engine, factories were able to avoid the work cycles imposed by day-and-night and changes of season. Industrial society had the energy to work around the clock, rain or shine, 365 days a year, turning out commodities in enormous amounts and at an incredible pace, and transporting them around the world in a matter of hours. With this extra storehouse of energy at its disposal, human society became far larger and more complex than ever before. In addition, industrial society's capacity to exploit tremendous stores of carboniferous energy provided it with the illusion that, for the first time, people were no longer dependent upon nature.


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To adapt to, and take advantage of, the increased pace of carbon-powered production, humans adopted methods of work, social interaction and exchange that were flexible and efficient. The essence of “efficiency” became the replacement more expensive human labor with cheaper fossil-fueled machinery. Society’s new rulers became those who controlled this complex, high-powered system of production. Efficiency and flexibility were best served by allowing the profit motive to govern the pace of production and market mechanisms, like supply and demand, to allocate resources--including human labor. Yet these impersonal mechanisms, while highly efficient and flexible, tend to resist all attempts at social control even by those who are nominally "in charge" of society's most powerful economic and political institutions. Thus, the survival of workers and managers alike requires the mindless acceptance of relentless economic growth and constant consumption, while the entire industrial system appears to be locked into a process of non-stop acceleration with no particular destination.

Partially because many people continue to feel uncomfortable with mindless production and consumption, religious belief systems that imbue life with a higher purpose have continued to be influential during the industrial epoch. However, the belief systems that grew out of the industrial period have been primarily secular and political in character. These secular, more political, belief systems became known as "ideologies". Most of them have openly extolled the supremacy of humans, rationality, and science over nature, spiritualism and theology. Conservatism, Liberalism, Socialism and Communism all assume, and extol the virtues of, limitless industrial "progress" and reduce nature to a vast cornucopia of natural resources. Instead of holding either nature or deities as sacred, these ideologies worship the gospel of growth and place their faith in technology and science.

While ignoring the ecological limits to industrial growth, each of these ideologies posits political rationales for ever-escalating rates of production and consumption. For some, like conservatism and liberalism, the alleged purpose of pursuing limitless growth is primarily individual--expanding access to personal wealth and liberty. For other “isms”--like socialism and communism--the purpose is supposedly more collective and social: ending poverty, oppression, scarcity and class exploitation; promoting equality, peace, democracy and social justice. But whether the purpose is individual or social, endless economic growth is assumed to be both possible and necessary. This is the most basic dividing line between all of the industrial era ideologies and the Green perspective. Greens begin by assuming that limitless economic growth is both unsustainable and unnecessary. This belief is deeply grounded in the Green


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interpretation of the constantly evolving relationship between human society and the natural environment.

With abundant supplies of fossil fuels to overcome the energy limitations of agricultural society, the masters of this new industrial technology tore down the traditional political and religious barriers to rapid production for profit. In the early decades of the industrial revolution, the credo of the new industrial elite—whether capitalist or “communist” was: KEEP GROWING!

Today, the top of the global “power pyramid” is dominated by rival economic and political units—multinational corporations, banks, and nation-states. These global institutions are locked into a system based on intense national and corporate competition, where wealth and power are derived from a petroleum-fueled technological capacity to create and destroy. Neither political nor corporate elites appear willing or able to free themselves from the systemic imperatives of constant growth and military rivalry.

Beneath this system’s corporate, political and military elite lies a large class of middle managers, educated professionals and skilled technocrats who form the consumer base of this global system. This relatively affluent middle class is reluctant to abandon their media-hyped culture of over-consumption. Though many partially recognize the serious social and environmental downsides of pursuing this lifestyle, and a minority have voluntarily embraced a simpler, more sustainable way of life, the vast majority continue to court bankruptcy in order to buy into the dream of “living large”. This is unfortunate, because behind the chic facade of affluence and power the entire system is rapidly devouring its ecological foundations like a voracious serpent eating its own tail.

Pushed by the invisible hands of supply and demand and the competitive drive to maximize profit, the hyper-metabolism of industrial capitalism has required and fueled global rivalry for expanding markets, new sources of raw materials and cheap labor. In just a few centuries, fossil fuel-powered global chains of resource extraction, transportation, production, processing, consumption and disposal have ravaged the entire planet. By the middle of the 20th century, this system was teetering on the brink of nuclear annihilation and marinating in its own toxins. Today, even the “successes” of high-energy global industrialism are morphing into nightmares. Over consumption and over population are driving thousands of species to extinction and shredding the very web of life that supports human survival. Meanwhile, the skyrocketing combustion of petroleum around the planet is beginning to drastically alter global climate patterns with potentially disastrous results.


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It is highly unlikely that modern industrial civilization will last another century. In fact, it is already poised on the brink of self-extinction. The abundant stores of petroleum that form its primary energy base are rapidly disappearing and, by most accounts, will become effectively exhausted over the next 50 years. In many ways this is fortunate because fossil fuel combustion—which is responsible for the most dangerous forms of air, water and land pollution—is beginning to disrupt the biosphere to the point of threatening human survival. Further, the demographic growth, resource extraction, industrial pollution, urban sprawl and toxic wastes of modern civilization are destroying the habitats of countless species. The current rate of extinction, which is estimated to be between 10-100,000 species a year, is already faster than the period of mass extinction that buried the dinosaurs. For humans, this amounts to playing a perilous game of ecological Russian roulette because no one can predict how far this mass extinction must go before the ecological web that supports human life unravels beneath us.

Although industrial civilization has permitted millions of people to live relatively affluent, comfortable lifestyles and has permitted thousands to become unbelievably rich, billions have hardly benefited from global industrialism while, for millions more, life has become substantially worse. Nothing has been more destructive to life at the bottom of the industrial system than the global transition from solar-based, subsistence and local-market agriculture to fossil fuel based, globalized, export agriculture. This process has displaced and uprooted rural communities all over the world, especially in the developing nations. These uprooted farming families have migrated to the cities desperately looking for scarce, low-paying jobs. They have become the cheap labor of the modern global economy. Their desperation keeps wages low throughout the global system by undermining the bargaining power of labor.

In the developed nations, bankrupt small farmers have abandoned rural life and have migrated to the cities looking for work. In the US, they provided much of the cheap labor that allowed industry to abandon its unionized, relatively well-paid, Northern workforce by moving to the South. This poorly paid Southern workforce has been kept docile and un-unionized by the constant threat that industry may move again. This time to the poor, peripheral nations like Mexico and India where an even more desperate landless workforce scrambles for survival in the urban slums surrounding all of the Third World’s major cities.

Meanwhile, a small handful of giant agro-industrial corporations have assumed control of the global food chain. Their control over the technologies of petroleum-based mechanization, fertilization, pest control, food storage,


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marketing, processing and transport—combined with their access to vast pools of financial credit and government subsidies—give them an unfair advantage over the world’s declining number of small farmers. For now, this advantage has meant enormous profits for corporate agri-business and ruin for small farmers, while the middle class still enjoys a relatively affordable supply of highly processed, industrially grown, genetically engineered foods from all over the world. But is this food system healthy and sustainable? Or will it soon run out of energy while it poisons the land, water and air with its wastes? Can International Cooperation Prevent Environmental Collapse?

Most Greens are fairly pessimistic about the prospect that world leaders will be able to turn the looming environmental catastrophe around. Their pessimism is based on the fact that these political and economic elites owe their positions of wealth and power to the current unsustainable system. With such a deep stake in the status quo, will they be willing to make changes that will undermine corporate profit, threaten military might and decentralize political power? Can they afford to stop selling lifestyles of mindless consumption to the middle class, while pillaging the planet’s resources and profiting from the de-humanizing labor of those at the bottom?

Greens generally agree that any hope for change lies with those who recognize the serious crises on the horizon and are willing to rock-the-boat and demand change from the powers-that-be. These people have become part of a movement that is neither corporate nor governmental. They have created activist organizations and political movements within “civil society” in countries all over the planet. The transnational efforts of these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have forced political and corporate leaders to respond to the serious environmental problems facing industrial society. They are creating communities of survival, networks of solidarity and nodes of resistance all over the planet. But many fear that change will be too little, and too late.

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