2473. Climate: currently we are stuck.
We are smart enough to invent a lot of interesting stuff but not smart enough to control the stuff we invent. The key problem we are not facing is that we must do more than just stop accumulating CO2 and other greenhouses gasses because with what is already present temperatures will continue to rise and eventually no niche survives where life is possible, As time moves inexorably on cascading retreats from consumer culture, corporations, tech and financialization will leave us less capable of inventing and managing paths to reduce those gasses.
The question - is any approach, including Gardenworld proposed here - adequate to the wicked problems we are living into? Humanity has lived through the fall of Rome, the breakup of feudalism, the religious wars of the 1500s, World Wars and the use of nuclear weapons. We must see that the current crisis is at least on a par with all these. One of the few positive examples of unmaking a bad decision is the ending of colonialism, still incomplete. Toynbee has written about the challenge-response of failing civilizations. Joseph Tainter has written about the collapse of complex societies
.Gardenworld, blending food and habitat in new communities of practice, looks like the best path. Gardenworld is a place where interest in each other can flourish and people do not hide behind masks. We can work together in difficult times.
But we can’t just go there. Things have to come unstuck a bit before we can create. Dangerous, but probably necessary. The real bottleneck is that we have no script for leadership to act on. Cutting fossil fuel use means just that - cutting fossil fuel use. But it is like trying to carve a live turkey- any cut is an immediate threat to some institution and population. No one knows how to do this. Cut home heating? How? Who? Cut transportation - can’t drive to work or kids to school? What leader can take this on, even if they want to. Adequate steps would need to be backed by a new big global welfare system in order to help those hurt. But still, there is no script for this. There are signs that the arts is where the results might be significant.