I heard a very interesting interview on National Public Radio the other day, with Paul Gilding on his concept of "the great disruption." The piece is available online (paulgilding.com/writing/) along with some hefty background information.
It's a great read if you have the time, but meanwhile I'll break out some of the basics here.
Gilding's underlying concept is that we have become too large and complex in our economic, political and environmental systems. So much so that there is little or nothing that can happen to prevent the mushroom cloud of unintended consequences, whether they arise from well intentioned corrective action or the greed and self interest, which is now rampant.
Because of the vast scale of these inter-relationships, global in nature, the leading edge of the catastrophe we are experiencing now has causes going back many years. Think of the early savings and loans fiascoes, the first oil crisis, the last stock market crash, NAFTA. These were all early indicators of fairly deep systemic dysfunctions that were ignored, poorly handled in correction, or misleadingly portrayed from the start.
An example? The discharge of atmospheric carbon has been building for generations, and the environment's ability to reabsorb has been declining for generations.
None of this can be fixed overnight. But, Gilding says, the fix will indeed take place, and at a pace we can't imagine yet because it will be driven by the fallout from a catastrophe which hasn't yet fully developed. But the fixing won't be as hard as the pain of avoiding the fix, he says, or the realization we can't go back to the old operating systems.
The new models must be based on sustainability. This doesn't rule out growth, but we have to make better projections of its impacts, better understand the hidden linkages between systems, more accurately forecast "unintended consequences."
We can't leap before we look any longer. The days of cheap energy, cheap money, cheap resources and cheap labor are probably ending.
On the upside, the potential for new systems utilizing new resources is great. Mankind and Mother Earth are both ultimately resilient. We will adapt to these changes because we have to, and in hindsight, probably wonder why it was all so difficult. Much of this is simply a question of doing the right thing, sadly in short supply in some quarters right now.
If I might repeat myself, one right thing we can continue to do is "act locally." Our small communities are well equipped to move through this disruption, no matter its size, if we keep our local infrastructures in place and healthy.
Thanks for taking the time to think about this with me.
Don Wilson is the chairman of the Bennington County Conservation District, whose mission is promoting rural livelihoods and protecting natural resources in Southwestern Vermont. Web site at www.bccdvt.org
This column appeared in the Bennington Banner in March 2009, as one of the BCCD's Conservation Currents pieces, a bi-weekly feature written by BCCD board and staff members since August 2006.