Mother Pelican
A Journal of Solidarity and Sustainability

Vol. 20, No. 7, July 2024 Luis T. Gutiérrez, Editor

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Transition from Patriarchy to Mutuality How can human civilization transition from current ecocidal trends to a new civilization of improved social and ecological justice? A reasonable hypothesis is that any such transition would entail a deep cultural change from patriarchy to mutuality, from competition to cooperation. In personal terms, mutuality between men and women, and between humans and Mother Nature; cooperation between humans and between humans and the biosphere in the planet that is our common home. Is this possible, given that human brains have evolved over millennia to seek patriarchal domination by favoring competition to the maximum degree allowed by energy availability, as can be deduced from the Maximum Power Principle (MPP)? Assuming that Homo economicus (aka Homo ecophagus) will continue to drive human agency, current demographic, energetic, and pollution trends would seem to indicate a fundamental human incapacity to change course. Is it possible for humans to subjectively become Homo ecologicus? The cultural barriers to such ecological conversion seem to be insurmountable. For instance, patriarchal religions are a formidable obstacle at the deepest level of human subjectivity. Consider this Critique of Religious Patriarchy. Articles compiled in this edition provide a sampling of current and forthcoming challenges for human flourishing and long-term survivability. POPULATION ECONOMY TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT GROWTH OVERSHOOT DEGROWTH RESILIENCE ENVIRONMENT ENERGY RESOURCES BIODIVERSITY CLIMATE CIVILIZATION METACRISIS WARS CULTURE PATRIARCHY TRANSITION MUTUALITY GENDER CONTENTS Significant Announcements and Current Trends The System Within: Addressing the Inner Dimensions of Sustainability and Systems Transformation Rosie Bell & Jamie Bristow Beyond The Petri Dish: Human Consciousness in the Time of Collapse, Apathy, and Algorithms George Tsakraklides Humans Have Been Altering Nature for Thousands of Years Todd Braje Food Equity in Action: Asking Big Questions to Transform Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Ag Cara Judea Alhadeff Messy Business: Polluted 'Biosolids' Derail Recycling of Human Waste Kurt Cobb Should Harming Mother Earth Be a Crime? The Case for Ecocide Reynard Loki The Human Face of Climate Change Kumbirai Thierry Nhamo Why Cheap Renewables Are Stalling Jack Marley Explainer: Understanding Carbon Trading and its Rationale Joyce Chimbi Is Carbon Capture Just Climate Delusion? Basav Sen & Jim Walsh The Dangerous Class Consciousness of Donald Trump Stephen F. Eisenman Is Democracy the Right Answer? Gregg Lavoie Taking Paradigm Shift To A Wider Audience ~ Part 2 Jan Spencer Biden Should End the Fossil Fuel Industry's Secret Weapon Sonali Kolhatkar Artificial Intelligence, Colonialism, and Water ~ Where 'Development' is Empire-speak for 'Extraction' Sahana Chattopadhyay Two Degrees: Guardrail? Or Guide Rail to Disaster? Kent Peacock Boondoggle Watch: Carbon Capture Great for Making Things Worse Kurt Cobb Food Companies Intentionally Make Their Products Addictive, and It's Leading to Chronic Diseases Melissa Kravitz Hoeffner Delaying Global Economic Collapse: Extend-and-Pretend Dave Pollard Are We Communitarian By Nature, or Merely Tribal? Dave Pollard The Genesis of Patriarchy Talley Cross Radical Feminism and the Failures of the Left Robert Jensen Making More Babies to Drive Economic Growth Nandita Bajaj Significant Announcements and Current Trends The System Within Exploring a new deep dive paper commissioned to address the inner dimensions of sustainability and systems transformation, panel hosted by Earth for All co-author and Club of Rome co-president Sandrine Dixson-Declève, 3 July 2024 Online Launch Earth Overshoot Day 2024 ~ August 1st "Humanity limps in the race to end global overshoot, even as it falls in the middle of this year's Olympic Games" Overshoot Day Announcement Season of Creation 2024 To hope and act with Creation, September 1 to October 4 Download the Celebration Guide Think Tank on Innovative Communication for Social Change With Andrew Gaines, 21-23 November 2024, Sydney, Australia Information and Point of Contact Human Population Growth, Worldwide and by Regions Click the right arrow to see the mix of population growth trends over time. Click the "Edit" to add/remove countries and regions. Click the "Settings" to view alternative geographic groupings and scales. Click on "Explore the data" for links to data sources and many other charts. Following the logic of the I=PAT equation, it is clear that population growth is a decisive driver of economic affluence (aggregate, not equitably distributed) and the environmental impacts of human agency via the use of technologies to exploit natural resources. All technologies transform energy and increase entropy (disorder). The fact is that energy demand keeps growing as the human civilization grows. The human appetite for more energy/power seems to be insatiable. Actually, energy demand is growing faster than energy savings due to "green" techs. Renewable (solar, wind) energy sources are adding to available energy, not replacing fossil fuels. There are positive (reinforcing) feedback loops connecting energy abundance, human population, and industrial output. Our global techno-industrial civilization is depleting all natural resources and exceeding the regeneration capacity of the biosphere and the absorption capacity of pollution sinks. Continued growth is leading to overpopulation, overconsumption, ecological overshoot, and eventual ecocide. Is it humanly possible to neutralize this ecocidal process? If the human enterprise is to keep quantitatively growing forever, there is no financially and/or technologically feasible path for an energy transition. This is not about capitalism, or socialism, or any other political system; and expecting magic by investing in high energy/resource intensive techno-fixes is silly. A radical ecological conversion is required. A bold cultural revolution is required to transform subjective human desires and consequent human agency. Going forward, voluntary or involuntary DEGROWTH seems inevitable. Better be voluntary than involuntary. "God always forgives. We forgive sometimes. Nature never forgives." Interactive graphs by Our World In Data, Creative Commons. |Back to Outline| LINK TO THE CURRENT ISSUE          LINK TO THE HOME PAGE

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