Even among those who insist that everything will work out - those who claim that the center of the Earth is really full of limitless oceans of oil, or that we can all move to lifeboat ecovillages and embrace an abundant new lifestyle, or that the Rapture, the Singularity, or some other deus ex machina will save them from the future - I have to question how many people actually believe what they claim to believe. I know far too many people who insist the world will end soon, for example, who are still putting money into their retirement accounts, and it's been an open secret for the last decade that the vast majority of people who like to imagine living in a lifeboat ecovillage haven't been willing to lift a finger or spend a dime to bring such a project into being.
I'd like to suggest that this mismatch between what people claim to believe and what they believe enough to put action into arises because daydreams about lifeboat ecovillages and planet ending catastrophes share a common purpose, one that's also shared by an assortment of unproven but heavily promoted technologies that claim to be able to solve our energy crisis without requiring anyone to give up the extravagant energy and resource-wasting lifestyles that pass for normal in the industrial world these days. That common purpose has nothing to do with addressing the crises these things aim to address; instead, it's a matter of giving people something more pleasant to think about than the future that's breathing down our necks. Even planet ending catastrophes, after all, are more pleasant to think about than the couple of centuries of ragged decline, impoverishment, and population loss that define the usual fate of a failed society. If we all get blown to kingdom come in one vast fireball, at least it's over quickly, and we can get some consolation in the few seconds before we're vaporized by telling ourselves it wasn't our fault.
Green Wizardry - John Micheal Greer
