What do black holes, hurricanes, tornadoes, eddies, and toilets all have in common? Each of these is a vortex, a downward, self-accelerating spiral, emptying into — what? Some kind of singularity, whether it be as innocuous as a downward column of water or the temporary low-pressure stillness in the eye of a raging hurricane — or as destructive as the vacuum at the base of a tornado, ripping apart everything it touches.
But the vortex also has many metaphorical uses as well. I remember a friend talking about a small private college where she had recently taken, and quickly left, an administrative position, because, she said, “I could tell that they were all just circling the drain…”
Her phrase “circling the drain” stuck with me, because it is a perfect description of the plight of our world civilization, our global market economy, and the biological support system upon which we all depend — our unique, indispensable, biogenically self-regulating planet.
We are all entering a grand, swirling worldwide vortex that we may generally call “overshoot and collapse” — driven, above all, by the crisis of self-accelerating climate disruption from relentlessly rising CO2 emissions, intertwined with both the causes and consequences of this global heating. The causes begin with our total dependence on fossil fuels — oil, coal, and gas — as the source of the cheap net energy we need to maintain our vast, expanding industrial and technological civilization, but also the source of the rising atmospheric carbon levels that threaten catastrophe within the next few decades. These fossil fuels, essential and destructive as they are, are now becoming harder to find and more and more expensive, energetically and financially, to extract, as they are inexorably depleted.
The other major cause is our total dependence on money — a zero-sum game characterized by two simple production rules: more is always better, and what’s mine is not yours. Any economy based on money — which is essentially nothing more than arithmetic — must continually grow to survive, meaning it must continually expand extraction of resources, production and consumption of commodities, and population (to expand their markets). And the second rule, “what’s mine is not yours,” guarantees that the net wealth will always concentrate upward, since those with money will thereby gain the power to corner markets, keep wages low, charge customers whatever they will pay for what the rich own that others need; influence (or bribe) policymakers to legislate in their favor, and brainwash the public into buying their products through relentless advertising.
And all these causes lead, just as inexorably, to the consequences we are seeing all around us: not just the rapidly rising global temperatures due to unprecedented CO2 concentration, but also depletion of topsoil, forests, and most other vital resources; industrial pollution of our land, sea, and air; prolonged droughts and wildfires, interspersed with catastrophic flooding; melting of polar icecaps and glaciers; rising sea levels flooding coastal cities; accelerating extinction rates — even of pollinating insects and the plants they pollinate — due to hotter climates and ecological collapse; vast swarms of climate refugees from the chaotic and parched global South finding their way to the affluent and industrialized North in any way they can; and in response to all this growing chaos, a rise in scapegoating of, and violence toward immigrants by fascist demagogues and warlords displacing liberal democracies all over the world. Meanwhile, the rich get richer and fewer, while the rest of us increasingly fall through our eroding safety nets to join the working poor, or the homeless and destitute masses.
From such a self-accelerating vortex, there is no escape; there is nowhere to go, other than to spiral down, down into the singularity of violence, starvation, despair and death…
Unless… What? The most common “solutions” we see these days are techno-fixes like converting our power infrastructure, en masse, to renewables like solar and wind and carbon capture technologies, or launching complex, untested geo-engineering schemes that require worldwide agreement and cooperation. Or somehow we might reinvent the social contract so that everyone, overnight, becomes less belligerent and greedy, and more trustworthy, helpful, generous, and friendly, if we all (take your choice) entrust ourselves to Jesus, bow to Allah, meditate daily, do yoga, eat vegetarian, or whatever. The standing problem with all of these “Why don’t we all…” solutions is the delusion of agency: who among us, individually or collectively, has the power, authority, or influence to enact such far-reaching global schemes? And where would we get the cheap net energy necessary to build out a vast new infrastructure for gathering, processing, and distributing solar and wind energy — if not from fossil fuels?
None of us has the power to transform our entire economy. The infinitesimal minority of us with the greatest power and influence — political leaders, CEOs, billionaires, or celebrities — all have an enormous vested interest in the status quo. The rest of us can rail, pontificate, or envision as much as we wish, but will only, at best, reach a small bunch of followers who already share our views.
So what’s left? Suicide? Rage against the machine? Acts of terrorism? Or simply denial?
Here’s my own choice:
Grow Gardens. Grow Community. Grow Awareness. These three injunctions reinforce one another, reciprocally. The more we undertake to grow some of our own food, the more likely we are to strike up conversations with neighbors nearby who are doing likewise, sharing ideas. And then we can form or join local garden clubs or guilds, or start a community garden through our schools, colleges, or places of worship. We can learn new skills from each other; teach others the skills we have acquired; heal our topsoil, our watersheds, and our loneliness; and create new opportunities for others to join us in doing likewise. And as a result, we will be that much less dependent on the increasingly fragile infrastructure of big agriculture, with its ecocidal, topsoil-depleting practices, pesticides, fertilizers, and (fossil fuel-driven) global supply chain. And together, incrementally, we can create small spirals of transformation that push back upward against the consuming vortex, like a resilient weed pushing up through the cracks in the concrete.
It may or may not work, but it is a lot better way of spending our days and raising our children than wallowing in rage and despair, or clinging to delusions.