Dear kindest reader,
Disappointingly, most articles discussing anarcho-primitivism fail to address the core tenet of the critique of industrial civilization: namely, that industrial civilization is inherently unsustainable; that unsustainable structures collapse, often catabolically; that this civilization, even were it sustainable, is not immune to collapse.
It’s not too difficult to reason to this conclusion. Shall we try?
Population Growth
Population growth is a function of available energy. This is as true for reindeer and petri dish-delimited bacteria as it us for us. We are not, despite our concomitant capture of exogenous energy (esp., fossil fuel), exempt from finite limits to growth. We are constrained by the ecological superstructure supporting the manufactured infrastructure of industrial civilization. We are bounded by thermodynamic laws and exigencies beyond our ken - certainly, beyond our control. Ecology is the exoskeleton of the economy. Without ecologies, there are no economies. To wit:
- Homo sapiens enjoyed a fairly stable global population of approx. 300 million individuals from our first speciation 2.2 million years ago up to about 300 years ago.
- Circa the mid 1700s, European Homo sapiens initiate the inevitable Industrial Revolution, unlocking hitherto unnoticed stores of hydrocarbon energy: first coal, then natural gas, then crude oil, then most recently syncrude (e.g., algal biodiesel).
- Things went exponential.
- Things went exponential very quickly.
- Homo sapiens now doubles its population each half century.
- And the rate is increasing.
- Exponentially.
Extraction Peaks
This trend is unlikely to continue.
Extraction of both available energy and available materials (esp., lumber, phosphorus, silver, and rare earth elements) appears to have “passed peak” sometime circa the early 2000s. Quantifying a peak for global oil production is fairly rote, due to the ubiquitous publication of production-reserves data (excluding Saudi Arabia of course):
- Global oil production peaked on an annual basis in 2005 at 74.30 million barrels of oil per day (mbd).
- Global oil production peaked on a monthly basis on July 11th, 2008 at 74.82 mbd.
In either case, global oil production is past peak. Other resources are more difficult to quantify, but equally telling. Some authors suggest global coal extraction is also past peak. A few suggest global uranium extraction is, as well. Due to the hungry nature of exponential growth, we needn’t wait long for a global peak in extraction of all remaining non-renewable resources.
But population growth is a function of available energy. So, it stands to reason that human population growth will probably backpedal into population decline at some nearby (but still future-flung) inflection point.
Ecological Declines
But scarcity in available energy and materials is just the crux of the fulcrum. Accelerating global declines in so-called “ecosystem services” (as a consequence of anthropogenic deforestation, erosion, biodiversity loss, et al.) suggest that such a decline could be more pronounced than it otherwise need be. Humanity is not simply embattled against an absence of raw resources or the “means of production.” Humanity is in battle against destruction of the material basis for life itself.
The destruction of climatic stability.
The destruction of nutrient cyclicity.
The destruction of arable land.
The destruction of potable water.
Only time will tell. But time, in this case, is not on our side.
Thus Spake…
Thus the primitivist critique of industrial civilization.
I take a rather more agnostic approach to the manner than the traditional anarcho-primitivist, however, who takes as articles of faith the immanence of the collapse of industrial civilization. I neither disbelieve nor believe the premise. Given the widespread failure of socioeconomic institution and power centers to admit the “fait accompli” necessity of economic de-growth, energetic power-down, and the relocalization of human scale, I do believe our bitterest outcome to be the most probable. Frequent visits to North America do nothing to dispel this belief.
In closing, I should say that the claim of primitivist nihilism is just that: a claim, with as little or as much evidence as most. Primitivists are not anti-human. Primitivists are not anti-family, anti-community, or anti-society. Collectively, primitivists do not seek, aim for, or otherwise desire the blood-rimmed extermination of 6.8 billion humans.
Given the failure of industrial civilization to develop sustainable alternatives not predicate on infinite growth schemas, however, they do expect it.
Humbly yours,
Leyli Cecil. From his blog, Mysidian Dreams.