Thread by @SteB777

1) What system change means is the change to a sustainable system i.e. one without the ongoing adverse trends that will lead to civilization collapse i.e. where our current organized economies split up and become disorganized.

https://twitter.com/Cedders68/status/1337189503056941056

2) However, it's a mistake that this system can be envisaged in anything other than the general recognition of the situation and us i.e. the majority recognising that our societies, economies are totally reliant on natural systems, and this means working within what is possible.

3) There is no society wide understanding that our modern civilization is entirely dependent on natural systems. There is virtually no understanding of systems in our society and even less about how ecosystems operate.

4) As I say, the essential elements of effective problem solving are first recognising the problem, and then beginning to understand the problem.

5) One of the main elements in understanding this problem is acknowledging how poor our grasp is of systems in general and especially ecosystems i.e. we need to focus on developing that understanding.

6) Only when all this is acknowledged can we focus on effectively solving this problem.

7) Unfortunately, a major myth in our society is that the way you address a situation like this is by coming up with a great big plan right at the very beginning, and then put this plan into operation.

8) Whilst so many people are absolutely certain that this is how you solve a problem like this, with the great big plan, and then put it into action, I know no historical precedent for anything working successfully like this. Not once in the whole of history.

9) I'm quite confident about this, because not have I not been able to find any example of this happening or working like this myself, but when I challenge people to give an example, they can't.

10) As I have pointed out repeatedly before, when Britain evacuated it's troops from Dunkirk in WW2, there was no plan of how to win the war. Most of the technologies we take for granted now, emerged in just a few years in WW2. But this was not from any plan.

11) It wasn't a great big plan that resulted in all of this happening, but everyone being focused on solving the problem. From this focus on the problem, emerged all the plans and technologies which won the war. Not a big plan of how to do it in the beginning.

12) The war analogy is limited. There are so many confusing parts of this, especially the misconception that the climate and ecological crisis is going to be solved with technology. Then end to what technology is used, depends on the system it is used in.

13) The only useful part of the war analogy is everyone seeing this crisis as a crisis. As a crisis, which if we don't solve it, our civilization is finished.

14) People throw up all sort of problems, how are we going to convince people, etc, etc. However, it really is very simple, if we don't switch to a sustainable system, our organized society/economy will collapse, and a very large proportion of the human population will starve.

15) Before the industrial revolution the global human population was well under 1 billion people. This gives us something of a ball park figure of the human population a disorganized world of warlords can support i.e. what would be left if our global organized society collapsed.

16) The only way cities of tens of millions of people can survive and sustain the population which exists now, is with an organized economy. People are fed by long supply chains. A huge city of people has no obvious way to feed itself without organization.

17) We know from past civilizations, empires, that when they collapse, it takes a long time for them to re-organize. When the Roman Empire collapsed, it took close on a thousand years for Europe to reach that level of organization again.

18) So it is essential that we avoid uncontrolled collapse completely.

19) Currently, the only glue which holds our societies together is economic growth i.e. everyone is working to a singular goal of increasing their own personal wealth, and improving their lot.

20) The problem is that this is also what is destroying the natural systems that sustain us, and which make this level of prosperity possible. In other words, this model economic model has a very limited timespan before it collapses as it is destroying what it needs to survive.

21) Luckily, this is not an insoluble problem. Humans are an innately cooperative species. People don't need personal greed and competition for them to work together. This was not what bound societies together for most of human existence.

22) Part of understanding the problem is understanding how we got where we are, and why the current system of competition and economic growth developed. Contrary to our cultural myth, it isn't because it benefits most people.

23) The industrial revolution started as a get rich quick scheme for the already wealthy classes in Britain. They had discovered with the British Empire, that through systematic exploitation, through the factory system, that there could be continuous economic growth.

24) The first factories as we know them today, emerged in Asia with the British East India company. Factories like this had never existed before in the whole of human history. The Arsenal at Venice, was a production line, but for different purposes.
ampltd.co.uk/collections_az…

25) In other words, industrial production for the purpose of big profit, didn't actually start in Britain as most accounts claim in the late to mid 18th Century, but a bit before that with the British East India Company in India.

26) Prior to the industrial revolution, continuous and maintained economic growth had never been possible before. Economic growth happened through things like wars, conquest and colonization.

27) The way the wealthy created their income in Europe prior to the industrial revolution was from the income of their estates. But this provided a steady income, not growth. Hence their preoccupation with wars and colonization, to grow that wealth.

28) However, industrial production in factory systems (the first factories used old technology) allowed these wealthy landed families to start to grow their wealth by their investment. It's no accident that most grand country houses in the UK date from the 18th Century on.

29) This industrial capitalist system was developed, purely to increase the wealth of a relatively small sector of already wealthy people. It was not to lift the poor out of poverty, that was never envisaged and was simple a later accident.

30) Although the industrial revolution began in Britain in earnest in the late 18th Century, in the early 20th Century, most working class people still lived in dire poverty. Most working class children were malnourished and smaller than the children of the wealthy.

31) It was only really in the post WW2 period that working class people started to consistently become materially more prosperous. There are a number of reasons for this I won't go into.

32) However, if you look at writers that imagined the future, HG Wells, George Orwell etc (1984 is the best example), they still envisaged a working class living in poverty i.e. the "proles" in 1984, and this was written in 1948.

33) In other words, up to the 1950s, the idea that in developed countries, working people would get better off, and start living more like the middle classes didn't exist. Industrial capitalism, was simply seen as giving people a regular job so they didn't starve, before then.

34) Those who champion the current economic growth model like to pretend that the aim of it is to lift people out of growth so they become prosperous. But as I say, this only really happened post WW2 and no one even imagined it before then.

35) Therefore, the purpose of the economic growth orientated economy/society, was only to grow the wealth of some people, not everyone. That bit was a lucky, unforeseen accident. Yes, of course liberals saw the opportunity for some to lift themselves out of poverty, but not all.

36) I am not an ideologue, not a socialist (I seen nothing wrong with socialism, but this is not the basis of my argument) which is about sustainability, not social justice (although this is part of sustainability).

37) Rather the point I am making is that those driving the economic growth system, were never doing it to lift everyone out of poverty. It should be rather obvious if everyone tries to live like the wealthy, we will run out of resources quickly.

38) In other words, the lifespan of the modern economic growth orientated system is far shorter than people think, and it only really started post-WW2.

39) I only make this point, because people are being whipped into carrying on with this economic growth system and prosperity for all on false pretences. It is still really just about making a few people very wealthy.

40) The Earth's natural resources and systems are being destroyed, not for the benefit of everyone, but for a few people.

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1336933027180666880

41) What this is about, and I know what Greta is advocating because it has been my vision of things for 40-50 years is simply to give people are realistic view of the whole situation and where we are heading.

42) In reality most people are not benefiting from this system. As @KevinClimate explains, if the wealthiest 10% just reduced their emissions to that of the average European, this would cut global emissions by a third.

43) If most people can clearly see that they are destroying any chance for themselves and their children, just to make a relatively small proportion of people unimaginably rich, they would not object to the system changing to a sustainable system, to give their children a future.

44) The only reason people are not pushing for this and are being swept along by right wing populists and the agenda of billionaires, is because they are being fed a false view of the reality we live in.

45) The way to change this is to give everyone a simplified and accurate overall big picture explanation of our reliance on natural systems, the climate and ecological crisis, and the need for a sustainable society/economy.