The Ecotechnic Future: Envisioning a Post-Peak World

by John Michael Greer

Overview

How to survive and thrive in the post-industrial age

In response to the coming impact of peak oil, John Michael Greer helps us envision the transition from an industrial society to a sustainable ecotechnic world-not returning to the past, but creating a society that supports relatively advanced technology on a sustainable resource base.

Fusing human ecology and history, this book challenges assumptions held by mainstream and alternative thinkers about the evolution of human societies. Human societies, like ecosystems, evolve in complex and unpredictable ways, making it futile to try to impose rigid ideological forms on the patterns of evolutionary change. Instead, social change must explore many pathways over which we have no control. The troubling and exhilarating prospect of an open-ended future, he proposes, requires dissensus-a deliberate acceptance of radical diversity that widens the range of potential approaches to infinity. 

Written in three parts, the book places the present crisis of the industrial world in its historical and ecological context in part one; part two explores the toolkit for Ecotechnic Age, and part three opens a door to the complexity of future visions.

For anyone concerned about peak oil and the future of the industrial society, this book provides a solid analysis of how we got to where we are, and a practical toolkit to prepare for the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550924398
Publisher:	New Society Publishers
Publication date:	10/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	563 KB

About the Author

John Michael Greer is a certified Master Conserver, organic gardener, a scholar of ecological history, an internationally renowned Blogger and an award-winning Peak Oil author. He lives in Ashland, Oregon.

John Michael Greer is a scholar of ecological history, an award-winning author and an internationally renowned Peak Oil theorist whose blog, "The Archdruid Report", has become one of the most widely cited online resources dealing with the future of industrial society. He is a certified Master Conserver, an organic gardener, and has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years. John lives in Cumberland, MD.

Table of Contents

Introduction

PART ONE – ORIENTATIONS
1. Beyond the Limits
Human Ecologies
Tomorrow Comes Anyway
The Illusion of Independence

2. The Way of Succession
Succession in Action
Succession and Agriculture
Succession and Technic Societies
The Long Road to Sustainability

3. A Short History of the Future
Glimpsing the Deindustrial Age
The Depopulation Explosion
Völkerwanderung
Culture Death
A Different Planet
The World Is Round

4. Toward the Ecotechnic Age
What Evolution Means
The End of Affluence
The Age of Scarcity Industrialism
The Age of Salvage
The Coming of the Ecotechnic Age

PART TWO – RESOURCES
5. Preparations
Projecting the Shadow
The Effects of Homeostasis
The Twilight of Technology
Adaptive Responses
A Time For Dissensus
The Mariner's Two Hands

6. Food
The Next Agriculture
Compost as Template
In the Dark with Both Hands
Pieces of the Puzzle

7. Home
Tomorrow's Homes
Retrofitting the Future
The Household Economy
The Decline and Fall of Home Economics
The Specialization Trap

8. Work
A Hundred Energy Slaves
The Deindustrial Want Ads
The Twilight of Automation
Trailing-Edge Technologies

9. Energy
The Innovation Fallacy
The Paradox of Production
Jevons' Alternative
Master Conservers

10. Community
Lifeboat Ecovillages
Cities in the Deindustrial Future
The Ecology of Social Change

11. Culture
A Failure of Mimesis
The Twilight of Culture
Cultural Conservers
Religion and the Survival of Culture

12. Science
Saving Science
Appropriate Ecology
Toward Ecosophy

PART THREE – POSSIBILITIES
13. The Ecotechnic Promise
History's Arrow
History's Wheel
History, Meaning and Choice
The Eyes of Nature

Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Greer's work is nothing short of brilliant. He has the multidisciplinary smarts to deeply understand our human dilemma as we stand on the verge of the inevitable collapse of industrialism. And he wields uncommon writing skills, making his diagnosis and prescription entertaining, illuminating, and practically informative. Not to be missed."
Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute and author of Peak Everything

"There is a great deal of conventional wisdom about our collective ecological crisis out there in books. The enormous virtue of John Michael Greer's work is that his wisdom is never conventional, but profound and imaginative. There's no one who makes me think harder, and The Ecotechnic Future pushes Greer's vision, and our thought processes in important directions."
Sharon Astyk, farmer, blogger (SharonAstyk.com) and author of Depletion and Abundance and A Nation of Farmers

"In The Ecotechnic Future, John Michael Greer dispels our fantasies of a tidy, controlled transition from industrial society to a post-industrial milieu. The process will be ragged and rugged and will not invariably constitute an evolutionary leap for the human species. It will, however, offer myriad opportunities to create a society that bolsters complex technology which at the same time, maintains a sustainable interaction with the ecosystem. Greer brilliantly inspires us to integrate the two in our thinking and to construct local communities which concretely exemplify this comprehensive vision."
Carolyn Baker, author of Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization's Collapse and publisher/editor, Speaking Truth to Power (CarolynBaker.net)