The promos for the Kim Hill interview announced that Guy McPherson’s recipe for saving humanity is to help the global economic system collapse! Fly and help rise the price of oil, then it will collapse and we can save the planet. Take your money out of the big banks too. The Radio New Zealand podcast can be accessed here. This turns environmentalists’ thinking on its head.
Guy lives on a rock in the middle of a desert in New Mexico with his small community. His visit to New Zealand has made a remarkable impact. I had never heard of him before three weeks ago and we were lucky enough to host him and his super wife Sheila last Monday and have him show his life changing slide show in our home.
And I have bought his book Walking away from Empire. It is the stimulation from people like Guy that challenges my beliefs. He says we are now at the stage with climate change where the positive feedbacks are kicking in and we are on target for a six degree warming by 2035. The International Energy Association forecast this if it is business as usual. Only if nations honour their promises will we get to 3.5 degrees by 2035 and they are not going to do this.
He told us that climate change activists are divided into those who want to save industrial civilisation and those who don’t. Seems an awful choice to most of us. But logically he is right. Those who love the planet and want it to survive should hope for economic collapse. So next time I am faced with the option of flying I will do so.
Last night I followed the story on the standoff in the Straits of Hormuz, the 30 mile wide stretch of water near Iran which carries 14 oil tankers every day. One commentator was saying that it the tension between US, Europe and Iran is going to escalate over the next weeks and months. Iran is already drawing up legislation to block oil tankers there. I recommend following developments here, because the rising tensions may trigger a spike in the price of oil and a global economic collapse. All economic recessions have been preceded by a spike in the price of oil.