"Other Plans"

While Derrick, Aric, and Lierre are the activist authors nearest and dearest to my heart, they are by no means the only point of view on the issues they discuss.  In "Other Plans," Lierre addresses many of the writers she perceives as her counterparts, many of them identified with the "Peak Oil Community."  Our tutorial read a number of these authors - Ted Trainer, Lester Brown, John Michael Greer, Pat Murphy, etc.  I was unprepared for the degree of repetition among these authors.  They all seemed to be saying the same things: industrial civilization isn't that great (due to inequality, materialism, violence, etc) and it's also about to collapse (due to peak oil) and we should do something about that.

What we should do, in a mixture of preparation for post-collapse life and in order to prevent/soften the collapse, is prepare self-sufficient local food systems, sustainable local energy systems, local economies, control population growth, reduce inequality, spread democracy, etc.  The authors differ primarily in their emphases and predilections: Brown favors policy solutions, since he's a policy adviser, while Trainer, Murphy and Jensen see government as part of the problem.  Brown favors technological solutions like solar panels, while Jensen sees these as perpetuating the industrial system causing the problem.  Brown favors market mechanisms, while Jensen and Trainer are firmly anti-capitalist.

While there are subtle differences in approach, none of these really matter: no author can control what activists do with the degree of specificity that would be required to prevent both high-tech and low-tech solutions from being implemented.  The diverse group of activists has their own predilections and essentially everything will happen whether the authors like it or not.  DGR is the exception to this: they are the only people pushing for violent direct action against the industrial system.  It seems quite likely that their advocacy will have a strong effect on whether this kind of activism is carried out. 


However, without evidence-based future projections, these authors differ more in the ideological predispositions or their readers (as well as their relative pessimism) than in their factually falsifiable hypotheses and arguments.  While it could be a matter of academic debate whether or not we should engage in monkey-wrenching (though it's a complex question), the arguments, e.g. Lierre makes are more about ideology than about reality: if you believe capitalism is bunk, then her argument pleases you; if not, she never presents any evidence to sway you to her side.  This is perhaps because she sees this debate as too large and complex to adequately address here, as well as too polarized and overdone to be worth rehashing.  But this illustrates the problem in premising her argument on anti-capitalism: activists don't and won't agree on this question, and it is not as crucial to Lierre's point as she seems to think it is (presumably because anti-capitalism is both very important to her personally and because it was a key influence in bringing her to the position she advocates in DGR).

McBay seems to understand this when he points out that "even if you want humans to be able to use factories to build windmills and use tractors to help grow food over the next fifty years, forcing an immediate cut in fossil fuel consumption should be at the top of your to-do list."  He is pointing out that it's not necessary for someone to accept his narrative in order to agree on the task at hand.  That's not to say he doesn't fall into the same fallacy just as much as Lierre, however - he just seems to see past it for a moment of clarity here.

Thus, DGR's analysis does little to establish why it is more relevant and correct than any of its peers.  Lierre attempts to do this in "Other Plans," but her critiques are often superficial and appeal to the emotional and ideological predilections of her readers rather than presenting some compelling facts.  I happen to agree with her, but for that reason I think that her position needs to be defended and advocated with some better evidence, in order to distinguish it from competitors and defend the legitimacy of her plan in a more mainstream community.  The evidence may not exist or may not have been organized and interpreted yet, but it seems clear that this must happen before DGR becomes something more than a fringe group motivated by eclectic emotional and ideological backgrounds.

Edit 5/24/2013:  I've recently come across articles about psychological studies on worldview and ideology. It seems to be the case that, through whatever means, people have personalities and worldviews (like, deep worldviews) that differ fundamentally and make them predisposed to certain interpretations over others, and to certain responses over others. That is, you could say that there is a "moderate brain" and a "radical brain," (as Chris Mooney dichotomizes in his article on the Keystone XL fight - he poses Bill McKibben as his "radical" which is kind of funny here, where McKibben is juxtaposed against DGR's militancy) or even a "conspiracy theorist brain."  The research shows only the faintest suggestions about what might make a person have one of these brain types, but once they have them, it's tough to get out. If the research is correct, then DGR readers like DGR because it tells them a narrative congruent with their worldview. The contrast between DGR and its competitors in the apocalypse activism arena is simply a matter of this, the predilection of their readers. While there is some sort of "objective" difference between the arguments, the intellect is not the force driving readers from one to the other.

There is a very well-defined narrative here, and I literally have read dozens of books that make my brain light up in the reading of it. It may hold lots of elements of truth - and indeed, a major part of what I like about the narrative is that it must be presented with copious peer reviewed evidence, to "prove" the story is correct and make me feel intelligent for following.