Dark Age America: Climate Change, Cultural Collapse, and the Hard Future Ahead

Definitely gives food for thought on how to gage and prepare for a future without the world many of us grew up taking for granted. Excellent read!

How do our nation's elites such as the Roosevelt's or the Bush's ascend rapidly to a pinnacle of power while exhibiting no expressions of moral or intellectual superlatives? Simply, says author John Michael Greer: Be a descendant of previous high profile functionaries such as those from the Roosevelt or Bush hierarchies and be supple enough "to do anything a well-trained cockatiel might do."Back to the theme of Dark Age America and the author's assessment of America's environmental disasters, the coming demographic collapse, the implosion of political and economic institutions, failed science and technologies, and the dangerous deceptions reflected in cultural shifts as they attempt to adapt to emerging economic, political, ecological and demographic changes.Cancer was uncommon during the nineteenth century but it has become the signature disease of industrial society. It has risen in tandem with the dumping of chemical toxins and radioactive waste into the environment."I sometime wonder if our descendants in the deindustrial world will appreciate that irony. One way or another, I have no doubt that they'll have their own opinions about the bitter legacy we're leaving them. As they think back on the people of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries who gave them the barren soil and ravaged fisheries, the chaotic weather and rising oceans, the poisoned land and water, the birth defects and cancers that embitter their lives, how will they remember us? I think I know. I think we will be the collective Satan of their mythology, the ancient race who ravaged the Earth and everything on it so they could enjoy lives of wretched excess at the future's expense They will remember us as evil incarnate-- and from their perspective, it's by no means easy to dispute that judgment." p38Americans consume three times as much energy as do Europeans, per capita, and twenty times as much as the average Chinese. Cheap energy is and has been the enabling force behind our industrial expansion. Author Greer is unequivocal when he posits that the carrying capacity of North America has been degraded by climate change, sea level rise, radiological and chemical pollution, and the depletion of fossil fuels needed for cheap energy. War, famine and pestilence are common events in the evolution of civilizations and the industrial world will attract it's fair share. Bad agri practices is a common factor in the collapse of civilizations (topsoil loss) while artificial fertilizers are made from nonrenewable resources and all are in depletion.In chapter 5 the author writes that none of the world's 20 biggest industries could make a profit or break even, if their costs included the damage they inflict on the environment. On page 175 author Greer states that "none of the companies at the heart of the fracking boom ever turned a profit...."In the final pages of Dark Age America the author sets sail away from the book's core and transitions to an area that this writer would describe more as wishful thinking than contemporary connected realities. Page 214 "...the challenge of our time is about on a par with other eras of decline and fall." No, not even close!Today there are some seven-and-a half billion members of humanity on earth. In 1900 there were an estimated 800 million. But wait! The World Health Organization expects that number to be on a trajectory to nine or ten billion by 2150That unfettered expansion of humanity will be concentrated in squalid crowded megacities where drug resistant microbes reproduce in evolutionary minutes as expressed in resurging tuberculosis and other assaults from the unseen world. Microbes today have the ability to infest billions of people as they move freely globally compared to the millions that traveled by land, sea and air a century ago. Not only have the numbers changed but demographics reflect behaviors that are more violence prone, are religiously and culturally intolerant, and do not readily integrate with western values.

The title is unsettling, but even more so are the details the author lays out in this book. He does not mince words and provides a fairly broad arc across the history of civilizations that points to one very likely outcome of western civilization and that in North America in particular--a gradual, but uneven decline as cheap energy comes to an end and the effects of burning vast stores of million years worth of organic carbon become very evident.Considering the age of Earth, our current civilization has lasted less than a blink of an eye. One takeaway from this book is that we collectively have an enormous blind spot for this truth, partially because of our inherent tendency to see the future rosier than it is, partially because we've surrendered a lot of common sense by being perpetually distracted. Cheap energy has produced a behemoth of cultural knickknack and "intermediation." This has ensured that most of those fortunate enough to live in societies in which toilets flush, lights can be turned on or off by switches, and calories from food are easy to come by have cultivated the idea that progress is inevitable and will lead to bigger and better things (Hegelian thought has cast a fairly long shadow into all political corners, as the author also discusses).Greer pops this illusion while acknowledging that many will dismiss his predictions as doomsaying. I disagree with a number of things he's predicting or suggesting as remedies (I'm not sure that book printing will pull us out of our predicament, but I sure hope so). And I wish he would have said a little more about why alternative energy sources such as wind and solar couldn't at least buffer the blow of dwindling energy supply. I suspect it's because, as the author repeatedly emphasizes, petrochemicals are extremely energy dense, and whenever there's a new source of available energy, its consumption goes up to unsustainable levels. But the main point of the book would have been more convincing had the author discussed this at some greater length (though, besides these fairly minor niggles, it's well-nigh impossible to muster arguments that would rebut the central thesis of the book).The author's main proposed approach, aptly termed LESS (less energy, stuff, and stimulation), resonates with me. But anyone old enough to remember Jimmy Carter's "malaise speech" knows that it's unlikely to become popular not to mention be as widely adopted as it would need to be to bring about the changes needed to avert the impending tragedy that will await many of us. But it really should be, not only because Greer proposes it, but because energy conservation and living modestly and more in the present are powerful tried-and-true remedies used for times immemorial.

This book really holds up well with predictions of the new dark age ahead.It would be interesting to look at this book as a before The Age of Trump and what the elites did to rid themselves of him.In the book he states there are 3 ways the Elites would deal with the coming collapse,one was to basically do nothing,this would have been the bast way overall but worst for the Elites.Trump represented the 1st way now we are in the mist of combination of 2 and 3.A totalitarian Jack boot approach using the Deep State Media and social media lackeys.I believe that no one could have predicted how soft power of the Internet was weaponized into hard power of the Lockdowns.This with an increased level of government spending which yields a low or negative rate of returns.Some of this book feels a tad bit dated to the Obama era collapse because Trump was temporarily able to reinvigorate the American dreams.But John;s predictions of a senile elite leadership manifested itself in the 2020 Lockdowns and USA elections.I can only hope that we are living in a Lovecraftian New Dark Age with help from some neoreactionary acceleration process now instead of collapse.

An excellent analysis of our present situation and future.

In general I have been a critic of Greer's work, primarily because I think he is simply wrong that "the collapse' will be a long descent. He obviously models his hypothesis on the fall of Rome, but there is much recent scholarship, not considered by him, indicating that Rome's fall was much quicker than orthodoxy holds. In any case, the environmental challenges today dwarf those faced by the Western Roman empire. Today, there is a global crisis. This book gives Greer's best analysis of this. His previous supporters, now some of whom are critics, don't like what they see as Greer's new pessimism.don't let their comments here persuade you in not buying this book. I believe that he is getting closer to the truth. I have been criticized, I think unfairly by Greer in a book review, so my initial inclination was to be somewhat biased to this book. But the quality of the argument and fine writing style has persuaded this critic to give the book five stars. You will find this book challenging even if you finally disagree. Well worthy of purchase!

thought provoking. could have done with more examples drawn from real life but have enjoyed researching those for myself

Excellent, thought provoking and if the reader wishes to work out for him/herself how best to face the coming crisis , a useful guide