Thanks for sharing this thoughtful and well-argued article. I find Michaux's data and the conclusions he draws from them particularly compelling: many of the minerals required for producing the infrastructure needed for a transition to a fully renewable economy (particularly batteries) are rare, and we either don't have anywhere near enough reserves to meet the quantities required, or the process of extraction will take too long. The reality is our extractive, growth-oriented economic system is at the root of the current ecological crises, and behind that is a worldview that places humans apart from the natural world and each other, as individuals whose only goal is personal gain.
I believe we need to recover a sense of our relatedness to all life, what Thich Nat Hanh calls 'interbeing' and the Lakota call 'all my relatives'. For who would act in such a way to knowingly bring harm to those that they love and care for? And then we must embrace the transition to a low-energy, local, community-based way of life, where most of our practical needs are met locally. The sacrifice is that we must give up the consumer lifestyle and all its trappings, but the reward is that we can recover a sense of community, and begin to free ourselves from the oppressive shackles of the capitalist military industrial complex that has most of the world enslaved.
Thanks for sharing this thoughtful and well-argued article. I find Michaux's data and the conclusions he draws from them particularly compelling: many of the minerals required for producing the infrastructure needed for a transition to a fully renewable economy (particularly batteries) are rare, and we either don't have anywhere near enough reserves to meet the quantities required, or the process of extraction will take too long. The reality is our extractive, growth-oriented economic system is at the root of the current ecological crises, and behind that is a worldview that places humans apart from the natural world and each other, as individuals whose only goal is personal gain.
I believe we need to recover a sense of our relatedness to all life, what Thich Nat Hanh calls 'interbeing' and the Lakota call 'all my relatives'. For who would act in such a way to knowingly bring harm to those that they love and care for? And then we must embrace the transition to a low-energy, local, community-based way of life, where most of our practical needs are met locally. The sacrifice is that we must give up the consumer lifestyle and all its trappings, but the reward is that we can recover a sense of community, and begin to free ourselves from the oppressive shackles of the capitalist military industrial complex that has most of the world enslaved.