could ever possibly use. Even in those very
severe scenarios, many factors are emergent
and novel, including opportunities that peo-
ple haven’t faced before, but we can relate it
to the historic precedent of what the mon-
asteries did in the period after the collapse
of Rome: saving the elements of civilization
and being able to do that because they were
self-reliant, mostly rural communities and
because they supported their constituent
surrounding communities with critical agri-
cultural and engineering knowledge. Those
communities protected the monasteries,
and the monasteries were able to do their
core work of salvaging the knowledge of the
civilization that was fading.
A lot of people would say, “Well, that’s a
severe scenario.” I see those now as much
more likely to emerge after some longer
period within the Green Tech or Brown
Tech scenarios. Stepwise, if we’re in a Green
Tech scenario, there could be a more gentle
segue into an Earth Steward scenario with
a benign climate. Unfortunately, the Brown
Tech world tends to armor itself and will
drive a more precipitous collapse into the
Lifeboat scenario. It’s a complex view, but
it’s very hard to offer these nuanced views
of the future and how different they could
be when we’ve tended to have these road-
rage movies like the Australian Mad Max
films as an intellectual reference point for
dystopias. It is pleasing to see that popular
culture is coming up with some, at least a
bit, more sophisticated dystopias for our
imaginations to work with these days. It’s
still an area where there’s been very little
serious intellectual consideration of ener-
gy-descent futures.
Vollmar: Recently, a volume of solarpunk
fiction out of Brazil was translated into
English from the Portuguese. A film like
Mad Max is going to be better at express-
ing our deepest fears about how a col-
lapse might look, but as that energy-descent
future gets closer, literary responses to those
concerns sharpen in their focus. As we
can more clearly see likely paths sitting in
front of us, the question becomes, Can we
creatively imagine something in that space
other than people in a lake of fire screaming
for eternity or whatever other conceptions
of apocalypse we may culturally bring to the
table? Even in periods of collapse, people
have to live their lives. We have to continue
to be a part of nature, as we’ve always been,
even though nature has entered into a state
for which we have no historical precedent.Holmgren: It’s important to understand that
periods of extreme crisis, especially ones
that are destructive, only go on for a very
short time, and then some new scenario
emerges. A lot of thinking about the future
focuses on imagined crises but doesn’t ask,
“What is the world that emerges after those
crises?” In Future Scenarios workshops, the
emphasis is not on the details of that fall
off of the cliff face but the mountain ledge
plateau that one ends up waking up on
after the fall. Things do stabilize even if
then there is another future crisis, creating
this sort of stepwise energy-descent future.
Human adaptability to whatever becomes
one’s daily experience eventually becomes
a learnt normality, especially for children.
People will grow up with a completely dif-
ferent perception of what is normal. Indoing Future Scenarios workshops, espe-
cially with environmental activists, I was
very cautious about this work because it’s
a shift away from the focus on the positive
solutions, getting people involved in per-
maculture and positive solutions—a bit of
an over-the-horizon view. I found people
sometimes reported that they were enor-
mously empowered by the experience. I
thought, “Gee. What were the scenarios in
their heads?”
This inability to publicly talk, about
futures other than the arrow-of-progress
of modernity has meant that people’s own
private conceptions become darker because
it’s not discussed. There is value in that
discussion. The other side of the equation is
that more and more people can see that the
arrow-of-progress is looking darker itself.
The techno-optimists that advocate hybrid-
izing humanity with silicon technology to
create new emergent life-forms has many
people asking, “Is that really what we want
to do?” If we look at it from an energetic
and ecological point of view, if the system
is capable of harvesting more high-quality
energy, then nothing will stop our com-
plete hybridization into machines and the
algorithm. This means humans dying out
as any sort of autonomous form that our
traditional notions of value would consider
to be of any value.
There are very dark outcomes that result
from society magically having energy and
resources to push back the climate and
other problems and launch itself onward
and upward. That’s something people don’t
often consider. Most people would like
everything to remain in a steady state. That
seems to me to be the least likely future.March 2019Rob Vollmar is WLT’s
book review and online
editor. He is currently
researching sustainability
in the industrial food
system while pursuing a master’s degree
in integrated studies at the University of
Oklahoma.Even in those very
severe scenarios, many
factors are emergent
and novel, including
opportunities that
people haven’t faced
before, but we can
relate it to the historic
precedent of what the
monasteries did in the
period after the collapse
of Rome.WORLDLIT.ORG 69