Bring on the doomers

As I’ve pointed out before, I’m proud to be a doomer. I’ve never minded the negative connotation and rapid dismissal by mainstream folks. But it turns out there’s more to doomerism than I knew nearly a year ago. Kathy McMahon has developed a clever classification system for doomers. I’m easily classified as the ecosophic action-oriented variety.

Small banks failing like dominoes on a cattle car? Okay. GDP growth dead, except for federal spending? Hello, stimulus. Unemployment out of control and getting worse? Outstanding. Things falling apart in the industrial economy? Sign me up. Americans working harder for less pay? Well, of course. Pay raises going down with the imperial ship? Duh. Foreclosures about to get really serious? No surprise there. Home values and income being destroyed on Main Street even as the financial companies rake in exorbitant profits and hand out phenomenal bonuses? You betcha. Consumer credit drying up like a jellyfish in the desert? Why not? Stock market bubble, created by the Fed, about to pop? Yes, please. The bubble in higher education about to pop, too? Hurry, hurry. And the mother of all bubbles, the bailout bubble, about to implode? Hallelujah. Oh, and Chris Martenson reveals who bought last week’s Treasurys: the Fed (secretly, of course). More printing money, behind closed doors. Whoo hoo. Dmitry Orlov interviewed on the radio? It’s about time. Hyperinflation on the way, as Fed faces its Zimbabwe moment? It can’t come soon enough for me. I could go on (and on). But you get the idea.
How about you? Are you a doomer? If so, what kind?
As I’ve written and said countless times, completion of the ongoing collapse offers the only legitimate opportunity for non-human species and non-industrial cultures to survive the onslaught of industrialization. The oppression at the hand of corporatism continues unabated, and has extended to all arenas of the human experience, including land-grabs by industrial powers at the expense the poor. If you’re anthropocentric, it’s worse than that. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the industrial economy poses a threat not merely to national security, but also to the persistence of our species on the planet.
Which makes me wonder: When will even a small percentage of industrial humans join the doomer movement? Will the day come only after our species is reduced to a couple small groups of hungry individuals in polar regions, struggling to survive? Will we ever recognize the perils of human population growth? Or will give up the planet as easily as we traded our republic for fascism, without so much as a muffled protest?
More importantly, is that what we want? Is hell on Earth our goal for our hapless descendants?
The twin sides of our fossil-fuel addiction — energy decline and global climate change — are the most important topics we can address as a species. The national conversation ignores or marginalizes these critical topics. On the rare occasion they inadvertently come up, we act like a roomful of eight-year-olds with plates full of peas and mashed potatoes, pushing the main course around without actually ingesting it, wishing for the distraction of dessert.
“I know the real reason Paula Abdul is leaving American Idol.”
Problem solved.