The Planet Masters

Joel Cane was sitting at his desk in his office at the top of the high skyscraper. He was staring out the window, somewhat absent-mindedly. His current projects were going well, and he was starting to look for something new to undertake.

Joel Cane had proved himself as an inventor, technology entrepreneur and industrialist. He was considered by many to be the greatest individual industrialist of the twenty-first century.

He thrived on excitement, on risk and on accomplishment. He found it much more gratifying to be trying to get to the top of the hill than in being there or in trying to remain there. Once he got a business going, he turned it over to others to manage. At present, he was in that “in-between” phase of moving from his last big project to the next one. All he had to do now was decide what the next big project would be!

After spending some time in unproductive thought, he decided to call a meeting of some of his top directors, to solicit their input. A short time later, four of them were assembled in his office. The group included Rani Singh, Director of Human Resources; Yvonne Lim, Administrator and Chief of Operations; Jack Barnes, Director of Engineering; and Roger Wilson, Director of Planning / Chief Strategist.

“Good morning, folks,” Joel began. “Thank you for coming,” he added as a perfunctory salutation. The group returned his greeting.

“Things are going very well at present, and I have been giving some thought to what our next big venture might be. I haven’t come up with any Earth-shattering ideas, and I thought that you might be able to help me out. This is a brainstorming session – I am looking for ideas that are novel, big, exciting and transformative. Any questions about the task?”

Roger Wilson responded, “Do you have a particular sector in mind, such as physical infrastructure, communications, health care, or defense?”

“No, not at all,” Joel replied. Anything that would be exciting and meaningful – like our past ventures.”

Jack continued, “Well we get lots of new ideas from our venture-capital proposals. You just reviewed the latest round of applications. Were any of them of potential interest?”

“No, not really,” Joel answered, “a number of them have merit, but none quality as candidates for ‘The Next Big Thing.’”

Rani spoke next. “Joel,” she began, “from an ecological viewpoint the planet is going to hell in a hand-basket. Every day, the news is filled with stories about environmental destruction, pollution, climate change, natural habitat loss, toxic spills and species extinctions. The situation is reasonably characterized as an existential threat to civilization at the least and to mankind at the worst. It begs for a solution, but, despite more than a half-century of trying, no one has come up with any ideas that that have even slowed the destruction, much less stopped it or repaired it – not that species extinctions can be repaired.”

Jack Barnes interjected, “What about all these Green New Deal proposals? They address the problem, and plans are in the works to allocate massive amounts of money to address them.”

Rani countered, “Jack, those proposals are a complete scam! They are window-dressing to promote the illusion that something is being done to resolve the environmental crisis, when they in fact simply make it worse. They are nothing more than schemes to shore up the economy as long as possible, while the environmental destruction continues.”

Jack responded, “Rani, how can you say that? Much of the funding will go into environmentally friendly renewable energy production, such as solar.”

“Jack,” Rani continued, “It would take all morning to explain all the fallacies involved. The recent book, Bright Green Lies, explains the situation very well. I’ll loan you my copy, if you are interested in learning more about it. Solar energy is not the solution, or even part of a solution. In fact, it is a major part of the problem.”

Joel interrupted, “Has anyone else read the book Rani just mentioned?”

No one had.

“Rani,” Joel continued, “Jack is right that there will be an awful lot of money for the Green New Deal. If there are some serious shortcomings to it, I would like to understand them. I agree that today’s meeting is not the appropriate forum for a briefing on this, but, in view of the importance of the Green New Deal, I want to have a good understanding of the issues. I would like to understand this before trying to identify other venture possibilities, to give me a better frame of reference for evaluating alternatives. Can you give us a briefing on this tomorrow?”

“Well, yes, of course I can,” she replied.

“OK, then,” Joel responded, “let’s adjourn for today and reconvene at nine tomorrow morning.”

The meeting reconvened the following morning, as scheduled. Rani took the floor and presented a summary of the book, Bright Green Lies, by Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith and Max Wilbert. The primary message of the book is that the so-called renewable energy sources, such as solar electric, solar thermal, biomass, wind, tides, hydroelectric and geothermal are very destructive of the environment. Their production and use cause much pollution, habitat destruction and species extinction. The focus of today’s environmental movement is to attempt to reduce the level of environmental damage without constraining economic activity and growth. With this focus, environmental destruction never ceases.

After her presentation, Rani asked for comments and questions. The immediate reaction from the group was that the information that she presented was in stark contrast to the message being presented by the Green New Deal proponents. From the presentation, it appeared that the immediate future for global civilization was very bleak indeed.

Roger spoke first. “Rani, that was a very interesting presentation. But let me ask you something. I know something of the ecological crisis, and have read a few books on it. There are, in fact, quite a number of books on this important subject. For example, those of the ecologist Edward O. Wilson. Why did you choose to present this particular one?”

“Actually, the reason why I mentioned it yesterday is quite simple,” Rani responded, “I had just finished reading it. It is up-to-date and contains a lot of factual information about the effects of renewable energy use on the environment. The main thesis of the book, that human energy use – even from so-called renewable energy sources – is causing massive and irreparable harm to the biosphere, is not any different from that of mainstream ecologists. The book was pretty comprehensive and well-organized. It was an easy one to summarize in today’s presentation.”

“OK,” Roger replied, “I’ll buy that.”

Jack asked, “Rani, although the book may reflect the views of many ecologists, the tone of the book flies in the face of mainstream politics. I know a fair amount about the engineering aspects of energy production, and my impression is that your facts and figures in that area are generally correct. The authors have been writing in this field for quite some time, and I can’t imagine that they would expose themselves to criticism on the basis of faulty data. Although I am not an ecologist, it seems to me that the book’s diagnostic assessment of the situation is reasonable. The arguments you hear today aren’t about what is happening and how serious the situation is. They are about what to do about it. Most of the discussion about energy policy, and virtually all of the significant decisions, are based on economic costs, not on environmental costs. It could be argued that what Jensen and the others are documenting are not lies, but a monumental whitewash of the environmental damage caused by renewable energy. The differences in opinion about how to address the global ecological crisis arise mainly from differences in the perceived value of the natural environment. Like it or not, however, the big decisions about renewable energy are going to be based on economics, not on ecology.”

Rani responded, “I don’t take issue with your opinion. You are correct in asserting that political discussions about renewable energy essentially ignore environmental costs. While the book includes a lot of information about economic costs, and in particular about government subsidies, the main message of the book is not about the economics of alternative renewable energy sources. It is about the fact that all renewable energy sources based on solar energy cause severe damage to the environment and ecology. That message has nothing to do with economics.

“As I explained in my briefing, the book starts out by asserting three truths. First, that our current way of life requires industrial levels of energy. Second, that fossil fuel is functionally irreplaceable; that solar-energy alternatives like solar-electric, wind, hydroelectric and biomass will never be able to replace it at its current scale. Third, those alternatives require industrial-scale devastation, including open-pit mining, deforestation, soil toxification and extinction of vulnerable species. From that beginning, the book presents detailed arguments to support the authors’ thesis that any efforts to replace the energy that is now provided by fossil fuels will cause further environmental and ecological damage to the biosphere.”

Roger interjected. “OK, let’s accept for the moment the argument that massive development of renewable energy will cause massive damage to the biosphere. That is a reasonable premise – it has been happening since the dawn of the Industrial Age, some two-hundred years ago. The cries of the environmentalists have been strident over the past half-century, and yet the destruction continues unabated. The fact is, humanity is going to maximize economic activity and growth no matter what the cost to the environment. It is patently obvious that it does not even matter that the result of this activity poses an existential threat to global civilization and to the human species. The world’s leaders will not accept restrictions that impede economic growth, period. The book you have summarized presents the case that solar-based renewable energy systems do not represent a solution to the energy and ecological crises. It appears, nevertheless, that the so-called Green New Deals are on the fast track, and that the environmental destruction will continue. So, I ask you, if this is so – and it appears that it is in fact so – what do you propose that we do in response? Or, more to the point, what do you propose as our next big business venture, to take advantage of this crisis?”

Rani responded, “Well, at this very moment, I am not proposing anything. I was trying to identify significant problems facing human society, in the hope that we could identify technological solutions to them. The major existential threat facing humankind at the moment is the destruction of the biosphere in which we live. What I am doing is conducting a needs analysis. You’re the engineer, Jack, you’re the one to propose solutions. I’m trying to identify big problems that need solving. So, I will ask you the same question you just asked me. Environmental destruction is the major existential crisis facing mankind. What do you propose to do about it?”

“Now, wait a minute,” Jack replied, “as I just said, this problem hasn’t been solved in two hundred years, and I’m not sufficiently arrogant to suggest that I can solve it in five minutes.”

Rani responded, “OK, fine, you evidently agree that asking me, a non-engineer, for a solution was a little unfair.”

“OK, OK,” Jack replied, “I agree that it was.”

Joel interjected. “I agree with Rani’s approach to identify big needs, and then try to find big solutions. From the discussion, it may well be that attempting to solve the world’s environmental crisis is more than we can chew. Going back to your presentation, Rani, one thing puzzles me. You had something to say about every renewable energy source that I know about, but you didn’t say anything about nuclear energy. Is nuclear energy not considered renewable? I thought that with the latest breeder-reactor technology we had sufficient nuclear fuel to last for millions of years. That isn’t as long as the sun is expected to shine, but it’s a very long time. Why wasn’t nuclear energy included in your presentation – and I assume, therefore, in the book?”

“You’re right, Joel,” Rani replied, “nuclear energy was not discussed in the book. I imagine either that it is not considered renewable, or that there are not a lot of ‘bright green lies’ associated with it. But I’m not an engineer. Jack, what’s your take on why nuclear energy was excluded?”

“Well,” Jack answered, “nuclear energy has been classified both ways – as nonrenewable and as renewable. In the early days of nuclear fission, using very inefficient reactors, the world’s supply of nuclear fuel was sufficient to last only a few hundred years, and nuclear energy was at that point in time considered nonrenewable. With new technology, the available fuel can in fact last millions of years, and nuclear energy is generally considered renewable. The reason why it was excluded from the book, I imagine, was that the book was written by environmentalists, and as a group they are generally opposed to the use of nuclear energy. So, it wasn’t even on the table for discussion.”

Joel asked, “If nuclear energy had been included in the book, how would it have stacked up?”

“Well,” Jack replied, “they would likely have panned it, since that is the standard position of environmentalists. But not necessarily. Some environmentalists are coming around to accept the fact that although nuclear waste is hard to handle, the negative environmental impact of nuclear energy is very much less than that of any other industrial-energy source. It has been estimated that the total amount of high-level radioactive waste generated by nuclear energy from the dawn of the nuclear age in 1945 would fit in a football field to a height of just ten feet.”

“But,” interrupted Roger, “it lasts for a very long time. For example, I understand that some radioactive waste takes 30,000 years to decay to a low level.”

“That is true,” said Jack, “but the human race could be around for a few million years – 30,000 years is nothing, compared to that. Moreover, the species extinction caused by the use of other energy sources has been massive, and will last for all eternity. The number of human deaths from nuclear accidents and waste is trivial compared to those associated with fossil fuels and renewables. The fact is, nuclear energy is superior to any other form of industrial energy, with respect to environmental impact and safety. The main reason it is relatively expensive is the massive amount of government regulation associated with it. My take is that it was not included in the book because it is not highly damaging to the environment, and that message would not be politically acceptable to the book’s primary audience, environmentalists.”

Joel spoke, “The reason why there is so much discussion about renewable energy is that the world’s oil reserves are exhausting – the Petroleum Age is drawing to a close – and people are scrambling to find replacement energy sources. From the presentation and discussion this morning, it would appear that what is going to happen is a transition to renewable energy – other than nuclear energy – accompanied by massive destruction of the environment. Is that a fair assessment?”

Jack responded, “The fact is, as Rani pointed out, that the environmental cost of the non-nuclear renewable energy sources is so massive that the transition may well be to nuclear energy, despite the antipathy toward it.”

Joel asked, “Is there an energy crisis?”

Jack replied, “In a sense, there is no energy crisis at all. Nuclear energy can replace all of the energy now provided by fossil fuels, with little negative effect on the environment. It is far safer than other sources of energy – a few dozen people have died from nuclear-power energy, whereas thousands of deaths have been caused by accidents and disease caused by other sources of energy. Its ‘carbon footprint’ is almost zero. In view of the massive environmental costs of the other renewables, it is just a matter of time before the environmentalists accept it.”

Rani interjected, “Well, some environmentalists will never accept it, any more than they accept fossil fuels or the other renewables.”

“Well,” Joel responded, “that may be true for some environmentalists, but from what I hear, most environmentalists have resigned themselves to simply trying to minimize environmental damage, not stop it, given the inexorable growth in economic activity. From what has been said here, it sounds as if the Next Big Thing is going to be a massive increase in the development and use of nuclear energy, as petroleum reserves exhaust. What do you think?”

Roger spoke, “That may well be, but I am not convinced that we should get involved. Nuclear energy is a mature industry, with lots of big players. The profit margins are low, and the risk high – recall the Westinghouse Electric Company bankruptcy in 2017?”

Jack countered, “Well, Westinghouse failed because of cost overruns in the construction of large nuclear power plants. These large plants are all custom-made operations. Nevertheless, I tend to agree with Roger – the risk is high and the expected returns low, even though the industry may be headed for growth. There may well be some significant market potential, however, in the business of constructing small modular reactors, or SMRs, which can be manufactured off-site and in quantity using standard designs.”

“Small modular reactors?” asked Joel. “How do they differ from other reactors?”

“Well,” replied Jack, “SMRs are just small nuclear-fission reactors that are centrally manufactured. The salient difference between them and other reactors is not their smaller size, but the fact that they can be manufactured and assembled in a factory, instead of being constructed on-site. They are sufficiently powerful to provide the electricity and thermal-energy needs for a small city, but not for a large city or national electricity grid. The completed modular assembly is transported and installed wherever it is needed. The unit starts generating power as soon as it is installed. The customer avoids the long delays associated with design approvals, on-site construction, and the risk associated with new designs. They may be hooked into an existing power grid or deployed in remote locations having no power grid. They incorporate advanced safety features and have longer refueling cycles. They are well-adapted to special high-energy-use purposes such as water desalination, ore refining, extraction of petroleum from oil sands, creation of synthetic oil from coal, or production of hydrogen. They may be used in cogeneration, that is, to generate either thermal energy or electricity. They have a ‘load-following’ design that can provide varying levels of electricity. Load-following may be implemented by cogeneration, such as using electricity above a base load for auxiliary uses, such as desalination or hydrogen production. As stand-alone units, they represent a more reliable source of electricity than that distributed over large grids. There are a variety of design options, including fast-neutron reactors that can produce more nuclear-fission fuel than they consume. In short, they possess a lot of significant advantages over conventional nuclear reactors, and a number of development efforts are under way.”

“Who’s in the business?” asked Joel.

“Well,” replied Jack, “hardly anyone at all. There are a number of firms that have been doing design work, but that’s about it. As long as the world possessed substantial petroleum reserves, the effort expended on developing new nuclear technology has been limited. In my view, as petroleum reserves exhaust, the situation will change, and quickly. The US Navy has awarded competing contracts to design a transportable SMR for military use. The Russians have constructed and are operating a few SMRs. They have made substantial progress in the development and production of floating nuclear power stations. These stations are self-contained, low-capacity, floating nuclear power plants. The first one began operation in 2019. It can produce up to 70 megawatts (MW) of electricity or 300 MW of heat, or cogeneration of electricity and heat, enough for a city of population 200,000. The Russians intend to mass produce them.”

Rani interjected, “I have a hard time believing what I am hearing! The world is literally going down the tubes, and all you seem interested in doing is jumping on the bandwagon.”

Joel countered, “Well, Rani, you’re the one who started the discussion of energy.”

“I identified the global ecological crisis as a problem crying for a solution,” Rani replied. “The solution is not more energy – the current high level of industrial energy use is destroying the biosphere. While there may be a strong demand for more energy, or for energy sources to replace fossil fuels, energy availability is not the solution. In fact, it is a major part of the problem.”

Joel turned to Yvonne. “Yvonne,” he started, “you have been conspicuously silent in this session. That signals to me that you don’t much care for the suggestions. Is that true?”

“Joel,” Yvonne began, “you have succeeded fabulously in business because you undertook ventures that were big, that had a real flair – one might even say panache, élan – and that no one else had the vision or audacity to undertake. Sometimes they filled a societal need, and sometimes, like a hit film, they didn’t. So far, in this discussion, I don’t see anything that fills the bill. I agree that the biosphere is dying, and that no one seems to be able to do anything to fix it. If you came up with an idea there, that would be great. But people know exactly what the problem is – too many people – and no one is going to take any active measures to fix that. On the matter of energy supply – that problem is simply an economic one that will take care of itself. Manufacturing a lot of small modular reactors will make a lot of money for someone, someday, but it is not the sort of thing that you do. It is nothing more than manufacturing glorified widgets. That doesn’t require your talents, and it doesn’t require mine. Bo-ring!”

Yvonne rolled her eyes. Joel continued to look at her. No one spoke.

After a short time, Joel spoke. “So, Yvonne, you agree that the global ecological crisis defines a significant need, and you agree that no one seems to have identified a feasible solution. So let’s table that for the moment. Can we identify some other significant needs? Or desires?”

Joel glanced around the room, questioningly.

After a brief silence, Rani spoke. “It has been said that the two main existential problems facing mankind are global nuclear war and climate change. Perhaps nuclear war will occur. Perhaps global famine and plague will occur. If those events cannot be avoided, then it may very well be that the best that can be done is to prepare for them, in order to mitigate their effects when they do happen. Sort of like a hurricane – even though you can’t stop it from happening, you can prepare so that you survive.”

Jack replied. “Rani, our business ventures have not succeeded by solving the world’s problems. They have succeeded by implementing solutions, quickly, in very specific areas. They have succeeded by catering to people’s desires and imagination – sometimes by creating the desire and fueling the imagination – not by addressing mankind’s existential needs. We do better in business by responding to people’s wants and desires, not to their needs. Everyone needs a solution to the ecological crisis, but no one seems to want it very much, so that may not be a fruitful area for business. I think that the contextual framework that you are working in is too ambitious.”

Rani replied, “Joel set the parameters of this meeting as a free-wheeling brainstorming session. What about it, Joel, is the contextual framework – existential crises – too broad?”

Joel answered, “No, no, I don’t have a problem with that. I agree that we may not be able to solve the ecological crisis, but in view of its importance it is good to take it into account while trying to identify good ventures of manageable scope. By the way, I was struck by your observation that if it is not possible to prevent a catastrophe then a good fallback position is to be prepared to survive it.”

Yvonne interjected, “Joel, people are in complete denial about the ecological crisis and nuclear war. Government leaders know this. They are not going to prepare for those contingencies because to do so would admit that government is powerless to prevent them from happening, and that they are in fact likely to happen. It’s like the nuclear-war radioactive fallout-shelter program of the 1950s and 1960s. The fallout-shelter signs were a constant reminder of the threat of nuclear war. The government eventually realized that even if the shelters kept people alive for a short time, that would have little effect on their long-term survival in a post-attack environment, and the program was abandoned.”

Jack interrupted, “You mean to say, it was abandoned in the US. Countries such as Finland and Switzerland have fallout shelters for everyone, even today.”

The group fell silent. Joel surveyed the room. “You know,” he started, “perhaps this contextual framework is too broad. It is identifying problems that are extremely difficult to solve, and not helping us achieve the goal of identifying good ventures that are within the scope and interests of the firm. I would like to conclude today’s meeting and give some thought to a more productive framework for discussion. Thanks for your time.”

The meeting adjourned.

2. Rumination and Resolve

Joel spent the next few weeks reading and thinking. From the brainstorming session, he recognized that he had not given serious thought to the ecological state of the planet. His previous business ventures had succeeded in the context of a vibrant technological economy, in the context of its continuing, not its collapse. He had always been aware of the vulnerability of modern industrial society to global nuclear war, but since the initial use of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II, three-quarters of a century had passed and such weapons had never again been used. The world’s powerful nations seemed quite content to wage small, manageable proxy wars, not large, unpredictable, uncontrollable, existentially threatening large ones. So, he and most other people did not worry much about the threat of nuclear war, even though it had the potential to destroy global industrial civilization. The threat was real, but it was evidently well managed.

What had caught his attention in the session was the seriousness of the present global ecological crisis. Like nuclear war, it represented an existential threat to global industrial society, if not to mankind, but unlike nuclear war, the threat was large and growing larger. The nature of the threat was recognized, but nothing effective was being done to manage it. The natural habitat and species destruction that had already occurred was truly massive – millions of species had been made extinct and a substantial proportion of Earth’s mammals and forests had been destroyed by human activity. The real problem was that continued human activity was continuing the destruction and extinction at a high rate. The ongoing extinction is the sixth mass species extinction in the geological history of the planet, this one human-caused. Mankind’s activity was rapidly destroying the habitat of all Terran life, including that of mankind itself.

Joel had thoroughly enjoyed his successes and took a measure of personal pride in his accomplishments, but he was suddenly struck by the fact that if industrial civilization collapsed, then none of his successes were of any value. For a moment, he experienced a flood of embarrassment that his life’s work, which had previously seemed so impressive, was likely irrelevant to the future of humanity.

Irrelevant! How could his accomplishments be irrelevant? If his accomplishments were irrelevant, then it logically followed that he was irrelevant! The thought that he might be irrelevant hit him like a body slam. How could he possibly be irrelevant? Being relevant was central to his sense of self-worth. He had to be relevant! Relevant to his family, to his friends, to his competitors, and to human society. His life, in fact, had been a quest for relevance, a search for purpose and meaning. If global industrial civilization were to collapse, then he would be instantly irrelevant to everyone and everything. Nothing that he had achieved would have mattered a whit. That was not how he had planned to view his life’s accomplishments, at its end. Lack of relevance implied a lack of meaningful purpose, and he had always been driven to achieve meaningful goals. He was free to choose those goals, but for his life to be meaningful they had to be goals that he and those who mattered to him considered worthwhile.

Joel was driven to work on things that mattered, that had a significant impact. And, he now realized, had some meaningful purpose and had a lasting impact. He recalled Yvonne’s ridicule of manufacturing widgets. If global society crashed and his accomplishments were made irrelevant, all of a sudden, his life would have become one of making useless widgets. That was not at all what he had planned for his life, or what he was willing to accept.

Joel realized that he needed to know more about the future, about the nature and risk of societal collapse. The literatures on societal collapse and the ecological crisis are very substantial and overlapping. Joel read several of high-profile books on the subjects, including the one that Rani had summarized.

The two books that he liked best about societal collapse were Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Societies. Although various authors’ views on the reasons for and the mechanisms of societal collapse differed, it was apparent from history that nations and empires are very mortal entities. All societies collapse. The United States would collapse, and present global industrial civilization would collapse. All that remains to be seen was by what means and when, and what follows.

It seemed that people don’t seem to worry much about the eventual collapse of the US or of global civilization. If they think about it at all, they evidently view societal collapse as a fact of existence, and accept it. Societal collapse eventually happens, no matter what. It is a given, the inevitable fate of any man-made creation. There is essentially nothing that can be done to avoid it – given human nature, no matter who or what is in charge, there are others working hard to replace that power. Civilization is a continual game, with constant struggle for control, and erstwhile winners are always replaced with new ones. It is just a political process of musical chairs. When one nation or empire collapses, others are formed to take their place. As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr observed, ‘Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose’ – ‘The more things change, the more they stay the same.’ He was reminded of the caption he had seen once in a hotel-lobby mural, Nous sommes toujours esclaves, seulment nos maîtres changent – ‘We are always slaves, only our masters change.’

Joel’s mind continued to wander. As long as civilization does not cause permanent damage to the biosphere, after the collapse of one society the survivors simply pick up the pieces, rebuild and continue. In this case, individual nations and empires come and go, but the overall system of civilization continues, with new nations and empires evolving out of the old ones. The essential nature of the system does not change. Who is in charge changes, but that is bound to change anyway, since people die. Every century, the people in charge are all new. With respect to political evolution, nothing essential changes. From almost any planetary perspective, as long as mankind does not cause permanent damage to the biosphere, in the long term, civilization really doesn’t matter. It collapses, then it rebuilds. The cycle continues.

As complex systems, human civilization and the Earth’s planetary ecosystem possess some similarities, but they differ in fundamental ways. Like civilization, the ecosystem, too, may be viewed as a game – a contest, a conflict, a struggle – with some people bent on using nature for their own purposes no matter what the cost, and others wanting to protect it. The big difference is that, as the game proceeds, environmental destruction continues and mass extinction continues. With every passing year, there are fewer species remaining. The result of the game could be the sentencing of humankind to life on a biologically impoverished planet for millions of years, or even the extinction of the human species.

The state of the biodiversity of the planet will have a tremendous effect on the quality of human life for all of its future. Thousands of species are made extinct every year because of human activity. With each passing year, fewer remain, and the quality of human life is irreparably degraded for millions of years to come. If it is desired to avoid this bleak future, there is extreme pressure to bring the environmental destruction to a halt, as quickly as possible. Because the planet’s species are finite in number and the destruction is continuing at a high rate, the sooner the environmental destruction ends, the better. If we delay too long, there will be nothing left to save, and the situation will have been overtaken by events.

As Rani had mentioned, it has been said that the two main existential threats to global civilization and mankind’s existence are nuclear war and ecological catastrophe. The likelihoods of occurrence of these threats are, however, very different. History shows that, for some time, the risk of nuclear war has been kept low. With continued progress on nuclear disarmament, the magnitude of the threat may be decreasing. With advancements in technology and increased global political integration, the risk of occurrence, whether by accident or intention, may also be decreasing.

With respect to the ecological crisis, however, the level of permanent environmental damage – species loss – is inexorably increasing, year after year. The essence of the ecological crisis is species extinction, and it has already occurred and is continuing on a massive scale. The ecological catastrophe has in fact already occurred, and it gets worse with every passing year.

The signs of ecological catastrophe are everywhere – severe pollution of land, air and water, natural habitat destruction, and species loss. The collapse of fisheries. Climate change. Wildfires. Sea rise. Desertification. Global industrial civilization is rapidly destroying the biosphere upon which its very existence is utterly dependent. Massive harm has already been caused to the biosphere. Unless the environmental destruction is halted, global industrial civilization is unsustainable and its collapse is inevitable.

But the destruction is not being halted! It is continuing every year and the signs of stress to the biosphere are increasing in number and intensity. The risk of collapse of global industrial society is high and ever-increasing. Nothing is being done to change the situation for the better. Based on the evidence, it seemed to Joel that an inescapable conclusion was that collapse was both unavoidable and imminent. From a rational perspective, any new business venture should be based on the assumption that industrial society will soon collapse, not that it will continue. Rather amazingly, that is exactly the opposite of the basic assumption or context underlying almost all business planning.

Joel collected his thoughts. He now realized that in order for his life accomplishments to be of lasting value to him and to those who mattered to him, they had to be important to mankind’s future. He also realized that the quality of mankind’s future was directly related to the quality, or species composition, of the biosphere of which he was an integral part. The relevance of Joel’s accomplishments was directly related to two things: in general, the state of the biosphere, and more specifically, the state of the human species within that biosphere.

Until now, Joel had been living in the present. Relating to the present. He had been operating under the assumption that global industrial society would continue, when the evidence overwhelmingly indicated that it would not. In order to achieve his quest for relevance, he had to focus on the future. If the ecological crisis were not resolved, mankind’s future was bleak, and nothing that he had done or would do would be of any relevance, either in his own eyes or from the viewpoint of others. To make his life worthwhile, to give his life meaning and purpose, to accomplish his quest for relevance, the environmental destruction had to stop. While that was necessary, however, it was by no means sufficient. It was also necessary that human society be fundamentally restructured to assure the long-term preservation of the biosphere’s biodiversity.

From his reading, it was very evident that no person or organization was either willing to or able to accomplish either of these goals. In order for Joel to accomplish his quest for relevance, Joel realized that accomplishing these goals would be up to him. Could he do this? Of course he could! The environmental destruction was not being caused by an external source, like an asteroid collision. It was being caused entirely by mankind’s actions, and it could be stopped by human action.

Joel Cane had a new goal: to bring a halt to the global environmental destruction and to set up a planetary management system, or PMS, that would assure the long-term survival of humankind in a species-rich biosphere.

3. Epiphany

Early in his career, Joel had been a systems and software engineer, and he used a systems engineering approach to all of his development projects. The major steps of a systems engineering project are needs analysis, operational concept specification, systems analysis, requirements analysis, requirements specification, identification of performance evaluation criteria, synthesis of alternative systems, evaluation of the system alternatives relative to the performance criteria, selection of a preferred alternative, high-level design, detailed design, implementation, and operation and maintenance.

At this point, all that had been accomplished for the present project was a preliminary needs analysis – it was documented in the large number of books that described and discussed the environmental crisis. Ordinarily, Joel would convene his “brain trust” at this early stage of a project, to sketch out an operational concept. In this case, he decided to spend some time working on the problem by himself, to become more familiar with the problem and to get a firmer grasp of its magnitude and complexity.

The books that he had read all contained summary chapters on what the authors proposed as solutions to the ecological crisis, but they were essentially worthless. There was really nothing wrong with them – they were simply never accepted or implemented. Joel re-read a number of these prescriptions, to see why they never worked.

It soon became pretty clear why no proposed solutions had worked. There were lots of reasons, but there were two main reasons. First, global civilization had embraced growth-based economics as its guiding principle. The leaders of all of the world’s nations call for economic growth and development. The goal of growth-based economics is increased production and consumption of goods and services. Its fundamental goal is to grow. If all of the world’s nations are striving for growth and have adopted a system that works well to accomplish growth, then it is not at all surprising that the global economy is growing!

In a finite world, however, physical growth cannot continue indefinitely, since physical growth requires resource inputs (minerals, energy, space), and those inputs are appropriated from nature. If the growth is exponential (compound growth), it cannot continue for very long at all. It is eventually moderated by physical limits, but, history shows, not until it has caused great damage to the natural environment. It is basically a system for converting natural resources into products for human consumption.

Growth-based economics had been embraced by all major political systems – capitalism, socialism, communism, fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, democracy, monarchy, theocracy, oligarchy, plutocracy. There had been calls to moderate the destructive effects of growth-based economics, by more benign-to-nature versions such as steady-state economics or ecological economics, but those calls were unheeded.

The second reason why no efforts had succeeded in solving the ecological crisis was that human population has grown to extremely high levels. For any level of economic development, the utilization of natural resources by the economic system is proportional to the number of human beings. With a population of eight billion human beings, the rate of conversion of natural resources to human use has reached a point where a massive proportion of nature had been destroyed, and destruction of the remainder was rapidly under way. Because of human activity, the biomass of wild animals and old-growth forests had been reduced by over half, and millions of species had been made extinct.

There had been calls to slow or halt human population growth, and some progress had been made in slowing the rate of growth of human population. The growth rate was still massive – an increase of about eighty million people per year, a number comparable to the population of Germany (and substantially more than the populations of the United Kingdom, France or Italy) added to the world’s population every year. There had been calls to reduce the total human population size, but these calls generated no interest. It was recognized that political power is proportional to population size, and no country was willing to reduce its population size. As the old adage says, “A king’s glory is in his population.”

The only way for human society to live in harmony with the biosphere – that is, to be sustainable – was for all of the products of human activity to be biofriendly – biodegradable in amounts that could be metabolized by the biosphere, or harmless to it. Modern civilization produced massive amounts of products that were not biofriendly. To transform the present system of civilization to a sustainable one would require a halt to the production of nonbiofriendly products. To accomplish this would require some combination of a very large reduction in the size of the human population or a very large reduction in the amount of nonbiofriendly material produced by human industry. The latter can be accomplished either by reducing the production of such material or by the expenditure of a very large amount of energy to transform nonbiofriendly products into biofriendly ones. Either of these approaches reduces the standard of living of people from what it would otherwise have been.

History had shown that none of these things was going to happen willingly. Nations did not desire to reduce their population sizes, and people did not desire to reduce or even constrain their standards of living. In fact, all nations were calling for increases in standards of living. The United Nations had proclaimed that all people have a right to economic development. No one, it seemed, was willing to allocate a substantial portion of the world’s industrial energy to reducing the amount of nonbiofriendly waste.

Joel was confirming his original conclusion that there was no way that catastrophic collapse could be avoided. There was not going to be a peaceful transition to a sustainable civilization. Economic growth and development would continue until stopped by some sort of major catastrophe. It was just a matter of time. If he was going to make a difference, it had to be in the context of a catastrophic collapse of global civilization.

This conclusion was consistent with Tainter’s work. His view was that societies tend to increase in complexity, and collapse when the cost of maintaining the complexity becomes too great. They do not devolve to a previous, lower level of complexity. Societies did not decline slow or gracefully unless there were neighboring societies that propped them up or absorbed them as they declined. Otherwise, they collapsed fast. For Planet Earth, there was no neighboring society to ease the fall. The collapse of global industrial civilization, it seemed, was not only inevitable and imminent, but it would happen very quickly.

Joel concluded, therefore, that his job was to develop a plan to transition to a new, sustainable civilization when the current global industrial civilization collapsed.

All of a sudden, things seemed very clear! As long as he had held the mindset of preventing the collapse of industrial civilization, solving the problem had seemed hopeless. It probably was. The present system was not fixable, not repairable. It was beyond redemption. Now that he perceived the essence of the situation and saw clearly what was going to happen, he was buoyed by a rush of optimism, confidence and enthusiasm. Solving the problem no longer required transforming today’s juggernaut, biosphere-destroying civilization to a sustainable one.

The present system was totally unsustainable and doomed to collapse. Uncontrolled industrialization was a malignant cancer that eventually would destroy its host – the global civilization that had created it and nurtured it. He did not have to do anything about that – it would happen on its own. All he had to do was develop a plan for surviving the collapse and for establishing a sustainable planetary management system in its aftermath. The transformation would be a discontinuous, revolutionary, violent one, not a continuous, evolutionary, peaceful one. A new world order would arise like the Phoenix out of the ashes of the old one.

4. Concept

The thought crossed Joel’s mind that he should convene his brain trust at this point. He could describe his reasoning and conclusions, and solicit their input on alternative solutions. Once again, however, he decided not to do so. Not just yet. He was obsessed with the project, making good progress on it, and did not want anything to distract from his thought processes right now. He would solicit their input later. Postponing their input should not lessen its value – they would simply be starting from a later point, with benefit of his insights.

Joel was convinced that catastrophic collapse would occur, and soon. But how? What were the alternatives? Whatever plan he devised would have to work well no matter how it happened. It would have to be robust relative to the nature of the catastrophe.

It seemed that many people were agreed that an ecological catastrophe of some sort was likely, as the environmental and ecological crises worsened. Most of the discussion was about climate change. There would be global warming, with species loss. Heat waves would intensify. Glaciers would melt. Wildfires would increase. Hurricanes would increase in number and intensity. Rainfall patterns would change. Drought and deluges could become more frequent and severe. Famines would occur. Fisheries would collapse. Sea levels would rise. Ocean currents might change. Migration would increase.

But so what? Such events would have little effect on the world’s controlling elites. They would not affect the relative position of the elites in society, and the elites would therefore expend little effort and resources to avoid them. These events would cause a lot of human hardship, but most of the world’s population lived in miserable poverty anyway. Joel did not see that any of these events, individually or even collectively, would lead to a collapse of global civilization. In fact, they would simply fuel the global economy. They would be like war, which is good for the economy.

As the human population continued to increase, and the climate-change events disrupted production systems, local resource wars would increase in magnitude and intensity. But at any given time, dozens of local wars are always in progress around the world. That process is well managed by the superpowers, who make fortunes from arms production.

The growing scarcity of natural resources would not in itself represent a catastrophe to global industrial society, or threaten the position of the planet’s elite. In fact, it would represent a stimulus to the global economic system. Economics is the science of managing scarcity. Economic systems are efficient and resilient. As one resource becomes scarce, technology is applied to find substitutes, and production marches on. Rising resource scarcity would simply heighten the importance of economics and technology. With the world in the stranglehold of global industrial civilization, the environmental crisis could simply continue to worsen. Barring a catastrophic collapse, the science and technology of economics would keep the system alive to the bitter end! As T. S. Eliot mused in The Hollow Men, the world would end not in a bang but in a whimper. The environment would be in shambles, most wildlife gone, and mankind condemned to live in a desolate, impoverished world for all future time.

Joel’s brainstorming was morphing into daydreaming.

No! He shook himself awake. That could not be the future! It was too depressing to contemplate. There was no place in it for him. He would have made no difference. He rejected that future, and would make no plans to be a part of it or to accommodate it. If that future came to pass, it would be most unfortunate for all future generations of mankind – or, perhaps more accurately, for all potential future generations of mankind, because there may not be any – but he had no interest in it.

Joel took his copy of Herman Kahn’s book On Thermonuclear War from the shelf. It had been a long time since he had read it. He scanned through the text. Some of Kahn’s points were coming back to him. Kahn’s thesis was that although the outcomes of nuclear war are terrible, the various outcomes are qualitatively and quantitatively distinct – what he termed “distinguishable.” Measurably distinct. He stressed the importance of preparation, both to influence the course of the war and its aftermath. He had been a strong proponent of national fallout shelter programs.

At the time of its publication, On Thermonuclear War generated a lot of controversy. Kahn’s thesis was that thermonuclear war was survivable. Many people did not want to hear that, because, if it were survivable, then the conflict-avoidance strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD, would not work, and that was evidently all that kept nuclear war from breaking out.

Kahn’s point was that although nuclear war may be incredibly destructive, it was both survivable and winnable. It was not necessarily true that the survivors would envy the dead. The survivors would rebuild. Preparations could make a tremendous difference in the outcome. As with most things in human endeavor, fortune would favor the prepared.

It occurred to Joel that, in his focused contemplation, he had allowed himself to become sidetracked. His concern that global industrial society would continue until the biosphere was essentially destroyed before it collapsed was essentially irrelevant to his task. His task was to develop a plan to survive a collapse, if and when it occurred, and to establish a sustainable civilization after the collapse. He accepted that he had no control over the timing or nature of the collapse. His plan would be a contingency plan, conditional on collapse, whenever and however it occurred.

The plan must be for a survival system that would perform well no matter what the nature of the collapse. It must be robust. Actually, it must be better than robust. To use Nicholas Taleb’s terminology, it must be antifragile. It must thrive on uncertainty, on chaos. In an environment of change and uncertainty, the change and uncertainty must make the system stronger. It must be like a child’s immune system, which becomes stronger as the child is exposed to and attacked by more and different germs.

What was needed was a system that would become stronger and stronger as time passed, as the situation worsened.

Joel realized that the survival system that was needed would require preparations on a grand scale, of global scope – and a very substantial investment. The resources required far exceeded his own. What was needed was a system that people would want, and be willing to build, in normal times, but which would also work in the aftermath of collapse.

So, if he assumed that global industrial society were to continue, what sort of system would serve it well, and also be of use after a collapse? The answer to this question was pretty obvious. It was an energy system. Of all of the resources that support civilization, energy was among the most essential. For most physical resources, as one resource became scarce or even unavailable, technology could find a way to develop substitutes, replacements. But not so with energy. You might succeed in being more efficient and using less of it, and you might replace one type of energy source with another, but you could not totally eliminate the need for it. Every system required energy to operate. Energy was a resource sine qua non.

As petroleum reserves exhausted, the global industrial world was facing an energy crisis. Energy was the essence of the so-called Green New Deals that were now circulating the halls of government. The primary concern of the Deals was not to save nature. It was not to stop pollution, deforestation, killing of wildlife or species extinction – those would continue. The primary concern was to find alternative sources of energy to replace petroleum, and, eventually, all fossil fuels. The adjective Green was a hypocritical deception, a cynical and cruel lie. Replacement of the energy provided by fossil fuels by solar-energy-based renewables would cause massive environmental damage.

But this was not true for nuclear energy. Nuclear energy could replace all of the energy now provided by fossil fuels, with little environmental impact. Actually, it would do so with a tremendous environmental impact! All of the other energy alternatives would continue to destroy nature. Only nuclear energy possessed the potential to save it!

All of a sudden, Joel saw a basis for a plan! He would get into the nuclear energy business, big time. To avoid the problems that had plagued large-scale nuclear power plants, he would build small modular reactors. Thousands of them. People willingly pay for energy, and they would pay for the SMRs. The SMRs could supplement existing power grids, or provide power to remote locations independent of existing grids. If global industrial civilization suffered a collapse, the current power system, based on large interconnected grids, would fail. It was fragile, not antifragile. But the SMRs were not interconnected – they operated independently and would continue to operate in any location that remained intact after the collapse.

SMRs were the key to his survival plan! As the global energy crisis worsened, today’s industrial society would eagerly build them, and, because they functioned independently, those that survived the collapse would remain operational. The SMRs could provide energy both to today’s global industrial society and to tomorrow’s collapsed society. In a large-scale nuclear war, for example, all large cities might be destroyed, along with most major power plants. National power grids would collapse. SMRs located in small towns, unlikely to be attacked, would survive.

With the survival of a substantial source of industrial energy, technological civilization would be able to continue. Since nuclear power is environmentally friendly, it possessed the potential to form the foundation for a biofriendly civilization. Joel’s concept offered the potential both to save technological civilization and to save what remained of the biosphere’s biodiversity, after collapse of the world’s current planet-destroying global industrial civilization. If this concept worked, then Joel would have succeeded stunningly in his quest for relevance.

He would have saved technological civilization and saved the biosphere. He would have made his mark.

Now that Joel had envisioned a concept for a survival system, he would present it to his brain trust and solicit their comments. There was much that they could contribute. At this point, all that he had was a preliminary concept. Perhaps they could develop a better concept, but at least he had identified an initial concept that appeared to be feasible. He was convinced that he had identified a feasible solution to the world’s ecological problem. In any event, much more analysis and design work would be required to construct a workable plan to implement it or a version of it.

5. Revelation

Joel felt a strong sense of accomplishment. The task of designing an antifragile survival system for technological civilization was a daunting one, and he believed that he had made a good start on it. He was always amazed at the creative process. You think about a problem hard, you research it, you discuss it, you sleep on it and, in a rush, a solution presents itself. How does that happen?

As he mused, he glanced over a nearby shelf in his library. He took pleasure in his library. It contained about 6,000 volumes on things that were of interest to him. He had eclectic interests, and many subjects and topics were covered. Sometimes it seemed that his library was like a millstone around his neck. Except for it, however, no other physical possessions meant very much to him. But he took pleasure in possessing his books. They were good friends.

A few times he had tried to reduce the size of his library, but he had not been very successful. At one point, he had even telephoned the department secretary at his school to ask whether they would accept the whole thing. The secretary told him that she would get back to him, but she never called back. He changed his mind about giving it away.

Joel had resigned himself the realization that his library would remain at least 6,000 volumes in size. He had now moved it several times, as he had relocated. He accepted that 6,000 books were now his “traveling library.”

He had laughed out loud when he read Nicholas Taleb’s comments, in The Black Swan, about Umberto Eco’s library. Eco owned a library of about 30,000 books. He said that people who saw it for the first time often expressed awe and asked how many of the books had he read. Joel had been asked a similar question, many times: “Wow, have you read all of these?” Of course not. He had read some of them in detail, but many of them he had just skimmed to have an idea about what they contained. There were more than a few that he had not read at all. He had purchased them because he felt that someday he would have a use for the information in them, and that day had not yet come. A few people understood that his library books were for reference.

With the Internet and Wikipedia, information on about any topic was instantly available. But it was usually not detailed, in-depth information. For that, he needed original sources – books. Many books were now available in electronic form, but many of his books were not. Also, reading a hard-copy book was more comfortable than reading a computer screen.

He continued to mull over the mysterious creative process. No one had any explanation for it, since no one had any idea how the mind worked. He had read Fritjof Capra’s book, The Tao of Physics, and accepted the argument that the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment and Bell’s theorem imply that the universe is a unitary construct – fundamentally interconnected, interdependent and inseparable. He was taken by the so-called 100-monkeys phenomenon that, after about 100 monkeys have learned something, the entire species appears to know it.

It had occurred to Joel that because space-time is continuous – else the universe could not manifest velocity – it must exist for all time, not just the present. In the creative process, was it possible that we were simply accessing a universal storehouse of knowledge, colorfully described as the Akashic records?

The solution that he now held seem to come from two sources – from science and logical reasoning on the one hand, and from spiritual revelation on the other. Joel’s eyes wandered over the bookshelf. Revelation. Apocalypse. He pulled D. H. Lawrence’s book, Apocalypse, from the shelf and leafed through it. The book was a critique of the political, religious and social structures that had shaped our materialistic and technological age. Lawrence viewed that there were two approaches to gaining knowledge, by spiritual revelation on the one hand and by the scientific method and intellectual reasoning on the other, and that mankind’s present alienation from nature followed from a separation of these two ways. It was Lawrence’s view that ‘The final aim of every living thing, creature, or being is the full achievement of itself.’

Joel felt that, in the path to his finding a solution to the ecological crisis, he had made full use of both approaches – the scientific way and the spiritual way. He had labored hard assimilating facts and analyzing them, and he had opened his mind to receive inspiration and revelation. He had received a revelation. He had subjected the revelation to analytical scrutiny, and found it to be sound.

Joel realized that he was not just speculating on the nature of the creative process. He was seeking validation of his concept.

He pulled Arthur B. Robinson’s reprint of Sir Isaac Newton’s Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John from the shelf. To Joel, this book contained the greatest revelation of all time. He read:

“In recent years it has become fashionable to say that Newton's laws of motion contained an error (the error of assumption that mass is a constant), and that this was corrected by Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. As Petr Beckmann has pointed out in his book, A History of Pi, this error never existed.

In the Principia Newton writes,

‘Lex I. Corpus omne perseverare in statu suo quiescendi vel movendi uniformiter in directum, nisi quatenus illud a viribus impressis cogitur statum suum mutare.’

‘Lex II. Mutationem motus proportionalem esse vi motrici impressx, & fieri secundum lineam rectam qua vis illa imprimitur.’

‘Lex III. Actioni contrariam semper & aequalem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse aequales & in partes contrarias dirigi.’

“These are the famous three laws of motion.

“In translation, the second law reads ‘The change of momentum is proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.’ Newton defines momentum as follows: ‘The quantity of momentum is the measure of the same, arising from the velocity and quantity of matter conjointly.’

“Or, in the symbolic terms of Newton's calculus, F = d(mv)/dt.

Newton did not know whether or not mass was constant, and he was too careful a scientist to assume so by placing it outside the differential. During the next 200 years, physicists assumed, for convenience, that mass was constant and began to write F = ma or F = m dv/dt. It is this later day shortcut which proved to be incorrect, not Isaac Newton's original law.

Joel placed the book back on the shelf and pulled out the one next to it, A History of Pi, which Robinson had referenced. He read:

“There had never been a scientist like Newton, and there has not been one like him since. Not Einstein, not Archimedes, not Galileo, not Planck, not anybody else measured up to anywhere near his stature. Indeed, it is safe to say that there can never be a scientist like Newton again, for the scientists of future generations will have books and libraries, microfilms and microfiches, magnetic discs and other computerized information to draw on. Newton had nothing, nothing except Galileo's qualitative thoughts and Kepler's laws of planetary motion. With little more than that to go on, Newton formulated three laws that govern all motion in the universe: From the galaxies in the heavens to the electrons whirling round atomic nuclei, from the cat that always falls on its feet to the gyroscopes that watch over the flight of space ships. His laws of motion have withstood the test of time for three centuries. The very concepts of space, time and mass have crumbled under the impact of Einstein's theory of relativity; age-old prejudices of cause, effect and certainty were destroyed by quantum mechanics; but Newton's laws have come through unscathed.

“Yes, that is so. Contrary to widespread belief, Newton's laws of motion are not contradicted by Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. Newton never made the statement that force equals mass times acceleration. His Second Law says

F = d(mv)/dt

and Newton was far too cautious a man to take the m out of the bracket. When mass, in Einstein's interpretation, became a function of velocity, not an iota in Newton's laws needed to be changed. It is therefore incorrect to regard relativistic mechanics as refining or even contradicting Newton's laws: Einstein's building is still anchored in the three Newtonian foundation stones, but the building is twisted to accommodate electromagnetic phenomena as well. True, Newton's law of gravitation turned out to be (very slightly) inaccurate; but this law, even though it led Newton to the discovery of the foundation stones, is not a foundation stone itself.”

To Joel, the fact that Newton had left mass within the integral was nothing short of amazing. At Newton’s time, there was absolutely no way of inferring from available observation or data that mass was not constant. The standard way of simplifying formulas is to take constants outside the integral. Joel imagined that almost anyone working with the formula would have done so, because the final result seems simpler. Which it is! Simpler, but not correct! To leave mass inside the integral had to have been motivated by inspiration, by intuition, by revelation. Or was it motivated by caution, as surmised by Beckman? Who knows? Joel don’t believe so.

Joel ended his reverie. He felt confident that his basic concept was sound, but he knew that there was much work to do to flesh it out. It was now time to involve his team in the project.

6. Forging a Plan

A series of meetings followed, in which an operational concept and system design were developed. Joel was impressed by the enthusiasm of the group for his idea. He had initially imagined that their reaction might range from scorn to skepticism to indifference, but he had not imagined that it would be greeted with warm enthusiasm.

There were several reasons for their enthusiastic embrace of the plan. First, the planet’s ecological crisis was very real, and noticeably worsening by the year – the problem was relevant on a planetary scale and well worth working on. Second, in over half a century of trying, no one had been able to slow the destruction. In fact, it was accelerating. Population growth had slowed, but the planet’s economic engine was still working at maximum capacity to raise standards of living for seven billion poor people. As things were now headed, there was no end in sight except for massive environmental destruction and biospheric annihilation, even if population growth were to magically drop to zero immediately.

Third, the concept seemed feasible. The world was running out of petroleum, and nuclear energy seemed to be far-and-away the best energy replacement source. Granted, nuclear energy did produce radioactive waste, but waste reprocessing and containment were proven technologies. Although many environmentalists had opposed nuclear energy for a long time, it was in fact much safer and less polluting than other sources of renewable energy, and it had a very small carbon footprint. As petroleum reserves exhausted and the destructive nature of industrial solar energy became apparent, the world would indeed embrace nuclear power. Any resistance to it on ethical or environmental grounds would be ignored, as its advantages over other energy sources became clear. Economic arguments would trump ecological ones, as they always had.

Fourth, the concept appeared to be quite easy to implement. Joel was right that society would eagerly pay for SMRs to produce energy for the present industrial system. There would be no need for convincing them to do so. Industrial society, which was destroying the biosphere, would be building its own Noah’s Ark.

Fifth, the concept was antifragile. The longer the current system continued, the more SMRs would be built and put in place. As breakdowns of the electric grid became more frequent and severe, more and more SMRs would be installed. As political unrest from the continuing poverty generated more intense demands for energy, more SMRs would be demanded and installed. The worse things became, the stronger the survival system would become. The system was the epitome of antifragility. It would thrive on chaos.

Sixth, it would make a difference. Without this survival system, technological civilization could well come to an end after a collapse of the present global industrial civilization. As the astronomer Fred Hoyle once noted, technical civilization has but one bite at the apple. When fossil fuels exhaust, mankind will have extracted all easily extractable minerals from the planet’s surface. Trying to rebuild a technological civilization after a collapse, after fossil fuels are gone, after the surface minerals are gone, after the biosphere has been severely degraded, would be a daunting task, far more challenging than the first time. With the survival system in place, this dismal future could be avoided.

Finally, the plan did not embrace violence. It seemed clear that the only solution to solving the world’s ecological crisis would require a dramatic reduction in the number of people living on the planet. Joel’s concept totally circumvented this issue. He was not proposing nuclear war, biological war, social population control, or any other violent or coercive means to reduce human population. He would let that problem take care of itself.

His concept did not involve imposing any undesired burden to make the preparations for the collapse aftermath. The present global industrial system would eagerly make all preparations for the post-collapse system, since it was very profitable to do so and it solved the world’s impending energy crisis. The present system would prepare for its own demise, and the transition to a new, sustainable world order. The present system would collapse on its own, with absolutely no influence from him.

Joel was struck by the substantial size of the task of fleshing out his concept. It took a number of meetings, which were long and intense. As it turned out, the strengths and interests of the members of his brain trust complemented themselves quite well. The task of developing an operational concept was divided roughly into four areas: the design of civilization survival pods; the design of the structure of post-collapse society; administration; and strategy.

Civilization Survival Pods

Jack, the Director of Engineering and Chief Technical Officer, had a profound and comprehensive knowledge of technology. His immediate reaction to Joel’s concept was that technology could not be kept alive simply by assuring the survival of a lot of SMRs. In the near-term, they require technical support. In the longer term, they require the continuity of technological civilization. As soon as the nuclear fuel in a fission reactor requires reprocessing, it ceases to function and becomes useless. Newer SMR designs have longer fuel cycles, and some SMR designs have lifetime cores that eliminate the need for on-site nuclear fuel handling, but at some point, new nuclear fuel is required for currently operational SMR designs.

A traveling-wave reactor is a breeder reactor that uses the fuel that it breeds. It eliminates the need to remove the spent fuel and clean it before reusing any newly bred fuel. Although the traveling-wave reactor concept is decades-old, no such reactor had ever been built. At present, fuel reprocessing is required for all fission reactors.

With present nuclear technology, SMRs would be able to provide power for at most a few years, before needing refueling. Jack compared the role of SMRs in providing energy to a post-collapse world as a “bridging” one, analogous to the role of lifeboats or fallout shelters. They could help assure immediate survival and facilitate transition to a new post-collapse civilization, but without access to nuclear fuel reprocessing they could not provide power for a long time and would play only a temporary, transitionary role.

Continuing, Jack asserted that what a survival system needed was not just power reactors, but a collection of other modules that would contain all of the knowledge and tools required to help build and sustain a biosphere-friendly technological society after collapse of the present biosphere-destroying one. What was needed was a “survival pod” that contained about a dozen modules. Each module would be the size of a standard shipping container, or multiple containers, if necessary. These included the following:

1. Nuclear power reactor, i.e., a Small Modular Reactor (SMR), including interface (electrical generators) for converting thermal energy produced by the reactor to electricity.

2. Survival-kit module (short-wave radios, basic tools, security)

3. Knowledge module (a detailed compendium of all of the world’s knowledge, in paper hard copy and electronic-storage medium)

4. Mechanical equipment module (basic machine tools and equipment, such as lathes, drill presses, punch presses, forming presses, milling machines, saws, grinders)

5. Electrical equipment module (electrical test equipment, motors, generators, welders and supplies)

6. Electronics equipment module (electronic test equipment and supplies)

7. Chemistry equipment module (chemistry laboratory equipment and supplies)

8. Physics equipment module (X-ray equipment, radiological supplies)

9. Biological equipment module (microscopes, test equipment and supplies)

10. Seeds and genetic material module (to replenish destroyed habitat)

11. A specialty module to utilize electricity at off-peak times, such as district heating or a desalination plant.

12. (Optional) A specialty module to provide the foundation for a manufacturing or resource facility in a particular specialty technology application area, such as communications, computer hardware, computer software, information technology, microelectronics, unmanned aerial vehicles, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, nanotechnology, genetics, metallurgy and materials science, Earth science and defense.

Jack’s view was that it was important to provide an entire survival pod to a single remote SMR and to at least one member of a group of geographically proximate SMRs.

The Structure of Post-Collapse Society

Rani’s contributions lay in the area of the structure of society, and the nature of the social, political and economic systems that comprised it. Rani’s background was economics. She possessed a degree in economics and was well acquainted with mainstream economic theory, but her interest in the field was not at all mainstream. Her father had been a Buddhist, and a proponent of what had at one time been called “Buddhist economics.” He summarized Buddhist economics as economics as if people mattered. It was in the tradition of Leopold Kohr, Fritz Schumacher, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Herman Daly and John Cobb. It was usually referred to as “steady-state economics,” but there were other terms, such as ecological economics and bioeconomics.

Rani had a strong interest in ecology. She was attracted to the viewpoint that small-scale social systems worked better than large ones both for people and for the environment, as asserted by Kohr, Schumacher and Kirkpatrick Sale. She was a proponent of bioregionalism, the view that political, cultural, and economic systems are more sustainable if they are organized around naturally defined areas called bioregions – geographic areas defined by similar physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics.

Rani had rather strong feelings about the structure of a sustainable society. After much explanation and discussion, the group agreed that the following politico-socio-economic system was a good initial basis for a post-collapse society. What follows is a description of a “nominal,” or “exemplar,” planetary social system. The actual numbers and perhaps the structure, to some extent, would depend on what remained of civilization – cities and human population – after the collapse. For convenience, the human civilization would be referred to as “Terra.”

Rani explained that she was not proposing that this society, either in size or configuration, be imposed. It is just an example, for convenience in discussion, of what might be done with what remained after a collapse.

1. Following the suggestion of E. O. Wilson, half of the planet’s area would be left wild, with little human presence.

2. The human-inhabited world would be divided into about 100 city-states, corresponding to bioregions. The city-states were similar in size, to reduce the ability of any one of them to take control of or assert control over the others. Industrial activity (including industrial agriculture) would be permitted only within city boundaries. Outside of the city boundaries were the unoccupied (wild) areas and rural areas containing small villages; no firearms.

3. A nominal city would have a population of approximately 50,000. Its electrical power would be supplied by a single SMR.

4. A nominal city-state would include about ten cities.

5. The political system is a single (planet-wide) unitary state that is an eco-socialist democratic republic. There is no private ownership of land, permanent infrastructure (immovable objects, such as buildings), or living creatures.

6. All human beings are included as citizens of Terra. All human beings are endowed with basic human rights. All adults possess the right to vote. No private groups would have legal rights. In particular, no corporations.

7. Fiat money. All citizens receive a basic income, sufficient to cover lodging and sustenance. Additional income may be earned by rendering of services. No unearned income (interest, rents), except for the basic income and gifts. Income is in proportion to the contribution to society, not a reward for acquisition.

8. Basic education is mandatory and free. Post-basic education is merit-based and free.

9. Basic health care is free.

10. No prisons. Unlawful behavior is addressed by rehabilitation. If not successful, a city resident must leave the city, and a village resident must leave the village.

Point number 2 received a lot of discussion. When the point was first made about restricting industrial activity to cities, there was no immediate objection. That would keep the areas outside of cities in a natural state. But then Jack asked a question about travel, transportation and trade among cities and city-states.

“There isn’t going to be any,” responded Rani, “or, at most, extremely little. None among city-states, and very little among cities. Certainly not free trade. No free movement of capital, or labor, or raw materials, or finished goods. No free immigration. Foot travel only. No land vehicles, no highways, no ships, no harbors, no planes and no airports. Every city-state is totally self-sufficient.”

At that statement, the group broke into an extended period of animated discussion. Rani summarized the destructive effects of free trade and immigration on the environment, and referred them to the literature on steady-state economics, such as Herman Daly’s Beyond Growth.

“Along with global industrialization,” she explained, “mass immigration and free trade are incredibly destructive of the biosphere. Much of industrial activity causes the extinction of species by actively polluting the environment and destroying habitat and species. But free trade and mass immigration work in a more pernicious way, causing species invasions and the end of spatial speciation. The mass species invasion is bringing speciation to a halt. We are in the Great Homogenization. Not just of the human species, but of all species that travel a significant distance. Globalization is ending the speciation of all species that travel an appreciable distance. People intuitively know that inbreeding is to be avoided, that genetic diversity is advantageous. Even feuding tribes and families and tribes will accept strangers into the family / tribe. We are in the process of turning the human species and all other large species into homogeneous species with little biodiversity, like cheetahs and laboratory guinea pigs. It is not just an evolutionary disaster for the human species, but for all others, as well. Free trade is incredibly destructive of nature. It has no place in a society committed to protection of nature.”

After further discussion, the point was accepted.

Rani went on to discuss the rationale for prohibiting travel among city states from the viewpoint of its effect on species: species invasions, species extinctions, the origin of species and the evolution of species. She explained the basics of the theory of evolution, that speciation occurs because species become geographically separated for a long time. When natural variation occurs in an area, it spreads as far as it can, to the natural boundaries of the area, but not beyond them. Similarly, the variation that occurs in other isolated areas does not extend beyond their natural boundaries. The random variation that occurs in one area is different from that in other areas and so, as long the areas remain isolated, evolution follows different paths. The reason why there can be a lot of different species in relatively small area, such as a rainforest, is that small creatures, such as microbes, do not travel very far.

When mass travel, trade and immigration occurred on a global scale, all of a sudden species were exposed to new predators. Species invasions occur, such as the tumbleweed in the American West, boa constrictors in Florida, devastation of elms and chestnut trees in North America, killer bees in South America, starlings in North America, European thistle in Canada, sea lampreys in the Great Lakes, rabbits in Australia, and amphibians dying everywhere.

To stop species invasions, it is necessary to stop unrestricted global travel, immigration and trade. If these things continue, the evolutionary process grinds to a halt, because there is no longer any isolation of species, and species invasions will continue. To prevent this, travel may occur only within bioregions.

“But that flies in the face of freedom of individuals to access nature,” Roger pointed out.

“Just because a person is born on the planet does not bestow him with the right to destroy the biosphere,” Rani responded. “Rights have to be symmetric, balanced. The benefit of a right granted to an individual is not justified if doing so is likely to impose massive costs to others, to society at large.” Rani paused, and then added, “The planet’s city-states are defined by bioregions. For all practical purposes, the bioregions could be on different planets. If you are born in one, that is where you are going to live and die. Otherwise, without geographic isolation, further speciation of the human species itself is stopped. We would become a very homogeneous species, with little genetic diversity. That is not an evolutionary advantage. If we wish to preserve genetic diversity, we need geographic isolation. From a physical viewpoint, the age of global exploration and travel are finished.”

“While global free trade, travel and immigration may be good for the economy, they are disastrous for the biosphere and many species on it, including the human species.”

Yvonne asked, “Rani, your arguments are very reasonable, but how could you possibly restrict people to their birth bioregion? Some people want to see the world, or as much as they can of it.”

“I wouldn’t force anyone to do anything. I would simply prohibit industrial artifacts and energy from outside of cities. With respect to human mobility, the global situation would be similar to 10,000 BCE. If you want to go somewhere and you can get there by walking, then go for it. The bioregions are very large – major parts of continents. Each one is sufficiently large to provide a rich environment for personal development. A bioregion was of sufficient size to promote full development of human potential for millions of years. Newton and Maxwell did not need access to the entire planet to develop their theories of motion and electromagnetism and develop their full potential as human beings – Scotland was quite sufficient. There is absolutely no reason, except for hedonistic tourism, why everyone has to be allowed access to all of the bioregions of the planet. That would be a highly asymmetric privilege – the pleasure of some in-person sightseeing at the cost of destroying the biosphere. What possible justification could there be for that? What are people for, anyway?”

Roger spoke again, “Rani, you are describing a Draconian planetary prison. Everyone is sentenced to live in the bioregion in which he was born. You are defining global travel as a biosphere-destroying crime. How do you feel about that?”

“Roger,” she replied, “I am trying to design a long-term-sustainable planetary management system in which human beings can lead quality lives in a species-rich biosphere. I am doing my best to design a system that is feasible and antifragile. If you have a suggestion to make, I would be pleased to hear it. Please don’t just say that what I have proposed is not acceptable, without suggesting something better. That is not being helpful.”

“Besides,” she continued, “there is nothing unnatural about a person’s staying in his bioregion for his entire life. Virtually all living creatures do that. Humankind has done it for virtually all of its existence. You were born on Earth, for God’s sake, and are doomed to remain here. What’s the big deal? Does everyone have to be able to travel to Mars to achieve fulfilment as human beings?”

“OK, OK,” Roger replied. “I accept what you are trying to do, and I see your point. It is just really difficult to accept what the changes that are going to be necessary to achieve the goal that we have set for ourselves. Major lifestyle changes! I shall endeavor to be more constructive and, if possible, creative.”

Administration

Yvonne Lim, the Administrator and Chief of Operations, had not had a lot to say in the early meetings about the new business venture. To some extent, it was out of her primary area of expertise of managing a for-profit firm. Compared to the venture that Joel was proposing, managing a for-profit firm was a piece of cake. For a for-profit firm, there was a single objective – to maximize profit. Everything else was a constraint, not an objective. Resource constraints, legal constraints, pollution constraints, ethical constraints, time constraints. The problem of managing a firm could be represented as an optimization problem. In an optimization problem, the goal is to maximize a single variable – profit – subject to constraints on all other variables.

Over the years, a massive amount of technology had been developed to address this problem. The field of constrained optimization was mature. It included methodologies such as linear programming, nonlinear programming, quadratic programming, dynamic programming, integer programming and generalized Lagrange multipliers. It included resource-constrained games. It included statistical decision theory, general-sum game theory, general equilibrium models, genetic programming and optimal control. Computer software packages were widely available to implement these methodologies.

An incredible array of powerful methodologies had been developed to maximize economic quantities such as profits, efficiency and growth.

The problem was simplified even further by the fact that the variable of primary interest to the firm – money – was of primary interest to all of the actors in the system – the owners, the suppliers, the customers, the workers. Money could be used to motivate employees. Money could be used as the basis for determining whether to substitute one resource for another, and for trade. The relative value of every variable in the system could be expressed in terms of money, and resource substitutions made on the basis of monetary value. The problem was essentially a one-dimensional one, involving a scalar utility function.

Actually, it could be considered a two-dimensional one, if one considered time as a second dimension. Taking time into account, it mattered not just how much money a firm made, but when it made it – the issue of trading off short-term profits for longer-term ones. One of the facts that made the ecological problem so difficult was the human tendency to discount in time and space – conditions or events that were far distant in time or space, like famines in Ethiopia or future generations of human beings living on an impoverished planet, were of little importance relative to the issue of making decisions in the here and now.

She had always remembered Peter Drucker’s example in The Practice of Management of a company that fails to balance present and future and “leaves behind nothing but a burned-out and rapidly sinking hulk.” That is exactly what the present generations of human beings were doing to the planet’s biosphere, at the expense of all future human beings.

The business of a for-profit firm is to make money. The business of an economic system is to make money, and make it more efficiently. Everything else is an “externality” – a factor that might be taken into account in some way, perhaps as a constraint, but not the key variable to be maximized or minimized.

From a political perspective, it was important to assess the winners and losers for proposed legislation. This process was routinely carried out by using cost-benefit analysis. In a cost-benefit analysis, all costs and benefits are expressed in monetary terms. It is useful for comparing the financial status of different groups, but not for making tradeoffs between noncommensurable assets, such as manufactured goods versus natural habitat.

As the environmental and ecological problems caused by economic develop arose and grew in magnitude, efforts were made to adapt economic models to resolve them. In an effort to take non-monetary factors into account, cost-effectiveness analysis was applied. Cost-effectiveness analysis explicitly differentiated between monetary and non-monetary factors, but it was of little help in addressing the ever-growing environmental or ecological crises.

The field of economics evolved to include specialties such as environmental economics and ecological economics. As the decades passed and the environmental and ecological crises worsened, it became clear that economic models were not useful for solving the ecological crisis. None of these models had stopped the destruction of the biosphere.

Ecological problems represented a significantly greater challenge than economic ones. There was no single variable that was to be extremized – maximized or minimized. The goal was achieving and sustaining homeostasis, or optimal functioning, of the planet’s biosphere. The problem was highly multidimensional, and could not reasonably be reduced to or approximated by a single-dimensional model. The planet’s ecology was an incredibly complex system in which everything affected everything else. The system variables were causally interdependent – change one and others change.

To solve such problems, the discipline of systems theory, or systems modeling and analysis, evolved. Rather quickly, it was realized that systems theory was useful only for analyzing small systems or particular aspects of larger systems. It could be used to demonstrate system behavior, such as the phenomenon of overshoot and collapse, but it was not very useful for analyzing, controlling, or interacting with large, complex systems such as the planet’s biosphere.

Systems theory includes a variety of topics, such as catastrophe theory, chaos theory and complexity theory. While these disciplines help provide insight into the behavior or systems, they are of limited help for controlling the behavior of large, complex systems, such as the biosphere, or for identifying strategies for interacting with it in a sustainable fashion.

So, it was back to economics. All important decisions about the planet’s environment and ecology were based primarily on economic considerations and economic models in which ecological factors such as climate change and species loss were viewed as externalities. The externalities were handled in a number of ways, such as through regulations, government provision of services, Pigovian taxes and subsidies, litigation, mediation and voting. All to no avail. The planet’s environmental and ecological crises continued to worsen.

History had shown that all of the approaches to reducing negative externalities had failed to solve the ecological crisis. The provision of penalties and incentives seemed inane, little more than a cynical attempt for government to appear to be doing something about the problem, when it was not. Nevertheless, Yvonne viewed that, of all of the methods, there was one that might conceivably work – regulations. Not simply incentives or disincentives, but absolute constraints on undesired actions. And not thousands of little regulations, but one very large one.

The ecologist E. O. Wilson had proposed setting aside half the planet for nature. That approach, which did not require the use of any economic model or systems model at all, had a chance of working. Its primary attribute was simplicity. It obviated the need to try to model the biospheric system in an attempt to control it or preserve it. There was no requirement to attempt to regulate the behavior of the massively large and complex biosphere. It was minimally intrusive: there was no requirement to attempt to regulate human behavior at the personal or local level, except to prohibit entry into a small number of large areas. It was simple from a political perspective and from a management perspective. It occurred to Yvonne that economics, like direct democracy, worked best for very small systems, not for large ones. It recognized the validity of Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation that people will accept control of the big things in their lives if they are allowed control of the little things.

Wilson’s half-planet approach just might work. In the post-attack world, simplicity was a necessity. The city-states proposed by Rani would be essentially independent. Their operation must be guided by a simple set of guiding principles, not a complicated system of many statutes and regulations. The guiding principles could be stated in a few pages. Local conditions could be taken into account by locality-specific regulations, and by adaptive systems such as common law.

Yvonne had spent her career in the private sector. In her current position, she was administrator of a large, for-profit, privately owned firm. With respect to Joel’s concept, in developing the survival system, she would continue in that role. On the other hand, if collapse occurred, the situation changed. She may not even be among the survivors. Her task was to design an administrative system that would assure that the survival system operated successfully, whoever survived. That was a job in public administration, not private administration.

The fundamental principles of administration of organizations were the same, whether the organization was public or private. They were the principles that had been described by Herbert Simon in his book, Administrative Behavior, written well over half a century ago. The keys to success were well known. For organizational structure, there were many types of organizations. It was generally accepted that form should follow function, and that the structure relate well to the goals, environment and process. For personnel, key factors included motivation, education, training and access to information.

Two fundamental keys to success were motivation and ethics. In a post-collapse world, citizens would be motivated by assurance of success and their ability to share in a bountiful world. Ethics must be based on a good understanding of the dependence of the human species on the rest of the biosphere, and respect for nature. À la Taleb, a choice is considered ethically proper if it promotes the goal of a long-term-sustainable human society living in a biodiverse biosphere, and is symmetrical, i.e., does not benefit the individual at the cost of an incommensurate burden on society.

Yvonne had focused on ethics, but she realized that morality was also relevant. Ethics refer to rules from an external source, such as codes of conduct in workplaces or principles in religions. Morality refers to an individual's own principles regarding right and wrong.

Many people take issue with Taleb’s ethics. It was based on relative morality, as opposed to absolute morality. Absolute morality was like the Ten Commandments – a fixed specification of what was right or wrong. Relative morality was concerned with the appropriateness of a decision or action relative to achieving a goal. An action was morally defensible relative to a specific goal if it helped to achieve the goal, otherwise it was not. The really big problem with relative morality is that it requires the decisionmaker to assess the implications of a proposed decision or action, and that is a very difficult thing to do. It is also called “consequential morality,” since it is relative to the consequences of decisions or actions.

The assertion that we should assert dominion over nature and exploit it for mankind’s use is an example of absolute morality. The assertion that we should respect nature and not destroy it is an example of absolute morality. The assertion that we should respect nature and not destroy it because to do so will ultimately destroy the human species, and our goal is to avoid that end, is an example of relative morality.

In addition to Taleb, other people advocated relative morality. It was the moral system proposed, for example, by Neale Donald Walsh in his Conversations with God book series. It implied that the ends justified the means. Many people could not accept that.

The founding documents for the new society would be a Vision Statement, a Mission Statement, a Constitution, a Declaration of Rights, a Code of Laws, and a Code of Ethics. All would be brief, but well thought out. She was beginning to structure these documents in her mind.

Although Yvonne mulled the issue of ethics for some time, she was not overly concerned with the topic. She knew right from wrong. Her interest was from an administrator’s viewpoint – she would have to construct a Code of Ethics for the new society. It was her own sense of morality that would underpin the Code of Ethics, taking the other documents into account.

Yvonne considered the issue of motivation at length. Capitalism had been a tremendous motivator for building the global industrial world. As Bertrand Russell observed, acquisitiveness is a primal human drive. The promise of being able to personally own all that one acquired enabled capitalism to outperform all other politico-economic systems with respect to economic growth. But civilization was now ending its growth phase. All biological creatures of any size undergo a period of exponential growth, which ends when the creature attains it adult size. All large societies experience exponential growth for a while. At some point exponential growth always ceases, because of self-regulation, predators, or environmental limits.

Yvonne reflected that while capitalism had enabled industrial civilization to cover the planet in a scant two hundred years, its time was now past. For a time, growth had been a primary goal of humanity, and capitalism had served it exceptionally well. But now, continued growth had proved to be the greatest weapon of mass destruction, capable of destroying a planetary biosphere in just two centuries. Capitalism was incredibly powerful, but it was a two-edged sword. It had been able to create global industrial civilization in two centuries, and to destroy the biosphere in two centuries.

For human society to survive long-term, Yvonne viewed that it would be necessary to switch from growth-based economics and capitalism to steady-state economics and socialism. This transition might be difficult. Most countries of the world were mixed economies, including elements of both capitalism and socialism.

In order for the survival system to work, it must appeal to both the leaders of society and to the people. There must be a strong incentive to everyone to make the system work. As Taleb observed, everyone must have a vested interest in the common goal, to have “skin in the game.” It seemed to Yvonne that the proposed concept could be configured to achieve this goal. As Joel realized, operation of a long-term-sustainable society in a species-rich biosphere required that the human population be of a size that did not have significant effects on the rest of the biosphere. He also accepted that mankind itself was unwilling or unable to transition to a lower population size, and that a collapse of civilization was necessary to bring this about. Implementation of a long-term-sustainable population could then conceivably be achieved from that point. Yes, it may be possible, but how?

Yvonne enjoyed reading science fiction. One of her favorite books was October the First Is Too Late, by Sir Fred Hoyle. In the book, Hoyle described a human future of many collapses and reconstructions of global civilization. That process ended only when mankind made a conscious, committed, collective decision to limit the size of human society. In the book, that size was about five million people – about the size that is generally regarded to have existed on Earth for the past million years.

Rani’s concept for a post-collapse society was one based on direct democracy, at least at the local level. It seemed to Yvonne that as long as city-states were small, that concept could work. With small cities surrounded by much natural land, there was something for everyone. People interested in and capable of complex jobs would find them in the cities. People interested in a simple, pastoral existence could have it outside of the cities. All would be citizens of the world, and provided with basic sustenance, education, health care, social services. Yet for those who wanted a more challenging existence, the opportunities were essentially limitless, bounded only by the restriction that no industrial activity occur outside of cities.

Unlike today’s world, in which everything was owned, people would be free to live anywhere on the planet, except for the half reserved for nature. Anyone could go anywhere in one’s own bioregion, except for parts reserved for nature. In today’s world, a person who became fed up with society had nowhere to go. The world was incredibly crowded with people. Under the present system, most people lived in grinding poverty, in squalor. All sorts of dysfunctional and antisocial behavior were manifest, on a large scale – war, violence, oppression, crime, mental illness, depression, paranoia, suicide, sociopathy, child abuse, spouse abuse, animal abuse, destruction of nature, disease, hunger, overcrowding, meaningless lives and unhappiness. With too many people, none of these problems were fixable. With a small human population, all of them were, or at least, were reduced to low, natural levels.

Yvonne was aware of the problem, under socialism, of the “tragedy of the commons,” in which people tended to abuse or overuse unowned resources, such as nature. She knew that some economists held the view that this problem could be mitigated by expanded property rights – by more of the very evil that had caused resource scarcity in the first place! But, under the proposed survival system, property rights would be limited essentially to movable personal property. Land, buildings, nature, the means of production – none of these would be owned by individuals. Under these conditions, would the phenomenon of tragedy of the commons go out of control? It could, but not necessarily as long as everyone had equal access to society’s resources and natural resources, and skin in the game. The key was self-control, which could be achieved in large measure by education, training, motivation and, in some cases reeducation and rehabilitation.

Although open-access resource systems may collapse due to overuse, there existed numerous examples where communities managed to access common resources in such a way as to avoid collapse. The economist Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for demonstrating how local communities could do this without top-down regulations or privatization.

Yvonne recalled Bertrand Russell’s Theorem, that a single world government was not feasible since there was no external threat (i.e., another nation) to promote cohesion of the population.

Yvonne reflected on Russell’s identification of politically important human desires – necessities of life, acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, love of power, love of excitement, escape from boredom, fear and hate. For the proposed system to succeed, it must take into account all of these basic human desires.

Yvonne realized that the task of designing and managing a long-term-survivable human society was a daunting one. Such a society would reasonably be viewed as utopian. To date, all attempts at implementing utopian societies had failed. They existed only as pipe dreams, in novels such as Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia. Actually, it occurred to Yvonne, the historical record showed that all civilized societies eventually fail, not just utopian ones.

The world’s ecological crisis was visibly worsening by the year. All rainforests would be gone in just a few decades. A major portion of all wild animals and forests had been destroyed. Climate change had already occurred. Catastrophic ecological collapse was well under way, and would likely come to term in just a few years from now. Yvonne shook her head. That was not her concern! Joel recognized, and she did also, that there seemed to be no way of avoiding a collapse. She should take that as a given. Her task was to design a system that would enable human society to survive after that initial collapse, given the state of humanity and the biosphere at that time.

The purpose of the survival system was to establish a long-term-sustainable human society in a species-rich biosphere following the collapse of the present global industrial civilization. Potentially, barring a truly unpreventable catastrophe such as an asteroid collision, the human species and its biosphere could last another billion years, or at least, a few million! From this perspective, Yvonne’s task was truly daunting. How could she possibly design a civilization that could last millions of years, when, to date, no civilization had lasted for more than a thousand years or so?

For a time, a feeling of hopelessness overcame her. The task seemed quite impossible. But then, at first slowly, and then quickly, she began to see the light. It occurred to her that she did not have to design a society that would last for all time; not for the next several billion years, several million years, or even several centuries. To succeed, she did not have to design a civilization that would last indefinitely. All she really had to do was design a system that would last for a human generation – for twenty years. With that success, future generations would see what was required, and what needed changing, and go on from there.

Yvonne collected her thoughts, and reviewed her concept. It was obvious that she could not design a survivable society that would last indefinitely. She accepted that that goal was impossible, since all countries and civilizations eventually fail. What was well within the realm of possibility, however, was to design and implement a society that would last for a single human generation – for 20 years. Each generation had control of its own destiny, for as long as it existed. All that could be expected of it, and should be demanded of it, was to hand the planet’s biosphere over to the next generation with the same biodiversity – the same number of species – as it had itself received from its own parent generation. While a generation existed, it was responsible for husbandry of the planet’s biosphere, and it had complete power to discharge that responsibility. If humanity was to survive, each generation had to accept that responsibility, and preserve the biosphere. What happened after it passed its time of power was the responsibility of the next generation.

It occurred to Yvonne that the problem could be conceptualized as a dynamic programming problem, in which a complex multi-stage optimization problem could be solved by breaking it down into simpler subproblems in a recursive manner. Richard Bellman’s Principle of Optimality asserts that an optimal policy has the property that whatever the initial state and initial decision are, the remaining decisions must constitute an optimal policy with regard to the state resulting from the first decision.

In its most basic sense, surviving for a period of time meant that no human-caused extinctions occurred during that period. All that Yvonne had to do to enable the survival system to succeed long-term was to get it through the aftermath of the first civilizational collapse, without any further human-caused species loss. If the survivors of the imminent collapse of civilization could hand the planet over to the next generation with no further human-caused extinctions during their tenure, then they would have succeeded not only in accomplishing their own survival, but also in preserving the conditions necessary for assuring the long-term survival of humankind and of a species-rich biosphere.

With these many thoughts in mind, Yvonne would soon begin work on preparing guides for the administration of the city-states.

Yvonne knew full well that designing the survival system and implementing the preparation phase was the easy part of this project. The real challenge would be making it work, after the collapse. Things would be a mess. The power and authority of the global industrial civilization would be gone. The power vacuum would be intense. Other players would rush in and attempt to establish hegemony. These players were defined in terms of their philosophies, their ideologies. The major ones were easily identified. First, there were groups who simply wanted political power. For example, proponents of capitalism who would vehemently oppose the establishment of a global socialist society. Their ability to accomplish their goals was effectively throttled by dividing the world into a large number of small political entities – the 100 city-states. If most of the city-states were in agreement as to the program, then no single one of them would be able to assert dominance, let alone take over.

Second, there were the anarcho-primitivists, who desired an eco-friendly world but rejected all large-scale authority. They would see the aftermath of collapse as their one great chance to implement their ideology. Yvonne reflected that the proposed system gave the anarcho-primitivists everything they wanted, except for their desire for the absence of high-level, large-scale authority. Half of the world would be rewilded, with no permanent human presence. The other half would consist of small cities surrounded by pastoral land. There would be no industrial activity outside of the cities, not even agriculture. If each city, including its agricultural areas, covered, say, 1,000 square kilometers, then 100 cities planetwide would cover 100,000 square kilometers. The planet’s total habitable land area was 64 million square kilometers. The total city area would represent just 0.156 percent of the total.

The proposed survival plan, in essence, would give the anarcho-primitivists 99.844 percent of the planet. If the techno-primitivists could not accept this in exchange for ceding top-level authority to a biosphere-friendly / human-friendly regime, then we had a problem! This deal was as good as they could possibly wish for. Technology was out of Pandora’s box, and, as long as the human species remained, the world would never again be free of human dominance. The best that could be achieved would be dominance by a biosphere-friendly / human-friendly regime.

The third major group that would move to fill the power vacuum was faith-based religions. The three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – promoted the concept that of all living creatures, only human beings had souls. They asserted that mankind had dominion over nature and was to use it for its own purposes. That viewpoint had destroyed the biosphere! Yvonne accepted that politics involved mainly compromise, but some things, like allowing the planet’s biosphere to be destroyed, were non-negotiable. Like the anarcho-primitivists, some sects rejected the authority of civil governments.

Yvonne realized the tremendous relevance of ethics and morality to the project. The preparation phase of the survival plan eschewed violence, but, in implementation, the concept called for the prohibition of industrial activity outside of cities. What if this rule were violated? What if other groups such as the capitalists, the anarcho-primitivists, the faith-based religions moved to take over, and chose to use violent means to achieve their ends? At some point, it would be necessary to make a choice: either to physically defend the new society, or to allow the destruction of the biosphere to continue. What type of response was morally justified? Was Taleb’s relative morality, consequential ethics, appropriate? Did the ends justify the means, for an existential issue?

As Thomas Jefferson observed, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” As George Patton observed, “When you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend’s face, you will know what to do.” The capitalists, the growth-based economists and the faith-based religions had had their chance, and they blew it. They were not at all reluctant to use force, on a grand scale, to achieve their ends, to advance their campaigns of destruction and oppression. Their ideologies had encouraged the extermination of millions of species and had virtually destroyed the biosphere. Their ideologies had resulted in billions of people living in oppression, poverty, hunger, squalor and freedomless deprivation. If Yvonne had her way, they would not be given a chance to continue their annihilation of nature and oppression of mankind. What remained of nature was non-negotiable. A social structure that drove billions into grinding poverty was not acceptable. With respect to taking a stand to defend nature and liberate mankind, Yvonne would know what to do. If need be, she would fight force with force.

Strategy

Roger Wilson, Director of Planning and Chief Strategist, had a natural talent for solving problems and for winning. As the survival-system concept evolved, he was already visualizing ways to implement it and make it work. As the discussion proceeded, he began to visualize a strategy.

The strategy had to work well no matter the nature of the collapse: gradual or sudden, catastrophic or modest, and cause. Potential causes included nuclear war, biological war, famine and plague. For starters, Roger decided to consider two extremes: gradual decline of industrial civilization and massive global nuclear war. A gradual decline could happen, for example, if the energy now obtained from fossil fuels declined, but it proved to be impossible to obtain sufficient energy from solar-energy-based sources, and many countries refused to turn to nuclear power. Or, it could happen if the industrialized nations realized that the environmental damage that would be caused by raising the standard of living of the world’s poor would cause environmental damage so severe as to threaten their own high quality of life, and they decided to deny energy to the world’s poor countries.

The threat of nuclear war was ever-present. At present, nine of the world’s nations manufactured nuclear weapons, and five more countries shared them. Many of the nuclear powers were at odds with each other, such as the United States versus Russia; India versus Pakistan; Israel versus Iran; and North Korea versus several countries. Global nuclear war could be truly massive. An estimated 13,890 nuclear warheads existed, and the platforms to deliver them. About 1,000 warheads could destroy every one of the approximately 600 cities in the world having population over one million, as well as strategic targets such as military bases, oil fields, coal fields and hydroelectric dams.

Given the nuclear warhead inventory of 13,890, it made sense to distribute a substantially larger number of survival pods, such as 20,000. That way, even if every single warhead were used, many pods would still survive. He decided to accept the number of 20,000 as a preliminary estimate of the number of survival pods to be produced and distributed.

Who would produce the pods? His first thought was that our own firm could do it. Then, he saw some drawbacks. The production of nuclear power plants, even SMRs, was tightly regulated. SMRs were relatively small and could be mobile, and they could be subject to theft by terrorists. Although the manufacture of 20,000 SMRs might appear to be a fantastic business opportunity, it included a lot of risk. By refusing licenses, the US government could shut the operation down on a moment’s notice. It would be much less risky if the US government itself accepted the idea and accepted responsibility for making and distributing the pods. His firm could be a licensed contractor – one out of several – but the government would run the show. As it ran the security / defense forces, the Department of Energy, the US Agency for International Development, the Peace Corps, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That way, it would become an entrenched bureaucratic agency, with little chance of termination.

The two limiting cases that he was considering were gradual decline and global nuclear war. Under gradual decline, the pods would simply perform their function of producing electricity for peacetime uses. Under global nuclear war, they would supply energy to the post-collapse world.

The concept was robust against these two extreme cases. Roger imagined a number of other scenarios, such as global biological war, global famine, global disease and massive sea rise. The concept appeared to work well for all of them.

Moreover, it was antifragile. That was important to Joel, and Roger appreciated why. The system was antifragile for two main reasons. First, if no catastrophe occurred, the system would simply continue to produce energy for peacetime uses. Countries would pay for the SMRs, in the normal fashion. As countries strove to improve standards of living, demand for the SMRs would grow. The increasing demand for energy to replace fossil fuels would lead to increases in the number of SMRs in peacetime. The fact that the SMRs served double duty as survival pods was a free bonus. The concept was, in fact, a totally cost-free survival system.

The second reason why the system was antifragile was because, if minor catastrophic events were to happen, other than total collapse, the perceived importance of the system would increase. Demand for the pods would skyrocket.

The functional independence of the SMRs was a major selling point. National electrical grids – interconnected and interdependent – were highly fragile. They were vulnerable to terrorist attacks and to network breakdowns. They were expensive. They were environmentally unfriendly. The SMRs, in contrast, were modular and functioned independently. Or they could be hooked into the national grid, if desired. They could handle variable loads. They were standardized, faster to produce and easier to maintain. They were more highly reliable than large systems. They were transportable – the military versions were mobile – and they could be set up almost anywhere. The thermal energy that they produced could be used directly, such as in heating a town, or to power steam-driven generators to produce high-grade industrial energy – electricity.

The only area in which SMRs did not compare favorably to large nuclear power plants was with respect to economy of scale. As inexpensive sources of energy such as fossil fuels exhausted, and as the total cost of other sources of renewable energy became evident, the cost advantage of economy of scale became irrelevant – SMRs outperformed other sources of energy on every major performance factor, including safety, environmental impact, low carbon footprint, load variability, availability, reliability and cost. They could not outperform large-scale reactors with respect to cost, but they tremendously outperformed large reactors on other key performance measures, such as the risk of collapse of the entire national energy system. Cost would not be a significant factor in the immediate post-collapse period, but it was an important consideration in the preparation phase, when SMRs had to compare favorably to other energy sources, to be purchased.

Although the number of city-states would be determined by the outcome of the collapse, Roger spent some time thinking minimal numbers for the survival system to work. The absolute minimum was a single city state, and its minimal population could be as low as ten thousand. That was the estimate, based on mitochondrial evidence, of the smallest number of human beings that had existed on the planet. A more reasonable lower limit was the number that likely existed for much of the human era prior to civilization. That number was estimated to be about five million people. It was a size that was known to be able to live in harmony with the biosphere for hundreds of thousands of years.

Another lower limit was the number of people required to maintain a high-technology civilization. That number was not the same as the number of people required to develop a high-tech civilization. That latter population had to be relatively large in order to be able to produce the economic surplus required to support thinkers who could develop science and technology. But the population size to maintain a high-tech system once it was developed did not have to be very large. The Industrial Revolution developed primarily in the British Isles from about 1750, and its population of the British Isles at that time was about ten million people. The number of people required to maintain a high-tech civilization – maintain it, not develop it – could easily be as low as this, but more people would be required for higher levels of technology.

If the new society were to monitor the entire planet, and human presence were allowed only in half of it, its total population could likely be somewhat larger, without significantly harming the planet’s biosphere. After some discussion, the group settled on a “nominal” planet-wide minimal presence as being comprised of at least one, and preferably two, city-states per continent. In an extreme case, the planet would have a single city-state of five million people. If there were two city-states on each of the six habitable continents, each of population five million, the global population would be sixty million people.

This number was somewhat smaller than the nominal 100-city-state configuration discussed earlier, which would include 500 million people. The figure of 500 million was probably much larger than desired to avoid harming the biosphere. History had shown that a population of just 300 million low-technology people had ravaged the planet’s environment by the year 900 AD. High-tech people used up to 100 times as much energy as low-tech people, and were easily 100 times more destructive of nature. If 300 million low-tech people were sufficient to wreak havoc to the environment, then perhaps three million high-tech people were all the biosphere could accommodate, along with a few million low-tech people, who have little effect on the environment. That number was, by coincidence, about the size that Hoyle had discussed as a long-term-survivable population in October the First Is Too Late.

The group tossed the numbers around for a while, but agreed that the nature of the collapse would pretty much determine the number of city-states. For planning purposes, the likely number did not matter much. The system design had to be robust with respect to whatever the size. Based on the desire to have substantially more SMRs than nuclear weapons, the target number of SMRs was 20,000. It was recognized that not all of these would be complete survival pods. It was expected that many SMRs would stand alone, without the other modules of a complete survival pod.

A major point of discussion centered on how it would be possible to manage a global system of city-states without a strong central government. There could not be a strong central government physically located anywhere; if there were, it would be targeted and destroyed. The survival-system concept was a matrix structure, and experience had shown that matrix structures work best for small organizations, not for large ones. How would the city-states interact? It would not be possible to link things together using ships or airplanes: air forces would be gone, and the fuel depots necessary to support long ship trips or airplane flights would be gone.

If the city-states were to be linked together as a whole, the linking would have to be using communications, not by physical transport, such as mechanized land, sea and air vehicles. The satellite communication systems would likely not survive the war. The only electronic communication systems that might work would be simple radio systems that could cover long distances, such as short wave.

At one point, Roger commented, “One thing that I am puzzled about, Jack, concerns the survival-kit module. You mention that it addresses security, but you have never mentioned defense. Will the survival-kit module contain weapons, such as rifles to defend from desperate people seeking food right after the collapse, or bazookas to destroy industrial complexes outside of the cities?”

“No,” responded Jack, “it will not. It will not contain food, and it will not contain weapons.”

“But then it will be immediately destroyed by looters seeking food and weapons, even if there are none. How will the staff that run the SMR protect defend themselves?”

“They won’t,” Jack said. “The staff who run the SMRs cannot possibly defend themselves against scores, hundreds, or thousands of desperate, violent looters. If they are to survive, it is up to their host countries to defend them. If they are not defended, then the survival module is lost, and that country has one less chance for survival of its culture.”

“Well, that’s not a good selling point!” asserted Roger. “A survival pod that is not likely to survive!”

“Well, perhaps it is not so good for that country,” agreed Jack, “but it is good for the planet. The objective is for the survival system to survive, not for individual pods to survive. Up to a point, the fewer individual pods that survive, the better. The biosphere can survive only with a much-reduced human presence. At a minimum, all we need to save technological civilization is for one pod to survive. The reason for placing a large number of them all over the world is that we don’t know how many of them or which ones might be destroyed in a global collapse, and we want a reasonable probability that at least one survives. It’s like a tree that produces thousands of seeds, when only a few seeds must survive in order for the tree’s genes to survive, and only a few trees need survive to continue the species. In fact, if all of the thousands of seeds survived, all of them would likely perish, like yeast in beer or wine, or kernels on a corncob, or an algae bloom in a pond.”

“OK,” said Roger, “I see that.”

Jack continued, “Cultures that desire to survive will work to assure the survival of some survival pods, and they will have a good shot at surviving. Cultures that do not will pass away. That’s basic Darwin. Is it clear now why the survival-kit module contains no food or weapons? For a culture to survive, it will have to convince its citizens to protect the survival pods, no matter what. The pods are the key to their future as a technological society, and as a culture. We don’t have to worry about defending survival pods. Any host country that cares about its future will do that. It has an existential motivation to do so. Or not. We can’t assure the survival of any particular pod, and we are not going to try. Even its own culture can’t, but the culture can do a lot to increase the country’s probability of surviving if it possesses the will and capacity to do so. If a culture cannot survive, then, from an evolutionary viewpoint, it will not be missed. The situation is survival of the fittest, and it was not fit.”

“I see your point,” Roger concurred. Then, he added, “But what if none of the pods survive?”

“Then, I fear,” said Jack, “that human society may be in deep trouble, if it survives at all. As Hoyle suggested in October the First Is Too Late, it may be in for a cycle of rebuilding and collapse. We are trying to avoid that. We are trying to cut to the chase, and do it right the first time. Sort of like Isaac Asimov’s Thousand-Year Plan.”

“Thousand-Year Plan?” asked Roger. What is the Thousand-Year Plan?”

“Evidently you never read the Foundation trilogy” Jack said.

“No, I’ve heard of it but I haven’t read it,” replied Roger.

“Well,” Jack commenced, “the thesis of the series was that by making sufficient preparations, including having multiple survival centers, human society – the galactic empire – could avoid a looming thirty-thousand-year collapse. Collapse was inevitable, but with sufficient planning, it could be a thousand-year collapse instead of a thirty-thousand-year one. In the novel, there were two survival pods, Foundation and Second Foundation. Those names were, in fact, the names of two of the novels of the trilogy. The third novel was Foundation and Empire. If we succeed in our venture, that is what we will have, with the Foundation represented as our survival system and the Empire represented by global industrial civilization.”

Jack looked surprised, incredulous, actually. He turned to Joel. “Is that where you got the survival-system concept from?” he asked. “From a science-fiction novel?”

“No,” responded Joel, “I thought it up on my own. Or, rather, I believe that I did. But I had read Asimov as a kid. Perhaps the idea was ruminating there all along. As the Book of Ecclesiastes asserts, ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’”

7. Proposal to the United States

Roger’s proposal for implementing the system was to sell the concept to the US government, and Joel agreed with that. Joel approached several agencies of the United States government about his concept: The Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Defense and the Department of State. They were uniformly negative about the idea. The reasons varied.

With respect to energy, the US had plenty of energy from petroleum, thanks to fracking, and plenty of coal. It had plenty of nuclear energy from large nuclear power plants. Contracts had been awarded to do design work for SMRs. While they might be useful for remote locations, they did not compare favorably to large plants with respect to cost, because of economies of scale. It was easier to manage security and waste from a smaller number of large nuclear power plants than from a larger number of small ones.

The country’s focus right now was on solar energy. People were excited about it. Contrary to fact, it was considered less damaging to the environment than nuclear power. It seemed that there were always activists and protest groups raising fusses about nuclear waste facilities, such as the Yucca Mountain facility in Nevada and the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in New Mexico. Few people were protesting renewable solar energy. Most environmentalists were dead-set against nuclear energy, despite the facts that it had a much smaller carbon footprint and massively better safety record. Green New Deals were an exciting, hot topic, politically. It was considered important not to lessen the interest in them by considering additional options. Keep the focus on solar; don’t dilute the arguments or distract attention. The operating, legal and environmental costs associated with renewable solar energy were falling, and those associated with nuclear were not. There were arguments about whether nuclear energy could or should be considered renewable.

They almost had an allergic reaction to the observation that renewable solar could not replace the energy currently available from fossil fuels. They did not want to hear it, and they did not want that message told.

The survival benefits of the system fell on deaf ears. The arguments were similar to those that had been used to discredit the national fallout shelter program of a half-century ago. The program would make people worry about the country’s ability to protect them, about worry about the decline in fossil fuels. One person observed that we don’t need more people to survive an attack than we can use. As soon as those words left his mouth, he realized that what he had said did not sound good, so he rephrased it to “than can be supported or can be given work.” His view was evidently that population size must be proportional to surviving infrastructure. “What are people for?” wondered Joel to himself.

The arguments continued: The Department of Defense had active design contracts for SMRs under way, and did not need additional effort. Other companies have greater expertise in nuclear energy.

All in all, trying to sell the survival-system concept to the US government was a completely wasted effort.

8. Proposal to the United Nations

Joel reassessed the situation. He mulled over all of the many reasons, or excuses, why no agency of the US government was willing to become involved. Was there a common thread?

Perhaps there was. The only reason for a global survival system is a defense against a global system failure, and no one, it seemed, was willing to entertain the possibility of global collapse. For all of the people he had talked with, their lives, their welfare, and their way of life depended on continuation of the present system. Joel was, in effect, asking them to accept the possibility that that future might not occur, and they did not want to consider it. They were, it seems, in denial. Their biosphere was dying, and they did not want to face that reality. Even worse, it was their system, their very existence, that was killing it. How could they admit that? They were doomed, whether industrial civilization continued to destroy the biosphere, or whether it collapsed.

It occurred to Joel that it wasn’t denial, really. It was the fact that global collapse was totally incompatible with their lifestyle. If it occurred, their careers were instantly irrelevant, gone. They were not denying that this was possible, they were asserting that they were not interested in considering it. They had no control over it or even influence over it, and they could not prepare for it. Worrying about it would make no difference, and was not part of their jobs. It was analogous to a banker’s situation. In planning his financial strategy, he assumes that the present financial system will continue. If the global system collapses, it would not matter what his strategy was.

Joel realized his error. He had approached the very people who were benefitting most from global industrialization and the rape of nature, and would lose everything if the global industrial system collapsed. It is natural that they would not want to discuss a future without them in it.

A possible factor was the “politics of envy.” The “politics of greed” is the use of power to acquire things. Most people are familiar with that, and understand it, and can relate to it. The “politics of envy” is the use of power to deny things to other, if you cannot have them for yourself. It seemed to Joel that if the people with whom he spoke could not have things their own way, could not see global industrial civilization continue, then they did not really care what happened. They did not care about the quality of life for all future human beings. They cared only about themselves. Was that disgusting, or tragic, or simply sad?

Although Joel’s present audience reaped the benefits of global industrialization, most of the world’s people did not. In fact, most of the world’s nations paid dearly for it. It had robbed them of their natural environment and given them instead, poverty, hunger, deprivation, oppression and misery. Joel would approach them, the world’s oppressed. While the US had much to lose from collapse, poor nations had much to gain.

Joel decided to approach the United Nations. It represented all nations, all people on the planet. The UN would surely realize the benefit of the survival system.

It seemed to Joel that there were several good reasons why the UN would be receptive to his proposal. First, many of the member nations were less economically developed. Accomplishing economic development required energy in two ways – the energy to build industrial infrastructure, and the energy to run it. The energy from petroleum was expensive, and it would soon become more so, as petroleum became scarcer and more difficult to extract.

Second, large-scale nuclear reactors were very expensive to build and a challenge to operate. SMRs were considerably more affordable. Large-scale reactors required extensive national electrical power distribution systems, whereas SMRs did not.

Third, poor countries were not obsessed with the collapse of global industrial society. They were not the primary recipients of its benefits. They paid the cost, through the exploitation of their natural resources and their people’s labor, but reaped little of the benefit. If the present global industrial system were to collapse, their situation would not change all that much. It might even improve. They could still carry on and accomplish development on their own. All they needed was a good source of industrial energy, and the survival system would provide that.

Fourth, even if a less-developed country’s population remained stable in size, the country’s requirement for industrial energy would continue to grow massively, to raise the people’s standard of living. People in poor countries used a small fraction of the energy used by developed countries such as the United States. The demand for industrial energy would continue to grow.

The UN had adopted a set of 17 goals for sustainable development, under The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015. Goal 7 was Affordable and Clean Energy. Joel’s system fit perfectly with this goal.

Under the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, everyone has a right to a good standard of living. If everyone has a right to economic development, it follows that they have a right to the energy required to accomplish that.

With respect to the development of nuclear power, the UN partnered with international organizations, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Their mission statement was, “The International Atomic Energy Agency works with its Member States and multiple partners worldwide to promote the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies.” Joel read a statement by the head of the IAEA, issued on October 7, 2019: “Without significantly increasing the use of nuclear power worldwide, it will be difficult to achieve the goal of reducing harmful emissions and fighting climate change.”

Although Joel approached the UN with optimism and confidence, his enthusiasm soon turned to disappointment. Although the excuses were different, the results were the same as for his proposal to the US government.

First, it became evident that the UN’s function was coordination, not action. It partnered with atomic energy agencies. It produced reports, information and data. The people with whom Joel spoke were not antagonistic to his concept. They were essentially ambivalent, indifferent. Taking action wasn’t their job. It was all talk, talk, talk. Conferences, publications and coordination, but no action. They promoted sustainable development to improve human lives and protect the environment, but they refused to address the conflict between these competing goals. Within the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, they were, in essence, in favor of improving everything: water, energy, climate, oceans, urbanization, transport, science and technology.

Each agency with which he met listened to him politely and referred him to the next agency.

Joel soon realized that the UN was not relevant to his mission.

Forget the UN. If Joel was looking for actions, not just words, it was clear that he must work with member countries directly. But which ones? He had approached the US, with no success. Which countries were big nuclear power users? The biggest users were the US, France, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea, India, Canada, UK, and Ukraine. Many countries had companies that designed and built large nuclear reactors. Which countries were active in SMRs? A number of them, but Russia was the only one with operational SMR plants. Licensing could be a major problem. That could be less of a problem in Russia.

Russia. Russia was a big producer of nuclear power. It has a strong nuclear power industry. It was not afraid of action. He would approach Russia.

9. Proposal to Russia

Joel approached the Russian government. In stark contrast to his receptions in the United States and the United Nations, he received a very warm reception. Russia had built a few SMRs, and was planning to build more. Two were operating at the present time.

Russia had implemented a program of geographic dispersal of its industry, both for political and defense reasons. It had made good progress overall, but had some concerns about distributed manufacturing. Distributed manufacturing is a form of decentralized manufacturing using a network of geographically dispersed manufacturing facilities that are coordinated using information technology. Russia was favorably disposed to dispersed manufacturing, and had achieved a measure of success in it on a limited scale, but it had concerns about the vulnerability of a large network.

The use of SMRs addressed that problem very effectively. From a commercial viewpoint, it would be very interested in building a lot of them, to sell to other countries. Such a venture meshed nicely with what they were planning to do anyway, and had already done on a small scale. Selling SMRs to other countries would generate revenues to help speed their own decentralization process. Doing it on a larger scale would also enable more resources to be put into design, and would reduce unit cost.

Although Russia’s main motivation for the SMRs was decentralization, it clearly saw how a large number of them could address the global energy crisis. Moreover, it accepted Joel’s arguments that it would help address the environmental problem. With limited energy, it seemed that there was never enough available to convert the waste produced by modern industry to biofriendly waste. With the substantial increase in energy that nuclear power promised, there would be sufficient energy to convert all industrial waste to biofriendly waste. The environmental representative was very excited about this.

Licensing was not a problem in Russia, and it would be overcome in other countries as it became clear that other forms of renewable energy were not a feasible solution to the world’s growing energy demands.

It was a go!

Or, at least, the basic concept was a go. The devil was in the details. What turned out to be a major discussion point was the role of SMRs in survival from collapse. The Russians had envisioned the role of the SMRs in assuring its own survival in the event of a catastrophe to Russia, whether it was specific to Russia or part of a global collapse. It had envisioned only a national system, not a global system designed to play a role in saving the planet’s biosphere or in avoiding the extinction of the human species.

Although its original vision focused on Russia, it quickly embraced the concept that the SMRs could be represented as solutions to both the global energy crisis and the global environmental crisis, although those goals had not been considered and represented a much more ambitious goal than their decentralization program had in mind. Their primary concern had been and still was the survival of Russia as a nation. While very mindful of the global environmental crisis and the larger issue of survival of the biosphere, they had not viewed that there was much that they, as a single nation, could do much about that on their own.

The cost of a survival pod containing ten modules, only one of which was the SMR, was substantially greater than the cost of an SMR alone. Their initial view was that this might make it much harder to sell the concept on a large scale. After much discussion, they accepted that the dual-use aspect of the SMRs – addressing both the energy crisis and the ecological crisis – could in fact be a major selling point. Moreover, by including the argument that nuclear energy afforded the possibility of providing sufficient energy to mitigate the environmental crisis by converting industrial waste to biofriendly waste, the substantial public antipathy to nuclear power, especially from environmentalists, could be overcome.

It was also discussed that a substantial proportion of the survival pods might include just an SMR module, and no others. Such SMRs would be appropriate as supplements to the national power grid, or to larger cities, whereas the full pod was more appropriate to small cities and remote locations. In the end, they agreed wholeheartedly with the approach of selling survival pods, not just SMR nuclear power modules.

The survival-system project meshed very well with Russia’s interests and capabilities, from several viewpoints: nuclear-power technology, economics, industrial security, national defense and ecology. Russia had a strong nuclear-energy program, and had already developed and installed SMRs. The prospect of manufacturing thousands of them for placement around the world was very exciting. It would be very profitable and would enhance Russia’s prestige as a global manufacturer. By manufacturing thousands of SMRs, the cost of each unit would be low. The ready availability of low-cost SMRs would enable Russia to quickly complete its distributed manufacturing program. By transforming Russia’s industrial energy system from a national grid to stand-alone power plants, the vulnerability of the nation to large-scale system failures, to sabotage, and to military attack would be reduced substantially.

In the past, Russia did not have the best reputation with respect to protecting the environment. Decades of experience with nuclear power had unequivocally demonstrated its superiority to other energy sources with respect to safety and environmental impact. The implementation of the survival system both in Russia and throughout the rest of the world would rehabilitate Russia’s reputation in this area, and establish it as a world leader in protecting the environment and helping to address the planet’s ecological crisis.

Because of the substantial perceived importance of the project to Russia, the project soon caught the attention and attracted the interest of Russia’s president, Viktor Petrovitch Romanov. Initially, his interest focused on the economic and military advantages of the system to Russia. Soon, however, he realized the tremendous value of the system in addressing the world’s energy, environmental, and ecological crises.

Although Russia had massive petroleum reserves, sufficient to last the country for decades, it was very apparent that world leaders were seeking alternatives to oil as a global energy source. Romanov realized that it was not feasible to replace, globally, the massive amount of energy currently provided by oil by renewable solar energy, and that demand for nuclear power would increase dramatically as global oil reserves exhausted. That growth in nuclear power could be satisfied by SMRs, and they could be manufactured primarily by Russia.

Soon after learning of the survival-system proposal, Romanov requested a number of briefings from Joel and his team. He had been aware of the extreme damage that global industrial civilization was causing to the biosphere, but he had not dwelled on the prospect of collapse of global technological civilization. He had focused on the survival of Russia, not on the survival of the planet’s biosphere or of global civilization. Joel’s briefings, and subsequent discussions, caused him to expand his focus to include all three perspectives: Russia, the biosphere, and global civilization.

As the project progressed, Joel and President Romanov had a number of personal discussions and telephone conversations. They got along well, and used first names.

10. Implementation of the Survival Plan (Preparation)

Russia decided on an SMR design that was good for mass production, and began mass production of SMRs and survival pods. With its substantial experience in small nuclear power plants for submarines and experience in designing, constructing and operating floating nuclear power stations and SMRs within Russia, it was in a good position to ramp up SMR production to scale. It had, of course, not put any effort into design of the other survival-pod modules, since it had not conceived of them. Russia was very impressed with the Joel’s past accomplishments, and the task of designing those modules was assigned to Joel’s firm. Joel placed this development task on the fast track, and the design was completed for all ten basic modules within a few months. Prototypes were available shortly after that, and Russia had undertaken manufacturing within a year.

The time was right for SMRs. That the world was running out of petroleum was obvious, as desperate, environment-destroying techniques such as off-shore drilling, fracking and oil sands were being pursued. Electric cars had been killed by the George Bush administration, but were now surging back, now that it was obvious that the Petroleum Age was drawing to a close. Demand for the SMRs skyrocketed. People began to see SMRs as the solution to the global energy crisis, as the key to giving them the higher standards of living that they craved, that their leaders called for and promised, and that the UN asserted was a basic human right. Environmentalists who had opposed nuclear power soon came around, as they saw the inevitability of increased nuclear power and could identify no better alternative. By the end of the year after Joel’s first meeting with Russia, complete survival pods and stand-alone SMRs were being shipped.

Both the SMRs and the survival pods were an instant success. Orders poured in from around the world, especially from developing countries having no nuclear power plants and a high level of dependence on fossil fuel. Very quickly, other countries having a nuclear-power-plant capability took note of the phenomenon, and raced to get on board. Russia had announced plans to build 20,000 SMRs, many of which would be included as part of complete survival pods. Other countries with nuclear-power industries were not about to let this golden goose get away. The US, Canada, China, UK and France were soon producing SMRs and survival pods, followed by Germany, Japan, South Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel.

For the initial versions of the SMRs and pods, all supporting documentation had been in the producing country’s language and in English, the common language of technical documentation. That is, pods from Russia included Russian and English, and pods from China included Chinese and English. As a selling point, other countries offered the pods in several other languages, including French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German.

Even though an SMR was modular and small, it was a highly technical product. A team of technical support personnel accompanied each pod, to provide operations and maintenance. The SMR module came complete with equipment, in additional modules, to generate either heat or electricity. While this configuration worked well in remote locations, for hookup to the national power grid the customer often wanted the interface to be custom-tailored. Additional technical personnel were often required for this.

While the initial marketing of the SMRs and survival pods had been oriented toward addressing the energy crisis and survival of catastrophes for the recipient country, it was quickly realized that the pods represented a means of assuring the survival of the producing country’s culture, as well. That was assured by the inclusion of all documentation in the producing country’s language and of the requirement for a technical support team. While the technical support team could eventually be replaced by local personnel in larger, developed countries, they were permanent for placements in less-developed countries. This fact was pointed out and vigorously discussed, but the attention dropped off rather quickly, as it was realized that in the global industrialized world, the cultures of the primary technologists and main manufacturers were invading all others quite independently of the survival pods, as a result of the mass migration motivated by globalization.

When Russia rolled out its program for placing SMRs around the world, no one anticipated how quickly the idea would catch on. Soon, the placements by other nuclear powers were competing strongly with Russia’s sales. President Romanov was unhappy with the development, since he had set the unit price of the SMRs low in anticipation of selling 20,000 of them. Joel was unhappy for a different reason: the new entrants to the market were selling the SMRs stand-alone, not as parts of a survival system. Joel convened a strategy session with his team, to address the issue.

After some discussion, Roger, the strategist, came up with a very promising solution. It was to lease the SMRs, not sell them. It was the business model used for a number of products, ranging from cell phones to large computer systems. The idea was to license the SMRs and provide them with full support, including maintenance, technical upgrades, and reprocessing of the nuclear fuel. If new reactor technology were developed, old-model SMRs would be replaced with new models.

SMRs – Small Modular Reactors – were modular. This plan took full advantage of that feature.

When President Romanov heard of the idea, he was elated. He carried it even further. He proposed that Russia would assume full responsibility for the SMRs, including clean-up of any accidents, however unlikely they may be. In addition to fuel reprocessing, Russia would accept all nuclear waste. To implement this feature, Russia would incorporate each SMR into an online monitoring and control system located in Russia. It would assume full control of the SMR. The SMR would be under continual surveillance and control by a large technical support facility in Russia, and the local technical support staff would be Russian, not local. This approach would enable a higher level of reliability than the original plan of having technical support provided by on-site personnel, and the possible inclusion of host-country personnel in the support. In the event of a problem, an SMR could be shut down immediately from the control center in Russia.

Initially, some purchasers grumbled about conceding full control of the SMRs to Russia. Russia responded that it could not accept one-hundred percent of the liability for accidents and maintenance unless it was in full control of the SMRs. The lure of one-hundred-percent nuclear accident insurance and nuclear waste disposal was simply too appealing, and the initial resistance to the business model quickly faded away. Under this approach, there would be no development-cost overruns, no risk from accidents and no obsolescence. There was no need to worry about nuclear waste disposal or training of nuclear engineers. Conceptually, leasing a nuclear power plant would be as simple as leasing a car.

By the end of two years, the goal of placing about 20,000 SMRs around the world had been achieved. The lease-don’t-buy business model succeeded greatly. The competition was blown away. Most of the SMRs placed around the world were Russian.

As the number of SMRs grew, the fragility of national power grids declined. The situation was reminiscent of the time, many years earlier, when cellular telephones were being introduced. Prior to that time, telephone service had been provided by land lines. But with cell phones, there was no longer a requirement for a land-line system. Some developing countries, which had not developed an extensive telephone land-line system, simply bypassed that development phase and moved directly to a national cellphone system. A similar phenomenon was now happening with the modular power systems. Less developed countries were abandoning further development of the national electricity transmission grid system and moving directly to modular SMRs, which needed no national electricity transmission grid.

As the fragility of the national electric grid systems declined, fewer regional power outages occurred. National power systems were more reliable. The small SMRs were far more flexible than large power plants. With the availability of SMRs, countries could readily add additional power capacity without the requirement to invest in large power plants.

11. Completion of the Preparation Phase of the Survival Plan; Results

Within another two years, the impact of the survival system was becoming evident. Regrettably, it was becoming clear that the implementation of the survival system possessed an unintended consequence and serious drawback. As planned, the system was providing a substantial amount of energy to the world. The concept had solved the world’s energy crisis very nicely. As demand for energy grew, additional nodules could readily be added.

The intention had been, however, that much of the energy provided by the nuclear reactors would be used to lessen the impact of industrial energy on the planet’s biosphere by reducing the need for other forms of renewable energy that were very destructive to the environment, and to convert industrial waste to biofriendly waste. In fact, neither of these goals was being realized. The additional energy provided by the pods was being used to increase standards of livings for the world’s seven billion very poor people, but not to protect the environment or address the ecological crisis.

The windfall of nuclear power was not being used either to replace biospherically-destructive energy sources, or to convert industrial waste to biofriendly waste. The destruction of the environment was continuing every bit as fast as before. In fact, the ecological situation was worsening. Injected with significantly more industrial-grade energy, the level of pollution, habitat destruction and killing of nature was increasing, not decreasing. Given the nature-destroying uses to which mankind put energy, it was now patently obvious, if it had not been so before, that the world needed to be using much less energy, not more. It was very clear that mankind was never going to use a significant portion of its precious industrial energy to convert industrial waste to biofriendly waste. It was going to use it only to further its hedonistic, biosphere-destroying, self-indulgent lifestyle.

Although Russia’s initial interest in the SMRs and survival pods had been to advance its distributed manufacturing initiative, it had come to fully embrace the ecological purpose of the survival system. Because of its efforts, it was now recognized as a world leader in the effort to address the global ecological crisis. As it was gradually becoming clear that its efforts were in fact making the situation worse, Russia’s leaders were at first surprised and then thoroughly chagrined.

President Romanov was furious. He had listened to the discussions about the root causes of ecological crisis, and believed that he understood what was required. Mankind had to stop the mass extinction of species, pollution and the destruction of natural habitat. Every bit of human-produced waste had to be biofriendly – biodegradable or converted to biofriendly form. This required energy, and lots of it. He had given that energy to the world, but the world was simply using it to support more industrial production and more destruction of nature. Russia had done its part, not only in providing the energy, but in using it within Russia as intended, to convert industrial waste to biofriendly waste. No other country had done this.

Romanov had embraced the cause, and had committed to it. He had staked his reputation in this venture, and worked hard to make it successful. He had been lauded for his efforts. Now, his reputation as an environmental savior was evaporating, not because of any wrong action on his part, but because the other nations of the world were refusing to do their part. Because of their insatiable greed, his legacy to history – to humankind and the biosphere – was evaporating before his very eyes.

The realization that the survival system was actually worsening the ecological crisis caused Romanov to rethink the entire survival system concept. The fact that this had gone so wrong led him to wonder whether the survival system might work at all, after a collapse. The prospect of that event was truly depressing.

Romanov contacted Joel, and vented his frustration. Joel did not have a ready response. The situation was disappointing, but not surprising. At the end of their telephone call, Joel agreed to assemble his team and address the issue.

Joel convened a meeting of the team, and explained the situation. The SMRs were being used mainly to provide more energy for more industrial activity, not to convert industrial waste to biofriendly waste. The team discussed the problem for some time, without making progress.

At this point, Joel recapitulated the problem. There were actually two problems. First, the fact that the SMR energy was not being used to reduce industrial waste, and second, Romanov’s concern that the survival system might not work at all. Most of the discussion had been on the first problem, not the second. Joel suggested that they may not be able to solve the first problem, and should focus on the second.

Relative to the second problem, the discussion soon focused on the issue of the validity of Rani’s basic PMS concept. At the general level at which her concept was specified, however, it was difficult to assess its validity. Yvonne suggested that perhaps it would be useful to consider a more detailed specification of Rani’s example, to try to assess validity of more specific features.

In view of the lack of progress of the group discussion, the suggestion was made that Yvonne make an effort to do what she had suggested, or at least, show a more concrete example. Although she did not have any specific ideas in mind, she agreed to do so.

Because of the apparent difficulty of this challenge, Yvonne asked for a week to analyze the problem. Joel agreed that that was a reasonable request, but urged her to report back sooner if she could.

Yvonne proceeded to address the problem. Over the next several days, she worked night and day on the effort to validate Rani’s model PMS. Within a few days, she believed that she had reached some significant conclusions about Rani’s example.

Her analysis was long and involved. Although all of the analysis was conceptual and qualitative, it involved a fair amount of detail. [A summary of her analysis is included in Appendix A.]

When Yvonne decided that she had done as much as she could, a meeting of the team was convened for her to present her results for discussion.

The Team’s Reaction to Yvonne’s Analysis

Yvonne summarized the main conclusions of her analysis of Rani’s example:

1. Rani’s example of 100 city-states of average population about 50,000, for a global population of five million, would work to support a long-term-sustainable planetary management system for assuring a high-quality life for humankind in a species-rich biosphere. This size society could support modern technology. Such a PMS might work for larger population levels, but it is not known what those population levels or their compositions (technology level; city, rural and wild areas) might be.

2. Rather than adopt E. O. Wilson’s concept that half of the Earth’s surface be set aside for nature, it is proposed that ninety-nine percent of it be set aside for nature.

3. In order for the PMS to work as intended would require the presence of an external political power to enforce it.

4. For the PMS to endure would require that human population levels remain at a low level.

5. In order for the external power to exercise effective population control, it is necessary that it be a single world power.

6. The global use of nuclear energy is problematic. To support it would likely require trade among city-states, which was precluded in Rani’s example (because it promotes species invasions and restricts speciation).

7. For a global population of five million, there is no need for nuclear energy: all energy needs, even for a modern technological society, can be obtained from recurrent solar-energy sources.

Yvonne presented her views to the team. They were not very receptive. They agreed with her view that if the human numbers were small, then humanity had great freedom to pursue its interests. They were uncomfortable, however, with her assertion that for such a planetary management system to be maintained would require its imposition by an external power, and that that external power had to be a singular world power.

Yvonne emphasized that she was not proposing or promoting global war to install such a system. She was not advocating or proposing rule by an external power. She was not proposing anything, really. She was simply presenting her view that she did not see how to maintain a PMS without an external power in charge, and that that power had to be the single world power. No one had arguments to refute her points of view.

Yvonne’s main point was that Rani’s exemplar society would work to protect the biosphere if it were in place. If a global collapse occurred, and if the size of the human population were reduced to the levels of Rani’s examples, then her examples, both at the local level and the global level, could work. The team accepted that. They accepted it, but they were uncomfortable in the knowledge that an external power would be required to make a PMS work. This was not satisfying. They might succeed in setting up a viable PMS, but there was no assurance that it would last.

Nevertheless, lacking arguments to the contrary, they accepted Yvonne’s conclusions as reasonable. Her arguments seemed well founded and her overall concept seemed to be internally consistent. She had provided a tangible example illustrating how it might be configured. No one had any idea what collapse might bring, and her concept appeared to be a reasonable example.

Besides, there was never an assurance that the survival system that they had designed would ever be implemented. It was a contingency plan, contingent on global collapse. It was always a risky venture. Yvonne’s analysis had simply revealed a few additional contingencies. As she had pointed out, she was not requiring that any of the conditions that she had identified be imposed. She was simply pointing out that if they did not hold then the system was not likely to work. If they did hold, then the system still might not work, but, at least, it would not be for these particular reasons.

Yvonne pointed out that the SMRs had a dual use. They were being sold as part of a collapse survival system, but they were also being sold as supplementary energy sources, quite independent of any consideration of post-collapse survival. For many purchasers, the fact that they might promote survival only under certain conditions would have little or no effect on the decision to purchase as a supplementary energy source. The conditions that she had identified might serve to restrict the set of circumstances under which the survival system might work, but they did not limit the usefulness of the SMRs prior to collapse.

Her analysis had provided reassurance that under certain conditions, it was reasonable to believe that a PMS might work for Rani’s exemplar system. In today’s uncertain world, that was certainly better than nothing! The team expressed their view that they considered her analysis to be a worthwhile accomplishment.

At one point, near the end of the discussion, Roger commented on the global population sizes that Yvonne had cited, such as five million or 80 million. Few people, he believed, would willingly agree to those low levels, even if they were ones that held arguable potential for stopping the ongoing mass species extinction. “People are used to a planet that is dominated by human beings, numbering in the billions, not millions. They like crowds. They like going to football matches with 50,000 roaring fans. They like having a large and changing array of entertainment and consumer options. More than anything else, they like contemplating a future in which they and their children might exist! Have you tried to get the numbers up, to find feasible solutions with higher population levels? People might be more receptive to a survival system that might work for populations somewhat similar to what they are used to, for a world that has a place for them in it.”

“No, Roger, I have not tried to find feasible solutions with large human population sizes. Why should I? I have tried to identify a population size and configuration that offers mankind a broad spectrum of opportunities for fulfilment. After the collapse, the total population may be much larger than five million, and it may very well live in harmony with the biosphere. If it happens, that is fine. But my analysis was focused on Rani’s example of a global population of five million people. From my analysis, I believe that an effective PMS can be implemented for that level of population. It may work for a larger population. That would be fine. But what does that matter?

“The PMS works for five million people, and probably would work for 80 million, and perhaps even for 300 million. In my view, Rani’s design could well work for larger populations than the five million that she assumed for her example. At some larger population size, it would not work. I have no control over the population size that remains after a collapse. It may well be too large to survive. To some extent, increasing the size would decrease the chance of extinction from a local catastrophic event. Beyond that, however, all that additional people would do is increase the burden on the biosphere and increase the risk of mass species extinction. They would not improve the quality of life for human beings or the quality of the biosphere.

“Why would you want more people when a lower number works? For God’s sake, we’re trying to save the planet! Life on this planet is not a game where we are trying to maximize the number of human souls who get processed through each year. We are not concerned with saving large football matches! No, I have not tried to get the numbers up. I have not tried to estimate the odds that the survival system might work, as a function of the population remaining after a collapse. I have not tried to design a survival system that will accommodate the largest possible human population. That is what studies on carrying capacity are always trying to do, at humanity’s peril. From your comments, it seems that you are obsessed with having a large human population on the planet. For what good purpose? For what benefit? What are people for?”

Roger had no answer. The meeting ended.

Joel forwarded Yvonne’s presentation to President Romanov, to Viktor.

Viktor assesses the situation

Viktor received Yvonne’s analysis. It explained the situation quite well. Given mankind’s nature, as evidenced by thousands of years of history and a couple of hundred years of industrial society, what had happened was not at all surprising. Yvonne appeared to have a knack for identifying causal factors that drive social systems. Her identification of the reasons why things had turned out the way they did seemed very reasonable. It gave Viktor confidence that her assessment of what would be required for the PMS to work was probably correct.

Viktor assessed the overall situation. It was generally agreed that the two principal threats to global civilization were climate change and global nuclear war. He projected the likely outcomes for these two cases.

Under climate change, assuming no global nuclear war, the human population and industrial activity would remain high, continuing to wreak havoc on the biosphere until it collapsed, and continuing to provide a very low quality of life for the masses. Large-scale industrial human society, which is totally dependent on the biosphere, would collapse along with it. Under this scenario, it is doubtful that technological human civilization as we know it would survive in recognizable form. If the human species survived, it would do so in a severely degraded environment. How long it would take for the biosphere to stabilize, is not known. Whether the sixth mass species extinction would come to a halt or continue could only be speculated on. As the entire biosphere collapsed, and human society along with it, it would seem likely that the survival system would have little or no effect on the outcome.

Under the case of global nuclear war, an immediate reduction would occur in human numbers and industrial activity. Viktor assumed that the global war occurs in the near future, before a biospheric collapse occurs and before much further damage is done to the biosphere. The damaging effects of large human numbers and industrial activity would cease, but global warming would likely continue for some time, so some additional damage to the biosphere was likely. The nuclear war would cause some damage to the biosphere, but scientists were generally agreed that a nuclear winter would not occur. Most of the damage caused by nuclear war would be to industrial targets and would have relatively little effect on the biosphere, since, from an ecological viewpoint, those areas are essentially already dead. It seemed that the sixth mass species extinction would end at that time. The state of human society, and the level of technology in it, would depend on the extent to which the survival system had an effect.

Herman Kahn would say that, although both cases are terrible disasters, the second situation is clearly distinguishable from the first. With respect to a number of measurable indicators relating to the quality of human life and the biosphere, the second situation is much to be preferred over the first. The biosphere ends up in better shape; the sixth mass species extinction stops; human technological society possibly, perhaps even likely, survives; and the greatly reduced human numbers and industrial activity represent a chance to implement a long-term-survivable planetary management system with high-quality human life in a species-rich biosphere.

In either case, the human population size ends up being small. The differences are in how it became small: through famine, disease and pestilence, or from war, and what the state of the biosphere is at that point. In the first case the biosphere is destroyed to the ultimate limit that industrial civilization can accomplish; in the second case the state of the biosphere is as of the time of nuclear war, plus whatever damage is caused by the war.

The situation begged the question: If, with respect to the quality of life for human beings and the biosphere, global war is preferable to doing nothing, then why has it not occurred? The answer was pretty obvious: since it is considered that the most likely cause of nuclear war is an intentional attack, the most likely reason why it had not occurred was because it was not in the interest of the world’s controllers, the world’s wealthy elites. Neither of those two outcomes – ecological collapse vs. nuclear war – matters to them as much as maintaining their status and wealth. They would rather keep their wealth-generating system going until the biosphere collapsed, rather than turn it off and save the biosphere. The first case, of no nuclear war, generates income and wealth for the current generation of the world’s elite for a longer period of time than the second case, of nuclear war, and that explains why no nuclear war has occurred. Other features of the two cases did not matter. Follow the money!

Viktor turned his attention to the issue of global nuclear war.

For a time, the global powers had in fact arrived at a solution to the problem of nuclear war. It was the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, or MAD. The MAD concept is that if a would-be attacker believed that he would be destroyed in a counterattack, he would never launch an attack. The MAD strategy can fail for a number of reasons, including: a decision by one of the parties that nuclear war is in fact survivable; accident; instigation by a third party; irrational behavior; or if it is believed, as asserted in some eschatologies, that global war is inevitable and therefore unavoidable.

Since the beginning of the age of nuclear warfare in 1945, over 75 years ago, nuclear warfare had not been used again. It was Viktor’s opinion that a primary reason for this was MAD. As the leader of the world’s leading nuclear power, he was in a position to know! Evidently, the leaders of the other nuclear powers felt the same way. Since most of the world’s nations were controlled by wealthy elites, MAD was working for them. It was keeping their golden goose alive to the bitter end! But the present system was a disaster for the masses, and for nature. The elites want large populations, since their wealth is roughly proportional to population size, given whatever technology level their society possessed.

In order to have a high-quality of life and protect nature, exactly the reverse was required. Many measures of quality of human life are ratios: a total amount of some quantity divided by population. There are two ways to make a ratio large: increase the numerator or decrease the denominator. The approach of economics to improving the quality of human life was to keep the denominator large and attempt to increase the numerator. That approach was an incentive for growth and was incredibly destructive of the environment. It was the root cause of the global ecological crisis.

To achieve and maintain a high quality of life for human beings without causing harm to the biosphere, it was absolutely necessary to get the human population size down and keep it down. Global nuclear war would cause the population size to plummet. Afterwards, it could be kept down by population control. As Yvonne had concluded, the latter objective could be accomplished with a high degree of certainty only by a singular world power willing to impose global population control.

The question that rose immediately was: Could Russia be that singular world power?

From Viktor’s – or Russia’s – perspective, global nuclear war could happen in two ways: Russia is attacked first, or Russia attacks first.

A country cannot unilaterally decide to be the first striker, since there is always the probability that another country will strike it first. Some countries adopted the policy of not attacking first. If there is a positive probability per unit of time that some country might initiate an attack against Russia, then delaying a first strike decreases the likelihood that Russia will be the first striker. Once a decision is made to make a first strike, other nations may learn of the decision and move to counter it by preparing for it or attacking Russia first. For this reason, once the decision to attack first is made, it is important to implement it quickly.

Viktor had always been somewhat surprised at the basic similarities among the global powers. If he was entertaining thoughts of initiating a nuclear war, there was little doubt in his mind that the other powers would at some time do the same. In strategic military planning it is necessary to consider as many alternatives as possible.

Viktor considered the advantages of attacking first, if that was an option.

In war, there are general advantages to striking first, including the element of surprise and the opportunity to ready one’s forces and deploy them to maximal advantage.

The first striker controls the timing of the attack. There are several reasons for delaying an attack. Delaying the attack provides the attacker with the opportunity to prepare for the counterattack, including hardening of its facilities; relocation of strategic assets, including military personnel and population; construction and provisioning of fallout shelters; construction and deployment of antimissile systems; and industrial decentralization.

Conversely, there are advantages to attacking sooner rather than later. First, environmental destruction from large human numbers and industrial activity is continuing every day; the sooner the war occurs, the sooner this destruction ends. As time passes, there is less and less of the biosphere left to save. From Russia’s viewpoint, there was a second reason. At the present time Russia possessed a significant capability in nuclear weaponry and delivery systems, such as cruise missiles. With the passage of time, the military offensive and defensive capacities of other countries increase. This situation lowers the likelihood of success of a Russian first strike. Future arms reduction treaties could further shrink any advantage that Russia might possess.

Viktor had reached two conclusions. First, with respect to solving the planet’s ecological crisis, nuclear war was, from his viewpoint, given his value system, preferable to doing nothing. Second, in nuclear war, the preferred position to be in, from the viewpoint of winning, was that of first striker. As the global ecological crisis worsens, the likelihood of global war will increase, and the odds of Russia’s being attacked increases.

Viktor considered reasons why, from the viewpoint of solving the global ecological crisis, it would be preferable for the victor in global nuclear war to be Russia rather than some other power. In doing this, he kept in mind Yvonne’s requirements for an effective PMS: that the global population should be on the order of five million people; that there should be an external power in charge of the city-states; that that power should be the sole world power; that at low population levels there was no need for nuclear energy. Viktor considered reasons why Russia was in a strong position to meet these requirements.

1. Russia is well prepared for global nuclear war, both for waging it and surviving it long-term. From the viewpoint of saving what is left of the biosphere, war sooner is vastly better than war later.

2. Russia is in a strong position to wage global nuclear war immediately, bringing an immediate halt to the sixth mass species extinction.

3. Russia has a good chance of surviving the direct effects of nuclear war (blast and fallout), for several reasons:

it has a strong first-strike capability, including a large number of nuclear warheads and delivery platforms;

it is prepared to strike first;

it has a strong anti-missile system;

it covers a large geographic area;

it has a decentralized industrial system;

it has a decentralized energy system;

it has a strong fallout-shelter program.

4. Although Russia possesses capable satellite surveillance, communications and control systems, its nuclear-weapon delivery platforms are configured to work with or without satellite systems.

5. Given that it survives the direct effects of global nuclear war, Russia has an excellent chance of surviving the immediate aftermath of global nuclear warfare, including the following:

it has survival pods throughout the country;

it has SMRs throughout the country, capable of providing industrial-grade energy for many years;

The Russian people have historically demonstrated a very high level of characteristics necessary to prevail in war, including warfighting skill, cohesiveness, bravery, strength, resolve and resilience.

6. Given that it survives the immediate aftermath of global nuclear war, Russia has an excellent chance of long-term survival as an industrial, high-technology nation:

it possesses sufficient energy from SMRs to support its total current population;

it possesses sufficient recurrent solar-energy resources to support a population of up to 44 million people in Russia at a low-energy level of living and up to 440 thousand people at a high-energy level of living;

In conducting nuclear war, Russia has “skin in the game” – it is prepared to lose population, and to accommodate a substantial loss;

Located in the far north, Russia has a better chance of surviving global warming than many of the world’s countries.

7. Russia possesses the material resources and cultural characteristics to become and remain the singular world power:

it has survival pods all around the world, manned by Russians and under central control by Russia;

it has the capability to turn off any or all of the SMRs that it has installed around the world;

it has a history and culture of authoritarianism and imperialism;

it has demonstrated capabilities in operating a disciplined, controlled society;

it has a tradition of ruling puppet states;

Russians are a proud people with a strong sense of destiny;

Russia has demonstrated a willingness and ability to sacrifice millions of its own people for a national cause;

Russia has strong capabilities in nuclear power technology and production;

Russia was the first and for a while the only country constructing mobile nuclear plants, such as the floating nuclear power station, designed for mass production;

Russia has installed SMRs all over the world. Each of these is accompanied by a team of Russian support staff. Russia is in complete control of these SMRs, and can turn them off at any time (from a Russian control center).

The eschatologies of the world’s Abrahamic religions are consistent with global war and with Russia as winner (global dictator, king in the north, Rosh). Many believers will accept Russian global hegemony as divinely inspired.

8. Russia possesses the characteristics required to maintain an effective planetary management system, including:

Russia has demonstrated a commitment to and a capability to allocate sufficient energy to the goal of converting industrial waste to biofriendly waste. In the past two years, of all of the world’s nations, Russia was the only one that used the additional energy obtained from the SMRs to help convert industrial waste to biosphere-friendly waste. Russia is the only major power taking effective actions to save the biosphere. If any other power wins global war, the result will be a catastrophic disaster for the biosphere;

Russia has demonstrated a capability for stabilizing its own population. For the past two decades, its population had been about 146 million;

Russia can support its total population on renewable energy;

Russia has a strong scientific tradition. At the start of the 18th century Peter the Great founded the Russian Academy of Sciences and Saint Petersburg State University. Since that time there have been notable Russian scientists in all of the major sciences;

Russia has demonstrated capabilities in modern technology, including being pioneers in space;

Russia is culturally homogeneous. Although Russians have migrated around the world, there is but a single Russian nation. This situation makes it feasible for Russia to impose population control over all other countries;

Russia is independent of influence from organized religion;

Strong in science and without influence from organized religion, Russia is free to adopt consequential ethics;

Russia has a civil-law legal system;

Russia is in a uniquely favorable position to implement a planetary management system consistent with Wilson’s Half-Earth or Yvonne’s Ninety-Nine-Percent Earth. Russia spans eleven time zones. Canada and Alaska span eight. The Nordic countries span most of the rest. Combined, these northern countries could form the part of the planet having substantial human presence and industrial activity, with the rest of the planet left wild;

The world had seen many empires come and go. Recent history had seen empires of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, French and English rise and fall. Those other empires consisted of colonies spread around the world. The Russian approach to imperialism had always been different, focusing on countries within a compact geographic spere of influence. If Russia implemented the new world order in the north – Russia, Canada, Alaska and the Nordic countries, including Greenland – then it would follow a path with which it was culturally familiar and which made sense as a solution to the ecological crisis;

As a very large country, Russia has vast mineral resources. It is not dependent on other countries for anything essential. It does not depend on trade from other countries. It can function easily in a system having no free trade, as is required for a PMS.

After analyzing the situation, Viktor was convinced that, from the viewpoint of saving what is left of the biosphere, Russia had both a moral and an ethical obligation to initiate global nuclear war, become the world’s single power, and implement an effective planetary management system.

Viktor assessed that the war should be initiated as soon as possible. Delaying was disadvantageous for several reasons. First, as the military strengths of other countries increased relative to those of Russia, its chances of surviving, of being the sole winner, and of being able to set up an effective PMS decreased. Second, with every passing day the biosphere incurred more destruction and species extinctions, so there was less and less to save. With sufficient delay, the nuclear-war case would be no more effective than the do-nothing case. Third, despite decades of effort, nuclear proliferation had not been stopped and nuclear disarmament had stalled. The world’s nuclear powers possessed thousands of nuclear weapons and it was just a matter of time until they were used. There were a number of ways that a nuclear war would be started. As long as the probability of occurrence remained significant – and it was certainly significant – it was just a matter of time until it occurred. From that point of view, if it is likely to happen sooner or later, then, from the viewpoint of protecting nature, sooner is better, and the sooner the better.

As a nuclear-war deterrent, MAD has been much weakened. Some would say that it is effectively dead. The doctrine assumes that either side can annihilate the other. That assumption is invalidated if either side builds large-scale radioactive fallout shelters or anti-missile systems. Recent developments such as hardening of targets and weapons, decentralization, cyber-espionage, proxy-state conflict, and high-speed missiles further weaken MAD as a deterrent strategy. Nuclear weapons exist for but one purpose – to be used – and, in today’s world, it was just a matter of time until that happened.

At the present time, Russia had installed most of the SMRs around the world, and had full control of them. Other countries ad jumped on the bandwagon of mass-producing mobile nuclear power plants. At present, Russia’s control over a large segment of the industrial world’s power-generating capacity provided it with a substantial edge. As time passed, that edge would disappear. Time was of the essence.

Global nuclear war is a terrible thing to contemplate. But so is the slow death of the biosphere. Humanity faces the choice of undertaking radical surgery to remove the cancer that is consuming the biosphere, or doing nothing and permitting the destruction to continue. War was a last resort. Unfortunately, it appeared to be the best of a set of unpleasant alternatives, some of which were far worse.

Initiating global nuclear war was a terrible thing to do. Viktor had done his best to avoid an outcome such as that. He had committed himself to building a system that might have avoided that. He had done his best, but had not succeeded. He had considered a full range of alternative futures and tried to implement the one that appeared to have the best chance of success, working within the world community of nations. That approach had not worked. Now, he would go it alone. Perhaps that was the only way global war would ever be deliberately initiated. It is difficult to imagine that any consortium of nations would ever take that action.

Viktor had seen his legacy as savior of the world’s biosphere evaporate. He would now take action to forge a new legacy. If it succeeded, he would be remembered as the man who saved the biosphere. If it failed, he would be remembered as the man who murdered six billion people.

Viktor acts

Viktor assembled his key military leaders. He summarized the ecological state of the planet – the ecological crisis was worsening fast, and posed an existential threat to all mankind. Russia had done its part to provide a solution, and no other country in the world was doing anything to measurably help. The time for further discussion was long past. Nothing had worked.

The basic problem was too much production of nonbiodegradable and otherwise biosphere-unfriendly waste from industrial production. The world had been provided the wherewithal to address that problem – to convert this waste to biofriendly waste – but no country in the world except for Russia had done so. The time for discussion was past. The time for decisive action was now.

After describing the ecological state of the world and the absence of will on the part of other countries to resolve the ecological crisis, Viktor proposed that steps be taken to bring a halt to industrial activity everywhere on the planet, outside of Russia.

“Exactly what do you mean?” his Minister of Defense asked.

“I am proposing to neutralize all major industrial complexes in the world,” Viktor declared.

An audible gasp sounded from the audience.

“You can’t be serious!” exclaimed the Minister.

“Oh, but I am,” asserted Viktor.

The room erupted chaos. Viktor let the chaos continue for a time, and then called for order.

Viktor spoke, “I want to go around the room,” he said, “and give each person one minute to explain why this action should not be taken – perhaps two minutes, if the argument appears to warrant further explanation. We will then hear responses to each point. You all understand the issue. You all know that, the way things are going, you are all going to be dead, along with your families and fellow citizens. You all know that all efforts to date have failed. You know what the cause of the ecological crisis is. You know that Russia has the capacity to resolve this crisis, and to save your loved ones, Russia and the biosphere. At the end of the discussion, I will call for a vote to approve my proposal. Because I know that you may be reluctant to support such a drastic measure in public, I propose that we use secret ballot. Let us begin.”

The one-minute statements began, followed by heated discussion, which continued for a long time. Discussion about the morality of doing what was proposed, and the morality of not doing it. Discussion that in any global nuclear war, Russia itself would suffer much damage, even if it attacked first. Discussion about nuclear winter. Discussion that global war could make the environmental crisis worse, not better.

When all of the major points about the pros and cons of global nuclear war had been addressed, and the discussion appeared to be repeating itself, Viktor spoke.

“It is time to vote,” he declared.

The vote proceeded, by secret ballot as Viktor had proposed. When the vote was completed, the tallies were revealed. The proposal carried.

Viktor concluded, “Thank you for your time. It will take a little time to work out the details of the attack. Now that we have made this decision, it is imperative that we act quickly, before our intentions are known. We are prepared to act immediately. Two weeks from now, I want you to be on vacation with your families. At a remote location, far from Moscow, inspecting a survival pod, say. By the way, I need not remind your that everything said in this meeting is strictly secret.” The meeting adjourned.

A couple of days after the meeting, Viktor called Joel. After a cordial discussion, Viktor concluded the discussion. “Joel, I can’t go into any details, but I need your help. I need to work with you on a very important project, quite as significant as the one we have completed. You told me once that you had relatives in the area of Belleville, Ontario, Canada. I want to ask you, and this is very important, to assemble your key lieutenants and their families, and take them to Belleville for a one-week meeting. I cannot attend, but the Russian ambassador to Canada will be there, along with others. The meeting is to convene on the second Monday from now. Can you do this? Belleville. Monday two weeks from now. Very important.”

Joel had met with and talked with Viktor many times, and there was no question that he would accommodate his request. “Why of course, Viktor, I can do that. Can you tell me anything more about what this is about?”

Viktor responded, “Joel, I am calling you on your commercial line, which is not secure. The matter is highly sensitive, and I regret that I cannot tell you more.”

“OK,” Joel replied. “I understand.” Joel made one last attempt to elicit information. “But why Belleville? I recall mentioning Belleville and Kingston to you once, but there are other places that we could have a meeting. For example, the Russian Embassy in Canada is in Ottawa. That’s where the Ambassador is, and it has a much bigger airport than Kingston, where we would be flying to in order to go to Belleville. It would be easier to assemble your staff there,” Joel added, solicitously.”

“For reasons I cannot divulge,” Viktor responded, “the meeting place has to be remote. Ottawa is too big. I wish I could tell you more, but I cannot. The phone, you know.”

“OK,” Joel replied. “No problem. We will be there.”

“Joel, I wish that I could tell you more now,” Viktor responded, “but I cannot. This is important. Remember, the week after next. Everyone on your team who matters.”

Joel responded, “Yes, Viktor, I do. I will do that.”

“Good,” Viktor replied. “You take care, now. We’ll talk later.” Viktor paused. “Joel?” he queried.

“Yes, I’m still on the line,” Joel responded.

“Joel,” Viktor said, “Since the meeting lasts for a week and in a nice tourist area, this would be a good opportunity for your team to bring their families along. I will have the Russian ambassador arrange to accommodate. Will this work?”

Joel hesitated for a moment, and then replied, “Of course, Viktor, that is very gracious of you. We accept.”

“Good,” answered Viktor. “Please contact the Russian Embassy in Ottawa to coordinate.” Viktor terminated the call.

Viktor’s telephone call caught Joel off guard. Viktor had called him previously from time to time, but he had not heard from him recently. Usually, the purpose of a call from Viktor was to discuss aspects of the survival system, but sometimes the calls were simply personal calls. It had crossed Joel’s mind that Viktor was a man very much alone, and had simply wanted to talk to someone outside of his political milieu. Viktor was a little older than Joel, and certainly vastly more powerful. It was obvious to Joel that Viktor respected Joel’s intellectual abilities, his imagination, his creative talents, and his drive to achieve his goals. From their past discussions, however, it was also clear to Joel that Viktor felt some genuine personal affection for him.

After Viktor’s call, Joel called Yvonne, told her of the development, and asked her to make arrangements, in coordination with the Russian Embassy in Ottawa. He mentioned to her that although the meeting was to be held in Belleville, they would be flying into Kingston, where the regional airport was located. At the end of the call, he added, “By the way, Yvonne, arrange to get us to Belleville a few days before the Monday meeting. I have an uncle there. He is getting on in years, and I have not seen him in a while. I would like to spend some time with him on the weekend before the meeting. While I am visiting him, you and the others could spend time sightseeing in the Kingston area. It has some interesting attractions, like Fort Henry, Queens University, the Kingston Mills Locks of the Rideau Canal, the Kingston Penitentiary and the Thousand Islands.”

12. A Visit to the Relatives, and a Trip down Memory Lane

Everything went off as planned. They arrived in Kingston on the following Wednesday. Joel spent some time with the team, visiting the tourist attractions. Kingston had once been the capital of what was then called United Province of Canada, which was separated into Ontario and Québec upon the founding of Canada in 1867. The main attraction was Fort Henry, which had been built to provide protection from the United States. It was a large fort, in absolutely perfect condition. Students from the local Royal Military College of Canada served as guards, in period uniforms. The officers’ quarters were outfitted just as they had been a couple of hundred years ago, with uniforms, linens and toiletries.

The fort was constructed out of large limestone blocks. Limestone was very abundant in the area, and much used in construction. In fact, Kingston’s nickname was The Limestone City. They visited Queens University, where Joel knew a few people. The school’s buildings were all of limestone.

On Friday, the team departed Kingston for Belleville. The meeting with the Russians was scheduled for Monday morning. Joel had planned to spend most of Saturday with his uncle in Belleville. On Friday, Joel showed the team some of the places he knew in Belleville. A highlight was Glanmore House, where his uncle’s grandmother had been raised. It was a grand home, which was now a national historic site.

On Saturday morning, Joel went to visit his uncle.

After warm greetings and a family chat, Joel got down to business. “Uncle George,” he began. As you know, I have been very busy over the past few years working on the development of a system that will assure the survival of technical civilization and promote the long-term survival of mankind in a species-rich biosphere.”

“Yes,” George interjected, “I have followed your work. In fact, some of your survival pods have been installed in this area. Your pods are great for providing energy sources that do not depend on a national grid, but it remains to be seen whether they make any difference in saving the biosphere.”

“Well,” Joel concurred, “you are right. That does remain to be seen. As I mentioned, I am here for a meeting in Belleville with the Russians about the future of the pods. The meeting was called quickly, and I don’t know details at present. I hadn’t seen you in a while, and so I arrived a few days early to spend some time with you. My team is doing some sightseeing while I visit you.”

“Well,” George replied, “that is a nice silver lining! But why Belleville? Belleville is not a big city, and doesn’t have a big airport. Why would you meet in Belleville?”

“I’m not really sure. The Russians wanted a quiet location, and they knew that I was from this area. It is close to their Embassy in Ottawa. They may have selected this particular area simply because they knew that I had relatives here.”

“Well,” observed George, “that would be flattering to think so.”

“Uncle George,” Joel resumed, “this whole project is all about mankind’s effect on the environment. As background for tomorrow’s meeting, I would like to get better informed about the situation in this area – Belleville, Kingston, and the environs. You have lived here, and you know the area. What I would like for you to do, if you can, is to reminisce on your life, identifying all sorts of things that you have done or observed over the years. Every time that you mention something that has to do with the environment and quality of life as it relates to the environment, I may ask you to elaborate. May we do this?”

“Of course, of course,” George replied. “At this stage of my life, it will be good to summarize it to you, and answer questions that you may have. I have often regretted that my father and I did not have detailed conversations about his early life. Too late for that, but you and I can do it right!”

Without further ado, George began. The visit went on for quite some time. [Some details of their discussion are recounted in Appendix B.]

When their discussion had ended, George concluded, “Well, Joel, that’s a summary of the way things were in the 1940s, and the way they are now, in this area. One massive disaster – the mercury poisoning of Lake Ontario – and a serious local one – the Bakelite contamination in Belleville. There are a lot more people. The population has exploded – the population of Canada was about 14 million in 1950, and is about 38 million now.”

Joel had thoroughly enjoyed the visit with George, hearing the family history and the details of a boy’s life in the 1940s in this area. He was distressed to hear of the environmental destruction. Some, such as the Bakelite contamination, had been caused by local stupidity, ignorance and greed. Some, such as the urban sprawl around Kingston, by population growth, and some, like the mercury poisoning of Lake Ontario and the die-off of butterflies and frogs, from the planet-wide destruction of the biosphere. Much of the destruction, such as that of the Canadian prairie, had been caused by large-scale agriculture.

Joel was distressed by the level of the environmental destruction, even in a country that was overall lightly populated and with a relatively good environmental record. It was significant to note, however, that the environmental damage was from two distinct sources: First, industrial damage from Canadian sources, such as major industrial centers, hydroelectric dams, mining, oil sands development, annihilation of salmon from the upper Columbia River, the Bakelite pollution, and destruction of the prairie, which had started long ago but continued today; and second, from outside sources. such as the mercury poisoning of Lake Ontario, the collapse of cod fishing at the Grand Banks, the devastation of the chestnut trees, the disappearance of Monarch butterflies and amphibians.

When would the destruction end? Were all of his efforts in vain? The biosphere-destroying global industrial system, it seemed, was invincible. It was like a cancer, destroying its host. The biosphere was being destroyed by too many people and too much industrial production. How would it ever end?

13. Global Nuclear War

A Russian consular officer had contacted Yvonne the previous week and set up a meeting at a Belleville hotel for Monday morning at 9:00 am. Joel and his team arrived and met the officer, whose name was Yevgeny, in a reserved conference room. The room was equipped with a video player and display.

Yevgeny thanked everyone for being there. After the introductions, he said that he had a video recording that he wanted to play. From his computer, he cast the recording to the display. The introductory screen displayed the Russian state emblem, the two-headed eagle. Yevgeny clicked “Play” and the presentation began. The video was an address by the Russian President, Viktor Petrovitch Romanov.

“My fellow citizens. Greetings. This is Viktor Petrovitch Romanov, President of Russia, speaking. As you may be aware, global nuclear war has occurred. I am making this broadcast to inform you of the situation and of plans for the future.”

There was an audible and collective gasp from Joel’s group. Joel, interrupted, “What is this?” he demanded to know. “Some kind of joke?”

Yevgeny had clicked “Pause” when Joel spoke. “Please Joel, humor me. This is not a joke.” He clicked “Resume,” and Viktor resumed speaking.

“In the war, several thousand nuclear bombs were detonated, causing massive destruction. The war involved attacks on military and industrial targets. Since industrial complexes tend to be near large cities, many large cities were destroyed, or mortally damaged. Large industrial power sources, including power plants, oil fields, and coal fields were destroyed. As soon as nuclear powers were attacked, they responded in force against their enemies. Most of the detonations happened within a few hours. A few occurred later, and it is quite possible that more may follow. It is estimated that the surviving population of Earth is probably about two billion people, with many of the initial survivors expected to die of starvation and radiation over the next few weeks.

“National governments survived in only a few countries, since those governments were generally based in large cities, most of which were destroyed. Russia hereby declares its dominance over the entire Planet Earth. Effective immediately, all human beings are declared to be citizens of Russia, or, what is the same thing, citizens of Planet Earth.

“As most of you are aware, many survival pods were distributed in the past couple of years, around the globe. While the immediate function of these pods was to produce nuclear energy for your countries, the secondary purpose of the pods was to make available all of the knowledge and tools required to rebuild technological society, in the event of collapse of global industrial civilization. Many of you may be hearing this message on the radios supplied with each pod.

“While many people are generally aware of the existence and purpose of the pods, many may not be familiar with the procedures, described in the Administration Manual of the pod, to be implemented in the event of a global catastrophe, such as has just happened. In today’s broadcast, I will spend some time describing, at a summary level of detail, these procedures.

“Coordination of government affairs will henceforth be made in accordance with the City-State Administration Manual provided in the survival manual of your survival pod. This Manual describes the division of the planet into approximately 100 bioregions, with a number of city-states located within each bioregion. The boundaries of each city-state are specified in the Manual. It is required that effective immediately, no industrial activity is permitted outside of the boundaries of each city. Industrial activity includes agriculture, which in turn includes livestock.

“A primary goal of the global war was to reconfigure the Earth so that it would henceforth be ecologically sustainable. The general plan for doing this is Edward Wilson’s Half-Earth Plan. Under this plan, approximately half of the inhabitable land of the planet will be set aside for nature, with very little human presence supported, except as required for monitoring. Effective immediately, the human-inhabited portion of Earth is declared to be the Northern Hemisphere, including North America, Europe and Asia. No industrial activity is permitted in the Southern Hemisphere, including South America, Africa, Oceania and Antarctica. Russia remains with a substantial inventory of nuclear weapons and delivery platforms, fully capable of enforcing this declaration.

“In the course of the global war, much of the physical infrastructure of the world’s countries was destroyed or otherwise made inoperable. Much of the administration of the planet will be accomplished at the local level, with global administration accomplished using electronic communications, not transportation by land, sea or air. That is, the administration will be structurally decentralized and geographically distributed.

“The structure and operation of each city-state is specified in detail in the Manual. Please review it and comply with its requirements. Although Russia is now in charge of Earth, most of the activities of the central government will be focused on monitoring and ensuring compliance at a high level. Virtually all of the operations of each city-state will be conducted by the city-state at the local level, without help from the Russian central government. For practical purposes, as long as the requirements of the Manual are followed, the only government presence that you will see is that associated with your own city-state.

“Cities may communicate with other cities via short-wave radio. Trade is permitted among cities, subject to the condition that no industrial activity take place outside of cities. Trade is not permitted among city-states. Industrial activity is not interpreted to include the construction and maintenance of pastoral entities such as small houses, barns, buildings, villages, gardens, and wagons on unpaved roads, but it would include the use of electricity and electrical equipment other than for educational purposes and the operation of motorized vehicles on paved highways. It is to be recognized that what caused the global ecological crisis was industrial-scale activities and free travel and trade, and such activities are no longer permitted outside of cities.

“The goal of the global war was to set up a long-term-sustainable planetary management system in which mankind could experience a high quality of life in a species-rich biosphere, for many generations to come. This was not happening under the previous system of global industrialization. If the new system succeeds, mankind could experience a high-quality existence for millions of years. For this to happen, each generation of humanity will have to assure that, under its watch, no species are driven to extinction. Working together in accordance with the Manual, this goal is technically feasible.

“The achievement of success, however, will require loyalty and commitment of each citizen to the goal. It will require respect for nature. It will require diligence and effort. But it is quite feasible. Our ancestors accomplished this goal for hundreds of thousands of years, without even thinking about it. The big difference between their situation and ours is the presence of technology: theirs was a primitive, low-technology society and ours is high-technology society. High technology is now out of Pandora’s Box, and it complicates human existence very much. It is vastly more difficult to maintain a survivable biosphere for a high-technology civilization than for a primitive society. At the same time, it provides humankind with much interest and excitement, and opportunities for varieties of experience, personal development, and societal development that are much more fulfilling and meaningful than those of a primitive existence.

“The year ahead, and particularly the next few weeks, will be very difficult. As they say, it is always darkest before the dawn. Humanity is transitioning from a social order based on capitalism and growth-based economics to one based on socialism and ecoeconomics. The birth of a new social order is accompanied by much change and stress. The old social order provided a good life to a very few, but for most human beings it provided a freedomless life of oppression, crowding, poverty, hunger and misery. It abused nature, causing much destruction of the biosphere and the extinction of many species. The new social order will provide a life filled with freedom, living space, abundance, and harmony with nature.

“The old social order has collapsed. But that does not mean that the transition to the envisioned new social order will occur automatically or with certainty. It is expected that forces will move to reestablish the old order. If the new society is to be achieved, we must fight for it. Russia will fight for it on a planetary scale, by implementing the Half-Earth program. But you must fight for it at the local level. It will not be easy, but with strong will, it can be done. If you succeed, your descendants will honor you as the founders of a sustainable civilization that lived in harmony with nature and provided a good life to all people for all time.

“I must elaborate on my use of the word ‘fight,’ and the role of violence in establishing a new world order. Fighting can be done on a debating platform or on a field of battle. The founding of new orders invariably involves the overthrow of old ones, which are reluctant to step aside, and a measure of violence. As the new order is established, it is recognized that violence will occur. That violence is a transient effect, and of little consequence in the long term. The real issue is the role of violence in maintaining the new order.

“When mankind gained the knowledge of technology, that technology was used to destroy nature and to subjugate humanity. For a long time, technology has operated freely, without human or natural constraints. It is now out of control making macroscopic changes to the biosphere in which we exist, oppressing billions of human beings, and threatening our very existence. For a species to survive long-term in a biosphere, it must achieve balance with that biosphere. For quite some time, the human species has not been in balance with the rest of the biosphere. It has no natural predators, and, until now, has not imposed any effective self-regulation on its growth or activities. Prior to the advent of modern technology, mankind’s growth and damage to the biosphere were held in check by nature. Once large-scale, high-technology industrial civilization became available, mankind’s natural rapaciousness was no longer held in check by nature.

“Once technology is known, that knowledge does not disappear. Civilization, once in existence, is with mankind forever. It cannot simply be erased from humankind’s memory. Although global industrial civilization is destructive of nature and oppressive to humankind, it does not disappear since those in control of it benefit greatly from its use. They are not about to abandon it and revert to primitivism, since that would not benefit them, and they are the ones in charge at the present time. Unless mankind becomes extinct, industrial civilization is not going to just magically disappear. If the pernicious effects of industrial civilization are to be eliminated, the nature of civilization must change. For mankind to survive in a quality biosphere, civilization must be changed in a way so that is not destructive of nature and not oppressive to mankind.

“For a moment in history, the industrialists have lost control. Although it is little realized, the masses are always the ultimate possessors of power. The few who are in control are in that position only because the masses cede their power to them and allow them to remain in power. The few can control the many only through the consent of the latter. Ultimately, the power to affect the future lies fully in their hands. The global war that just occurred is the first step in the process of modifying civilization to achieve these goals. That war has smashed global industrial civilization; it has stopped the engine of destruction that was consuming the biosphere and broken the chains that bound mankind to lives of poverty and oppression.

“The next step is for the masses to reassert their control, through direct democracy, and forge a system that works well for them and for the biosphere. Not representative democracy, but true democracy of, by and for the people. But remember this well, direct democracy works well only for small societies having educated and informed electorates. The war has fragmented society into many small city-states. Direct democracy should work for them, or at least for individual cities. The process of education and information will be up to you.

“The people of this generation have been presented with a choice. To rebuild the old world order, which destroyed the biosphere and enslaved and impoverished them, or to build a new world order, to preserve the biosphere and assure them a quality life in it. The choice is yours. May you choose well.

“The survival pods that your countries acquired contain all of the knowledge and tools required for you to survive as a technical society. They do not, however, contain food or weapons. With the chaos that ensues global war, neither would be of any use in defending the survival pods. If you are able to protect your pods from destruction and use them to rebuild your society, your pods must not all be destroyed. Now that technology is known to all, you must either use it to promote your preferred way of life, or some other group will use it to promote theirs.

“Returning to a primitive existence, as some groups promote, is not an option. Knowledge, once it becomes available, generally does not disappear. Technology is a very powerful tool, and once it is known, it is not easily erased. From the time when technology arose, society has been controlled by those who made most effective use of it. There does not appear to be any reason why this situation will change. If your countrymen destroy your pods, your locality will lose its ability to utilize technology, to defend itself from oppression by others, and to promote its preferred lifestyle.

“In the Manuals, you will see that the boundaries surrounding each city are not defined by walls. While there is consideration of police security, as from theft or assault, there is no consideration of city or city-state military defense. In the long run, for a sustainable society to survive, it cannot rely on fear, on violence or threat of violence, or on walls. It cannot rely on governments that destroy nature and oppress humanity. Its survival must flow from the basic human desire of all people to have a quality existence. Successful implementation and continued operation of the new system can be accomplished in the long term only by intellectual means, by persuasion, not by regimes whose authority is maintained by violence. The Manual describes a procedure for accomplishing this, based on education in the benefits of the new order, and on direct democracy.

“Successful implementation of the new social system will depend on the ability of society’s leaders to convince their fellow citizens of the benefits of the new order, which include preservation of nature, equal participation in the affairs of humankind through direct democracy, and equal access of everyone to all facilities of human society and nature. These benefits were not provided by the old order.

“Russia has freed you from the stranglehold of global industrial civilization. That system is now mortally wounded. Mankind now has a tremendous opportunity to establish a society that can provide a high quality of life for people for a very long time. While the old system is severely wounded, however, it is not dead. Whether a better civilization is constructed out of the ruins of the old world order is up to you.

“These are uncertain times. Your survival will depend on many factors, some of which you can control, and many of which you cannot. If you do not succeed in maintaining technology, your future will be determined by others, who do. Russia has neither the ability nor the interest in protecting individual cities or city-states. It is recognized that many cities that survived the war will not survive its aftermath. From the point of view of health of the biosphere, in fact, the existence of a large number of cities is a disadvantage. We find ourselves today in a very-much Darwinian situation, where those best adapted to the new environment will be the ones most likely to survive. We look forward to working with cities that exhibit the skills necessary to survive these perilous times.

“One final note. For most of you, your former countries were based on capitalism, exploitation of nature, and growth-based economics, whereas the new order is based on socialism, preservation of nature, and steady-state economics. This shift will be wrenching. I wish to point out, however, that even the world’s greatest economists did not hold the view that economics would be a long-term basis for human society. I will close this message with the following observation by the mathematician / economist John Maynard Keyes, from his 1930 essay, “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” about the fatal limitations of economics as a long-term basis for human society:

“Some day we may return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue – that avarice is a vice, that the extraction of usury is a misdemeanor, and the love of money is detestable. But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to every one that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little while longer.”

“This concludes today’s broadcast. Routine global news summaries will be made weekly. By the way,” Viktor added, seemingly as an afterthought, “you may wonder where this broadcast is coming from. For the time being, for reasons of security, our location will be kept secret, and it will change. It is, of course, situated in the far North. If you wish to give this location a name, you might call it Hyperborea. Good day. And good fortune.”

The video ended, with the same Russian-Emblem display that had prefaced the presentation. Yevgeny turned off the display, and turned to Joel and his group.

“Well,” he asked, “what do you think?”

Joel responded immediately, “I don’t know what to think! What is this? It is pretty evident that global nuclear war has in fact not occurred, since we are still here, the electricity is still on, and the news channels aren’t reporting anything of this sort. So, I’ll answer your question with a question: What’s the point?”

Yevgeny was somber. “This is the point. The distribution of 20,000 SMRs in a somewhat lesser number of survival pods has not helped the world’s ecological crisis one iota. In fact, the availability of additional energy is making things worse. Russia did its part in trying to solve the crisis, but it is evident that the rest of the world has no intention of cooperating. It is in the process of destroying the biosphere, and Russia along with it.”

“A short time ago, President Romanov met with his cabinet to discuss the situation. It was decided that, absent decisive and immediate action, the biosphere would soon be mortally wounded, and Russia along with it. In response, the Cabinet resolved to defend the Motherland, by destroying a large portion of the world’s military and industrial production capacity.

“You are correct in deducing that global nuclear war has not yet occurred. The only reason why the war has not happened yet is you. President Romanov has great respect for you and your team. He views that it was your idea and drive that created the planetary survival system. It is his view that you would be instrumental in guiding the aftermath of global nuclear war. Global nuclear war may be necessary to move to a survivable system, but it is by no means sufficient. Human society could simply pick up the pieces, rebuild industrial society, and the ecological destruction would continue. President Romanov believes that you may well be the key to avoiding this fate. He realized that, in the massive destruction that would occur to the United States, you would very likely not survive. The purpose of inviting you and your team to this meeting here today was to extract you from the US and bring you to a relatively remote location in Canada, which had little chance of being attacked.”

“So, what’s the deal?” Joel asked, in consternation. “Is an attack still planned?”

“Yes, the attack will proceed, as scheduled. Please do not infer that the decision to make the attack, or the timing of the attack, has anything to do with you. It does not. Efforts were made to bring you here prior to the attack, but its implementation was in no way contingent on your arrival.”

Joel’s mind was racing. “Well, if the initiation of the attack had nothing to do with me, why are you informing me of this? Why are you taking the risk that, because of the existence of this video, someone may learn of the attack plan and thwart it, such as by talking Russia out of it, or by attacking Russia first? Or, if the President respects my abilities so much, that, on hearing of this plan, refuse to cooperate?”

“That was a risk that the President was willing to take, to assure your safety. Be flattered. By the way, it was the Cabinet that made the decision to attack, not the President. The President does not have that power.”

“But you already succeeded in getting me here!” Joel exclaimed. “You didn’t have to tell me about a pending attack, and risk exposure.”

“There are some other facts of which you should be aware. Because of your presence in Canada, and your abilities, President Romanov has designed the attack to provide you with resources to implement the restoration of the North American biome, starting with restoration of the American Tallgrass Prairie. The cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Montréal are no more, but all other major cities, including Winnipeg and Québec City are intact. I am not sure about Ottawa. You may make use of resources in those cities, or anywhere else, to initiate work on this project.”

“One aspect of an attack on industry is to destroy industrial energy sources, such as hydroelectric dams. It is possible that you might have particular use of some of these during the transition to a new world order, even though they will be of no use in the future. The President is holding back on targeting hydroelectric power plants in Canada, pending your decision.”

Joel immediately sensed that he was making a totally different kind of decision from any time before. His decision would mean life or death for others. Intellectually, he knew that hydroelectric dams were key ingredients in the industrial engine that was destroying the planet. But emotionally, when given the power to destroy them, he hesitated. Of necessity, their destruction would mean the deaths of people. He was not trained to or otherwise disposed to make this kind of decision. Thinking out loud, he responded, “If I don’t save the dams, then people will die. That puts the responsibility on me! For God’s sake, I am an inventor, an entrepreneur, not a nuclear warrior!”

“That’s fine. You don’t need to participate in this decision. He just thought he’d ask. No problem.”

Joel was struck by the casualness of the operation. “But you have forced me to participate! The decision to destroy the dams hinges on my choice!”

“You have chosen to become involved with solving the ecological crisis, and doing so involves some very difficult choices. Did you really believe that the problem could be solved without making those choices? That is what environmentalists have been believing for fifty years. You criticize industrialization, claiming that it kills wild nature and will destroy the quality of life for billions of people in the future. Yet you are unwilling to take a single human life to fix things.

“New societies are not founded by people willing to die for a cause, but by people willing to kill for a cause. The Green movement has failed dismally to protect the biosphere because so few of its members are willing to commit to it, to kill for it, to risk their mortal souls. They write their articles and books, they do their television documentaries, they conduct research studies, and they attend conferences, and they protest. And, until today, absolutely nothing of any significance has happened.

“Today, however, things changed. The President has taken bold action, even though it may mean his mortal soul. He is committed to saving the biosphere. What about you? What is your decision? Save the dams or not?”

Joel’s mind raced. He had asserted many times that the root cause of the planet’s ecological crisis was the use of massive amounts of industrial energy. Canada’s hydroelectric dams were among the largest in the world, and there were a lot of them. The basis of his survival plan was small, distributed SMRs, not massive power plants. The hydro dams destroyed wild rivers. The dams served mainly US industry in the northeast and northwest, and, if what Yevgeny said was true, those recipients were likely gone. The dams really didn’t matter. If they did, Romanov would not be leaving their fate up to Joel. How could he, Joel, decide that massive industrial power plants were fine for him, but not for anyone else? He didn’t really need the dams at all. What he wanted was wild rivers. What he wanted was salmon spawning in the Columbia River. He had in essence made this decision long ago, but had not admitted it to himself. He had made it intellectually, but had not physically carried through. He recalled the long discussion with his uncle. Something had to be done to stop the human annihilation of the biosphere. Was he going to take a stand and take action, or just talk, like everyone else? Alea jacta est, -- the die is cast – he thought to himself.

“Do it your way,” Joel said. “Do as you wish. But bring back salmon to the Columbia River.”

“So,” Joel asked, “when is the attack to happen?”

“It is under way now. President Romanov made this trial recording for broadcast in the event that he does not survive.”

“Oh, my God,” Joel gasped.

The lights flickered, went out for a moment, and the emergency lighting went on.

“The national electric power grid is no longer functional. For your project, you will be making use of the SMRs that you were responsible for installing.”

During this exchange with Yevgeny, Joel’s team had remained silent. As the emergency lighting came on, Joel began to accept that what Yevgeny was saying was likely true. Joel slumped back in his chair, in disbelief. The members of his team, who had remained spellbound and silent through Yevgeny’s presentation, erupted in disbelief, consternation and shock. They bombarded Yevgeny with questions, which he addressed as best he could. By and large, he did not have answers for their questions. About all he could say was that a massive attack had occurred, and he did not have any detailed information about it.

When things settled down, Yevgeny spoke again, “Very soon, travel will be very difficult, if not impossible. There will be no petrol, and, in the chaos of the aftermath, roads will be unsafe. Within the next few hours, we can get you to where you want to go, but after that, you will be essentially on your own, dependent on local resources, and without the means to travel. Where would you like to go?”

Joel looked at his team. It occurred to him that they resembled deer in headlights. “Where would you like to go?” he asked.

The team remained silent for a time. Then Yvonne spoke. “There is much to do. Everywhere. The industrial giant that held the planet in its thrall has been felled, and it is now possible to implement a sustainable planetary management system. The Prairie Project has the endorsement of President Romanov, and it is as good a place to start as any. Ninety-nine percent of it and the plants animals that inhabited it – the grasses, the bison, bear, elk, moose, deer, antelope, wolves, coyotes, foxes, muskrats, gophers, ferrets, prairie dogs, rabbits, hares, whooping cranes – have been destroyed. Restoring it is a worthwhile and ambitious project. The East Coast is going to be hell for a while. Let’s go to Winnipeg!”

“Vamonos!” Joel concluded.

Appendix A. Ruminations

[This appendix describes Yvonne’s thoughts leading up to her decision that the only way for mankind to protect the biosphere from further destruction is to limit human population to a very small number, such as a few million people total on the planet. Furthermore, the only way to maintain such a system is to have control by an external power committed to the planetary management system, and for this power to be the single external power in charge of the planet. This appendix is referred to in the main text of the book, which may be read in conjunction with this appendix or alone, without loss of continuity.]

Although Yvonne had identified some general principles and concepts for social organization, she soon realized that her ideas to this point were too general to be of much practical value. To be of operational use, her ideas had to be more specific. One of the major shortcomings of environmentalists was that they focused on general principles, failing to identify or implement specific action strategies. In the chaos that followed a global collapse, people would need specifics, not principles.

She had considered general principles of administration, ethics, and the transition from growth-based economics and capitalism to steady-state economics and ecosocialism. She had made the problem much more manageable by casting it in a dynamic-programming structure. As she mulled over her initial insights, she realized that she had not given sufficient consideration to the issue of government.

In considering these concepts, it was important to distinguish between the government of the planetary management system and that of human society. They were distinct and served different purposes – one focused on the welfare of man, and the other on the welfare of nature (which, of course, includes man).

Yvonne’s career experience had been in administration of private for-profit firms, not in administration of public nonprofit organizations. Although there were significant operational differences in these application areas, these differences did not matter much since the basic principles of administration – organization and motivation – were similar for both areas. In both cases, the mission of the organization was specified by external powers: in the case of the private firm by the stockholders and in the case of the public organization the electorate.

The problem she faced now was more formidable: the one of determining an administration for a complete society, not just a single organization within it. On the other hand, her task within this context was to develop administrative guidelines for a single entity – a global society, a unitary state – and all of her experience involved administration of a single, unitary entity. From that point of view, her experience was well-matched to the task.

The organizations that she had administered operated in the context of a nation of laws, which laws placed substantial constraints on the organization. The nation was a framework, an environment. Working within this context substantially simplified things in several areas, such as security, workers’ rights, property rights, breach of contract, fraud and ethics. What she was dealing with here was quite different. She was concerned with a world government. There were no external constraints other than physical ones. The government could make its own rules and was free to change them. How could the goal of protecting the biosphere be accomplished with this sort of organization in charge? Her task was to figure out a way of setting the rules and motivating compliance with them so that the goal of operating a sustainable planetary management system could be accomplished. How could this be done?

The big difficulty, as she saw it, was that the planet’s environment had not fared well under any form of societal government. The major forms of societal governments were monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, theocracy and tyranny. Under tyranny, a despot was free to destroy nature or not – the choice was a personal one. Under democracy, the people could collectively make the same decision. Monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy – they all possessed the same feature.

Actually, Yvonne realized, the problem wasn’t so much with the political structure, but with the economic system that was used in conjunction with it. Major economic systems associated with states include capitalism, communism, distributism, feudalism, socialism, statism, and welfare state.

With respect to environmental damage, it did not make much difference which economic system was employed. In some cases, there were synergistic effects. For example, the combination of democracy, capitalism and growth-based economics appeared to be particularly effective at building global industrial civilization – and destroying a biosphere.

Economics does not protect nature because natural inputs are free, except for the cost of extracting them. The attempt to take them into account by placing a monetary value on them or constraints on them does not work because the ecological system is too complex, and that approach does not avoid extinctions. Economics works extremely well in accomplishing what it was designed to do, which is to allocate scarce resources efficiently and, in the case of growth-based economics, to grow the economy. It is not a system intended to protect or nurture nature, and it does a very poor job at that. It is good at utilizing natural resources, not at protecting them.

A review of Rani’s proposal of a unitary-state ecosocialist democratic republic.

For the organizational scheme of her example, Rani had suggested that the government be a unitary-state ecosocialist democratic republic. Yvonne had no problem with the unitary part or the ecosocialist part. But what about democracy? The democratic-republic part bothered her. Yvonne felt that democracy would not work as the fundamental organizational basis for a long-term-survivable planetary management system, or PMS. She needed to collect her thoughts about this.

In her design of a sustainable society, Rani had focused mainly on specifying the characteristics of the city-state, and less on global society above that level. The size, extent and structure of global society would depend very much on what remained of global civilization after its collapse. Rani had identified an “exemplar” global society consisting of 100 city-states, of average population about 50,000.

Yvonne decided to focus most of her attention on the city-state level as well, and take into account global society by considering two extreme cases: the case of a single city-state on its own; and the case in which there are multiple city-states, but there exists a global power, such as the winner of a global war, that asserts control over the city-states.

In her career, and in her initial thoughts on administration of the survival system, she had taken the matter of societal government as a given. Everything that she had done in her career had been in the context of organizations within a capitalist democratic republic. It was easy to visualize the transition from capitalism to socialism, because both of these systems were well represented in the world’s nations.

Twenty-five hundred years ago, Plato had criticized democracy as a system for governing a city-state. He viewed that people would elect poor leaders who would promise them anything. He viewed democracy as the penultimate form of government as it degenerates from aristocracy to tyranny.

Rani had suggested a democratic republic as the form of government for the city-state. In a democratic republic, or representative democracy, people elect representatives to enact laws and govern them. In direct democracy, people decide on policies directly, without intermediaries. For large groups, representative democracy, or indirect democracy, is more efficient than direct democracy. It is hoped that the electorate would elect representatives who were better qualified to lead and administer than the masses. Poor decisions can be made under either form of democracy.

The framers of the United States Constitution considered alternative forms of democracy at length and rejected direct democracy, in which they saw a danger in tyranny of the majority. They advocated a representative democracy in the form of a constitutional republic over a direct democracy, to protect the individual from the will of the majority.

James Madison asserted that representative democracy better enabled the government to address the concerns of the many special-interest groups that arise in a diverse society. This very advantage, however, represents one of representative democracy’s strongest weaknesses. It possesses the serious flaw that representatives tend to support special-interest groups no matter the merit of their interest, since the per-person benefit to the special-interest group is great yet the per-person cost to the electorate is small, and the special-interest group often possesses the power to sway elections.

Representative democracy also possesses the drawback that the government tends to grow in size and increase the complexity of society. With direct democracy there is a natural limit on how much time and effort people are willing to allocate to review of draft legislation and voting. With representative democracy there is no such inhibition. On the other hand, as a society grows in size and complexity, the demands on the citizen increase, and it is efficient to move from direct to indirect democracy.

In a direct democracy, citizens vote directly on certain things, such as their leaders and rules or laws. There are a number of different forms of direct democracy, including semi-direct democracy, in which representatives administer day-to-day governance but the citizens remain the sovereign through three methods of popular action: referendum (plebiscite), initiative, and recall. Direct democracy is practical for small groups but awkward – not very efficient – for large ones. It mitigates the shortcoming of representative democracy of being strongly influenced by special-interest groups, but at the cost of enabling tyranny of the majority.

Representative democracy and direct democracy both have advantages and disadvantages. Direct democracy is intended to protect from tyrants, but it enables tyranny of the majority. Representative democracy is intended to protect from tyranny of the majority, but it enables tyranny by legal experts. Semi-direct democracy can moderate the risk of either form. It splits power between the people and the politicians.

Problems are associated with both direct and representative democracy. In her example, Rani had suggested representative democracy, which is the most common form of democracy used by nations today. Yvonne recognized the problems of democracy, but for the moment could not think of a better system. It was a useful default political system. For her further analysis, Yvonne would accept Rani’s suggestion of representative democracy as the basic form of government for the exemplar city-state, but would allow for the possibility that the system might contain elements of direct democracy as well.

Yvonne considered further the role of democracy, whether representative, direct, or semi-direct, in the survival system.

Democracy works fine as a basis for operating homogeneous groups in which everyone has common interests. It does not work well for running a goal-oriented or complex system, such as a ship, a plane, or a battle. The problem is fundamental in two ways. First, if operation of the entity involves complex technical skills, such as piloting a ship, allowing those operations to be influenced by votes would at the very least be inefficient and at worst disastrous. Second, and just as serious, under democracy, the group can vote to change the goal.

Although democracy had its shortcomings, it seemed that everyone, from the anarcho-primitivists to the communists to the socialists to the capitalists, were in favor of some elements of democracy. Democracy was useful for both the leaders and the followers. For the people, it seemed to be a good system – articulate leaders would promise them what was pleasing to hear, and even a minimalist government offered protection from crime. For the leaders, it helped to control the people, by giving the people what they wanted or, at least the appearance of trying to give them what they wanted.

Democracy is a peaceful way of giving power to those who crave it. It is fine for deciding on things that really don’t matter. The people don’t care who is in charge, as long as those in charge provide them what they want – not what they need, but what they want. Many leaders don’t care what the people ask for. Their main desire is the exercise of power, no matter what the goal. Unfortunately for the constituents, the most effective way of experiencing the satisfaction of power is to use it to deny people things that they want, so the constituents do not always get what they expected.

Democracy is fine for a group that has is no goal, or if it is free to choose a goal, or if the goal doesn’t matter. It is a poor basis for running a goal-oriented activity where the goal matters. Direct democracy would work fine at low levels of a hierarchical structure, as long as the overall goal and rules are set at a higher level. It is fine for big organizations or small ones, as long as the goal is not important.

Yvonne recalled the preamble to the Constitution of the United States: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” And, from the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” “Promote the general welfare” and “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – these totally vague goals were perfect for the leaders. They work fine as long as it is not specified what the general welfare or happiness are!

For protecting a biosphere, democracy seemed out of the question as the basic form of government, since the government would not necessarily hold to that goal. It could perhaps play a role at some level, such as in allowing workers a voice in some aspects of their work environment, but not as the basis of global government.

Is democracy responsible in part for the ecological problem? Yvonne wondered. To what extent is it a significant causal factor in the ecological crisis? It is present in almost all social systems, and they are all destroying the biosphere, but correlation is not causation. It seems to be a synergistic factor: capitalism and growth-based economics seem to work more effectively in democratic systems. The insatiable desire for acquisition creates an endless demand for more production. No matter how much people have, they always want more. The leaders cater to these desires, and the system grows. Democracy, it seemed, might be the worst form of government for a steady-state economic system.

If not democracy, then what?

The matter of government had been a major focus of thought for all of history. The subject comprises a major area of philosophy: political philosophy. The literature on political philosophy was vast, but in her schooling, Yvonne had studied a comprehensive sampling of it. Of the very large number of political philosophers, some of the prominent classical ones crossed her mind: Plato, Locke, Hegel, Rousseau, Hume, Machiavelli, Mill, Montesquieu, Hobbes and Russell. They had identified useful principles to guide the design and operation of government, including the major political doctrines such as democracy and republicanism, and features such as separation of powers, reducing concentrations of power, and systems of check and balances. She had some knowledge of modern political philosophers, such as Robert Nozick, but the subject was not of substantial interest to her, and her knowledge of recent developments was superficial.

Yvonne had now reflected much on the usefulness of democracy in a planetary management system, and found it wanting. But if democracy would not work as a basis for a sustainable planetary management system, then what form of government would work?

Perhaps this is an ill-posed question, she wondered. It may be that there may be no best form of government, just one that is good for specific purposes and circumstances. Just as there is no best position for sleep – it is necessary to keep changing the position to keep the lymph flowing in the lymphatic system. Government is like a house – configure it as is most useful, given the situation.

For constructing a global industrial civilization, democracy and laissez-faire capitalism work quite well. Unfortunately, they have the fatal drawback of destroying the biosphere at the same time.

As a good form of government for running a city-state, Plato had suggested what he called aristocracy, defined in a way that is similar to what we now call merit-based technocracy or socialism. His goal, however, was not preserving nature, but serving man.

If the best form of government depends on the circumstances, then it is not possible to specify, in advance, the form of government for all time, since circumstances change over time. Yvonne could not solve that problem. It would have to be solved by each future generation by itself.

Since no governmental system had worked to protect the environment, all Yvonne really knew is what hasn’t worked. Theocracy didn’t work, for obvious reasons. Religions that have no respect for nature, or that place man above it instead as a part of it, or that instruct mankind to exploit it, are not a good basis for a PMS. Faith-based religions that reject science don’t work.

Tyranny is obviously not a good choice – the dictator can choose any goal he pleases. A benign dictator can change his mind and become a malevolent one. Besides, a dictatorship lasts only as long as the dictator – human or otherwise – survives. It is not a permanent solution. Perhaps a temporary, transitional one, such as Marx’s viewing the dictatorship of the proletariat as a temporary, intermediate phase between capitalism and communism.

Political systems are combined with economic systems to form integrated socioeconomic ideologies. The economic system incorporates more specific goals than the political system. For example, using capitalism instead of socialism to control the distribution of goods and services to people. Rani had suggested the use of an ecosocialist democratic republic. Such a system, she viewed, would address the concerns of both people and the biosphere.

After a quick review of several major political-economic systems, it was clear to Yvonne that none of them would work well for achieving the goal of a sustainable planetary management system. Suddenly, she realized the problem! The problem was not with democracy or any other major form of societal government per se. The problem was that no societal governmental model worked well to protect the environment. That is intentional. The primary purpose of societal government was to serve man, to maximize his pleasure, satisfaction and fulfillment. More specifically, it was to do this only for those currently in charge – the current generation. Governments were not designed to protect nature or to protect the interests of future generations of mankind. They were designed to be flexible, to allow for changing interests as society evolved over time. They were designed to accommodate change, such as the US Constitution, which allows for amendments.

For holding to and accomplishing a specific goal, other organizational models are appropriate, such as a business model for operating a firm or a military-combat model for defending a nation or winning a war. Managing a planet was, like these, a goal-oriented undertaking. The societal-government model could be called goal-oriented, where the goal was to serve man, but that goal was too general to be operationally useful. It was more appropriately viewed as process-oriented. It was more concerned with means than ends.

Yvonne now realized what the problem was or, at least a significant part of the problem. All existing political-economic systems were focused on the welfare of man. Not even on the welfare of future generations of mankind, but only on the welfare of the current generation of man that is in charge of operating the system. They did not focus on nature.

Even ecosocialism did not focus on nature, but on man. It was still economics, concerned fundamentally with the utilization of resources for the benefit of mankind. At best, it paid lip service to nature, by slowing the destruction of the environment. It might place constraints or Pegovian taxes to slow the destruction of natural resources, but the ultimate goal was maximization of benefit to the current generation of mankind, not to protect the biosphere and not to benefit future generations of man.

Actually, the present global societal governmental system had little to do with enhancing the quality of life for most people. It was concerned with the welfare of the current generation of people only with respect to its role in helping a very small elite sate their appetites for power and wealth. Under growth-based economics, it had destroyed the quality of life for almost all people and the biosphere, as well. The present system was focused on accumulating great wealth for an elite at great expense to the rest of humanity and to the biosphere.

It was clear that no existing political-economic system was going to be of help in solving the ecological crisis. Not even ecosocialism. They all put man, not nature, first. In this regard, they are similar to religion. Religion glorifies man’s superiority over nature, and justifies his exploitation of it.

The placement of key environmental agencies in the US government is a prime example of the low priority given to nature by US society: the Environmental Protection Agency is within the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is within the Department of Commerce. If climate change really mattered, there would be a Department of Climate Change, with a Commerce Agency within it. But climate change doesn’t matter. Commerce matters.

There are fifteen departments associated with human activities, but no Department of Nature. There are over 100 independent executive agencies in the US government, only a handful of which are focused on the environment. The leading voices for nature, such as World Wildlife Fund and Natural Resources Defense Council, are private voluntary organizations.

Although Yvonne felt that she now understood what the problem was, that no existing political-economic system would solve the ecological crisis, at this point she had no idea what might work.

She let her mind wander. For a system model to be of help in accomplishing desired outcomes or goals for certain system variables, it was necessary to represent those variables as outcome variables and to consider the other system variables as input variables. Under the present system, mankind’s welfare was the output, the thing to be promoted, and nature was the input, resources to be utilized. To help design a system to protect nature, what was needed was a system model in which nature was represented by output variables and mankind’s interests were represented as inputs. If the goal was to protect nature, then the present system had it backwards. The situation should not be represented as mankind being in control of nature, but of mankind accommodating nature, cooperating with nature, being a part of nature. Mankind had it backwards, organized religion had it backwards, and the government had it backwards. To achieve a long-term-sustainable planetary management system that provided a quality life to mankind in a species-rich biosphere, these viewpoints would have to be reversed.

Yvonne recalled her observation that she did not have to solve the problem for all time, but just for a single generation. She did, however, have to solve it for at least that much! To find a solution to the issue of government, she decided to go back to first principles. She would logically consider the system requirements and performance-evaluation criteria, assess the pros and cons of various forms of government relative to them, and select or construct a preferred solution. In conceptualizing a governmental system, she would, as usual, be guided by Bertrand Russell’s analysis of the basic human drives.

A major difficulty in solving the ecological crisis, it seemed to Yvonne, is that no external power is in charge, that humankind is very much on its own. Globally, the political system is presently in a state of chaos and tyranny, run by a collection of hedonistic elites at one extreme and local warlords at the other. Was there no planetary goal, no planetary purpose? Was the universe a self-organizing system? Was mankind self-organizing itself into extinction?

Yvonne knew that she could not answer this question, about the meaning and purpose of existence. That scope was too broad. The most that she could do was set up a sustainable system that might work for a few years. The responsibility for maintaining such a system in the future would always rest with the then-current generation of humanity.

Whatever system of government is set up, it has to last only for twenty years! If it doesn’t work out, then perhaps the next generation would be able to learn, and do better.

Yvonne considers a special case

Yvonne reflected for a moment. She was avoiding allowing the scope of the problem to be too broad, but perhaps her perspective was too narrow. Perhaps she was looking at the problem with blinders on. She was trying to solve the problem within the context of a political-economic system that was focused on providing benefit to mankind, not nature. She needed to step back and take a fresh perspective.

What if, she mused, there were an external power in charge. What would it do? What if she were a citizen of a Galactic Empire, charged with the responsibility of protecting the biospheres of a host of planets? Would she simply place a planetary management office within the governments of each planet? Of course not! That would be stupid! She would set up a planetary management system on each planet, and have the local governments accommodate it!

Yvonne chuckled to herself. Perhaps she had been reading too much science-fiction! Albert Einstein had proposed the same kind of approach. His biographer Banesh Hoffman wrote, “When judging a scientific theory, his own or another’s, he asked himself whether he would have made the universe in that way had he been God.”

If there were an external authority in control of Earth, then the planetary management system would in fact be the overall planetary government, subject to the control of the external authority, and the local societal governments would be subject to it. Viewing the problem from a different perspective had made this very clear. Before, she had not seen the forest for the trees.

Up to now, she had been putting the cart before the horse, letting the tail wag the dog. If an external power were in charge, the planetary management system would include or be superior to the societal-government system, not vice-versa. That way, the focus would be on protecting nature. The overall system goals would relate to nature, not to mankind. It was just the reverse of the present approach, where the political-economic system worked for mankind’s benefit and nature was short-shrifted, represented as an externality at worst and by constraints or penalty functions at best.

Did this viewpoint invalidate Rani’s proposed structure, and her recommendation that the political system of the city-state be an ecosocialist government? Not necessarily. It simply meant that if an external power were in charge, then the societal government would be inferior to – under or within – the planetary management system, not external to it or superior to it. Under this concept, Planet Earth would be viewed as Spaceship Earth, and it would be operated like a ship rather than a nation, like a business rather than a social club.

If the societal government were inferior to the planetary management system, then it could be of any form at all, as long as its operations did not conflict with the goals of the planetary management system. So, in particular, ecosocialism would be just fine. It would not be necessary to tailor the societal government to the task. The theological views of religions would not matter. It would not be necessary to persuade religions to give up their disdain for nature. The planetary management system, backed by the external power, would require that they comply.

The preceding thoughts were in the context of a situation in which an exterior power was in charge of the city-state government. But what if that was not the case? Whatever system Yvonne designed must work in either case, whether there was an external power or not. In reality, such an external power would not be a Galactic Empire, but the winner of a global war, or the vestigial remains of a national or regional government following such a war or other type of collapse.

If there were no external power, however, what should be done? From her consideration of that special case, Yvonne realized that she had simplified the problem and made it much more tractable. The essential problem was that the societal government focused on benefiting mankind at the expense of nature – its goal was in direct opposition to that of the planetary management system. Trying to modify societal government to achieve the planetary management system goal, when it was designed for an opposite purpose, was futile.

Although human society was in fact part of the biosphere, the essence of the situation was that human society and the rest of the biosphere were in competition – opposing players in an existential game. A more reasonable approach was to recognize this, keep the planetary management system separate from societal government, and consider how they might interact to achieve their respective, conflicting, goals.

The limiting-case example of an external power had helped to clarify things, but it had not led to a general solution – or even to a specific one. A major benefit from having considered it was that it suggested that a better approach was to consider the planetary management system as a separate entity, rather than try to modify societal government to work to accomplish its goal. She would now consider the problem of designing the planetary management system.

To solve the problem, Yvonne would identify the major groups, or actors, or players, in the complete human-society-and-nature system, and how they interacted. She would consider the desires of each group and how the groups might interact to accomplish their respective goals. This was a standard approach to systems modeling.

In its simplest form, there were two major actors – the planetary management system, or PMS, and human society. Since the PMS was an organization designed for a specific purpose, it could be reasonably be viewed as a single actor. Because of its complexity, human society could not reasonably be represented as a single actor. After some thought, Yvonne viewed that the main actors in human society were leaders of five groups: societal government (politicians, civil servants); economics (economists); industry and commerce (producers of society’s goods and services); science and technology (scientists, technologists, educators); and security (police, defense). In some societies, there was also a sixth main group, organized religion. The actors in the model were the collective leaderships of each of the various groups.

The leaders of the various groups interact with each other and make decisions. Since their power ultimately derives from their constituents, the relationship to their constituents has to be taken into account.

Yvonne would now consider the major players, and then identify what motivated each of them.

The PMS would always be external to the societal government. If there were an external power in control, the PMS would be superior to the societal government. Otherwise, it would be independent of it or inferior to it, as is the case for organized religion. After thinking about the problem for a while, Yvonne decided that the structure of the PMS could, and therefore should and would, be the same, in either case.

The societal government could be of any form. The basic approach was to decide how to interact with that government, not to modify it.

Yvonne considered further what entities, functions and features to include in each of the seven major political entities, or polities, that she had identified. Her goal was not to attempt to define a set of polities that were ideal or optimal. It was simply to define a set that seemed reasonable, and then consider how they might work together as part of a PMS. By doing this she hoped to achieve a better understanding how a PMS might function, and what general features it might possess.

Up to now, Yvonne had used the term “planetary management system” to refer to the entity, outside of societal government, that was concerned with planetary management. She realized that this descriptor was inappropriate. The planetary management system included both this entity and all other entities. From now on, she would refer to the independent entity as the “planetary management organization,” not as the “planetary management system.”

The seven political entities that Yvonne had identified were the following:

1. Planetary Management Organization (PMO) (management of the planetary management system; constituents: all staff of the PMO)

2. Societal government (the city-state; the political system; constituents: the electorate (adult citizens))

3. Economics (steady-state economics; ecosocialism; protection of nature and efficient use of resources; constituency: economists)

4. Industry and commerce (production of goods and services; infrastructure; energy; constituents: management and labor)

5. Organized religion (all organized religions; concerned with ethics, metaphysics, philosophy, spirituality; constituents: all adherents)

6. Science and technology (includes mathematics and engineering; scientists, technologists and educators; philosophy and ethics; education and research facilities; knowledge; information; data; constituents: all workers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics)

7. Security (city and city-state defense; internal security; police; rehabilitation of lawbreakers; neutralization of industry outside of cities; constituents: police and defense personnel)

The leaders of each of the seven groups are the movers and shakers of society.

If all seven polities work together in cooperative management of human society to protect the environment, such a system of government is called synarchy. Yvonne mused that if they accepted the goal of protecting nature, then they could be viewed as enlightened, that is, as the Illuminati. In general, however, the polities have competing goals and they do not cooperate. In this case, the system may be viewed as a multiplayer game. The game may be cooperative or noncooperative. In a cooperative game, the players may make binding agreements that are enforced by an external agency. In a noncooperative game, they do not. The reason why players engage in a cooperative game rather than a noncooperative one is that they may realize greater payoffs by cooperating than they would if they do not cooperate.

An example of the distinction between a cooperative game and a noncooperative game is afforded by a purchase-and-sale transaction between two parties in situations in which it is not practical to make an exchange in person, such as the transfer of a real property or the sale of an item via the Internet. The problem is that the party that initiates the transfer incurs a risk of loss. If the buyer transfers the money first, the seller may keep it without providing the goods or by providing unacceptable goods. If the seller transfers the goods first, the buyer may keep them and not provide payment.

This risk of loss can be avoided by utilizing the services of a trusted third party, such as an escrow agent in the case of real property or PayPal or Amazon in the case of Internet transactions. The money is held by the third party until the purchaser has received the goods. The presence of the third party to assure compliance with the agreement makes this a cooperative game. If there is no external agent, then the game is a noncooperative game.

In the present application, the external power might be the winner of a global war or the remains of a regional government after global war.

The basic theory of cooperative and noncooperative games was developed by John Nash, for multiplayer general-sum games. His development was a major advance over the theory that preceded it, for zero-sum two-player games. For noncooperative games, the solution is called the Nash Equilibrium. For cooperative games, the solution is called the Nash Bargaining Solution.

While the Nash theory was an elegant approach to solving multiplayer games, it applied to situations in which the preferences of the players could be ranked, that is, could be represented by utility functions. It was very useful for addressing economic problems, for which the interests of the players could be represented by money. It was not very useful for finding solutions to complex problems, such as ecological problems, in which there are many variables of interest, and the players’ preferences cannot be well ordered. Like systems theory, it was useful for helping to understand features of complex problems, but of limited use in finding practical solutions.

Organized religion is usually separated from the other polities, under the concept of separation of church and state – the people’s freedom is more secure if there is a separation of powers. The PMO is separate for a different reason, namely, that its goal is to protect nature whereas the primary goal of the other polities is to serve man, and, as history has shown, these goals are often in opposition.

Yvonne now considered each of the seven polities with respect to the following aspects: the composition and government; interests, including motivations, desires, goals and obligations; functions; and basis for power. After doing this, she would be in a good position to assess the likelihood of achieving the goal of establishing a long-term-sustainable planetary management system that would provide a high quality of life to human beings in a species-rich biosphere.

The features that Yvonne identified for the polities went far beyond the level of detail specified by Rani, but they were consistent with Rani’s example. Yvonne’s objective was not an attempt to define a set of ideal polities, but to try to find a set that might work to implement a workable PMS. It was difficult to work with these concepts in a vacuum; considering a concrete example facilitated the analysis.

Planetary Management Organization

Composition and Government

This group is comprised of naturalists. In considering alternatives for the organizational structure of the PMO, Yvonne followed the concept that form should follow function. She was guided by the adage, “What gets measured gets done.” The administrative departments would be defined align with the major concerns of the organization. The management philosophy of the PMO will be standards-based quality management, such as that described in the International Organization for Standards ISO-9001 Quality Management Standard (“say what you do, do what you say, prove it, improve it”).

All organizations have some form of government. Her initial specification of the administrative departments for the organization were as follows. Nature (Megafauna, Megaflora, Habitat and Extinctions, Environmental Quality, Rehabilitation), Man (Health, Education, Quality of Life), Administration (Government, Central Planning, Economics), Science and Technology (Education, Research), Industry (Infrastructure, Energy, Labor, Biofriendly Performance).

Interests

The goal of the PMO was to establish a long-term-sustainable planetary management system that would provide a high quality of life to human beings in a species-rich biosphere. Since the PMO was staffed by naturalists, the interests, goals, desires and motivations of the staff were aligned.

Functions

The primary functions of the PMO are to issue a charter to the city-state, to define the ecological zones that define it, to conduct monitoring and evaluation of the ecological state of the region governed by the city-state, and to issue directives to the city-state to assist accomplishment of the goal. In greater detail, these functions include the following.

The primary functions of the PMO are the following:

1. To issue a Charter to the city-state. The Charter is the written statement of the planetary management organization’s goals. The city-state societal government will have a written Constitution, which must support the PMO goals. The Charter will require that all government operations be conducted in accordance with a recognized quality management standard, such as ISO-9001, and pertinent other standards.

2. To issue a license for the city-state to operate energy sources, such as a nuclear reactor.

3. To define the major ecological zones of the city-state. The city-state is comprised of three main types of ecological zone: a single city, an urban area which includes all industry (including agriculture) of the city-state; rural areas, in which no industrial activity (or agriculture) may take place, but in which citizens may reside and are afforded protection under the law (i.e., citizen’s rights are enforced); and “wild” areas, which include no industry or agriculture and in which the state does not enforce the human rights of inhabitants, other than citizens on authorized visits. The city-state exercises a monopoly on the use of force in the first two zones, but not in the third. That is, the third zone is a stateless area governed by the city-state. If there are multiple cities in a bioregion, the PMO determines its ecological zones in concert with the other cities.

4. To license settlements outside the city, in the urban area of the city-state.

5. To monitor the environmental and ecological state of the area governed by the city-state.

6. To make plans for protecting the biosphere and for rehabilitating it.

7. To issue reports, advisories and requests to the city-state, to best achieve the goal.

Basis of Power

The PMO does not exercise its influence by force. The basis of power for the PMO is either from an external source – a higher level of planetary government – or from an internal source – power granted by the people through the city-state, based on a spiritually based regard for nature and desire to protect it.

Societal government

Societal government is the “politics” part of the political-economic system. As Rani had suggested, the basic form of government would be a unitary-state representative democracy. Its founding document would be a written Constitution. Its major components are the city-state, political parties, elected politicians, and citizens.

The city-state

Composition and Government

A state is a polity under a system of governance with a monopoly on the use of force. A state is not synonymous with a government as stateless governments have existed, such as the Iroquois Confederacy. The wild zones associated with a city-state are stateless. The city-state government of these areas does not exercise its monopoly on the use of force, and it does not enforce the basic human rights of the residents.

In its most basic form, the city-state is similar to the concept of a minimal state, or minarchy, or “night-watchman state,” extended to include acceptance of the Charter to establish a long-term-survivable planetary management system. If the city-state were a minarchy, it would be a political entity one step above anarchy.

Some minarchists argue that a state is inevitable, believing anarchy to be futile. Robert Nozick, who popularized the concept of a minimal state in his book, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, argued that a night-watchman state justifies the existence of a state on moral grounds by providing a framework for any political system that respects basic individual rights.

In general, the city-state would not be a minarchy at all. Its purpose is to enable a full range of opportunity for mankind, not just to provide basic services such as protection from crime. It would provide opportunities for some to live off the land, if that is what they preferred to do. It would also provide a setting for someone to develop robots controlled by artificial intelligence, or genetic research to reconstitute extinct species, if that is what he wished to do. It would probably not generate the economic surplus required to provide opportunities for nuclear physicists to work on large synchrocyclotrons.

Under minarchy, or libertarianism, people are free to give up their freedom and become slaves. Under Rani’s concept, slavery was not permitted. No living thing could own another. Under Rani’s concept, property would be limited to movable inanimate personal property. A person could own a poem that she wrote, or a book. She could own a malachite necklace. She could not own trees or cattle. People could not own land, either individually or in common. Some have argued that the commons may be protected by increased property rights. That approach requires monitoring, evaluation, judgments, legal action. It has failed over and over again.

The basic city-state political system: representative democracy (democratic republic)

Yvonne understood why some aspect of democracy was present in all major political-economic systems. Democracy is good for pacifying people and making them feel comfortable about who is in charge. That system also satisfies those who crave power. It is a peaceful way of satisfying both the people who crave power and everyone else.

The basic political system for the city-state is representative democracy. The principal components of this system are the people, politicians, political parties and an agency in the government to assist the democratic process (information distribution, voter education, voting, elections).

Now that the role of religion in politics has subsided, democracy is now the opiate of the masses and the principal control mechanism of the politicians. It keeps the people placated, pacified, calm, busy, occupied. In general, democracies don’t wage wars or start revolutions.

The PMO doesn’t care who is in charge of societal government, as long as they accept the goal of setting up a sustainable planetary management system and work effectively toward it. Every generation, the set of leaders is replaced, anyway.

The city-state is a unitary state. Parts of it, such as the wild zones, could be called anarcho-primitivist except for the fact that the city-state would extend protection to citizens there on authorized visits.

With respect to organization, the city-state would likely follow the popular trias politica model, that is, it is divided into three branches, legislative, judicial and executive. The purpose of the separation of powers is to prevent concentration of power by providing for checks and balances.

The types of personnel in the city-state are elected politicians; civil servants; citizens of the city-state; and citizens of other city-states. The wild zones include stateless persons.

Under the preceding scheme, the form of government in an area is tailored to the function of the area, for example, representative democracy or synarchy in the city and rural areas and anarcho-primitivism in the wild areas.

Legal system

The PMS had a dual purpose of protecting the quality of life for people as well as protecting the biosphere. The type of legal system used in a country had a substantial impact on the quality of life for its citizens. The United States, which touted itself as a bastion of freedom, had become one of the most litigious societies in the world. The average citizen was under continuous threat that, from just the viewpoint of the time and cost of legal defense, a single legal incident could ruin the quality of his life. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world (655 per 100,000 population in 2016) and the highest prison and jail population (2,121,600 in adult facilities in 2016). Because of its importance, Yvonne spent some time mulling over the issue of specifying a legal system for the city-state.

In deciding on a useful legal system for the city-state, Yvonne reviewed basic information on legal system alternatives. There are four major legal systems in use in the world today: common law (English law), civil law (Roman law), socialist law (Soviet law) and Islamic law (Sharia). Common law is used mainly in English-speaking countries, and civil law in most others. Socialist law was used in the USSR and is used today in China and North Korea. Islamic law is used in several countries with predominantly Islamic populations. About one-third of the world's population lives in jurisdictions using common law combined with civil law.

[In this discussion, the term “civil law” refers to a system of law, contrasted with other systems such as common law and religious law. It does not refer to non-criminal law in a common-law system.]

The standard definition of common law is "The body of law derived from judicial decisions, rather than from statutes or constitutions.” Common law is also known as judicial precedent or judge-made law, or case law. The source of the law is decisions by judges in previous similar cases. Courts are bound by their own previous decisions in similar cases, and the decisions of lower courts must be consistent with the previous decisions of higher courts.

Civil law, based on the framework of Roman law, is a group of legal concepts and systems derived from a legal code. A legal code is a concise statement of the general principles of law, rights and entitlements, and how the legal system works. The purpose of the code is to provide all citizens with a written collection of the laws which apply to them and which judges must follow.

Civil law is based on a legal code and statutes. Statutory law or statute law is written law passed by a legislature. Whereas codes are concise statements of general principles, statutes are lengthier and specific. Civil law holds case law secondary and subordinate to statutory law. Civil law courts generally decide cases on a case-by-case basis with reference to the law code, without reference to other judicial decisions, even of superior courts.

Common law decisions tend to be lengthy, since common law courts generally explain in detail the legal rationale behind their decisions, with citations of both legislation and previous relevant judgments, and interpretation of broader legal principles. In contrast, decisions in civil law jurisdictions are generally shorter, referring only to statutes. The reason for this difference is that civil law jurisdictions adhere to the concept that the reader of a legal opinion should be able to deduce the logic of the decision from the facts of the case and the statutes.

Civil law courts use an inquisitorial system in which an examining magistrate serves two roles by developing the evidence and arguments for one side and then the other during the investigation phase.

Common law courts usually use an adversarial system, in which two sides present their cases to a neutral judge. The responsibility for framing the case rests on the parties, and judges generally decide the case presented to them, rather than acting as active investigators, or actively reframing the issues presented. In contrast, in civil law systems, criminal proceedings proceed under an inquisitorial system in which an examining magistrate serves two roles by developing the evidence and arguments for one side and then the other during the investigation phase. Criticisms of the common-law legal system are that the desire to win is more important than the search for truth, and that wealthier defendants are more likely to win because they can hire better lawyers and spend more on the legal research necessary to identify precedents.

A major problem with common law (case law, precedence law) is that the documentation of the law, which is all previous cases, grows without limit. In the United States, no one knows how many pages long the law is. Under United States common law, no one knows what the law is. The U.S. Code is a consolidation and codification by subject matter of the general and permanent laws of the United States, and is produced in a Main Edition every six years. The 2018 Main Edition is approximately 60,000 pages encompassing 54 volumes, and is prepared by the Office of the Law Revision Counsel. The Internal Revenue Code is more than 7,500 pages long. There are about 20,000 laws just governing the use and ownership of guns. The preceding figures apply just to federal laws. In addition to federal laws, the body of law in the US includes laws at the state, county and local levels. In addition to laws are the countless associated regulations, which have the force of law.

“Ignorantia juris non excusat” – “Ignorance of the law excuses not,” or “Ignorance is no excuse from the law” – is a legal principle holding that a person who is unaware of a law may not escape liability for violating that law merely by being unaware of its content.

Having so many laws substantially degrades quality of life. Under common law, it is impossible for anyone to know all of the laws that affect them, or that apply to a specific case. It is impossible, even for a conscientious, law-abiding citizen, not to be ignorant of the law. This fundamental feature of common law is a profound shortcoming, in several ways.

First, it is impossible not to break any laws. The law should be sufficiently simple – compact and comprehensible – that every person with a basic education can reasonably be expected to know all of the legal codes and statutes that apply to him. Only then would a law-abiding citizen be in a position to obey the law, and only then would it be reasonable to apply the principle that ignorance of the law is no excuse from it.

Second, it places the citizen in a very disadvantageous position in legal proceedings. Because the law documentation is so voluminous and fluid – the legal decisions and written opinions of all previous cases in this court and all higher courts up to the present time – he cannot possibly know or determine with certainty what law applies to his case. Even trained lawyers and judges do not know with certainty. All that can be done in a trial is to research the documentation to the limit of the budget, to learn the decisions of all similar preceding cases.

This situation causes two serious problems. First, the cost of research over tens of thousands of pages of legal documentation spanning many years vastly increases the cost of a trial. Second, it is not feasible for a private citizen to undertake this effort at reasonable cost and within a reasonable period of time. He is faced with the choice of representing himself at great peril, or of hiring lawyers to defend him at great cost. Even the lawyers may not be able to determine the applicable law, but, under the common-law system, the judge will resolve the case based on their presentation.

The second serious problem is that, because it is impossible to determine what law applies to the case, there can be no assurance that the proper law was applied to the case and that justice was rendered.

The practice of common law evokes scenes of teams of lawyers poring over tens of thousands of pages of documentation of previous cases, to find one that may be similar, trying to find out what the law is. The lawyers present their cases to a neutral judge, who bases his decision on the lawyers’ presentations. The judge is not an active participant in the presentation. He does not formulate the legal positions of the two parties. There is little need for him to know or interpret the law – that is done by the trial lawyers. Under this system, for all practical purposes, the judge can be an elected hayseed.

Although the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution asserts the right to a speedy trial, trials in the US are not speedy. Quite the contrary, they are incredibly slow, many taking years to resolve. The long duration of trials contributes much to their very high cost. Major factors driving the cost are the time and effort required to conduct research to determine what law may be applicable to a case and the time and effort required for lawyers to build a case under the common-law adversarial system.

In civil law, the applicable law is found in the Code of Law and Statutes. A fifteen-year-old schoolgirl could readily determine the law relevant to a case. The judge is an active participant in the trial, who formulates the cases for the two sides and makes his decision based on the Code of Law and Statutes, not on presentations by lawyers.

If the law were not so complex and amorphous, and if it were not necessary to hire skilled debaters to develop and present one’s case to a judge who is not heavily engaged in the procedure, the cost of legal defense would be far less. The US legal system is the most costly in the world. As a percentage of gross domestic product, liability costs in the US, which uses a common-law legal system, are 1.66 percent of GDP, versus 0.4 percent for the Netherlands, which uses a civil-law legal system. In a just legal system oriented toward serving the citizen rather than enriching the legal profession, there would be no need to hire lawyers to prepare and conduct a legal defense.

The increase in complexity of common law can be traced to the invention of the printing press, which enabled the production of massive amounts of documentation on all cases ever tried. The process is wasteful and inefficient. As the body of law documentation grows, the outcome of a case becomes more and more biased to those who can afford to pay teams of research lawyers to do legal research and hire articulate trial lawyers to make persuasive presentations to judges.

The rationale for common law is that the law should continuously change to reflect the current views of society, and that this is best done by using recent judicial decisions as the basis for law. The serious problem that has arisen with this approach is that the law has become so complicated that no one knows what it is, and it has become very costly to apply. The development of common law is an excellent example of Tainter’s view that society tends to become more and more complex and costly to maintain. A much more practical and just approach is to revise the statutes, and perhaps the Code of Law.

Common law has no place in a just society, or in an efficient one. It promotes complexity, waste, and laziness and incompetence in judges. As the complexity and unknowableness of the law grows, the law becomes an oppressor of the citizen instead of a protector, a threat to his security and well-being. It promotes tyranny by legal experts. It promotes the need for lawyers and increases the cost of legal proceedings. It makes a travesty of justice.

After reviewing the four major legal systems, Yvonne concluded that a civil-law system would best serve the interests of the PMS in providing a high quality of life for people. The common-law system is very prejudicial to the citizen. It makes it impossible for him not to break the law. It makes application of the principle of “ignorance of the law does not excuse” impossible. It greatly raises the cost of legal defense. It promotes tyranny by legal experts.

The legal system of a city-state is civil law (legal-code-and-statute law), not common law (judicial-precedent law, judge-made law, case law). If there are multiple city-states, all would have identical legal systems, based on the same Code of Law but city-state-specific statutes.

Citizens, citizen rights, citizen responsibilities and citizen duties

People may choose to become citizens of a city-state or not. Citizenship carries with it certain rights, responsibilities and privileges. These are specified in a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. A person living in the domain of a city-state who is not a citizen is still afforded basic human rights. He is still free to remain in the city, at its discretion, as long as he obeys the law. A person who violates the law may be expelled from the city, or even from the rural area. Expulsion would occur, after due process, for persons who commit serious infractions of the law, or who refuse rehabilitation or are not responsive to it.

Adult persons may grant authority to others, such as in the case of a person joining the military, or of a person who chooses to become a citizen of a state, or of one spouse to another. This is done so that the person may become part of a larger purpose. The ceded authority is subject to the terms of the agreement. Even then, the person may terminate the agreement if the other party violates it, such as in the case of an illegal order. Parents have authority over minor children and other living creatures, such as pets, livestock and plants, subject to regulation. They do not own the children or other living creatures.

A citizen must obey the laws and he must accept a job (guaranteed, merit-based). All people within the city and rural areas, whether citizens or not, must provide their children a basic education. In the wild areas, there is no enforcement of basic human rights, such as the right to a basic education or protection under the law. These areas allow the human species (along with other species) the opportunity for speciation. It also provides a substantial land area for anarchists, should they choose to live there.

All adult citizens are required to serve a minimal term in a defense agency and a nature agency, within a year of attaining the age of majority.

When a person is in a particular ecological region, whether he is a citizen or not, he is subject to the laws and regulations of that region, whether he accepts them or not.

All citizens are furnished with written copies of the Charter, the Constitution, the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, the Code of Law and Statutes. The first four of these would be short documents consisting of a few pages each. The Statutes, dealing with many specific activities and localities, would be a pocket-sized booklet.

Basis of power

The city-state acquires its authority either from an external power or from those who are subject to it, i.e., voting citizens.

Functions

The function of the legislative branch of government is to draft laws that, to go into effect, must be ratified, by the people in direct democracy or by the elected representatives in representative democracy.

The function of the judicial branch is to assess the constitutionality of laws and to decide on legal cases.

The function of the executive branch is to operate the city-state and govern the wild areas. The departments (or ministries) of the city-state include the following. Nature; human resources; health; education; infrastructure (parks, borders, roads, buildings, transportation; communications, energy distribution, water distribution, waste management); industry and commerce; labor; human settlements; monitoring; planning; security; exterior; culture and sports.

The functions of the various departments are as usually understood, with the exception of the Ministry of Culture and Sports. The primary function of the Ministry of Culture and Sports is to motivate the people to accept the goal of establishing a PMS, and to work hard to implement it and support it. Other entities concerned with this objective are organized religion and science and technology. They will work together to accomplish this objective.

The preceding description assumes that the city-state is autonomous. At city-state level, the democracy is representative democracy, perhaps with some elements of direct democracy. If there are a few other city-states in a bioregion, then their relationship is peer-to-peer. If there are many, then the overall system is a unitary government of city-states with representative democracy among them.

Interests

Democracy is useful for increasing stability, but not useful with respect to setting or accomplishing goals. It can be used to resolve any issues that do not affect the overall goal. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, people will accept control over the big things in their lives, if they have control over the little things. Democracy is very useful in this regard.

An interesting aspect of the political structure is that the interests of its three main agents – the political party, the elected representatives and the electorate – are not aligned. They may appear to be. On paper, it would appear that they all support the party platform. But in fact, they have different interests.

Yvonne considered two extreme cases of city-state autonomy: that in which the city-state was autonomous; and that in which it was controlled by an external power. In the latter case, of an external power, it could reasonably be assumed that the interests of the polities were aligned – they were whatever the external power imposed. In that case, it could be viewed that the rule was synarchic – joint rule, cooperative rule. In the former case, of autonomy, the goals of each of the polities would be whatever the polities decided. It could be characterized as anarchic.

For a time, as she was considering the characteristics of the societal government, Yvonne considered the matter of how to instill the goal of establishing a PMS in the case in which no external power imposed it. It seemed that in order to accomplish the goal, everyone had to accept the goal and embrace it. It would not be sufficient for just the leaders to accept the goal. If the people accepted the goal, then the leaders might concur, but not necessarily. It had to be everyone, since force was not a practical long-term solution. But, how to get everyone to accept the goal? Acceptance had to be motivated by desire, not by fear or force. The goal had to be accepted and embraced by all sectors and levels of society.

The big problem was that, as Bertrand Russell had observed, people can do what they want, but they cannot want what they want. A goal might be forced upon them by an external power for a while, but that arrangement would not last. To endure, the goal must be motivated by basic human desire. Yvonne did not see a solution to this problem. Her efforts to solve that problem were not productive, and she set it aside for later.

The people

By the term, “the people,” is meant the masses of people other than elites.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume observed that since rulers are so greatly outnumbered by the governed, force is always ultimately on the side of the governed, and that the rulers retain their position of power only because of public opinion.

Robert Nozick observed that libertarianism can lead to voluntary slavery, exactly what human society opted for. Personal slaves previously and wage slaves now. Human bondage in either case.

It occurred to Yvonne that she might pardon civilization for enslaving mankind, because it submits of its own free will. As Hume observed, the people possess the power, but they choose to give it up. She could not, however, pardon civilization for destroying the biosphere. That civilization, unrestrained global industrial civilization, had to go.

It was rather amazing to Yvonne that the people evidently do not realize that preserving nature is the key to a high quality of human life. She had mused from time to time, “Who will speak for nature?” Nature’s interests and the people’s interests are perfectly aligned. Logically, there should be no need to separate the interests of the people from the interests of the biosphere. Regrettably, however, many people do not realize what is in their best interest.

The people are the ultimate source of political power; incredibly, they cede it to the politicians. At that point, since the people will not speak for themselves, the question becomes, “Who will speak for the people?”

The elected representatives; the “politicians”; the power-seekers

Ultimately, the power rests with the people, should they choose to exercise it. The people can make poor decisions, but so can politicians. Under semi-direct democracy, the hope is that the two groups might moderate each other and produce a better outcome than either one alone. The people are responsible for choosing and monitoring the politicians. The politicians are useful for controlling, guiding, managing and moderating the people. A primary function of the politicians is to avoid tyranny of the majority.

While the politicians are motivated primarily by a desire for power, they use it to satisfy other desires, such as acquisitiveness. It does not matter too much to them what the context is, so long as they are in control. So, the politicians will never be of much use in setting the goal. Nevertheless, the power will always rest with them. They can help to achieve the goal, if they choose to accept it. They have to see that the goal is useful for them.

Because of mankind’s love of power, there will always be people seeking it. That basic desire must be recognized and taken into account. Yvonne recalled Plato’s system, based on merit-based selection of leaders. She did not view that as a practical solution. It ignored the fact that some power-seekers have few interests and skills in the application areas in which a market-based economy provides jobs. If leadership positions were merit-based, many would-be political leaders would never achieve a position of power. Some politicians never have jobs other than as politicians for most of their lives. They may have marketable skills, but they do not choose to market them outside of politics. Were it not for the role they could play in government, they would be shut out, ignored. But the power-seekers could not be ignored.

The power-seekers will always be present, and always be in charge. Could we depend on them to do what is best for the electorate? History has shown that we could not. They don’t care what the goal is. The stated goal is whatever the electorate wants to hear, so that the electorate will vote for them.

We cannot force a goal on the politicians. We must set things up so that they are motivated to choose the goal of implementing a PMS. They must see that this goal has a good chance of succeeding. If it is based on science, or the truth, it is off to a good start.

Because they control the outcome for society, the power seekers must be reckoned with. It is better to accommodate them and use them than to fight them or exclude them. Give them a useful role. Provide them a framework in which to channel their energies. An advantage of representative democracy over direct democracy is that it provides a framework for managing the power-seekers. While it may be argued that direct democracy mutes their power, it effectively excludes them from government. Rather than becoming potentially useful parts of the system, they become frustrated and uncontrolled loose cannons in society.

Under the present system, the politicians obtain great wealth from major sectors of a private economy, such as the military-industrial complex and the health-care industry. Under the new system, those entities would not exist, their functions now implemented by public services. The politicians must be convinced that the goal of establishing and operating a planetary management system works for them to satisfy their lust for power. They must see that the goal of setting up and operating a sustainable planetary management system is better than all other alternatives.

Political parties

For organizations of any size, some machinery is required to implement democracy. This machinery includes an agency for distributing information relevant to the implementation of democracy and for conducting voting on laws and elections. This machinery is located inside the government. Outside the government are located political parties, which formulate platforms and slates of candidates for election to office. Publication of slates and official platforms is done by the government.

Organized Religion

Composition

All organized religions.

Basis of power

In much of the history of mankind, religion played a key role in government. In some cases, the form of government was theocracy, in which religion was in complete charge of society. In most cases, power rested with secular forces. In these cases, religion often played a key role. As science developed and its value to politics increased, the value of religion waned, and it now plays a minor role in most societies. We are seeing the last vestiges of the power of religion in political systems. As a factor in politics, religion is in subsidence, but it is not dead.

Organized religions are based not on verifiable fact, but on fear, superstition, ignorance and faith-based beliefs – served with lots of love, devotion, affection, warmth, caring, altruism, trust, dedication, commitment, attention, meditation, community, social activities, education, indoctrination, faith-based ethics, rules, ritual and ceremony. Thus constituted, they have had an increasingly difficult time competing with science either as a legitimizer of political power, or as a useful ally of it, or as a useful tool of it.

A principal value of organized religion to politics was its espousal of the doctrine that of all living creatures, only man has a soul; that man is superior to nature, and should assert dominion over all other living creatures; that man should use nature for his purposes; that man should increase in numbers and fill the earth with people. These tenets were in complete accord with the goal of capitalism and growth-based economics, and, for a long time, politics and religion were staunch partners in the assault on nature.

There is no question of mankind’s superiority over nature. So what? He has proved that he can destroy the biosphere. At the same time, he is totally dependent on it. If its quality degrades, the quality of his life degrades also. If it dies, the human species dies also.

Another reason for the value of organized religion to politicians was the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Organized religion provided rulers with justification for their status. If everything was God’s will, well, who could argue with that?

Organized religion was once the handmaiden of politics, but science has greatly reduced its role. For the past several centuries, separation of church and state has been the norm in national societal systems, with the state clearly in charge.

Actually, the role of religion was declining long before the rise of science. The historian Edward Gibbon wrote:

“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.”

With the ascendance of science, organized religion lost its credibility, validity and usefulness. It was based on faith and beliefs, on unverifiable assertions, no matter how absurd, not on verifiable or credible facts. Many of its creation stories and legends lost credibility. Its baseless foundations were exposed as a sham. It could not compete with science, and it failed. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. For the most part, it simply became irrelevant and just faded away. Formerly, it played a role in provision of basic social services, such as homes for orphans. Eventually, even these functions were taken over by the state. In its last days, it focused on the trappings of power, on pomp and ceremony, and on its past glory, instead of on spirituality. It cared nothing for the quality of life of future human beings, or of nature. It ignored or denied its fundamental role in enslaving mankind, in destroying its quality of life, and in destroying the biosphere. It focused on the past and present, not on the future.

In times past, social ethics were based heavily on religious tenets. With the rise of philosophy and science, the basis for social ethics has shifted from absolute morality, moralistic ethics and religion-based ethics to consequential ethics – what is ethical with respect to a goal is what works to achieve the goal.

Despite its assertion to the contrary, organized religion is based very little on spirituality. Spirituality is not dead, but we don’t know anything about it or things related to it, such as consciousness, the mind, the creative process and the nature of existence. Organized religion capitalizes on this ignorance, and, without evidence or justification, lays claim to spirituality.

For organized religion to regain credibility as a spiritual force, it would seem necessary to reject the doctrine that man has dominion over nature and is justified in using nature as it wishes for its benefit. Religious ignorance and superstition and non-science-based, faith-based tenets were destroying the biosphere. It is much more useful to have evidence-based faith in reality, founded in science. It was more useful to use consequential ethics than moralistic ethics or religion-based ethics.

Science and Technology

Composition

The term “science” is broadly interpreted to include the scientific method, logic, mathematics, philosophy, ethics, spirituality, the creative process, whatever is useful for finding new truth. Karl Popper’s testability. Bradford Hill’s criteria for establishing causality.

“Technology” includes applied science, industry, agriculture, genetics, education, infrastructure, energy, monitoring the environment, waste management, conversion of nonbiofriendly products to biofriendly materials, computers, telecommunications, information technology, jurisprudence, administration, defense, space research, rehabilitation of the biosphere, handling of invasive species, and extinction recovery.

Basis of power

Science (including logic, mathematics and philosophy) is useful for establishing truth. That ability is useful to politicians in several ways.

The thing that politicians fear most is looking foolish. Being proved wrong. Making mistakes. Science, as a determiner of truth, can help politicians avoid making mistakes. Politicians who follow the science are much less likely to make mistakes than politicians who do not.

Scientists are useful to the politicians because they can identify good decisions – what works to achieve a specified goal. Science is useful in helping politicians to win arguments and to legitimize their proposals and decisions.

Science does not assert ethical standards, but it is useful in implementing consequential ethics – what works to achieve a goal is ethical – because it assists determination of what works to a achieve a goal, that is, of what is ethical relative to the goal. For example, with respect to solving the ecological crisis, what is ethical is what works to save the biosphere and assure quality life for mankind. Science can help identify that.

So, science is useful, but it does not guide the way. Although it can assist the determination of consequential ethics, it is fundamentally descriptive, not normative or prescriptive. It shows the truth. It is neutral about how technology is used. For example, nuclear physics may be used to build X-ray machines, radiological pharmaceuticals, nuclear power reactors, or atomic bombs. Chemistry and biology for chemical and biological weapons or for pharmaceuticals and vaccines.

Science does not lead to wholly new areas, it just describes things, explains things, fleshes out the gaps, establishes consistency, ties things together. The finding of new areas is accomplished by man, through the creative process, through revelation, in conjunction with the scientific method.

Technology is useful for clinging to power, once power is achieved. There are different ways in which power may be achieved and maintained, such as through brute use of force, propaganda, education, control of the media, and the feature of representative democracy that enhances the influence of special-interest groups.

The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the role of science and its value to government and industry. Throughout the pandemic, the government drummed the message: follow the science, trust the science, heed the science, listen to the science. People generally accepted this. Even if science occasionally got it wrong, it let the politicians off the hook.

At the same time that government was promoting science, the health-care industry was making billions of dollars in promoting ineffective treatments, mostly paid for by the taxpayer. Although there was no effective treatment for COVID-19, health-care providers charged an average of $65,000 per hospitalized case in providing non-effective treatment. For a few days or weeks on oxygen. The median per-capita income in the US in 2020 was about $36,000.

In today’s science-based world, science is more useful to politicians than religion. The government can use science more effectively than religion because science is based on truth, as best science can determine it. Religion is faith-based, not truth-based. Truth-based positions are less likely to lead to arguments and wars than faith-based ones.

Some religions contradict other religions, so they cannot all be true – some have to be false. Since they are not evidence-based, they can be easily tailored to politicians’ desires. With science, the truth is immutable, and cannot be manipulated. As science developed, people began to see the weaknesses of religion, and began to abandon it. Unlike religion, science is the same everywhere. It places truth-based constraints on what politicians can do, which religion was not in a position to do.

When religion dominated science, politicians used religion as their handmaiden. But religion’s day is largely past. Now, politicians are using science as its source of validation, and technology as its tool. It has used them to great effect, to construct a global industrial civilization. At the same time, it has used them to rape the biosphere. How can politicians be motivated to save the biosphere instead of destroy it?

Previously, politicians elevated the priesthood, catering to the priesthood’s desire for power. It was a symbiotic relationship. It was not, however, an equal partnership: the politicians were almost always clearly in charge. While politicians had a use for religion, they had no respect for it. It was based on faith, not truth. Religion was a handmaiden because it was a malleable tool that could be manipulated by political leaders. It had no intrinsic power; its magic existed only in fairy tales. Its power existed only through the spell it cast on the believers. It was always a house of cards. The politicians knew that. That is why it was characterized as a handmaiden.

The relationship between the politicians and science was fundamentally different from that between politicians and religion. Whereas organized religion could be tailored to suit the politicians, science could not – it was immutable. The politicians could deal with it and use it, but they could not change it. It was not easily manipulated. Science, philosophy, and mathematics can establish the truth, which is absolute. In the realm of truth, politicians must defer to the scientists.

While it could have been that the relationship between politics and science was one of joint rule, the scientists never cared for ruling. Politicians used science and scientists, but scientists asked for little in return, except for funding to conduct research studies. Scientists were not politically organized, and did not exert their potential power in politics.

By itself, science alone is of no effect. To be useful, it must be implemented through technology, like Watts’ steam engine. It might be said that technology is the handmaiden of politics, but science is not.

The status of the priesthood had much appeal for the leaders of organized religion. They knew, however, that the tenets of the religion were based on blind faith, not on empirical evidence. Unlike scientists, who have marketable skills and can achieve the recognition of their peers and from society from their scientific accomplishments based on the hard rock of truth, the priesthood’s foundation was sand: unprovable faith-based legends and superstitions. They acquired and retained their position and status by fraud, fear, dissimulation, support of believers, and the support of politicians whose rule they justified. Their power was ephemeral. The priesthood needed the politicians, and the politicians made good use of the priesthood. It was a very profitable relationship.

We have many false religions, but only one scientific method, only one mathematics. Science is more useful to politicians than religion. Politicians armed with truth will tend to prevail over those who are not.

As the assessors of truth and the caretakers of knowledge, the scientific community is in a position of great power, but this power is unrealized, not asserted. The scientific community is unorganized, without power. In this respect it is like the people – a tremendous potential for power, but unrealized.

For a time, some individual scientists might hold significant power, but, since the productive lifetime of a human being is about 40 years, this individual power is transitory, ephemeral. To assert its power, the scientific community needs a permanent institution, like organized religion, that lives on. There are some permanent scientific agencies in government, but they are not allowed to engage in political activity. And, they are within government, not outside it.

Like Plato’s Guardians, scientists are appointed by merit. Under socialism, they are rewarded for their contribution to society.

Science (including mathematics) and spirituality are partners. Revelation suggests solutions, paths to the truth. Revelations are subjected to the scientific method and mathematics to establish truth, to obtain validation. Without the revelation, nothing happens. Science does not have imagination, vision. It simply establishes truth. We can test, à la Popper, testable hypotheses.

Science knows the truth about global warming, yet it has exhibited little influence in taking effective actions to stop it. The scientific community has no influence on the goal of government. The science of global warming is well-established, but no one is paying attention, because science is not politically organized and has no political power. The politicians use the fruits of science to their advantage, but the scientific community has little influence in this process. It is like the Committee of Concerned Scientists – it may appeal to the politicians, but it has little power.

Although science is neutral, scientists are not. They know the truth, and they have a moral responsibility to use it for what they see as good. But they have not organized, consolidated and actualized their power. As a group they have elected not to use their latent power and they have thereby abrogated their responsibility to act.

The scientific community gives its knowledge and know-how freely to politicians, asking for nothing but salaries in return. Like the people, it is selling itself short.

With respect to funding, religion and science differ. Religion receives its donations from the people, whereas scientists receive funding from clients or from work as employees in research and development in private firms. In many countries, such as the United States, the government is a major source of funding for scientific research. While many scientists may depend on government funding, the field of science is not beholden to the state for existential support. Religions may be abolished by the state; science cannot be.

Many scientists are very concerned about the state of the planet, and are articulate about where we are headed. Why, then, has science not organized and politically engaged so that it could take effective action on important social issues?

There are a several reasons, of which the following are a few. First, just as there is the concept of separation of church and state, there is a concept of separation of science and state. Many scientists do not wish to become involved in politics. Their view is that science should not be politicized, that politics is based largely on subjective preferences, and that searchers of the truth should not “take sides” in subjective arguments. Many do not appreciate the key role that science can play in consequential ethics.

A second reason why science is not organized for political ends is that many scientists derive satisfaction and status primarily from their scientific accomplishments. Unlike organized religion, they do not need the politicians, except for funding, which they can also obtain from the private sector since their skills are marketable. They know that they can realize tremendous satisfaction from their research. The prospect of achieving that level of satisfaction from winning a political argument, even an existential one, is low. Political issues come and go. Social issues that are important today may be irrelevant tomorrow; scientific truths endure. Achieving a political goal provides but transitory recognition; establishing a new physical law or mathematical result can lead to immortal recognition. Scientists prefer very much to focus on their research. Giving some time and effort to a political cause is a substantial distraction. They would greatly prefer to operate under representative democracy, let the politicians take care of the job of saving the planet, and let themselves be free to focus on their research.

A third reason why science is apolitical is that most people simply don’t pay much attention to the ecological crisis, even if it is an existential threat. Trying to motivate them to act is a formidable challenge. It is like the smoker at age twenty who does not worry about the odds of lung cancer at age 60. Discounting in time. A lot of time and effort could be spent on the effort, with no positive results. It may be hopeless. Solving the ecological crisis, given mankind’s weaknesses and proclivities, may be pretty much hopeless. From the viewpoint of the individual, it is more gratifying to spend one’s limited resources on activities that are sure to yield a high return than on ones that are fraught with uncertainty. On activities within one’s primary field of interest and immediate sphere of influence.

A fourth reason for the scientific community’s lack of political action is that it is very clear that the activity of resolving the ecological crisis is going to end up involving a violent, life-and-death struggle. Few people are willing to take a stand that may well lose their livelihood, jeopardize their freedom or cost them their lives, until they are forced to do so.

There are a number of other reasons that could be cited, but there is no need to do so. The point is that, while the scientific community has much potential power, it seems to have little motivation for actualizing that power. It will provide its skills and knowledge to politicians as requested, but it shies away from playing an active role in the political process.

The scientists’ role in setting the goal of establishing a PMS

Scientists are the new spiritualists. They are the ones who have visions, revelations. They are not trained to do this; they are born with that talent. It is a gift. One that can be nurtured and stimulated, but a gift, nonetheless.

The greatest explorers (Vasco da Gama, Columbus, Vespucci, Cook, Magellan), generals (Alexander, Caesar, Lee), scientists (Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Darwin), mathematicians (Euler, Gauss, Cauchy, Riemann, Leibniz, Lagrange), industrialists (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Ford), inventors (Watt, Edison, Bell, Tesla, Wright brothers), were individuals. It is individuals who have visions, not teams. Teams verify, implement, engineer, improve. In recent times, teams appear to be coming up with ideas, but it is still individuals who have the vision.

Yvonne thought about Joel. Joel is not a scientist, but an engineer and therefore a technologist. She wondered to herself, is Joel just a technologist? No, he is much more than that: he is a visionary and a man of action. He is not afraid to act. He is compelled to act, driven to act. Many scientists know the truth but have no will or power to act, other than to write and speak. Faith without works is dead. Knowledge without works is dead. You shall know them by their fruits. To accomplish a significant challenge requires both those who know the truth and those who have the political power and are not afraid to use it, to act.

Some, like radical environmentalists, were not afraid to act, but had no power. All they had was the pen, not the sword. Is the pen mightier than the sword? Is it as asserted by Hume, that all political power based on public opinion?

Economics

The economic system is steady-state economics, à la Herman Daly. As Georgescu-Roegen observed, even steady-state economics eventually leads to the exhaustion of minerals. The key issue is whether it causes further extinctions. It could be viewed as a temporary solution, not a permanent one. On the other hand, it may serve mankind quite well for his tenure on Earth. The next glaciation is expected in 100,000 years. With a small human population, steady-state economics could well get us that far.

Economics is the basis for the economy, whether centrally planned or not. It is used as the basis for defining jobs and setting salaries.

Ecosocialism is not an answer, because it focuses on man (actually, just the present generation of man), not on nature.

Industry and commerce

Industry and commerce are guided by ecosocialism. No waste that cannot be accommodated by the biosphere. No extractions of natural resources without a permit.

Security

The city-state has a monopoly on the use of force, which it exercises in the city and rural areas.

It enforces citizens’ rights in accordance with the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities to citizens in the city and rural areas, but not to people in the wild areas (except for citizens on official visits).

Tying it all together

Once she had specified a set of basic characteristics for the seven polities, Yvonne turned her attention to the matter of seeing how they might work together to accomplish the goal of implementing a PMS.

She was considering two basic cases: the case of a single city-state and the case of a global system of city-states. For each of these basic cases, she was considering two subcases. They were extreme cases, one in which an external power was forcing implementation of a PMS, and the other in which the city-state was autonomous.

She considered first the case of a single city-state.

Case: Single City-State, External Control

The external-power case presented no problem. The city-state simply did as it was told.

Case: Single City-State, Autonomous Control

The case of the autonomous city-state, it seemed, was impossible to resolve.

The basic problem was that the seven polities had different interests, motivations and goals. That feature suggested formulating the problem of constructing a PMS as a multiplayer game. That approach might be reasonable if she could identify utility functions for each of the players – mathematical functions that ranked their preferences Because of the complexity of ecological systems, Yvonne did not view that available theory, such as the Nash theory, would be of much help in identifying solutions, but it might be of use in identifying important features of solutions. The theory might be of some assistance if she could identify a primary interest for each of the players. She quickly concluded that she did not have the time or resources to investigate this approach.

Unable to implement Nash’s approach, Yvonne turned to a simpler approach of trying to determine some salient features of a solution, without actually determining it. Along this line of reasoning, Yvonne considered how each of the groups might be motivated to accept the common goal of protecting the biosphere. After spending some time in this effort, she was unsuccessful. For the autonomous city-state, she was not able to find a solution to the problem.

The Role of Societal Government

Of all of the polities, it seemed that the only one that really mattered was societal government. The politicians were driven by intense and insatiable desire for power. The primary interests of the leaders of other groups were secondary to the acquisition and exercise of power.

Yvonne reviewed the interests of the societal-government leaders and of the electorate – the people – and considered how they might be motivated to work for the PMS.

The Government Leaders

For the leaders, the essential issue was: How could government leaders be induced to accept the goal of protecting the biosphere? Force would not work. The goal could not be imposed, because the leaders were the ones in charge, and subject to control by no one.

Another problem is that leaders come and go, they are always changing. It would not matter who they were, as long as the goal remained. What was important was that the goal remain the same.

Desires determine everything. Whatever political system is used, the politicians always end up in charge. Under democracy, they give the people what they want. They don’t care about nature, or the quality of life for the present generation, or the quality of life of future generations. The only way that they would accept the goal is if the people saw that the goal was in their best interest and forced the politicians to accept it – and there was no reason to believe that that was going to happen.

The People

For the people, there were several key interrelated issues. First was the interrelationship between the quality of nature, the quality of life for the present generation, and the quality of life for all future generations. The current generation might maximize its pleasure at the expense of the quality of life for all future generations. Yvonne considered this possibility as being quite likely, because of the tendency of human beings to discount in time and space: people far away in either time or space don’t count for much.

Another key issue for the people is that civilization was not only destroying the biosphere. It had degraded and was continuing to degrade the quality of human and animal life through its policies and practices of overpopulation, domestication, oppression and industrialization, all of which started with the industrialization of agriculture ten thousand years ago.

As Yvonne had considered earlier, most of mankind had willingly given its freedom away and was now living a life of slavery, in freedomless poverty, misery, hunger and ill health. In order to save nature, and in order for mankind to regain its freedom and high quality of life, it seemed that it was necessary for it to take back control from its leaders. This could be accomplished via direct democracy, but only if mankind took a stand. Mankind had always been free to do this, but never did. Revolutions occurred from time to time, but only to install slightly different versions of civilization, with new leaders.

It seemed that people cared little for their own welfare. The ultimate power rested with them, not with their leaders, yet they invariably ceded their authority to the leaders and opted for voluntary slavery. The experience of ten thousand years of bondage and misery was not sufficient to dissuade them from this. No amount of education, empowerment and democracy had been sufficient to avoid this fate. Bizarre! Was it that the more intelligent, the more aggressive, the craftier, the more highly motivated, would always make slaves of the others? Or, is it that, as Nozick surmised, if given the option, the others choose to make slaves of themselves?

Under representative democracy, people ceded their power to the power-hungry and gave up their freedom and good quality of life. If they want it back, it seemed that they would have to abolish representative democracy, establish direct democracy, and participate. It was evident from history, however, that this was not going to happen. To hold to the goal of protecting nature, they would have to adopt a spiritual respect for nature, or an external power was going to have to enforce that respect.

The anarcho-primitivists seemed in denial of the facts that technology is now out of the box and that most of society would never willingly return to primitivism and ignorance. Once mankind had acquired knowledge, primitivism no longer satisfied. Intelligent man would never acquiesce to living in primitive society. It would enjoy camping, hikes, swimming in natural settings, wild river rides, birdwatching, nature safaris and communing with nature. That would be the extent of its experiencing a primitive lifestyle.

Yvonne now considered the main beneficiaries of a planetary management system. There are three main groups of beneficiaries: nature (present and future); the present generation of human beings; and all future generations of human beings.

Nature

What is the incentive to protect nature? Incentives like Pegovian taxes don’t work – we have seen that. Carbon taxes might affect who pays for natural resources and who makes use of them, but they do not bring a halt to their destruction. It is not useful to put a price on a priceless thing, such as the extinction of a species.

Is it possible to inculcate a respect for nature? It can’t be forced. Is it like a faith-based religious belief, that just has to be accepted? But how? Does it need a spiritual rebirth, as some have suggested, to protect nature? In Yvonne’s view, that would never happen. The ecological crisis had been well known for a long time. If a spiritual rebirth were possible, it would have happened years ago, before the biosphere had been so much destroyed. Most people aren’t spiritual, aren’t religious, and simply don’t care about nature.

Incentives don’t work, disincentives don’t work, spirituality doesn’t work, education hasn’t worked, and force doesn’t work in the long term. Ethics can’t be forced. What would work to protect nature?

The Current Generation

The thing that is special about the current generation is that they are the generation that allowed the destruction of nature to move to a catastrophic level, and they are continuing the destruction, and they are in a position to bring a halt to it. They are causing the extinction of countless millions of species. They are causing massive environmental damage to the planet. It is to the point where it now seriously threatens not just the quality of life of their children, but of themselves. They have the capacity to act and the know-how to undertake effective action. Yet they fail to act! Why?

There are many reasons why human society fails to act. The main driver of environmental damage is the massive size of the human population. To halt the destruction would require not just a leveling off of human population to anywhere near its present level, but an immediate massive reduction, by billions of people. The population is now so large that practicing feasible family planning policies, such as a one-child policy, would have little effect on the total size for many years, allowing the destruction to continue for decades. The opportunity to solve the ecological crisis by means of a gradual decline in human population is long gone. It is too late. Family planning, birth control, economic development, education and empowerment are no longer effective options.

It has been said that solving the ecological crisis requires hard choices to be made. While that is true now, the crisis could have been solved years ago by easy choices, such as birth control, but mankind was unwilling to make even easy choices. In seeing the biosphere destroyed before their eyes, the present generation may be more highly motivated to act than previous generations, yet it refuses to do so. There is little reason to believe that the present generation will take effective action to address the ecological crisis.

So, we are now in a situation where the only effective action is a massive drop in human population. Such a drop could be caused by unintentional happenings, such as famine or plague, or by an intentional happening such as war. In times past, war was often used to reduce population size, both of the attacking tribe or nation and the attacked. At the present time, since nuclear war is so devastating and unpredictable, the use of global war to reduce civilian population size seems unlikely. The perpetrators of global war would be nations. Until now, under the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction, whatever countries undertook such an effort would likely be destroyed by the countries that they attacked. The human will to survive is so strong at the level of the individual that no rational leader who accepted the doctrine of MAD would initiate such a war. As long as MAD is effective, global war will not be used as an instrument of population control.

Human society refuses to take responsibility for the biocide that it is committing, reflected in its adamant refusal to acknowledge that it is mankind’s large numbers and large-scale industrial activity, global migration and trade that are the problem, and in its adamant refusal to take any action to reduce these.

Recent generations of mankind are analogous to the proverbial frog sitting in a pot of water as it is gradually heated. It could take action and jump out of the pot at any time, yet it continues to get used to the temperature increase and remains in the pot until it dies.

Future Generations

Future generations cannot speak for themselves. Their existence and welfare depend on the generations that precede them. Human beings have an instinct to protect the survival of their own children and grandchildren, and those of their relatives and tribe, but they exhibit little concern for their species beyond that. Under discounting in time and space, a human society in one area has little thought of human society in another area, and the current generation of mankind does not concern itself with future generations. That is the nature of man. Future generations would realize a high-quality existence only if the goal of protecting nature were accepted and realized by the present generation.

Without a spiritual awakening, the current generation will continue to sate its hedonistic appetite. The quality of the biosphere as a habitat for humanity will be degraded, and the quality of life for all future generations will be degraded.

The fact that future generations are on their own did not bother Yvonne greatly. That was a natural fact that she could do little about, except for affecting what her generation passed on to the next. She realized that the best that she could do is to set up a system that protected nature and human quality of life for one generation. Every generation is on its own. Every generation possesses the same power, to leave its children with the same natural resources that it inherited; or less, and to degrade the quality of life for all generations following it.

Yvonne could not find a way in which the polities could be motivated to work together toward a common goal. Without an external power that imposed a PMS by force, the system would never hold to the goal. So, for now, an external power was needed. Perhaps someday, a spiritual solution would occur. For now, the only solution available appeared to be a temporary one: dictatorship by an external power.

The Role of Religion

Organized religion, like societal government, is focused on man, not on the rest of nature. It has a spiritual regard for nature, but, for the major world religions, that regard is an extremely low one. For the Abrahamic religions, it is not to respect it or protect it, but to take dominion over it, to use it for mankind’s benefit, to exploit it, to fill the world with people. With these views, organized religion is one of the worst enemies of the PMS.

Some apologists for organized religion assert that the exhortation to take dominion over nature could be construed to mean to act as a good steward over nature, as in the role of a gardener tending to his garden. In light of the lack of effective actions or results along these lines, there is little evidence to suggest that the major organized religions accept this interpretation or responsibility.

It has been said many times by many people that resolution of the ecological crisis will require that mankind adopt a spiritual high regard for nature. Because of the role of religion in things spiritual, it might be thought that the major organized religions would encourage such a view. In view of its many-millennia-long assault on nature, it is considered unlikely that this will happen.

Assessment of Rani’s proposal for an autonomous city-state

Yvonne had tried hard to identify a political system that would work for an autonomous city-state. She had not succeeded. It seemed as if, under autonomy, there was no hope. The only long-term solution that she could identify was a spiritual awakening and, in her view, that was not going to happen. Barring a spiritual awakening, nature would be protected only if an external power imposed a planetary management system having that goal. And that would be imposed by force. It would last only as long as the imposing force lasted – perhaps one generation.

A good example of the failure of an autonomous city-state to protect nature is provided by Botswana. Botswana is a medium-sized country. It is mostly rural, with population 2.4 million in 2021. The capital, Gaborone, has a population of 208 thousand. The second-largest city, Francistown, has a population of 90 thousand. At the time of its independence from Britain in 1966, tens of thousands of rhinos roamed Botswana. Within a generation, by the early 1990s, they had been annihilated.

The carnage continues today. The current president is in favor of elephant hunting in Botswana. He reversed the ban on elephant hunting put in place by his predecessor, and removed Botswana's "Shoot to Kill" anti-poaching policy. He is in support of elephant hunting in Botswana, and believes that allowing some ivory trading would allow more funding for conservation. In 2019, he presented stools made from elephant feet to the national leaders of Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In the year of its independence from Britain, 1966, diamonds were discovered in Botswana. Its economic position changed from being one of the poorest countries per-capita in the world to one of the richest in Africa. Its population is small, and the country has all the money it needs to provide a high level of living to its citizens. It does not have to slaughter its wildlife to pay for conservation. It has all the money it needs for conservation, but it chooses not to conserve. It has no respect for wildlife, and enjoys slaughtering it. It prefers violence, murder and the sheer joy of killing, even to the point of extinction, to conservation.

Botswana was endowed by nature with stunning beauty. The Kalahari Desert, Okavango Delta, Chobe River, and other works of nature. It was bestowed with fabulous wealth from diamonds. It had and it has no need to slaughter its wildlife for more money. But fabulous natural wealth and fabulous monetary wealth are not sufficient. Instead of protecting nature, it chose to go on a wanton, savage massacre of its wildlife, for a few dollars more. Its venal lust knows no bounds.

Since independence and the acquisition of great wealth, the population of Botswana has exploded, from 1.7 million in 1966 to 2.4 million in 2021. From 1966 to 1991, while the rhinos were being exterminated, the livestock population grew from 1.7 million to 5.5 million. More than half of the households in Botswana raise cattle. Overstocking, overgrazing and the commercial collection and sale of veld products have caused substantial rangeland degradation and desertification.

Botswana slaughtered all of its rhinos – tens of thousands of them. After the extinction, some rhinos from other countries were reintroduced into Botswana’s wild, and they, too, are now being slaughtered. The government not only refuses to protect wildlife from poachers, it tells lies, denying and covering up the ongoing massacre. It blames poachers for the problem, when it has ample resources to stop them.

Botswana has no shame. It is guilty of one of the worst genocides the planet has seen. Despite the efforts of a few citizens to stop the carnage, Botswana has continued its killing rampage of slaughtering wildlife year after year, since its independence in 1966. What justification does Botswana have for this behavior? What justification does the rest of the world have for permitting it? Botswana is warmly embraced in the community of nations. People buy its beef and its diamonds, and flock to its wildlife parks in the Okavango Delta and Chobe. The international community has no shame.

Had a human being committed a similar crime against human beings, he would be executed. But, according to organized religion, wildlife has no soul. Nature has no rights. Nature does not matter. Nature is to be exploited by man.

The international community is wringing its hands at Botswana’s behavior, but it takes no effective steps to stop it. It stood by as forty-thousand Botswanan rhinos were slaughtered and their horns sold for Asian traditional medicine and Yemeni dagger handles. It is still standing by, as the slaughter continues. Botswana’s crime is one of commission; the world’s crime is one of omission, of condemning Botswana’s perversion and sociopathy, yet choosing to condone it and do nothing.

Prior to Botswana’s independence, Britain, an external power, imposed strong environmental restrictions on its colonies. As long as Botswana was under British rule, Botswana’s wildlife thrived. Under autonomy, it has suffered greatly.

Botswana is not alone. The United States destroyed the Great Plains and wiped out the bison. Asian countries such as India have virtually exterminated the tiger. Several African countries will drive the gorilla to extinction within a few years. Madagascar is exterminating the lemurs. Indonesia and Malaysia have driven orangutans to extinction. No effective action was taken or is being taken to stop this. With its massive overpopulation, the human species is on a wild killing rampage against nature.

There was no doubt in Yvonne’s mind about the need for an external power to support a PMS. It was patently clear that human society would not protect nature unless forced to do so. Ten thousand years of mankind’s rape of nature have proved this. Botswana and many other nations have proved this. Who would take a stand for nature? It is not going to be the United Nations, and it seems that it is not going to be any nation at all. Since mankind is the sole intelligent species on the planet, and since it collectively will do nothing, effective action will have to come from the statistical extremes of the population distribution: those few individuals who care about nature, who possess the power to protect it, and who take decisive action to do so. They have yet to make their move.

Assessment of Rani’s proposal for the planet

Case: Global Society of City-States, Autonomous Control

Under autonomy, Yvonne soon concluded, no system would work for a global planetary management system, just as for the local level. It did not seem possible to design a political system that works to protect nature. Nature is extremely complex. Human populations tend to grow. Whenever mankind’s numbers reach the level at which it interferes to a significant degree with the natural system, it is doomed.

Yvonne concluded, as in the case of the single city-state, that a global PMS of city-states could only be assured for a time, if enforced by an external power. Her thoughts on the size of the global system follow.

Case: Global Society of City-States, External Control

There is an aspect of PMS design that is fundamentally different for individual city-states vs. a global collection of city-states. It concerns the matter of scale. It is possible that the effect of an individual city-state on the biosphere could be negligible, but the combined effect of a large number of city-states would be considerable. That is, there may be global constraints that have no effect at the local level. To account for the effects of scale, it is necessary to consider the total impact of all city-states, not just the impact of a single one.

Individuals may be very frugal, and conserve and recycle, but if their numbers are too great, their conservation efforts are a complete waste of time. In the context of today’s large human populations, to represent recycling programs as a useful part of an effective program to solve the planet’s ecological crisis is a lie, a deception, a subterfuge, implying that some good is being done while allowing them to continue their destructive practices a little longer.

If an economy is growing by one percent a year, then the effect of a ten-percent reduction in waste disappears in ten years. What is important is the total burden of the waste on the biosphere, not the level of frugality of a household. Pennywise and pound foolish.

If you reach the point where you, as an individual, have to conserve to protect the environment, then there are too many people. The Amerindians, the nomads, had the right idea. Live in a place for a while, trash it, and move on. Let nature clean up the mess. Just don’t leave behind anything that natural processes can’t handle in the time that they have to work. Unfortunately, in a world filled with people, we can’t do that anymore. Global industrial civilization is using much of the planet for its own purposes, without allowing nature the opportunity to repair the damage. Humankind is racing to the cemetery.

In the end, the freedom to reproduce without limit curtails all other freedoms.

Yvonne eventually reached the conclusion that the only solution that has a chance of working is to have human society so small that it does not have a significant impact on the biosphere. The ecologist Edward O. Wilson has proposed that to solve the ecological crisis half of the Earth’s surface be set aside for nature. Steps have been taken to initiate this effort, which is called the Half-Earth Project. Wilson’s Half-Earth Project is a step in the right direction, but it seemed to Yvonne that it was much too small a move.

What size human population works for a PMS? There are three main constraints. First, the population must be sufficiently small that it does not cause significant damage to the biosphere. Second, it must be sufficiently large that it has a low risk of extinction from a local catastrophic event that might annihilate a single city-state. And third, it must be sufficiently large as to be able to support modern technology.

If all of the constraints are satisfied, the population is called a feasible population or feasible solution. A feasible solution to an optimization problem is one that satisfies the constraints. It is not necessarily optimal or efficient. In ecological problems, optimal solutions are of little interest for two main reasons. First, optimization problems maximize or minimize the value of a single variable, and ecological problems involve countless variables. Optimization is much-used in economic analysis because attention often focuses on a single variable – monetary value. Second, the planet’s ecological system is too complex to be credibly represented by a mathematical model. A mathematical model might represent part of an ecological system, or some macroscopic features of a complete system. A systems model can be used to illustrate Catton’s overshoot and collapse phenomenon and Eugene and Howard Odum’s ecosystems theories. But no so-called “optimal solution” could be taken seriously. Optimization is useful for determining control policies for systems that are under control, and the biosphere is not under control.

Identifying feasible populations is not very difficult. Keeping a real human population at a size that satisfied the constraints is the problem. From recent experience, the problem of keeping the population sufficiently small that it does not cause significant environmental damage was seen to be the big one. How could this be done? So far as Yvonne could see, there were only two possibilities: spirituality or an external power. These were the same options as for the city-state level.

The big problem is that the population could grow. Once again, Yvonne did not see that a spiritual awakening was a realistic solution. And mankind, it seemed, had no natural instinct to constrain its numbers.

The experience of the last ten thousand years is that, left to themselves, the people always opt for slavery and allow destruction of the quality of their lives and the biosphere by their leaders. It appeared that the only solution to assure a PMS for global society was for an external power to enforce it. Such a power would have to be enlightened to respect nature, to accept mankind’s dependency on it. The Enlightened Ones. The Illuminati. As Voltaire observed, Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait l'inventer. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Left to his own devices, left to autonomy, mankind destroys both nature and itself. It seemed that that control by an external power, whether spiritual or real, is the only solution for mankind.

Mankind’s social evolution can be represented to date as moving from primitivism and freedom to civilization and slavery to technology. The rise of knowledge had disturbed the biosphere, and it was taking some time to regain a new state of equilibrium. What would that state be? For the time being, as part of this process, the PMS would be imposed by a dictatorship by an external power.

The Population Size Constraint: How big is too big?

Yvonne considered the problem of identifying a population that would not cause significant damage to the biosphere.

A known feasible solution was the population of an estimated five million primitive people that existed for hundreds of thousands of years before the present era. If there are five million high-tech people, and they are in cities of average population 50,000, that means 100 cities – the number that Rani had used in her example.

Mankind got into trouble about 900 AD, causing significant damage to the biosphere, with a population of 300 million low-tech people. A high-tech person uses, on average in economically developed countries, up to 100 times as much energy as a low-tech one. The damage to the environment is positively related to human energy use, suggesting that the upper limit for a high-tech human population that might live in harmony with the biosphere is about 300 million divided by 100, which is three million. This could reasonably be added to five million primitives – which is just a rough estimate – for a total of about eight million – about one one-thousandth of Earth’s current population of eight billion.

So, a population that might not cause much change to the biosphere is a primitive population of five million and a high-tech population of about three million. If we were less destructive with our use of energy, perhaps more high-tech people, say five million. The energy needs of a high-tech population of five million can be supported entirely by solar energy.

With such a population, the human species just might make it to the next planetary glaciation, predicted for 100,000 years from now.

Yvonne considered Wilson’s Half-Earth proposal further.

If you take any complex system, natural or manmade, such as a bird or an airplane, and damage half of the parts, would you expect it to keep working? Of course not! If you damaged even just one percent, you would be taking a chance. To imagine that mankind needed to protect just half of the Earth, and have the biosphere survive in good shape, is absurd! Destroying half the Earth and expecting the biosphere to fail to thrive is reasonable; saving half of Earth and expecting it to cope is not. The Half-Earth proposal is a step in the right direction, just far too little. Under such a plan, the biosphere would resemble a park more than a natural planet. The One-Percent Solution, however, just might work. Rewilding ninety-nine percent of the planet might stand a chance.

The factor of a high-tech person using 100 times as much energy as a low-tech one is not set in stone. For some industrialized countries the factor is about 100, but for others it is substantially less, say, a factor of ten.

If the energy-use factor – the ratio of power use for a high-tech person to that of a low-tech, primitive one – were reduced from 100 to, say, 10, then the biosphere might accommodate 50 million high-tech people. Or, if energy were used to convert nonbiofriendly waste to biofriendly waste, the number could be increased. For example, 80 million people. This is one percent of the planet’s current human population of eight billion. A One-Percent Solution. A Ninety-Nine-Percent Earth, instead of the Half-Earth proposed by Wilson.

It occurred to Yvonne that mankind’s renewable solar energy provides approximately two percent of mankind’s current industrial energy needs. So, with the One-Percent Solution, all of mankind’s industrial energy needs could be provided by solar energy. Nuclear energy would not be needed at all!

It seems difficult to believe that a Half-Earth solution would make much difference at all. A One-Percent Solution seems much more plausible. Say a 100-percent-wild Half-Earth and a 98-percent-wild other half, for an average of 99-percent overall. The Earth contains about 64 million square kilometers of habitable land. If one percent of the Earth were city-state urban and rural areas (i.e., exclude the wild areas in the city state), that would be .64 million square kilometers, or 640 thousand square kilometers. If there were 100 city-states of that size, each would contain 6.4 thousand square kilometers – an area of 80 kilometers by 80 kilometers, if it were square. That sounds like plenty. With that number, we could have a species-rich biosphere and a high-tech global society. What is the point to having more people than a minimal number needed to sustain an interesting society in a species-rich biosphere? What are people for, anyway?

What are people for? That is a question! What good purpose does eight billion people serve? What can a population of eight billion accomplish that a population of five million cannot? Is it the development of advanced technology? If so, has a large human population now served its purpose? Having served its purpose, is today’s global population of eight billion people worth sacrificing the entire biosphere for, and all future generations of mankind for? It is the height of arrogance to imagine that the current generation of mankind is the only one that that matters. Except for its capacity to destroy nature, today’s human population is no more special than the human population of any other time. Why have a population of eight billion people that destroys the biosphere, when five million does the job, without destroying the biosphere?

With the One-Percent Solution, any kind of societal government is fine. Mankind simply lives in nature and accepts its bounty. Mankind does not have to worry much about extinctions. Religion can hold to its tenets about mankind’s special place in the universe.

Human society has proved itself incapable of doing the job of managing a single species – its own – let alone the millions of species in nature. Give it up! The only reasonable solution is a population size that does not cause significant damage to the biosphere. The idea that mankind might be able to convert all of society’s waste to biofriendly waste struck Yvonne as simply not reasonable. It required too much monitoring, too much control and too much energy. Recent history had shown that people were quite unwilling to expend energy to recycle all waste and reduce environmental damage. To imagine that mankind would operate a large-scale steady-state economy, even if it could, was not believable. Such an economy had never been implemented anywhere. Just keep the size sufficiently low that nature can handle the waste.

So, Rani’s global example – 100 city states of average population 50,000 – seems very reasonable, from the viewpoint of not causing significant environmental damage. Such a configuration would implement the One-Percent Solution. Such a population would in fact accomplish the goal of a long-term-sustainable planetary management system that would provide a good quality of life for human beings in a species-rich biosphere. It was a feasible solution.

If human numbers are kept low, then mankind is free to adopt whatever social system it desires. Society would be free to use ecosocialism or any other steady-state economic system. At a low level of population, the type of government doesn’t matter much. Religion is free to spread its myths, fables, wild tales, fantastic stories and unsubstantiated assertions. And the goal of a long-term-sustainable planetary management system with a high quality of life for human beings in a species-rich environment is realized. Just be small and don’t grow! Stay small! Be small! It was the message of prominent ecologists such as Kohr and Schumacher, and more recently of Kirkpatrick Sale, but it was rejected by virtually all politicians and economists.

The Technology Constraint; The Role of Technology

Yvonne had considered the constraint on population size. She now turned her attention to the requirement that the PMS maintain technology.

The goal of distributing the survival pods was to increase the likelihood of survival of technological civilization. But what good is technological civilization? It had destroyed the quality of life for human beings, degraded the biosphere, and caused the extinction of countless species. What is technology good for?

What is technology for? It was a tool of humanity. It had no intrinsic value. Its value derived from its use to humanity. This begs the question: What are people for? No known reason. They just are. Why is there something rather than nothing? Who knows? If it is accepted that the biosphere is of value, that the human species is of value, then technology is absolutely necessary, to maintain an effective PMS.

Why preserve technology? If technology is the problem, then why try to preserve it? Why not try to destroy it? Neo-Ludditism. The problem is that technology is now out of Pandora’s Box. It could never be destroyed, only used, controlled, kept on a human scale. Technology bestows great power on its user – it is not going away. It can be used for good or for evil. If those seeking to save nature attempted to destroy technology, then others would use technology to destroy them. Now that it is known to mankind, if the biosphere and the human species is to be saved, technology has to be used by the forces of good to combat the forces of evil.

Those currently in charge of global civilization are using technology to destroy the biosphere and to oppress mankind. They are using technology very effectively, and those who would save the biosphere must do the same. The argument that it is hypocritical to use technology to try to solve the ecological crisis when it has caused the problem, is silly. People who reject the use of technology are like those who take a knife to a gun fight. They will lose. Technology is not a sentient being. It is mankind that uses the technology. If those who care about the planet refuse to use technology and force, while the opposition is using those tools, they will lose.

Technology would play several roles in the PMS, including monitoring and evaluation of the environment and implementation of actions to protect nature. It would also be used in the application of force, such as to neutralize industrial activity outside of cities.

Yvonne considered the role of force. A state was defined by its monopoly on the use of force. That is a principal reason why the anarcho-primitivists reject the state. But force and violence are part of the existence of every biological creature. It is necessary for self-preservation, for evolution of species, for natural selection, for a healthy stock. Force and violence cannot be eliminated. They can be controlled by means of alliances, negotiation, hierarchical structures and specialization (soldiers, police).

The preceding were reasons for technology that are related to operation of the PMS. There is another reason why technology was useful to mankind. It helps mankind satisfy its desire for adventure, exploration and excitement. Science and technology are needed to enable fulfillment for intelligent beings. Once technology is known, primitivism alone can never provide a high level of satisfaction. Evolution proceeds forward, not backward. But it is not possible to have a high level of science and technology without civilization. Civilization: the double-edged sword.

The Technology Constraint: The Level of Technology; How small is too small?

Yvonne had now considered the reasons why technology was important to the PMS. She must now consider the problem of how large a society is required to support modern technology.

Unlike extinctions, which last forever, if mankind loses technology, it can get it back. If technological civilization were destroyed, it could be rebuilt. Or could it be, as Hoyle once surmised, that technological civilization has just one bite at the apple, and he has already taken it?

An effective PMS would have to possess all of the advanced technologies, because those are what would be used by the opposition. It would require a satellite communication system, nuclear technology, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, airplanes, air drones, space flight. It would require technology to reverse extinctions – genetic engineering, cloning and eugenics. Artificial intelligence. Nanotechnology. New science. It would require as advanced science as was available to the opposition – the growth-based economists and the capitalists who would destroy the biosphere and enslave humanity.

The reason why nuclear technology is needed is to maintain a technological PMS. What is the minimum size of a society that can sustain technological civilization? Five million? It seemed that there were a number of technologically developed countries of about that size. The population of Sweden is about ten million, and it would be quite capable of doing this. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, in 1750, the population of England and Wales was 6.5 million and the population of Scotland was 1.4 million.

A problem with this size is that Rani’s example assumed 100 city-states of average size about 50,000, for a global total of about five million. To support nuclear technology would likely require a city size larger than 50,000 or some trade in nuclear materials among city-states. Rani’s example precluded free trade among city-states. This is necessary to stop species invasions and promote speciation. If nuclear energy were to continue, it seemed feasible only for a few large cities.

In addition to population size, another key consideration is the amount of energy required to support technological society. The use of nuclear technology, for example, requires the availability of large amounts of industrial-grade energy, for extraction, processing and reprocessing of nuclear fuel. The amount required depends on the total population size and on the per-capita energy use. The per-capita energy use depends on the level of technology to be supported.

Yvonne realized that the energy requirement for advanced technology was not simply a continuous function of population size, but a “step function” involving significant fixed costs. For example, a significant amount of industrial-grade energy is needed to establish even a small nuclear-energy capacity. The population sizes under consideration appeared to be sufficiently large to cover these fixed costs.

For the PMS to prevail over those who might oppose it, it would always have to make use of the latest modern technology. If it did not, it would be overcome by those who did. This would require a high per-capita energy use. That level of energy use could be provided by recurrent solar energy if the population were on the order of a few million. For substantially larger populations, nuclear energy would be required.

As usually defined, a steady-state economy operates on renewable energy and very little additional mineral resources. Renewable energy may be defined to include nuclear energy, since under current technology the expected lifetime of that source far exceeds the expected lifetime of the human race. A steady-state economy recycles matter through the use of urban mining and other waste management processes. For some activities, such as space travel, some matter is lost from the Terran system. If such activities are pursued, some new extraction of minerals from nature is required. Even for mundane activities, some waste becomes unrecoverable, and a new supply of minerals is required. Now that the easily extractable minerals are gone, advanced extraction processes are required, such as extraction from low- grade ores and sea water. That requires a lot of energy. Industrial grade energy. Electricity. To support modern technology, the PMS would need access to industrial-scale energy sources.

Summary

Yvonne reflected on what she had accomplished. She had taken a close look at Rani’s exemplar society of a global society of one hundred city-states of average population 50,000 – a global population of five million. She had convinced herself that this size society was a feasible one for a long-term-sustainable planetary management system that would provide a high quality of life for human beings in a species-rich society. But she had reached the conclusion that for such a society to function as intended, it must be subject to control by an external power committed to that goal.

Yvonne wondered, did this mean that an external control would always be necessary? In the Garden of Eden, man had God and Nature to care for him, to protect him. Armed with knowledge, man perturbed the system, and he was on his own to fix it. Was Plato right, that society always has a need for Guardians, for the Enlightened Ones?

Yvonne had reached the conclusion that, at least for the near term, there has to be an external power implementing the PMS. At every level of the human social hierarchy – the family, the tribe, and the nation – the natural instinct is to grow, not to shrink or even stay even. To increase the size of one’s group is a successful strategy for species survival. Grow as much as possible, to the limits of one’s environment and resources, and let nature do the pruning.

Bertrand Russell identified rivalry – competition – as one of the four insatiable human desires. With respect to population, rivalry manifests in different ways, such as in the instinct to increase group size, or in violence against other group members or other groups, which promotes improvement of the breed by survival of the fittest.

Discretionary population control, such as a decision to have fewer children, whether at the level of the family or the tribe, is not a strong natural instinct, but an intellectual decision. In general, population control is fine, as long as it is for some other family, some other tribe, some other nation. For one’s own group or society, it is generally avoided. To date, population control has been adopted by only a few countries, such as China, and then only when its large population size was a serious and immediate threat to their security. As long as there is unoccupied habitable land available, population expands to fill it.

After a global collapse, much of the planet will be up for grabs. It would be unreasonable to believe that any autonomous city-state could resist the social and religious pressure to expand into uninhabited or uncontrolled areas. Without pressure from an external power, effective population control would appear to be impossible. It is unnatural. Under autonomy, under freedom, if there is uninhabited land available, population will expand. That would not happen only if an external power is in charge, to impose population control.

Conversely, the only circumstance under which an external power would be motivated to impose population control – on others, not on its own people – is when it is the single power in charge of the planet. If it has no rivals, it can impose population control on states under its control to improve the quality of life on the planet, without jeopardizing its own security. If it has rivals, then it has no incentive to reduce the population size of states under its control, for fear of reducing its strength relative to its rivals.

The only area in which a world dictator would not be able to impose effective population control would be on its own people. But history has shown that technologically advanced societies have low birth rates – often less than replacement level. Population control is not needed for the world dictator’s people, only for other peoples.

For a healthy planet, human overpopulation is the enemy. It must be controlled or, as recent history has so painfully shown, it will destroy everything – species diversity, the quality of human life, the biosphere. As long as the external power is of a different people from those of the city-states, it will view population growth of the city-states as an enemy threat. It will have no compunctions about or difficulty in imposing population control on the city-states, since they will be a different people, foreigners, strangers, aliens.

To maintain this situation will require zero immigration from the external power to the city-states, otherwise their peoples will become the external power’s people. Such immigration – from a single global power – is also undesirable from an ecological perspective, since it would destroy the genetic diversity of the human species. Some immigration from the city-states to the external power will likely be necessary, because, as an advanced society, its fertility rate will likely be less than replacement level. Such immigration will help maintain not only the population size but also the genetic diversity of the external power. From a security perspective, it can make use of immigrants as information sources and spies.

Machiavelli asserted that there are three ways to control a conquered people: annihilate them; set up puppet governments; or overwhelm their culture with mass immigration and interbreeding. Of these three options, the third would not be acceptable to a world dictator, because it would then be necessary to impose population control on its own people, and that is to be avoided. To protect nature, the conquered states must be kept separate from the world dictator. Of the three options, only the first two would work in the long term.

It is possible to be objective only at the highest level. No emotion is involved, just objective decisions. Running a population model would be like running an economic model. A world dictator can assume the role of a good steward, a good husband. This is not possible at any lower level. The only viable solution for the planet is a single-power world dictatorship. This is stewardship at the highest level. Stewardship. That is what organized religions have proposed. Perhaps they can play a role in this new phase of the human adventure, after all.

Yvonne recalled Bertrand Russell’s assertion about the feasibility of a world state. In 1948, Russell wrote:

“Always, when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. A world state, if it were firmly established, would have no enemies to fear, and would therefore be in danger of breaking down through lack of cohesive force.”

In 1946, the author E. B. White – author of Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, The Trumpet of the Swan and A Manual of Style co-authored by William Strunk Jr. – wrote:

“The awful truth is, a world government would lack an enemy, and that is a deficiency not to be lightly dismissed.”

Yvonne considered these assertions. Specifically, she considered the nature of the external enemy. The assertions of Russell and White were made when world population was about 2.5 billion people. At that time, while the global ecological crisis was developing, it did not pose as great a threat as it does today. At that time, although the biosphere had been damaged significantly, it was not in the full-collapse mode of today. At the time when the assertions were made, the external enemy was considered to be another state, not a circumstance such as the likelihood of global nuclear war or an ecological collapse.

Today, it can reasonably be said that massive human numbers and large industrial activity pose an existential threat to the human species and to present global civilization. It is not hyperbole to characterize that threat as a very real enemy. The significant aspect of this threat, however, is that it does not induce cohesion in society to address it. It is an internal threat, not an external one. Society is paralyzed to address it, because to do so would require radical surgery on itself. It is unwilling do this; it can be done only by an objective external power.

So, Yvonne concluded, as had Russell and White, that the enemy required to induce cohesion and allow effective action to maintain the system had to be addressable as an external threat, such as other states, not an internal one. If human society were included in a single world state or government, no solution to the ecological crisis would be implemented, since the cause of the crisis – unrestrained population growth – would be internal to the system, and as history has shown, untreatable. No integrated world community of nations would ever solve the global ecological crisis.

For the system to work, it is necessary that the external power be separate from the city-states. The system that Yvonne imagined was not and could not be a single world state or single world government. It was a collection of city-states and a single external world power that is separate from them and in control of them. The external power would possess an external enemy – all of the city-states outside of it. There would be no single world government, no single world state. There would be no contradiction to Russell’s theorem.

It crossed Yvonne’s mind that time was running out for the biosphere, for the human race, and for technological civilization. If decisive action were not taken soon, there would be nothing left to save. Because the ecological destruction was continuing at a high rate, the odds of collapse from an unintended external source, such as famine or plague, was increasing, and warning signs were now obvious and everywhere. Because there would soon be nothing left to save, the odds of collapse from an intentional source, such as global nuclear war, were increasing.

Yvonne wondered who would prevail, following the collapse. Not just survive, but prevail, as an external power, to implement a PMS. If the collapse were caused by an unintentional source, the odds would seem to favor a major world power covering a large area, such as the United States, Russia and China. If it were caused by global nuclear war, the nuclear powers could well annihilate each other, leaving the spoils to some minor industrial nation left reasonably intact. Who knows? Fortune favors the bold, the brave, the strong, the prepared. Or, as Democritus observed, boldness is the beginning of action, but fortune controls how it ends. For her purposes, it did not really matter who prevailed. What mattered was that the survival system work, no matter who prevailed. What mattered was that at least someone prevail.

Yvonne summarized the main conclusions of her analysis of Rani’s example:

2. Rather than adopt E. O. Wilson’s concept that half of the Earth’s surface be set aside for nature, it is proposed that ninety-nine percent of it be set aside for nature.

3. In order for the PMS to work as intended would require the presence of an external political power to enforce it.

4. For the PMS to endure would require that human population levels remain at a low level.

5. In order for the external power to exercise effective population control, it is necessary that it be a single world power.

7. For a global population of five million, there is no need for nuclear energy: all energy needs, even for a modern technological society, can be obtained from recurrent solar-energy sources.

Appendix B. Boyhood Memories of Canada of the 1940s

[This appendix presents details of the discussion between Joel and his Uncle George, during Joel’s visit to his uncle’s home. Joel had two interests in the discussion: to learn some family history from George, who represents a passing generation, and to understand how the environmental situation in the Belleville / Kingston area has changed over the years since the 1940s until now.

[The discussion is long, detailed, and rambling at times, and the family-history parts are not highly relevant to the main story line. The details of the discussion are included here since they help to explain Joel’s frame of mind as he entered the meeting with the Russians the following morning.]

“OK, this is good,” George said. “I’ll summarize my life roughly in chronological order. If I start to ramble about something that is of little interest, please stop me and I’ll move on.”

“That will be fine,” Joel concurred. “Please don’t hold back on the detail. In addition to learning more about the environmental situation in this area, I would like to know more about everyday life in the 1940s, when things were technologically much simpler than today. Describe what you did, and the things you did it with.”

Cascapédia

George resumed. “OK. As you know, my father, Joseph George Caldwell, was born and raised in Belleville and my mother, Evelyn Phyllis Barter, in Grande Cascapédia, Quebec, on the Gaspé Peninsula. That is now part of Cascapédia-Saint-Jules. I was born and raised in Kingston. Mother’s parents were Leslie Barter and Emma Dow. They built a farm a few miles out of Grande Cascapédia, where Mother grew up. She had four sisters and three brothers. She had to walk five miles to school each day. Her father was a big believer in education, and he sent his daughters to college. When I was young, the farmhouse had no electricity. A wood-burning stove in the kitchen, and a water pump. A butter churn. Grandfather hitched a horse to a carriage once, and we got a kick out of riding in it.

“My Uncle Ralph was mayor of Grand Cascapedia for a time. He and his wife, Susie, owned a restaurant and a White Rose Service Station.

“The Gaspé Peninsula is very pretty, with forests and wildflowers such as lupine, but it is not geologically spectacular. The most well-known geological feature is Percé Rock – a very large rock just offshore, containing a large arch.

“When I was young, there was still a lot of logging going on, and there was a large pulp and paper mill near New Richmond. Paper mills are very smelly – not as bad as an abattoir, but smelly nonetheless.

“Two of my uncles, Bob Barter and Frank McColm – Mother’s brother and brother-in-law – were captured by the Japanese on Christmas Day, 1941, in Hong Kong, and served four years in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, first at Stanley Prison in Hong Kong and then in Japan – Uncle Frank on the docks in Osaka and Uncle Bob in a coal mine in northern Japan. One of my earliest memories as a child is hearing family members wonder if Uncle Bob and Uncle Frank had received the Christmas package that they sent to them – it turned out that they never received any. They served with the Royal Rifles of Canada. But that’s a story for another day.”

Joel interrupted. “No, no, please tell me some more about Hong Kong. I don’t know much about Hong Kong, and would like to hear more.”

“OK, fine. I’ll do that,” George replied. He paused for a moment.

“You know, I’ll do better than a quick summary. I wrote a short piece once for other members of the family about Hong Kong, and I have a copy. It’s not too long, but it includes details that I would have forgotten by now. Let me get it for you.” George rose from his chair and walked to a bookcase, where he retrieved a several-page piece. He handed it to Joel. “Since you are spending some time here today, you should take time to read this – it’s only a few pages long.”

Joel accepted the piece. “This is good. This is great! I will read it right now.” Joel proceeded to read the document.

[The article begins.]

A Family Experience with the Japanese

Two of my uncles fought the Japanese in World War II. They were captured by the Japanese, and served as prisoners of war for nearly four hard years. Their experiences shed light on the Japanese mentality and capability to wage war. The experience of my uncles provides an insight into this capability, and for that reason it is summarized here.

My uncles were part of a force of 1,975 that had been sent by Canada to present a “show of force” to the Japanese. The British had already decided that Hong Kong could not be defended, and had started to withdraw their forces. They decided it would look good, however, if the Empire put up a token show of force, instead of simply abandoning Hong Kong without a fight.

As a result, Churchill asked Canada to send troops to Hong Kong. The troops were never told that the position there was considered untenable by the British, and that they were in fact evacuating for that very reason. They were sent to their deaths by Canada, out of a perverted sense of patriotism for the British Empire. While it is common practice to sacrifice a unit in combat for the sake of winning a battle, this move made no sense whatsoever. The British had written Hong Kong off. It was lost. Sending 1,975 Canadians to their doom accomplished nothing. Indeed, even today it engenders contempt and disgust for the Canadian leaders who would knowingly sacrifice the lives of brave young Canadian soldiers for no good reason at all.

Two regiments, the Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers, were sent to Hong Kong. Uncle Bob and Uncle Frank had volunteered for the Royal Rifles. These were volunteer units of citizen soldiers. They were poorly trained and ill-equipped for battle.

They arrived in Hong Kong on November 16, 1941. On December 8, the Japanese moved against Hong Kong, just as they did against the US in Pearl Harbor (still December 7 there). The battle lasted for seventeen days. Canadian losses were 276 killed, died of wounds, or murdered.

Uncle Bob told me of the last day – Christmas Day, 1941. It was horrible. Accounts of the battle are presented in The Royal Rifles of Canada in Hong Kong (Hong Kong Veterans’ Association of Canada, now out of print), in Canada’s Glory by Arthur Bishop and in Hell on Earth by Dave McIntosh (both still in print).

(In what follows I talk mainly of Uncle Bob and not of Uncle Frank. Uncle Bob is very much alive, and the knowledge I have of the battle of Hong Kong is from him. Unfortunately, Uncle Frank died before I was able to talk with him about his wartime experiences, and so I don’t know details of his time there. I believe that Uncle Frank was in C Company.)

The Japanese were brutal. On December 25, soldiers entered the emergency hospital at St. Stephen’s College. There were about 100 patients and seven nurses. The Japanese bayoneted about seventy of the wounded patients in their beds. They shot and bayoneted the two doctors who tried to prevent the massacre. They raped all of the nurses and killed five of them.

The Royal Rifles served with highest distinction. They fought without rest for the five days before Christmas, and were collapsing from exhaustion by Christmas Eve. The Japanese forces overwhelmed the island, and at 3:15 p.m. on Christmas Day, Major General Charles Maltby, commander of the garrison, advised the governor of the island that further resistance was futile (the Japanese force numbered 30,000).

The regimental commander, British Brigadier Cedric Wallis was informed of the decision to surrender (by Lt. Col. R. G. Lamb), but because the order was not in writing, he refused to accept it. He was determined to hold out, regardless of how many Canadian lives it may cost. Further resistance was in fact futile. The men were outnumbered and exhausted, with little ammunition. There was no food or water, no artillery support, and no mortar ammunition. In front of the Royal Rifles was a massive Japanese army, well armed with artillery, mortars, and tanks, and behind them was the sea.

Despite the situation, at 10 o’clock in the morning of Christmas Day, Brigadier Wallis ordered Lt. Col. Home (commanding officer of the Royal Rifles regiment) to send a company to attack a group of bungalows on the ridge in Stanley Village. Lt. Col. Home protested that such an attack in daylight would most likely be unproductive of any results but additional Canadian casualties. Brigadier Wallis was unmoved, and D Company was ordered to proceed on this suicide mission. (Uncle Bob was in 16th Platoon, D Company.) They attacked in broad daylight (a hot, bright, clear day) without artillery support, and were virtually wiped out – of about 130-140 men, 26 were killed and 75 were wounded. The 17th and 18th Platoons took the brunt of the attack. Sgt. Macdonnel’s graphic description of this last assault is on pp. 84-91 of The Royal Rifles of Canada in Hong Kong. A British officer fighting alongside also describes this “last glorious charge of the Canadian, up through the grave-yard and into the windows of the bungalows at the top…. Very few of the Canadians survived that gallant charge.”

Sgt. Macdonnel ordered the men to fix bayonet and charge, and they did so “with fearful war-whoops.” In hand-to-hand combat, they drove the Japanese from their much superior position on high ground, and occupied the bungalows. The Japanese regrouped and proceeded to shell the houses. With ammunition running out and the houses being blown to pieces, Macdonnel received orders to pull back to the Stanley Prison Fortress. At about 5 p.m. in the afternoon, D Company collected its wounded and returned to Stanley Fort.

At six o’clock in the evening Brigadier Wallis ordered Lt. Col. Home to send another company down Stanley Village road. A Company was ordered to proceed, in full view of the Japanese. A heavy barrage of Japanese artillery killed six and wounded twelve.

A second time, verbal orders were relayed to Brigadier Wallis that the forces had surrendered at 3 p.m. Once more he refused to comply until a written order was received. Word was circulated, however, that all units would cease firing unless attacked. C Company received word of the surrender at 9 p.m. Brigadier Wallis did not fly the white flag of surrender until he received the written surrender order, at 2:30 p.m. the following day (Dec. 26). The gallant men of the Royal Rifles of Canada – a small band of volunteer citizen-soldiers against a large, battle-hardened army – had fought and died in bloody combat three hours longer than necessary.

The Royal Rifles of Canada in Hong Kong presents a scathing critique of the defense of Hong Kong, from the bad decision of Canada to send reinforcements to Hong Kong in the first place, to the unfortunate placing of the Regiment under the command of an inept British officer, to the faulty tactics that resulted in needless casualties. The critique also cites inadequate training, shortage of arms and ammunition, shortage of vehicles, inadequate time for acclimatization and rest from a long sea voyage. The Canadian forces were not briefed on their objectives or adequately trained for war (battle tactics). They were sent to fight a vastly larger, battle-hardened Japanese force that knew how to wage war. The Royal Rifles were repeatedly ordered to attack in broad daylight without benefit of mortar or artillery support against a fresh, well-equipped Japanese army that had both artillery and air support. “Hong Kong has come to be regarded as one of the major mistakes of the British and Canadian Governments during World War II.”

Several good books have been written about Hong Kong, and I will not present details here. These books include:

1. The Royal Rifles of Canada in Hong Kong 1941-1945, Hong Kong Veterans’ Association of Canada (many excerpts from Sgt. Lance Ross’s diary)

2. Seventeen Days Until Christmas, by Léo Paul Bérard

3. Hell on Earth, by Dave McIntosh

4. Canada’s Glory: Battles that Forged a Nation, by Arthur Bishop

A fascinating video on the topic is The Valour and the Horror, written by Terence and Brian McKenna and presented by History Presents (The History Channel, Canada). The first (of three) segment, Episode 1: Savage Christmas: Hong Kong 1941 is about Hong Kong.

The fall of Hong Kong was just the beginning of the war for Uncle Bob and Uncle Frank. Uncle Bob and Frank served as prisoners of war for a year in Hong Kong. After capture, they were marched north to North Point Camp (on Hong Kong Island), where they remained a few months under terrible conditions. They were then moved to Sham Shui Po on Kowloon (the Chinese mainland).

One hundred and thirty-three prisoners died in North Point and Shamshuipo Camps. Most died from diphtheria, dysentery, and avitaminosis, others from malaria, beriberi, pneumonia, tuberculosis, pellagra, and other diseases. In September of 1942 diphtheria was epidemic. As many as seven men died in a single day. The epidemic continued until October 21; Uncle Bob’s friend Ted died on October 14.

On August 20, 1942, four members of the Winnipeg Grenadiers escaped from North Point Camp. They were captured, tortured for a week, and then executed. A Japanese Sergeant Yoshida later boasted about killing four Canadians with his sword. The word in Camp was that they had been beheaded; the bodies were never found.

On January 19, 1943, they and 664 other prisoners were marched to the docks and departed at seven o’clock in the morning on board the coastal freighter the Tatu Maru, for Japan.

They landed in Nagasaki (on the island of Kyushu) at 8 p.m. on January 22. Uncle Bob and Uncle Frank were separated at that point. Uncle Bob was put on a train and sent to the Omine Camp (within a hundred miles of Nagasaki, and 40 miles from Fukuoka) to work in a Japanese coal mine. Uncle Frank was sent to work in a dockyard / shipyard near Tokyo.

The Japanese treated the Hong Kong prisoners of war horribly. They were forced to work as slave labor under the most barbaric treatment and conditions. They were underfed, underclothed, overworked, and denied medical treatment. A total of 267 of them perished from starvation, beriberi, and other disease.

Twelve Canadians died in Omine Camp from malnutrition and overwork.

Omine Camp was a square camp, with two enclosures. There was no heat in the wintertime, and was quite cold – a few degrees below zero. The only heat was in the steam room. The steam room was for drying clothing and off limits. If you, against the Japanese wishes, spent time in the steam room, you would get pneumonia and die. And then there were the sand fleas. Winter and summer, they would crawl into your clothing, and “bite like Hell,” particularly at night if you wore any clothes at all.

The POW commander in the Omine Camp was a British then-Major Robertson. Col. H. G. G. Robertson was a medical doctor, a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps. According to Uncle Bob, “he never bent an inch.” The Japanese had confiscated all jewelry and watches. Major Robertson made a sundial out of wood, bearing the inscription, “Yet nightly pitch my moving tent; a day’s march closer home.”

Uncle Bob told me that “Major Robertson gave us courage and Huey Lim gave us hope.” Huey Lim was a Eurasian who had been assigned to the unit after they were captured. His father was English, his mother Chinese. He could read Japanese, which he said was the same as Chinese except for affixes (prefixes, suffixes). Regularly, parts of newspapers were left in the mines – wrappings for food and the like. Huey Lim would read these newspapers to the prisoners. When you are totally cut off from everything, news becomes incredibly important. From the dates on the newspapers and the place names (Coral Sea, Guam), they learned how the war was progressing.

Huey Lim was in large measure responsible for the high morale in the camp. It was speculated that he was a plant. In any event, “he served our camp well.” Right after the two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Huey Lim disappeared. He went out to find out what was taking place, and was never seen again.

Toward the end of the war, when it was clear that the Japanese were losing, the Japanese leadership decided that it would be a good idea to execute all of the prisoners of war – “dead men tell no tales.” But the war ended sooner than expected, before the plan could be carried out. Uncle Bob and Frank would have been executed had it not been for the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Uncle Bob kept a diary throughout the war. He told me that when the war ended, he was on his last legs, and would not have lasted much longer.

The war was over for Uncle Bob on August 15, 1945. In September, he passed by Nagasaki. He said that where the bomb dropped there was nothing left of it – “it was like a wheat field.” How do I feel about Nagasaki and Hiroshima? They were a good start.

The Japanese are formidable enemies. Another good book on the subject is The Rape of Nanking, by Iris Chang. The Comfort Women, by George Hicks discusses the history of the Japanese military comfort system.

Throughout the war, our family and many others waited anxiously for news about our soldiers, and prayed for their safe return. During the war, my great uncle Ernest Barter (Grandfather Leslie’s older brother), wrote a poem about the boys who served in Hong Kong. Until now, it has never been published.

Tribute to the Brave Boys in Hong Kong

by Ernest Barter (1871-1959)

When our empire was invaded,

And called for volunteers

They quickly joined the Royal Ranks

Though some were young in years.

Which caused some tender hearts to ache

And hoary heads to bow.

Where scarcely eighteen summers

Shone on some youthful brow.

They heeded not the ties of love

That bid them fondly stay.

But crossed the wide Pacific span

To the thickest of the fray.

Where cannons roar like thunder

And shrapnel swiftly flies

And drums and trumpets sounding

To drown all dismal cries.

‘Twas there they fell those gallant youths

As poets oft-times said

The brilliant sun that never sets

Where slumbers England’s dead.

Now let the palm tree and poppy flowers

Their leaves by soft winds fan,

The graves of those who slumber there

‘Neath Hong Kong’s bloody sand.

O loved ones sleep and take thy rest,

A calm and sweet repose

Where the summer winds blow soft and fair

Where blooms the tropic rose.

Till the Lord shall give that quickening shout

And set the captives free

When death shall lose its venom sting

The grave its victory.

[End of article.]

“Wow!” Joel exclaimed as he finished. “That is some story! They went through hell.”

“Yes, they did,” agreed George. “By the way, there is a lot more about Japanese prisoners of war in World War II in the book, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. Her book was the basis for the eponymous film by Angelina Jolie.

“Yes, I have seen that movie,” replied Joel. “It is a powerful film.”

“OK,” continued George, “some more about my mother’s home in the Gaspé.”

“The Cascapédia River – Rivière Cascapédia – was and is one of the great salmon-fishing rivers of the world. Several Governors General of Canada had summer homes along the river. The American industrialist Charles Engelhard, the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s Auric Goldfinger character, had a lodge on the River. My relatives, including Uncles Bob and Ralph, had dealings with Engelhard, and I visited the lodge a couple of times as a kid.

“On the river, it is allowed to fish for salmon only using artificial flies. Industrial fishing by the Japanese hurt the salmon fishing for a while, but it is OK now. The River is split up into about a hundred sections, called salmon pools, which are privately owned. One of those sections is still owned by a member of the Barter family – Cousin Joe. My Uncles Ralph and Bob had a cottage there, which I stayed in. No electricity. I can still recall the Coleman lantern with mica, not glass, around the flame. It gets really cold in the cabin at night, and the sleeping bags that are used for covers on the bed were really heavy!

“My uncles were good hunters, and worked as guides when they were young. When they visited us, they would often bring salmon, venison or moose. I tried my luck once at trout fishing in a little stream near Aunt Margaret’s home in Saint Jules, without success. I was much better at picking hazelnuts behind her house! My Dad caught some flounder off the dock at New Richmond.

“I don’t get back to the Gaspé much anymore. When I do go, I take the train from Montréal. It is a delightful overnight ride. I still have relatives in the area. I have visited cousins Rose and Nelson at their home on Black Cape and cousins Tracy and Clair at their home in Saint Jules, just up the road from Aunt Margaret’s house.

Joel interrupted, “That’s really interesting, George. But tell me, how have things changed over the years with respect to the environment?”

George replied, “I would say, it’s just fine. Things haven’t changed very much at all. In fact, in some ways, significantly better – the smelly pulp and paper mill at New Richmond is gone. Much of the river is privately owned, and well monitored. The fishing licenses are pricey. When I go back, things always look up-to-date, modern. The roads, the stores, our folks’ places. You see, the population hasn’t grown. The population of Cascapédia-Saint-Jules is still just a few hundred. The reason for this is that the area is very rural. To get advanced educations and good jobs, the young people have to leave the area. They end up with spouses and careers in distant places.”

“OK,” replied Joel, “I understand. I’m sure that there’s a lot more that you can tell me about the Gaspé, and I want to hear it, but later. Let’s move on to Belleville and Kingston.”

Belleville

“Alright,” George agreed. “Although I was born in Kingston, I’ll start with Belleville, since that’s where most of our recent ancestors lived. I know that you can find a lot of information on the Ancestry website, but I’ll just give you a quick summary of what I know. My great grandfather, Joseph George Caldwell, married my great grandmother, Edna Mary Conant, in 1878 in Oshawa, in the same house where she was born. She was born in 1856 and died in 1916. She was the brother of Thomas Conant, author of Upper Canada Sketches and Life in Canada. Those books relate the history of the Conants in North America. Edna Mary was a descendent of Roger Conant, who was one of the founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony, and the first Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. He arrived in Plymouth / Salem in 1623, probably on the Anne, which followed the Mayflower. It is not known for sure which ship Roger was on – it is known that his brother was on the Anne, and so it is assumed that he was on the Anne also.”

George walked over to the bookcase and retrieved copies of the books that he had mentioned, plus another one, A History and Genealogy of the Conant Family in England and America, Thirteen Generations, 1520-1887 by Frederick Odell Conant. He opened the book and showed Joel an entry.

“It says here about the marriage of Joseph to Edna Mary in 1878 that he was born in 1852 to Joseph and Caroline Mariah (Gibbs) Caldwell. That is as far back as I know the Caldwell line.”

George leafed through the books, evidently refreshing his memory. “More about Roger Conant. As I mentioned, he emigrated to the English Colonies in America in 1623. He was known as Roger the Pilgrim. All of the Conants in the United States and Canada that are listed in the Conant Family Genealogy are descended from him. Roger became Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company.”

“That is really interesting!” Joel interrupted. “From what you tell me, your ancestor Roger the Pilgrim, as head of the Massachusetts Bay Company, was effectively head of all British operations in North America.”

“Well, yes, you could say that,” Joel replied.

“At the outbreak of the American Revolution, six generations later, three brothers, descendants of Roger the Pilgrim, lived in Massachusetts Colony. Two of the brothers sided with the rebels and joined George Washington’s army. The third brother, named Roger, born in 1748, sided with the United Empire Loyalists. As the Revolutionary War progressed and it turned against Great Britain, his position in Massachusetts weakened, and he decided to move to Canada.

“Roger was a man of substantial resources. He had been educated in law and attended Harvard University. He owned several thousands of acres in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Money was hard to come by at that time. With the help of his brothers, he was able to assemble $5000 in gold for his properties. In 1777 he left his home near Boston, with his family, and set out for Canada. In 1778 he settled in Darlington, County Durham, Canada West (now Ontario). This area later became the Regional Municipality of Durham, which includes Oshawa and forms the east end of the Greater Toronto Area.”

“Roger had a number of children, including a son, Thomas, born 1787, who in turn had a son, Daniel, born 1818, the father of Edna Mary, my great grandmother.”

“OK, so much for the Conants. Back to the Caldwells. My great grandfather, the Joseph George Caldwell who married Edna Mary Conant, was a dentist, and had done well for himself. He owned properties in Belleville, including homes at 243 E Bridge Street, 137 E Bridge Street, and 209 Albert Street. Joseph and Edna had four children: Thomas Wilfred, Gordon Conant, Joseph George, Imogene (“Gene”) and May. Wilfred and Gordon became dentists, and Joseph George, my grandfather, joined the military, serving in both World Wars. Edna Mary kept a diary, which describes family events prior to her death in 1916. Dad gave the diary to me, and I gave it to my cousin Pat, who lives in BC.”

“Wilfred was an interesting person. He equipped a school bus with a complete dental office in the rear. In the summers, he would travel to the Northwest Territories and provide free dental care to the Indians, now known as First Nations people or Aborigines. He and his wife travelled to western Canada. They had some interaction with the Doukhabors, but I do not know the nature of it. Let me show you a few pictures from their travels out west.” He showed Joel a picture of a bison and a samovar. “They got the samovar from the Doukhobors,” George said.

“I don’t enjoy exposing my ignorance, but who are the Doukhobors?” Joel asked.

“The Doukhobors? Well, if you are dealing with the Russians and environmentalism, you should know about the Doukhobors. Here, let me show you.” George reached for his computer and brought up articles on the Doukhobors from The Canadian Encyclopedia and Wikipedia. He showed them to Joel, and summarized briefly.

While George summarized, Joel scanned down the article from The Canadian Encyclopedia. He read the note “The Canadian Encyclopedia, a free, bilingual online resource and the only established national encyclopedia of its kind in the world, offers the largest collection of authored, accurate and continually updated articles focused on Canada's history and culture.”

“Doukhobors are a sect of Russian dissenters, many of whom now live in western Canada. They are known for a radical pacifism which brought them notoriety during the 20th century. Today, their descendants in Canada number approximately 20,000, with one third still active in their culture.

“Persecuted [in Russia], many of the Doukhobors were allowed to emigrate to Canada, assisted by novelist Leo Tolstoy and his followers in addition to British and American Quakers and Russian anarchists. More than 7,500 sailed to Canada in 1899 and settled in what was to become Saskatchewan, where they lived as a community. With 500 more Doukhobors, [previously exiled leader Peter] Verigin was allowed to join them there in 1902, making the migration of the Doukhobors the largest single mass migration in Canadian history.

“During the 1930s, the effects of the Depression, internal disenchantment and mismanagement, combined with the incendiarism of fanatics and the unsympathetic policies of finance companies and government, ruined their communal living system. It had been one of the largest and most complex undertakings in communal living in North American history. In 1939, foreclosure took place and the land passed to the BC government

“Today, many members of the various Doukhobor groupings still struggle to forestall the effects of encroaching assimilation and declining membership. Descendants of the original Doukhobor settlers number approximately 25,000 across Canada, but about one third of that number remains active in the culture, maintaining their spiritual practices, Russian language and pacifism to varying degrees. Most of these Doukhobors live in the Kootenay region of British Columbia, with smaller groups residing in other areas of BC, Saskatchewan and Alberta.”

When George finished his summary, Joel said, “That’s very interesting. I had no idea.”

George continued, “My dad was born in Belleville in 1921. The Great Depression occurred in the 1930s, while he was a teenager. The Depression was not as bad in Canada as in the US, since the Canadian government did not allow the banks to fail, as the US government had done. Nevertheless, it was hard. The family fell on hard times, and spent some time camping out near Belleville. Dad told me that he ‘rode the rods’ for a time with Granddad, looking for work. One year, Granddad bought a hotel at Lake of the Woods near Rainy River, Ontario, northwest of International Falls, Minnesota. Unfortunately, the snows came early that year, the hotel was snowed in, and no guests arrived. He had already purchased the winter’s supplies. A total loss, except for the beer, which he drank.

“By the way,” George added, as an aside, “Did you know that people who spend time in forests when they are young have a much better sense of direction than those who do not? They don’t have reference points like mountains to guide them, and the learn to develop an internal sense of direction.

“Granddad returned from Rainy River to Belleville ahead of the rest of the family. I don’t know why he returned first. Subsequently, Nannie drove back with the children from Rainy River to Belleville through the United States. The route was through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan to Detroit, and from there through Ontario to Belleville. Granddad contacted the state police along Nannie’s route, as she returned. The car was a 1934 Chevrolet equipped with a 1936 engine.

“When I was a young boy, my grandparents, Joseph George Caldwell, the soldier, and my grandmother, Coralie Laurie Cook Caldwell, whom we called Nannie, owned a cottage on Consecon Bay, a little southwest of Belleville. This was the period from about 1948 through 1952. That was after Wilfred had died, in 1948. His dental school bus was parked on the lot. I explored it once, and rummaged through the dental equipment at the back of the bus.

“Consecon was a magical place at that time. During the daytime, while I was outside the cottage, I could hear the radio. Nannie and Granddad listened to it a lot. Granddad like the CBC and BBC news. Each day, Nannie would listen to Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club and the soap operas. One of the stations was from Chicago, WGN, I believe. I can still recall their theme song, With a Hey and a Hi and a Ho Ho Ho! The soap operas were short – about 15 minutes each, but there were a lot of them: The Romance of Helen Trent, Our Gal Sunday, The Second Mrs. Burton, Stella Dallas, Lorenzo Jones, Mary Noble Backstage Wife, Young Doctor Malone, Ma Perkins, The Guiding Light, Della Street, Just Plain Bill. The sponsors were the major soap brands, Tide, Oxydol, Duz, Ivory Snow, many of the Proctor and Gamble brands. There were a lot of soap operas, but, remember, they lasted only fifteen minutes and ran from after The Breakfast Club until noon.

“The cottage was right on the bay, across the road from the Consecon Coal Company, a coal-and-lumber yard that served the village of Consecon. Nannie and Granddad owned the coal company. There was a large building on the property, behind the lumber yard and next to a loading platform and railroad track. A train would make coal deliveries, and the building contained a system of conveyer belts to remove the coal from the coal car to large piles within the building. A single large engine, connected to the conveyor belts by a belt-and-pulley system. The engine driveshaft drove a three-or-four-step drum pulley, called a cone pulley, which drove several-inch-wide fabric drive belts. To change the speed of the conveyor belts, granddad would slip the drive belts to a different step on the cone pulley. I was fascinated how the belt would remain in the center of a pulley step as it ran. This happens because the step is slightly convex.

“At Consecon, Nannie and Granddad raised pigs and chickens. The chickens roamed free. One day someone hit one with his car and killed it on the road between the cottage and the lumber yard. He brought the dead chicken to the cottage door, and apologized. He asked to pay for it. Nannie told him, fifty cents. Nannie raised the chickens from eggs. I remember seeing them just after they had hatched.

“The coal building is gone now, but the railroad track remains. There is a small store there now, the County Depot Animal Feed Store. In the late 1940s there was a house on the property just east of the lumber yard. There was a wild cherry tree in the front yard. I cannot describe to you how different the taste of wild cherries is from the domesticated varieties.

“In the bay, a few hundred yards from the shore, was a very small island. One day, my cousin Leslie rowed me and him to the island and back. The boat leaked badly, and I bailed while he rowed. I did not know how to swim at the time, and was blissfully unaware of the danger.

“There were ducks and loons in the marsh in front of the cottage, and the loons would make noises at night. Numerous bullfrogs, and thousands of Monarch butterflies.

“I was back there not too long ago. When we owned the coal and lumber company, our cottage was the only one on the bay. Now the shoreline is dotted with cottages.

“Allow me to digress a little here. My dad owned a heavy-duty Indian motorcycle. He would use it to commute to his job at the Aluminium Company of Canada, or Alcan. I remember the bike well, since he rebuilt it in the kitchen of our small home in Kingston. It was burgundy red, with decals of an Indian chief with full headdress on the left and right sides of the gas tanks.

“During the winter, the streets got packed with snow, which did not melt until March. One day, Dad attached my sled to his motorcycle with a rope, and towed me along the snow-packed streets. As we started down the hill of Guy Street, his motorcycle slipped over, and we slid all the way down the hill. I was scared to death. Dad simply brushed us off, and we continued, along Division Street.

“Well, I am getting ahead of myself. At some point – I don’t know when – Dad decided that we would move from Canada to the United States. We visited relatives in Syracuse, New York. In the summer of 1952, he took a road trip on his Indian motorcycle to the United States. He toured through Kentucky and Tennessee, of which he had heard so much.

“When he returned to Canada, I was visiting Nannie and Granddad at Consecon. He brought me back a bow-and-arrow set, which was in a long box, strapped to the side of his motorcycle. I was really excited to receive that. It came complete with an Indian-chief headdress, which I wore. In front of the cottage, on the shore of the bay, was marsh, with lots of bullfrogs. One of them took an arrow from my bow.

“I was the oldest grandchild of Nannie and Granddad, and my sister Anita was next. The next grandchildren, cousins David, Pat, Gayle and Brian, were somewhat younger. During the time I was spending time with Nannie and Granddad in Consecon, I was alone. Cousin Dave visited once. I suppose that he was about four years old. He now lives in Winnipeg.

“Dad’s trip evidently confirmed his decision to emigrate to the United States, and we did so, on January 23, 1953.

“As I mentioned, Granddad had entered the military, and served in both World Wars as Lieutenant and Captain. Between and after the wars, he worked as a customs officer and, as just discussed, ran a business. But he evidently wasn’t a very good businessman.

“In the 1940s, Nannie and Granddad had a small home in Belleville, I believe that it was on Burnham Street, but it could have been on Dufferin Avenue. The home was a pretty, small brick home. I recall my Aunt Pat’s wedding there.

“Nannie was a registered nurse and worked at the Belleville General Hospital, which is on Dundas Street at the end of Dufferin Avenue. The hospital was about a ten-minute walk from the house.

“Nannie enjoyed gardening, and grew a lot of poppies and other English-country-garden flowers, such as geraniums, sweet Williams, peonies, hollyhocks, marigolds, carnations, bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots and pansies. And herbs, such as dill, sage, basil and mint.

“Well, as they say, nothing lasts forever. In 1950 or 1951, Granddad’s brother, Gordon, died. Gordon had been a successful dentist, as his brother Wilfred and father before him. He left Granddad and Nannie the homes at 209 Albert Street and on Bridge Street, a 1951 Hudson automobile and $30,000.

“By the way, Grandad and your other relatives who died in Belleville are interred at the Belleville Cemetery on West Dundas Street.

“After Nannie and Granddad inherited Gordon’s estate, they eventually sold all properties except the house at 209 Albert Street, which became their home. That was a grand house. A two-story house with a basement, a garage, front and back yards. A coal chute delivered coal to the basement, where an Iron Fireman – a furnace equipped with a conveyor belt to load coal into the furnace automatically – was located. For a while, I had the horizontal clock that was used to turn the Iron Fireman on and off. The heat was distributed through the house by a circulating hot-water system, with radiators in each room, not with sheet-metal ducts and fans, like today.

“Uncle Gordon had some neat things – a parrot, and a seltzer bottle that made carbonated water using carbon-dioxide cartridges. Nannie would add flavoring.

“Nannie enjoyed tending the flowers. She enjoyed the geraniums and peonies most.

“The house had French doors with frosting on the panes, and crystal doorhandles. A bronze art-deco lady on the banister at the base of the stairs to the second floor. Marble statuettes of Daphne and Apollo. An old Underwood typewriter. Lots of National Geographic magazines with black-and-white photographs. A television set, when few people owned them.

“They took a road trip in the Hudson to visit Nannie’s relatives in Monte Vista, Colorado. They bought a 34-foot cabin cruiser, which they named the CC. I spent much of the summer of 1952 at Albert Street and on the yacht. We cruised mainly around the Bay of Quinte, but once took a trip from Belleville to Kingston. Life preservers were stuffed with kapok. The boat was not new, and I can recall Granddad working on the engine – a Gray Marine engine – a number of times.

“In 1951 or 52 Nannie and Granddad took me to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto. We stayed at the York Hotel.

“You know, I could be off by a year on these dates. It is my recollection that I spent the summers of 1949 and 1950 at Consecon, and the summers of 1951 and 1952 at Albert Street.

“Granddad and Nannie were great fishermen. We fished from the yacht much of the time, and trolled in the dinghy in the evening, using a 2-1/2 horsepower Johnson outboard motor. We caught many perch, bass, sunfish, pike and pickerel. An eel once.

“We ate a lot of the fish on the boat, and took some home. We cleaned the fish and cooked them on a Coleman stove. I learned how to clean fish.

“During the time of my summers in Belleville, Grandad served as Harbormaster. In their younger days he and Nannie had sailed a lot. One time, we monitored a yacht regatta.

“Near Albert Street, to the northwest, was Alexander Street. My mother’s sister, Florence – mother of the cousin Leslie I mentioned earlier – lived at 48 Alexander Street, and I would walk over there from time to time to visit. There was a summer program for children in a very small park at the east end of Alexander Street.

“Alexander Street was at one time an upscale neighborhood. While I was visiting there, it was lined with grand houses. Aunt Florence’s home at 48 Alexander Street was located on a very large lot. One summer we set up a military-style camp tent, with camp cots for sleeping, and Leslie and I spent some nights in it. The house and garage were eventually taken down and replaced by a nursing home.

“Alexander Street ran along a high bluff overlooking above the Moira River to the north. My cousin Leslie had a tree house in a tree extending out from the bluff, but I never worked up sufficient courage to walk out on the branch to the tree house. In the front yard of Aunt Florence’s house, near the garage, was a large grove of lilac trees. The smell of lilac blooms is exquisite! In the front lawn of the house next door to the east was a large chestnut tree. In those days, chestnut trees were everywhere. Boys would take chestnuts, drill a hole through them, insert a shoelace, and swing at another boy’s hanging chestnut to see which one smashed. A couple of houses to the west was a very long stairway leading to the lower part of town along the Moira River.

“A little more about my grandmother, Nannie, or Coralie Laurie Cook. She was born in Virginia, in the United States, and moved to Monte Vista, Colorado, as a young girl. At age twelve, her parents died, and she moved to Belleville to live with her Aunt Vicki. They lived in what is now called the Glanmore House, now the Glanmore National Historic Site, at 157 East Bridge Street. It is a grand house, with multicolored slate shingles. We can visit it tomorrow, if you wish.

“Aunt Vicki married Stephen Burrows, and my dad always referred to them as Mum and Dad Burrows. Stephen Burrows emigrated from England and married Victoria Cook – Aunt Vicki – who was the daughter of Nannie’s grandfather, Alan Cook, from Craigleth, Ontario. I have a comprehensive genealogy of the Andrew and Anna Cook family,” George remarked, pointing to a bookcase.

“There is a further connection to the Burrows. Granddad George had a first cousin, Edna Ilene Burrows. She married Wallace Havelock Robb, a famous Canadian naturalist, born in 1888. You can read about him on Wikipedia.” George showed me the Wikipedia article. It said that Robb was the son of Montréal-born William Doig Robb and Catharine Haggart Black. William was an official of the Grand Trunk Railway. They lived on Station Street, near the Belleville Junction of the Railway.”

“Hmm,” Joel mused, “So, I have relatives in Montréal. Interesting.”

“I’m sure,” agreed George, “Perhaps interesting, but hardly surprising. Over time, everyone has relatives everywhere.” He continued. “At one point, the Robb family had a home at 60 Alexander Street, a few houses up from where Aunt Florence lived. Robb attended Belleville High School. He left Belleville in 1906 and moved to Montréal. In 1913 he married Edna. In 1914 he served as a lieutenant in the Canadian Expeditionary Force in World War I. He returned to Montréal where he and his wife had a daughter and two sons. He worked in business with his four brothers until 1921, when he became involved in wildlife photography, poetry and writing. He was a member of bird-photography expeditions at the Magdalen Islands and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. He moved to the US for a while, living in Portland, Maine, and Cazenovia, New York.”

From the Wikipedia article, Joel read, “Robb returned to Canada in 1924 when Edward VIII, then Prince of Wales, expressed interest in Robb's inspirations. He first heard about Robb's photographic work traveling on one of William Doig Robb's trains. Edward persuaded Robb to return to Ontario to focus on writing as he thought Canada in need of good poets. When Robb agreed he became the first poet to be honoured with the Prince of Wales as a patron. This relationship had not been established since the Middle Ages, and would last for 11 years. Robb returned to Belleville in 1924 and initiated 'Abbey Dawn,' a bird sanctuary located outside Belleville.”

In 1928, after an unfortunate incident, “Robb relocated Abbey Dawn to a plot of land approximately five miles east of Kingston, Ontario. The land, first described as a 500-acre plateau of woodland, initially served as Robb's family's home farm where they managed 84 head of cattle and crops. Over time, the land developed into a retreat and study centre for visiting poets as well as a bird sanctuary and a museum of interesting Indigenous artifacts Robb had found in the area.”

“The site was also the first bird sanctuary for birds of prey in North America. Robb published his written work from the location, via Abbey Dawn Press, and the area eventually gained official recognition by the Government of Ontario as the Abbey Dawn Crown Game Reserve.”

“Close to Belleville is Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, a Mohawk reserve home to the Bay of Quinte Mohawks. Much of Robb's published work refers to a place called 'Kente,' which is the traditional name for the Bay of Quinte region (of which Belleville is a part). 'Quinte' is the current term for the area, having been morphed from the traditional Mohawk name, kénhte ('bay'). Robb and his wife lived with the Mohawks on this reservation for 3 1/2 years, learning the language and assisting with the preservation of the culture and its history.”

“Robb has been identified for his efforts in preserving and celebrating Mohawk culture. Mohawks from Six Nations of the Grand River (near Brantford, Ontario) had gifted Robb the title of 'Honorary Pine Tree Chief,' and he held an honorary Mohawk name meaning 'Great White Eagle' as he was adopted as a brother of the Mohawks.”

“The actor Jay Silverheels was born on the Six Nations of the Grand River near Hagersville, close to Brantford. His birth name was Harold Jay Smith. He used the name Harry Smith when he first got into pictures, but then switched to Jay Silverheels, a nickname that he had as a lacrosse player.”

“Nannie and Granddad were married at Wallace Robb’s home. When they visited Kingston once, the family visited Abbey Dawn. I recall Wallace as an old man. He had designed a large bronze bell, called Gitchi Nagamo, which he rang every morning and evening. I remember that I was puzzled why a bell would have a name.”

“What does Gitchi Nagamo mean?” asked Joel.

“It means Great Sound. Gitchi means great. As in the first line of Longfellow’s poem, The Song of Hiawatha: ‘By the shores of Gitche Gumee, by the shining Big-Sea-Water’”

“By the way,” George commented, “you may be interested in reading some of the history of the town of Brantford.” George clicked to the Wikipedia articles on Brantford and Joseph Brant.

“Brantford is named after Joseph Brant, an important Mohawk leader during the American Revolutionary War and later, who led his people in their first decades in Upper Canada. Many of his descendants, and other First Nations citizens, live on the nearby Reserve of Six Nations of the Grand River, 15 kilometers (10 miles) from Brantford; it is the most populous reserve in Canada. Brantford is known as the ‘Telephone City’ as the city's famous resident, Alexander Graham Bell, invented the first telephone at his father's homestead, Melville House, now the Bell Homestead.”

At this point, Joel, interrupted. “This is interesting, George, but let’s get back to Belleville, or maybe Kingston, now.”

“OK,” George chuckled. “No problem.”

“So,” Joel interjected, “the natural environment was pretty good back then. Your cousin Wallace Robb was a naturalist, and your uncles in Cascapedia were guides. You were probably well aware of the environmental situation. From the road atlas, I noticed that there are a few large provincial parks in Québec and Ontario. I am getting the impression from what you have said so far, that the environment hasn’t changed much in these areas over the years, that Gaspé, Consecon, and the Bay of Quinte are still in good shape. Is that a fair assessment?”

“Joel,” said George, “I haven’t really addressed environmental issues yet, and I don’t want to get ahead of myself. Let me talk about Kingston back then, and then summarize the situation now for all of the locales.

“OK, that’s fine,” said Joel.

Kingston

The City

“I was born in Kingston in 1942, during World War II, and grew up there. It is located at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the mouth of the Cataraqui River and the start of the St. Lawrence River. It was founded by the French as Fort Cataraqui and renamed as Fort Frontenac when the British took over. It was named Kingston in the 1780s.

“Kingston became the first capital of the United Province of Canada in 1841. The first meeting of the Parliament of the Province of Canada was held on the site of what is now Kingston General Hospital, where I, my sister Anita, and my brother Charles, were born. From 1844 to 1849 the capital alternated between Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto until it was permanently set at Ottawa.

“The Rideau Canal was completed in 1832, linking Kingston to Ottawa. It still operates today, as a recreational waterway. The first few locks are at Kingston Mills, just north of the city.

“As you know, Fort Henry is a major tourist attraction. It was established in 1812 to defend against a possible attack from the United States. The fort that you see today was constructed mainly in the 1830s and restored as a tourist attraction in the 1930s.

“Queen’s College was established in 1841. It was established by the Church of Scotland via a royal charter from Queen Victoria. It ended Church affiliation in 1912 and adopted the name Queen’s University.

“The Royal Military College of Canada, established in 1876, is Canada's only military university.

“Canada’s oldest English Catholic high school is Regiopolis – Notre Dame Catholic Secondary School, located also on Cowdy Street north of Frontenac School, which I attended. I would walk by it every day, going from my home to school and back.

“Until December of 2020, the principal high school in Kingston was Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute, or KCVI. KCVI has a long list of distinguished alumni. I would have attended had we not moved from Kingston when I was in seventh grade. Students from KCVI and Queen Elizabeth Collegiate and Vocational Institute, or QECVI, were combined in a new school, named Kingston Secondary School.

“There is a lot of limestone in the area, and it was widely used for construction of public buildings. It has the nickname, The Limestone City.

“Kingston's economy today is about half private-sector and half public-sector. When I was young, the private sector’s larger major private employers were the Aluminium Company of Canada, or Alcan, the Canadian Locomotive Company and DuPont Canada. In 1942, DuPont built Canada’s first and the world’s second nylon factory in Kingston. At that time, we did not call it DuPont, but rather, The Nylon Company. The “Loco” closed in 1969, after having constructed over 3,000 locomotives in its time. Dad worked at Alcan. Cousin Leslie worked at The Nylon Company, now Invista. A friend’s dad worked at the Loco.

“Major public-sector employers are Canadian Forces Base Kingston, Kingston General Hospital, where I was born, the universities, government, and correctional facilities, such as the now-closed Kingston Penitentiary. My Aunt Pat was stationed at Barriefield during the war. She would babysit my sister Anita and me during that time.

“Kingston is on the ViaRail railway line. Centrally located between Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and Syracuse, NY, it is a center for trucking and logistics warehousing.

“Kingston is a pretty city, with a lot of parks. Like Belleville. There are a lot of lakes in the area. At one time we owned two cottages on Beaver Lake, northwest of Kingston.”

“You certainly recall a lot of dates,” remarked Joel.

“Well,” said George, the public schools were strong on history, and dates are helpful in tying things together. Speaking of dates, most of which I am going to tell you is from the period 1947 to 1952. I was born in 1942 and we moved to the US in January of 1953.”

Social Structure

“The social structure in Canada is somewhat more rigid than in the United States. Perhaps that was a factor motivating Dad’s desire to move to the United States. The United States is truly the land of opportunity. It is my opinion that as a family and as individuals we did better than we would have, had we remained in Canada. But who knows?

“As children, we were told not to speak to adults unless spoken to first. I was told never to stand with my hands in my pockets.

“Vagrancy was not allowed. I never saw any loitering. People outside were engaged in activities or in walking with purpose.

“I never encountered any racism, since there weren’t any other races. No Asians, no Blacks. I recall seeing a black man for the first time at a circus, when I was about eight years old.

“We weren’t aware of sexism, perhaps because it was pervasive. Through seventh grade in Canada, all of my teachers were women. The nurses were women. The secretaries were women. Most clerks were women. The milk man, the bread man, the ice man, the popcorn man, the local construction workers, the service-station attendants, the bus driver, the train conductors, the school janitor, the factory workers, the policemen, the soldiers – except for my Aunt Pat – were all men. In my world, except for the doctor, the dentist, the pastor at our church and Wallace Robb, men did manual work and women did cerebral work.”

Our Home

“Mom and Dad bought their first house, brand new, at that time for $600.”

“Good grief!” exclaimed Joel. “That sounds impossible!”

“Well, money was worth a whole lot more back then,” George responded. “The house was a small, single-story, two-bedroom one. My sister, Anita Lynn, was born in 1943, a year after me. The house was small, but comfortable.

“While we were still quite young, the government provided grants of materials plus $300, as I recall, to add basements to the homes. That was quite a project! Dad jacked the house up, dug out the basement, poured the footings using a small concrete mixer, did all the block laying, installed the gravel and weeping-tile trenches around the house, tarred the outside walls, installed the wiring, plumbing and a new furnace, and finished the concrete floor. He also added a concrete front porch and steps. He painted the basement, walled off a workshop and photography room, and a bedroom for me. The furnace heated the house through a register above it, to the floor of the living room. Small houses did not have circulating heating systems like the radiators in Granddad’s home.

“I was fascinated with the blowtorch used to melt the lead to seal the sewer pipes. My sister and I would make simple bowls from the left-over cement. For a time, the concrete blocks were stacked in our front yard, and Anita, I, and other children would assemble them into play forts.

“My brother, Charles Randolph, was born in 1950, eight years after me. After he was born, I used the bedroom in the basement.

“When our house was first built, there were no sidewalks along the road, just drainage ditches. The walkway leading from the street to the house was made of wood. After some time, the city put in sidewalks. At that point, we acquired roller skates, and made good use of the sidewalks. Wooden fences defined many of the property boundaries. The fences were about five feet tall, with a two-by-four on top. For fun, we would sometimes walk along the fence tops.

“There was no air conditioning – not that it was needed in Canada – and the windows were open in summer time. Flies were controlled with spiral fly strips that hung from the ceiling.

“Dogs roamed free – there were no leash laws. Problem dogs were few, and were removed by the city dog catcher.

“After the war, population in Canada surged. Over the period 1945-1951, Canada received more than 150,000 war refugees. They were called Displaced Persons, or DPs. There was a lot of new construction. Kingston at that time had a population of about 50,000 people. The development in which we lived was on the north side of town, on the edge of town. Since it had been built during the war, it was called wartime housing. We lived at 21 Twelfth Street, which was later renamed and renumbered to 33 Lorne Street. Our section of town was called Kingston Heights and then Kingscourt.

“A common job for teenage boys was newspaper delivery. It was a hard job. Usually done by walking, sometimes by bike, never by car. The boys often had a hard time collecting. They used large canvas bags hung over their shoulders to hold the papers. In the wintertime, it was dark until we left for school. One time, a paperboy was mistaken for a prowler, and was shot and killed.

“We owned a 78-RPM record player and would listen to a variety of musical songs. A favorite of mine was Burl Ives singing The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Also, Victor Borge.

“In the 1940s, things were pretty basic. We had an ice box, not an electric refrigerator. The ice man delivered ice once a week, in a horse-drawn wagon. I can still recall the formidable-looking ice-block tongs. The milkman’s delivery vehicle was a horse-drawn wagon, as was the breadman’s. In the summer, the popcorn man would drive his popcorn wagon through the neighborhoods, until the city passed an ordinance that food could not be sold from a horse-drawn vehicle. There was horse manure on the streets. You watched where you stepped.

“The horses were very well trained. They had feed bags attached to their heads, so they could eat while the did their route. They knew exactly where to stop, house after house. Eventually, horses disappeared. I recall being told that they were sent to glue factories, to make glue from their hooves. That was sad!

“The horses were shod with steel horseshoes. They worked fine on flat streets, but not on hills. One day, a horse slipped and broke his leg. All of the neighborhood kids were standing around watching as a man shot it.

“It stayed light till about ten o’clock at night. One night, we saw a great display of the aurora borealis.

“Our bread toaster was a manual one, with sides that tipped open for the bread. Mom had a wringer washing machine and a scrub-board. I recall her adding starch and bluing to the washer load. It surprised me that blue color keeps shirts white. My friend, Dennis, got his arm caught in his mother’s wringer, and it dragged it in until the wringer popped open. After wringing, the clothes were pinned to a clothes line. Ours was equipped with a pulley system that allowed Mom to pin the clothes on the line from inside the kitchen and then reel them outside. In the winter, they got frozen solid, but most of the ice evaporated – we did not use the word sublimated – within a few hours.

“The early irons for pressing clothes were heated on the stove. Mom had an electric iron – steam irons had not been invented yet. She owned a Sunbeam Mixmaster and a portable Singer Sewing Machine. Our first telephone was a large wooden box mounted on the wall, with the mouthpiece on the front of the box at the bottom, and the receiver attached to the side. We later had a black handset on the table next to the sofa. Our telephone number was 5605.

“People were thrifty. Nannie kept an earthworm box. At the end of each summer, she would pull up her geranium plants, hang them in the garage, and replant them the next spring. I rolled cigarettes for Nannie and Granddad, on a single-cigarette roller for practice, and then on a five-cigarette roller. We saved the empty tobacco cans for a variety of purposes, such as storing old nuts and bolts. At Consecon, they collected water from the roof in a rain barrel. Did you know that you place a drop of oil on the water in the barrel to kill the mosquito larvae? Some people saved short pieces of string on ‘string balls.’ We used cloth handkerchiefs instead of paper tissues and dish cloths instead of paper towels.

“Nannie knitted me a sweater once with two opposed moose at the top. The next year, when I had outgrown it, she unraveled the entire sweater and reknit it larger. When I was quite young, she made me a ‘Simple Simon’ doll, similar to Raggedy Andy. Socks were darned. We occasionally put cardboard inside our shoes, after a hole was worn through the sole. When a shirt collar wore out, it was turned over. Old fabric was used for patchwork quilts. On our sofas – we called them Chesterfields – there were lace doilies on the armrests and backs, to keep them clean. Dad made us a kite once, out of tissue paper and sticks. One summer, we made an ‘orange-crate’ racing cart.

“We purchased some things from war surplus stores, such as canteens, ammunition cases, pea coats, duffel bags and blankets. Our more expensive toys, like tricycles, wagons and bicycles, were often used ones, which my dad refurbished.

“People rebuilt and recycled things. People rebuilt shock absorbers, recapped tires and returned empty drink bottles to stores. Across the street from us and down two houses, a car had caught fire, and was severely damaged. It was the kind with a leather roof. The man who owned it rebuilt the entire car.

“If an appliance broke, you fixed it or had it fixed. If an electric motor burned out, new windings were made from copper wire, and the motor refurbished.

“When we were given tricycles and bikes, they were always too large, so you could ‘grow into them’ and they would be of use longer. The tricycles and bicycles were provided with pedal blocks. My first bicycle had 28-inch wheels. I could not possibly straddle it. You learned to ride side-ways, with the left leg going through the frame to the left pedal. To operate a bicycle on Kingston streets it was required to have a license, issued at City Hall.

“People did a lot of canning and pickling. We had a lot of large pickle jars and crock pots. One summer, Nannie took a load of tomatoes to the canning factory in Consecon, and I remember watching the canning process. Dad made some dandelion wine in a crock pot once, but he did not like it, so he built a small still and extracted the alcohol.

Materials and Equipment

“Equipment was simpler back then. Except for computers, we had all the basic modern inventions, such as electrical appliances, radio, television, telephone, radar, X-rays, cars, trucks, busses, trains, ships and airplanes. There are some new materials, such as plastics and synthetic fabrics, and there are some new chemicals, such as cortisone, antibiotics and vaccines, but, all-in-all, technological society has the same basic functionality. Global transportation and communications then and now. Without computers, we could not do space travel, such as go to the moon. That is about all that has really changed in the last century. Everything else is functionally about the same.

“Apart from space travel, modern technology has improved the quality of many things, but not their basic nature. The really big inventions of modern time were in electronics, such as the invention of radio tubes, transistors, integrated circuits, lasers, the computer, and digital signal processing. When I was young, all controls were electromechanical, such as switches on radios and timers on washing machines. Now, appliances and cars are computer-controlled using integrated circuits. Then, most electronic equipment, such as recordings, radios, televisions and telephones, were analog. Now, they are digital and use a lot of digital signal processing, which requires computers. These advances allow for a tremendous increase in the complexity and features of equipment, even though the basic functionality remains the same. Cars, ships, trains and planes still just move people from place to place, but they do it faster, more efficiently, more reliably and more comfortably. Telephones still just basically enable communication between people, but now virtually everyone in the world is connected, and with video, not just audio. And, through the Internet and Wikipedia, everyone now has instant access to much of the world’s knowledge. Now, many movies can be included on a single digital video disk, complete with audio and subtitles in many languages. People can watch movies any time they wish.

“In some areas, quality has gone down. Furniture was made from solid wood, not veneer. There were still plenty of hardwood trees in the woods – chestnut trees, hickory trees, walnut trees, cherry trees. The large furniture-hardwood trees – mahogany, teak, ebony, walnut, cherry, chestnut – are essentially gone now. There are still sugar maples in Cascapedia. We always used maple syrup on our waffles and pancakes, not honey, molasses or cane sugar.

“Materials were more basic – more natural, less synthetic. Upholstery padding was horsehair. Life preservers used kapok. There was not much aluminum or plastic – mainly leather and wood. Fabric electric cords. Bakelite ashtrays. Toy wagons were made of wood, not metal. Car interiors were fabric, wood, painted steel; the upholstery batting was horsehair and coconut coir.

School

“I started school in 1947, at age five. The grade was a combination kindergarten-first-grade. The combination was necessary because of the teacher shortage and classroom shortage caused by the surge in population growth. We learned addition and subtraction, and the alphabet. If you did well, then you moved on to second grade. If not, you moved on to regular first grade. I attended Frontenac School at 38 Cowdy Street. The building is still there, still with the name Frontenac School on the front. By the way, Kingston is in Frontenac County and Belleville is in Hastings County. Because of population growth, my first year was not in the main building, but in a temporary, white-siding cube-shaped building just to the north of the main building.

“We learned reading in second grade, from Dick-and-Jane readers. In third grade, we learned to write script, multiplication, long division, and improved our reading skills. We learned some Canadian history. The teacher read us several books, including Lassie Come-Home, The Story of Ping, and Solomon Cleaver’s Jean Val Jean, a much-simplified version of Hugo’s Les Misérables.

“My favorite school book was Golden Windows. That was a fabulous reader, authorized by the Ontario Ministry of Education.

“Each year we were issued basic supplies: nib pen, nibs, ink bottle, blotter, pencil, eraser, exercise book, and a hardwood ruler with a metal edge. The hardwood ruler served also to rap the knuckles of an unruly boy. Reliable fountain pens were available, but the ball-point pens were of poor quality – leaky. We never used these in third grade – only pencils and nib pens.

“Periodically, the teacher completed a report card, which each student carried home to be reviewed and signed by a parent. I had never paid much attention to the report card. My mother always looked at it, said, “That’s good, George,” signed it, and that was that.

“One day, in third grade, on the day when we had received our report cards, my friend Jackie and I were lying on the school ground talking, and Jackie asked to see my report card. I handed mine to him and he handed his to me. Mine was mainly B’s and C’s, and his was all A’s. Up to that point in life, I had paid no attention to the grades. I was a well-behaved student who paid attention, but I made absolutely no effort to excel. Attending school was simply what one did, such as eating breakfast. I enjoyed learning things in school, and the social aspect of it, but I made no effort to excel. Jackie asked me, ‘Why don’t you make A’s?’ he asked, ‘You can make A’s. Why don’t you make A’s?’ Well, I had never even thought about it, and I am sure that that is what I would have told him.

“Well, after Jackie’s comment, I did think about it. Jackie’s reaction to my average report card telegraphed the message that school was a competition. That had never occurred to me. Upon this realization, I felt embarrassed. I resolved to improve my grades. Previously, there had been no reason to make good grades. Now, there was. Immediately, my report card grades increased to A’s.

“Mother had never commented on the quality of my performance. She was totally nonjudgmental, totally accepting. In retrospect, I imagine that she assumed that I was doing the best that I could. “Well, that was not true at all. I was putting no more effort into getting good grades than into getting dressed in the morning. No one had encouraged me to get high grades, and there was absolutely no motivation to do so.

“Up to that point in life, I had simply been sitting in class along with my classmates, receiving instruction and passively accumulating knowledge, but absent the concept of competing academically. We had recess every morning, but, for the first six grades, no organized physical education. School was not competitive, in the least, either academically or physically.

“Before Jackie’s observation, my learning had been indiscriminate, unfocused, not passionate. I had spent time learning anything, whether a part of school or not. Now, I spent time learning things that would make a difference, and learning them well. I concentrated. I made a definite effort to retain facts and understand concepts. Thank you, Jackie, for making education a competition.

“I had always enjoyed learning about things. Learning this is biologically natural. It was enjoyable, but not exciting. While I enjoyed learning things and found satisfaction in gaining knowledge in almost any field, excelling in academia was now very different. It was exciting and gratifying, and, as it turned out, my excelling academically made all the difference in my life.

“It is not just the social recognition of your peers that is gratifying, but the sense of knowing that you fully understand a concept. It is the feeling of confidence that, equipped with sufficient knowledge – and analytical skills – you can solve virtually any problem. Before Jackie’s remark, learning was motivated by my own mild curiosity about the nature of things. It was internally motivated, not externally motivated. It was not oriented toward achieving a particular goal, but only to slake a natural thirst for knowledge.

“After the epiphany that Jackie caused, my learning, my education, my quest for knowledge and understanding, was motivated by focused desire to achieve a particular goal or goals, to solve a problem, or to understand a concept. Indiscriminate, unfocussed learning of a lot of facts never produced this feeling.

“Looking back at that time, I am surprised that the educational process in grade school in Canada was so non-competitive. In the absence of competition, my grades remained mediocre. Had this continued, since many of the opportunities in life are affected by educational achievement, I would have realized a mediocre career, standard of living, and position in society. With competition, my grades soared. I learned faster, better and more. I focused my learning on things that had better payoff. I improved my cognitive skills. Competition in academia made a tremendous difference in educational outcome, and in my life.

“In his famous lecture on human drives, Bertrand Russell identifies rivalry as one of the four infinite human desires, along with acquisitiveness, vanity and love of power, that can never be fully gratified. Rivalry is one of the strongest human drives, and therefore a key motivating factor, yet it was ignored in my early schooling. The importance of rivalry is well recognized in sports, but its importance is suppressed in academia. Why is this so, when academic achievement is so much more important to later quality of life than sports?

“The next grade was a combination fourth-and-fifth grade. If you did well, you went on to sixth grade. If not, you moved on to fifth grade. I don’t recall much about fourth-and-fifth grade, except for standing up reading out loud to the class, and shop, where I made a plastic lamp. It is my recollection that I was an excellent reader.

“The shop teacher hosted a ‘workshop’ one Saturday morning, in which he introduced students to stamp collecting. My sister, Anita, and I attended. I collected stamps for many years.

Joel asked, “What do you think about the split grades?”

George answered, “I think that they are an excellent idea. There are fast students and slow students. With the split grades, the fast students can move along twice as fast. It helps alleviate boredom. It is less regimented, more flexible. It recognizes that student progress at different rates. It provides a mechanism for moving the more able students along at a faster pace.”

“In sixth grade we moved to a new school, Kingscourt School, just north of where we lived, and much closer to home. The school was on the edge of town. One day, at recess, I saw a dead fox on the ground. The school construction made heavy use of glass block, which may have good insulation properties but is easily damaged. The school is no longer there.

“Sixth grade included Canadian history. We learned about Wolfe and Montcalm and the battle on the Plains of Abraham, near Montréal. We learned about Jean Cabot, Jacques Cartier, and coureurs-des-bois. Seventh grade some world history. I can still recall the teacher describing in near horror that the population of India was four hundred million people. The population of Canada, a physically much larger country, was about thirteen million at the time.

“We learned Canadian geography and world geography. I remember pointing out to Mrs. Wallace the remarkable similarity in shape of the continents of North and South America, and opining that they must have been joined together at some time. She scoffed at the notion – just a coincidence. That was before the theory of plate tectonics had been developed.

“Princess Elizabeth visited Kingston in 1951. We all went to see her in a parade down Princess Street. Her father, King George the Sixth, died in 1952. We got a day off from school.

“Mother owned silver tea service. The tray celebrated King George’s coronation in 1936. The tray showed him in full uniform with a hat that looked like a banana peel.

“In school, boys and girls were treated equally. Our readers had Dick, Jane and Sally – one boy and two girls – and a dog, Spot. An abandoned school building near our home had separate entrances marked ‘boys’ and ‘girls,’ but that was before my time.”

Health Care

“Every spring was called ‘polio season.’ Parents prayed that their children did not catch it. When the warm weather came, you were sent out to play and get a tan, to store vitamin D. Most children were healthy. I heard of one boy who had asthma. Almost no one was overweight and for good reason. We ate fresh food, prepared at home. We had few snacks and soft drinks. We played outside a lot. We walked a lot, and later we biked. We had no television, no Internet and no cellphones. There was an overweight girl in our class in third grade – the only overweight person I can recall in all of elementary school. Her name was Juanita (I thought, ‘Wanita’). She was an immigrant and could not speak English. She was several years older than the rest of the class, but had been placed in a third-grade class to learn English. How humiliating, I thought. I do not recall ever hearing her speak English – or Spanish, for that matter.

“Health care was not very good. The federal government passed the Medical Care Act in 1966, which offered to reimburse one-half of provincial and territorial costs for medical services provided by a doctor outside hospitals. Within six years, all the provinces and territories had insurance plans that universally covered physician services.

“In Canada, penicillin was not generally available in the 1940s. I had many ear infections, and sulfa drugs did not help. Finally, I had my tonsils and adenoids removed, and that solved the ear problem. I still recall going under the ether anesthetic, and waking up afterward with a terrible sore throat. We had a visiting nurse to check on Charles when he was a baby.

“I don’t know much about social services or welfare at the time. There was a legless man who sat on the sidewalk in front of the movie theater, selling pencils.

“We were given doses of cod-liver oil in the winter, for vitamin D. Fish and chips came in real newspaper.”

Family

“My dad was quite creative. His job at Alcan was a tool and die maker. He liked to build things. I mentioned the basement. He also added a room at the back of the house. He did photography. He built and repaired radios. There were no transistors back then, only vacuum tubes. He built me a crystal radio set once. I was amazed that you could pick up and hear a radio signal directly from the air, without any electricity. He built a very nice hardwood boat, to sell. He built a giant snowmobile, using a small automobile engine and an airplane propeller. We tried it out one day on the ice-packed roads. It was highly unstable. The giant skis did not dig into the hard-packed street snow, and the thing veered erratically. He ran it for probably less than a minute, and realized that it was far too dangerous. Unlike airboats used in swamps, his propeller had no protective screen around it.

“We attended church every Sunday – the First Baptist Church of Kingston. The children joined the main service at the beginning, and then left for Sunday School. I did not get much from it. Every Christmas we had a Christmas play, and I played a shepherd once.

“Dad left Alcan at some point, and bought an electroplating business on Quebec Street. My sister Anita and I would sort screws that he had plated. The shop was just a block from Frontenac School, and I would visit it occasionally. That would be 1949 or 1950. He did a lot of silverplating. I don’t know how well the shop did. Perhaps not very well. Maybe that was part of the motivation for moving to the US.

“Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were big. Always a family get-together. We did not have big family reunions. At Christmas parents would take their children to the Santa Claus Parade and to see Santa at department stores, such as Eaton’s or Simpsons. Typical gifts at Christmas were pen sets, grooming sets, clothes, plus a special gift such as a wagon or bicycle.

“People kept diaries back then. My Great Grandmother Edna kept one, which is interesting reading. I started one for a while, but lost interest.

“Until we got bikes, we walked a lot. In a town of size 50,000, you can get around by walking. Towns were very safe then. My sister and I were told not to speak with strangers, but we were free to walk anywhere, such as to school every day and to the movies on Saturday, and to hikes north of town. Our house was never locked. We children had no keys – the doors were always unlocked.

“We used our bikes mainly to go back and forth to school. I don’t recall ever taking a bike hike, but my cousin Leslie cycled with his friend Pat from Belleville to Kingston. They did it without telling their mothers. When they arrived in Kingston, my mother called the newspaper, and Leslie and Pat had their pictures in the paper, along with their bikes, a few days later. Lots of men rode bicycles to work. Some of the bikes were motorized. Many bikes did not have chain guards, and men always used a pant clip to keep chain oil off the right pant leg. They all carried black metal lunch boxes to work.

“Trains and busses were much-used for intercity travel. We took the train from Montréal to Gaspé, and I took it once from Belleville to Kingston.

“Dad brought us home a few pets, including a kitten, a racoon, and a crow. For a while, he kept pigeons. The kitten was run over by a car, the crow flew away, and the neighbors complained that the raccoon was stealing food from their gardens, so Dad had to get rid of it. We never owned a dog.

“Mom never had outside employment when we lived in Canada. It is very comforting to a child to know that mother is always at home. She would socialize with other ladies in the neighborhood, and we would go along.

“As part of the city’s civil defense program, Mother took lessons in First Aid from the St. John’s Ambulance Corps at Camp Barriefield, a local military installation.

“Mother invested a major portion of her time in her children and their education. I will get into that a little later.

“When visitors came to town, we would take them to Fort Henry. We visited Wolfe Island once, at the home of the parents of our across-the-street neighbors. They owned a really neat Edison record player that used record cylinders, not disks.

“During the war, the windows all had dark green shades. I recall putting up the light beige ones at the end of the war.

“I remember when they were constructing the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The town of Iroquois, where my Uncle Bill lived, was to be flooded. We went to visit one last time, before it was flooded. Uncle Bill and Aunt Fran lived in Kingston for a while, when he worked at Alcan and the Kingston Penitentiary. They lived only a couple of blocks from us, so I got to know my cousin Gayle better than some of my other cousins at that time. Gayle now lives in Cornwall. We see each other from time to time.

“It seemed that every family had a Kodak camera. I had a Kodak Baby Brownie camera for a while. My friend Bobby’s family had an 8mm movie camera. Kids were never invited in to view a picture show, but we were allowed to watch it once through the front window. The first television set on our street appeared about 1950. The local kids were allowed to see it once, through the window.

“Dad’s brother Bill and sister Pat joined the army in the Second World War. Dad seemed to have little interest in the military.”

Clothing Styles

“Clothing styles were a little different in Canada. Up to third grade, I wore grey ‘breeches,’ which had flared sides like riding pants or World War I officers’ pants. We called them ‘breeks.’ They were grey, of a very tough fabric. They had a leather seat and leather on the knees, and laces along the outside bottom of the legs. My sweaters had leather patches on the elbows. Mom had a fox-fur stole, complete with the fox’s head and glass eyes. One fall – probably when I was in third grade, Dad bought me a trench coat, which I strongly objected to, since none of my friends had one. I got used to it and ended up liking it a lot. Unfortunately, I was growing fast, and it was too small the following year.

“When I was growing up in Canada, we did not wear denim jeans. When we moved to the United States, all the boys wore blue jeans. I had never seen my father in a pair of blue jeans, and I asked him why. ‘Farmer pants,’ he replied.

“I remember Mom bringing my brother, Charles, home from the hospital after he was born. She was dressed in a Scottish plaid skirt with a large safety pin on the side.

“Both men and women wore hats. Dad had a nice fedora. When we moved to the US, on the road to Florida, he accidently forgot the hat in a restaurant in Roanoke, Virginia. He remembered the hat about an hour later, too far down the road to return for it. He telephoned the restaurant and they agreed to package it and mail it to him. He did not realize at that time than men in the US no longer wore hats, and I never saw him in it again.

“Each summer we got a new pair of sandals and sneakers, and each fall we got a new pair of rubber shoes and rubber boots. Also, a windbreaker jacket and a peak hat with fold-down ear flaps. And earmuffs. For winter, we got a new parka, always with a fur-edged hood and mittens or gloves. We did not call them anoraks back then. Actually, the parkas were not always new – some hand-me-downs. Small children got mittens, and older kids got gloves. Our grandmothers knitted the mittens and scarves. Grandmother Barter was knitting until age 99. At that year, she knitted a glove with only four fingers, and the family encouraged her to stop knitting.”

Family Entertainment

“Most of our entertainment outside of the home was to go to a park, such as Victoria Park or Macdonald Park, or to go swimming, such as to Lake Ontario Park or to a place along the lake that we called Flat Rock. And visits to relatives. We visited Nannie and Granddad and Aunt Florence here in Belleville a number of times. We made a trip each year to Cascapedia, to visit mother’s family. Back then, workers received only two weeks annual vacation, and ours was pretty much used up by the trip from Kingston to Cascapedia. The forty-hour work-week was not yet standard, and many people worked Saturday morning.

“From time to time, we visited my Aunt Eileen, one of Mother’s sisters, in Shawville, Quebec. Driving along the country roads – you would not call them highways – I was struck by the number of dead animals, such as raccoon, possum and deer. I recall Dad telling me that that was a good sign, that there was a lot of wildlife in the area.

“Life at Aunt Eileen’s was basic. They lived on a farm quite outside of town. No electricity, so none of the household appliances ran on electricity. A wood-burning stove, water from a well outside, a treadle Singer Sewing machine, and oil lanterns for light – they called it coal-oil, not kerosene. A hand-crank cream separator. An ice house. Outdoor plumbing, with stinging nettle along the path to it. They did have a telephone. A party line. A feed house with the wonderful aroma of oats. The sound of wolves at night. The parlor we never used. Goose-down pillows.

“We did not do much in the way of paid entertainment, except for movies. Mom and Dad went square dancing occasionally. Dad knew how to call square dances, and had the necessary public-address equipment. We went to see the Hell Drivers stunt-car show once, and to the circus once. Every summer the Alcan Company sponsored an annual company picnic. Cookouts, races, prizes.

“Parents played card games such a canasta, euchre, cribbage and bridge. Nannie played bridge, but Mom did not. Dominos were not very popular.”

Cars

“Dad bought two 1936 Terraplane automobiles – they were manufactured by the Hudson Motor Company – which he rebuilt for sale. In the 1940s there were still a lot of classic cars around. I recall a visitor who owned a car with a rumble seat. Cars had manual chokes and spark advancers, and some had hand cranks in case the battery failed. The hoods on the older ones opened from the two sides, not from the top. We owned a 1942 Oldsmobile with a superb Hydramatic automatic transmission.

“Our car was black. Almost all cars were black. The movies you see nowadays show old cars in lots of colors. There were a few in different colors, such as a white convertible in Hollywood, or a Yellow Cab in New York, but most regular cars were black. Perhaps some in dark shades of grey or blue or green.

“Dad did most of his own auto repair work, as did lots of men. Cars were always breaking down. On any trip, you would see a number of disabled vehicles by the side of the road. Unless it was in the middle of nowhere, or unless you were flagged down, you didn’t stop to help – there were just too many. People were expected to get them running again by themselves. Along with a small bag of essential tools, Dad always carried a point file in the car. When cars rusted out, they were repaired with lead, not with epoxy.

“Cars often needed starting. Most cars had standard transmissions, not automatic transmissions, and the standard way of getting them started was by pushing. Either with a few men or with a push from another car.

“Car battery casings were not very reliable – they were prone to leak. Some, like Exide, came with a heavy glass battery case, to catch any sulphuric acid that might leak. Dad saved one of those for us as a goldfish aquarium. He made a ‘diving devil’ for us once. A diving devil is a test tube in a quart jar with a rubber diaphragm tightly covering the top of the jar. The test tube is partially filled with water so that it barely floats. When pressure is applied to the diaphragm, the test tube becomes slightly heavier than water, and sinks.

“Cars were not equipped with seat belts or air bags, or with safety locks on the back doors to protect children. One day, my sister opened the door while we were driving and fell out of the car. Fortunately, she was not hurt. Many cars did not have double-latch doors, and opened immediately, without a first ‘catch.’

“Cars needed tune-ups – spark plugs, points and capacitor (they were called condensers) – every few thousand miles. Spark plugs often got fouled, and needed cleaning. Spark plug wires often got wet or damp and shorted out. Electrical emissions from the spark plug wires often interfered with the radio. Resistors were added to prevent this. Some men did complete engine overhauls. Getting the driveshaft seated in the main bearings sometimes took several tries, with Prussian Blue used to show where to make adjustments. A lot of work!

“After one summer visit, Granddad drove me back home in an old pickup truck that had a front windshield that was hinged at the top and opened at the bottom. I got cold and asked Granddad to close the windshield. He said that we could not, because the fumes would make us sick.

“The rear doors on some of the cars were hinged at the rear – the so-called ‘suicide doors.’ That design actually made getting in and out of the back seat a little easier. On lots of cars, door and trunk hinges were not flush, but visible protuberances. Many cars had running boards, and they all had roof gutters. They had large hood ornaments, which even as a child I thought were dangerous.

“Windshield wipers were really poor back then. They operated from the engine’s vacuum, and when you accelerated or were going up a hill, they slowed or stopped. They were flat, and did not clean the window well except at the center of the blade. Many years later, in Spartanburg, South Carolina, I lived across the street from Ernest Eady, whose father had invented the Trico windshield-wiper blade. It was equipped with a spring system that pressed the blade uniformly close to the window, even on a curved windshield.

“Road maps were free from service stations, and we had a lot of them.”

Entertainment: Radio

“We didn’t listen to the radio a lot. Some evenings. Programs included dramatic shows such as Boston Blackie, Mr. Keen, Tracer of Lost Persons, The Shadow, Death Valley Days and Perry Mason; comedy shows such as Jack Benny, Bob Hope, The Burns and Allen Show and Red Skelton; situational comedies such as Amos ‘n’ Andy, Fibber McGee and Molly and The Great Gildersleeve; shows from comics, such as Blondie, Dick Tracy and Red Ryder; and just-for-radio shows such as The Lone Ranger.

“The comedy was clean, perhaps slightly off-color at times, with no bathroom humor. There was a lot of stereotyping. We would be seated around the radio, just as you see in the pictures of that era. Family radios were large console models, with good-quality speakers. Unfortunately, the signal was amplitude modulation, which is often not of very good quality during the daytime, but quite good at night. We didn’t listen to much classical music – perhaps the Bell Telephone Hour once. We rarely listened to the record player. The fidelity was poor – that was before high-fidelity and stereo had been invented.

“The radio broadcast in several languages in addition to English – I recall hearing French and Polish, and there were others. We didn’t listen to music on the radio very much. A few popular singers and country singers, including Giselle Mackenzie, Patti Page, Teresa Brewer, Doris Day, the Andrews Sisters, Hank Williams, Wilf Carter and Hank Snow. Some variety shows, such as Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Groucho Marx, and Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour.

“By the way, the singer Gordon Lightfoot is from Orillia, near Oro Station, where cousin Evelyn lives. Cousin Tracy, who lives in Saint John, New Brunswick, was an acquaintance of Hank Snow, who was from Nova Scotia.”

Entertainment: Movies

“My sister and I received a weekly allowance of twenty-five cents. Almost always we spent it as ten cents for movie admission, five cents for a Coke and five cents for a candy bar, usually a Hershey’s chocolate bar, at the theater. If it wasn’t raining, we walked home with five cents to spare. If it was raining, we would spend the remaining five cents for a bus ride home. There were three movie theaters on Princess Street: The Odeon, the Grand and the Capital. We almost always went to the Odeon. On Saturday mornings they would have a couple of cartoons; a serial, such as Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, or the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police and a feature film – sometimes a double feature. We saw Audie Murphy in To Hell and Back and Burt Lancaster in Jim Thorpe, All American.

“When we were younger, Mom and Dad took us to a few pictures, including The Wizard of Oz and the Disney classics – Sleeping Beauty, Alice in Wonderland, Bambi, Dumbo, Pinocchio, Song of the South, So Dear to My Heart and Treasure Island. My grandfather Leslie took me to the picture, The Mudlark, about Queen Victoria, at the Capitol. Grandfather Barter was a man of few words. All I can recall is his asking, as we left the theater, ‘Did you like the show, George?’

“As a boy, Dad had enjoyed the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s. He took me to a reshowing of a complete series at the Odeon.

“We did not own a television when I was young. Nannie and Granddad had one, but all I can recall their watching was the Saturday-night wrestling. The reception was poor.”

Entertainment: Other

“As you know, ice hockey is big in Canada. Every school has an ice rink. We played hockey on a local rink sometimes, but most of the time we played it on the hard-packed snow of a street, under a street lamp. In winter, it got dark about four o’clock in the afternoon.

“We played a little softball in a nearby field, and a little rugby at school. I had just received my first set of skis a few months before we left Canada for the US.

“We took swimming lessons at the YMCA. Mother enrolled me in piano lessons, but I did not enjoy it and stopped after a few lessons. Dad enjoyed music, and played a number of instruments. He played the guitar and piano, and was quite good on the accordion. He took lessons from an Italian.

“Kingston has a lot of parks. In the summer, we would go to Victoria Park, which had a wading pool, and to Macdonald Park, Lake Ontario Park and to Flat Rock for swimming. Once we drove to the Sand Banks near Picton. Sand dunes beside the lake were really fascinating for young children.

“There weren’t fees to get into places back then. The parks were all free. Very few fences. Very few people.”

Food

“Food was relatively inexpensive. We never ate out at a restaurant, however, unless we were on the road, traveling. Even on the road, we almost always ate at a roadside table – they were placed along highways for just that purpose. We purchased groceries once a week from Anderson’s Supermarket and occasional food items from a neighborhood store. There were neighborhood grocery stores in every neighborhood. From time to time, Anderson’s had bananas from Central America. That was exciting. Bread came in two sizes – a nine-cent loaf and an eleven-cent loaf, sliced or unsliced. A can of soup cost ten cents. Two candies for a penny.

“Milk came in glass bottles. We always bought non-homogenized milk. The cream separates and was used for coffee. The milkman placed our milk outside the door in the morning. There were no insulated boxes. In winter, the milk would freeze, raising the cream an inch or two above the mouth of the bottle.

“Soft drinks and beer were in bottles back then, not in cans. A bottle soft drink cost five cents, with an extra two cents deposit on the bottle. Postage for postcards was one cent, and for letters three cents. Five cents for a local telephone call. Telephone booths were everywhere – service stations, drug stores, hotel lobbies, street corners. There was no aluminum foil, only tin foil. Cellophane, not Saran wrap.

“Dairy products tasted slightly different back then, with a more delicate flavor – the milk, the buttermilk, the ice cream, the yogurt and the curd that we purchased from small cheese factories on rural roads.

“Our breakfast food was basically the same as today, but with less variety, and no sugar-coated cereals. Corn flakes, wheat flakes, shredded wheat, crisped rice, puffed wheat, puffed rice, all bran, Grape Nuts, but none of them sugared. Cooked breakfasts included oatmeal, cream of wheat, cream of rice, French toast, eggs and bacon or sausage. Toast with jam or marmalade.

“Chewing gum was popular. Brands included Adams Chiclets, Wrigley’s, Fleer Dubble Bubble, Topps Bazooka and Black Jack.”

Education at Home: Mother Reads to Us

“We had few books, except for the ones that Mother read to us. A friend of mine owned a Book of Knowledge encyclopedia, which he showed me one day after school. We had access to a city library, but it was not close to our home, and I only used it once. When my sister and I first learned of the library, we were amazed that you could loan books for free! There was a bookmobile that passed along our street, but we never used it. In seventh grade our ‘science’ room had a few books, which you could read there.

“Mother read us a host of the classic children’s anthologies, collections and novels. One of my favorites was a collection of fairy tales with art nouveau illustrations. Let me see how many I can recall: Aesop’s Fables, Tales of Mother Goose, The Arabian Nights, Bothers Grimm folk tales, Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales, Pinocchio, The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh, Peter Rabbit, Peter Cottontail, The Wizard of Oz, Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible. She read to us from Little Golden Books: A Day in the Jungle, Little Black Sambo, Tootle, and The Little Engine that Could. And a Giant Golden Book, Uncle Remus Stories. As we learned to read, we would re-read these books by ourselves.

“She read us Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland, James Barrie’s Peter Pan and some of Rudyard Kipling’s work – not just his poetry, but his fiction, including Just So Stories, The Jungle Book and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. She read us stories about explorers, such as Marco Polo, Christopher Columbus and David Livingston.

“When Mother was young, there were few books and people memorized poems. She would recite A Legend of the Northland and The Little Dog under the Wagon to us. Her sister Isabel and cousin Leslie wrote poetry.

“Mother read us a lot of poetry. I can recall a number of them. They included a lot of the favorites, such as Joyce Kilmer’s Trees, A Visit from Saint Nicholas, Abou Ben Adhem, Gunga Din, Casey at the Bat, The Raven, and The Owl and the Pussycat. She read us a number of long poems, including Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha and Evangeline, and a lot of Robert Service’s poems, such as The Cremation of Sam McGee. By the way, Hank Snow does a nice reading of Service’s poems on his Tales of the Yukon CD. Evangeline, as you know, is about the Expulsion of the Acadians from Acadia during the French and Indian War. If you ever get the chance, a visit to Cape Breton Island is worth the trouble. There is fabulous reconstruction of the Fortress of Louisbourg there. Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi did experiments there, including transmission of the first North American transatlantic radio message.

“After recounting these, I am amazed by the realization of how much of my early education was from Mother, at home. At school, we learned technical skills, such as reading and arithmetic, and we learned some history, but by far the major portion of our cultural education, from books, was from home.”

Education at Home: We Read to Ourselves

“Mother introduced us to books, and made them a significant part of our lives. As soon as we learned to read, we continued to read at home. My sister, Anita, was an avid reader. I can recall once we were on vacation passing by the Statue of Liberty, and Anita was engrossed in a book. Dad asked her to put it down for a time, while we took in a little world-class sightseeing.

“Our reading started with comics, and moved on to books.

“Comic books were expensive – ten cents for most, like Dell, Marvel and DC / Action, and fifteen cents for Classics Illustrated. Most children had little money to purchase comics, so we would collect a few over time and trade them. It didn’t matter how old a comic book was, as long as you hadn’t read it. My favorite comic books included Little Lulu, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Henry Hawk and Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, Mighty Mouse, Unknown Worlds, Tom Mix, Lash Larue, Bill Boyd, Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd), Lone Ranger, Red Ryder, Tex Ritter, Johnny Mack Brown, Tim Holt, Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr., Whiz Comics, Tarzan, Superman, Superwoman, Superboy, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Action Comics, Plastic Man, Aquaman, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Blackhawks, Sheena, Nyoka, the Phantom, Mandrake the Magician and Ibis the Invincible.

“It may seem to you that we spent a lot of time reading comics. We did. In winter, it was often very cold outside, and we spent a lot of time inside. Children did not spend much time in their friends’ homes. In primary school, there was very little homework – I actually cannot recall any. We spent a lot of time reading. Both comics and standard books. Recall, this was the era before television. Homes generally had one large radio, in the living room, and it was operated by the parents.

“The Sunday comics – we also called them the funny papers or funnies – were a separate section of the newspaper. The front page had Superman at the top and Tarzan at the bottom. Other favorites were Li’l Abner, Dick Tracy and Fearless Fosdick). We also traded hockey cards and Straight Arrow Injun-Uity cards. Big Little Books were somewhat popular.

“We gradually migrated from comics to full-size books.

“We read a lot of books. Ivanhoe, Robin Hood, King Arthur and His Knights, Gulliver’s Travels, The Three Musketeers, Little Women, Lorna Doone, Hans Brinker, Heidi, Black Beauty, Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Treasure Island, The Call of the Wild, White Fang, Huckleberry Finn, Anne of Green Gables, King Solomon’s Mines.

“We read a number of the classics, such as James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales: The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers and The Prairie.

“We read about famous explorers and frontiersmen, such as Daniel Boone, Kit Carson, Lewis and Clark, Ernest Shackleton, and Robert Scott.

“My dad read Astounding Science Fiction., and he had enjoyed the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon movie serials of the 1930s.

“The books of Edgar Rice Burroughs were an enduring reading pleasure to me. Eventually, I read them all – the Tarzan series, the Martian series, the Venusian series, the Pellucidar series, and many others. Burroughs had a way with words – long, flowing sentences that would wrap around your mind. Later, I came to realize that my good vocabulary and reading comprehension skills owed much to Burroughs. Early on, I realized that, although his planetary novels were often referred to as science-fiction, his genre was not science-fiction at all. It was not even science-fantasy. It was fantasy, plain and simple. Adventure fantasy. Jungles, the Wild West, imaginary planets, inner earth – exciting situations and action in exotic, albeit imaginary, places.

“In one Martian tale, Burroughs described light returning to its source, and I asked Dad about that. He said, no, that doesn’t happen. Burroughs’ work had nothing to do with science. Like many other so-called science-fiction writers, such as Olaf Stapledon and Doris Lessing who followed him, Burroughs would use imaginary planets and star systems as a setting for his stores. As Lessing observed, the other-planet context allows much flexibility for exploring far-out themes, such as alternative social systems. For a young boy, Burroughs’ writing was a pleasure to read and his tales were highly entertaining. They did not pretend to be scientific.

“We subscribed to few magazines. Dad read the newspaper every day after he came home from work. He read a fair amount. Mainly technical publications, such as on electronics and radio, and magazines on popular science, mechanics and electronics. He possessed only a few books, such as the Radio Engineers Handbook, which I still have, and some reference manuals for his tool-and-die work. Some science fiction. He was fascinated with electronics. He told me once, ‘All we are is electricity.’ Somewhat of a simplification, but a not-unreasonable characterization.”

Recreation: Games

“As I just mentioned, children did not visit in their friends’ homes very often. You went ‘out to play.’ There were always other children outside, because inside was confining and not nearly as exciting as playing with the other kids. I recall being in my best friend’s home only once. It was raining outside, and we played Chinese checkers. We played lots of games. Marbles (‘pottsies’), India-rubber balls, Spalding balls (called ‘Spaldeens’), hopscotch, skip rope (single and multiple), hide and seek, kick the can, red rover, tag.

“The parlor games we played included twenty questions, battleships and a few board games, including snakes and ladders and Monopoly. We had checkers and backgammon, but had little interest in them. As children, we did not play chess.”

Recreation: Other Activities

“Our recreation was pretty basic. In the winter, it was ice hockey, ice skating, sledding, tobogganing, snow forts, snowball fights, igloos, snowmen, ice fishing and stamp collecting. Mom and Dad owned skis, but they never went skiing. Women knitted a lot, crocheted, and sometimes made bed quilts. My sister and I both learned to knit, and we made yarn and gimp lanyards.

“In the fall, after the first hard frost, the leaves on the trees would take on gorgeous colors. We would collect some and place them in a book.

“In the summer, a major item of family recreation was going on a picnic to a swimming area. We didn’t do much camping, but we enjoyed a number of bonfires. In late summer and fall many people would preserving fruits and vegetables. Perhaps that is not recreation, but it was fun to do.

“We took hikes around our neighborhood, and in the fields north of our house, on the edge of town. There was a tile factory located there, and we salvaged a few pretty souvenirs. With the long summer recess from school, that is when we typically visited relatives.

“Dad wasn’t a hunter, but a lot of men were. Dad took me to the city incinerator over on Division Street once to shoot at rats with a pistol for which he had made the stock out of aluminum.

“I was given a white terracotta head once, with horizontal ridges all around. You filled it with water and planted grass on the ridges, which sprouted. Many years later, the concept was marketed as Chia Pets. We would carve things from Ivory soap bars, and sometimes make things out of plaster of Paris.

“We collected lots of things. Hockey cards from bubble gum packages. Milk bottle tops, pop bottle tops, matchbooks, postage stamps, Nabisco Shredded Wheat Straight Arrow Injun-Uity cards. Dick Tracy Crime Stoppers tips.

“We collected used postage stamps, but not coins. For a time, my Uncle Bill worked for the Canadian Mint, and he would give us proof sets for Christmas gifts. Nannie and Granddad gave me a “loonie” silver dollar when they first came out.

“We saved pennies in glass piggy banks made of marigold-colored carnival glass. My friend Eric had a metal-cartridge dime bank, like the coin holders on the city busses.

“We saved popsicle sticks and made woven ‘rafts’ out of them. We would float the rafts or sail them through the air. Ice-cream cones and Popsicles cost a nickel. Rather than pay this amount, mothers would make flavored ice cubes. You could save popsicle wrappers and redeem them for toys. One time we visited a cousin in Arnprior, who owned a neighborhood store. He gave us hundreds of wrappers, which I redeemed for a football.”

Recreation: Toys

“We had a variety of toys. Toy sailboats and paddle-wheelers, which were usually home-made. Spinning tops, yo-yos, gyroscopes, Slinky, fireworks, button spinners, Plasticine modeling clay, Ouija talking board, kaleidoscope, View Master. Dad made me a magic lantern.

“There were some things that every small boy had from time to time: cap gun, a water pistol, pea shooter, slingshot and a pocket knife, or jackknife. They broke or got lost, so we had a number of them. We would make Tommy guns out of wood (there was lots of waste wood from nearby construction sites) and play ‘Commandos.’ The toys from Japan were of poor quality and did not last long. Friction cars were popular. One of my favorite toys was a friction-driven flint sparker, which was fascinating to work in the dark, at night. Toys were simple, like jacks, paddle-ball, and pick-up-sticks. Some wind-up toy cars. The only electric toy I recall is an electric train.

“There weren’t many battery-operated toys. A few, but they soon broke, often because the batteries leaked and ruined them. We played some with flashlights. During the war, flashlights were dark green with the light pointed at a ninety-degree angle from the handle.

“When I was quite young, toy cars were made of metal, solid rubber, or wood. Later, plastic toys came along. They were sorry replacements. We made toy farm sets and service stations out of cardboard kits. The girls had tea sets, dolls, doll houses and dress-up paper dolls. We had coloring books and sets of crayons in eight colors. The boys played with lead soldiers – we called them tin soldiers, but they were made of lead. Nannie and Granddad gave me several sets. Back then you could buy sets of period soldiers at Fort Henry. Probably not anymore. The lead, you know.

“Brand-name toys such as Tonka toys were out of our price range, but we had a few Matchbox cars. A fire engine with detachable ladders, and a Texaco fire-chief helmet. Dad had a pair of binoculars from The Jockey Club in Paris. We were given a number of kaleidoscopes and a couple of music boxes. Someone in the family had an antique stereoscopic viewer, with a lot of pictures. I was given a Sawyer’s View Master 3-D stereoscopic viewer, and can still recall the reel, Buzz Sawyer Goes to the Moon. You can arouse a lot of imagination with just seven three-dimensional color slides.

“When very young, we were given wooden building blocks with letters on them, Lincoln logs, Tinkertoy construction sets, hammer-and-peg, and Meccano sets. The Meccano set did not do much for me. I could build representations of things, but they were not functional and not esthetically pleasing. We enjoyed solving metal wire puzzles, interlocking wooden puzzles and hidden-coin boxes. We made paper airplanes and, once in a while, papier mâché constructions. Nannie and Granddad gave me an operating toy steam engine once. It ran on Sterno fuel. It was a beautiful machine, in shiny brass. They also gave me a large jigsaw puzzle of a clipper ship. It took a while to assemble it, since the pieces were all of white sails or ocean blue. I found it to be tedious, and did few other jigsaw puzzles after that. For one birthday I received a chemistry set, which was completely useless. Dad built us a push-cart once (soap-box racer, orange-crate racer) using a peck-size fruit basket and wagon wheels.

“We made balsa-wood airplane models from kits, such as Testors and Comet. Plastic toys were just coming in. Nannie and Granddad gave me a plastic kit of the Titanic. It took some time to assemble, but I did not enjoy it. I enjoyed the balsa-wood model airplanes that required some skill in cutting, fitting, gluing, sanding and painting. The plastic models required only gluing, and I did not assemble any more of those.

“Tattoos were considered low-class back then, but nonpermanent decalcomania, or ‘transfers’ as we called them, were popular. We got the decals as free toys in Cracker-Jack boxes. Taffy apples were a special treat, once in a while.”

Nature

“There were a lot of fireflies back then. Sometimes we would catch them in glass bottles for a while. I don’t see fireflies any more. And dragonflies. I have not seen one of them in years.

“In the summers, there were thousands of Monarch butterflies everywhere, both at Consecon and in Kingston. Leopard frogs were ubiquitous. Not many garter snakes. You could often find them in the garden. On the way to school, you would see pollywogs in many puddles at the side of the road. Every home had a ‘Victory Garden’ in the back yard. They had been started during the war, but continued long afterward. They included all the standard vegetables, plus a few not-so-standard, such as beets, parsnips and rhubarb. Parsnips were popular because you can leave them in the ground until the frosts come, and they do not rot.

“We didn’t use a lot of insecticide back then, although sometimes we sprayed the garden plants with DDT insecticide, using a hand-pump sprayer. We had large green tomato worms, and caterpillars in a variety of colors. Lots of apples contained apple worms. It was fun to see your sister bite into an apple with a worm in it.

“There were apple trees and elderberry bushes along the way to school, and raspberry bushes in the fields just north of our development. The taste of wild strawberries I will never forget. In summer there were lots of wildflowers: mustard, goldenrod, white daisies, blue daisies, trilliums in the forests. A few crabapple trees.

“Climbing roses on trellises and rose arbors were popular.

“Dad would pick wild mushrooms and puffballs in the woods, and cook them. It upset Mother a lot that we might get poisoned, and so he stopped doing this.

“When we moved to the United States, we left everything behind, except what we could pack in the trunk of our 1942 Oldsmobile – Dad’s tools and our clothes.”

George stopped speaking, and was silent for a few moments. “Well, that’s an overview of the way things were in this area in the 1940s.”

“Very good,” Joel said, “I enjoyed hearing that very much. I knew a few of the basic facts about our family history, but almost none of the details. It is interesting that we have relatives all over Canada – the Maritime Provinces, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba and British Columbia – and in northeastern United States as well. Also, that our roots in North America extend back in both the United States and Canada before those countries even existed.”

“Yes,” agreed George, “our family has a history here that predates both the United States and Canada.”

“One part of the story that I found particularly interesting,” Joel commented, “was the exodus of so many people – United Empire Loyalists and Indians – from the Colonies to Canada at the time of the Colonial Revolution. I was initially puzzled about the bond between our ancestors and the Indians. I understand that now. They both left a lot behind.”

“Yes,” said George, “the Revolution is often simply depicted as British troops fighting the Colonists. That is not an accurate characterization. It is not generally realized that the Revolution very much involved Rebel Colonists fighting Loyalist Colonists under the direction of British officers.

“When the British lost the war, the treaties that established Indian reservations in what was now the United States were no longer honored. The Indians were dispossessed of large reservations. In response to their plight, the British granted them land in Canada, but it was far smaller than what they had before.”

From the Wikipedia article on Iroquois, George read, “Many of the Iroquois migrated to Canada, forced out of New York because of hostility to the British allies in the aftermath of a fierce war. Those remaining in New York were required to live mostly on reservations. In 1784, a total of 6,000 Iroquois faced 240,000 New Yorkers, with land-hungry New Englanders poised to migrate west. ‘Oneidas alone, who were only 600 strong, owned six million acres, or about 2.4 million hectares. Iroquoia was a land rush waiting to happen.’ By the War of 1812, the Iroquois had lost control of considerable territory.”

“I did not realize that,” Joel remarked.

“So,” Joel continued, “I believe that I have an idea of how things were here in the 1940s. How have they changed?”

George cleared his throat. “Well, with respect to the environment, which is your primary concern, they haven’t changed for the better. The Eastman Kodak factory on the New York side of Lake Ontario dumped a lot of mercury into the Lake. It ruined the fishing. You could not eat any fish from the Lake. No perch, no sunfish, no bass, no pike, no pickerel – nothing. They say that you can eat a little now, but not much.

“A blight introduced in the early twentieth century destroyed almost all of the American chestnut trees in North America. There were about four billion chestnut trees in North America before, now there are almost none. Chestnut trees were everywhere. Dutch elm disease has destroyed many elm trees.”

George pulled up the Wikipedia article on chestnut blight, and Joel read, “It is estimated that in some places, such as the Appalachian Mountains, one in every four hardwoods was an American chestnut. Mature trees often grew straight and branch-free for 50 feet and could grow up to 100 feet tall with a trunk diameter of 14 feet at a few feet above ground level. The reddish-brown wood was lightweight, soft, easy to split, very resistant to decay; and it did not warp or shrink. For three centuries many barns and homes near the Appalachian Mountains were made from American chestnut. Because of its resistance to decay, industries throughout the region used wood from the American chestnut for posts, poles, piling, railroad ties, and split-rail fences. Its straight-grained wood was ideal for building furniture and caskets. The fruit that fell to the ground was an important cash crop and food source. The bark and wood were rich in tannic acid, which provided tannins for use in the tanning of leather. Many native animals fed on chestnuts, and chestnuts were used for livestock feed, which kept the cost of raising livestock low.”

George continued, “The Bakelite factory on the west side of Belleville was a catastrophe. Large amounts of highly toxic chemicals were dumped on the grounds. It is still an environmental disaster area.”

“What is Bakelite?” Joel asked.

“Bakelite is a very hard plastic, which does not conduct electricity. The Bakelite Thermosets Ltd building was erected in 1947 in Belleville – on the Bay of Quinte west of the Belleville Hospital. They mainly manufactured electric power-line insulators, resistors, electrical plugs, radios, kitchen appliances, plates and many other things. The hard plastic ashtrays you saw in the 1940s and 1950s were likely made of Bakelite.”

George looked up the Wikipedia article on Bakelite, and Joel read the introduction:

“Bakelite, sometimes spelled Baekelite, or polyoxybenzylmethylenglycolanhydride was the first plastic made from synthetic components. It is a thermosetting phenol formaldehyde resin, formed from a condensation reaction of phenol with formaldehyde. It was developed by the Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland in Yonkers, New York, in 1907.

“Bakelite was patented on December 7, 1909. The creation of a synthetic plastic was revolutionary for its electrical nonconductivity and heat-resistant properties in electrical insulators, radio and telephone casings and such diverse products as kitchenware, jewelry, pipe stems, children's toys, and firearms.

“In recent years the ‘retro’ appeal of old Bakelite products has made them collectible.”

Joel read part of another article, which told that the plant operated for almost 50 years, until it was shut down in 1990. The land had been used to dump chemical waste, and was highly contaminated with toxic chemicals, including polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

“I believe that Kingston may have fared better than Belleville environmentally. The locomotive plant is gone. Alcan and DuPont are small. The city dump on Division Street is gone. Kingston has grown some since the 1940s. Then, it was a town of about 50,000, now it is several times that. All of the fields that I roamed are covered with houses.

“Many places are about the way they were before. Fort Henry, Queens University. The Kingston Penitentiary is now a tourist attraction. The Kingston Locks, Rideau Canal, The Thousand Islands, Wolfe Island. They are all still fine. Abbey Dawn is gone. The frogs are gone. The Monarch butterflies are gone. The once-ubiquitous chestnut trees are gone. Elm trees are gone from many places. The sea lamprey decimated indigenous fish species in the Great Lakes in the 1930s and 1940, but no one is really sure how they got there. The Aborigines hunted the Canadian bison to extinction, but they are being reintroduced in a few places. The hardwoods used for fine furniture, such as walnut and cherry, are hard to find.

“We are still destroying the prairie at a fast pace.” George showed Joel a snippet from an article about prairie grasslands on The Nature of Things website: “Some generous and out-of-date estimates say that Canada has roughly 25 per cent of its native grassland remaining, the rest of it lost to row-crop agriculture, though urban sprawl is responsible for a small portion of the damage, too. Those who would like to resist any restrictions on plowing will insist that no one plows much prairie anymore, but the data shows otherwise: it’s been reported that from 1990 to 2015, Saskatchewan alone lost more than 3.3 million acres (about 1,335,462 hectares) of native grassland. In the U.S., The Nature Conservancy estimates that over the past two and a half decades the nation has lost 25 million acres of grassland.”

“By the way,” George added, “you may be interested in this picture. It is a picture of a bison on the Canadian prairie. Wilfred brought it back from his visit out West. He also brough back some oil paintings and a samovar that he got from the Doukhobors. I had those items for a while, but lost them somewhere along the way.”