Chanting “La, la, la, I can’t hear you”

That latter point, I think, sums up the tragedy of William Catton’s career. He knew, and could explain with great clarity, why industrialism would bring about its own downfall, and what could be done to salvage something from its wreck. That knowledge, however, was not enough to make things happen; only a few people ever listened, most of them promptly plugged their ears and started chanting “La, la, la, I can’t hear you” once Reagan made that fashionable, and the actions that might have spared all of us a vast amount of misery never happened. When I spoke to him in 2011, he was perfectly aware that his life’s work had done essentially nothing to turn industrial society aside from its rush toward the abyss. That’s got to be a bitter thing to contemplate in your final hours, and I hope his thoughts were on something else last month as the night closed in at last. - JMG

The world is collapsing, and all you do is chanting “La, la, la, I can’t hear you”.

There are four possible outcomes for the ongoing collapse:

• A stabilisation at 1800 century technological level (Paradise) (possible outcome according to Greer)
• A global Dark Ages (the first) (likely outcome according to Greer) 
• A global Stone Ages (the second) (possible outcome according to Tverberg)
• Human extinction (the first and the last) (likely outcome according to Tverberg)

Oyvind, so? Of course the purveyors of crackpot optimism are going to reject what I have to say — after all, look at all this vaporware they’ve imagined! The proof of the pudding, though, is in the eating, and despite all the constantly shifting claims about this or that or the other miracle technology that’s sure to save us all, the decline and fall of industrial civilization is still following the familiar trajectory. – JMG

Is there anything more annoying than all these “La, la, la, I can’t hear you” - people?

These crackpot optimists. Completely arrogant and ignorant as they are!

Dark clouds gathering before the first global dark ages.