ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the dynamics and discourses of collapse to argue that modern hubris, the hubris that indicates contemporary industrialized societies cannot perish or catastrophically change, is misplaced. It argues that many perspectives tell us people should take the prospects of continuity for current world populations, in and out of industrialized countries, seriously. Statistics have a powerful way of focusing discussions on the date on peak oil rather than understanding that the date does not matter; and, if someone predicts one date and then the collapse does not come at that specific time, the whole lot of concern for sustainable dynamics goes with it, castigated as another prophecy failed. But the dynamics of oil require little future predicting, it will become and is becoming exhausted. The counter-movement denies this history, dynamics, and logic, actually reversing it to say that the use of resources to make capital and protect us from nature is what makes civilizations thrive.
