Global Climate Change is occurring. Projections of the extent of the impact that it may have on the human species as well as life as we know it on Earth cannot at present be made with any degree of accuracy. It could range from the extinction of the human species and that of all life on Earth to the survival of the human species and some others through the adoption of skillful strategic responses. Whatever the outcome in the long term, a period of extreme destruction and painful adjustment lasting into several millennia of evolutionary eras as the climate seeks its own new equilibrium is certain.

Do we throw up our hands in despair, or do we link together scientists, academicians, researchers, technological experts and all those who dare to hope, identify ecological niches in which on the basis of our current knowledge we think that life is likely to be able to survive the storms ahead and set up survival communities made up of those willing to accept the challenges of survival and work towards the dedication of all available resources towards life’s evolution through and beyond human being and towards its universal spread.

This concept paper is an outline of a proposal for such a response to the current context and an invitation to join and participate therein.



Basic Premise:

The human species has to deal with the challenges presented by Rapid Resource Depletion (RRD), Pollution and Global Climate Change (P&GCC), Global Monetary Collapse (GMC) and the increasing incredibility of the Growth Model of Development (GMD).

All four of these challenges have to be responded to simultaneously. How ever sophisticated our responses may be, there is a very real probability that the continued supporting of a human population of eight billion individuals is unlikely to be possible. The actual number of individuals likely to be supported by the planetary ecosystems in their currently depleted state is currently impossible to predict accurately.

What can be foreseen is a process of contraction that reduces the human population to a sustainable number of individuals. The nature of such a contraction is also unforeseeable beyond the fact that the abovementioned four factors are likely to play a major role in this process.

The human species has a clear choice. It can slide into contraction without knowing what is happening or it can consciously face this process with all the resources it is able to muster with the objective of ensuring the survival of its species.

Not all human individuals may be able to understand this and it is impossible to bring the entire eight billion individuals of the species to a level of awareness where they can accept this situation and respond to it. Those who do understand what is happening and what is likely to happen however can respond.

Those most likely to accept the need to respond are in the first instance those scientists, academicians, technologists and independent thinkers who are able to accept that such a process of adjustment has already begun and as such will run its course regardless of our responses leaving us with only the option of attempting to mitigate its effects and to attempt to ensure the survival of the human species and as many other forms of life as is possible.

In the second instance those who have already been affected by events of an unprecedented nature such as floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, and fires may agree to join such attempts because they have been displaced from their economic and ecological niches and know that they cannot reach the levels of comfort they once enjoyed. These people who have been affected, because they do not necessarily understand the scientific basis of events that are occurring are likely to present as a volatile horde who will have to be carefully guided into constructive actions lest they become destructive in their attempts to secure their own survival in whatever way possible. Hopefully their experiences will render them amenable to the acceptance of new ways of living that may in time generate a new and more sustainable civilization.


Response:

Designing and setting up “Survival Communities”

Objective:
To ensure that those who have the perceptual capacity, knowledge and technical know how required by the human species in order to respond to the and processes that have been triggered as well as those with the strategic competence required to guide the human species into taking the actions required for its survival, are positioned in ecological niches selected for their anticipated ability to facilitate the survival of humans and other life forms and technologically equipped to continue their work while remaining in communication with such survival communities across the face of Earth for as long as possible and hopefully throughout the transition period and to the successful re generation of the human species at sustainable level in the distant future.

These Survival Communities will also gear themselves to train people in survival techniques and show them how to build the kind of social structures and lifestyles that facilitate survival in adverse conditions and will also accept the responsibility of advising all individual members of the human species as to what is happening and how they can best respond.

Presentation:
They will present as research institutions sponsored by the “International Community” or as “Civil Society Survival Initiatives”.

Size:
Communities may be as small as 2 people or as large as they are able to successfully organize themselves but in general we expect them to be around 12 persons in size.

Location:
They may be rural or urban or wilderness based.

Technology:
They will be equipped with Internet connectivity, will maintain rotated stocks of medicine and food for as long as this is possible, will be powered by solar energy and any other viable non fossil fuel source and they will shift to non fossil fuel based transport as soon as possible.


Generating the “Global Network”

These communities will be linked up globally using technologies for as long as such technologies are still available within which time other more advanced means of communication may hopefully be discovered and spread widely.

Planetary Guidance
This global network will hopefully be able to perform the task of planetary guidance which may lead to the regeneration of the planetary eco systems that we have destroyed and also guide the human species into new technologies as well as reconfigurations of the existing ones that can be sustained in the long term.

Guidance for survival
These communities will function as guidance mechanisms that provide responses and solutions that the human species may advance and implement in the face of critical situations and diffuse this knowledge and the related methodologies and technologies to human individuals within their sphere of influence.

Survival stores
The setting up of delivery systems by which human individuals and communities may purchase or otherwise access technologies, equipment, information and training that may be required to effectively respond to the processes that have been set in motion.

Survival Systems and Processes
These survival communities will make attempts to redesign and ensure the continuity of the following systems and processes:

• 1. Power Generation Systems
• 2. Communication Systems,
• 3. Agricultural Systems
• 4. Waste Recycling Systems
• 5. Transport systems,
• 6. Social Support Systems,
• 7. Training and Education Systems,
• 8. Health Systems,
• 9. Surgical and Medical Systems
• 10.Rapid Response Systems.

Psycho Social Interventions
These survival communities will guide the human species through the task of transforming all organizational structures from the existing hierarchical pyramids to networks that complement and collaborate with each other rather than compete.

Survival Technologies
These survival communities will research, develop and deploy any technologies that use each others wastes as raw materials for the end produce they generate as well as:

Wind powered energy generation and production units.

Solar powered energy generation units.

Bio powered production units and transport systems.

They will also look at how human energy can be captured, stored and converted when necessary.

Survival Objectives
The continued evolution of life on Earth through and beyond Human Being and its universal spread.


Selection process
Members of the scientific community as well as others who understand what is happening and who are willing to accept it and respond to it.


Anticipated outcome
These communities linking together through the internet for as long as the net survives to form a global network of human minds that together may be able to perceive what none can perceive on their own and hence find ways to move the species forward through the volatility ahead and ensure the survival and conscious evolution of the human species and its regeneration over the millennia of eras to come.