“...we are headed for major societal disruption within the next 5 years”
May 8, 2024 8:07 AM Subscribe
Guardian: World’s top climate scientists expect global heating to blast past 1.5C target. “Hundreds of the world’s leading climate scientists expect global temperatures to rise to at least 2.5C (4.5F) above preindustrial levels this century, blasting past internationally agreed targets and causing catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet, an exclusive Guardian survey has revealed. Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C (5.4F). Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C (2.7F) limit would be met.” [Daily sea surface temperature]
So, looks like we are well and truly fucked. But, hey, my stock portfolio is doing great!
posted by nofundy at 8:16 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
posted by nofundy at 8:16 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
Well, you're fucked if you're poor, and that's why they don't do shit about it. When I think about the bits of humanity that will be allowed to survive the next several hundred years, I do not envy those living in a world made only by and for our worst, with our best all long dead.
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:21 AM on May 8 [16 favorites]
posted by GoblinHoney at 8:21 AM on May 8 [16 favorites]
Also, if you're in the US and curious how your community views climate change, Yale has put together a fact-sheet generator that lets you drill down by state, county, and/or congressional district.
posted by mittens at 8:22 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
posted by mittens at 8:22 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
IDK if I can go read that now.
I've been reading for years now how the people who sit on the IPCC are privately convinced that political leadership will do nothing and there will be gigadeath catastrophes and global ecological collapse.
So I'm just taking this item as a "yep we're still on course for that" and going on with my day.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:32 AM on May 8 [15 favorites]
I've been reading for years now how the people who sit on the IPCC are privately convinced that political leadership will do nothing and there will be gigadeath catastrophes and global ecological collapse.
So I'm just taking this item as a "yep we're still on course for that" and going on with my day.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 8:32 AM on May 8 [15 favorites]
It's so awesome to be part of a suicidal culture that's running top speed off of a cliff. Must be something like how Wile E. Coyote feels.
posted by evilDoug at 8:39 AM on May 8 [5 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 8:39 AM on May 8 [5 favorites]
“[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted."
This was apparent in very recent footage of Lula + crew touring over Rio Grande do Sol, and it seems inevitable that as the number of catastrophes increase, many/most if not all leaders will find it difficult to provide the help needed for restoration. And the impact / consequences of that ... well, one can only imagine or maybe prefer not to imagine, depending on the person.
posted by clandestiny's child at 8:41 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
This was apparent in very recent footage of Lula + crew touring over Rio Grande do Sol, and it seems inevitable that as the number of catastrophes increase, many/most if not all leaders will find it difficult to provide the help needed for restoration. And the impact / consequences of that ... well, one can only imagine or maybe prefer not to imagine, depending on the person.
posted by clandestiny's child at 8:41 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
welp, no need to cut back on my booze consumption.
seriously, though, I do believe we must still keep trying, primarily by demanding that our governments DO SOMETHING.
posted by supermedusa at 8:50 AM on May 8 [9 favorites]
seriously, though, I do believe we must still keep trying, primarily by demanding that our governments DO SOMETHING.
posted by supermedusa at 8:50 AM on May 8 [9 favorites]
@mittens That tool doesn't seem to work for me - it just keeps opening new tabs in Chrome that just have the same "generate a fact sheet" form. I'm happy to help troubleshoot outside of this discussion.
posted by ElKevbo at 8:51 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
posted by ElKevbo at 8:51 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
I've been reading for years now how the people who sit on the IPCC are privately convinced that political leadership will do nothing and there will be gigadeath catastrophes and global ecological collapse.
This is what I've always believed, because our system simply isn't set up to do the things necessary - power is distributed wrong for this. There's no way to have a relatively "benevolent" tyranny, there's no way for local authorities to stand up to big money at higher levels of government and among big corporations. It would be extremely difficult to manage if we had either a powerful benevolent government or empowered communities that could make democratic local decisions (granted, some of those would be bad, but even bad decisions wouldn't have such huge ramifications). Lacking both, there's no way that anything will be done.
All along, I've wondered why scientists possibly, possibly believed that the kazillionaires would change their ways and thought that seemed very naive, but apparently they were just doing happy talk out of political prudence, which at least makes a kind of sense.
posted by Frowner at 8:55 AM on May 8 [15 favorites]
This is what I've always believed, because our system simply isn't set up to do the things necessary - power is distributed wrong for this. There's no way to have a relatively "benevolent" tyranny, there's no way for local authorities to stand up to big money at higher levels of government and among big corporations. It would be extremely difficult to manage if we had either a powerful benevolent government or empowered communities that could make democratic local decisions (granted, some of those would be bad, but even bad decisions wouldn't have such huge ramifications). Lacking both, there's no way that anything will be done.
All along, I've wondered why scientists possibly, possibly believed that the kazillionaires would change their ways and thought that seemed very naive, but apparently they were just doing happy talk out of political prudence, which at least makes a kind of sense.
posted by Frowner at 8:55 AM on May 8 [15 favorites]
Maybe if they gave me another bin to sort my trash into, things will be fine.
posted by Dark Messiah at 9:09 AM on May 8 [18 favorites]
posted by Dark Messiah at 9:09 AM on May 8 [18 favorites]
A bin for billionaires?
posted by advicepig at 9:12 AM on May 8 [17 favorites]
posted by advicepig at 9:12 AM on May 8 [17 favorites]
Total destruction, the only solution
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 9:13 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 9:13 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
demanding that our governments DO SOMETHING
Most of them are far more likely to waste their time and your taxes on trying to stop China from doing something first.
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
Most of them are far more likely to waste their time and your taxes on trying to stop China from doing something first.
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
Glad I never had kids.
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:05 AM on May 8 [15 favorites]
posted by Capt. Renault at 10:05 AM on May 8 [15 favorites]
This makes me sick to my stomach. My kids are 2 and 4. What have we done?
posted by samthemander at 10:06 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
posted by samthemander at 10:06 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
I feel like I have heard buzz, in the past, that even the IPCC reports and public discourse, is quite watered down from what a lot of climate scientists *really* think is coming, either due to politics or concerns they will be disregarded as extremists. which is pretty terrifying, cause the watered down stuff is bad enough.
posted by supermedusa at 10:15 AM on May 8 [5 favorites]
posted by supermedusa at 10:15 AM on May 8 [5 favorites]
We still have to live on this planet. There's no alternative. I thought this quote was helpful to sort out a perspective that is eyes wide open, but also not completely hopeless.
Peter Cox, at the University of Exeter, UK, said: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5C – it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2C, which we might well do.”
posted by keep_evolving at 10:20 AM on May 8 [9 favorites]
Peter Cox, at the University of Exeter, UK, said: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5C – it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2C, which we might well do.”
posted by keep_evolving at 10:20 AM on May 8 [9 favorites]
I love my two kids (9 and 13), but I feel awful about the future that is unfolding. Voting and donating what I can the right way hasn't helped at all.
posted by Dalekdad at 10:20 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
posted by Dalekdad at 10:20 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
Most people in my life seem pretty oblivious to this, which seems incredible to me. I'm aware of all the arguments that say personal action is pointless without systemic change, and I think they're valid arguments.
I still find it really depressing that, just off the top of my head, I know: two friends who are currently traveling in Portugal, two friends who regularly fly to England and Mexico, a nephew and his girlfriend who flew to Japan last year and are currently in Vietnam, a sister-in-law and her husband who flew to England last year and are planning a trip to Italy, a brother who bought a motor home the size of a city block, and most frighteningly thirteen nieces and nephews who between them have thirteen kids and two pregnancies (and counting).
And these are not ignorant or stupid people. These are people who, at some point, have chosen not to look at what's happening.
Total destruction, the only solution.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 10:21 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
I still find it really depressing that, just off the top of my head, I know: two friends who are currently traveling in Portugal, two friends who regularly fly to England and Mexico, a nephew and his girlfriend who flew to Japan last year and are currently in Vietnam, a sister-in-law and her husband who flew to England last year and are planning a trip to Italy, a brother who bought a motor home the size of a city block, and most frighteningly thirteen nieces and nephews who between them have thirteen kids and two pregnancies (and counting).
And these are not ignorant or stupid people. These are people who, at some point, have chosen not to look at what's happening.
Total destruction, the only solution.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 10:21 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
Voting and donating what I can the right way hasn't helped at all.
QFT
posted by Reverend John at 10:23 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
QFT
posted by Reverend John at 10:23 AM on May 8 [4 favorites]
Looking at my county which is ferociously "Yes it's real", only 48% say "it will harm me personally" after almost 80% say "it will harm future generations". With the current situation/news, I think these people are woefully unprepared.
I mean, so am I, but ... I won't be surprised when (ok, "if") it happens to disrupt my life. Won't be happy, but won't be surprised. maybe that's cuz a lot of them are boomers on their way out. IDK. But it seems low for an otherwise very high "we're fucked" stance. That's us bleeding hearts.
And until people get that 'corporations' are NOT going to do jack shit unless government compels them, it won't matter that almost everyone thinks the fix is on corps, not government, which seems to be the case in both the county I grew up in and the one I reside in now. Are there any people who say "government should be more involved in the response than corps"? California? Time to look I guess.
posted by symbioid at 10:24 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
I mean, so am I, but ... I won't be surprised when (ok, "if") it happens to disrupt my life. Won't be happy, but won't be surprised. maybe that's cuz a lot of them are boomers on their way out. IDK. But it seems low for an otherwise very high "we're fucked" stance. That's us bleeding hearts.
And until people get that 'corporations' are NOT going to do jack shit unless government compels them, it won't matter that almost everyone thinks the fix is on corps, not government, which seems to be the case in both the county I grew up in and the one I reside in now. Are there any people who say "government should be more involved in the response than corps"? California? Time to look I guess.
posted by symbioid at 10:24 AM on May 8 [1 favorite]
And these are not ignorant or stupid people. These are people who, at some point, have chosen not to look at what's happening.
It seems pretty clear that most people care but don't *really* care until / unless the threat comes directly through their front door, right? How many mothers joined MADD prior to being directly affected ? I'd like to think many mothers had the imagination to realize it could be them next, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's not that many.
Over the past weeks, Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, Dubai, and Texas (perhaps more?) have had catastrophic rain events that are often 'unprecedented' and much of asia experiencing 'unprecedented' wet bulb index readings. Yet watching US news, you'd think that climate is just another story among *so many* to cover... what is Tom Brady doing ? What's up with that Drake fight anyhow ! ? what about the feel good story about the puppy to end on a bright note ?
posted by clandestiny's child at 10:52 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
It seems pretty clear that most people care but don't *really* care until / unless the threat comes directly through their front door, right? How many mothers joined MADD prior to being directly affected ? I'd like to think many mothers had the imagination to realize it could be them next, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's not that many.
Over the past weeks, Kenya, Brazil, Indonesia, Dubai, and Texas (perhaps more?) have had catastrophic rain events that are often 'unprecedented' and much of asia experiencing 'unprecedented' wet bulb index readings. Yet watching US news, you'd think that climate is just another story among *so many* to cover... what is Tom Brady doing ? What's up with that Drake fight anyhow ! ? what about the feel good story about the puppy to end on a bright note ?
posted by clandestiny's child at 10:52 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
In 2014, we were on trend for a 3.9 degree increase under the "current actions" scenario (first graph here). We're now on trend for a 2.7 degree increase.
That is bad, but 3.9 degrees would be much worse. Policies are having a positive effect, though clearly not nearly enough.
The world is not going to end, but there will be much avoidable suffering. Every policy that mitigates climate change will avoid some of that suffering.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:55 AM on May 8 [26 favorites]
That is bad, but 3.9 degrees would be much worse. Policies are having a positive effect, though clearly not nearly enough.
The world is not going to end, but there will be much avoidable suffering. Every policy that mitigates climate change will avoid some of that suffering.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 10:55 AM on May 8 [26 favorites]
The world is not going to end, but there will be much avoidable suffering.
I admire Hannah Ritchie for wanting to respond to the state of things with hope and optimism, it is important to try to respond in any way other than hopelessness. But I do worry that she's overlooked some of the more worrisome aspects of what we're facing, such as ocean acidification and also the threats of feedback loops that are already set in motion from methane emissions, outbreaks of new diseases, to name just a few ....
Optimism is important but we need to start with an honest picture of the multiple challenges we're facing and a systematic way to prioritize many of these threats over all else until we can call an end to the imminent crisis / crises we are now facing.
posted by clandestiny's child at 11:06 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
I admire Hannah Ritchie for wanting to respond to the state of things with hope and optimism, it is important to try to respond in any way other than hopelessness. But I do worry that she's overlooked some of the more worrisome aspects of what we're facing, such as ocean acidification and also the threats of feedback loops that are already set in motion from methane emissions, outbreaks of new diseases, to name just a few ....
Optimism is important but we need to start with an honest picture of the multiple challenges we're facing and a systematic way to prioritize many of these threats over all else until we can call an end to the imminent crisis / crises we are now facing.
posted by clandestiny's child at 11:06 AM on May 8 [3 favorites]
what about the feel good story about the puppy to end on a bright note ?
Narrator: the puppy story was not good.
posted by mazola at 11:07 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
Narrator: the puppy story was not good.
posted by mazola at 11:07 AM on May 8 [6 favorites]
Excerpts from the Guardian article:
disastrous results for humanity
catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet
every fraction of a degree avoided would reduce human suffering
massive preparations to protect people
extremely worried about the costs in human lives
substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south
Amongst the depressingly small percentage of people who are even thinking about this issue, there's a visceral feeling that this is something that's being done to humanity, with some side effects that are harming the natural world.
Let's not lie to ourselves. This catastrophe was caused by human beings, but its effects are felt by all species. Altering the details of how we dominate the natural world (i.e. shifting from fossil fuels to renewables) isn't going to solve the underlying problem. Until we see ourselves as a small part of a global system, rather than as "stewards", we're bound to fail.
Most of the efforts to ameliorate the effects of climate change are focusing on saving humanity. Unfortunately, we're the problem, not the solution.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 11:17 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
disastrous results for humanity
catastrophic consequences for humanity and the planet
every fraction of a degree avoided would reduce human suffering
massive preparations to protect people
extremely worried about the costs in human lives
substantial pain and suffering for the people of the global south
Amongst the depressingly small percentage of people who are even thinking about this issue, there's a visceral feeling that this is something that's being done to humanity, with some side effects that are harming the natural world.
Let's not lie to ourselves. This catastrophe was caused by human beings, but its effects are felt by all species. Altering the details of how we dominate the natural world (i.e. shifting from fossil fuels to renewables) isn't going to solve the underlying problem. Until we see ourselves as a small part of a global system, rather than as "stewards", we're bound to fail.
Most of the efforts to ameliorate the effects of climate change are focusing on saving humanity. Unfortunately, we're the problem, not the solution.
posted by Joan Rivers of Babylon at 11:17 AM on May 8 [2 favorites]
'major societal disruption within the next 5 years”
Yeah nah. It's happening already. My mate lost his house to flooding in Auckland last year, in a once-in-a-hundred year storm.
That summer Auckland had three "once-in-a-hundred year storms".
posted by happyinmotion at 11:43 AM on May 8 [18 favorites]
Yeah nah. It's happening already. My mate lost his house to flooding in Auckland last year, in a once-in-a-hundred year storm.
That summer Auckland had three "once-in-a-hundred year storms".
posted by happyinmotion at 11:43 AM on May 8 [18 favorites]
Well, you're fucked if you're poor, and that's why they don't do shit about it. When I think about the bits of humanity that will be allowed to survive the next several hundred years, I do not envy those living in a world made only by and for our worst, with our best all long dead.
The rich are preparing for catastrophe but what happens in that bunker when the warlord you hired decides he's King Dick from now on?
Wealth is only a method of control when THE REST OF SOCIETY RECOGNIZES THAT WEALTH. The only reason that a billionaire has >$1 billion in wealth or even that $20 is $20 is because the US government basically threatens me with prison if I don't pay my taxes using paper notes that says $20 is worth $20 of goods and services. Short of that, what do these immensely wealthy people think they're going to do if society breaks down? Without the rule of law there's no government to enforce property rights. There's no government enforcing a store of value. What you're worth is what you have and you can't have every thing in your proximity under your custody at all times. That's why we have things like property rights and stores of value in the first fucking place. I don't need to keep 50 years of grain in a granary that I defend with robots because we have a society so I can keep my store of value liquid and buy a loaf of bread.
It's so stupid.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:59 AM on May 8 [13 favorites]
The rich are preparing for catastrophe but what happens in that bunker when the warlord you hired decides he's King Dick from now on?
Wealth is only a method of control when THE REST OF SOCIETY RECOGNIZES THAT WEALTH. The only reason that a billionaire has >$1 billion in wealth or even that $20 is $20 is because the US government basically threatens me with prison if I don't pay my taxes using paper notes that says $20 is worth $20 of goods and services. Short of that, what do these immensely wealthy people think they're going to do if society breaks down? Without the rule of law there's no government to enforce property rights. There's no government enforcing a store of value. What you're worth is what you have and you can't have every thing in your proximity under your custody at all times. That's why we have things like property rights and stores of value in the first fucking place. I don't need to keep 50 years of grain in a granary that I defend with robots because we have a society so I can keep my store of value liquid and buy a loaf of bread.
It's so stupid.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:59 AM on May 8 [13 favorites]
“How Anarchy Works” [53:25]—Andrewism, 01 May 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 12:24 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 12:24 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
I've been spending recent years trying to get academics to think and do stuff about the climate crisis. It's been tough work, as the overwhelming majority don't want to.
But I've been seeing more interest from some quarters: individual professors, traditional-age students, the rising number of sustainability officers. Architects, campus planners, and food service providers all get it. So over the next few years we'll hopefully see academia take some steps. I hope.
posted by doctornemo at 12:36 PM on May 8 [5 favorites]
But I've been seeing more interest from some quarters: individual professors, traditional-age students, the rising number of sustainability officers. Architects, campus planners, and food service providers all get it. So over the next few years we'll hopefully see academia take some steps. I hope.
posted by doctornemo at 12:36 PM on May 8 [5 favorites]
I still find it really depressing that, just off the top of my head, I know: two friends who are currently traveling in Portugal, two friends who regularly fly to England and Mexico, a nephew and his girlfriend who flew to Japan last year and are currently in Vietnam, a sister-in-law and her husband who flew to England last year and are planning a trip to Italy, a brother who bought a motor home the size of a city block, and most frighteningly thirteen nieces and nephews who between them have thirteen kids and two pregnancies (and counting).
Many many years ago, there was an article on passports and how most Americans didn't have them. It made the rounds of lefty-leaning blogs and the general consensus was that this meant Americans were hopelessly stupid and ignorant and experience-poor and how could they not want to fly to every country on Earth, what a bunch of fucking rubes.
Travel has been upheld as almost an obligation, certainly a right, of any educated, "worldly" person. It's right there in the word "worldly," actually. And this is just one example; so many environmentally destructive personal behaviors aren't things we do because we're just in denial or something it's because much more direct, intimate pressures than a looming, indistinct climate crisis are pushing us to do them.
Yeah we should all just be so strong and good that no social pressure can ever touch us, we should all be paragons of virtue and independent thought. I'm sure we'll get right on that.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:51 PM on May 8 [7 favorites]
Many many years ago, there was an article on passports and how most Americans didn't have them. It made the rounds of lefty-leaning blogs and the general consensus was that this meant Americans were hopelessly stupid and ignorant and experience-poor and how could they not want to fly to every country on Earth, what a bunch of fucking rubes.
Travel has been upheld as almost an obligation, certainly a right, of any educated, "worldly" person. It's right there in the word "worldly," actually. And this is just one example; so many environmentally destructive personal behaviors aren't things we do because we're just in denial or something it's because much more direct, intimate pressures than a looming, indistinct climate crisis are pushing us to do them.
Yeah we should all just be so strong and good that no social pressure can ever touch us, we should all be paragons of virtue and independent thought. I'm sure we'll get right on that.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:51 PM on May 8 [7 favorites]
Yeah we should all just be so strong and good that no social pressure can ever touch us, we should all be paragons of virtue and independent thought. I'm sure we'll get right on that.
And better yet, how those of us who chose not to have children were told how immature and selfish we were being.
posted by notoriety public at 1:17 PM on May 8 [9 favorites]
And better yet, how those of us who chose not to have children were told how immature and selfish we were being.
posted by notoriety public at 1:17 PM on May 8 [9 favorites]
these are not ignorant or stupid people. These are people who, at some point, have chosen not to look at what's happening.
With respect, while every little bit makes a difference, some people you know not having kids and not traveling wouldn't have the impact you're implying. And society at large isn't going to change its behavior easily, especially not in terms of having kids. These aren't things you can control, but they are things you can judge.
Having kids and occasional elective travel aren't the actions of uniformly unrepentant, uncaring people. And focusing on other people's life choices on a micro level over the environmental crimes of entire industries and governments is alienating and counterproductive, like yelling at people about properly separating their recycling when in reality, a lot of recycling is just dumped in landfills after all that careful organization.
Everyone needs to do better and consider their life choices, but the focus should be on the worst offenders, not everyone around you who you happen to see sinning. If shaming people worked to reduce harm (of any sort, really), we would live in a different world.
You might say, well, but we can't influence industry or governments, either. And if you did say that, you'd be right. The solution isn't waving your fist at everyone around you who does what you perceive to be the wrong things, though. The solution is making friends, discussing things you care about with them, and building coalitions, taking action together to change things. But that's a lot harder than judging people.
posted by limeonaire at 1:19 PM on May 8 [37 favorites]
With respect, while every little bit makes a difference, some people you know not having kids and not traveling wouldn't have the impact you're implying. And society at large isn't going to change its behavior easily, especially not in terms of having kids. These aren't things you can control, but they are things you can judge.
Having kids and occasional elective travel aren't the actions of uniformly unrepentant, uncaring people. And focusing on other people's life choices on a micro level over the environmental crimes of entire industries and governments is alienating and counterproductive, like yelling at people about properly separating their recycling when in reality, a lot of recycling is just dumped in landfills after all that careful organization.
Everyone needs to do better and consider their life choices, but the focus should be on the worst offenders, not everyone around you who you happen to see sinning. If shaming people worked to reduce harm (of any sort, really), we would live in a different world.
You might say, well, but we can't influence industry or governments, either. And if you did say that, you'd be right. The solution isn't waving your fist at everyone around you who does what you perceive to be the wrong things, though. The solution is making friends, discussing things you care about with them, and building coalitions, taking action together to change things. But that's a lot harder than judging people.
posted by limeonaire at 1:19 PM on May 8 [37 favorites]
"So, looks like we are well and truly fucked. But, hey, my stock portfolio is doing great!"
Are you long Greenland Real Real Estate?
posted by maloqueiro at 1:35 PM on May 8
Are you long Greenland Real Real Estate?
posted by maloqueiro at 1:35 PM on May 8
Prepping such as the very rich are in the midst of right now is only rational if the social order breaks down completely for a very short interval during which well over half of the global population dies.
From that point of view, not doing anything to ameliorate the effects of global warming or even acting to worsen them as much as they can get away with make perfect sense.
posted by jamjam at 1:44 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
From that point of view, not doing anything to ameliorate the effects of global warming or even acting to worsen them as much as they can get away with make perfect sense.
posted by jamjam at 1:44 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
I hate the travel conversation. I've never been to at least 10 countries I've desperately always wanted to go to, and you'd better fucking believe if I have the chance and can save up the money I'm flying there.
It's not a few individuals flying, it's not that asshole who has never recycled, it's not driving when you could have walked those 12 times.
It's not US that caused all this current and future suffering, its the fucking rich leaders of the world. And yes, the world won't end, but PEOPLE will end, and that's depressing as hell. I'm not going to crucify myself or others for wrenching some happiness out of this capitalist nightmare.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:50 PM on May 8 [18 favorites]
It's not a few individuals flying, it's not that asshole who has never recycled, it's not driving when you could have walked those 12 times.
It's not US that caused all this current and future suffering, its the fucking rich leaders of the world. And yes, the world won't end, but PEOPLE will end, and that's depressing as hell. I'm not going to crucify myself or others for wrenching some happiness out of this capitalist nightmare.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:50 PM on May 8 [18 favorites]
Rich countries will become fortresses dedicated to the worst possible treatment of the vast amounts of climate refugees. Billions of lives in the LICs and then the MICs will be treated as disposable, or even worse, as our country slides into autocracy. Small local disasters bring people together. Big unending ones will be used by the powers to demonize whomever is a convenient scapegoat.
While 2.7 is better than 3.9, what if it really does turn out to be 3.9, or even 5 like some of these highly qualified experts fear? Will that kill off oceanic plankton, the major generator of oxygen in our atmosphere?
Even if 'only' the civilization ending scenario, I agree with the Your Childhood Pet Rock above, the oligarchs think that they're somehow going to keep their 'stuff' when a bunch of psychotic, armed beyond belief militias come after them? After the ex-cops come to take their stuff? After the military comes to take their stuff? Yes. I'm sure the charismatic brilliance of Musk, Zuckerberg and all the other edgelords will win out.
I so desperately want to believe this won't happen, and that we'll have some sort of 'well planned out', ' endlessly compassionate to others' soft landing.... but, well, the powers in the world won't let that happen, and plenty want it to fail.
posted by WatTylerJr at 2:02 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
While 2.7 is better than 3.9, what if it really does turn out to be 3.9, or even 5 like some of these highly qualified experts fear? Will that kill off oceanic plankton, the major generator of oxygen in our atmosphere?
Even if 'only' the civilization ending scenario, I agree with the Your Childhood Pet Rock above, the oligarchs think that they're somehow going to keep their 'stuff' when a bunch of psychotic, armed beyond belief militias come after them? After the ex-cops come to take their stuff? After the military comes to take their stuff? Yes. I'm sure the charismatic brilliance of Musk, Zuckerberg and all the other edgelords will win out.
I so desperately want to believe this won't happen, and that we'll have some sort of 'well planned out', ' endlessly compassionate to others' soft landing.... but, well, the powers in the world won't let that happen, and plenty want it to fail.
posted by WatTylerJr at 2:02 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
Sometimes universities want to fly me out to talk about climate change and academia.
We live on the Atlantic seaboard, so I can instead train to some locals (New England, parts of the northeast, parts of the southeast). Otherwise... I'd like to train to, say, California, but the week of travel destroys my schedule. And traveling out of the country beyond Ontario and Quebec needs planes.
As an alternative, I give fee discounts to do a virtual presentation instead. Sometimes that works.
I really want more train access. Also Kim Stanley Robinson's airship renaissance, so long as it has WiFi.
posted by doctornemo at 2:51 PM on May 8 [11 favorites]
We live on the Atlantic seaboard, so I can instead train to some locals (New England, parts of the northeast, parts of the southeast). Otherwise... I'd like to train to, say, California, but the week of travel destroys my schedule. And traveling out of the country beyond Ontario and Quebec needs planes.
As an alternative, I give fee discounts to do a virtual presentation instead. Sometimes that works.
I really want more train access. Also Kim Stanley Robinson's airship renaissance, so long as it has WiFi.
posted by doctornemo at 2:51 PM on May 8 [11 favorites]
This is your regular reminder that aviation accounts for 2% of total greenhouse gas emissions and centering the discussion about climate change on this very small component of the total cause is a distraction from the real issue, which is that we keep extracting fossil carbon from the ground where it is safe. 24% of GHG comes from industrial uses. 18% from maintaining our homes and businesses. 6% is livestock. Forcing industry to reduce its usage of fossil fuels by 10% would have a greater impact than eliminating air travel entirely. The occasional air-travel vacation by middle class people is essentially irrelevant against these much larger sources. That isn't to say there is no value in choosing to refrain from air travel, from a personal ethical standpoint. But judging others for their air travel is very much missing the forest for the trees.
The solution to climate change is, in some sense, simple. Ban the extraction of fossil carbon. Leave it in the ground where it's supposed to be. The ultrarich could marshall their immense resources to make that a real possibility, if they chose to. They will not.
posted by biogeo at 3:04 PM on May 8 [46 favorites]
The solution to climate change is, in some sense, simple. Ban the extraction of fossil carbon. Leave it in the ground where it's supposed to be. The ultrarich could marshall their immense resources to make that a real possibility, if they chose to. They will not.
posted by biogeo at 3:04 PM on May 8 [46 favorites]
I do wonder where the “it doesn’t personally affect me” people live. In the US, the East and Gulf Coasts are regularly pounded by hurricanes, the Southwest is baking, with people getting burned by sidewalks and door handles, the West Coadt is suffering decorating fires, and the central states are having entire towns erased by tornadoes. I expect other countries can make similar assessments.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:11 PM on May 8 [4 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:11 PM on May 8 [4 favorites]
I can't read it. I'm already fighting too much despair, for my own life and the planet in general.
I keep seeing these things about how young people might sit out this election, because, while they hate Trump, they're just not enthusiastic for Biden. I want to grab them and scream in their faces, ARE YOU ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT FASCISM AND CLIMATE CATASTROPHE?! Yes, yes, Biden won't do enough of the right things. But Trump will do all of the wrong things, and he will leave this planet a ruin.
We have six months. Get out there and vote your asses off, at the very least.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:12 PM on May 8 [27 favorites]
I keep seeing these things about how young people might sit out this election, because, while they hate Trump, they're just not enthusiastic for Biden. I want to grab them and scream in their faces, ARE YOU ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT FASCISM AND CLIMATE CATASTROPHE?! Yes, yes, Biden won't do enough of the right things. But Trump will do all of the wrong things, and he will leave this planet a ruin.
We have six months. Get out there and vote your asses off, at the very least.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 3:12 PM on May 8 [27 favorites]
I do wonder where the “it doesn’t personally affect me” people live. In the US
Parts of the midwest, it seems.
(Check the series Extrapolations, which sees Miami evacuated to Duluth)
posted by doctornemo at 4:18 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
Parts of the midwest, it seems.
(Check the series Extrapolations, which sees Miami evacuated to Duluth)
posted by doctornemo at 4:18 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
centering the discussion about climate change on this very small component of the total cause is a distraction from the real issue
I can't speak for anyone else in the thread, but what you say doesn't apply to what I'm doing, nor to what a lot of people in the climate world are up to. We're talking about a civilizational transformation, which includes air travel *along with everything else*.
posted by doctornemo at 4:20 PM on May 8 [7 favorites]
I can't speak for anyone else in the thread, but what you say doesn't apply to what I'm doing, nor to what a lot of people in the climate world are up to. We're talking about a civilizational transformation, which includes air travel *along with everything else*.
posted by doctornemo at 4:20 PM on May 8 [7 favorites]
I keep seeing these things about how young people might sit out this election, because, while they hate Trump, they're just not enthusiastic for Biden.
All the young people I know have looked at the data, and the expectations provided by scientists, and the understanding that the only way this will change is if governments and the ultra-rich make it happen, and the recent history of said governments and ultra-rich people.
And basically every single one of them have said "okay well I guess we're fucked then." And so they are living their lives as if they expect that the world won't exist in 30 years.
I take that back. That's not true. A lot of them are saying "okay. I know we're all fucked in 30 years. What is something that is bad that is happening right now that I can do something about?" And so, for instance, many of them are on universities protesting about Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the US's involvement. And in general Biden and the rest of the US government is treating them like idiots and terrorists. So no, I don't think it's that they're just unenthusiastic about Biden. I think Biden has drawn a line in the Sand and told them they're on the wrong side when they know, they know in their hearts they are on the right side of History.
They know there's nothing they can do about climate change, but they could help to save lives today, and they're getting treated as enemy forces for it. If Biden wants to win over young people, he ought to think about not treating them that way.
posted by nushustu at 4:23 PM on May 8 [16 favorites]
All the young people I know have looked at the data, and the expectations provided by scientists, and the understanding that the only way this will change is if governments and the ultra-rich make it happen, and the recent history of said governments and ultra-rich people.
And basically every single one of them have said "okay well I guess we're fucked then." And so they are living their lives as if they expect that the world won't exist in 30 years.
I take that back. That's not true. A lot of them are saying "okay. I know we're all fucked in 30 years. What is something that is bad that is happening right now that I can do something about?" And so, for instance, many of them are on universities protesting about Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the US's involvement. And in general Biden and the rest of the US government is treating them like idiots and terrorists. So no, I don't think it's that they're just unenthusiastic about Biden. I think Biden has drawn a line in the Sand and told them they're on the wrong side when they know, they know in their hearts they are on the right side of History.
They know there's nothing they can do about climate change, but they could help to save lives today, and they're getting treated as enemy forces for it. If Biden wants to win over young people, he ought to think about not treating them that way.
posted by nushustu at 4:23 PM on May 8 [16 favorites]
I mean, as insane as it seems, way back when...Al Goddamn Gore of all people showed me a graph, and I said, "Oh." What he showed, as I remember realizing, was the end of all human life on earth, and it was baked in then. Startling how few were and are actually alarmed.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:34 PM on May 8 [12 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:34 PM on May 8 [12 favorites]
In terms of ability, we all can do as much, if not more to effect systemic change to fight the climate catastrophe as we can for the Palestinians.
posted by Reverend John at 4:37 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
posted by Reverend John at 4:37 PM on May 8 [3 favorites]
I know the above comment of mine seems rambling. But my point is that people in this very thread have admitted that over the past several decades that scientists have said we have to have systematic large-scale change in order to avoid destroying the world that they have voted the way they were supposed to every single time and that it hasn't made a lick of difference.
I have not been quiet on the fact that I scoff when people suggest that we all should just vote harder. But seriously, we're speeding head first toward living in a Mad Max world. It is clear and has been for decades that the governments of the world and the ultra rich are not going to fix this problem. The systems that are in place will not allow for it. So the only logical thing to do in a situation such as this is to dismantle that system and build one that will solve the problems that we have.
And that's basically what the kids are doing. They know Trump is bad. But they also know that Biden is sending millions and millions of tax dollars in the form of bombs to Israel to commit wholesale slaughter. They can't trust him with not being a major supporter of a relatively small genocide, why would he think that he should be trusted by them to try to stave off the much more difficult problem of global self-inflicted genocide?
posted by nushustu at 4:37 PM on May 8 [7 favorites]
I have not been quiet on the fact that I scoff when people suggest that we all should just vote harder. But seriously, we're speeding head first toward living in a Mad Max world. It is clear and has been for decades that the governments of the world and the ultra rich are not going to fix this problem. The systems that are in place will not allow for it. So the only logical thing to do in a situation such as this is to dismantle that system and build one that will solve the problems that we have.
And that's basically what the kids are doing. They know Trump is bad. But they also know that Biden is sending millions and millions of tax dollars in the form of bombs to Israel to commit wholesale slaughter. They can't trust him with not being a major supporter of a relatively small genocide, why would he think that he should be trusted by them to try to stave off the much more difficult problem of global self-inflicted genocide?
posted by nushustu at 4:37 PM on May 8 [7 favorites]
doctornemo, my comment wasn't intended to be directed at you specifically, and in fact I began composing it before you posted. Rather, it is the general pattern that happens very frequently in these discussions, both on MetaFilter and elsewhere, where a discussion of climate change morphs into a discussion of how bad air travel is. I admire your choice to sacrifice in accordance with the fact that, as an individual event, flying is a larger source of GHG release than most any other single thing that a person will do. I've been a vegetarian for over 20 years for similar reasons, so I can relate. But it's also frustrating to see people castigated for choosing to fly for a special vacation or to see family (not what you did, but is seen in this thread), when the reality is that it's a blip compared to what massive corporations and the megarich do every day. The world is not passing 2.5C because Jane from Topeka wants to see the Parthenon before she dies, nor because of all of the Janes from Topeka wanting to fulfill their dreams. It's because of all the Joe Manchins from the Senate who killed bare-minimum climate regulations so their coal investments would buy them another yacht.
posted by biogeo at 5:04 PM on May 8 [18 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 5:04 PM on May 8 [18 favorites]
We've estimates of cumulative CO2 emissions from having a kid that range from 60 tonnes to 9441 tonnes, so avoiding having a kid buys you 30-4000 transatlantic flights, doctornemo. ;)
Air travel creates problems not so much through emissions, but through enabling empires, especially all these multi-national corporations. About how long do you think the NYC and Singapore offices of JP Morgan relly worth together once their executives cannot physically meet in person? See Quantitative Dynamics of Human Empires by Cesare Marchetti and Jesse H. Ausubel
Afaik, agriculture today employs two main tools, shipping food to where people require food, and fossil fuel based fertilizers, with anything like pesticides being secondary concerns. We should absolutely leave the fossil fuels in the ground, but we'll end these two tools in doing so, which maybe okay if we end meat too, but..
If we've some miracle that ends fossil fuels quickly then it'd likely kill a few billion people too, via famines and the ensuing diseases. We'd do worse to those same people by averting said miricale that ends fossil fuels though, because they'd have exacly the same famines 20 years later, but then lethal wet bulb temeratures too.
Afaik +4°C means uninhabitable tropics and maximum carrying capcity around 1 billion.
As a species, we're better off if our global civilization collapses faster from whatever causes, before being taken down by some planetary boundary like climate. As individuals, we almost surely better off with faster collapsoe if we live in tropical and subtropical regions, but even temperate or artic peoples maybe benefit from collapse. Joseph Tainer observes that most Roman subjects benefitted form the collapse of the Roman empire.
Anyways, our goal should be to collapse our civilization as quickly as possible, including ending oil access, without another global hegemon like China having oil or and/or taking over, while also bringing through as much of the natural world as possible, and ideally as much of our knowledge and technology as possible.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:05 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
Air travel creates problems not so much through emissions, but through enabling empires, especially all these multi-national corporations. About how long do you think the NYC and Singapore offices of JP Morgan relly worth together once their executives cannot physically meet in person? See Quantitative Dynamics of Human Empires by Cesare Marchetti and Jesse H. Ausubel
Afaik, agriculture today employs two main tools, shipping food to where people require food, and fossil fuel based fertilizers, with anything like pesticides being secondary concerns. We should absolutely leave the fossil fuels in the ground, but we'll end these two tools in doing so, which maybe okay if we end meat too, but..
If we've some miracle that ends fossil fuels quickly then it'd likely kill a few billion people too, via famines and the ensuing diseases. We'd do worse to those same people by averting said miricale that ends fossil fuels though, because they'd have exacly the same famines 20 years later, but then lethal wet bulb temeratures too.
Afaik +4°C means uninhabitable tropics and maximum carrying capcity around 1 billion.
As a species, we're better off if our global civilization collapses faster from whatever causes, before being taken down by some planetary boundary like climate. As individuals, we almost surely better off with faster collapsoe if we live in tropical and subtropical regions, but even temperate or artic peoples maybe benefit from collapse. Joseph Tainer observes that most Roman subjects benefitted form the collapse of the Roman empire.
Anyways, our goal should be to collapse our civilization as quickly as possible, including ending oil access, without another global hegemon like China having oil or and/or taking over, while also bringing through as much of the natural world as possible, and ideally as much of our knowledge and technology as possible.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:05 PM on May 8 [1 favorite]
We are already at 1.5C, since summer of last year. And the rest of this year is expected to stay there too. Maybe it will revert back somewhat after that? A reversion would be, at best, a temporary reprieve. At worst, it just keeps going on up from here without so much as a pause. It's hard to believe that those 6% are being honest with us (or possibly even to themselves), when it's already staring us in the face, today. Do they think we're going to turn it around, when we haven't even gotten it to slow down? We haven't yet gotten it to stop accelerating, for fuck's sake.
posted by notoriety public at 5:06 PM on May 8 [4 favorites]
posted by notoriety public at 5:06 PM on May 8 [4 favorites]
The solution is making friends, discussing things you care about with them, and building coalitions, taking action together to change things. But that's a lot harder than judging people.
Yes indeed, but if only this weren't more difficult than you (may or may not) realize. Because the sad reality (as I experience it at least) is that the mere mention of climate change can drive a wedge between people because frankly not many want to hear it, and especially this often means people with children. Either because they don't have the time to consider it or because those choosing to have kids are a self-selecting group of people predisposed to denial or ignorance about the imminent threats we are facing ?
And that's just for superficial discussions. When it comes to the various phenomena that are involved with assessing, diagnosing and properly understanding things from a systems perspective (ecology, ecological overshoot, carrying capacity, aerosolized climate forcing, planetary boundaries, ocean acidification, etc.), forget it, those topics are completely off the table and any attempt to introduce any such topics is largely a 'friendship killer' among the vast majority of the population, and how can anyone blame people for that ? I was one on them before I became jobless for 1+ years and had the time to learn of such things.
So while I agree with the spirit of your prescription, I find it rather impractical and a bit naive. No one has the time and no one wants to dedicate the time needed to understand what is truly going on because everyone is struggling to hang onto their jobs and payoff debt. And this will continue until people are forced to an understanding that might have to come to them in some other, more abrasive and unsettling way(s).
posted by clandestiny's child at 5:33 PM on May 8 [5 favorites]
Yes indeed, but if only this weren't more difficult than you (may or may not) realize. Because the sad reality (as I experience it at least) is that the mere mention of climate change can drive a wedge between people because frankly not many want to hear it, and especially this often means people with children. Either because they don't have the time to consider it or because those choosing to have kids are a self-selecting group of people predisposed to denial or ignorance about the imminent threats we are facing ?
And that's just for superficial discussions. When it comes to the various phenomena that are involved with assessing, diagnosing and properly understanding things from a systems perspective (ecology, ecological overshoot, carrying capacity, aerosolized climate forcing, planetary boundaries, ocean acidification, etc.), forget it, those topics are completely off the table and any attempt to introduce any such topics is largely a 'friendship killer' among the vast majority of the population, and how can anyone blame people for that ? I was one on them before I became jobless for 1+ years and had the time to learn of such things.
So while I agree with the spirit of your prescription, I find it rather impractical and a bit naive. No one has the time and no one wants to dedicate the time needed to understand what is truly going on because everyone is struggling to hang onto their jobs and payoff debt. And this will continue until people are forced to an understanding that might have to come to them in some other, more abrasive and unsettling way(s).
posted by clandestiny's child at 5:33 PM on May 8 [5 favorites]
Scientist's responses to this piece have been interesting.
Gretta Pecl, whose quote in the Guardian piece forms the title of this FPP, says: "Ooof, always challenging when 1 quote gets pulled out!! I ALSO believe there has never been a better time to do more, every fraction of a degree of warming we can avoid is worth the effort. And I still wake up every morning & actively choose hope bc we have so much left to save."
Katharine Hayhoe: "As many scientists interviewed here pointed out, the main uncertainty in future temperature change is not a physical science issue: it is a question of the decisions people choose to make. We are not experts in that; instead let's ask the elected officials, CEOs & other leaders!" (Perhaps we can start by talking to the financiers busy funneling money out of the global south in the form of interest payments?)
Michael Mann, whom I quoted earlier, pointed out that a mere six months ago, the Guardian published a piece entitled, "Climate scientists hail 2023 as ‘beginning of the end’ for fossil fuel era." That is, depressing as the FPP is, and surely judging from the tone of this thread, we're all well within our stages of climate grief over it, we should be careful taking journalism as gospel.
We really have a hard time with how to think about climate change. We try to simplify by forecasting the end of life on the planet, or at least the end of human civilization, and we often apply a timetable to this apocalypse that is really much closer than the science suggests. Or, if we're more fiercely optimistic, maybe we dust off our Marx and talk about revolution. But the world is really complicated--the science is complicated, the economy is complicated, and--this is just me, this is my weird moral stance on it--I think we should honor that complexity by setting aside the apocalyptic vision. If your neighbor's house burned down due to a climate-driven wildfire, you would not stand in front of him and wail that we're all doomed, we're doomed. You'd probably just...help him? And by doing so, move the spotlight off your own reaction, get out of your own worries a bit?
I don't want to say that the road to mental peace is to immerse yourself in reading about what we know about climate change--it can be a little nerve-wracking, honestly, to really dig into what's coming, what's already happening, the lives and security that have already been lost, the great profits that have been made off the suffering of others. But I do think it leads to something maybe a little more productive, a little more sanity-affirming, than straight up "bleaching the surface of the earth" dooming, if that's the direction you found yourself heading in anyway.
posted by mittens at 6:01 PM on May 8 [12 favorites]
Gretta Pecl, whose quote in the Guardian piece forms the title of this FPP, says: "Ooof, always challenging when 1 quote gets pulled out!! I ALSO believe there has never been a better time to do more, every fraction of a degree of warming we can avoid is worth the effort. And I still wake up every morning & actively choose hope bc we have so much left to save."
Katharine Hayhoe: "As many scientists interviewed here pointed out, the main uncertainty in future temperature change is not a physical science issue: it is a question of the decisions people choose to make. We are not experts in that; instead let's ask the elected officials, CEOs & other leaders!" (Perhaps we can start by talking to the financiers busy funneling money out of the global south in the form of interest payments?)
Michael Mann, whom I quoted earlier, pointed out that a mere six months ago, the Guardian published a piece entitled, "Climate scientists hail 2023 as ‘beginning of the end’ for fossil fuel era." That is, depressing as the FPP is, and surely judging from the tone of this thread, we're all well within our stages of climate grief over it, we should be careful taking journalism as gospel.
We really have a hard time with how to think about climate change. We try to simplify by forecasting the end of life on the planet, or at least the end of human civilization, and we often apply a timetable to this apocalypse that is really much closer than the science suggests. Or, if we're more fiercely optimistic, maybe we dust off our Marx and talk about revolution. But the world is really complicated--the science is complicated, the economy is complicated, and--this is just me, this is my weird moral stance on it--I think we should honor that complexity by setting aside the apocalyptic vision. If your neighbor's house burned down due to a climate-driven wildfire, you would not stand in front of him and wail that we're all doomed, we're doomed. You'd probably just...help him? And by doing so, move the spotlight off your own reaction, get out of your own worries a bit?
I don't want to say that the road to mental peace is to immerse yourself in reading about what we know about climate change--it can be a little nerve-wracking, honestly, to really dig into what's coming, what's already happening, the lives and security that have already been lost, the great profits that have been made off the suffering of others. But I do think it leads to something maybe a little more productive, a little more sanity-affirming, than straight up "bleaching the surface of the earth" dooming, if that's the direction you found yourself heading in anyway.
posted by mittens at 6:01 PM on May 8 [12 favorites]
the mere mention of climate change can drive a wedge between people because frankly not many want to hear it, and especially this often means people with children. Either because they don't have the time to consider it or because those choosing to have kids are a self-selecting group of people predisposed to denial or ignorance about the imminent threats we are facing ?
No, but seriously, stop this. The suggestion that "those choosing to have kids are a self-selecting group of people predisposed to denial or ignorance about the imminent threats we are facing" is not helpful in these discussions, and is exactly the kind of language that drives a wedge between people and predisposes them not to listen to your climate-change arguments. I don't even have kids and I can see that. Get some perspective about how this sounds to anyone here or elsewhere who does have kids and isn't somehow magically going to change that.
posted by limeonaire at 6:11 PM on May 8 [10 favorites]
No, but seriously, stop this. The suggestion that "those choosing to have kids are a self-selecting group of people predisposed to denial or ignorance about the imminent threats we are facing" is not helpful in these discussions, and is exactly the kind of language that drives a wedge between people and predisposes them not to listen to your climate-change arguments. I don't even have kids and I can see that. Get some perspective about how this sounds to anyone here or elsewhere who does have kids and isn't somehow magically going to change that.
posted by limeonaire at 6:11 PM on May 8 [10 favorites]
Moreover, we will need people to solve these problems. This work ideally does not end with current generations. The idea of people just ceasing to exist and reproduce has ecofascist tinges and isn't a useful argument. If there is a possibility of solving these problems for the rest of the species on this planet, that possibility lies with those of us who are here now making better choices, pushing governments and industry to make better choices, and teaching children to continue the work. Those ideas are not naïve.
posted by limeonaire at 6:17 PM on May 8 [5 favorites]
posted by limeonaire at 6:17 PM on May 8 [5 favorites]
They can't trust him with not being a major supporter of a relatively small genocide, why would he think that he should be trusted by them to try to stave off the much more difficult problem of global self-inflicted genocide?
This was farther up, and I know it's everyone's favorite* topic these days. But come on now! There have actually been some good pieces of progress on climate action by the Biden administration.
And this framing is disingenuous. Biden's opponent would not only bungle any efforts to mitigate climate change (or the other genocide), but would actively accelerate the destruction. Trump loves climate change because it's profitable and it "owns the libs" or whatever they're saying these days. With Biden, we have someone imperfect but who cares & seems like he wants to do the right thing (even if I and many others disagree with him). With Trump, we have the Joker driving a tour bus off a cliff because he thought it would be funny to cut the brakes. There's no comparison, and to suggest that both sides are the same is either dishonest or ignorant.
*lol
posted by knotty knots at 8:02 PM on May 8 [10 favorites]
This was farther up, and I know it's everyone's favorite* topic these days. But come on now! There have actually been some good pieces of progress on climate action by the Biden administration.
And this framing is disingenuous. Biden's opponent would not only bungle any efforts to mitigate climate change (or the other genocide), but would actively accelerate the destruction. Trump loves climate change because it's profitable and it "owns the libs" or whatever they're saying these days. With Biden, we have someone imperfect but who cares & seems like he wants to do the right thing (even if I and many others disagree with him). With Trump, we have the Joker driving a tour bus off a cliff because he thought it would be funny to cut the brakes. There's no comparison, and to suggest that both sides are the same is either dishonest or ignorant.
*lol
posted by knotty knots at 8:02 PM on May 8 [10 favorites]
We have six months. Get out there and vote your asses off, at the very least.
We have six months. Biden better get out there and win some votes by addressing the thing that’s gonna lose him the election.
Fixed it for ya.
posted by iamck at 8:36 PM on May 8 [11 favorites]
We have six months. Biden better get out there and win some votes by addressing the thing that’s gonna lose him the election.
Fixed it for ya.
posted by iamck at 8:36 PM on May 8 [11 favorites]
This was a quotation from the Economist in 2011 that really struck me at the time. Now it seems to make even more sense, especially the last line.
"Maybe a hundred years down the line, nobody will look back at climate change as the most important issue of the early 21st century, because the damage will have been done, and the idea that it might have been prevented will seem absurd. Maybe the idea that Mali and Burkina Faso were once inhabited countries rather than empty deserts will seem queer, and the immiseration of huge numbers of stateless refugees thronging against the borders of the rich northern countries will be taken for granted. The absence of the polar ice cap and the submersion of Venice will have been normalised; nobody will think of these as live issues, no one will spend their time reproaching their forefathers, there’ll be no moral dimension at all. We will have wrecked the planet, but our great-grandchildren won’t care much, because they’ll have been born into a planet already wrecked."
posted by perhapses at 8:41 PM on May 8 [13 favorites]
"Maybe a hundred years down the line, nobody will look back at climate change as the most important issue of the early 21st century, because the damage will have been done, and the idea that it might have been prevented will seem absurd. Maybe the idea that Mali and Burkina Faso were once inhabited countries rather than empty deserts will seem queer, and the immiseration of huge numbers of stateless refugees thronging against the borders of the rich northern countries will be taken for granted. The absence of the polar ice cap and the submersion of Venice will have been normalised; nobody will think of these as live issues, no one will spend their time reproaching their forefathers, there’ll be no moral dimension at all. We will have wrecked the planet, but our great-grandchildren won’t care much, because they’ll have been born into a planet already wrecked."
posted by perhapses at 8:41 PM on May 8 [13 favorites]
Thirty-some years ago now, I made a considered decision not to reproduce. This was a decision made on ecological grounds. Global human population at that time was around 5.7 billion and the degradation of damn near everything caused by my own species's overgrowth was well underway, as was readily apparent to anybody willing to pay it the slightest attention.
I harbour no illusions that my personal reproductive choice has global significance. Then again, my personal existence also has no global significance. I am but one of billions and it's the aggregate effect of that incomprehensible number of human lives that's degrading the biosphere to a far greater extent than the choices any one of us makes.
However, the two scaling factors involved are commensurate. My decision not to reproduce makes a contribution to the solution that's proportionate to my own existence's contribution to the problem.
I didn't ask to exist and am therefore not responsible for the fact that I do. I am responsible for choosing to continue to exist.
I am lucky enough to have been brought into existence in a place where existence is, on balance, very pleasant. I have no intention of leaving this place, nor of ceasing to exist any sooner than biology dictates. This does indeed reveal a certain degree of selfishness on my part, but no more than that revealed by any other person who might attempt to criticise me for displaying it, which makes all such criticism very easy to dismiss.
I have long chosen to live in ways that make me responsible for less personal resource consumption than that of the people I live amongst, and intend to keep on doing so. Stuff that would normally go to waste, where available, is my preferred source for the things that I need. Given the ongoing degradation of the conditions of life on this planet, I do not think I could bear to live out my allotted span on any other basis.
If I were to reproduce, though, I would be responsible for the existence of a tree of descendants of unknowable size, and therefore responsible for an increase in resource consumption over that required for the maintenance of my own existence by at least an order of magnitude. I couldn't bear that either. But people who do not and never will exist have no moral standing and my decision not to create those purely imaginary people therefore injures nobody.
Even so, getting the snip has been the single most emotionally wrenching decision I've ever made. I grieved hard after getting it done. But I'm glad I did, because it has let me live with myself.
If any of the above strikes any reader as arrogant or self-absorbed or futile or over-defensive or delusional or finger-waggy or in any other way reprehensible, I cordially invite that reader to find the nearest mirror and take a good long look in it.
posted by flabdablet at 9:42 PM on May 8 [15 favorites]
I harbour no illusions that my personal reproductive choice has global significance. Then again, my personal existence also has no global significance. I am but one of billions and it's the aggregate effect of that incomprehensible number of human lives that's degrading the biosphere to a far greater extent than the choices any one of us makes.
However, the two scaling factors involved are commensurate. My decision not to reproduce makes a contribution to the solution that's proportionate to my own existence's contribution to the problem.
I didn't ask to exist and am therefore not responsible for the fact that I do. I am responsible for choosing to continue to exist.
I am lucky enough to have been brought into existence in a place where existence is, on balance, very pleasant. I have no intention of leaving this place, nor of ceasing to exist any sooner than biology dictates. This does indeed reveal a certain degree of selfishness on my part, but no more than that revealed by any other person who might attempt to criticise me for displaying it, which makes all such criticism very easy to dismiss.
I have long chosen to live in ways that make me responsible for less personal resource consumption than that of the people I live amongst, and intend to keep on doing so. Stuff that would normally go to waste, where available, is my preferred source for the things that I need. Given the ongoing degradation of the conditions of life on this planet, I do not think I could bear to live out my allotted span on any other basis.
If I were to reproduce, though, I would be responsible for the existence of a tree of descendants of unknowable size, and therefore responsible for an increase in resource consumption over that required for the maintenance of my own existence by at least an order of magnitude. I couldn't bear that either. But people who do not and never will exist have no moral standing and my decision not to create those purely imaginary people therefore injures nobody.
Even so, getting the snip has been the single most emotionally wrenching decision I've ever made. I grieved hard after getting it done. But I'm glad I did, because it has let me live with myself.
If any of the above strikes any reader as arrogant or self-absorbed or futile or over-defensive or delusional or finger-waggy or in any other way reprehensible, I cordially invite that reader to find the nearest mirror and take a good long look in it.
posted by flabdablet at 9:42 PM on May 8 [15 favorites]
So when are people going to connect the dots? Built into the global hegemonic monetary system is an unsustainable exponential growth function. Everywhere the petrodollar touches exists an incentive to pump and burn and squeeze hard enough to outpace inflation. The side effects are environmental ruin, monstrous debt and elevated prices for humanities youth.
The share of this calamity imparted by the type of money we use is ignored at our peril.
Ever wonder why it's so hard to take the foot off the gas? Recognise that the force holding that foot down is the unsustainable money it's shackled to.
posted by neonamber at 11:01 PM on May 8 [6 favorites]
The share of this calamity imparted by the type of money we use is ignored at our peril.
Ever wonder why it's so hard to take the foot off the gas? Recognise that the force holding that foot down is the unsustainable money it's shackled to.
posted by neonamber at 11:01 PM on May 8 [6 favorites]
Everywhere the petrodollar touches exists an incentive to pump and burn and squeeze hard enough to outpace inflation.
This is a property of extractive industries in general, not only of the fossil fuel extraction industry. As a side note, the growth that those incentives exist to outpace is the product of inflation and population growth.
I don't think that there is anything inherently unsustainable about money, any more than there is e.g. anything inherently toxic about masculinity, so I agree with you to the extent that "unsustainable money" refers to a particular attitude toward the uses of money rather than being a suggestion that unsustainability is a baked-in property of monetary systems always and everywhere.
Money provides a decentralized, socially sanctioned way to resolve competition for access to resources. It should not be beyond the wit of humanity to shift the social norms around resource access in ways that reduce the intensity of that competition to create societies more equitable and therefore more sustainable than those that exist today, without abandoning the genuinely useful properties of a monetary system.
Both the abolition of legally sanctioned slavery and the advent of the welfare state provide historical examples of this kind of shift having happened already, so we know for sure that they're achievable given sufficient political will.
The commons needs to be respected and protected rather than being accepted as inevitably tragic. I've long believed that protecting the commons, not facilitating the activities of those who seek to enclose it, is the primary function of any State worth respecting rather than merely fearing.
posted by flabdablet at 3:00 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
This is a property of extractive industries in general, not only of the fossil fuel extraction industry. As a side note, the growth that those incentives exist to outpace is the product of inflation and population growth.
I don't think that there is anything inherently unsustainable about money, any more than there is e.g. anything inherently toxic about masculinity, so I agree with you to the extent that "unsustainable money" refers to a particular attitude toward the uses of money rather than being a suggestion that unsustainability is a baked-in property of monetary systems always and everywhere.
Money provides a decentralized, socially sanctioned way to resolve competition for access to resources. It should not be beyond the wit of humanity to shift the social norms around resource access in ways that reduce the intensity of that competition to create societies more equitable and therefore more sustainable than those that exist today, without abandoning the genuinely useful properties of a monetary system.
Both the abolition of legally sanctioned slavery and the advent of the welfare state provide historical examples of this kind of shift having happened already, so we know for sure that they're achievable given sufficient political will.
The commons needs to be respected and protected rather than being accepted as inevitably tragic. I've long believed that protecting the commons, not facilitating the activities of those who seek to enclose it, is the primary function of any State worth respecting rather than merely fearing.
posted by flabdablet at 3:00 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
The Australien Government has made an ad about our environment laws, and it's surprisingly honest and informative.
Honest Government Ad | How to state capture 🐨 (thejuicemedia, YouTube/Piped/Invidious, 6m57s)
posted by flabdablet at 4:09 AM on May 9
Honest Government Ad | How to state capture 🐨 (thejuicemedia, YouTube/Piped/Invidious, 6m57s)
posted by flabdablet at 4:09 AM on May 9
The suggestion that "those choosing to have kids are a self-selecting group of people predisposed to denial or ignorance about the imminent threats we are facing" is not helpful in these discussions, and is exactly the kind of language
Yes you are right, it was poor choice of words and sounds more judgmental than intended, I agree with you + should've made my point more mindfully thank you
posted by clandestiny's child at 4:18 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]
Yes you are right, it was poor choice of words and sounds more judgmental than intended, I agree with you + should've made my point more mindfully thank you
posted by clandestiny's child at 4:18 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]
Hillary Clinton tweet with this caption:
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:20 AM on May 9 [2 favorites]
What's at stake for our climate in this November's elections?And this is above a projection of both Trump and Biden policies massively overshooting emissions targets, but Biden somewhat less so. I'll vote obviously, but I can see why people would decide not to bother.
Absolutely everything.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 4:20 AM on May 9 [2 favorites]
This work ideally does not end with current generations. The idea of people just ceasing to exist and reproduce has ecofascist tinges
oh, please ... I don't believe anyone is implying that *no one is to have kids*, that is preposterous. As others have pointed out, the population growth increased threefold or more in 25 short years, I don't think we need to fear that we will abruptly cease to see human beings.
The societal and cultural forces at work continue to put much pressure on people to have children, maybe a tiny bit less in the US and europe and some other regions but by no means has this pressure ceased to exist. And in many countries this pressure remains great. So perhaps the idea is that those who are having kids moreso because they are getting much pressure by family and friends should maybe should re-consider and those who are sincerely motivated by the desire to have children should by all means have the freedom to do so.
posted by clandestiny's child at 4:30 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]
oh, please ... I don't believe anyone is implying that *no one is to have kids*, that is preposterous. As others have pointed out, the population growth increased threefold or more in 25 short years, I don't think we need to fear that we will abruptly cease to see human beings.
The societal and cultural forces at work continue to put much pressure on people to have children, maybe a tiny bit less in the US and europe and some other regions but by no means has this pressure ceased to exist. And in many countries this pressure remains great. So perhaps the idea is that those who are having kids moreso because they are getting much pressure by family and friends should maybe should re-consider and those who are sincerely motivated by the desire to have children should by all means have the freedom to do so.
posted by clandestiny's child at 4:30 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]
biogeo, thank you for your thoughtful response.
Climate change is such a hyperobject that people often grab onto one piece of it to think through: flying, diet, cars, architecture.
One college I work with spent serious money on a consultant who advised them on their climate future. Their conclusion: to swap out their main boiler. That was it. And the college was proud of this.
For a lot of people it's hard to think of the climate crisis as a revolutionary one. Plus the sheer complexity can be daunting.
posted by doctornemo at 5:40 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]
Climate change is such a hyperobject that people often grab onto one piece of it to think through: flying, diet, cars, architecture.
One college I work with spent serious money on a consultant who advised them on their climate future. Their conclusion: to swap out their main boiler. That was it. And the college was proud of this.
For a lot of people it's hard to think of the climate crisis as a revolutionary one. Plus the sheer complexity can be daunting.
posted by doctornemo at 5:40 AM on May 9 [4 favorites]
The societal and cultural forces at work continue to put much pressure on people to have children
Those pressures are increasingly failing. Nearly every part of the developed world have seen their fertility rates fall below replacement levels (around 2.1 children per woman). The same patterns occurs on the developing world, once a society goes through modernity: increased wealth, improved health care, better public health, and especially improvements in the status of women (access to job market, more education, more reproductive control).
A bunch of attempts have been made to reverse this trend, but they usually fail.
posted by doctornemo at 5:46 AM on May 9 [2 favorites]
Those pressures are increasingly failing. Nearly every part of the developed world have seen their fertility rates fall below replacement levels (around 2.1 children per woman). The same patterns occurs on the developing world, once a society goes through modernity: increased wealth, improved health care, better public health, and especially improvements in the status of women (access to job market, more education, more reproductive control).
A bunch of attempts have been made to reverse this trend, but they usually fail.
posted by doctornemo at 5:46 AM on May 9 [2 favorites]
perhaps the idea is that those who are having kids moreso because they are getting much pressure by family and friends should maybe should re-consider and those who are sincerely motivated by the desire to have children should by all means have the freedom to do so.
I agree. Insisting that other people should make the same choices as I do while simultaneously asserting my own right to steer by my own personal moral compass would amount to the worst kind of hypocrisy; I'm a terrible person but not that insufferable.
That said, I do feel quite confident in the quality of my grasp of the bleedin' obvious. Sheer human population pressure is the single most significant contributor to the current extinction spike. The idea that saying so marks me as any kind of fascist is ludicrous on its face.
In any case, I honestly could not care less if somebody thinks I'm a fascist. This isn't about me. It's about us. All of us. It's beyond time we learned to play nice and share.
posted by flabdablet at 5:57 AM on May 9 [5 favorites]
I agree. Insisting that other people should make the same choices as I do while simultaneously asserting my own right to steer by my own personal moral compass would amount to the worst kind of hypocrisy; I'm a terrible person but not that insufferable.
That said, I do feel quite confident in the quality of my grasp of the bleedin' obvious. Sheer human population pressure is the single most significant contributor to the current extinction spike. The idea that saying so marks me as any kind of fascist is ludicrous on its face.
In any case, I honestly could not care less if somebody thinks I'm a fascist. This isn't about me. It's about us. All of us. It's beyond time we learned to play nice and share.
posted by flabdablet at 5:57 AM on May 9 [5 favorites]
What he showed, as I remember realizing, was the end of all human life on earth
Please do not repeat this. It is both completely false and incredibly harmful in two ways:
1) The hyperbole plays into the hands of climate-change deniers. ("Can't believe those crazy people who think people are going extinct!")
2) It promotes fatalism. As written above, "every fraction of a degree of warming we can avoid is worth the effort." And the damage is non-linear: for example, going from 3.5 degrees to 3.6 degrees would causes much more suffering than going from 2.5 to 3.6. So at the levels we are currently headed toward, every fraction of a degree of warming avoided will benefit literally millions if not billions of people.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:31 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Please do not repeat this. It is both completely false and incredibly harmful in two ways:
1) The hyperbole plays into the hands of climate-change deniers. ("Can't believe those crazy people who think people are going extinct!")
2) It promotes fatalism. As written above, "every fraction of a degree of warming we can avoid is worth the effort." And the damage is non-linear: for example, going from 3.5 degrees to 3.6 degrees would causes much more suffering than going from 2.5 to 3.6. So at the levels we are currently headed toward, every fraction of a degree of warming avoided will benefit literally millions if not billions of people.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:31 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
People will go extinct. I am VERY familiar with climate deniers, and like all out-to-lunch science deniers, I don't really care what they think, since they've given up on reason anyway.
Not sure what is "completely false." The rates Al showed even back then showed we were headed towards catastrophe. I wish it were not so.
I reject that I am "promoting fatalism" by expressing feelings about the data I've read.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:41 AM on May 9
Not sure what is "completely false." The rates Al showed even back then showed we were headed towards catastrophe. I wish it were not so.
I reject that I am "promoting fatalism" by expressing feelings about the data I've read.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:41 AM on May 9
(And also - great! every fraction of warming we can avoid is great! - no where have I advocated for doing nothing or hopelessness)
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:42 AM on May 9
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:42 AM on May 9
Will climate change drive humans extinct or destroy civilization?
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:48 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:48 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
👍
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:53 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:53 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Drive humans extinct? I doubt it, not within any reasonably foreseeable future. Our turn will come because every species's turn comes, but whether big and clever works at least as well as microscopic, unobtrusive or photosynthetic remains to be seen.
Destroy civilization? With any luck.
posted by flabdablet at 7:00 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Destroy civilization? With any luck.
posted by flabdablet at 7:00 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Hell, as a species we might even become photosynthetic.
posted by flabdablet at 7:05 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
posted by flabdablet at 7:05 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Hello from New Orleans. We died in 2005, and were forcibly displaced across the country.
Death is not the end. Everything you love may be torn asunder, to be erased from the map, and you will be asked to keep going, and you must. Your friends may be drowned, and lie bloated in the street, with no one to bury them, and you will have to keep going and keep struggling.
Please join us in fighting carbon waste dumping on our state, please stop fighting yourselves and fight ExxonMobil instead.
Eyes on the prize, please.
posted by eustatic at 7:23 AM on May 9 [17 favorites]
Death is not the end. Everything you love may be torn asunder, to be erased from the map, and you will be asked to keep going, and you must. Your friends may be drowned, and lie bloated in the street, with no one to bury them, and you will have to keep going and keep struggling.
Please join us in fighting carbon waste dumping on our state, please stop fighting yourselves and fight ExxonMobil instead.
Eyes on the prize, please.
posted by eustatic at 7:23 AM on May 9 [17 favorites]
Future Gas Strategy underpins emissions, not renewables
The [Australian] Federal Government’s Future Gas Strategy locks in fossil fuel expansion until 2050 and ignores the fact that the vast majority of Australia’s gas is used for exports, according to analysis from the Australia Institute.posted by flabdablet at 7:27 AM on May 9
My own death and the destruction of the world are inextricably linked in my own mind. I figure I have less than ten years left and dwell in morbid curiosity of how much of the climate collapse I will see before I go, and in what way the collapse of climate and society will cause my death in advance of the life expectancy I was given when I was born. My bet right now is inability to get medical care for an easily treatable condition.
We've been hearing about this stuff for years. When I was about twelve or thirteen I was put into a class called Ecology, that probably was going to cover Silent Spring and the dangers of DDT to the food chain, but all I actually remember about it was being assigned a research project, of going to any grocery store and evaluating the merchandise for unnecessary packaging material. That was in the early seventies when I was dropping out of school. By the eighties you could read about Acid Rain, the Hole in the Ozone Layer, and Global Warming. I found the sources credible, and read them to find out more. What I read was pure doomsday scenario: Enough carbon had been put into the atmosphere during the late 1800's end of the Industrial Revolution, that our climate was going to collapse by the end of my lifetime, and we all needed to stop producing carbon right now or it would be Mass Extinction after that.
During the bargaining stage of my grieving process, there were two things I wanted to survive the coming Mass Extinction: Mammals and trees.
I didn't feel the worst pangs for humanity, because the more I read history, the more I understood that the society I grew up in couldn't survive the centuries anyway. The many different beats and rhythms of aboriginal cultures are gone. I only know the names of my four great-grandmothers but not the names of their mothers. In the nineties every one who was demonstrating their social power wore a suit, no matter whether they were in Asia or Africa or where they came from. No, people and cultures are fragile and time limited. You might translate Linear B, but you'll never know the rhythm they danced to, nor the sound of their music, not a thousand years later.
There are flickers of hope when I think about other societies large and small, that faced doomsday scenarios - the Hale Bopp Cult, the contemporary Evangelicals that believe God will destroy them by fire because they failed to prevent abortions, the Christians who believed that the Albigensian Heresy would bring the Wrath of God on them. If these groups of rational people trusted their most respected leaders, was I also, perhaps trusting deluded leaders who were seeing end times through a veil of blood? Maybe, maybe, it was a mass delusion?
After all I get my data from the media - a story about PFA's from fertilizer destroying farmland, a bootleg copy of the film "Don't Look Up", a paperback copy of Silent Spring in my father's brick and board bookcase: books, magazines, computer screens. How do I differ from the woman sitting in the pew, shuddering when her pastor tells her Jesus will not intercede because doctors are killing unborn babies, or from the French villein who listened to the priest talking about fire from above, and went home and took the blade of his scythe from the long handle and turned it into a sword so that he too could join a crusade and do the Will of God? I've never personally squinted at rows of test tubes filled with soil samples. What do I know about PFA's really? The Acid Rain issue has supposedly been solved. The Hole in the Ozone Layer is closing and Oral Roberts is still alive. Maybe this is just the Apocalyptic Myth of our era?
But to believe it's all just a mass delusion I have to entirely distrust all the media I consume - It's one thing to assume that the news stories and books I read are ones that some publisher and editor somewhere has decided are worth printing because they will turn a profit. I read each article watching closely for the writer to claim personal testimony of witnessing things they were not personally present to see, or could not have been at a vantage point to see them. It's another thing to question if the Atmospheric River that flooded British Columbia a few years ago really happened. Are those photographs fake? Or does this commonly happen every spring anyway, from time immemorial? Does British Columbia really exist? Well, I've been to BC. So do I live in a simulation?
Do you know why I believe? I have bad eyes - much too sensitive to light. I've spent my whole life looking down, looking at the ground. As a kid I always found change, everywhere, and always had pennies and nickles and dimes to take to the candy store, all because I couldn't safely look up and let the full light of the sky scald my eyes. So I looked down and saw the sidewalk and the grass, and the weeds and the dirt of the vacant lots, the ubiquitous metal bottle caps, the cigarette butts and the bugs.
Bugs and worms and birds. There were so very many of them. When it rained the sidewalks were writhing with worms, sometimes multiples in every square of concrete. The roots of the grass were crawling with ants and beetles and grubs. If you sat down, you sat on them. And anywhere you went - into the blissful shade and coolness of bushes and trees, the branches were alive with birds. I didn't know their names. It felt like there were too many to learn. Oh, I learned the names of the vivid ones - cardinals, red winged black birds, bluejays, goldfinches, and the really common ones, robin, pigeons and sparrows and crows, but there were myriads more of discrete little ones, brown and dun, speckled and banded, iridescent or dull.
If you walked in an area of deep shadows under the trees there were clouds of shad flies and swarms of mosquitoes, so many you kept your mouth closed to avoid breathing them in and even then sometimes you blew your nose and there was a tiny corpse amid the snot in your kleenex. When we actually left the city on our yearly car trip to go camping, we'd keep stopping to get gas. Not because the tank was empty, and not because it was prudent to keep it topped up, but because after an hour or two, you couldn't safely see through the windshield in the front of the car. We were really stopping to get the water to clean the windshield. That's how many bugs there used to be. The windshield turned into a solid grey smear. Tiny bugs and big ones.
And beside the gas station where we stopped, there would sometimes be a field full of flowers - weeds of course, so many, many types of flowering weeds, and it would be alive with the bees, seething with them, buzzing and crawling and drinking the nectar. If you weren't afraid you could sit in the grass and they would crawl on you - fuzzy banded bees with their little dark feet.
All of it's gone. I lived in Downtown Montreal then and in the 1960's there were millions of bugs and worms. Now I live two blocks from a park that is a nature preserve large enough to sometimes have bears, in a neighbourhood full of deer, but the bugs and the worms and birds are gone. If I take a walk I might see two, maybe even three species of birds. I might see as many as ten different individual birds. If it's rained, I might see fifteen worms on the sidewalk. But I won't see any shad flies or mosquitoes, and this spring I have so far seen three bees. My neighbours have wild flower gardens to attract the pollinators. One side of my street has no houses on it, only a slope covered in uncultivated trees and shrubs and weeds - and this is a good year, because I've seen three bees.
So this is why I believe that the climate scientists are downplaying it, that they are working with genuine data, that it is not a delusion, that the Atlantic is already heating up before summer has even started. This is why I believe that the soil is dead below my feet, that the nematodes and bacteria that were the foundation of our food chain have already suffered a mass die off that requires numbers we would struggle to write down even with scientific notation. This is why I believe that a juggernaut is already in motion, that the juggernaut began its journey a long time ago, maybe even so long ago that it began walking a million years before recorded history began.
I don't care if you die. I don't care if I die. I know my children will die. They were going to die at some point anyway. But all I can do now is grieve for the trees, and the annoying shad flies, and the tiny, unseen creatures that used to live in the soil. There is a lament singing inside me that no words can convey. "Fili mi, Absalon," nor "Never, never, never, never, never, thou'lt come no more," do not approach the depth of my grief. How do you grieve for an end of all things that ever made this world beautiful, and fertile and green?
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:30 AM on May 9 [19 favorites]
We've been hearing about this stuff for years. When I was about twelve or thirteen I was put into a class called Ecology, that probably was going to cover Silent Spring and the dangers of DDT to the food chain, but all I actually remember about it was being assigned a research project, of going to any grocery store and evaluating the merchandise for unnecessary packaging material. That was in the early seventies when I was dropping out of school. By the eighties you could read about Acid Rain, the Hole in the Ozone Layer, and Global Warming. I found the sources credible, and read them to find out more. What I read was pure doomsday scenario: Enough carbon had been put into the atmosphere during the late 1800's end of the Industrial Revolution, that our climate was going to collapse by the end of my lifetime, and we all needed to stop producing carbon right now or it would be Mass Extinction after that.
During the bargaining stage of my grieving process, there were two things I wanted to survive the coming Mass Extinction: Mammals and trees.
I didn't feel the worst pangs for humanity, because the more I read history, the more I understood that the society I grew up in couldn't survive the centuries anyway. The many different beats and rhythms of aboriginal cultures are gone. I only know the names of my four great-grandmothers but not the names of their mothers. In the nineties every one who was demonstrating their social power wore a suit, no matter whether they were in Asia or Africa or where they came from. No, people and cultures are fragile and time limited. You might translate Linear B, but you'll never know the rhythm they danced to, nor the sound of their music, not a thousand years later.
There are flickers of hope when I think about other societies large and small, that faced doomsday scenarios - the Hale Bopp Cult, the contemporary Evangelicals that believe God will destroy them by fire because they failed to prevent abortions, the Christians who believed that the Albigensian Heresy would bring the Wrath of God on them. If these groups of rational people trusted their most respected leaders, was I also, perhaps trusting deluded leaders who were seeing end times through a veil of blood? Maybe, maybe, it was a mass delusion?
After all I get my data from the media - a story about PFA's from fertilizer destroying farmland, a bootleg copy of the film "Don't Look Up", a paperback copy of Silent Spring in my father's brick and board bookcase: books, magazines, computer screens. How do I differ from the woman sitting in the pew, shuddering when her pastor tells her Jesus will not intercede because doctors are killing unborn babies, or from the French villein who listened to the priest talking about fire from above, and went home and took the blade of his scythe from the long handle and turned it into a sword so that he too could join a crusade and do the Will of God? I've never personally squinted at rows of test tubes filled with soil samples. What do I know about PFA's really? The Acid Rain issue has supposedly been solved. The Hole in the Ozone Layer is closing and Oral Roberts is still alive. Maybe this is just the Apocalyptic Myth of our era?
But to believe it's all just a mass delusion I have to entirely distrust all the media I consume - It's one thing to assume that the news stories and books I read are ones that some publisher and editor somewhere has decided are worth printing because they will turn a profit. I read each article watching closely for the writer to claim personal testimony of witnessing things they were not personally present to see, or could not have been at a vantage point to see them. It's another thing to question if the Atmospheric River that flooded British Columbia a few years ago really happened. Are those photographs fake? Or does this commonly happen every spring anyway, from time immemorial? Does British Columbia really exist? Well, I've been to BC. So do I live in a simulation?
Do you know why I believe? I have bad eyes - much too sensitive to light. I've spent my whole life looking down, looking at the ground. As a kid I always found change, everywhere, and always had pennies and nickles and dimes to take to the candy store, all because I couldn't safely look up and let the full light of the sky scald my eyes. So I looked down and saw the sidewalk and the grass, and the weeds and the dirt of the vacant lots, the ubiquitous metal bottle caps, the cigarette butts and the bugs.
Bugs and worms and birds. There were so very many of them. When it rained the sidewalks were writhing with worms, sometimes multiples in every square of concrete. The roots of the grass were crawling with ants and beetles and grubs. If you sat down, you sat on them. And anywhere you went - into the blissful shade and coolness of bushes and trees, the branches were alive with birds. I didn't know their names. It felt like there were too many to learn. Oh, I learned the names of the vivid ones - cardinals, red winged black birds, bluejays, goldfinches, and the really common ones, robin, pigeons and sparrows and crows, but there were myriads more of discrete little ones, brown and dun, speckled and banded, iridescent or dull.
If you walked in an area of deep shadows under the trees there were clouds of shad flies and swarms of mosquitoes, so many you kept your mouth closed to avoid breathing them in and even then sometimes you blew your nose and there was a tiny corpse amid the snot in your kleenex. When we actually left the city on our yearly car trip to go camping, we'd keep stopping to get gas. Not because the tank was empty, and not because it was prudent to keep it topped up, but because after an hour or two, you couldn't safely see through the windshield in the front of the car. We were really stopping to get the water to clean the windshield. That's how many bugs there used to be. The windshield turned into a solid grey smear. Tiny bugs and big ones.
And beside the gas station where we stopped, there would sometimes be a field full of flowers - weeds of course, so many, many types of flowering weeds, and it would be alive with the bees, seething with them, buzzing and crawling and drinking the nectar. If you weren't afraid you could sit in the grass and they would crawl on you - fuzzy banded bees with their little dark feet.
All of it's gone. I lived in Downtown Montreal then and in the 1960's there were millions of bugs and worms. Now I live two blocks from a park that is a nature preserve large enough to sometimes have bears, in a neighbourhood full of deer, but the bugs and the worms and birds are gone. If I take a walk I might see two, maybe even three species of birds. I might see as many as ten different individual birds. If it's rained, I might see fifteen worms on the sidewalk. But I won't see any shad flies or mosquitoes, and this spring I have so far seen three bees. My neighbours have wild flower gardens to attract the pollinators. One side of my street has no houses on it, only a slope covered in uncultivated trees and shrubs and weeds - and this is a good year, because I've seen three bees.
So this is why I believe that the climate scientists are downplaying it, that they are working with genuine data, that it is not a delusion, that the Atlantic is already heating up before summer has even started. This is why I believe that the soil is dead below my feet, that the nematodes and bacteria that were the foundation of our food chain have already suffered a mass die off that requires numbers we would struggle to write down even with scientific notation. This is why I believe that a juggernaut is already in motion, that the juggernaut began its journey a long time ago, maybe even so long ago that it began walking a million years before recorded history began.
I don't care if you die. I don't care if I die. I know my children will die. They were going to die at some point anyway. But all I can do now is grieve for the trees, and the annoying shad flies, and the tiny, unseen creatures that used to live in the soil. There is a lament singing inside me that no words can convey. "Fili mi, Absalon," nor "Never, never, never, never, never, thou'lt come no more," do not approach the depth of my grief. How do you grieve for an end of all things that ever made this world beautiful, and fertile and green?
posted by Jane the Brown at 7:30 AM on May 9 [19 favorites]
How do you grieve for an end of all things that ever made this world beautiful, and fertile and green?
Daily.
And that grief is right and proper to sit with, but wallowing in it feels more self-indulgent than I'm willing to allow. So I also remind myself every day that it's not all about me or my feelings, and that outliving fucking Rupert Murdoch remains an aim worth aspiring to even in a world that's burning down.
And every now and then I encounter a glistening cockroach with bright golden edges or the glinting eye shine from hundreds of tiny grass spiders or a midnight choir of frogs or the pings of bats as the first hint of dawn dims the stars over the swimming hole, and I feel held by country and comforted.
I am so, so lucky to be able to live where I do, and failing to appreciate it would be churlish. I hope all three of the kids I've raised will find their way to that in their turn.
More from The Australia Institute:
The economic impacts of gas development in the Northern Territory
October 31, 2023 by Mark Ogge
December 20, 2023 by Elizabeth Morison and Polly Hemming
May 7, 2024 by Mark Ogge
Daily.
And that grief is right and proper to sit with, but wallowing in it feels more self-indulgent than I'm willing to allow. So I also remind myself every day that it's not all about me or my feelings, and that outliving fucking Rupert Murdoch remains an aim worth aspiring to even in a world that's burning down.
And every now and then I encounter a glistening cockroach with bright golden edges or the glinting eye shine from hundreds of tiny grass spiders or a midnight choir of frogs or the pings of bats as the first hint of dawn dims the stars over the swimming hole, and I feel held by country and comforted.
I am so, so lucky to be able to live where I do, and failing to appreciate it would be churlish. I hope all three of the kids I've raised will find their way to that in their turn.
More from The Australia Institute:
The economic impacts of gas development in the Northern Territory
October 31, 2023 by Mark Ogge
Gas development has few economic benefits beyond those that flow to the gas industry itself. The industry is a small employer, systematic non-payer of tax and crowds out other industries.3 Gas Myths Debunked
December 20, 2023 by Elizabeth Morison and Polly Hemming
You’ve probably heard things like “gas is a transition fuel”, “gas is a big employer” and “gas companies pay a lot of tax”.New Analysis: WA drivers pay more rego than gas companies pay in royalties
May 7, 2024 by Mark Ogge
The report finds that twice as much revenue is forecast to be collected from vehicle registration ($1.3 billion) as from gas royalties ($522 million) in the 2024-25 budget.posted by flabdablet at 8:22 AM on May 9 [6 favorites]
I don't think that there is anything inherently unsustainable about money, any more than there is e.g. anything inherently toxic about masculinity, so I agree with you to the extent that "unsustainable money" refers to a particular attitude toward the uses of money rather than being a suggestion that unsustainability is a baked-in property of monetary systems always and everywhere.
Maybe you missed the part where I was specifically referring to the global hegemonic monetary system, aka, the United States Dollar. Operating under the misapprehension that the dominant monetary system on this planet is an innocent mercantile tool with no centralised control, no noteworthy influence in environmental matters and no sustainability problems is a sublime acquiescence to the status quo.
Nothing is beyond reproach, but especially not something as foundational as the deliberate and consequential mathematical properties of our money. Expanding the monetary supply exponentially has profound impacts on how and where we use money.
You're advocating for a very top down approach and that will no doubt be important but we also need to weed out systemic perverse incentives that will hamper progress.
posted by neonamber at 9:16 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Maybe you missed the part where I was specifically referring to the global hegemonic monetary system, aka, the United States Dollar. Operating under the misapprehension that the dominant monetary system on this planet is an innocent mercantile tool with no centralised control, no noteworthy influence in environmental matters and no sustainability problems is a sublime acquiescence to the status quo.
Nothing is beyond reproach, but especially not something as foundational as the deliberate and consequential mathematical properties of our money. Expanding the monetary supply exponentially has profound impacts on how and where we use money.
You're advocating for a very top down approach and that will no doubt be important but we also need to weed out systemic perverse incentives that will hamper progress.
posted by neonamber at 9:16 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Still seems to me that the global hegemon itself is where the problem is, not so much that any of the specific tools it routinely abuses are faulty in and of themselves.
Also not quite sure why you'd conclude that I'm an advocate for top-down control. What I actually think is that States ought to operate as bandings-together that protect the common interests of the citizenry, and that prominent amongst those interests is freedom from oppression whether that be State or private in origin.
To the extent that a State does exert top-down control, it should only ever do so in ways that leave it accountable to the people who constitute it. The current hegemon manifestly fails on this criterion. Both its representative structures and its electoral processes are in dire need of extensive reform, having been designed from the get-go to avoid as much of that pesky bottom-up influence as possible.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Also not quite sure why you'd conclude that I'm an advocate for top-down control. What I actually think is that States ought to operate as bandings-together that protect the common interests of the citizenry, and that prominent amongst those interests is freedom from oppression whether that be State or private in origin.
To the extent that a State does exert top-down control, it should only ever do so in ways that leave it accountable to the people who constitute it. The current hegemon manifestly fails on this criterion. Both its representative structures and its electoral processes are in dire need of extensive reform, having been designed from the get-go to avoid as much of that pesky bottom-up influence as possible.
posted by flabdablet at 10:47 AM on May 9 [1 favorite]
I think that a rapid acceleration of plans and actions to give all women everywhere control over their own fertility will do more to halt the continued destruction of the planet's climate and resources than any action that *will* be taken by government or corporations. (They could do more, of course, but they won't).
There are too many humans. Every human going forward in time that isn't even conceived because each woman can have as many and as few children as she wants is one less human who will contribute to and suffer from the effects of climate change. We've all here on Mefi had plenty of discussions about women's rights to choose and how many women don't actually want kids. So...every woman who doesn't want them, doesn't have them. Every woman who does only has the 1.5 - 2.5 that the majority of them seem comfortable with. The outliers have 3-5 but that wouldn't even make up for the women who remain childless. Within a couple generations we could shrink the population way, way closer to the actual carrying capacity of the planet.
The reduction of goods and food needing to be hauled across the skies and oceans would be massive! Our current form of late-stage capitalism would collapse as the exploitable population drops drastically, and anyone with basic skills would be needed to help keep what remains afloat. Developed countries would either have to let in massive amounts of immigrants from the worst affected areas or give up on the idea of being world powers anymore.
And...that's my pie in the sky vision for combating not only climate change but a host of other ills caused by humanity in the process. I recognize it's delusional, and many governments would rather go full Handmaid's Tale than give women that sort of bodily autonomy.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:01 PM on May 9 [6 favorites]
There are too many humans. Every human going forward in time that isn't even conceived because each woman can have as many and as few children as she wants is one less human who will contribute to and suffer from the effects of climate change. We've all here on Mefi had plenty of discussions about women's rights to choose and how many women don't actually want kids. So...every woman who doesn't want them, doesn't have them. Every woman who does only has the 1.5 - 2.5 that the majority of them seem comfortable with. The outliers have 3-5 but that wouldn't even make up for the women who remain childless. Within a couple generations we could shrink the population way, way closer to the actual carrying capacity of the planet.
The reduction of goods and food needing to be hauled across the skies and oceans would be massive! Our current form of late-stage capitalism would collapse as the exploitable population drops drastically, and anyone with basic skills would be needed to help keep what remains afloat. Developed countries would either have to let in massive amounts of immigrants from the worst affected areas or give up on the idea of being world powers anymore.
And...that's my pie in the sky vision for combating not only climate change but a host of other ills caused by humanity in the process. I recognize it's delusional, and many governments would rather go full Handmaid's Tale than give women that sort of bodily autonomy.
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:01 PM on May 9 [6 favorites]
Actually flabdablet, it's definitely possible that "inflation is inherently a monetary phenomenon" in the sense that abstracting resources might always create unsustainable claims upon resources. I suppose Lotka's wheel and the long arm of history: how does the distant past determine today's global rate of energy consumption? by Timothy Garrett, Matheus Grasselli, and Stephen Keen (previously) applies here.
I'm convinced rationing must play some role in any solution, but maybe money could coexist alongside rationing?
I think children were historically people's retirement plans, sharp pointy objects, which could reemerge as society becomes more precarious, travel declines, etc. We might not increase birthrates everywhere, but one should not bank on birthrate decline saving us. It's also quite slow for our current timeline.
Mr.Know-it-some> Will climate change drive humans extinct or destroy civilization?
I do agree extinction looks unlikely, but the article never discusses civilization, only quotes a few scientists on exitnction. We know civilizations have collapsed frequently throughout history.
There is a broader statement by Tom Murphy that "civilization is destined to fail [because] it's not built on a foundation of biophysical ecological sustainability .. humans are not civilization .. civilization is just our recent hobby" (blog). As he never says "this" or "our", I suppose he means some future non-civilizataion comes after, but he disclames knowing what it'll look like, aside from saying we cannot go backward to being hunter gatherers.
I've trouble envisioning this future non-civilization myself too of course, which makes me nervious. As I've said here before..
We've no clearly foreseeable cultural pathway towards a "sustainable civilization" signular in the sense of nations interacting in a positive sum way via global trade. Yet, we could've envision sustainable collection of civilizations plural, in which many "civilizations" have primarily negative sum interactions that prevent them eating meat, refining oil, overpopulating, etc.
It's vaguely like universal jurisdiction for crimes against the biosphere, but with the expectations that individual civilizations cannot reliably prosicute their own excesses, ala the maximum power principle or similar, so covert operations become the only enforcement.
As an aside..
We know less about novel entities than other planetary bopundaries (previously), but right now they've ranked novel entities worse than cliamte, maybe because they envision some slim extinction risk there.
An extinction story goes initially climate change confines humans to Russia, Canada, and Scandenavia, by making everywhere else uninhabitable, but humans retain technology, become less cautious, and make almost everyone sterile by abusing novel entities.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:14 PM on May 9
I'm convinced rationing must play some role in any solution, but maybe money could coexist alongside rationing?
I think children were historically people's retirement plans, sharp pointy objects, which could reemerge as society becomes more precarious, travel declines, etc. We might not increase birthrates everywhere, but one should not bank on birthrate decline saving us. It's also quite slow for our current timeline.
Mr.Know-it-some> Will climate change drive humans extinct or destroy civilization?
I do agree extinction looks unlikely, but the article never discusses civilization, only quotes a few scientists on exitnction. We know civilizations have collapsed frequently throughout history.
There is a broader statement by Tom Murphy that "civilization is destined to fail [because] it's not built on a foundation of biophysical ecological sustainability .. humans are not civilization .. civilization is just our recent hobby" (blog). As he never says "this" or "our", I suppose he means some future non-civilizataion comes after, but he disclames knowing what it'll look like, aside from saying we cannot go backward to being hunter gatherers.
I've trouble envisioning this future non-civilization myself too of course, which makes me nervious. As I've said here before..
We've no clearly foreseeable cultural pathway towards a "sustainable civilization" signular in the sense of nations interacting in a positive sum way via global trade. Yet, we could've envision sustainable collection of civilizations plural, in which many "civilizations" have primarily negative sum interactions that prevent them eating meat, refining oil, overpopulating, etc.
It's vaguely like universal jurisdiction for crimes against the biosphere, but with the expectations that individual civilizations cannot reliably prosicute their own excesses, ala the maximum power principle or similar, so covert operations become the only enforcement.
As an aside..
We know less about novel entities than other planetary bopundaries (previously), but right now they've ranked novel entities worse than cliamte, maybe because they envision some slim extinction risk there.
An extinction story goes initially climate change confines humans to Russia, Canada, and Scandenavia, by making everywhere else uninhabitable, but humans retain technology, become less cautious, and make almost everyone sterile by abusing novel entities.
posted by jeffburdges at 12:14 PM on May 9
jeffburdges,
Historically there was no such thing as retirement. There was a point at which you were so broken down you either died or couldn't work anymore, and yeah it was good to have children to help care for you, but there have always been aunts and uncles and other extended family that couldn't or didn't reproduce. We made up for this by living in much more extended and close-knit units.
And I think now that women have had a long enough taste of that freedom of not having to have children by either force or economic necessity, that many of them wouldn't go back to it for any reason. There is a decent and growing movement of women who'd rather never marry or have kids if it meant dealing with both in a modern environment where they're entirely unsupported by society. If higher birthrates reemerge its not going to be because women decide they want six to eight kids on average again.
And yeah, I'm not banking on this scenario saving us, it was my daydream as I said. But wouldn't it be nice if every child who was born was created because their parents actually wanted them. And because of that fact our global population dropped back to under 5 billion people in the next couple generations?
(edited for grammer)
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:29 PM on May 9 [3 favorites]
Historically there was no such thing as retirement. There was a point at which you were so broken down you either died or couldn't work anymore, and yeah it was good to have children to help care for you, but there have always been aunts and uncles and other extended family that couldn't or didn't reproduce. We made up for this by living in much more extended and close-knit units.
And I think now that women have had a long enough taste of that freedom of not having to have children by either force or economic necessity, that many of them wouldn't go back to it for any reason. There is a decent and growing movement of women who'd rather never marry or have kids if it meant dealing with both in a modern environment where they're entirely unsupported by society. If higher birthrates reemerge its not going to be because women decide they want six to eight kids on average again.
And yeah, I'm not banking on this scenario saving us, it was my daydream as I said. But wouldn't it be nice if every child who was born was created because their parents actually wanted them. And because of that fact our global population dropped back to under 5 billion people in the next couple generations?
(edited for grammer)
posted by sharp pointy objects at 12:29 PM on May 9 [3 favorites]
looking at historical collapses, a major feature seems to be a contraction to a more local scale of activity. trade, economics, political structures, food sources etc., become much more regional/local and the nicer things are harder to come by or disappear all together (for a while). complexity diminishes.
human civilization has been through many collapses and come back in some form or another. the sticker is being an individual during a collapse. It doesn't necessarily spell the end for humanity, but it's gonna suck to be you (by which I mean me, us).
We have this persistent cultural trope that "romanticizes" an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic scenario but it's not as attractive as one gets older...(I'm aged out as breeding stock or even just the fuck farm. so I'll be mulched, most likely, since I'm not very good at surviving without electricity. oh well!)
posted by supermedusa at 12:44 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
human civilization has been through many collapses and come back in some form or another. the sticker is being an individual during a collapse. It doesn't necessarily spell the end for humanity, but it's gonna suck to be you (by which I mean me, us).
We have this persistent cultural trope that "romanticizes" an apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic scenario but it's not as attractive as one gets older...(I'm aged out as breeding stock or even just the fuck farm. so I'll be mulched, most likely, since I'm not very good at surviving without electricity. oh well!)
posted by supermedusa at 12:44 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
Like all life on earth, humans exist primarily to survive and reproduce and thus carry on our own genetic material. Our huge cerebral cortex is a more recent evolutionary development and has the nasty side effect of enabling both abstract reasoning and existential dread. Thus we are probably, to paraphrase a character in The Overstory, the first species to realize how hosed we are.
Because of this ability to reason, some of us also make the mistake of anthropomorphizing humans. That is, we expect humans to override billions of years of evolutionary drive by exchanging the abstract contents of our cortexes from time to time. When we occasionally succeed, we can deliberately alter our future species path far beyond the local community and gene pool. But the most absolutely normal things for humans to do are:
* Have as many offspring as possible.
* Consume as many resources as needed to have and grow those offspring.
* Have even more offspring when new resources are found.
* Ignore the future problem of the eventual consumption of all the resources.
* Prioritize local, genetically related groups over other groups.
* Regard other people and groups with suspicion, and fight them over resources when those are scarce.
* Prioritize immediate survival threats. This is also why stories and feelings trump facts in politics and debate.
Imagine if instead of thinking human beings, it was locusts that managed to outcompete all other species on earth. They would just use up everything until they died off; the rest of the ecosystem would then recover or not. We wouldn't be mad at the locusts that used more resources; that's the whole point. They were the winners according to the rules. The fact that they then all died doesn't change that.
I'm not trying to depress everyone. I try to use this starting point to be glad that we are even sort of trying to escape our fate. Getting humans to sustainable equilibrium with the rest of life on Earth is a mammoth, novel task. Let's tackle it, but let's also accept that we may not achieve it in the way or timespan that we would like.
posted by caviar2d2 at 2:26 PM on May 9 [7 favorites]
Because of this ability to reason, some of us also make the mistake of anthropomorphizing humans. That is, we expect humans to override billions of years of evolutionary drive by exchanging the abstract contents of our cortexes from time to time. When we occasionally succeed, we can deliberately alter our future species path far beyond the local community and gene pool. But the most absolutely normal things for humans to do are:
* Have as many offspring as possible.
* Consume as many resources as needed to have and grow those offspring.
* Have even more offspring when new resources are found.
* Ignore the future problem of the eventual consumption of all the resources.
* Prioritize local, genetically related groups over other groups.
* Regard other people and groups with suspicion, and fight them over resources when those are scarce.
* Prioritize immediate survival threats. This is also why stories and feelings trump facts in politics and debate.
Imagine if instead of thinking human beings, it was locusts that managed to outcompete all other species on earth. They would just use up everything until they died off; the rest of the ecosystem would then recover or not. We wouldn't be mad at the locusts that used more resources; that's the whole point. They were the winners according to the rules. The fact that they then all died doesn't change that.
I'm not trying to depress everyone. I try to use this starting point to be glad that we are even sort of trying to escape our fate. Getting humans to sustainable equilibrium with the rest of life on Earth is a mammoth, novel task. Let's tackle it, but let's also accept that we may not achieve it in the way or timespan that we would like.
posted by caviar2d2 at 2:26 PM on May 9 [7 favorites]
I would love it if the world would tackle it, collectively. I accept that it won't happen in the times span needed.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:38 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:38 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
we expect humans to override billions of years of evolutionary drive by exchanging the abstract contents of our cortexes from time to time.
The trick is understanding the pathways by which those drives actually function so as to be able to find and share sustainable ways to re-regulate them. My own snip is all the evidence I need that this can actually work.
So far I remain unaware of any similarly side-effect-free one-and-done intervention that could override billions of years of evolutionary drive and get my fucking appetite under control, but you better believe that if somebody exchanges that abstract content of their cortex with mine I will be all over that shit.
But wouldn't it be nice if every child who was born was created because their parents actually wanted them.
Wouldn't it be nicer still if the main motivation for wanting to make new people was to share the sheer delight of being alive in a world in better shape than the one we had ourselves inherited?
Getting humans to sustainable equilibrium with the rest of life on Earth is a mammoth, novel task.
Not convinced that life does equilibrium, so I'll settle for the nicest available homeostasis. To that end, I think we need to (a) exist in numbers sufficient to preserve the cultural knowledge that keeps our living circumstances comfortable while replenishing rather than degrading the resources required to do so and (b) have that cultural knowledge include as a bedrock principle that all forms of unconstrained growth are cancerous.
We wouldn't be mad at the locusts that used more resources
Sure we would! And rightfully so. Especially if endless high-volume propaganda in support of using ever more resources at ever faster rates was being pumped out 24x7 on Locust Media.
I'd love to be able to see my fellow paperclips as something other than paperclip maximizers.
posted by flabdablet at 6:50 PM on May 9 [5 favorites]
The trick is understanding the pathways by which those drives actually function so as to be able to find and share sustainable ways to re-regulate them. My own snip is all the evidence I need that this can actually work.
So far I remain unaware of any similarly side-effect-free one-and-done intervention that could override billions of years of evolutionary drive and get my fucking appetite under control, but you better believe that if somebody exchanges that abstract content of their cortex with mine I will be all over that shit.
But wouldn't it be nice if every child who was born was created because their parents actually wanted them.
Wouldn't it be nicer still if the main motivation for wanting to make new people was to share the sheer delight of being alive in a world in better shape than the one we had ourselves inherited?
Getting humans to sustainable equilibrium with the rest of life on Earth is a mammoth, novel task.
Not convinced that life does equilibrium, so I'll settle for the nicest available homeostasis. To that end, I think we need to (a) exist in numbers sufficient to preserve the cultural knowledge that keeps our living circumstances comfortable while replenishing rather than degrading the resources required to do so and (b) have that cultural knowledge include as a bedrock principle that all forms of unconstrained growth are cancerous.
We wouldn't be mad at the locusts that used more resources
Sure we would! And rightfully so. Especially if endless high-volume propaganda in support of using ever more resources at ever faster rates was being pumped out 24x7 on Locust Media.
I'd love to be able to see my fellow paperclips as something other than paperclip maximizers.
posted by flabdablet at 6:50 PM on May 9 [5 favorites]
They were the winners according to the rules.
The thing about rules is that they only exist inside the minds of thinking beings.
If responding to resource availability with unconstrained exuberant growth leading to massive population crash is winning according to our rules, we need better rules.
posted by flabdablet at 6:53 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
The thing about rules is that they only exist inside the minds of thinking beings.
If responding to resource availability with unconstrained exuberant growth leading to massive population crash is winning according to our rules, we need better rules.
posted by flabdablet at 6:53 PM on May 9 [1 favorite]
a rapid acceleration of plans and actions to give all women everywhere control over their own fertility
would be an unalloyed good.
That said, so would rapid acceleration of cultural acceptance for people exercising due control over our own fertility. As a former sperm producer, I object to the way that the entire fertility question is so commonly framed as an issue exclusively for and about women.
The objection is twofold.
First, this framing almost always ends up with men talking amongst ourselves about what those other people should do or need to do or should be "given" the opportunity to do. I think that's presumptuous, arrogant and disrespectful. It's never been about giving so much as ceasing to deny. Conceptual frameworks within which the ability to exercise life-defining choices are seen as gifts rather than fundamental human rights are long overdue for rebuilding.
Second, there's an implicit assumption that women exist within a world that's unavoidably awash with sperm, making men's choices irrelevant. The idea seems to be that if a woman wants to avoid pregnancy then it's all on her to ensure that no sexual encounter results in it, men being by nature both utterly irresponsible and impossible to negotiate with. I am not willing to give my fellow men any such free pass. It's not nature, it's attitude, and some attitudes call for brisk application of the clue-by-four.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had some bloviating arsehole explain to me that it doesn't matter whether I make sperm or not because if any woman wants a baby she can just get sperm from anywhere. Which, maybe, but so what? As well as revealing a skewed view of women as essentially predatory and men as essentially fungible, this is just such a cop-out.
Every intentional pregnancy is the result of choices made by two people. The fact that biology has one of those people literally carry the consequence of both those choices cannot and should not absolve the other of responsibility for their own.
posted by flabdablet at 8:19 PM on May 9 [2 favorites]
would be an unalloyed good.
That said, so would rapid acceleration of cultural acceptance for people exercising due control over our own fertility. As a former sperm producer, I object to the way that the entire fertility question is so commonly framed as an issue exclusively for and about women.
The objection is twofold.
First, this framing almost always ends up with men talking amongst ourselves about what those other people should do or need to do or should be "given" the opportunity to do. I think that's presumptuous, arrogant and disrespectful. It's never been about giving so much as ceasing to deny. Conceptual frameworks within which the ability to exercise life-defining choices are seen as gifts rather than fundamental human rights are long overdue for rebuilding.
Second, there's an implicit assumption that women exist within a world that's unavoidably awash with sperm, making men's choices irrelevant. The idea seems to be that if a woman wants to avoid pregnancy then it's all on her to ensure that no sexual encounter results in it, men being by nature both utterly irresponsible and impossible to negotiate with. I am not willing to give my fellow men any such free pass. It's not nature, it's attitude, and some attitudes call for brisk application of the clue-by-four.
I've lost count of the number of times I've had some bloviating arsehole explain to me that it doesn't matter whether I make sperm or not because if any woman wants a baby she can just get sperm from anywhere. Which, maybe, but so what? As well as revealing a skewed view of women as essentially predatory and men as essentially fungible, this is just such a cop-out.
Every intentional pregnancy is the result of choices made by two people. The fact that biology has one of those people literally carry the consequence of both those choices cannot and should not absolve the other of responsibility for their own.
posted by flabdablet at 8:19 PM on May 9 [2 favorites]
flabdablet,
Thank you, you make a lot of good points I hadn't considered, approaching it only as a woman. You are right that people, no matter their gender, should have control over their own fertility.
However, I was thinking of this in a framework of Climate Change and what could be rolled out right now that could start drastically bringing the fertility rate down within the next year. There was a post here on the green...some time ago about how the most recent, at the time, clinical study of a 'pill' for men was halted because of the spate of side-effects the men were experiencing. Which was pretty well lambasted in-thread as it was all things women have had to deal with for decades.
But still it is a pretty good representation of the world as it currently exists, one in which men as a whole are still stuck in the mindset of your second point. You're correct and men that hold these views need to change them. Realistically, will that happen fast enough for this scenario? In my opinion no, so to start with, just throw all the contraception at the people who were born with wombs. See what happens?
posted by sharp pointy objects at 8:41 AM on May 10 [3 favorites]
Thank you, you make a lot of good points I hadn't considered, approaching it only as a woman. You are right that people, no matter their gender, should have control over their own fertility.
However, I was thinking of this in a framework of Climate Change and what could be rolled out right now that could start drastically bringing the fertility rate down within the next year. There was a post here on the green...some time ago about how the most recent, at the time, clinical study of a 'pill' for men was halted because of the spate of side-effects the men were experiencing. Which was pretty well lambasted in-thread as it was all things women have had to deal with for decades.
But still it is a pretty good representation of the world as it currently exists, one in which men as a whole are still stuck in the mindset of your second point. You're correct and men that hold these views need to change them. Realistically, will that happen fast enough for this scenario? In my opinion no, so to start with, just throw all the contraception at the people who were born with wombs. See what happens?
posted by sharp pointy objects at 8:41 AM on May 10 [3 favorites]
I think specific human desires wind up being fairly culturally determined, sharp pointy objects, so we risk "the mistake of anthropomorphizing humans" here (thanks caviar2d2).
At present, we tell people they want many conflicting things, so yeah sure some people figure out kids fit their other goals poorly. We'd expect most life goals become less & less attainable during collapse, including if our collapse manifests via some flavour of inflation, which initially makes kids appear even worse, but..
It'll really depend upon how our cultural messaging evolves.
We'd one little blip from China's one child policy, but otherwise powerful elites have consistently wanted more exploitable babies from their subjects. Also, powerful elites always search out "free lunches", in which they increase their power but someone else pays the costs. We'll have powerful elites pushing natalist agendas in part because they think families would make the suffering people happier.
Anti-natalist literature could help enormously, both fiction and non-fiction, both by altering culture directly, but also by influencing elites.
In the Dark Forest by Cixil Liu, there are several moments when characters who hibernated ask what occurred during the "great ravine", aka climate collapse, but none of the survivors will ever tell them, meaning mass cannibalism. At least a couple anti-natalist fan fiction stories would fit this mass cannibalism. lol
All this said, we primarily need events, conflicts, or cultural changes that reduce consumption. A Thanos snap tomorrow would reduce meat consumption long-term, but oil consumption would likely just rebound after several years.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:31 PM on May 10 [1 favorite]
“They Want Us All To Die,” Jessica Wildfire, OK Doomer, 10 May 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 7:25 PM on May 10 [2 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 7:25 PM on May 10 [2 favorites]
Oh ffs.
Fed up to the back teeth with every click-hungry pseudo-radical taking a pop at Malthus, who was and remains consistently closer to correct than any of his critics. An Essay on the Principle of Population is right there if anybody cares to find out why I say that. If your attention span doesn't stretch to sixty pages of centuries old prose, here's an executive summary.
posted by flabdablet at 12:29 AM on May 11 [3 favorites]
Fed up to the back teeth with every click-hungry pseudo-radical taking a pop at Malthus, who was and remains consistently closer to correct than any of his critics. An Essay on the Principle of Population is right there if anybody cares to find out why I say that. If your attention span doesn't stretch to sixty pages of centuries old prose, here's an executive summary.
posted by flabdablet at 12:29 AM on May 11 [3 favorites]
Yeah that article was some bullshit. She claims that Malthus "blamed the poor for everything", "wanted them to die," and "hated the idea of public health". She pulls a quote in which Malthus seems to argue against public health:
Contrary to what Jessica Wildfire is claiming, Malthus does not hate the idea of public health. He hates the idea of policies intended to increase population because he thinks they are contrary to public health.
Now let me tell you about this crazy guy Jonathan Swift who hated the poor so much he wanted to eat them.
posted by biogeo at 8:53 AM on May 11 [8 favorites]
Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague... But above all we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much-mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total expiration of particular disorders.This is so contrary to my understanding of Malthus's general motivation and arguments that I took advantage of flabdablet's helpful link and found it in the original text; it's in Book IV, Chapter V, first paragraph:
It has appeared indeed clearly in the course of this work, that in all old states the marriages and births depend principally upon the deaths, and that there is no encouragement to early unions so powerful as a great mortality. [I.e., Malthus has already shown that people self-limit reproduction based on the mortality rate, when resources are limiting.] To act consistently [consistently with a pro-natalist agenda that Malthus is attacking] therefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases; and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. If by these and similar means the annual mortality were increased from 1 in 36 or 40, to 1 in 18 or 20, we might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty, and yet few be absolutely starved.This is a satirical attack on people who argue in favor of encouraging population growth. Malthus believes that in the book's previous chapters he has demonstrated convincingly that, contrary to what Jessica Wildfire is accusing him of believing, people, including poor people, respond naturally to the relationship between their observations of resource availability and the current death rate. When the death rate increases due to things like war or disease, people marry younger and begin having more children, and when the population begins to reach its carrying capacity again, people begin delaying marriage and have fewer children. Therefore, Malthus satirically proposes, if you seriously want to encourage people to get married younger and have more children, the best way to do that is to increase the death rate by worsening public health. Malthus naively assumes that his readers will be sophisticated enough to understand that this is obviously monstrous, and that therefore any pro-natalism that is not fundamentally about increasing the resource-based carrying capacity is misguided. According to Malthus, people naturally reproduce towards the carrying capacity of their country's ecology and economy, so worrying about encouraging births or getting people to marry early is pointless at best and immoral at worst (if done in a way to push the population past its carrying capacity).
Contrary to what Jessica Wildfire is claiming, Malthus does not hate the idea of public health. He hates the idea of policies intended to increase population because he thinks they are contrary to public health.
Now let me tell you about this crazy guy Jonathan Swift who hated the poor so much he wanted to eat them.
posted by biogeo at 8:53 AM on May 11 [8 favorites]
“The Collapse Is Coming. Will Humanity Adapt?,” Peter Watts, The MIT Press Reader, May 2024
posted by ob1quixote at 10:44 AM on May 14 [3 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 10:44 AM on May 14 [3 favorites]
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posted by mittens at 8:13 AM on May 8 [28 favorites]