Guest post: They are definitely going to take us over the edge if we let them
Originally a comment by Bjarte Foshaug on The climate crisis has arrived and is accelerating.
At the beginning of the decade we are about to leave behind – the decade of Trump, the alt right, and post-truth politics – the 2010s were described as the last decade in which the human species still had a realistic chance of keeping global warming below 2 °C. Of course we didn’t seize this realistic chance while we had it, but kept running as fast as we could in the wrong direction, which means that any lingering hope must be sought in the more or less unrealistic realm. We already know where such hope will definitely not be found: It will not come from our elected politicians. That’s the option that has already failed for 30 years and can safely be ruled out. (If we ask why this is so, the answer doesn’t put the electorate in a very flattering light either). Nor is there any real hope that each of us (i.e. the same people who have consistently been opting for increased consumption at every turn and voting for politicians spouting “Drill, Baby, Drill!” and “All of the Above”) is individually going to cut his/her emissions to the degree required by the laws of physics, especially not within the context of a world order that capitalism has turned into a global version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma with permanent defection as the only viable strategy.
A slightly more hopeful route (advocated years ago by James Hansen) might be taking the guilty parties to court. This is currently happening in my country where an alliance of environmentalist organizations is suing the state to prevent drilling for oil in the Arctic. The environmentalists lost the first round, however, and although I fully support the ongoing appeal (including putting my money where my mouth is), I can’t honestly say that I’m optimistic. If the Trump-era has taught us one thing, it’s that the division of power is largely fictional, that foxes are guarding all the hen-houses, and that power and money tend to prevail regardless of what the law might say.
The least unrealistic hope as I see it is to get a minority of people sufficiently riled up to engage in massive acts of civil disobedience and physically block the extraction, transportation and burning of fossil fuels at every turn with their bodies. This is already happening to some extent of course, and we have already seen some partial victories, but not on a large enough scale to make a serious dent. Every government, as well as every major political party, in the industrial world has made it abundantly clear that they are definitely going to take us over the edge if we let them. My last desperate hope at this stage is that enough people will decide to not let them. Of course in a world of collective ego-centrism, instant gratification, short-term thinking, and even shorter attention spans, a world of alternative facts and rampant anti-intellectualism, a world where the only ideology more powerful than both neo-liberalism and the alt-right is a bland, indifferent centrism that would rather see the Earth turned to a desert than take a strong, bold stance on anything, this is a very faint hope indeed.
Lowering population growth is very important, not only for CO2 reduction, but also for biodiversity. Reduction is an admirable goal, but alternatives like nuclear energy have to be considered.
A Thanos strategy is not all bad, if done over s century or two. Both my sons would rather not have kids. That ratio could have been two -> four and now it might be two -> zero. If only 10% of the population did that a major advance for Bengal tigers and other large predators.
Where is the line where we should give up? We’re not winning this war, and we’re not going to, at least not on these terms. What does it look like if and when we come to the conclusion that it’s no use trying to get our elected governments to substantially address climate change? What do we do next? How do we maintain hope in this space we’re in: after we’ve realized we’re inescapably doomed to go over the edge, but before we’ve gone over? Even if you won’t yet accept our fate — even if you’re not yet willing to acknowledge that we’re already past the point of no return — think about that point of view for a minute. Take a breath; take it in. What do we do next? Is there some other tack we can take? How can we salvage our situation?
Alas. It’s clear that climate change is exactly the type of problem that the modern, democratic, capitalist world is not structured to handle rationally, and never will: the timeframes are too long for the voters to grasp; the consequences come far too late for the politicians to care about; there’s no feasible mechanism by which we can collectively come together and put aside our individual immediate needs to make the painful society-wide changes needed to avoid catastrophe.
(Every time I look down at my QWERTY keyboard I see a vivid example of a problem that can’t be solved within the systems we currently occupy. The QWERTY keyboard layout was deliberately designed to slow us down in the age of jam-prone mechanical typewriters, and now it’s nothing but a hindrance, but we can’t find a way to collectively move on to something more rational; we’re systematically stuck with it and it’s unlikely we’ll resolve this anytime soon. Our overarching economic system is like that but gargantuan: it’s not just about typing speed it’s about LITERALLY EVERYTHING. If we can’t even come together to swap out our keyboard layouts what chance do we have of swapping out our FUNDAMENTAL SOCIAL STRUCTURE THAT UNDERPINS EVERYTHING?)
As much as I hate to admit it, the Realpolitik thinker in me sees only two possible outcomes: we’re either saved by some miraculous technology — some kind of geoengineering solution arises which, unlike most proposed geoegnineering solutions we’ve seen so far, would actually solve more problems than it causes — or, far more likely, a total social reorganization happens. And by that I mean ugly, violent revolution with a monumental body count. And it’ll be super freaky with technology in the mix. All I can imagine is that it’ll be like nothing we can possibly imagine.
And I think it’s absolutely likely. I genuinely anticipate a massive, civilization-shaking, violent revolution in the near future. (How near? Who knows…) Don’t we all kind of in the back of our minds feel the same?? I’m not saying we should give up on trying to avert this, but we should start imagining that scenario vividly and clearly, because it’s very very possible.
One thing the left has never been good at is being realistic, and now more than ever we need to be realistic about the challenges ahead.
How does that look in practical terms? I don’t know. Maybe, let’s start thinking in terms of planning for the worst and getting a headstart on legislation. Let’s lobby to shore up our rights to fresh water and protect its control from corporate hands, for one. In the inevitable climate-crisis future, that will matter more than anything. Social safety-net legislation could save countless lives if there’s a prolonged downturn. Let’s fight to get it in before it’s too late. Let’s each personally commit to having emergency preparedness plans, too, starting with simple first-aid kits, right up to getting ourselves out of debt and amassing savings so we can help others in times of crisis. These kinds of things matter and can save lives. Honestly, I don’t know, but that’s a start. Whoever wins the 2020 presidential, I can tell you, he or she is not going to spearhead some radical change to curb the rapid warming of the planet. So we better start thinking ahead and taking things into our own hands.
@Kevin Henderson
I agree that we need to find some non-violent way of lowering our numbers. Empowering women (as we should be doing anyway) seems the most promising route. But let’s be clear that this is not going to happen anywhere near fast enough to get us out of the acute crisis we are facing.
As far as nuclear power is concerned, I’m not dogmatically opposed to it per se – certainly not if the alternative is fossil fuel (as others have pointed out, nuclear power leads to a disaster if something goes wrong, while fossil fuel power leads to a disaster when everything works exactly the way it’s supposed to. And fossil fuel power works the way it’s supposed to far more often than nuclear power malfunctions). Still, there are serious issues with radioactive waste, and in the – unlikely but still far from impossible – event of a meltdown the consequences are sufficiently bad that I think we are right to be reluctant to consider it among our first options (Of course whatever “good” options may once have existed are no longer on the table…).
As Bill McKibben and others have argued Nuclear power plants are also extremely expensive, require massive subsidies, and take a very long time (precisely what we don’t have) to plan and build. In most cases we are therefore almost certainly better off investing in renewables that are both cheaper, safer and take a fraction of the time to put into operation.
That is so much the case…and another issue that came up a few years ago is the large amount of water they use, which in a globally warmed world is going to be less certain. Some nuclear plants in the US southeast had to close for a while during a dry spell.
And the other issue no one talks about is the constant drumbeat for low emission cars, which doesn’t take into account anything but emissions. They leave all the other negative impacts of cars intact, and allow drivers to still drive one person vehicles everywhere. This converts massive amounts of ecosystem into concrete, and worse, concrete with large heavy fast moving things that are a danger to any wildlife (or domestic life, for that matter) that wish to cross the road. We need to invest in more mass transit and reduce the roads, which would also help because it would restore some of the system that helps regulate the climate that is now covered in an impervious surface that increases water runoff and decreases carbon dioxide uptake.
This is probably the most complex issue we have ever had to face, and our main solution seems to be ignoring it hoping it will go away, or coming up with minor bandaid fixes that attempt to cover the gaping wound without actually stanching the flow of blood.
During WWII, amazingly fast changes were made to accommodate the world wide emergency. We need to regard our battle against global warming much as if it were WWIII. We are told not to generate fear in people, but it seems that our fastest, most effective mobilizations happen when we are afraid and know it is our own ass on the line.
@Artymorty
Personally, I’m already past that point. As I said, we are already out of “realistic” options. Whatever hope remains – realistic or not – is definitely not going to come from our elected politicians (the same people who go to every climate negotiation with the goal of avoiding an effective deal). The same goes for all the proposed “market-based” solutions (carbon markets, offsets etc.) specifically designed to appease the fossil fuel lobby by being as toothless and ineffective as possible. The sooner we accept this, the better because then we can stop wasting time waiting for the endless climate summits, and “aspirational” goals, and non-binding agreements (that none of the negotiating parties has any intention of following anyway) to yield results, and start working on getting in their way.
@iknklast
We’re treating it as if it were a bad haircut. Well, not quite that seriously.
About that conversion of ecosystem into concrete that iknklast mentions – that includes parking lots as well as roads. Marshland converted to parking lots turned out to be very bad news for Houston when Harvey arrived.
Another point that seems to be implied by iknklast’s post is that any proposed solution based on the premise that we are going to keep on living exactly as before, only without the carbon emissions (changing to a different car but not driving less etc.) is a false solution. If there are any good news in all of this, it is that most research seems to suggest that the consumerist lifestyle never really made us any happier anyway. Ideed I’m strongly inclined to think the oposite is true.
#7, #8 – Exactly. Our cities are centered around cars, not people. Private driving costs us more economically than mass transit, and ecologically, it is several orders of magnitude. Mass transit isn’t a perfect solution – you still need roads, tracks, fossil fuels – and horses for 7.5 billion people, well, don’t get me started about the need to clean up horse manure.
The reality is, there are no solutions that will work without significant changes in how we live, and how many of us are living that way.
The greatest threat to our way of life is our way of life.
Bottom line, “business as usual” is simply not an option. We can either make a managed transition away from the fossil fuel era and hope to maintain a minimum of control of our own fates, or we can wait and let nature make the transition for us and be reduced to helpless spectators as the whole thing comes crashing down over our heads. Naomi Klein is therefore right to say that – one way or the other – this does indeed change everything.
One more thing. A lot has been written lately about the new mental conditions of “climate anxiety” and “climate depression” (which seem to imply that being frightened of/ feeling bad about the mess we’re in with respect to climate change is something akin to a mental disorder rather than a perfectly reasonable reaction – indeed the only reasonable reaction – to a real and very serious problem). In a classical case of shooting the messenger, some have gone as far as blaming climate scientists – or even Greta Thunberg – of scaring people. As a climate activist in my country wrote not too long ago, this framing of the issue gets it completely backwards: It wasn’t the facts of the scientist that kept her awake at night, nor Greta’s brave effort to draw attention to the problem. It was the apathy and indifference of almost everyone else.
I could not agree more. I would probably be a lot less pessimistic if most people weren’t so damned optimistic. As a former head of the Norwegian Central bank once put it, nothing is more depressing than unjustified optimism. Whatever stubborn hope I still cling on to – realistic or not – comes precisely from people like Greta Thunberg, Bill McKibben, James Hansen, and activist groups like German Ende Gelände who show that they take the problem seriously and are willing to do something about it. On the other hand nothing fills me with more hopelessness and despair than people who shrug it off and expect everything to turn out fine all by itself, thus making it clear that they haven’t even acknowledged the problem yet.
A point I make frequently. We can be in control, or we can let things happen to us. And the other point: which will cost more? To make the adjustments to our lives, our economy, our system now? Or to let it crash on us and spend our time trying to figure out how to get out of the mess we made? Using a strict, accurate cost-benefit analysis would lead us to the conclusion that working to fight global warming is the more rational response, but the benefits are felt over the long term, not the short term, and economics deals only in short term.
As for the climate depression? I have something akin to that, but my therapist declines to see it as a mental disorder or illness, because she is able to recognize it as a rational response to a serious problem. I have been fortunate in my choice of therapists.