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OK, we’re not doomed…_
It’s not like falling off a cliff, it’s like walking into a minefield. Let’s try not to set off too many big ones.
When I’m near cliff edges, or minefields, I shall walk very carefully. I don’t want to doom myself…_
At ten A-bombs per second we’re clearly well into the minefield, so what do you reckon; minimise walking while we work out a plan?
I’m gonna walk more and plan less, can’t see the point anymore…_
IMHO greenhouse gasses, economic systems and so on are just symptoms of larger overarching phenomena. The root problems are fundamental laws of nature, specifically relating to ecology and thermodynamics. Humankind is a species in ecological overshoot and has been for tens of thousands of years; whether the starting point was fire, agriculture or civilisation is debatable. Like all species in a state of overshoot we are destroying our environment, displacing other species, consuming resources unsustainably and polluting at a rate that overwhelms the environment. As our population and technological sophistication has grown the rate of this change has increased, since the industrial revolution it has become dramatic.
Carbon pollution and the resultant climate change is just one instance of the damage our runaway species is doing to the biosphere.
We appear to be reaching the end of this process, the crescendo of our proud folly. It seems to me that collapse is inevitable; many of the political, economic, social and psychological problems we see in the world today are a result of this underlying cause. Even the most generous estimates of human population levels without the use of fossil fuels are a fraction of the current world human population. A truly sustainable human population level that did not cause accumulating environmental destruction would be even lower.
I used to be a techno-utopian too: carbon capture, renewable energy, recycling, education and so on. Now I see such an outlook as just another kind of denialism. It’s clear that as a species we are incapable of the level of humility and objectivity required to tackle this problem. We are too hardwired to chase comfort and dopamine in the short term (ie. a human time frame). Even if this were not the case it’s already too late, feedback loops have been triggered. Trying to solve the problems caused by technology, civilisation and progress with more technology, civilisation and progress is like trying to cure a drug addiction by taking more of the drug.
I’m not advocating fatalism or apathy, quite the opposite. My view may be wrong, and even if it isn’t it is our duty to do our utmost to ensure the safety and happiness of our collective progeny and by extension the rest of the biosphere. To do otherwise is the moral equivalent of eating babies. I spend every day digging, learning to grow food, contributing to my local community. Working to minimise dependence on global and national systems and bolster local small scale resilience seems to me to be the best course of action.
@ Flack Bag, …”Now I see such an outlook as just another kind of denialism”
Denialist dysphoria is a new one on me, how many types of denialism do you reckon there are?
I’ve always considered my denialism as being exclusive and singular, not existentialist and ubiquitous…_But there is no conclusive proof that this is being caused by human activity. We have been told that there is a scientific consensus but that is simply not true. There is no real evidence, just a lot of computer modelling which will basically tell you anything you want it to (post Covid we should all now know how useless these are in the real world).
Before committing to policies that will impoverish and disrupt the lives of billions of people across the planet, surely we should exercise some due diligence and really be certain that these policies are likely to have any effect.
Sir Keef:
– “….computer modelling which will basically tell you anything you want it to (post Covid we should all now know how useless these are in the real world)”
Did you actually watch any of the computer models during the pandemic? I did; various universities and scientific groups put their own on line, predicting infection prevalence, hospital admissions and deaths. Did you find them to be terribly inaccurate?
SK – rewritten to more accurately represent the truth :
There is conclusive proof that this is being caused by human activity. We know that there is a scientific consensus because that is simply the truth. There is real evidence, not just a lot of computer modelling which is what denialists, the fossil fuel lobby, its stooges and useful idiots want you to believe (post Covid we should all now know how useful these models are in the real world).
We have to commit to policies that will improve and enrich the lives of billions of people across the planet, surely we should exercise due diligence and really make certain that these policies are fully put into effect.
SK: I helped you out with your writing above, because apparently you’d accidentally dropped your original into some weird inverter before it was posted! Damndest thing… everything in your original was the precise opposite of what was really the case!
Sir Keef:
– “Before committing to policies that will impoverish and disrupt the lives of billions of people across the planet…” [my emphasis]
Aren’t the most powerful governments already committed to policies that already impoverish and disrupt the lives of billions of people across the planet?
Geopolitical and military conflicts over control of resources, especially hydrocarbons, seem the most glaring examples, but the more mundane attritions of poverty, lack of workers’ rights, pollution, environmental degradation etc. are increasingly affecting the entire global population.
FlakBlag, I strongly agree with most of your post, but…
– “Humankind is a species in ecological overshoot and has been for tens of thousands of years; whether the starting point was fire, agriculture or civilisation is debatable”
Humankind has only been in global overshoot for decades or centuries. Yes, humans have caused local extinctions for tens of thousands of years, and even some global extinctions of large animals, but didn’t really threaten the biosphere as a whole until industrialisation. Earth’s capacity to sustain life is being noticeably degraded, and this is relatively new. The rapidly increasing modern extinction rate is caused mostly by collateral damage, habitat degradation. Some habitat degradation is now global, and that too is recent.
Many human societies live close to sustainability, and many have done so throughout human existence.
Another thing that’s recent is the global domination of a unified ideology of maximising monetary profit through ever accelerating indiscriminate extraction, consumption and pollution. Ideologies were variously religious and/or about ruling families, tradition, culture and identity, but they all promoted some reverence and respect for nature, recognition of human dependence upon it. The ascendency of this mechanistic and capitalist ideology is truly creepy. It’s worse than inhuman, it’s anti-organic. It doesn’t grow into existing habitats; it buys and then sterilises anything in its way to impose its own large-scale order.
It’s big and highly coercive, but it must be stupid because its course is obviously self destructive. People can change their behaviours rapidly, if they can see the need, and especially if they can get organised.
Good on you for your resilience work.
I ask you, what’s a girl to do? The same decision taken at the EU has drawn out two entirely different conclusions.
One is that nothing has really changed,https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-ministers-pass-2035-car-engine-ban-law/
and the other is that everything has been throw up in the air.
The Daily Sceptic article expounds the argument in a Daily Telegraph article that is behind a paywall.
Does this mean we can expect even more nuclear bombs. Are we doomed or saved…_
I thought that Volvo and some others were phasing out construction of combustion engines by 2030 to be in a better position when the class action lawsuits about illness start arriving; “e-fuels” will probably be abandoned for the same reasons. Burning even pure hydrogen emits oxides of nitrogen because air is mostly nitrogen.
– “Are we doomed or saved…_”
Neither; thinking in stark binaries seems to be a predilection of your own.
The Berlin Climate Neutrality By 2030 referendum showed a lack of interest for the majority of Berliners.
The referendum was held last Sunday. Although most of the votes cast were in favour, not enough people voted to make the total vote quorate.
18% of the electorate voted in favour, 17% voted against and 65% stayed at home in their bunkers…_Natural law doesn’t care what people think, not even a majority.
– “…how many types of denialism do you reckon there are?”
Sir Keef seems to have demonstrated hit-and-run denialism. Very popular, that one.
As the man said,
“Why aren’t more people interrigent? Rike me”…_It isn’t that people are clever or stupid, nor even that people are misinformed. It’s worse than that. The supposedly factual news and current affairs media diligently undermine their viewers’ ability to rationally examine evidence, 24/7, year after year after year.
It has to do that, because the purpose of news and current affairs coverage is not to inform; it’s to lure audiences to advertisements – and that’s when it isn’t simply manipulating the public for political purposes. The commercial media have their own commercial objectives, and degrading their audiences’ critical thinking skills furthers those ends. This malign influence acts as much on elected representatives as it does on voters, as much on employers as on employees. When the biosphere itself is being killed by the profit motive, capitalism no longer serves the people of any class; by “serving the market” and swallowing neoliberal ideology governments have let a system get beyond their control and now it’s effectively farming us, confounding our ability to see the obvious by fogging our minds with “controversy”.
Clark –
Interesting little series from a year or so back, I missed it at the time. It’s called “How they made us doubt everything” – plenty of particulars concerning the operators who went smoothly from the tobacco/cancer denial industry to working for the fossil fuel people. Also highlights why scientists have been so bad at putting across their message, and how slick PR consultants basically wiped the floor with them.
https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/m000l7q1.rss
You can still hear the denialists coming up with _exactly_ the same talking points, all utterly disingenuous, promoted by the fossil fuel companies decades ago.
Incidentally, the “Fight like an animal” podcasts were interesting, thanks for that recommendation.
Glenn_nl, thanks for that RSS feed. For those who haven’t used RSS, here’s the BBC’s own index page:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000l7q1/episodes/downloads
The episodes are less than fifteen minutes each; clear, straightforward, with recorded statements from many involved at the time.
Clark,
In around 2009, when I discovered Craig Murray’s blog, I very nearly turned up in Norwich, at his campaign HQ to eg drop leaflets, in the hope that Craig would become the MP for Norwich North vs Chloe Smith.
So I nearly met you, and I think we would have got on, even though we disagreed about many things.
Glad you are still alive, and hopefull well.
I have had an entertaining hour reading the discussions between you, Glen_nl and John re covid and the jabs
What do you think now about them?
I thought you might have turned up at Craig Murray’s latest thing re Julian Assange – maybe you did.
My respect for Craig Murray is undiminished, and for some obscure reason, I have always liked you, especially when you were the moderator here.
I know, I am pretty comprehensively banned from most blogs on the internet, but that has been quite normal for me since around 1995.
We have got 3 Grandkids now, and our Rainbow Solar lights, have survived the winter.
covid did my head in more than my body – but that a bit too through lack of exercise and sunshine.
Trying to get fit, lose weight for the Festival Camping season ahead.
My wife and I look, and are pretty much the same, though she is very much fitter than me.
None of my immediate family have been jabbed, though there was a reunion for one of our friends who had, and dropped dead a year ago, suddenly, unexpectedly during a party.
Tony
Hello Tony, good to hear from you again. I’ll reply properly later; I’m about to watch a documentary about the Drax power station:
Drax: UK power station owner cuts down primary forests in Canada – BBC Science & Environment
Oh, looks like there’s a better one on Vimeo. “BURNED – Are Trees the New Coal”, 74 minutes.
