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Capitalism, Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth, Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Empire, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Financial Elite, Guy McPherson at Bluegrass Bioneers 2012, Mass Die Off, The Elite 1%
Gail from Wit’s End referred me to Guy McPherson’s presentation above. I just finished watching it a few minutes ago. Here are my thoughts on the talk.
This is the big wild card which may well bring everything down since the IPCC assessments and climate models either don’t factor in these feedback effects or, if they do, don’t do it with much accuracy. For example, the Arctic is melting three times faster than predicted and that will have implications for the entire planet. The Arctic melt, as well as Greenland melt, makes all global climate change predictions unreliable. Another example just came across the news today:
Doha, Nov 27 (Prensa Latina) The rapid increase in temperature in the Arctic has caused a loss of ice in the subsoil of the region, a fact that should be considered in climate models, experts said today. If the “permafrost” melts, it will free all the carbon accumulated for centuries, said Kevin Schaefer, of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at the 18th Conference on Climate Change held in Doha, Qatar.
“Once it starts happening, the process is irreversible. There is no way to recapture the carbon released. And the process wil continue for centuries, due to the organic matter being very cold and descomposing slowly”, said the scientist.
This excess of carbon released into the atmosphere was never included in the projections of global warming, which is why the UNEP recommends that the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on the Evolution of the Climate specifically take into account the growing impact of permafrost thawing on global warming…
All of these uncertainties should give everyone pause because it means that the most dire predictions could very well be correct, as Guy points out in his talk.
Towards the end of the video, the camera spanned the auditorium and I could see all the empty seats. There were perhaps a few dozen people in attendance of Guy’s talk. That’s a sad commentary on society, but it also points to something else – catastrophe fatigue or the normalization of catastrophe. The slow and steady stream of doomsday news along with the popularizing of such themes in mainstream entertainment and pop culture has served to desensitize people to catastrophe and violence:
source – Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth
Guy doesn’t really talk explicitly about the link between capitalism and the environmental crisis. He should. Capitalism feeds off of crisis. As they say, capitalism is crisis. It is the primary root cause of the civilization-ending eco-collapse we are facing:
source – Catastrophism: The Apocalyptic Politics of Collapse and Rebirth
Those are my observations and quick notes.
I feel that Guy was unnecessarily insulting to Bill McKibben and his 350.org movement. Yes, it is true we will never see CO2 levels at 350, but the point McKibben is making is that we are already past the point at which we will see terrible consequences from our fossil fuel use, and that spreading the word about the dangers of more carbon and forcing policy change may make a difference. I don’t know if we can make a difference now, but what else is more important than trying to keep warming down to a level in which survival is possible?
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Apparently, finding a way to profit off this disaster is always at the very top of the priority list.
“Green is the color of mold and corruption.” ~ James Lovelock
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Mike, it sounds like you feel all activism and organizing against the continued spewing of fossil fuels is not only a waste of time, but even tainted and unethical.
Is there any action you feel is worthwhile to try to diminish our damage to our atmosphere?
(Again, a part of me feels that all is too far gone and hopeless at this point. And I’m getting psychologically ready for the worst, but, geez, I still have other parts of me willing to try to alter our destructive course)
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As Chris Hedges and Guy McPherson have both pointed out, it is a question of morality. All acts of disobedience and revolt should be respected, supported, and admired. In a sick, irreparably dysfunctional, and morally bankrupt culture, the few who back up their beliefs and values with action are the only people who can face the future with a clear conscience.
However, lets not kid ourselves about corporate greenwashing and optimism bias.
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I agree, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. I think 350 is about as close as it comes to accomplishing some of the things we would like to see happening, such as a real awakening among the general population of the mega-crisis we face. Add to that real action against the worst of what our society does for our addiction to oil and coal and gas. I think McKibben has done a good job in getting people motivated and active.
Not many people are able to give up their entire lives for the cause, but they can at least help to support those who do. I live two separate lives. One running my dental office and putting in most waking hours into it, along with being a parent and husband as best I can. The other reading and thinking and occasionally participating in the new paradigm of no growth and environmentalism. I do the best I can. One day, I feel, all my work at my office and even being a dad will seem like a waste of time and energy as our system completely breaks down, but right now I can’t see a reasonable way to live differently than I am right now.
And that is where a group like 350 can be important. I can participate with some time and money. If thousands of others do, things can happen. And if you feel there is no benefit to a group like this, then what we’ll have is a few truly dedicated activists willing to dedicate their lives to this cause, but completely misunderstood and ignored by the general population, as there would be no awareness or participation in the cause by the vast majority. Talk about a handoff of complete power to the fossil fuel industry!!!
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Speaking of feedback loops: This video is only 19:34 in length & will not repeat not put anyone to sleep; goes very quickly. The remark about “next summer,” because this was recorded earlier, refers in advance to summer 2012.
One arresting pull quote: “The distinction between just a feedback process and a runaway feedback process is very, very important.indeed. You can have feedback that slowly increases, if you like, the risk and puts the temperature up a bit higher. Runaway feedback says the system responds so much to an increase in temperature that it becomes faster in the way it changes the climate with rising temperature. So the hotter it gets, the faster it gets hotter, and the hotter it gets, the faster it gets hotter faster, until you move into a process that’s completely uncontrollable. And instead of coming up to a new equilibrium temperature that may be a bit high, it goes on going up faster and faster until something runs out—there’s no more methane to release or we’ve run out of forests to burn or something …
“The danger of moving into a runaway climate change scenario is now clear and is beginning to be quantified in the last few months. It’s probably the greatest threat that we face as a planet.” (from 11:15ff.) Dr. Shakhova’s remarks just after this are also unsettling.
http://www.envisionation.co.uk/index.php/arctic-methane-why-the-sea-ice-matters
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The problem with groups like 350 is that they give people a false sense of security. Known as “Gang Green”, the big organizations are corporate funded and their full-time paid staff would lose their cushy jobs if they pointed out that saving the earth from ecocide means dismantling industrial civilization and deliberately, quickly, drastically reducing human population. I think it’s fair to say that they – Sierra Club (did you notice in the film how the woman said…but the Sierra Club says wee’re making progress!), EDF, WWF, etc. – have been corrupted and are doing harm by misleading their constituents.
Here’s a link to an article written by a Stanford professor, about why people deny how serious climate change is, with my response yesterday, because it’s sort of on the same topic:
http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/climate_science_as_culture_war
Dear Professor Hoffman,
I actually did attend a Heartland Conference (uninvited!) because I wanted to understand what enables professional deniers to be so convincing. (original blog post and photos here: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/07/beware-banality-of-evil-heartless-at.html)
One of the first questions asked by a speaker was, let’s suppose burning gas and oil and coal IS bad. What are we going to replace it with? Solar panels? Wind? Geothermal?
This elicited guffaws in the audience and therein, I believe, lies the simple answer. Deniers don’t believe that “renewable” (to the extent it really is renewable, because it isn’t, since it is produced with many nonrenewable resources) can ever replace the concentrated power of fossil fuels. And they’re right.
Most climate activists and scientists have no answer for this other than “faith” in technological magic – rather than confronting head-on that in order to make even a dent in the acceleration of global warming, thanks to all those amplifying feedbacks, the developed nations would have to sacrifice by drastically curtailing consumption…and the developing nations would have to drastically curtail population.
Nothing less will do, and as long as the Big Gang Green organizations pretend we will be saved by recycling, and buying local, and giving them donations, the deniers suspect quite rightly that there is no credibility in the environmental movement, and this is what enables them to dismiss the science.
To use your analogy of tobacco use – people had to QUIT. And they had to be tremendously frightened by an existential threat to do so.
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don’t know how to post an image so I put it in dropbox.
I’m no fan of capitalism but really, is there any social/cultural/economic human system that doesn’t ultimately wreck the environment? Perhaps a very few obscure tribes long ago…but as long as a population is growing, isn’t it ultimately going to overwhelm the ecosystem?
I blame Prometheus.
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Cool cartoon! here is the command for pics:
<img src="image URL" alt="
” />
The only thing you have to worry about is the URL for the pic which you will paste between the quotes where it says ‘image URL’.
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I’d argue with your points, but I largely agree about the seriousness of what we face, and that the big green organizations are led by groups tied to the consumption-capitalist systems that are the root cause.
However, right now we live in a world in which people honestly don’t even realize there is a real threat from climate change. Out here in eastern, coastal NC people still think the whole idea that fossil fuels is changing the world in dangerous ways is simply crazy liberal communist shit.
Maybe 350 is a bit naive, thinking that they can really change the course of the world, but this group really does have as its objective fighting the denial propaganda of the big fossil fuel corporations, trying to get regular people to understand the real issues involved in climate change. I’m a great supporter of that. You all may be far from that level of understanding and not realize the power that could come about if millions understood the dangers confronting us. I really want to spread the word, and 350.org is trying to do that.
The other important move 350.org has done is to target the fossil fuel industries as a real enemy. This is a huge move for many people. Not me. I’ve realized that the real enemy of life on earth are these corporations, which value profit over survival. But most people have not gotten to our understanding, and I applaud a group like 350.org that does that.
Bill McKibben is a tireless worker for spreading awareness of the dangers of climate change and our use of fossil fuels. Ok, I’m with you that our entire industrial and even agricultural way of life is killing the planet. I first found a soulmate in my feelings a few years ago with Derrick Jensen, understanding that to save life on earth our whole civilization needs to collapse, the sooner the better. But even Jensen realizes that there is good in activism, opposing the industrial corporations one step at a time. McKibben is doing this, confronting the forces of tar sands pipelines and fracking and mountaintop removal. Will it save the earth? I don’t think so. I think we are toast. But I don’t KNOW that. Maybe this activism will help avoid the worst. So I’ll support it, as it seems there is some hope there, and anyway, what better use of time? Watching football?
The alternative is sitting around knowing all we know will collapse, along with most life on earth, and doing absolutely nothing. I’d rather give McKibben some support and at least feel I’m on the right side of things.
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Testing…
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thanks for the formula XRay and that’s some wonderful graphic there! Maybe everyone should hold up a printout when Obama has Zomney to lunch tomorrow?
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Paul f. Getty,
I should point out, since you may well not know, that I have been to numerous 350 events. I’ve been arrested twice lately – once at the 350 organized protest against Keystone XL in DC in August 2011, then at Occupy last April in a planned action outside the Stock Exchange (my sign said “Industrial Civilization = Ecopocalypse) and I came uncomfortably close to getting arrested – and shot – at a mountain-top removal lockdown in West Va in last July. I went to Palm Springs in January 2010 to do some “shin-kicking” to protest the Koch brothers before anyone knew they were distinct from Ed. One of my proudest moments was learning that my zombie costume and sign “Koch Kills” irritated David so much that he singled me out in an interview with the Weekly Standard as “very extreme and very, very dangerous”.
So, I’m all for activism – like Guy, I consider it a moral imperative and besides, there’s not much else to do other than maybe truly subversive, highly illegal direct disruptions. I’m not one to just sit by and watch the collapse happen.
However, it is still possible to be active and at the same time criticize the strategy chosen by leading climate activists. What they’ve been doing ISN’T WORKING and unfortunately, they have attracted followers unwilling to tell the emperors they are missing essential garments.
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Well, I am in awe of you, thank you, and applaud you. I have not done much of these kinds of things that you have done. Wish I have. I would like to do more. You are one of the pioneers. We should learn from you.
But I think that people like you who have done so much can get aggravated that your efforts seem to be wasted because so many support organizations that do not really move the world to a place it should be. I understand it is frustrating. Many blabbing about light bulbs and solar panels and making money and still the earth bleeds more.
But on the other hand, if people like bill McKibben can bring in more people, thousands, make them think, give them information, motivate them, and some even progress to activism on a level like yours, then I think he has done something that really could be meaningful and maybe even slow the bleeding.
And that is why I was dismayed by Guy’s denigration of the entire 350.org activity.
I’ve read Guy’s books and have great respect for him. I think his criticism of McKibben was unnecessary and unhelpful. That’s all. Otherwise, a good talk.
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Thanks for sharing that interesting and humorous history. I loved the part about David Koch.
Gail, Mother Nature hereby grants you safe passage through the Great Eco-Apocalypse that is fast approaching.
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Here’s a new book that may be interesting or prove helpful in explaining your position to others. It’s from Heinberg and the Post Carbon institute people.
http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780970950086
That is the coffee table book with lots of pictures. There is also a text only reader version.
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I have another suggestion for why activism is still helpful.
First off, I’ll cop to being a completely confirmed fatalist about what’s happening and is going to happen. I’ve been looking at all aspects of the predicament very hard for the last 8 years or so. Every avenue I’ve explored, from resource use and pollution (especially including fossil fuels and climate change) though to human history, culture and psychology, has convinced me that we are locked into this death march. There is no realistic way out of the box we have so cunningly fashioned for ourselves. Although we have just pulled the trip-wire with clathrates and permafrost, the box was in fact sealed up long ago. It’s just that its plush appointments kept us from seeing the truth about our situation.
We have, in my estimation, 2 to 3 decades left to enjoy the fruits of our planetary rape. Between now and then we are dead men walking. Metaphors about being Schrodinger’s cat and hearing the click of the particle detector firing also spring to mind. Our wave function is about to collapse.
However, hope springs eternal, as they say, and I used the word “realistic” above quite deliberately. As my partner is fond of reminding me, there is always room in the cartoon of life for a box labelled “Here a miracle occurs.” It may sound fatuous, but I think she’s right. There is no guarantee that a miracle will occur of course, but unless we leave space in our thoughts and actions for the possibility, there is a pretty iron-clad guarantee that one WILL NOT – and that if it did we wouldn’t recognize it for what it might be.
And so I leave that tiny, improbable sliver of hope uncrushed. Along with a helping of Buddhist “equanimity of non-attachment”, it guards my spirit from an otherwise certain dissolution. I don’t count on it, and I rarely act on it directly. But it’s what keeps me posting on boards like this, keeps me talking to people about What’s Really Happening, keeps me thinking, writing, speaking. Because the more of us there are who Know, the greater that infinitesimal possibility of a miracle becomes. And even if it doesn’t come (as I am so sure in my darker moments) keeping that tiny space set for it in my own soul still makes my life an easier place to be.
McKibben is probably aware that what he’s doing is a forlorn hope. Ditto for Richard Heinberg and all the rest of our merry band of rogues. But life and death is just too damned fascinating not to watch in awe and wonder as it unfolds – and to help others clearly see that same majesty – warts and all.
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What a great little essay! Thanks.
You have expressed my feelings exactly, better than I.
I see very little hope of getting through our predicament without a major, cataclysmic collapse. And I also give it two or three decades. Could possibly be a long decline, but the end point will be much the same.
I first felt twinges of this hopelessness in the seventies, after reading The Limits To Growth, but I got busy with kids and career and forgot about it. I was right back then, I can now see.
But while reading Derrick Jensen, somewhere he mentioned, or I thought while reading him, that if you save a coastline, or a mountain, or a species, and then we collapse, that thing you saved is actually saved…..it made it past the time of omnicide, and could be part of a new remaking of the living world. That’s enough for me to keep me motivated and wanting to protect part of what we still have.
Regardless of the hopelessness, I’ll still support McKibben and Heinberg.
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This is very much my thoughts and feelings too, although I have still not yet decided on a timeframe for the big changes to come. I frequently say to others that the runaway feedback loops is the big wildcard in our predicament. We know that resource depletion happens, we know that there will be an energy crisis, we know there will be serious weather related incidents as the temperature climbs. And yes we might sweat and toil humanity through these. But if the temps blast up in +10C over average, it really seems like we would have managed to completely ruin the planet and the majority of life here. I generally don’t talk about this as peoples eyes glaze over then since you are walking over in doomerland and the Mayan calendar and all that silly stuff.
So xraymike is right here that the apocalypse has already been televised, people are just desensitized to cataclysmic events as “that’s the stuff of the movies” (and lunatics talking to themselves). Its very difficult to reach people, as the “tiny” 0.8 degrees warming since preindustrial times doesn’t sound very much. And so our CO2 footprint is also small. You know people have a problem with the dimension of stuff, a full pint is just the double of a half pint. So whats +3C warming? Only 3 times as much warming as so far? Whats 400ppm – only some 40% over pre-industrial times. The fact that in ecosystems these dimensions dictate critical changes is just above peoples heads. Very few have contact with nature anymore hence they cant even sense the changes. Zipping from warm house, to warm 4WD, to warm office – ordering stuff on the web which appears magically in the postbox – and getting dinner delivered at home. Most people live a superficial life – a fairytale – hence we like to listen to fairytales which generally grants us our wishes. I dunno about you, but its really about time that people get shaken out of their zombie walks and start observing and learning what we are doing to the planet.
I am beginning to think that it’s about time people like McKibben and Heinberg start shouting and cursing at people. All this soft talking about options and sustainable life seems like a nice alternative – but it doesn’t sell the idea. Some people just need to be kicked in the ass to react. Some people need to be confronted with the real and dirty consequences of their actions.
I think 350.org and those organizations are good really, its important that there is a community that can attract people – sometimes you might get a charismatic leader among them which connects to people. Imagine an artist like Justin Bieber coming out on stage and telling people to stop flying so much, stop driving fat ass SUVs and fix the atmosphere. This works for some you see. Even Bono has been able to convert some people into thinking out of the box – and be more intelligent about our options. No matter how much others like to ridicule famous people for being two faced. After all its better than nothing. I am also happy well respected people like David Attenborough is so clear that climate change is from human CO2 emissions – and he can clearly show the story from a nature perspective. If he had made a nature documentary about the end of our species due to global warming, some people might have been converted… the more the greater chance of change.
As for governments, I know the theme of xraymikes blog here is that people need to organize to overthrow governments in order for there to be a change – good old guillotine style revolution. I am not so sure this really works, but if a majority of people are convinced that what we do now is wrong and there is definitely room for change – people will voice this when they have a large backing. I call this the Ghandi way or King way – non violent change. Personally I think this is something available to all of us right now if people start organizing protests and meetings more often to mark territory and that there is a voice and opinion among people that needs to be heard.
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Among all the fascinating and frightening information that was presented at the AGU conference last week this might be the most important:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/12/is_earth_f_ked_at_2012_agu_meeting_scientists_consider_advocacy_activism.single.html
always remembering of course, that it’s too little, too late!
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This is a good discussion about just what good a non violent protest can do:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/12/last-weeks-post-here-on-archdruidreport.html
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Never fails. Every time I go to read the Hobbit I regret it. His brand of apocalypse not and long descent is faith based, self-serving, pompous, and just as blind as the people who deny peak oil. I can’t find such heavily censored discussions interesting, because he doesn’t allow any real challenges to his profitable orthodoxy through comments moderation.
The notion that the privileged few who follow His Beardship will be able to prepare to survive for a slow, gradual decline while all the rest who don’t buy his books will perish is some kind of quasi-religious fundamentalist orthodoxy. The black swans that will emerge from multiple converging crossed and irreversible tipping points in climate change – never mind massive ecosystem failures from pollution and habitat destruction – can’t be prepared for, and neither can the social breakdown that will swiftly follow.
The chaos that is just starting to begin is going to intensify and accelerate beyond anything ever seen by humankind, wishes notwithstanding.
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Rats, WordPress has me commenting with an old ID. I will have to try to fix that. Anyway, here’s the latest left by JMG on that post, which is illustrative both of his tendency to twist reality to suit his agenda, and his patronization of his followers:
“Chris, you get this morning’s gold star. One of the reasons that nobody outside the climate change movement takes it seriously is that it’s so obviously an attempt to pursue middle class lifestyles by other means — the way that so many climate change people end up pimping for the nuclear industry is par for the course.”
1. A gold star? Really? Are we in kindergarten?
2. I know an awful lot of climate change activists – some very prominent activists, and many more unknowns – and while I agree that many of them steer away from mentioning the drastic reduction in per capita consumption that would be required (for which it’s too late anyway) – I can’t think of a single one that even ADVOCATES nuclear power, let alone pimps for the industry. That’s something deniers try to shove down the the throats of environmentalists. JMG pulled that one out of his big pointy wizard hat.
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