A beautiful, sad, and justifiably angry essay from Jessica Wildfire (@jessicawildfire) about people continuing to ignore the climate crisis...
Today I watched a math professor and climate activist named Eliot Jacobson talk to CNN about global temperature records and arctic sea ice. He sums it up in the simplest terms. Climate scientists are shocked at what’s happening. None of their models predicted any of this. A mass extinction usually takes millions of years. As he said, “We’re going to do it in a hundred.”
For Jacobson, the collapse of global industrial civilization has become a certainty. A recent column in The Guardian says the same. We’re already breaking through the 1.5C limit set by the Paris Climate Agreement. Scientists are telling us to brace for 2C or even 3C of warming. All of the books I’ve read make it very clear: That kind of warming will turn the planet into something humans have never seen. Large parts of the earth will become uninhabitable for us.
Even the gloomiest climate scientists are left speechless by the disasters unfolding this summer. Climate activists who’ve been urging for an emergency declaration are saying: “I thought we had more time.”
The scenarios scientists were predicting for 2050 are happening now, and they don’t know how much worse it’s going to get. They’re starting to admit, they can’t predict anything anymore.
It’s hard to plan for a future when not even the climate scientists know what’s going to happen next.
Best not to think about it, right?
Nobody wants to talk about reality. They want to talk about Barbenheimer. They want to pretend we’ve still got time. If you face the truth of what’s happening, then suddenly the vast majority of what we’re forced to do makes no sense anymore.
Maybe that’s why people get so angry now when we talk about climate change. They know, but they want to spend however long they’ve got left chasing and consuming whatever pleasure they can. Part of them knows their time is growing short, and they don’t want to spend it angry or depressed, or even trying to stop it.
When you understand the full scope and gravity of what’s happening, most jobs don’t make any sense. It doesn’t make sense to plan a vacation when half the world is burning. It doesn’t make sense to save up money to send your kid to college in ten years.
But it’s easier to ignore it all.
It’s easier to keep working and going to movies while you wait for the wildfire, the flood, or the heat wave that kills you. It’s easier to delay the realization of your climate death as long as possible.
@breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire If enough people snapped out of denial and wishful thinking in time and stopped doing whatever they have been doing - which has become futile - and instead started to force those in power to act appropriately to this crisis, we could stop or prevent some of it. But I am not hopeful this will happen.
@doncish@breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire too many people think they can’t do anything, and/or other people are having a worse affect on the planet, so they should start first.
I'm in this phase - somewhere between fatalistic acceptance that it's too late to stop the collapse of human society, but wanting a bit of normality before I have to unsheath my sword.
I've taken steps to reduce my emissions and grow my own food, but unless I literally head for the hills and cut myself off from Capitalist society it's no more than a few sandbags against a tsunami.
I could get in on Malm's pipeline activism or go hunting oil execs and politicians, but I feel that would just be vengeance. We could be months from a series of cataclysmic tipping points. I don't think my actions will make a difference now.
Once the healthcare system collapses I've family whose lifespan will be measured in years at best. Once we've lost everything vengeance might be all that remains. The next couple of years are time to prepare and have a last few good memories.
@breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire IMO part of people’s reactions (and I think I am working through this myself) is that there has to be a way out of this; it sounds bad but some smart scientist somewhere can surely fix this. We don’t believe a catastrophe like this is possible. So we know there’s a way to fix it.
@breadandcircuses@strangefreeworld I think once you realise the Earth and it's life systems are part of a complex adaptive system. My experience is from health care and Richard Cook started why things break down there, back in 1998. Not all his 18 features apply, but the core features that he lists in first 6 certainly do, IMO. Feature 17 & 18 are crucial to the world.
I'm assuming here, but I think part of the reason many still want to ignore it is because marketing consumerism has been so successful in creating the illusion of peoples lives as a comfortable, safe space.
Our collective idea of what our lives are supposed to be like can't come crashing down like this... we're too fragile to take it.
I think the mental strain is just too much for many people.
there are going to be things climate scientists never could have predicted either, unknown unknowns -- which will only emerge when the heat really comes on. the feedback loop will intensify. seems obvious?
@breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire it feels like, collectively, we've made the decision to die as we are - SUVs, yachts, flying multiple times a year, accepting the disposability of most products, having steak multiple times a week - rather than become something different.
@breadandcircuses For sure, and that influence isn't waning or going away any time soon. Why does Hollywood succeed? Why did neoliberalism take over like wildfire after the fall of the wall? Why do people know that clothes are made by a slave class in Bangladesh and still buy tonnes of them?
Until wanna-be opposition to the current (awful) status quo answers these questions and frames the solution in more than just SJW-style attacks on conservatives, we're stuck at square 1 IMO
@breadandcircuses@sardaukar yes and double yes. I'd add being too full of ourselves to the list. "Nuh uh, no way I'm influenced by the system oversaturating my data inputs with shit, I'm too clever for that". Of course, that's also part of the narrative being pushed.
@breadandcircuses Can I ask you sincere question: Do you have any hope for reversing global warming, ie. drawdown, or are you by now singly focused on preparing and adapting for more climate chaos?
@breadandcircuses I understand how one can come to such a conclusion today. I'm sad to hear. I hope you find a way to adapt and prepare, that empowers people and doesn't worsen the situation (air condition adaptation), and help those that accompany you in that journey to do the same.
Why people get so angry now when we talk about climate change?
"They know, but they want to spend however long they’ve got left chasing and consuming whatever pleasure they can. Part of them knows their time is growing short, and they don’t want to spend it angry or depressed, or even trying to stop it."
"When you understand the full scope and gravity of what’s happening, most jobs don’t make any sense."
As an aside, what’s the deal with linking to archive.li rather than the actual Medium article? Does archive.li just scrape sites that have a paywall or membership, allowing people to bypass it? If so, that doesn’t seem particularly ethical. However, this article deserves to be read so if that’s what’s necessary to accomplish that then I guess it’s not all bad.
@breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire I must politely take issue with this, strictly on the grounds that doomerism doesn't seem to wish to solve anything. What are we supposed to do with writing like this?
The people who need their minds changed won't read it, and the people who already believe it won't benefit from its information. At best, they'll just agree with (justifiably) righteous indignation.
Isn't the only thing that matters real-world activism?
@breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire This is the kind of thing I can’t really talk to anyone about all while it’s having an effect on everybody’s mental health acknowledged or not. We’re so deep into fantasy and entertainments to ignore reality that we elect people like TFG who grifts and grifts his cult of personality sold as patriotic leadership while the world boils and burns.
Cold is my comfort that now so many others write of what terrible outcomes will soon be upon us all, as starkly as I have written myself over several years before I joined Mastodon.
I must admit I’d given up, so many were platitudes & soothing responses from well meaning responders.
But science isn’t soothed by words of hope or political manifestos bearing faked pledges!
@goatsarah@breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire There would be one way for the masses to stop it which is through en masse civil disobedience and indeed a general strike. Basically just completely stop then set terms.
But that's near impossible to imagine at current levels of apathy, it won't be until there is a general breakdown because people aren't able to survive any more so they turn on the state and each other.
Within the system we would need probably the level of coordinated and dare I say even authoritarian response that happened at the start of the COVID pandemic if we're to very rapidly cut emissions to drastically lower levels and coordinate mitigation. For example shut down the oil refineries even if in the immediate term the economy will implode and there will be widespread civil strife and a humanitarian catastrophe, because the alternatives are worse. This does not seem likely until its even later in the day and even more brutal.
I sadly agree. And though no one, IMO, can be fully prepared, perhaps we can arrive at a place where we can be of service to others--reducing as much suffering as we can.
Hey there. I'm writing you by dictation on my phone, from my bed, to which I'm largely confined. I know a thing or two about chronic medical conditions and being dependent on technological society survive.
Even us, there's still things we can do. It's still worth it to know what's coming down the pipe. It doesn't help to refuse to hear the truth because it's scary. If we know the truth we at least have the option of grappling with it. It's on us to manage our own fear. It's never the right choice to choose not to know something just because it scares us.
Knowing these things, gives us the option to make decisions about risk that we wouldn't otherwise, to make decisions about where to invest our limited energies and other resources.
In this way, knowledge of the climate catastrophe is like the gift of a gas mask: it is ugly, it is scary, it's something one doesn't want to have to receive. But having it might save your life. @breadandcircuses@jessicawildfire
TY for this kind & thoughtful response. It sounds like you have acquired this wisdom though courage & your determination to face the truth. I honor your compassion & willingness to provide comfort to those shattered by uncomfortable truths.
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