How Bad Is Global Warming?

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Harvey » Mon Nov 08, 2021 8:57 pm

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/cop26-climate-change-west-defence-skeleton-closet

COP26: Military pollution is the skeleton in the West’s climate closet

Jonathan Cook, 8 November 2021, Middle east Eye

Leaders at the COP26 summit have no intention of tackling the growing environmental impacts caused by their 'defence' spending

World leaders gathered in Glasgow last week for the COP26 summit in a bid to demonstrate how they are belatedly getting to grips with the climate crisis. Agreements to protect forests, cut carbon and methane emissions and promote green tech are all being hammered out in front of a watching world.

Western politicians, in particular, want to emerge from the summit with their green credentials burnished, proving that they have done everything in their power to prevent a future global temperature rise of more than 1.5C. They fear the verdict of unhappy electorates if they come back empty-handed.

Climate scientists are already doubtful whether the pledges being made go far enough, or can be implemented fast enough, to make a difference. They have warned that drastic action has to be taken by the end of this decade to avert climate catastrophe.

But the visible activity at the summit hides a much starker reality. The very nations proclaiming moral leadership in tackling the climate crisis are also the ones doing most to sabotage a meaningful agreement to reduce humanity’s global carbon footprint.

A photo from the opening of COP26 showed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the summit’s host, warmly greeting US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But rather than fete them, we should treat this triumvirate as the big villains of the climate talks.

Their armed forces are the most polluting on the planet - and the goal at COP26 is to keep that fact a closely guarded secret.

Hidden from view

US expenditure on its military far outstrips that of any other country - except for Israel, when measured relative to population size. Although the UK trails behind, it still has the fifth largest military budget in the world, while its arms manufacturers busily supply weapons to countries others have shunned.

The US military alone is estimated to have a larger carbon footprint than most countries. It is widely assumed to be the world’s largest institutional consumer of crude oil.
COP26: US military 'one of the biggest polluters in the Middle East'
Read More »

And emissions from the West’s militaries and arms makers appear to be growing each year rather than shrinking - though no one can be certain because they are being actively hidden from view.

Washington insisted on an exemption from reporting on, and reducing, its military emissions at the Kyoto summit, 24 years ago. Unsurprisingly, everyone else jumped on that bandwagon.

Since the Paris summit of 2015, military emissions have been partially reported. But all too often the figures are disguised - lumped in with emissions from other sectors, such as transport.

And emissions from overseas operations - in the case of the US, 70 percent of its military activity - are excluded from the balance sheet entirely.

Conflicts and wars

Most of Europe has refused to come clean, too. France, with the continent’s most active military, reports none of its emissions.

According to research by Scientists for Global Responsibility, the UK’s military emissions were three times larger than those it reported - even after supply chains, as well as weapons and equipment production, were excluded. The military was responsible for the overwhelming majority of British government emissions.

And new technology, rather than turning the military green, is often making things much worse.

The latest fighter jet developed by the US, the F-35, is reported to burn 5,600 litres of fuel an hour. It would take 1,900 cars to guzzle a similar amount of fuel over the same period.

Norway, like many other countries, has been queuing up to get its hands on this new-generation jet. According to the Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen, the total emissions by the Norwegian military over the next decade will rise by 30 percent as a result of its F-35 purchases alone.

As well as discounting the environmental harm caused by military equipment procurement and supply chains, countries are also excluding the significant impacts of conflicts and wars.

Each year of the US occupation of Iraq that began in 2003, for example, is conservatively estimated to have generated emissions equivalent to putting an additional 25m cars on the road.

Military spending up

Unlike the farming and logging industries, or the manufacturing industries, or the fossil fuel industries, efforts to curb the growth in military spending - let alone reverse it - are off the table at the COP26 summit.

And for that, Washington has to take the major share of the blame.

Its “defence” budget already comprises about 40 percent of the $2tn spent annually on militaries worldwide. China and Russia - ostensibly the two bogeymen of the COP26 summit - lag far behind.

The government of Boris Johnson unveiled last year what it called “the biggest programme of investment in British defence since the end of the Cold War”. Britain is no outlier. After a short-lived “peace dividend” caused by the break-up of the Soviet Union, global military expenditure has been on an almost continuous upward trend since 1998, led by the US.

Paradoxically, the upturn began about the time western politicians began paying lip service to tackling “climate change” at the Kyoto summit.
COP26 summit: 15 ways that the Middle East is under threat
Read More »

US military spending has been rising steadily since 2018. It is set to continue doing so for at least another two decades - way past the deadline set by climate scientists for turning things around.

The same global upward trend has been fed by a surge in military expenditure by Middle Eastern countries - notably Saudi Arabia and the UAE - since 2013. That appears to reflect two trends rooted in Washington’s changing approach to the region.

First, as it has withdrawn its overstretched occupation forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has increasingly outsourced its military role to wealthy client states in this oil-rich region.

And second, as Israel and the Gulf states have been encouraged to forge closer military and intelligence ties against Iran, these same Gulf states have been allowed to play military catch-up with Israel. Its famed “qualitative military edge” is being gradually eroded.

Propping up this Middle East arms spree is the UK, which has been exporting to the Saudis, and the US, which heavily subsidises Israel’s military industries.

Power competition

All this means that, while western politicians promise to cut emissions at COP26, they are actually busy preparing to increase those emissions out of view. Ultimately, the problem is that little can be done to green our militaries, either substantively or through a greenwashing makeover. The military’s rationale is neither to be sustainable nor to be kind to the planet.

The arms manufacturers’ business model is to offer clients - from the Pentagon to every tinpot dictator - weapons and machines that are bigger, better or faster than their competitors. Aircraft carriers must be larger. Fighter jets quicker and more agile. And missiles more destructive.

Consumption and competition are at the heart of the military mission, whether armies are waging war or marketing their activities as purely “defensive”.

“Security”, premised on a fear of neighbours and rivals, can never be satiated. There is always another tank, plane or anti-missile system that can be purchased to create greater “deterrence”, to protect borders more effectively, to intimidate an enemy.

And war provides even greater reasons to consume more of the planet’s finite resources and wreak yet more harm on ecosystems. Lives are taken, buildings levelled, territories contaminated.

The UK has 145 military bases in 42 countries, securing what it perceives to be its “national interests”. But that is dwarfed by more than 750 US military bases spread over 80 countries. Shuffling off this energy-hungry power projection around the globe will be much harder than protecting forests or investing in green technology.

The US and its western allies would first have to agree to relinquish their grip on the planet’s energy resources, and to give up policing the globe in the interests of their transnational corporations.

It is precisely this full-spectrum power competition - economic, ideologic and military - that propelled us into the current climate disaster. Tackling it will require looking much deeper into our priorities than any leader at COP26 appears ready to do.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.



And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


Eden Ahbez
User avatar
Harvey
 
Posts: 4165
Joined: Mon May 09, 2011 4:49 am
Blog: View Blog (20)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby §ê¢rꆧ » Wed Nov 10, 2021 8:24 am

Elvis » Fri Nov 05, 2021 4:45 pm wrote:
coal climate 1912.jpg

WHOA, I guess some have known over a hundred years ago. Never would have guessed that.

The climate thing is such an exponential catastrophe, it requires a humorous response like the Honest Government Ad above (cracked me the way she always does):



Despite the cheeky antics & tone, he gets into some finer points like milankovich cycles (changing Earth tilt), interglacial cycles (data on pre-industrial heating & warming periods going back hundreds of thousands of years) and how how artic ice core samples indicate the earth's CO2 levels have never been over 300 ppm, and how we are now at 400 ppm (iow the concentration of the world's CO2 is now 33% higher than the last 800,000 years).

Netfucked by 2050 indeed.
User avatar
§ê¢rꆧ
 
Posts: 1197
Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2007 4:12 pm
Location: Region X
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby DrEvil » Wed Nov 10, 2021 3:40 pm

^^Svante Arrhenius figured it out in 1896.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3972
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Elvis » Sat Nov 13, 2021 7:21 pm

Terrific video—thank you! He really spells things out nicely.

§ê¢rꆧ » Wed Nov 10, 2021 5:24 am wrote:


Despite the cheeky antics & tone, he gets into some finer points like milankovich cycles (changing Earth tilt), interglacial cycles (data on pre-industrial heating & warming periods going back hundreds of thousands of years) and how how artic ice core samples indicate the earth's CO2 levels have never been over 300 ppm, and how we are now at 400 ppm (iow the concentration of the world's CO2 is now 33% higher than the last 800,000 years).

Netfucked by 2050 indeed.
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
User avatar
Elvis
 
Posts: 7413
Joined: Fri Apr 11, 2008 7:24 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby stickdog99 » Sun Nov 14, 2021 2:50 pm

DrEvil » 03 Nov 2021 19:13 wrote:
stickdog99 » Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:39 pm wrote:I would like to see a far more concerted effort to move to renewable energy sources, but to me decentralization of power production is more key than anything else.

IMHO, we simply don't know how Gaia will ultimately react to our little carbon bonfire. The scientific consensus that claims we do is the exact same sort of scientific consensus that claimed with the same level of dogmatic certainty that "safe and effective" mRNA vaccines would end this pandemic. And it's also the same sort of scientific consensus that until very recently claimed that microbial life could not possibly survive the rigors of space travel.

Note that I am not saying that we should keep blithely filling our atmosphere with more and more carbon. I am just saying that we should show a bit more humility and bit less hubris in our "definitive" scientific predictions.


Those comparisons are flawed. We can see, right now, the effects of all that carbon. Of course we don't know every possible consequence of that, but we know the planet is heating up, and we know it's because of us, and we know it's starting to fuck with our climate in unpredictable ways, because it's happening right now. It's not a hypothetical. If climate change was microbial life we would already know they could survive in space because we tested it and saw that they could.

Even if there was some question about it (which there is not. The oft cited 97% of climate scientists agree with climate change is now 99.9%), it would be completely insane to not do everything in our power to fight it. Even if the chance of the worst outcomes was only one in a hundred, that's not the kind of odds you gamble the future of human civilization on.

A small aside: the argument that people were wrong in the past, ergo they can be wrong now bothers me. Not that it isn't sometimes true, but the use of it as an argument against $subject_matter is annoying. Sometimes the minority turns out to be right, most of the time they aren't, so in a sense, by using that argument someone is effectively saying they're probably wrong.


Again, I totally agree that it's insane not to at least try to mitigate the high risk that global warming will have catastrophic effects on human life by reducing carbon emissions and encouraging the proliferation of a healthy photosynthetic ecosystems. But my problem is with the hubris of scientists who often believe that their favored computer model can definitely predict the future. Such hubris is what leads to insane James Bond villain ideas such as Bill Gates' bizarre belief that polluting the atmosphere to blot out the sun could not possibly have negative effects that could outweigh its potentially positive effects of reducing global warming.

Basically, what I am saying is since we cannot know for sure, we should apply the Hippocratic Oath to our efforts to fight global warming. First, do no harm. Wouldn't you agree?
stickdog99
 
Posts: 6304
Joined: Tue Jul 12, 2005 5:42 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby DrEvil » Sun Nov 14, 2021 4:58 pm

stickdog99 » Sun Nov 14, 2021 8:50 pm wrote:
DrEvil » 03 Nov 2021 19:13 wrote:
stickdog99 » Mon Nov 01, 2021 11:39 pm wrote:I would like to see a far more concerted effort to move to renewable energy sources, but to me decentralization of power production is more key than anything else.

IMHO, we simply don't know how Gaia will ultimately react to our little carbon bonfire. The scientific consensus that claims we do is the exact same sort of scientific consensus that claimed with the same level of dogmatic certainty that "safe and effective" mRNA vaccines would end this pandemic. And it's also the same sort of scientific consensus that until very recently claimed that microbial life could not possibly survive the rigors of space travel.

Note that I am not saying that we should keep blithely filling our atmosphere with more and more carbon. I am just saying that we should show a bit more humility and bit less hubris in our "definitive" scientific predictions.


Those comparisons are flawed. We can see, right now, the effects of all that carbon. Of course we don't know every possible consequence of that, but we know the planet is heating up, and we know it's because of us, and we know it's starting to fuck with our climate in unpredictable ways, because it's happening right now. It's not a hypothetical. If climate change was microbial life we would already know they could survive in space because we tested it and saw that they could.

Even if there was some question about it (which there is not. The oft cited 97% of climate scientists agree with climate change is now 99.9%), it would be completely insane to not do everything in our power to fight it. Even if the chance of the worst outcomes was only one in a hundred, that's not the kind of odds you gamble the future of human civilization on.

A small aside: the argument that people were wrong in the past, ergo they can be wrong now bothers me. Not that it isn't sometimes true, but the use of it as an argument against $subject_matter is annoying. Sometimes the minority turns out to be right, most of the time they aren't, so in a sense, by using that argument someone is effectively saying they're probably wrong.


Again, I totally agree that it's insane not to at least try to mitigate the high risk that global warming will have catastrophic effects on human life by reducing carbon emissions and encouraging the proliferation of a healthy photosynthetic ecosystems. But my problem is with the hubris of scientists who often believe that their favored computer model can definitely predict the future. Such hubris is what leads to insane James Bond villain ideas such as Bill Gates' bizarre belief that polluting the atmosphere to blot out the sun could not possibly have negative effects that could outweigh its potentially positive effects of reducing global warming.

Basically, what I am saying is since we cannot know for sure, we should apply the Hippocratic Oath to our efforts to fight global warming. First, do no harm. Wouldn't you agree?


But no one is saying they can definitely predict the future. What they're saying is that with the evidence currently at hand, and with the best models they have, they are so and so confident that X will happen. In this case that is "we're pretty damn sure we're fucked".

As for geo-engineering, we're already doing it. The last two hundred years have been an uncontrolled experiment in geo-engineering, and we're starting to see the results.

That said, Gates can get bent. The problem is him and the system he's helping prop up, so before we go creating artificial volcanoes we might consider doing something about the system that is the major cause of our problems first. That of course is why Gates is proposing it to begin with: he wants to treat the symptoms, not the disease, because he is the fucking disease. He doesn't want a cure, he just wants to keep the host functional so he and his fellow parasites can continue sucking it dry.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3972
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby BenDhyan » Sun Nov 14, 2021 5:26 pm

I'm an AGW skeptic, but acknowledge the increased atmospheric CO2 contribution as adding to the greenhouse warming, and have often opined that the best solution is nuclear, no atmospheric pollution, reusable spent fuel, and ability to provide base load 24/7. So imagine my surprise to come across this talk by Bill Gates, he has gone up tremendously in my estimation. He's just the man with the marketing skills to overcome the anti-nuclear campaign and make heaps of money in the process.

Ben D
User avatar
BenDhyan
 
Posts: 867
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Nov 14, 2021 6:41 pm

stickdog99 » 15 Nov 2021 04:50 wrote:
Basically, what I am saying is since we cannot know for sure, we should apply the Hippocratic Oath to our efforts to fight global warming. First, do no harm. Wouldn't you agree?


What about the harm that has already been done.

If we'd taken that attitude as a species we'd have acted on AGW 25 fucken years ago.
Joe Hillshoist
 
Posts: 10594
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:45 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby BenDhyan » Sun Nov 14, 2021 11:27 pm

Coal to be phased down by 2050, not out.....lots of wriggle room there I suspect. I can imagine a graph showing continued growth of coal based power stations by China and India until, say 2040, and then declining slowly to 2050, mission accomplished. And it's not good news for Bill Gates nuclear business model!

Countries strike deal at COP26 climate summit after last-minute compromise on coal

UPDATED SUN, NOV 14 2021

The announcement comes several hours after the scheduled Friday evening deadline.

Delegates had struggled to resolve major sticking points, such as phasing out coal, fossil fuel subsidies and financial support to low-income countries.

India, among the world’s biggest burners of coal, raised a last-minute change of fossil fuel language in the pact, going from a “phase out” of coal to a “phase down.” After initial objections, opposing countries ultimately conceded.

In an emotional address to assembled delegates, the U.K.’s COP26 President Alok Sharma said he was “deeply sorry” for the way the process had unfolded. “I understand the deep disappointment. It’s also vital we protect this package,” Sharma said.

The U.N. meeting in Glasgow, Scotland, was billed as humanity’s last and best chance to keep the all-important goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius alive. This temperature threshold refers to the aspirational target inscribed in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/13/cop26-countries-strike-climate-deal-at-un-summit-to-limit-heating.html

Ben D
User avatar
BenDhyan
 
Posts: 867
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Harvey » Fri Nov 19, 2021 6:36 am

And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


Eden Ahbez
User avatar
Harvey
 
Posts: 4165
Joined: Mon May 09, 2011 4:49 am
Blog: View Blog (20)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby DrEvil » Fri Nov 19, 2021 4:01 pm

Peter Watts, always the optimist:
(Links at original)

COP/out

“Governments should be afraid of their people”
—Alan Moore

It was our “last chance to act”, according to Sheldon Whitehouse of the Democratic Party. The “last best hope for the world”, according to John Kerry. Boris Johnson invoked James Bond doomsday machines, declared it “one minute to midnight”, and warned that “If we don’t act now it will be too late.” “Make or break”, said Grenada’s minister for Climate and Environment.

Naturally, it broke.

Prior to Glasgow, the UN set three major criteria for the success of COP26:

- obtain commitments to cut CO2 emissions in half by 2030;
- Commit $100 billion annually in financial aid from rich nations to poor ones (a pledge already made back in 2015 at the Paris meeting but never honored because, you know, who gives a shit); and
- Ensure that half of that money goes to helping the developing world adapt to climate change.

By the time festivities concluded over the weekend, not a single one of these objectives had been met. Not a single fucking one. By the UN’s own criteria, COP26—our “last chance to act”—was a failure.

Not that you’ll catch any of the suits behind the mics admitting as much. What you’ll hear is endless defensive wankery about “progress”. What a miraculous breakthrough, that for the first time a COP document actually mentions fossil fuels! (Even though it doesn’t call for phasing them out. Hell, it doesn’t even call for an end to subsidies.) Isn’t it wonderful, how all these countries have pledged to end net deforestation by 2030! (A nonbinding pledge, mind you, not unlike another made back in 2014 which somehow didn’t stop deforestation from increasing by another 40%. Really, the fact that Jair Bolsonaro felt comfortable signing the damn thing tells you all you need to know.) Isn’t it great that we’re going to be kicking the can down the road in one-year increments now, instead of the five years we were doing before? And Kudos to this side deal that the US and China have cut to, well, do something. About emissions. Sometime.

Even Elizabeth May—of Canada’s Green Party—put on her Pollyanna hat and danced a desperate little jig, reminiscing about how unthinkable it would have been, even ten ago, to see India make any commitment at all to fighting climate change—as if that somehow excuses India’s role in deleting the “phase out fossil fuels” provision. As if the the geosphere might now prick up its rocky little ears and and say Well, I was going to plunge the planet into a post-apocalyptic hellscape, but now that India admits there’s a problem I guess I’ll just change the heat capacity of the atmosphere and give everyone a few more decades. As though the bar we had to clear was what some short-sighted political sleazebag in India was willing to do ten years ago, and not what the laws of physics are doing to us right now.

Not that May doesn’t have a lot of company, here in the aftermath. John Kerry—he of the “last best hope for the world”—is singing a different tune tune now that said hope is gone. “It’s a good deal for the world,” he says now. “Can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” But that’s not what’s happening, of course. We’re not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good; we’re letting scientific necessity be the enemy of the politically palatable.

So nobody’s talking about “success” any more. How can they, when we’re still on track for 2.4°C even if every country at COP26 honors all its shiny new commitments? Progress is the new buzzword. The COPpers have promised to nudge the Titanic a few more degrees to the left; keep it up and we’ll have changed course enough to avoid the iceberg entirely in just another hour or two.

Too bad we’re going to hit the fucking thing in thirty seconds.

So what now? Our “last chance” has come and gone. Is there anything at all we can do now, except wring our hands and clutch our pearls and continue to pump out first-world babies with megalodon-sized carbon bootie-prints?

George Monbiot gives it the ol’ college try over at The Guardian, cites a couple of papers about social tipping points and the power of the grass roots. Sharpe and Lenton talk hopefully about domino effects and the way incremental advances in technology can cascade into massive changes on national scales (the explosive growth of the electric car market in Norway is their go-to example). Centola et al describe an interesting social experiment showing that views held by as little as 21% of a population can ultimately tip over and become mainstream. But Sharpe and Lenton have to admit that their cascade effects frequently rely on policy changes made by the same governments who just screwed the pooch at COP26; nor do they address the countervailing impact of government policies designed to thwart constructive phase shifts (for example, the way Texas penalized people who installed solar panels by charging them for “infrastructure costs” to support the fossil grid they were opting out of). And Centola et al’s study is interesting as far as it goes, but the opinions it flips are innocuous things like “what would you call this picture”. It doesn’t explore the flexibility of opinions rooted in fear or brainstem prejudice, nor does it consider scenarios where powerful top-down rulers actively promote certain narratives and suppress others.

Monbiot makes a valiant effort, but he doesn’t convince me.

Anyone familiar with my own recent work might anticipate my own blue-sky solution: rewire Human Nature. Save Humanity by turning it into something else; hell, think of how much less destructive we’d be as a species if we just figured out how to short-circuit hyperbolic discounting. But that’s scifi speculation, that’s a solution to implement—at best— sometime in the future, if the tech ever catches up to my fever dreams. It doesn’t help us now.

If you’re looking for something that might help us out of the current crisis, maybe all you need to do is look at how the various delegates reacted to the failure of COP26.

Boris Johnson, who was all one-minute-to-midnight at the start of proceedings, called it “a historic success” afterward. John “last best hope” Kerry opined “”It’s got a few problems, but it’s all in all a very good deal.” For all their previous dire rhetoric, they act as if they’re pretty much okay with the outcome.

You know who isn’t okay? Aminath Shaunam, from the Maldives: “This deal does not bring hope to our hearts. It will be too late for the Maldives”. The prime minister of Barbados: “Two degrees is a death sentence.” The foreign minister of Tuvalu, which could be underwater by century’s end; he filmed a speech standing knee-deep in the ocean to make a point.

Those who feel personally threatened by this crisis want desperately to take all necessary measures. The John Kerrys and Boris Johnsons of the world? They’re rich. They’re first-world. They’re insulated: they’ll probably make out okay even under the worst-case scenario. So why should they care? Oh, they’ll walk the walk if they have to—but when the chips are down they’ll choose politics over science any day.

Not that these folks are necessarily any more evil than the rest of us. Short-sighted greed comes as standard equipment on this model, it’s what we are as a species. COP26 failed because the world’s most powerful leaders just don’t feel personally threatened by the crisis.

If only we could threaten them.

If only we could translate the abstract threat of climate change to other people into an immediate threat against things they actually care about on a gut level. Make the hypothetical real, make it unsafe for them to step outside. Target their families. Hold their kin hostage: get us down to 1.5 or your sister comes back in pieces. Let them feel the same desperation as all those people in all those faraway lands they’ve never had to care about.

Mostly revenge fantasy, of course. How would you even do that, when the people you need to threaten have all the power, command the armies and the cops, have a legal monopoly on violence and terrorism? (In fact, I don’t think they even call it “terrorism” when a G8 country does it.) It’s not like any of us are gonna get close enough to throw a rock through Trudeau’s window.

So mostly fantasy—but not all. Because, logistic difficulties aside, I honestly wonder if anything else could work at this point. Even when you sweep away the denialism, facts and science don’t seem to be enough for most people. Even those who accept the reality of climate change—even those who profess to be “gravely concerned”—aren’t willing, for the most part, to do anything significant to fight it. The wildfires, the floods, the pandemics spreading across a warming world; none of it seems to matter to us personally until it threatens us personally. (I do take some hope from the fact that kids these days seem somewhat more worried about the future than their parents; the present they’re growing up in is pretty dire, after all, and the trajectory is not good. But I am profoundly skeptical that we can afford to wait for a new enlightened generation to grow up and fix the problem for us. We’re already out of time.)

We have to be afraid. Somehow, we have to make them afraid.

Of course, we’re going to be rioting in the streets soon enough anyway. When the grid goes down and stays that way, when the coastal cities are flooded and the flyover towns all Lyttonised, when we’ve exhausted the world’s arable land (about thirty years from now, last I heard) and civilization itself begins to collapse (twenty); we’ll be out there with our Molotov cocktails and our boards-with-the-nails-through-‘em. It’s how societies collapse.

Maybe the best we can do is avoid the rush and do it now, when it might still do some good.


https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=10064
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3972
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Luther Blissett » Sat Nov 20, 2021 2:19 pm

§ê¢rꆧ » Wed Nov 03, 2021 2:13 am wrote:

We need to paradoxically foment a revolt against business-as-usual and partially dismantle industrial capitalist society, but also lean into hyper-optimization of resource allocation facilitated by super-intelligence in order to end the pushing and shoving for seats at the table.that has gotten us nowhere but Nowhere.



I see this as totally achievable using grassroots people power even though it's probably a one-in-a-thousand chance. There are the smallest hints at the possibility today – all the noise amongst the rank-and-file in the tech world about unions (and to take it even further, worker ownership), widespread derision of DAOs in favor of radical, democratic redecentralization of the internet, commons councils, emerging mycelium and other fungi-based battery technologies, the impending failure of Meta and the chance that the people might actually win that front on the civil cyberwar, vertical farms — that, with the right trajectory, could lead to the necessary conditions. We cannot rely on the powers that be to do it, we need communities to actually organize like the way Cooperation Jackson is doing it, and we have to spread that Kush model all through regions both rural and urban. I'm thinking rammed-earth high-rise pyramidal vertical farms in new agricultural zones, rewilded flat farmland, and, as the earth continues to urbanize (even with the pandemic: just saw that NYC continues to grow) a simultaneous retreat from coastlines in favor of upland areas that have the infrastructure but with their own mass vertical farm systems (essentially on every possible spare surface) all organized by community-led technologies and direct democracy.

The construction of those alternative means and methods could essentially circumvent the revolt against industrial capitalist society because we would build a better world alongside it that would render the old ways unnecessary and obsolete.
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
User avatar
Luther Blissett
 
Posts: 4990
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:31 pm
Location: Philadelphia
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Luther Blissett » Sat Nov 20, 2021 2:23 pm

But of course I'm the eternal optimist who also agrees with pretty much everything Rex says on the previous page too. If anything it's just motivation to organize even more — free schools, food co-ops, cooperative play, melding entertainment and recreation with political life, rematriation, transformative justice.
The Rich and the Corporate remain in their hundred-year fever visions of Bolsheviks taking their stuff - JackRiddler
User avatar
Luther Blissett
 
Posts: 4990
Joined: Fri Jan 02, 2009 1:31 pm
Location: Philadelphia
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby Harvey » Sat Nov 20, 2021 2:36 pm

Luther Blissett » Sat Nov 20, 2021 7:23 pm wrote:But of course I'm the eternal optimist who also agrees with pretty much everything Rex says on the previous page too. If anything it's just motivation to organize even more — free schools, food co-ops, cooperative play, melding entertainment and recreation with political life, rematriation, transformative justice.


Every action provokes an equal and opposite reaction. It isn't 'just' anything, it is maintaining belief in the goal despite every seasonal propaganda campaign, every punitive reaction, people being killed, people being jailed, lives destroyed, histories erased. It is no small thing. Our survival as a species is no longer in the balance, the balance is heavily against us, and all other complex life forms along with with us. It is a battle for survival against our own cultures and everything we thought we held dear.
And while we spoke of many things, fools and kings
This he said to me
"The greatest thing
You'll ever learn
Is just to love
And be loved
In return"


Eden Ahbez
User avatar
Harvey
 
Posts: 4165
Joined: Mon May 09, 2011 4:49 am
Blog: View Blog (20)

Re: How Bad Is Global Warming?

Postby DrEvil » Sat Nov 20, 2021 5:28 pm

I can't help but think of our current culture as a sort of anti-Gaia, feeding off Gaia itself to grow. It's a self-regulating superorganism, except it regulates itself towards maximum benefit for corporations and their parasitic larvae, and it won't re-balance itself because it was never intended to, and it didn't have four billion years of trial and error to figure out what works or not. It's a disaster waiting to happen, and oh look!, it's happening right now.

The people nominally in charge might manage to steady things for a bit, but eventually the wheels will come off. Like Watts argues, better to forcibly remove the wheels now. Maybe we'll come to a stop before we reach the cliff that way.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3972
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 57 guests