The Difficulty of Knowing

The main character from Camus' The Plague, a medical doctor spending his days and nights helping the sick, said,

"A man can't cure and know at the same time. So let's cure as quickly as we can. That's the more urgent job."

This hit me as particularly poignant as we're still coping with wafting smoke from so many fires which is making us face the reality of the situation, which might render us immobile. We can't figure out an exit strategy from climate change - it's all too big and complex and overwhelming; we can only try to keep helping one another as best we can while we're here.

Dr. Rieux recognizes that the vastness of pain and suffering is horrific, and we can't think about it without being paralyzed by the thought. His tactic is to focus on whomever needs his help right in front of him, trying to help one patient after another for 20 hours each day, doing his utmost to maintain his personal integrity at the peak of the plague, Camus' allegory for fascism creeping up on the unsuspecting. We have very little control over the big picture, so mainly focus on being a good person, helping in any way you can. 

Climate change is devastating. The knowledge of it is paralyzing. We can't solve it, but we can still try to slow it down or at least try not to make it too much worse. While we do that, we have to focus on the here and now, on helping in whatever way we can - to heal, teach, console, befriend...  We can't get stuck in fretting. In others words, we have to stay in the present, with what's right in front of us, instead of the future of unknowns.

So, what is that thing you can do to help? At home, I'm still working on helping my kids learn Epicurian negative hedonism: reduce their desires instead of grasping at everything they see. Do you really need that? Can you live without it? Online, I'm opting for a whole lot of commiserating and lamenting with a bit of educating thrown in for good measure! 

That paralysis? (CW - dweeby brain stuff) That's the dorsal vagus nerve being activated. Everyone's all about the vagus nerve these days, but they mainly mean the ventral vagus nerve that makes us calm and friendly. The dorsal vagus nerve makes us freeze or withdraw, which is sometimes really useful, but not when we get stuck there. They're both part of the parasympathetic nervous system that slows down our heart rate and blood pressure. It's possible to activate the ventral vagus nerve through deep breathing and mindfulness stuff when we're hyper-aroused - in the sympathetic nervous system's fight/flight mode, but when we're in that paralysis state, we literally need to shake it off. Swing your arms or dance around or do some jumping jacks to get into SNS territory, and then do some breathing to calm back down. Most of us do that already when our brain goes numb from thinking of something devastating, and we give our head a shake to snap out of it! 

I tweeted as much (about climate, not neurons) and was admonished for throwing in the towel, and told we can't just accept what's happening. But what does not accepting where we're at possibly look like at this point except denial? If the fish are leaping out of the ocean because it's so messed up, then are we sure we can turn this around? I responded, 

"We can only try to slow things down at this point. I still cycle everywhere, no A/C, etc. and petition for change from those in power. The fires are an existential moment of recognition of the extent of this crisis. We can't let it paralyze us or pit us against one another."

One of my detractors posted an article, "Emission Reductions from Pandemic Had Unexpected Effects on Atmosphere" to prove that a one year lockdown stopped and reversed the damage of climate change. I pointed out what the inside of the article said: 

"The most surprising result is that while carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell by 5.4%, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere continued to grow at about the same rate as preceding years. . . .  The drop in emissions didn't decrease the concentration of methane in the atmosphere. Instead, methane grew by 0.3% in the past year--a faster rate than at any other time in the last decade. . . . Emissions returned to near-pre-pandemic levels by the latter part of 2020, despite reduced activity in many sectors of the economy." 

The response? "I'm sorry you feel lost. But I understand."

I get that, sort of. I mean, I used to laugh at people who said the things I'm saying now, but that was before there were more fires in Canada than ever before, over 500 fires right now, more than half of them out of control, and fire season hasn't started yet. We have to stay inside to avoid the smoke here and in Europe because we're burning up. I followed climate change news, and knew this was a possibility, but now that I see it with my own eyes (and nose), I can't believe others are still in denial of how close we are to a collapse. Reversing course was never in the plan, but now we've hit some tipping points, I think maintaining course is also no longer possible. We're really far from getting everyone on renewables:

Please show my why I'm wrong. I'd love to see the solutions. 

We're getting very close to a wet bulb effect that will cause mass mortality and we've already seen heat domes that cost 619 lives in BC in 2021.  For 6,000 years, we've had perfect temperature for mammals to live and to grow food. That's really changing now. 

The fight to refuse to see where we are right now, to see that we can't capture enough carbon from the atmosphere to ever reverse the effects we have had but can only slow the train we're on, is as understandable as it is hard to accept. 

I almost walked away from the online argument but went back to correct the misinformation that it's fatalistic and spreading gloom to speak the truth: we are hitting tipping points. From Michael Mann's Madhouse Effect: 

"The West Antarctic Ice Sheet now appears on course to disintegrate no matter what we do" (p. 28). A NASA satellite study provided evidence back in 2019 that the Amazon forest "tipping point has been reached and will worsen if no action is taken immediately. . . . It is urgent that Brazil move away from unsustainable agribusiness monocultures."

The graph below indicates where we are on 16 different tipping points. 

"It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1°C of global heating caused by humanity to date. These include the collapse of Greenland's ice cap . . . the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic . . . and an abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost. . . . 'The Earth may have left a 'safe' climate state beyond 1°C global warming,' the researchers concluded."  

And this was from a year ago. before the impact of these recent fires on overall forest dieback can be taken into account. The fires produce GHGs and reduce the carbon sink that all those trees formerly provided. We've lost almost 20 million acres so far. And we thought it was pretty bad that we destroyed almost two million acres to access the ever-expanding tar sands, but we show no signs of stopping that. (It is pretty bad - horrifically bad - but I guess it's all relative.)

The researchers added that it doesn't mean "everything is lost and it's game over. Every fraction of a degree that we stop beyond 1.5°C reduced the likelihood of hitting more tipping points." That's what I said to my online adversaries, but I think the term "tipping point" was triggering for them. 

A handy image from the original study.

My online opponents argued that we solved the ozone issue, so we can definitely solve climate change! And I really wish that was the case. Back in 2019, Nathaniel Rich, in Losing Earth, explained why were were able to reverse the ozone problem, but it won't work for climate change: A major manufacturer of CFCs, which caused the hole in the ozone layer, "realized that it stood to profit from the transition to replacement chemicals and began placing full-page ads in the New York Times to announce its support for a phaseout" (p. 116). We need the giants to see the profits in renewables, but those profits will never be as high.

We've shifted from "feel the fear and do it anyway" to the mantra of self-care as self-oblivion: spas and massages and fun shows to watch to recuperate from our lives, targeted mainly at the privileged. For the less privileged, struggle longer and harder just to cover rent. 

I ended my part of the conversation with this, trying to harken back to the Camus quotation that provoked the fray:

"Like with Covid, we have to look reality square in the face. Pretending it's better than it is or that it just needs a simple fix won't solve these huge problems. But we have to keep sight of one another during this process, caring for those right in front of us as we go."

Our hubris and greed for more and better -- from all of us -- has destroyed our habitat. We can definitely blame capitalist notions that we deserve all the newest things and that we're not really living if we've never flown to Paris for a weekend or whatever your circle of companions or viewing pleasures convince you to demand of this world. Buying in to the idea that they've brainwashed us, even if it's true - starting with Edward Bernays' marketing tactics - gives short shrift to our perception of our own genius. We're just naked apes out of control.

Fun fact: The word deserve wasn't used significantly by any president before Reagan. It wasn't a big part of our vernacular, so possibly not a big part of how we used to think about things. If someone did an amazing thing, like fly across the ocean, that was amazing for them. We didn't immediately think we also must do that thing. Well, my parents didn't; that's for sure. They laughed at the idea of getting sucked up into the unending fray of desires. However, the fact that Aristotle also lamented the vulgar masses for focusing on satisfying their constant desires means my folks might have been outliers. But this type of desire feels different and definitely costs more. 

Reagan and his advisors and backers got the ball rolling in convincing the masses that we should expect to have everything our hearts desire. But they were just the tail end of the market society that's been in place since the 1500s. It's an important recent shift that might be further pinpointed to the 1950s, when advertising started to focus on the magic of perceived obsolescence - changing styles means a whole new wardrobe every year. Cha-ching! But it's also all part of the Big Lie (aka the American Dream) of the 1930s: if you work hard enough, you can get to the top. It's crept up on us for decades, and once entrenched, the profiteers could relax in the notion that people seeking what they deserve would keep the system going, even when it required two incomes in the home and massive debt to keep going, people wouldn't stop striving for more and better. (Side note: I also think body image issues can blame this shift in mentality - there were always ideals of beauty, but only since the 1970s or 1980s have so many people felt the ideal was attainable.) But anyway...

Despite the complexity of our brains, I believe most of us still really want to have so many things and adventures mainly in order to impress the people in our lives. With the exception of things that are addictive in nature (substances as well as games and social media), the things we want are not for themselves, but for their effect on others in our lives. We've lost sight that it's people we crave: allies, friends, comrades. Many of us have more clothes than we need but keep buying more, I believe, as a way to connect with people. But what if we just connect over shared valued without all the things, without impressing one another with photos of our last trip or the fancy meal we ate. Can we just sit and chat without talking about the latest thing we bought or activity we completed?? Can we talk about ideas any more, or is that a lost art? 

Or maybe all the ornamentation we surround ourselves with is no different than a peacock's tail feathers. We're doing what we can to attract others to us, and it's far too difficult, and just plain weird, to initiate in-depth conversation with total strangers. Wearing that same old coat I've had since high school just elicits a different type of companion, one that's fewer and farther between. We think we have the amazing ability to think into the future and plan ahead, but we actually suck at it - no better than many other mammal - worse than some. But we were able to progress maybe less because of our brains and more because of our thumbs, which enabled our efforts to be more permanent and more destructive than any other species could imagine. 

Many in power also have children and grandchildren. They don't want the earth in such a state of crisis, but how can they turn it around without creating enormous upheaval causing chaos and wars? Had we all acted decisively back in the 1970s, we could have developed the infrastructure necessary to shift our energy demands, but we didn't. I have solar panels on my roof that don't work, and I can't find a single person in the field willing to come look at them. We don't have enough people who can do that kind of work. We're the grasshoppers in the old fable who didn't prepare for winter, but we're taking all the prescient ants with us when we go. 

Except the grasshoppers are working their asses off. Some have nothing extra to save and no way to live an environmentalist lifestyle, which takes money. It's a privilege to be able to choose to live near your workplace to be able to walk to work each day. And others have extra money they quickly spend on the luxuries that are destroying us to have something to talk about with their friends. 

It's all really crappy. And I've been screaming into the void about it since 2009 - better out than in.

We need guaranteed basic income for everyone immediately to lessen the struggling as we watch the world burn. Cap rent prices. Cap home prices. Develop a maximum wage that's a factor of the lowest paid worker in each industry - maybe no more than 14 times their income in order to better distribute wealth. We need some sense of solidarity while it all collapses around us, some compassion for one another, and some way to shut down our competitive nature. It might be community focus that helps the most. Is it remotely possible for these strong mayor powers to be used for good?? We need governments to see this and act on it rationally because, left to our own devises, like all other animals backed into a corner, we'll kill each other to save ourselves. 

One online interlocutor asked, maybe with some hope of finding a friendly middle ground,

"Perhaps we're not all talking about the same thing? Generally, climate change speaks of a lot of life, including humans, going extinct. Do you mean the effects of climate change are going to happen, but we can still avoid that apocalypse?"

No, honey, we can't. 

I can't even imagine what that would look like. Once things are no longer stable enough to grow crops (already starting), we're pretty much toast. But, if we're very, very careful, all of a sudden, starting now, we might stretch things from two or three decades to maybe five or six. Another virus will likely take most of down first, though. Like with climate change, there are many things we could do to prevent the next virus, and we're not doing any of them! So it's vital we, each of us, keep an eye on our integrity and compassion as we get to the bumpy part of this ride. 

From Jane Morton's great activism manual published five years ago.

Long story short, try to recognize that this...

can lead to this:

ETA: Literally seconds after posting this, some solar guys I've been calling since April just showed up! It's like I negatively manifested them! So maybe there is hope after all. (Although they make no promises about what they might be able to do for me.)

ETA: They looked around, called a company for a re-set (and gave me that magical number) and then left, which cost $1,200, and it still doesn't work!!

ETA: More fatalistic doom and gloom -- yesterday we hit 1.64°C above pre-industrial baseline. 

h/t Prof. Eliot Jacobson