"When we remember that we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained." Twain / "I write to keep from going mad from the contradictions I find among mankind - and to work some of these contradictions out for myself." Montaigne / "I write because I have found no other means of getting rid of my thoughts." Nietzsche / "Writing is an integral part of the process of understanding." Arendt / "Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers." Asimov.
Of course calendars are a construct and don't mean anything, but the end of the year and, even more so, the end of the decade are useful times to take stock.
In pop culture, we have the Ecco Homo moment as a cultural foreboding - the chutzpah to insist on a fix that pretends to be completely oblivious to the destruction of former beauty. We've done that with our whole planet. But more than that is the fame it brought to the amateur restoration worker, driving up tourism dramatically. We are positioned to celebrate destruction of beauty more than creation. This could be bookended with the acknowledgment and then immediate justification of "billionaires in wine caves" having more power than the rest of the populous; that a politician will be attacked for refusing to be bribed is a sign of our times.
The New York Times got a random smattering of people to answer: What Will the World Look Like in 2030?, twelve years after we were told we have twelve years to fix everything. It's a terrifying read. I've smushed some pertinent bits together here:
I've come to believe that determining the very best diet is as individual as figuring out the best course of action to treat anxiety or depression. We are each our own guinea pig. Individually, we each have to try a few things, gradually, while monitoring our energy levels, abilities, and general feelings of good health and wellbeing, to see what actually works for us. That takes time to get right. I was raised on meat and potatoes, but then I read Diet for a Small Planet when I was a teenager, and it convinced me to eat low on the food chain. Ever since, I lean towards fruits, vegetables, and grains with the occasional brick of cheese melted on top, and an even less frequent gorge on chicken wings. After having cancer and reading manystudies on the correlation between animal consumption and cancers, I hesitate to eat animal products quite so much. To clarify, I still eat them because ... yum!, but I sit with some cognitive dissonance each time. I clear my conscience with my favourite salad: a bowl of raw vegetables smothered in cilantro and basil, no dressing. I don't get repeat invites to potlucks.
I just watched The Game Changers(their sources are here), and I'm going to try to sort out the fact from fiction in the film as well as in some of the many 'debunkings' I've found, which are sometimes equally suspect.
It's fascinating to me how often passion overrules reason in these discussions. What is it about food that makes people swing to the extremes? I've written before about even the brilliant Chris Hedges getting sucked into some weak evidence, and I've met many reasonable people who don't see any problems with some of dubious claims on only this issue. There's often an outrage just below the surface of these docs that suggest that, if you don't believe it, then either you're a horrible person or a complete idiot. I'm not convinced by the outrage. I'm not a nutritionist, and I'm definitely not a foody, but I do have a background in research methods and in logic and critical thinking. And some claims made in this field, on both sides of the aisle, are really problematic. Full disclosure, I have been vegetarian a couple times, for a few years each time, but I've never even tried to be vegan despite opening my classroom doors for a plant based club each week. Maybe this is the time to give it a shot.
A headache kept me home from work today, so I got some fresh air and checked out the climate strike. It was great timing for the strike, on Black Friday, with COP 25 starting in Chile - scratch that - Madrid three days from now.
It's a really hard sell to get a protest going on a cold day. There were about 200 people there, which was great, but it could be better, couldn't it. We can't have field trips to the protests, but could I book a field trip to see a movie and then accidentally get side tracked on the way?? Oh look, that protest is today too. Let's check it out for a minute! I have to say, it's really cool when you're at a march and suddenly a huge group of people join at once. It's like the cavalry coming in to save the day!
The protest started with an indigenous smudging ceremony, drumming and singing from Idle No More. Some dancing in unison, holding hands with the strangers next to us, can be so useful for developing community. It's necessary to be part of something bigger than ourselves if we're going to tackle something this huge. The speakers outside the mall had the power cut by Primus Property Management, even though, as far as I know, they had booked the area just like any other group. But a megaphone was passed to them, and they continued. Then we marched down the middle of the street instead of sticking to the sidewalks. That felt more like a real march. There was a panel of speakers waiting for us at a nearby church. The event ended with an Extinction Rebellion disruption at the mall. Kudos to the organizers for such an incredibly smooth event!! But about that panel...
Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G. and Borat, among others) won an award from the Anti-Defamation League. Here's his 25 minute acceptance speech. It's in writing, abridged a bit, below the video if you'd rather skim than watch. (Emphasis is mine.)
"Today, around the world, demagogues appeal to our worst instincts. Conspiracy theories, once confined to the fringe, are going mainstream. It's as if the age of reason, the era of evidential argument is ending and now knowledge is increasing delegitimized, and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. Hate crimes are surging . . . What do these dangerous trends have in common? . . . All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history. . . .
"A baby born in Canada today will never know a time in which his or her health isn’t at risk from a warming planet . . . Without accelerated intervention, this new era will come to define the health of people at every stage of their lives. . . . in a country like Canada, air pollution, heat-related illnesses and exposure to toxic smoke from forest fires are bigger threats to a child’s long-term health. A warmer world means more widespread transmission of diseases, as well as the political strife that comes with mass migration as some parts of the world become uninhabitable. . . . pushing the world to do more to slow global warming is critical. . . . if we intervene now to keep warming down and find ways to adapt, the savings to the health system and economic productivity down the road will in many places more than pay for the costs of those interventions."
The Lancet article she sources doesn't pull any punches,
"A child born today will experience a world that is more than four degrees warmer than the pre-industrial average, . . . Downward trends in global yield potential for all major crops tracked since 1960 threaten food production and food security, with infants often the worst affected by the potentially permanent effects of undernutrition. . . . Trends in climate suitability for disease transmission are particularly concerning, with 9 of the 10 most suitable years for the transmission of dengue fever on record occurring since 2000. . . . . air pollution—principally driven by fossil fuels, and exacerbated by climate change—damages the heart, lungs, and every other vital organ. . . . Globally, 77% of countries experienced an increase in daily population exposure to wildfires from 2001 to 2015. . . . . A business as usual trajectory will result in a fundamentally altered world. . . .
The Paris Agreement has set a target of “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1·5°C.” In a world that matches this ambition, a child born today would see the phase-out of all coal in the UK and Canada by their sixth and 11th birthday; they would see France ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by their 21st birthday; and they would be 31 years old by the time the world reaches net-zero in 2050."
If we can make this happen, we all know that it will be good beyond merely allowing us to continue to survive on this planet:
"The changes seen in this alternate pathway could result in cleaner air, safer cities, and more nutritious food, coupled with renewed investment in health systems and vital infrastructure. . . . In several cases, the economic savings from a healthier and more productive workforce, with fewer health-care expenses, will cover the initial investment costs of these interventions."
We're implemented some changes, but greenhouse gasses continue to rise. This is the same story we've been hearing for years, and the main reason I question anyone's choice to bring more children into this mess, but at least it's being reported by mainstream media. Maybe that's something.
In a New York Times article, "What do teens learn online today?", Elizabeth Weil suggests that kids are on the right track when they stream every inch of their anguish and joys in countless video tutorials aimed at, perhaps a necessary clarification, other teens. Weil says,
"It’s nice if our fellow humans are predictable, and you have some idea of what you’ll be dealing with when a person shows up. There are whole branches of psychology dedicated to trying to help us keep ourselves together. . . . And yet, at the same time, we know it’s a ruse. We are, all of us, deeply, inalienably contradictory and chaotic. Arguably it is the dominant postapocalyptic vision of our digital times, the internet’s McLuhan moment, brought to us by teenagers who, as such, spend their days feeling like 10 different people at once and believe they can, and should, express them all. We all contain multitudes. The kids seem to know that’s all right."
I commented on the article with this memory,
Back in first year uni, in the 80s, my prof told us, "It doesn't matter what your philosophy of life is, so long as it's consistent and self-cohesive," and immediately, in my head, I countered with Whitman's 'multitudes' line. That's youth talking. It's the untamed stream of consciousness all things at all times why do we have to learn punctuation anyway line of reasoning. And it has it's place, for sure. The error is in thinking it makes us more authentic to show all sides of ourselves in real time. Unorganized thought merely flattens the ideas presented until nothing is more important than anything else, but then nothing is really communicated beyond all the feels, and "I am here!! Look at me!" We contain multitudes, but at some point we also develop a more integrated self, not just to be conveniently predictable for others, but to better understand how to live and how to connect and how to be. Prioritizing our ideas into an organized whole in a thoughtful attempt at elucidating who we are and what matters is not to be shrugged off because it's what the "olds" do. It's the later stage work of finding that authentic self.
(After haggling in my head over a few words, I hit 'submit' and then noticed that one glaringly inaccurate *it's*. Punctuation indeed! Whatevs.)
Weil seems to be newly introduced to this adolescent culture of everything at once, which might mean she has forgotten what it was like to be a teenager. It might seem different online, but that's just a matter of packaging. That flattening of ideas and values so everything is as important as everything else is a useful way to avoid decision and responsibility - those nasty things that come with age. (Well, one can only hope they come.) She calls it a "feature of the online world" while alluding to a 19th century poet. Curious.
I believe it's vital to remember who should be leading whom. What kids do often looks new and cool from a distance, and they can be jarringly sophisticated in the talent of expressing distain for anything that predates them, but there are consequences to the refusal to do the work of thinking and deciding. Developing a consistent self and philosophy of life within the complexity of being isn't a ruse set to tame us, but a method of focusing. If we forget that in a quest to avoid an "Ok boomer" dig, then we are negligent, and we deserve the culture we've helped to create.
For the first time in 28 years of teaching, I approve of the new guru being brought to the masses from on high. Immediately, from just the first few seconds of the video we were compelled to watch for some force-fed professional development, I knew this guy was different. The sound was poor quality, and it was clearly homemade using a laptop camera and mic; there was nothing slick or polished about it in the least. That is high praise coming from me.
Paul Gorski is Associate Professor at New Century College. Beyond being an author of several books and magazine articles, he is the primary author of many articles published in journals (albeit low ranking or unranked - at least they're his own studies). And he, like me, rails against many of the ideas teachers have been told to embrace over the years, like the whole the Grit Movement. I think growth mindset fits the same "deficit" criticisms as is outlined further here, and in this tweet:
Elsewhere he adds in Emotional Intelligence and Cultural Competence. They all run into the same problem: Telling people they just need a different mindset or more grit to do better in school denies, in the most condescending way, the reality that people who are marginalized are often models of resilience and grit. They've overcome more obstacles before breakfast than the rest of us have to manage all day. He explains further in this paper,
I saw Dr. Kyle Powys Whyte present at the University of Waterloo on Thursday night on climate change, traditional knowledge, and environmental justice. It was similar to what he said in this video, but longer and with a Q&A at the end. It was eye-opening in the worst way - in a necessary way. Now that I know, either I have to change or else accept my ongoing complicity. (Or find a new form of rationalization to knock it all out of the park, so to speak.)
I'll preface with an admission of my absolute love of wilderness areas just north of me. I have deeply loved every moment spent in Algonquin Park, Killarney, Temagami, and the islands of Georgian Bay. The landscapes are breathtaking and the early morning animal sightings are well worth the swarms of mosquitos and black flies. I can breathe there and think and feel in a way that is lost to me in my city focused on growing high rises.
Whyte had us consider this very philosophical question (paraphrased): To what extent can people have an experience of intrinsic value - a love of something as a good in itself, something that has no other purpose but to be enjoyed for itself - on land that has been genocidally constructed? Is it possible to have a sense of spiritual enjoyment as a byproduct of a place that has been gained through bloodshed and, well, basic terrorism? And, I would add, if it is possible, then what does that say about us?? Perhaps the more-to-the-point question, the essential question, is,
Is it possible for a good person to profoundly enjoy ill-gotten gains?
My first thought is, from a slightly defensive stance, can a person be good but also forgetful? Or are we, the settlers, just living in that double-consciousness, that Freudian splitting, of rage for what our ancestors did to the original inhabitants of this land mixed with a convenient obliviousness as we hand over park fees and check the weather before getting on the water. Or are we living a full-on lie of mere clicktivism, rationalized with all the many reasons we couldn't possibly physically join the line at any of the fights for land rights going on in our country right now - fights that could potentially save the land and our climate from further environmental destruction? But that's not the answer either. We'd just be in the way there, too.
If cycling is part of your life, it looks like the NDP comes way ahead in terms of addressing cycling concerns. Extinction Rebellion is clear about the need for car-free streets as part of action to decrease the threats of climate change. And even my city claims to be moving away from our car-centric planning (paywalled in the local rag, but available in full on Reddit). But we still have problems.
About a month ago, a cyclist in my city was hit by a car, and then charged with cycling across a crosswalk, and I have so many questions! The big two:
(1) What's the difference between being in the crosswalk and being 6" to the left of the crosswalk?, and (2) What do we do with the many areas of town where a crosswalk is in the middle of a bike path with a slanted curb at each end, provoking unwitting riders to bike straight across them? That should be considered entrapment!! Should we instead veer into the road and then back up the path on the other side of the intersection? I've pondered that question before as I got off my bike to try to cross a busy street, with a walk signal, and left-turning cars repeatedly cutting me off, with a flippin' COP waiting at the red watching me gingerly step off the curb and jump back on over and over again. It might be good to remind the police that failure to yield right-of-way to a pedestrian is illegal. It has a set fine of three demerit points and $180.
A climate scientists, Katharine Hayhoe, and economist, Andrew Leach, seem to suggest that the Liberals are our best bet for tackling climate change if you averages the grades they gave for ambition and feasibility. I know! I was surprised too. Here are their final grades:
Conservatives: grade D for ambition, F for feasibility (don't even)
NDP: grade A for ambition, D for feasibility (no details on how they'll cut carbon so quickly)
Greens: grade A+ for ambition, C- for feasibility (not a realistic path to achieve goals)
Liberals: grade B for ambition, A for feasibility (their path won't quite hit their goals though)
They write,
"It’s hard to convince people that you’re serious about cutting carbon when you’re funding new ways to transport it (even if those new ways will pay for our green innovation).
But the tax and the pipeline discussions often mask the significant progress that’s been made in other areas. The Liberals are aiming to phase out coal power by 2030, more than 30 years earlier than would have otherwise been the case. They’ve also implemented a clean fuel standard that pushes our fuel producers and importers to reduce emissions all the way from the oil field to our gas tanks. During the campaign, the Liberals have committed to a deeper target—net-zero emissions nationally by 2050—and pledged a $2-billion tree planting program. No matter how you slice it, the Liberals have implemented this country’s first serious, national climate change plan, and they’re looking to build on it. . . . The Liberals have the experience to know how big a challenge it is. They’ve acted in line with their promises in the last election and brought in significant new policies. . . . For us, practical policy beats ambition without a viable plan."
Apparently that pipeline that Trudeau bought wasn't actually part of the Liberal's plan, but was a leftover deal from Harper, and any party that was elected would have been stuck with it. It appears I haven't been paying attention at all.
When questioned about the assessment, Hayhoe tweeted that she's the person who wrote this piece three years ago: "What surprises lurk within the climate system?" It's about how crucial it is that we act quickly. She knows the risks and the urgency.
This election will be anyone's guess.
Also check out this doc about the disenfranchising of youth, indigenous, and impoverished people in Canada in the last election.
"An investigation by The New York Times found an insatiable criminal underworld that had exploited the flawed and insufficient efforts to contain it. As with hate speech and terrorist propaganda, many tech companies failed to adequately police sexual abuse imagery on their platforms, or failed to cooperate sufficiently with the authorities when they found it. . . . National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, described a system at “a breaking point,” with reports of abusive images “exceeding the capabilities of independent clearinghouses and law enforcement to take action.” It suggested that future advancements in machine learning might be the only way to catch up with the criminals. . . .
Adults, now years removed from their abuse, still living in fear of being recognized from photos and videos on the internet. And parents of the abused, struggling to cope with the guilt of not having prevented it and their powerlessness over stopping its online spread. . . . The groups use encrypted technologies and the dark web, the vast underbelly of the internet, to teach pedophiles how to carry out the crimes and how to record and share images of the abuse worldwide. . . . Testimony in his criminal case revealed that it would have taken the authorities “trillions of years” to crack the 41-character password he had used to encrypt the site. He eventually turned it over to investigators, and was sentenced to life in prison in 2016. . . . “capturing the abuse on video was part of the excitement,” according to court records. . . .
The surge in criminal activity on the dark web accounted for only a fraction of the 18.4 million reports of abuse last year. That number originates almost entirely with tech companies based in the United States. . . . . Facebook and Google, stepped up surveillance of their platforms . . . “The companies knew the house was full of roaches, and they were scared to turn the lights on,” he said. “And then when they did turn the lights on, it was worse than they thought.” . . . In interviews, law enforcement officials pointed to Tumblr, a blogging and social networking site with 470 million users, as one of the most problematic companies. . . . The internet is well known as a haven for hate speech, terrorism-related content and criminal activity, all of which have raised alarms and spurred public debate and action. But the problem of child sexual abuse imagery faces a particular hurdle: It gets scant attention because few people want to confront the enormity and horror of the content, or they wrongly dismiss it as primarily teenagers sending inappropriate selfies."
Numbers doubled in a year. So where are all the pedophiles coming from?? I'm in the middle of a book discussing the concerns of John Adams and the founding fathers with women taking over the household - "despotism of the petticoat" - and it makes me think of this quote, "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." To what extent, I wonder, is this a reaction by men - and it's almost entirely men - losing absolute power in the home and unfettered access to women who were, until very recently, afraid of speaking out?? This seems to be where people turn who just want to dominate something. We have to find means of better helping men get through this change in social norms so they don't seek power in the most horrific avenues. And we need these agencies to get much more funding!
We're headed for 10 degrees in the next 20-30 years, and we will hit human extinction at 4 degrees?? Do I even bother to go to work today??
We've missed the window that could allow a gentle reversal. The only solution, he says, is to give the planet back to the planet. We need to re-wild nature and live a completely localized life - no international trade, no mass production. We have to stop doing stuff. Immediately. Maybe reconnect with your ancient beliefs that helped people cope with a lack of control over the massive tragedies befalling them, in their incomprehension. We won't be able to get our heads around what's about to happen. The wealthy still think they're above it all and not part of nature; they're not worried because they've been blinded by opulence.
"What comes after growth is maturity."
Maybe if this all sinks in, we'll all stay home to hug our children and other loved ones, maybe play in a park or go for a walk, and that will actually help us eke out a few more years.
It's dumb luck that I chanced to do just that! (Thoughts on Wallace-Wells here.)
This book a comprehensive exploration of the issues mixed with clear examples and Tom Toles's cartoons. It could easily be used as a climate change primer in a high school or middle school, and it comes with an index and lots of useful endnotes too!
Mann clarifies the problem of which, by now, we're all painful aware:
"This is the madhouse of the climate debate. We have followed Alice through the looking glass. White roses here are painted red, and words suddenly mean something different from what they used to mean. The very language of science itself, of 'skepticism' and 'evidence,' is used in a way opposite of how science really employs it. Not everyone wants the facts to be known. We have run squarely into what Upton Sinclair famously warned us about: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it'" (xi).
This is a quick read outlining the history of the efforts to do something to slow down fossil fuel use. Everything we know now about climate change, pretty much, we knew with great certainty forty years ago, in 1979. "The climate scientist James Hansen has called a 2-degree warming 'a prescription for long-term disaster. Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. A 3-degree warming, on the other hand, is a prescription for short-term disaster" (4). 5 degrees will bring the fall of human civilization. "The Red Cross estimates that already more refugees flee environmental crises than violent conflict" (4). We had a great chance to fix it all between 1979 and 1989, but we didn't take it.
WHY NOT?
"The common explanation today concerns the depredations of the fossil fuel industry, which in recent decades has committed to playing the role of villain which comic-book bravado" (6). But the fossil fuel industry was actually on board for a time. There are a whole lot of names and dates to keep straight below (I bolded the important ones), and the book, curiously, has NO index or footnotes! Rich wrote it as a compelling story, but I digest it better chronologically:
This link about people on the spectrum came to my FB feed as "Sponsored Content," so I'm wary at the get go, but they present this argument to be addressed: "Autism is a neurological difference in processing, and simply having a collection of traits or quirks without this difference in processing does not make someone autistic." They argue that "there does need to be some clarity, to get away from the ‘We’re all a little bit autistic aren’t we…’ phrase."
My position: But, why?
And, right before that came one of ContraPoint's latest video in which Natalie's characters argue about who counts as trans with a gender dysphoria anti-trender argument countered by a more fluid gender performativity stance.
I'm going to mesh the issues together here because of some similar arguments. I lean towards 'why does it matter?'. Whether someone's got dysphoria or is trending, it takes minimal energy to use whatever pronouns they asked to be used (while, of course, forgiving the forgetful who mean well). What's the harm in letting people try on the other gender or non-gender to see if it fits better? What's the benefit of doing brain scans on people to get some illusion of certainty about how people feel instead of just trusting how they say they feel? Similarly, who is harmed when people acknowledge their struggles with adhering to behavioural norms by latching on to a recognizable diagnosis? With ASD or ADHD or any other checkbox of symptoms that we've rolling into together under a label, why is it important to delineate who is in and who must stay out via an often expensive and sometimes questionable process? When one of my kids was diagnosed (incorrectly, I believe), the very reputable psychometrist badgered me to find that one thing they're obsessed with when one didn't immediately come to mind. Curious.
I just finished Camus's compelling read, The Plague. It's a parable provoked by the Nazi Occupation, but also about general occupation, oppression, and isolation. It's about resistance to incomprehensible evil and what it looks like to be a good person. But, it's striking how well what much of he says fits with climate change, so I'm going to summarize it here by exchanging the words "the plague" with "climate change," "scientist" for "doctor," and "temperature" for "death-rate." I'm also changing "man" to "person" just to equity it up a bit. Consider "pestilence" as "troubles," but I'll leave that as is. Let's see how this goes and if there are lessons to be learned!
The gist: The story follows a doctor, Bernard Rieux, who's an atheist and our narrator. His wife was sent away to recover from an illness before the plague hit. He misses her (a bit), but spends 20 hours a day helping the town. We meet all his varied associates and patients as a walled-off town copes with the sudden spreading of disease that seems as if it will never end. This is an extremely abridged version of a book 272 pages long (Stuart Gilbert translation). Some important characters, all remarkably benevolent seen from Camus's perspective, include a criminal who benefits from the chaos caused by the troubles, a priest trying to guide the masses, and a lover who's desperate to find a way to travel to see his girlfriend despite the new laws forbidding it. There's also a writer unable to find any words and a dear friend that are integral to the story but less vital to this bastardization of it:
Arendt wrote this short book in 1970, but there's nothing in it that needs to be updated today. Absolutely nothing significant has changed; it's just more. She was responding to the violence of WWII, Vietnam, the student riots in Paris, and, most specifically, the People's Park protests in Berkeley, where she was teaching at the time as students attempted "transforming an empty university-owned lot into a 'People's Park'." Sheldon Wolin and John Schaar wrote about how the event unleashed an unnecessarily strong police backlash:
"A rock was thrown from a roof-top and, without warning, police fired into a group on the roof of an adjacent building. Two persons were struck in the face by the police fire, another was blinded, probably permanently, and a fourth, twenty-five-year-old James Rector, later died. Before the day was over, at least thirty others were wounded by police gunfire, and many more by clubs. . . . Tear gas enfolded the main part of the campus and drifted into many of its buildings, as well as into the surrounding city. Nearby streets were littered with broken glass and rubble. At least six buckshot slugs entered the main library and three 38 calibre bullets lodged in the wall of a reference room in the same building. Before the day ended, more than ninety people had been injured by police guns and clubs."
That was on May 15, 1969, known as "Bloody Thursday." The Kent State shootings in Ohio were almost exactly one year later. Arendt tries to make sense of it all through a look at the changing view of violence in society.
PhilosophyTube is one of my favourite channels for in-depth analysis of issues in a philosophical and comedic yet profoundly heartfelt manner. Today Ollie tackled "Climate Grief" by working through the stages of grief. It's curious how similar it is to my previous post: "Seven Shades of Green."
In brief:
1. Despair (Non-Green and Light Green) - We run an increased risk of anxiety and depression when we hear there's nothing being done about climate change. We can't get our heads around climate change because of the "Non-Identity Problem." In a nutshell, climate change is a bad thing for future people, many of whom don't exist yet. Timothy Morton says climate change is an example of a hyperobject: it's real, but we can't see the whole thing at one - like five blind men describing an elephant, or like grief. It's like asking where the university is while being shown around each building. It's hard to grasp something so all encompassing. We're in the mess we're in due to thinking of the environment as separate from ourselves. Instead we have to think of climate change as an object we're inside of.
2. Denial (Shiny Green) - This is the tech fix. We expected to have all our problems solved by technology by now, or at least be on our way to Mars. Moore's Law, the idea that tech doubles in capacity at half the price every two years, isn't a law at all. It's a myth that help tech companies profit. The reality is that there is no solution to climate change that doesn't also include solving labour rights issues. The solution must turn over the entire capitalist system because it's colonialism and profit motives that got us here in the first place.
3. Bargaining (Emerald Green) - Ollie does a great job of summarizing the Standing Rock event. In January 2018, the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) route was going to be close to Bismarck, so it was rerouted to avoid it due to concerns with 200 leaks in the previous six years. Instead they decided to send it through unceded indigenous land. This led to a huge occupied protest. At Standing Rock, protesters tried a new way of sustainable living where everyone got free shelter and food with minimal impact to the land. It was an attempt to create a brand new world. Obama said we need to wait a bit to figure it all out, but the military, which was hired by the oil company, responded with violence - chemical weapons and dog attacks.
The military, gun control, overfishing, and climate change, is all one big problem. Indigenous authors have talked about this already. Nick Estes says that indigenous peoples are already living in a post-apocalyptic world. We have different attitudes to the land that has to be addressed: Abrahamic tribes mark sacred land that was involved in a specific event, like Mecca. But indigenous groups see land as sacred because "there's a piece of me in that land and a piece of that land in me." The land and people are enmeshed, and they're already living this philosophy. Extinction Rebellion has been cagey about linking climate change and police brutality, but the indigenous at Standing Rock are clear that the police enforced a set of values that aligned themselves with the oil company. They didn't wait for Obama to figure it all out.
4. Acceptance (Muted Deep Green, Deep Green, and Dark Green) - The idea of climate despair speaks to the notion that there's nothing we can do anymore. The apocalypse is coming. Jem Bendell's Deep Adaptation starts with the assumption that society is going to collapse. The controversy around this idea is whether or not it helps the cause to spread despair. Ollie appreciates that it allows us to experience grief over what's happening in the world - that leaders at Exxon, BP, and the North Dakota government should face justice, but won't.
We need to acknowledge the tragedy of the way things are right now, acknowledge that things suck. One advantage of facing grief is that once we recognize that everything is part and parcel of one big problem, then we have a lot more allies to work with. Another benefit is that confronting the possibility of the world ending, as we know it, offers us a chance to ask what were the good bits. We need to dwell in gratitude for what we've had as we take our leave from it.
But "apocalypse" doesn't mean end of the world. It means, literally, a revealing of knowledge. Can we learn from this before it's too late?
In pop culture, we have the Ecco Homo moment as a cultural foreboding - the chutzpah to insist on a fix that pretends to be completely oblivious to the destruction of former beauty. We've done that with our whole planet. But more than that is the fame it brought to the amateur restoration worker, driving up tourism dramatically. We are positioned to celebrate destruction of beauty more than creation. This could be bookended with the acknowledgment and then immediate justification of "billionaires in wine caves" having more power than the rest of the populous; that a politician will be attacked for refusing to be bribed is a sign of our times.
In pop culture, we have the Ecco Homo moment as a cultural foreboding - the chutzpah to insist on a fix that pretends to be completely oblivious to the destruction of former beauty. We've done that with our whole planet. But more than that is the fame it brought to the amateur restoration worker, driving up tourism dramatically. We are positioned to celebrate destruction of beauty more than creation. This could be bookended with the acknowledgment and then immediate justification of "billionaires in wine caves" having more power than the rest of the populous; that a politician will be attacked for refusing to be bribed is a sign of our times.
