The effects of the climate crisis intrude with increasing regularity into our lives and yet we do not act. We are as paralyzed as past civilizations were when facing catastrophic destruction.
The truth of the ecological crisis that our technological terraforming, earth shattering civilization has set in motion is a hard truth to accept....but the science in unequivocal. We are where we are, Chris describes it accurately.........and the saddest part is, we'd rather enter the world of fantastical last minute rescues...than face the grim collective reality that is the Future.
The rise of the Christian right is a depressing reality....but so are those wild fires making life miserable in New York...takes Americans away from the equally depressing reality of daily mass shootings I suspect....but hey!!!
Why not Vacate On? Come to Canada for some fishing or hunting in our once glorious boreal?? Be part of the destruction of the lungs of the north...get a load of how we're dealing with our Summer of Fire: It's really a bit of a hoot.
In Alberta, where the disaster began as we fought a polarized election, the winner (our family calls them weiners) is a libertarian champion of the unvaccinated....who recently claims these fires have been started by arsonists.
Not off roaders....or campers with their off road vehicles and big trailors..no....ARSONISTS.
She's likely a hair breadth away from having us imagine Orange jumper clad NDP terrorists running across the country setting fires as part of our madcap efforts to defeat the ruling Conservative Right.
So its not only in America that the seeds of our common destruction are ripening Everywhere, we'd rather engage in a protracted war with each other, than deal with what we're actually facing. The War in Ukraine may be the big metaphor....but everywhere on the planet, the battle between the 'woke' and the sleep walking dead is prospering.
It's good for the arms industry. It's cathartic for many. And it more than proves Chris Hedges dire predictions.
We live in a petro-state and our 'libertarian champion of the unvaccinated;' is beholden to the fossil industry because of campaign contributions. And many who voted for her are convinced that life cannot continue unless we burn every last atom of fossil fuel. There's some irony in the fact that the province with the wildest fires has contributed the most (among Canadian provinces) to the problem.
And change the subject from what the real crisis is, to a manufactured one that gives them a few more miserable decades to devastate what's left of a livable earth.
"We were raised on robbery' as a great Canadian folks singer put it years ago.......took me a few decades to realize what she meant. But the horrors of our residential schools....our clear cutting and our water intensive tarsands operations have wised me up.
I live in Brooklyn, New York. As the smoke crisis was easing, a friend asked about what starts the fires, and two of us listed a few possibilities—lightning, unextinguished cigarette butts, sparks from electricity, etc. She replied, "No, I think there's something they're not telling us." Someone else said that his wife believes the same thing. I felt both enraged and depressed afterward. Half a century of observation and analysis, most of it already proved true, hasn't made a dent on most. Thank you, Chris, for continuing to hammer away in the hope of making a dent.
A wonderful sermon on the coming end of times. One suggestion for you, Chris, why not read - yourself - all your articles, and attach the written article as well. Your voice, when heard, sounds like the "voice of authority", or a low-key Jerimiah "crying in the wilderness". We live in a "wilderness", a wilderness of illusions you often speak to, a wilderness of great greed, etc. Your wife does a great job in reading your articles, but [stating the obvious] she's not you. Your voice reading your articles [often sounding like sermons] brings gravitas and your whole experience to your words and message.
Thank you, Chris, for your hard work, your words of wisdom, and your deep, enduring love for humankind.
The collective West has become amnesiacal, where we see war as virtue signalling and have long forgotten the cycles of nature and the truths of history.
Sorry about the fires Chris, but our dumb ass cretinous government is too busy pouring gas on the empire's imperialist wars to bother putting out our forest fires.
It seems we have so many ways of burning down the future in the self-denigrating West.
1- CO2 is currently 420 ppm, which is 0.042%. Humans are responsible for 3% of that, which is 0.00126%. Thus, 99.99874% of all CO2 is created naturally.
2- At under 270 ppm CO2, plant life dies, and everything else dies with it.
The atmosphere has had periods where CO2 was up to and higher than 4000 ppm. Plant and animal life thrived, Alaska was a jungle.
3- When Mt. St Helens erupted in the early 1980s, it released the same amount of pollution as 270 years of human industrial activity in 1970. That's 270 x 1970 industrial activity--IN ONE DAY.
Let's cut the bullshit. Climate Change (global warming) benefits the oligarchy as they will tax us and starve us to create this 'perfect' world. Anyone tell me why Kyoto Treaty applied to the US but not China? Sorry but anyone with a thinking brain is going to look at the facts and see that this is a scam.
Before you send hate my way, I am ALL FOR taking care of our environment. Let's force recycling...let's force Monsanto to stop forcing Roundup on the world. Let's stop jetting to Davos and maybe use Zoom? Let's stop dumping plastics in the oceans. Let's stop abusing animals with these corporate farms. Let's stop military actions by the US which destroys the environment. Let's stop penalizing family farms at the expense of corporate farms. There is so much to do at the global corporate level but instead the little man has to do all the sacrificing.
C'mon Chris Hedges...are you a corporate sycophant or are your REALLY looking out for the common man? A true leftist? I wonder sometimes.
Whatever. The point is we are talking very small numbers here. I am all for climate change as long as the corporations feel the pain and not the little man. Last I checked, there was talk about a carbon tax...and where does that money go? Hmm...let me guess..the Ukrainian Nazis?
Agreed but what is the solution? Do we impoverish the lower and middle classes for a carbon dioxide problem that isn't? This is a scam because the beneficiaries are the corporations and the elite. If it truly was something serious, folks would not be jetting to Davos. Why not start with some obvious solutions such as getting rid of plastic bottles and reducing the use of RoundUp and other cancer causing chemicals? What about stopping war and wasting fuel to maintain the 800+ military bases around the world? What about allowing diesel autos in the US which have great fuel economy? What about using nuclear fuel so we can stop stripping the land and putting sulfur in the air? In all of these cases I have listed, corporations (and the military) stand to lose millions of dollars. That is why this is never talked about. However, let's take the cars away from the peons. Let's make them eat bugs. Let's charge them a tax, etc. See the pattern? I am mystified how leftists have it SO right about most things but are SO wrong when it comes to 'climate change.'
When I was an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia in the 1970's, parking on campus was forbidden, except in gravel parking lots some distance from the heart of the campus. Having walked 15 minutes from my car to the main library, I would carry on farther, and make an attempt to cross a large, flat expanse of bare earth, which from September until at least April or May would be guaranteed to be an ocean of mud. Across this expanse, someone had laid a wooden path, consisting of 1" x 12" planks laid end to end. It helped a lot but not enough. Each day, all day, a vast funnel of pedestrians would converge on each dry end of this bridge. When two walkers going in opposite direction would meet somewhere in the middle, a tacit negotiation would occur, usually involving an awkward sharing of the plank; usually each person would get at least some mud on their shoes as one or both pedestrians would have to take at least one step off of the plank and into the mud. One day, as I walked the plank between Brock Hall and the Student Union Building, I definitely slipped and immediately fell right into the sucking mud. As I cast about looking for one of my shoes from my new, ground level vantage point, I saw a field of white labels attached to sticks placed at regular intervals all over the sea of mud. They weren't actually sticks; no more than 30 to 40 cm tall, they were twigs that the university had planted. As I picked myself up and prepared to carry on, I remembered my Grandmother's saying, repeated often by my mother and her sisters, which had become a family motto of sorts. "Always plant a tree". Now, almost half a century later, all of those twigs have grown into and awesome, engineered canopy of Carbon Dioxide capturing, Oxygen dispensing, Solar Energy powered trees. "Always plant MANY trees" in places where trees will grow. If every human plants one tree for each and every year they have been alive and does so for as long as they have strength or breath, would the doomed planet object? Would things be marginally better, or worse? Resist. Plant many trees; now and forever.
As an x-tree planter, who has planted over 3,000 trees in one day, the answer is free contraceptives for all. Trees store carbon dioxide, and when they die and rot they release it ALL.
Well, no they don't release it all into the atmosphere. Much is recirculated in the soil by fungi, bacteria, termites, and others, and ends up as ... guess... new trees.
Bill wolfe's suggestion is apt. Restrictions on industrial logging may need to be curtailed -- and will be curtailed once the energy and ancillary costs reach cross the threshold where costs exceed any potential for profit.
Bob Johnson has planted over 3,000 trees in one day and has suggested the answer is in providing free contraceptives for all. I respectfully submit that planting 3,000 trees in one day may be a form of contraception in its own right -- and should be continued -- among all those seeking to avoid both 'boutique activism' and parenthood.
Steve Woodward has correctly observed that dead, rotting trees don't release all of their stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: "much is recirculated in the soil and ends up as . . . new trees."!
Although my suggestion about planting one tree for each year every individual human being has been alive has been subjected to criticism as 'boutique activism', it might still be effective, especially if taken on with a conscious attitude of religious reverence; it could become a spiritual practice that could well provide genuine renewal for the practitioner, with obvious continuing benefits to the community and beyond.
Ronald Wright's "A Short History of Progress" is an astonishing little book. Read it in an afternoon and change your life. His observations and images are succinct and lucid. Most moving among these was his recounting of how the Easter Islanders destroyed their bountiful island: inexorably, every tree was cut down to service a status arms race, as different tribes tried to top each other's moa, the giant stone heads we all know. The passage where he describes cutting down the last tree--they knew it was the last tree, that no more could be coming because rats ate all the seeds, everywhere they looked they could see desolation--but they cut it down anyway.
I turned 53 this year. My life has been a front-row seat to technical civilization destroying itself, bit by bit, in the service of a small sociopathic aristocracy. I can remember life before 1980; even as a child, it was clear the bottom fell out after Reagan, and every Reagan clone after. I knew things would get bad by the late 80s, but had hope during the brief green renaissance we had then, centered around the 1987 Montreal Protocol which banned ozone-destroying CFCs. But the 90s were wasted, and idiot boy-king W sealed the deal.
I'd challenge two things Chris writes.
The common refrain that "the Earth will continue even with all of our damage" belies a lack of understanding Earth's past. The changes we have wrought are of such magnitude and speed there is only one equally destructive event in Earth's history: the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But our changes compress tens to hundreds of thousands of years of change into a couple centuries. There is really no precedent for what the Earth is experiencing. Hansen's latest paper describes 5°C of warming this century, with up to another 5°C to 2300. This is a sterilization event. Complex life cannot survive such temperatures, and likely changes to a toxic, anoxic atmosphere. It's possible Earth could go back hundreds of millions of years, to where there are only worms, maybe some hardy insects, and algae and similar plants. It will be too hot for everything else.
Second, while it's true that the mass of humanity (or at least rich, Northern humanity) is sleepwalking to their collective doom, I have to give them a break. Since global warming surfaced in the collective consciousness in a big way in the 1980s, the 24/356 disinformation machine cranked into overdrive. As if in denial, or as part of our elites' Ghost Dances, the aristocracy stomped the gas. People are happy to enslave themselves in jobs, so long as they can buy toys to compensate. The commercials will keep people doing that as long as they're on.
There really is no good news. Extinction Rebellion and other groups are well-meaning, but I don't think they really understand the kinds of changes that would really make a difference, and the implications. Any hope of "doing something" about biosphere collapse was really over by 2000. Maybe covid and succeeding diseases will cut human numbers enough to make a difference, but even that I doubt.
Wright also notes that Marx called capitalism "a machine for demolishing limits." It worked...for a while. But then the rubber band snaps back.
It's true the future looks bleak, to understate the case. But, when your explaining this to your kids and theirs, what are you going to say when they ask, "Did you put up a fight?" There is the moral imperative. Cheers
Three years ago, I think, when the forests in the US northwest were on fire, my stepson, his pregnant wife and toddler son were living in Springfield, OR, just across I-5 from Eugene. Then, at least, the EPA had no rating for anything over 500 ppm. When it reached 775, he made a break for it, going north on smoke-covered I-5 to the Portland airport, and all 3 got on a plane they reasonably feared would be a super-spreader of Covid and flew east. Spent a few weeks in the southern Midwest until the fires finally were extinguished, and went back. Until they could move permanently.
But there is no real shelter from this storm. And, if we do get rid of fossil fuels entirely, after it is way too late, what will happen is the end of the aerosol masking effect of all of this particulate matter that has actually decreased the warming effect of the sun, just as this catastrophic level of particulate matter has seriously decreased the amount of sunlight hitting solar panels. That stuff comes back to earth in a week or two. As opposed to the carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere with it, which stays for many decades. The result of our 100% transition away from fossil fuels will be roughly an almost immediate 1 degree Celsius increase in average global temperature, while any benefit will remain decades away.
Thank you for these hard truths Chris. I work in science and frequently people will say to me don't worry science will solve it. Of course those people who say that are not in science. Science will not solve this , only a change in the Capitalist way of living will. One billion spent on CO2 reduction using a coal fired power plant fueled by burning trees, yes burning trees. If we burned all the trees in the u.s. that would power the grid for two years. Science will not save us. Science could have saved us IF we had followed the science decades ago. A new philosophy, Scientific Accelerationism , the thought that science will save us while doing nothing because science will save us.
There are posts appearing on some media sites with photographs of helicopters shooting giant flame throwers at the woods immediately below them in Canada. Weird, huh? Whose agenda is being served with these "wildfires"?
This is a fire prevention technique. You do a controlled burn out a section of forest in the hope of containing the uncontrolled fire. Chris is right. Social media is filled with climate misinformation because it seems people REALLY want to believe that climate change isn't real.
Those posts are pure BS. And you know very well who's posting them.
A....hol...s who want us to deny Climate change and imagine Eco terrorists.
I'm in Alberta. There's real ecological reasons why the boreal is burning.....trying to pin it on your bogus creation (terrorists everywhere ahahahahah) is part of the psychosis Chris is describing.
Fantasy villains, standing in for the civilized greed and disregard for natural limits that is the actual destroyer.
WHO'S AGENDA IS BEING SERVED BY THE WILDFIRES????? Find the scapegoat Kathleen...it won't make the air your children breathe any cleaner.
Yes, but how do you share this with your family and friends. I hesitate. Though my husband has been copied and we will continue to discuss the inevitable. I enjoy my garden. At this point is it better to be in denial? Just as the extractive amoral economic machine is coming for all of us except the top crust, the natural response to human pollution may get us first.
Such a beautiful planet the greens and blues with wondrous life forms.
"We become easy prey for con-artists, cult leaders, charlatans and demagogues, who tell us what we want to hear". How profound. Last night I was just thinking of Pat Robertson, the show called "cops", Rush Limbaugh, the 1600 right wing AM stations and Donald Trump. They are all getting in on the grift. It is ironic how the right wing blames Hollywood for the evil when it is their own damn TV and radio shows!
The truth of the ecological crisis that our technological terraforming, earth shattering civilization has set in motion is a hard truth to accept....but the science in unequivocal. We are where we are, Chris describes it accurately.........and the saddest part is, we'd rather enter the world of fantastical last minute rescues...than face the grim collective reality that is the Future.
The rise of the Christian right is a depressing reality....but so are those wild fires making life miserable in New York...takes Americans away from the equally depressing reality of daily mass shootings I suspect....but hey!!!
Why not Vacate On? Come to Canada for some fishing or hunting in our once glorious boreal?? Be part of the destruction of the lungs of the north...get a load of how we're dealing with our Summer of Fire: It's really a bit of a hoot.
In Alberta, where the disaster began as we fought a polarized election, the winner (our family calls them weiners) is a libertarian champion of the unvaccinated....who recently claims these fires have been started by arsonists.
Not off roaders....or campers with their off road vehicles and big trailors..no....ARSONISTS.
She's likely a hair breadth away from having us imagine Orange jumper clad NDP terrorists running across the country setting fires as part of our madcap efforts to defeat the ruling Conservative Right.
So its not only in America that the seeds of our common destruction are ripening Everywhere, we'd rather engage in a protracted war with each other, than deal with what we're actually facing. The War in Ukraine may be the big metaphor....but everywhere on the planet, the battle between the 'woke' and the sleep walking dead is prospering.
It's good for the arms industry. It's cathartic for many. And it more than proves Chris Hedges dire predictions.
We live in a petro-state and our 'libertarian champion of the unvaccinated;' is beholden to the fossil industry because of campaign contributions. And many who voted for her are convinced that life cannot continue unless we burn every last atom of fossil fuel. There's some irony in the fact that the province with the wildest fires has contributed the most (among Canadian provinces) to the problem.
As an environmentalist, we don't like forest fires! The right would like forest fires in order to blame the left.
And change the subject from what the real crisis is, to a manufactured one that gives them a few more miserable decades to devastate what's left of a livable earth.
"We were raised on robbery' as a great Canadian folks singer put it years ago.......took me a few decades to realize what she meant. But the horrors of our residential schools....our clear cutting and our water intensive tarsands operations have wised me up.
Sucks to be us.
I live in Brooklyn, New York. As the smoke crisis was easing, a friend asked about what starts the fires, and two of us listed a few possibilities—lightning, unextinguished cigarette butts, sparks from electricity, etc. She replied, "No, I think there's something they're not telling us." Someone else said that his wife believes the same thing. I felt both enraged and depressed afterward. Half a century of observation and analysis, most of it already proved true, hasn't made a dent on most. Thank you, Chris, for continuing to hammer away in the hope of making a dent.
Hi Chris,
A wonderful sermon on the coming end of times. One suggestion for you, Chris, why not read - yourself - all your articles, and attach the written article as well. Your voice, when heard, sounds like the "voice of authority", or a low-key Jerimiah "crying in the wilderness". We live in a "wilderness", a wilderness of illusions you often speak to, a wilderness of great greed, etc. Your wife does a great job in reading your articles, but [stating the obvious] she's not you. Your voice reading your articles [often sounding like sermons] brings gravitas and your whole experience to your words and message.
Thank you, Chris, for your hard work, your words of wisdom, and your deep, enduring love for humankind.
The collective West has become amnesiacal, where we see war as virtue signalling and have long forgotten the cycles of nature and the truths of history.
Sorry about the fires Chris, but our dumb ass cretinous government is too busy pouring gas on the empire's imperialist wars to bother putting out our forest fires.
It seems we have so many ways of burning down the future in the self-denigrating West.
An eloquent, truthful, mournful essay. So few voices like this. Thank you.
It's Fun Fact day!
1- CO2 is currently 420 ppm, which is 0.042%. Humans are responsible for 3% of that, which is 0.00126%. Thus, 99.99874% of all CO2 is created naturally.
2- At under 270 ppm CO2, plant life dies, and everything else dies with it.
The atmosphere has had periods where CO2 was up to and higher than 4000 ppm. Plant and animal life thrived, Alaska was a jungle.
3- When Mt. St Helens erupted in the early 1980s, it released the same amount of pollution as 270 years of human industrial activity in 1970. That's 270 x 1970 industrial activity--IN ONE DAY.
Let's cut the bullshit. Climate Change (global warming) benefits the oligarchy as they will tax us and starve us to create this 'perfect' world. Anyone tell me why Kyoto Treaty applied to the US but not China? Sorry but anyone with a thinking brain is going to look at the facts and see that this is a scam.
Before you send hate my way, I am ALL FOR taking care of our environment. Let's force recycling...let's force Monsanto to stop forcing Roundup on the world. Let's stop jetting to Davos and maybe use Zoom? Let's stop dumping plastics in the oceans. Let's stop abusing animals with these corporate farms. Let's stop military actions by the US which destroys the environment. Let's stop penalizing family farms at the expense of corporate farms. There is so much to do at the global corporate level but instead the little man has to do all the sacrificing.
C'mon Chris Hedges...are you a corporate sycophant or are your REALLY looking out for the common man? A true leftist? I wonder sometimes.
Drivel alert.
What is the drivel?
Well, to start with, your math. 420 (smoke'm if you got'm!) ppm is 0.000042%
Whatever. The point is we are talking very small numbers here. I am all for climate change as long as the corporations feel the pain and not the little man. Last I checked, there was talk about a carbon tax...and where does that money go? Hmm...let me guess..the Ukrainian Nazis?
Agreed but what is the solution? Do we impoverish the lower and middle classes for a carbon dioxide problem that isn't? This is a scam because the beneficiaries are the corporations and the elite. If it truly was something serious, folks would not be jetting to Davos. Why not start with some obvious solutions such as getting rid of plastic bottles and reducing the use of RoundUp and other cancer causing chemicals? What about stopping war and wasting fuel to maintain the 800+ military bases around the world? What about allowing diesel autos in the US which have great fuel economy? What about using nuclear fuel so we can stop stripping the land and putting sulfur in the air? In all of these cases I have listed, corporations (and the military) stand to lose millions of dollars. That is why this is never talked about. However, let's take the cars away from the peons. Let's make them eat bugs. Let's charge them a tax, etc. See the pattern? I am mystified how leftists have it SO right about most things but are SO wrong when it comes to 'climate change.'
When I was an undergraduate at the University of British Columbia in the 1970's, parking on campus was forbidden, except in gravel parking lots some distance from the heart of the campus. Having walked 15 minutes from my car to the main library, I would carry on farther, and make an attempt to cross a large, flat expanse of bare earth, which from September until at least April or May would be guaranteed to be an ocean of mud. Across this expanse, someone had laid a wooden path, consisting of 1" x 12" planks laid end to end. It helped a lot but not enough. Each day, all day, a vast funnel of pedestrians would converge on each dry end of this bridge. When two walkers going in opposite direction would meet somewhere in the middle, a tacit negotiation would occur, usually involving an awkward sharing of the plank; usually each person would get at least some mud on their shoes as one or both pedestrians would have to take at least one step off of the plank and into the mud. One day, as I walked the plank between Brock Hall and the Student Union Building, I definitely slipped and immediately fell right into the sucking mud. As I cast about looking for one of my shoes from my new, ground level vantage point, I saw a field of white labels attached to sticks placed at regular intervals all over the sea of mud. They weren't actually sticks; no more than 30 to 40 cm tall, they were twigs that the university had planted. As I picked myself up and prepared to carry on, I remembered my Grandmother's saying, repeated often by my mother and her sisters, which had become a family motto of sorts. "Always plant a tree". Now, almost half a century later, all of those twigs have grown into and awesome, engineered canopy of Carbon Dioxide capturing, Oxygen dispensing, Solar Energy powered trees. "Always plant MANY trees" in places where trees will grow. If every human plants one tree for each and every year they have been alive and does so for as long as they have strength or breath, would the doomed planet object? Would things be marginally better, or worse? Resist. Plant many trees; now and forever.
Perhaps best to begin by stopping the massive ongoing logging.
Individuals planting trees would be an approach that Hedges has called symbolic gesture, or boutique activism.
As an x-tree planter, who has planted over 3,000 trees in one day, the answer is free contraceptives for all. Trees store carbon dioxide, and when they die and rot they release it ALL.
Well, no they don't release it all into the atmosphere. Much is recirculated in the soil by fungi, bacteria, termites, and others, and ends up as ... guess... new trees.
Bill wolfe's suggestion is apt. Restrictions on industrial logging may need to be curtailed -- and will be curtailed once the energy and ancillary costs reach cross the threshold where costs exceed any potential for profit.
Bob Johnson has planted over 3,000 trees in one day and has suggested the answer is in providing free contraceptives for all. I respectfully submit that planting 3,000 trees in one day may be a form of contraception in its own right -- and should be continued -- among all those seeking to avoid both 'boutique activism' and parenthood.
Steve Woodward has correctly observed that dead, rotting trees don't release all of their stored carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: "much is recirculated in the soil and ends up as . . . new trees."!
Although my suggestion about planting one tree for each year every individual human being has been alive has been subjected to criticism as 'boutique activism', it might still be effective, especially if taken on with a conscious attitude of religious reverence; it could become a spiritual practice that could well provide genuine renewal for the practitioner, with obvious continuing benefits to the community and beyond.
Yes Plant many trees. And take care of the ones we've got. Cheers
Ronald Wright's "A Short History of Progress" is an astonishing little book. Read it in an afternoon and change your life. His observations and images are succinct and lucid. Most moving among these was his recounting of how the Easter Islanders destroyed their bountiful island: inexorably, every tree was cut down to service a status arms race, as different tribes tried to top each other's moa, the giant stone heads we all know. The passage where he describes cutting down the last tree--they knew it was the last tree, that no more could be coming because rats ate all the seeds, everywhere they looked they could see desolation--but they cut it down anyway.
I turned 53 this year. My life has been a front-row seat to technical civilization destroying itself, bit by bit, in the service of a small sociopathic aristocracy. I can remember life before 1980; even as a child, it was clear the bottom fell out after Reagan, and every Reagan clone after. I knew things would get bad by the late 80s, but had hope during the brief green renaissance we had then, centered around the 1987 Montreal Protocol which banned ozone-destroying CFCs. But the 90s were wasted, and idiot boy-king W sealed the deal.
I'd challenge two things Chris writes.
The common refrain that "the Earth will continue even with all of our damage" belies a lack of understanding Earth's past. The changes we have wrought are of such magnitude and speed there is only one equally destructive event in Earth's history: the asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But our changes compress tens to hundreds of thousands of years of change into a couple centuries. There is really no precedent for what the Earth is experiencing. Hansen's latest paper describes 5°C of warming this century, with up to another 5°C to 2300. This is a sterilization event. Complex life cannot survive such temperatures, and likely changes to a toxic, anoxic atmosphere. It's possible Earth could go back hundreds of millions of years, to where there are only worms, maybe some hardy insects, and algae and similar plants. It will be too hot for everything else.
Second, while it's true that the mass of humanity (or at least rich, Northern humanity) is sleepwalking to their collective doom, I have to give them a break. Since global warming surfaced in the collective consciousness in a big way in the 1980s, the 24/356 disinformation machine cranked into overdrive. As if in denial, or as part of our elites' Ghost Dances, the aristocracy stomped the gas. People are happy to enslave themselves in jobs, so long as they can buy toys to compensate. The commercials will keep people doing that as long as they're on.
There really is no good news. Extinction Rebellion and other groups are well-meaning, but I don't think they really understand the kinds of changes that would really make a difference, and the implications. Any hope of "doing something" about biosphere collapse was really over by 2000. Maybe covid and succeeding diseases will cut human numbers enough to make a difference, but even that I doubt.
Wright also notes that Marx called capitalism "a machine for demolishing limits." It worked...for a while. But then the rubber band snaps back.
It's true the future looks bleak, to understate the case. But, when your explaining this to your kids and theirs, what are you going to say when they ask, "Did you put up a fight?" There is the moral imperative. Cheers
So, homo sapiens is doomed to extinction. Just for the sake of balance, what's the bad news?
A panoply of feelings arise with this piece. And absolutely, resistance as a moral imperative and because we can, and must. Where else can love go?
Three years ago, I think, when the forests in the US northwest were on fire, my stepson, his pregnant wife and toddler son were living in Springfield, OR, just across I-5 from Eugene. Then, at least, the EPA had no rating for anything over 500 ppm. When it reached 775, he made a break for it, going north on smoke-covered I-5 to the Portland airport, and all 3 got on a plane they reasonably feared would be a super-spreader of Covid and flew east. Spent a few weeks in the southern Midwest until the fires finally were extinguished, and went back. Until they could move permanently.
But there is no real shelter from this storm. And, if we do get rid of fossil fuels entirely, after it is way too late, what will happen is the end of the aerosol masking effect of all of this particulate matter that has actually decreased the warming effect of the sun, just as this catastrophic level of particulate matter has seriously decreased the amount of sunlight hitting solar panels. That stuff comes back to earth in a week or two. As opposed to the carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere with it, which stays for many decades. The result of our 100% transition away from fossil fuels will be roughly an almost immediate 1 degree Celsius increase in average global temperature, while any benefit will remain decades away.
We have well and truly screwed the pooch.
I got caught in that same Oregon smoke - had to drive all the way south to Crescent City Ca. to escape.
A few weeks back, I got caught in even worse smoke just north of West Yellowstone, see:
Smoked Out On The Gallatin River
http://www.wolfenotes.com/2023/05/smoked-out-on-the-gallatin-river/
Bill, thank you for the comment, and the link.
Thank you for these hard truths Chris. I work in science and frequently people will say to me don't worry science will solve it. Of course those people who say that are not in science. Science will not solve this , only a change in the Capitalist way of living will. One billion spent on CO2 reduction using a coal fired power plant fueled by burning trees, yes burning trees. If we burned all the trees in the u.s. that would power the grid for two years. Science will not save us. Science could have saved us IF we had followed the science decades ago. A new philosophy, Scientific Accelerationism , the thought that science will save us while doing nothing because science will save us.
There are posts appearing on some media sites with photographs of helicopters shooting giant flame throwers at the woods immediately below them in Canada. Weird, huh? Whose agenda is being served with these "wildfires"?
This is a fire prevention technique. You do a controlled burn out a section of forest in the hope of containing the uncontrolled fire. Chris is right. Social media is filled with climate misinformation because it seems people REALLY want to believe that climate change isn't real.
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Those posts are pure BS. And you know very well who's posting them.
A....hol...s who want us to deny Climate change and imagine Eco terrorists.
I'm in Alberta. There's real ecological reasons why the boreal is burning.....trying to pin it on your bogus creation (terrorists everywhere ahahahahah) is part of the psychosis Chris is describing.
Fantasy villains, standing in for the civilized greed and disregard for natural limits that is the actual destroyer.
WHO'S AGENDA IS BEING SERVED BY THE WILDFIRES????? Find the scapegoat Kathleen...it won't make the air your children breathe any cleaner.
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Yes, but how do you share this with your family and friends. I hesitate. Though my husband has been copied and we will continue to discuss the inevitable. I enjoy my garden. At this point is it better to be in denial? Just as the extractive amoral economic machine is coming for all of us except the top crust, the natural response to human pollution may get us first.
Such a beautiful planet the greens and blues with wondrous life forms.
"We become easy prey for con-artists, cult leaders, charlatans and demagogues, who tell us what we want to hear". How profound. Last night I was just thinking of Pat Robertson, the show called "cops", Rush Limbaugh, the 1600 right wing AM stations and Donald Trump. They are all getting in on the grift. It is ironic how the right wing blames Hollywood for the evil when it is their own damn TV and radio shows!
Bleak but true. Human beings are so incredibly smart, and at the same time so incredibly stupid.