Optimism and climate change
On April 17th, at 23:21 Timotej wrote:
I wonder if you've gotten any more optimistic since our last conversation about climate change
I do am optimistic, in the sense that I am assuming (not knowing, not even hoping) that some people will survive. I am, I want to believe this, because without humans actively cooling nuclear power plants only cockroaches survive.
However, with regards to climate change, there is no reason whatsoever to assume things will be fine in any way. Even without what I’m now going to tell you, there are suggestions that green house gases are being released at rates greater than those associated with the The Great Dying - the third mass extinction event, where 96% of the species on the planet died.
As a matter of fact, there are more and more suggestions that much-feared positive feedback loops are causing what is called ‘runaway feedback’ - which you might interpret as ‘back to Mars*’, a scenario where only a few bacteria survive, realistically.
To be a bit more precise, here’s some of these feeedback loops;
Increased melting of polar ice increases sea level rice and reduces reflectivity (albido)
Arctic permafrost and sea methane release
Note that methane is about 25 times worse as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, which is also why I suggest people take it easy on the hamburgers. ;)
However, recently, I have been approaching things from another angle. Acceptance.
Accepting that we will die, as individuals, embracing and readying for death. That is, not seeing it as a bad thing, just as a natural transformation. From there onwards, allowing the thought that we will likely not make it, that we will be outpaced by the ‘sudden’ delayed feedback from our actions years ago. And that that’s alright.
That is, not making it does not necessarily mean we’re all going to die. It more likely means that we’re heading into a new global dark age. And this is where it becomes interesting; although life expectancy and many other common measures for wellbeing where much worse, some revisionist interpretations of the actual dark ages suggest that it was actually a time of freedom and recovery, of people living in balance with their environment, good health, dignity and social wellbeing.
One movement looking into this is the Dark Mountain Project, coining the term ‘uncivilization’.
In short, I really don’t think our actual wellbeing, our hapiness, needs to suffer greatly under all this. Yes, there will be misery. Yes, people will die.
But if you look around you, in the rich places, in the cities; people SUFFER. Already. Despite their riches. Then if you go to (some) developing countries, you might be surprised at the warmhearthedness and hapiness of the people. (Then again, in some others this is precisely not the case.)
It’s not material wellbeing that causes our hapiness. Although, I do feel if our wellbeing slips below a certain point, it might be much, much harder to attain that. But I do think this point is *way* below where we commonly think it is.
Lastly, I’d like to close off with a great movie I can recommend; My Dinner with André. Note the ‘pockets of light’ fragment. That’s what I’m aiming at. That’s where I want to be.
A (un)monestary. A pocket of light; a conservancy of the good parts of this dying structure.
* That is, a methane and CO2 dominated atmosphere.
