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Page added on October 6, 2015
An Unprecedented Future
I can see The Age of Consequences from my home.
We live on a former ranch near Santa Fe, New Mexico, that is now a subdivision with more than two thousand houses. Due to its proximity to a center of colonial Spanish, Mexican, and American administrations, as well as the Santa Fe Trail, the land where live has hosted a variety of livestock for nearly 400 years. In the 1950s, the owner of the 13,000-acre ranch invested in new wells, dirt tanks, roads and a ranch house complex, complete with a swimming pool, in an effort to create a prosperous cattle operation on the property. This effort continued for two decades, right up to the day the ranch was sold to a real estate company, who had a different definition of prosperity in mind.
Of all the artifacts left over from the ranch’s heyday, the one that I’ve watched closely over the years are the old dirt roads.
When we moved to the subdivision in 2003, the former ranch roads were still in decent shape, especially in the greenbelts where houses were excluded. Mostly two-tracks, the roads were easy to follow. As my wife and I walked our dogs and chatted side-by-side, we could pick out features of the ranch as we strolled, including dirt tanks for cattle and evidence of tree-cutting from days long gone. There was a timelessness at play in these parts of the old ranch, a feeling that despite the crop of houses, the land in between hadn’t changed much over the decades – a feeling that history would endure somehow.
I don’t feel that way anymore.
Today, the ranch roads are essentially gone, washed away or eroded into ditches by a series of catastrophic rainstorms over the last five years. In the summer of 2011, five inches of rain fell in a single afternoon – in a land that is lucky to get ten inches all year. Chased from an outdoor basketball game that afternoon, I watched the deluge from the shelter of the community center. As soon as it ended, I hurried to a nearby greenbelt and our favorite ranch road, fearful that it had been transformed.
It had. As if by magic, two-foot headcuts (dry waterfalls) had appeared in the old road where none had existed before – and by “before” I mean all of the 20th century and probably much longer. There had been big storms in the past, of course, but to our trained eyes destruction on this scale was not visible – until now. Subsequent deluges, including a monster two summers ago, have unraveled what was left of the old road altogether. We still go for pleasant walks on it with our dogs, but now we walk in single file on a trail that is a challenge to navigate in places. I doubt many people today would recognize it as a former road. What once endured disappeared in only a handful of years.
It’s the Age of Consequences in our backyards.
I’m certain there are many similar stories from many other backyards around the nation and the world. Call it what you will – weather weirdness, climate disruption, global warming – what’s happening is something new under the sun. As our ranch road continues to teach us, what we considered ‘normal’ will continue to erode, one storm at a time, until we can’t recognize it any longer. Change happens, of course, but there’s something about this change that looks and feels very different. There’s a way to describe it – which I’ll explain by way of another backyard story.
Some years ago, Craig Allen, an old friend and colleague, stopped by the office to catch up. He’s a forest ecologist stationed at Bandelier National Monument, in northern New Mexico, and his career is representative of the transition conservation science has undergone, as well as its likely future trajectory.
When I first met Craig, more than twenty years ago, his focus was on ecological change at landscape scales in the Jemez Mountains, in which Bandelier is nestled. His approach was a systems one; he studied the interlocking variables of ecological function, historical use, and plant and animal community dynamics in order to understand more clearly the condition of the forest. And what he discovered was worrisome. Specifically, he worried about forest “thickening” due to decades of fire suppression, overgrazing, and other human activities.
In 1998, Craig summarized his concern in an article for the Quivira Coalition titled “Where Have All the Grasslands Gone?” His research revealed that open, grassy areas in the Jemez Mountains were shrinking, due to tree encroachment, at the alarming rate of 1 percent per year. What was missing was fire.
“Most forests, woodlands, and grasslands in northern New Mexico evolved with frequent, low-intensity fires,” he wrote. “The removal of the natural process of fire by human suppression has disrupted these ecosystems in many ways [these areas] need to be restored to more open conditions to protect both ecological values and human communities.”
In the next phase of his career, Craig ‘walked the talk’ of forest restoration by implementing innovative experiments at Bandelier, becoming an enthusiastic advocate of adaptive management in the process. As a result of this fieldwork, Craig joined a chorus of forest ecologists advocating proactive policies and practices aimed at returning ecosystems to health in the Southwest, principally by restoring natural fire cycles.
Today, Craig is focused on the threat posed to forests by global warming. He thinks the dangers have the potential to be catastrophic not only for trees but also for the animal communities that depend on them, including us. His goal is resilience – figuring out ways to keep a forest healthy in the face of a changing climate. His research, however, says things don’t look rosy under Business-as-Usual scenarios. “The possibility exists,” he told me that day in my office, “that a 5 degree Celsius warming of the planet could wipe out entire plant communities, including the forests.”
But it was something that Craig said at the end of our meeting that brought home the Age of Consequences for me.
He had been asked to speak to a gathering of federal land managers about the climate crisis. They were looking for options and advice on how to meet that challenge. “What they told me,” Craig said, “was that nothing in their education or experience had prepared them for what was coming down the road in terms of climate. Their training was for a stable climate, they said, not one that was changing. They literally had no idea what to do. They were facing an unprecedented future for which they were not prepared.”
The words stuck in my mind: an unprecedented future.
For most of his career, Craig focused on a traditional goal of the conservation movement: fighting scarcity. Unhealthy forests, disappearing meadows, eroding topsoils, too few “cool” natural fires, too many “hot” catastrophic fires, and not enough grass are all indicators of scarcity at work – the scarcity of properly functioning ecosystems. His restoration work aimed at reversing such declines, at replacing scarcity with health and abundance.
Today, however, Craig is working beyond scarcity. He is confronting the specter of loss. Craig and his colleagues predict that the pine forests of New Mexico, as a result of repeated fires, will likely transition to shrublands over the next century. Hotter and drier conditions under climate change are already feeding record fire seasons across the West and Alaska. When trees burn up and seedlings can’t get established as a consequence of repeated scorching, forests die. In a recent interview for the New York Times, Craig said “The future in a lot of places is looking shrubbier.”
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? It depends on your perspective, I suppose. If you love forests and the plants and animals they shelter, you probably consider this news to be sad. If you love shrublands, this might be good news. Either way, the transition is underway. In the Age of Consequences, the unprecedented future has arrived.
Here’s a shrubland biome from a popular video game (I couldn’t resist):
Walking the ranch roads where we live over the last few years and thinking about forests and the bigger picture, I’ve come up with five principles (small p) for living in the Age of Consequences that I’d like to share. They’re solely my opinions – use them or not as you like:
1) Stop living in denial. The previous era is over and gone. We live now in a period of transition between what was and what will be. Exactly what our unprecedented future has in store for us isn’t clear yet, but what is clear is that our actions today will greatly influence tomorrow. We can’t implement those actions, however, if we continue to live in the past – which we’re still doing, big time. Simply acknowledging that we live in new era (whatever you want to call it) is a critical first step to slipping the bonds of denial.
2) Solutions exist. Because we live in an era of big problems, we tend to spend our time thinking of big solutions. Thinking big, however, can have a paralyzing effect on taking action. Let’s concentrate on the wide variety of low-cost, practical solutions available right now, not in some distant future. There are many innovative practices, for example, that soak up carbon dioxide in soils, reduce energy use, sustainably intensify food production, and increase water quality and quantity. Pick one that motivates you and support it in any way that you can.
3) Explore and share. Despite the daily cascade of dire predictions, sobering studies, and gloomy headlines, it’s still a beautiful, diverse, amazing world. Go see as much as of it as you can, starting in your own backyard. Share what you find with others. In particular, seek out Age of Consequences stories and explain them to the world. Share research, create art, give a lecture, write a book, post a photo, call a friend – whatever you like to do, big or small, to communicate what it means to be alive today.
4) Focus on the little normals. These are things that have persisted over the millennia: such as the way water moves across the land, or the love a parent feels for a child. We need food to live. We like to work and enjoy relaxing, as we always have. We need a sense of community, we like to belong. We like to live in proximity to other people. We feel a deep affection for animals. We are moved by spiritual concerns. All of these things persist in the Age of Consequences and can form the foundation for our actions.
5) Don’t despair. I did. I got over it by concentrating on the four principles described above. Despair is an eddy in the river of life – don’t let it catch you. Force yourself back into the flow of the water, move on, go places, hug people, sing a song.
A beautiful world awaits.
28 Comments on "An Unprecedented Future"
Rodster on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 6:29 pm
If you want to see an unprecedented future, here it is.
“California Mayor Forced to Hand Over Electronics and Passwords at Airport, Compares U.S. To Nazi Germany”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-06/california-mayor-forced-hand-over-electronics-and-passwords-airport-compares-us-nazi
Rodster on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 6:30 pm
“They us for our freedoms”
George W Bush
apneaman on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 6:45 pm
More pseudo spiritual horseshit from another over privileged white liberal. I wonder how beautiful he will think the world is when the water ans power gets cut off to the sub division. Pilgrim should mosey on over to South Carolina and tell the distraught flood victims that they just need to learn to appreciate the beauty of nature. I have come to despise these hope dealing cunts as much as retard right wingers. Thanks for helping me with my personal growth pilgrim.
Plantagenet on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 7:18 pm
“R-S-P-E-C-T.”
Barack H. Obama
Plantagenet on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 7:22 pm
the “carbon pilgrim” claims he can soak up CO2 in soils and so help solve Greenhouse Warming.
Puh-leeze—do the math, dude. The amount of CO2 you soak up in your lawn up is infinitesimal. The total amount of CO2 you sequester in your lawn and in your garden too —up until the day you die —- won’t make up for one day of driving your car or heating your house or a having a single package delivered to your door by Amazon.
Cheers!
Davy on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 7:55 pm
Number 5 should be changed to “do despair if you have not”. Have a break down, cry, and howl in pain. It will be good for you and you will feel liberated. After that is over get a backbone and face the harsh winds of change. If you are one of those who protects and provides accept your responsibility and make plans for how you will confront unprecedented change.
I find peace in nature every day. I am doing environmental work on the farm. I create and maintain habitat. I maintain and improve structures, farm roads, and systems. Just because the world is falling apart all around us does not mean we should become hopeless and paralyzed. We can make some changes. We can ease some of the discomforts. We can toughen up for the difficult times ahead.
If you are lucky enough to be like these people in this article be thankful for a wonderful life while it lasts. Indulge in nature and appreciate her because somethings will be gone and never seen again. Do not waste a wonderful experience because of guilt, resentment, and or hate of yourself or others. Life is going to shorten. Bad things are going to happen. These things are going to happen to us not those others. This will truly be a time of across the board disruptive and uncomfortable change.
A die off culture is what it is. Instead of birth and growth we will have death and descent. This may not be drastic but it could be. It may be a long emergency punctuated with extreme events. I feel we are on the cusp of immense change socially, economically, and with climate. We will see abrupt change with all three randomly and inconveniently. You can be prepared by not being in denial.
If you are into prep and can prep find the right location while you can. Make necessary preparations per your local and per your personality. You can also “carpe diem” why not? There is no reason not to enjoy life if you can. Don’t listen to the people that want you to feel guilty. Life is short and will get shorter. That said I recommend relative sacrifice for your own good and the good of others. Learn to appreciate stoic living, be Spartan, and downsize with dignity.
That may have sounded like a bunch of doomer happiness. Ha, I love incongruous juxtapositions! OK, so it sounded goofy. Tell me this does it really matter? You are just one of 7Bil. Most of us cannot make any kind of impact. Just find peace with yourself and the rest will follow.
apneaman on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 7:59 pm
2015 Has Been A Year Of Record-Breaking U.S. Weather Events
Floods, droughts, hurricanes, fires — and it’s not over.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/record-breaking-weather-events_5612d0e8e4b0dd85030ce995
Plantagenet on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 8:04 pm
@Rodster
I laughed when I read your post about “they us for our freedoms” and then I googled on the supposed quote that you attribute to George W. Bush to find out who really said that.
Google brought up exactly one use of the phrase—and that was by you in your post above. Congrats—you’ve coined an entirely new saying.
Please change your post to read:
“they us for our freedoms”
—Rodster
CHEERS!
Davy on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 8:27 pm
It would be funny if he was baiting you planter because you are such a goof. All of us knew what he meant except you that had to goggle it. I thought GW was your hero why did you forget one of your favorite presidents quotes? Shame on you.
makati1 on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 8:45 pm
Pilgrim is another unicorn huger writing for a paycheck.
GregT on Tue, 6th Oct 2015 10:34 pm
Video of George W Bush
They hate us for our freedoms:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PKRHgmHzK0
Truth Has A Liberal Bias on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 1:33 am
they hate us for our freedoms LMFAO fuuuuuuuuck are Americans ever a bunch of idiots. Check out this retard of the week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PzT8vEvYPg
I wonder if she votes Trump?
The sad fact is that most Americans are unbelievably fucking stupid. Stupidity is spreading like an epidemic throughout the whole country and it will continue until each and every Murikan is a fat stupid lazy useless piece of human garbage.
The best thing for the world would be if North Korea nuked it.
Ralph on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 6:04 am
I am always amazed at the US mindset that sees a century as almost ancient history. My house still has some timbers in it from when it was first built, about 350 years ago. Parts of the church are twice that age. We have buildings in this country with stone and brick foundations built by the Roman empire nearly 2000 years ago. They were an advanced technological society at a level we didn’t see again in the West for over a millennium. We have massive monuments in the landscape nearly twice that age, and traces of human occupation twice that age, over 8000 years old.
Our environment on the continental scale has been systematically changed and degraded since the invention of agriculture. Some practices have been more fertile and sustaining, from a human society point of view, than others. There has been overreach and collapse at least half a dozen times, as traumatic for the individual people at the time as anything we are seeing today. This time is different in that we are wrecking the ecosystem on the global level, entering the 6th great extinction, and recovery will be measured in millions, not hundreds or thousands of years.
Life will go on, but probably not yours or mine.
Davy on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 6:16 am
One thing I look fwd to if we get NUK’d is for all those Canadians who hate the US to be overrun by hords of Americans that come up and set up shop. We will be living in you home Not True and Bi-ass from dumbass Montreal. I thought the jihdi’s hated us but the worst hate is north of the boarder.
green_achers on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 9:11 am
How can some middle-class pissant living in a suburban Santa Fe subdivision call his wanker ass a “Carbon Pilgrim?” Dude, you, like most of us, are a carbon criminal.
BobInget on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 10:02 am
It’s difficult to determine what effect massive flooding in S.Carolina will have on the over-all economy. It should scare the crap out of all states along the Eastern Seaboard. Denial being as powerful as it is will keep (most) everyone complacent. Note, Carolinians are unrealistically calling flooding “a thousand year rainstorm”
S. Carolina’s governor urged people not to drive anywhere. Most fatalities were people driving into swiftly moving water. I’m guess torrential
rain kept many home last week along the East Coast.
On the one hand less oil is being used during and shortly after such disasters.
On the other;
Road and infrastructure repair, dams replaced
literally hundreds of bridges, homes, buildings, businesses and farms ruined.
This is huge. Bigger losses then Sandy in N.Y.
perhaps.
kanon on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 10:05 am
plantagenet: the “carbon pilgrim” claims he can soak up CO2 in soils and so help solve Greenhouse Warming.
Puh-leeze—do the math, dude. The amount of CO2 you soak up in your lawn up is infinitesimal.
I think the prospects are better than you say, but the soil area would have to be more than the lawns of suburban America. Why don’t you try a native grass and forbs lawn? I agree the “carbon pilgrim” moniker is pretentious and the article is pretty worthless.
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/soil_as_carbon_storehouse_new_weapon_in_climate_fight/2744/
BobInget on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 10:09 am
Ralph, post more often. You write so well.
Thank you for bringing a touch of sanity.
BC on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 11:22 am
Bob, rather than the broken-window fallacy, it’s the hurricane-and-flooding fallacy. 🙂
Although the insurers have anticipated this for a very long time now, the US will experience increasing incidents of this kind in the decades ahead from population density in disaster-prone areas with a mature, complex, high-cost, high-tech, high-entropy infrastructure and economy.
The cumulative effects will be prohibitively costly, contributing to further reduction of trend growth of real GDP growth per capita that is already effectively at 0% since 2007-08.
This is occurring with the national infrastructure already in dire need of replenishment and no political will to raise the funds to do the work.
Moreover, the peak Boomer demographic drag effects will combine with the foregoing to result in a once-in-history shift in the composition of household spending from growth of high-GDP-multiplier new housing, autos (eventually), and child rearing to low- or no-multiplier outlays for housing maintenance, insurance, utilities, and prohibitive, out-of-pocket costs for medical insurance and services, including medications (that the vast majority don’t really need).
This implies perpetual QEternity, ZIRP, NIRP, ongoing deceleration in CPI, continuing downtrend in long interest rates, money multiplier and velocity pegged to the floor, and little or no Keynesian “stimulus”, as incremental deficit spending will go virtually entirely to transfers for the elderly and working class, including making up the deficits for SS, SSDI, and Medicare and funding Medicaid, food stamps, SSI, unemployment payments, etc.
ZIRP and NIRP at post-2007 nominal and real GDP per capita below 2% and at 0% respectively implies that fractional reserve banking is coming to an end, as reserves will eventually reach par with the assets of the TBTE banks, as has occurred in Japan, i.e., 100% reserved lending.
So, climate change and its ongoing, cumulative effects cannot be separated from the effects of Peak Oil, overshoot, peak demographic drag effects, and LTG.
ghung on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 11:25 am
Bob; here in NC we’re used to watching public funds going to the coast every few years to rebuild areas that shouldn’t have been developed in the first place, at least on the scale we see today. Indeed, in 2012, our general assembly passed a bill prohibiting state and local jurisdictions from considering accelerated sea level rise in their future development plans.
“Before final passage, the state Senate eked out a compromise of sorts with the more aggressive House of Representatives, limiting the prohibition against considering more recent forecasts to four years, while the Coastal Resources Commission updates its predictions with a new study. The new study must not only look at the acceleration scenario predicted by most scientists but also the possibility of “sea-level fall, no movement in sea level, [or] deceleration of sea-level rise.” Between now and July 2016, state agencies may not consider the possibility of accelerated sea level rise in decision-making.”
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/rest_easy_outer_banks_sea_leve.html
That massive bonus for coastal developers literally means that state tax payers like me will be subsidizing profits for infrastructure repairs of roads, bridges, sewer systems, water systems, etc. that never should have been where they are.
That bill is slated to be revisited next year. Hopefully this will be an incentive to not allow more development in these low-lying areas, but I expect the Republicans will make sure that this is spun as one of those “thousand year events” not related to climate change or sea level rise, even though these flood events have happened recurrently and with more frequency. Too much money at stake.
Meanwhile, here in the western part of the state, we’ll see necessary projects postponed and our insurance rates increased, again. At some point I’ll likely see my tax dollars going to relocate people farther inland and to compensate those who are ‘unfortunate’ enough to find their homes and businesses underwater.
What 1 meter sea level rise will do to our coast. Areas in green will be permanently under water:
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/khenderson/assets_c/2012/06/1m_NC_Elev_noNTW_300dpi-thumb-500×818-6894.jpg
Some of the areas in green are the same areas being most highly developed.
penury on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 12:08 pm
Go back and read the fable of king Canute and tell me how the leaders of the day are any more advanced. The difference today is we have several tides running at the same time I also recommend the poem”Ozmandyias(sp)”
nothing new under this sun. You can deny the truth, but you cannot change the truth.
PrestonSturges on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 1:37 pm
The article mentions the cloudbursts like I said just yesterday – in the last couple years the whole country has seen these sudden 5″ downpours. On a sunny day, without warning, and even without wind or lightning, suddenly we get the sort of rain that causes a civil defense emergency. All this happens in an hour, and then the sun comes out. We get this a couple times a year now. Sometimes It’s preceded by the kind of silence I’ve seen before hail storms or tornadoes.
Ralph on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 4:05 pm
My grandmother grew up in the nineteenth century. If my children live as long as she did, they will see the 22nd century.
Four generations spanning the entire oil age from the year Daimler invented the ICE to the century when an oil well will be found only in history books, or folk tales if there are no more books.
energy investor on Wed, 7th Oct 2015 4:43 pm
We have short attention spans. The weather has always been a mixture of pattern and chaos. So if we blame the likes of Katrina on global warming, what do we blame the hurricane of 1900 that destroyed Galveston? Or the myriad of storms since. With larger and denser population and impact on the land, what is cause and what is effect?
I reckon that we will see oil leave us before we leave oil and when it does leave us, what then happens to atmospheric CO2?
I really like the King Canute analogy because the key issue is not fossil fuels, it is the exponential growth of global population and the demands we all make for more…and not just more fossil fuels.
So how will we stand against environmental CO2 and realistically expect the sea to recede if we don’t change causation?
If we don’t change causation, the Paris conference will just be more hot air fueled by merchant banks who see carbon trading as just another profitable service line? It will be a bun fight as emerging economies cajole and threaten to get more subsidies from the OECD so they can spend more on increasing the causes of CO2 emissions.
apneaman on Thu, 8th Oct 2015 1:23 am
energy investor, have you ever even read one piece of science on AGW?
Global Warming & Climate Change Myths
176 of them
Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
apneaman on Thu, 8th Oct 2015 1:40 am
energy investor, have you seen the disaster in South Carolina? That was nowhere near a direct hit. In fact, the hurricane was 600 miles out to sea – that was a gentle side swipe, yet when the damages are tallied up, you can bet that they will be direct hit huge. There is such an enormous amount of heat (energy) in the oceans now that if Galveston takes a direct hit like in 1900 it will cease to exist and destroy a large part of Houston. Turkey point nuclear power plant 80 clicks south of Miami is a major disaster waiting to happen. The gulf and eastern seaboard cities are all extremely vulnerable now and weather related disasters have increased greatly.
Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters: Time Series
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-series
Davy on Thu, 8th Oct 2015 2:22 am
Ape Man, you do realize energy investor is from New Zealand. I know your default shit meter is set to Amereca. I just thought I might mention some tuning adjustments.
apneaman on Thu, 8th Oct 2015 9:05 am
New Zealand? OMG, it’s worse than I thought. Former banker John Key and his fascists minions. What kind of retards elect a criminal banker for PM?