[dohboi]

"I can do nothing about it."

Of course, we all can and do 'do something about it'--mostly we make it much worse quite rapidly by living a much more carbon intensive lifestyle than we need to.

Instead, we all could make it worse less intensely and less quickly by living a much less carbon intensive lifestyle.

That won't seem like much of a difference to most people, but it is a difference.

[Ibon]

"I can do nothing about it."

Of course, we all can and do 'do something about it'--mostly we make it much worse quite rapidly by living a much more carbon intensive lifestyle than we need to.

Instead, we all could make it worse less intensely and less quickly by living a much less carbon intensive lifestyle.

That won't seem like much of a difference to most people, but it is a difference.

Yes Dohboi, we all can and many of us do. I could list 100 things I have personally done to reduce my carbon footprint. I don't want to suggest from my above statement that we don't have personal responsibility even if in my deepest heart of hearts I know that it is futile at this point.

What I meant in my statement above that you quoted is that there is nothing I (or any of is) can do about resolving the juggernaut of humanity, the collective consumption, the trajectory, the scale.

I do think that most of us are in denial about the unsolvable nature of climate change at the current scale of human overshoot. Even before I started that Worshiping the Overshoot Predator thread here at po.com I have been pointing out that the solution to human overshoot has been staring us in the face all along which of course is embracing the very consequences we think we can mitigate. Of all the denials out there none are greater than that one.

Humans are hardwired to manipulate and optimize, to tinker with their environments. We approach mitigating climate change in the same way. The scale of the problem is so immense that we now have tinkering schemes as extreme as releasing nuclear explosions up in the arctic or seeding the ocean to increase phytoplankton to absorb more CO2. IF you consider some of the ridiculous ideas recently proposed you have to conclude that there must be another way than some techno fix.

Some have suggested another way being some great cultural paradigm shift, re-engineering our global population to somehow embrace some virtuous new relationship with mother earth and choosing to slow way down consumption and breeding in some balanced manner. As noble as this "solution" may be it is as futile as the techno ones. We are simply several billion humans too many to find some balanced place in our biosphere even with noble intentions. We feed ourselves and power our civilization with the products of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. Feeling virtuous toward our mother earth while sustaining ourselves in such a manner is not a cultural paradigm shift. There is an underlying physical problem.

You cannot put a veneer of virtue on a foundation that is inherently rapacious.

Which leaves the solution everyone is in denial about. Of all the solutions it is the only one that truly embraces the problem head on with the required humility.

worshipping-the-overshoot-predator-t68063.html


P.S. Two guests from Spain and two guests from Germany are here at the moment, marveling at the natural wonders of the cloud forest. Yesterday 9 Colombians flew back to Colombia who stayed with us 4 nights. These current guests will fly back to Europe in a couple days. A new crop of guests are arriving next week from Canada, Switzerland and the Netherlands, all deeply virtuous human beings spending their money to find contact with nature. A tour operator, a Panamanian who has lived in CHina for 12 years visited us recently on a familiarization tour and has already reserved a week during the next high season next winter bringing the first batch of Chinese eco tourists to come see the cloud forest.

There is simply too many virtuous human beings out there for our planet to sustain.....

[SeaGypsy]

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-2 ... n/10113132

The thrust in this article is all about climate change, ignoring the vast increased agriculture adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef, which i believe to be at least as important but not PC to hammer farmers in Queensland.

[Newfie]

I don’t know if Cid is right or not, and frankly neither does anyone else here. We are all just being carried along by bigger forces we can not control and who’s chaotic nature is beyond our ability to predict.

But it sure don’t look good, whether it’s total annihilation, or if a breeding stick is spared, or if a billion will survive.

I’ve decided to act as if there is a chance for my kids to pass the bottleneck and I’ve taken actions to provide them with the resources to do so, should they ever find the need.

In the meantime we try to lead a low carb footprint without a hair shirt. These are my particular rationalizations.

[Newfie]

http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-20/great-barrier-reef-natures-perfect-match-is-breaking-down/10113132

The thrust in this article is all about climate change, ignoring the vast increased agriculture adjacent to the Great Barrier Reef, which i believe to be at least as important but not PC to hammer farmers in Queensland.

Good point, CC is just one of the challenges we face.
Anti-biotic resistance may devestate our numbers while saving our species
Resource depletion seems baked in
Global financial collapse is, in my view, a more emergent threat that could also devestae our species.
And underlying it all is of course over population, which will inevitably go away

[onlooker]

I applaud Dohboi for recognizing our "own" responsibility in all this. But I am in the camp of the more doomerish here. Consequences are now baked in inevitably. What exactly will happen to our species none of us can but speculate but runaway global warming can be a solution but can also be the final nail in the coffin of our species

[dohboi]

Ibon wrote, among other things:

"You cannot put a veneer of virtue on a foundation that is inherently rapacious. "

But of course, as much of the rest of your (as always) eloquent post shows, this is exactly what we as humans do. I don't generally claim to know exactly what 'human nature' is in any absolute way. But I do think that this is a huge part of it. As one psychologist put it, our conscious minds are a monkey sitting on a tiger's back (our general desires), pretty much completely out of control of where the tiger is going and what hell it is wreaking, but chattering away about how whatever the tiger does was exactly what the monkey had intended it to do, and how it's all to everyone's good!

I was 15 (early 70's), I think, when I really started to realize just how fast and hard global civilization was heading for disaster. I didn't think I had any chance really of altering that course, but I knew I didn't want to fully participate in that destruction, to the extent I could avoid it.

There is, of course, always the possibility of sudden dramatic change--fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of Apartheid--but I don't really think there's much chance of any such thing happening at a global level.

But back to your quote, most would see your admonition to embrace the consequences of GW as exactly 'putting a veneer of virtue on a foundation that is inherently rapacious' i.e. yet one more rationalization (it's what we're best at, after all). Of course, we are each (myself included) much more able to spot and debunk others' rationalizations than our own precious ones.

[dohboi]

ol wrote: "I applaud Dohboi for recognizing our "own" responsibility in all this. But I am in the camp of the more doomerish here"

Thanks for the applause!

I'm tickled that you put me in the camp of the less doomerish!

I see no contradiction between recognizing responsibility and recognizing the very high probability even inevitability of us outdoing even the greatest of all mass extinctions in the history of complex life.

I would just point out to the actual 'less doomerish' that in a mass extinction event (which we are already in), species are going extinct at rates 100s to 1000s of times faster than the long-term background rate of extinction and than the rate of creation of new species.

Humans are just one species.

We are pretty 'special' in many ways, but still just one species.

Saying that there is no way that our species could go extinct in the midst of a mass extinction event is like saying there is no way I am going to get wet when stuck in an open field during a massive thunderstorm...it might happen, but I wouldn't bet on it!

[Newfie]

Wisdom of crowds (Sarc)

I think Dohbois couple of posts above kinda cover it, monkey riding a tiger. I strongly believe our group reasoning power is near zilch.

[onlooker]

But mostly Denial in every way,shape and form that civilization is now set to collapse and/or denial that trying to save civilization might in fact doom the habitability of the Biosphere and thus much of life in or on it including us.

[Pops]

Why Hasn't The California Heat Wave Sparked The Usual Global Warming Hysteria?

Maybe they've caught on to the fact that the public has tuned out.

I gave up ranting that the hysteria is not only a waste of time but actually counterproductive.
They have a word for what happens when you force change on people,
they become reactionaries.

[onlooker]

Well, I would not worry about hysteria as most people have been on the opposite side of the spectrum ie. denial, apathy, complacency and ignorance

[EnergyUnlimited]

Ok. How about nuclear reactors stationed around the arctic sea to provide heat and light during the winter months. Should be quite survivable for a small population.

What about millions of ME, Africa and elsewhere refugees coming there, once built?
Perhaps *armed* refugees?

[onlooker]

Ok. How about nuclear reactors stationed around the arctic sea to provide heat and light during the winter months. Should be quite survivable for a small population.

What about millions of ME, Africa and elsewhere refugees coming there, once built?
Perhaps *armed* refugees?

It seems highly unlikey that a small population will maintain the wherewithal to employ and keep viable advanced technology like Nuclear Reactors

[EnergyUnlimited]

@onlooker,
Agreed, but there might be attempt to build them in near future and design them to run for 100 years or so, or at least until they go pop!
There is plenty of fissile material in atomic weapons, so you would not need extensive enrichment infrastructure.
Another possibility is abundant geothermal energy in places like Iceland.

Again, refugees may spoil a fun, what is already seen in Europe.
I wonder why we are still hesitating to call them an *environmental refugees* for what they are.

[asg70]

I wonder why we are still hesitating to call them an *environmental refugees* for what they are.

Because most of them are not.

[SeaGypsy]

Depending how broad a definition placed on environment. Humans are part of it. Does yeast try to escape the petri dish?

Back to point, wasn't MBS very recently posting about "limited nuclear winter"? Talk about denial, bargaining. Jeepers.

[GHung]

I wonder why we are still hesitating to call them an *environmental refugees* for what they are.

Because most of them are not.

How do you know that?

Depending how broad a definition placed on environment. Humans are part of it. Does yeast try to escape the petri dish?

Back to point, wasn't MBS very recently posting about "limited nuclear winter"? Talk about denial, bargaining. Jeepers.

Yeasts don't have the ability to escape the petri dish, but they will expand into areas of higher nutrition. If they could jump to another dish with more good stuff,, wouldn't they? (Actually, yeast is everywhere and will establish a hold anywhere that is favorable for their growth).