National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released its 2024 forecast for the Atlantic hurricane season, which officially starts on June 1. NOAA's report predicts an "above-average" hurricane season with 17 to 25 named storms, 8 to 13 hurricanes, and 4 to 7 major hurricanes of category 3 or higher. #ClimateCrisis
I have come to the conclusion that fighting directly against our capitalist rulers in an attempt to overthrow them will never succeed. They are too rich, too powerful, and completely unwilling to act rationally.
So our best choice now is to "be the change we want to see in the world," to demonstrate a better way of living. By doing that, we will also prepare ourselves and those we can involve in the effort to survive the coming collapse of modern industrial society and perhaps emerge from the rubble with a chance to help our species move forward.
Maybe the real question is not how optimistic we should be, but rather how pessimistic we should be.
It is clear to most of us that today’s out of control hyper-modern global society is unsustainable and headed for collapse due to overconfidence, overconsumption, and ecological overshoot.
But how bad will it get — very bad, or very VERY bad? How pessimistic should we be?
That’s the issue tackled in this fascinating discussion between a science fiction writer and an evolutionary biologist...
Paul Abela writes about "The Problem With Living On a Chaotic Planet"...
Tipping points occur when a critical threshold is breached in the Earth system. As soon as it is, it leads to change. Put another way, a tipping point is a point of no return.
What’s so concerning about tipping points is that when one is crossed, it could create a domino effect that will tip others and set in motion radical environmental changes.
Seeing as it’s impossible to model and forecast the impacts of tipping points, they aren’t integrated into climate models. This is why many scientists believe climate models are gravely underestimating future environmental conditions.
So how can we ever manage the complexity and chaos inherent in the Earth system? A logical starting point is to acknowledge that we are not in control. Once this is understood, the need to embrace the precautionary principle becomes clear.
It is safer to assume the worst and plan accordingly than to assume that we can continue with Business As Usual and that a technological breakthrough will somehow save the day. Because the risk of assuming everything will be okay is social collapse. The risk of precaution is that we move towards a sustainable path at a more aggressive rate.
It is a no-brainer, and yet, the reason we are ignoring the enormous risks we face is the same reason climate denial is alive and well. There are powerful vested interests who have everything to lose if we make the necessary transformation of our economy and society that is required.
For an historical overview of the "Origins of Optimism," I recommend this erudite piece that takes down Steven Pinker, Bill Gates, Ezra Klein, and Gottfried Leibniz, among others...
Consider the techno-optimistic take of New York Times columnist Ezra Klein on the climate crisis. His op-ed headlined ”Your Kids Are Not Doomed” notes that due to climate change the world’s poor will face “vast expanses of suffering” and we rich-worlders “will have looted the future of billions of people to power a present we preferred.”
But for this nice-guy neoliberal progressive, those mountainous miseries can’t outweigh “political realism.” The unassailable logic of “political realism” mandates that only an awesome “vision of more” is viable for NYT-reading elites. In Klein’s green future of abundance, electric cars thrillingly accelerate faster, induction stoves nix indoor pollution, and life just keeps getting better — first and foremost for his elite audience, and only many generations later for the global poor, assuming they survive the tsunami of suffering headed their way.
Klein’s maneuver helps his readers feel good as they materially (and thrillingly) accelerate away from the quagmire the poor are doomed to be caught in. This kind of optimism has the darkest of underbellies, it is but a thin veil over morally-poisonous pessimism.
Klein, like most of our political class, assumes that we citizens won’t ever do what’s right without incentives or personal gains. Even in a global crisis where billions will suffer, viable policies must be “win win” and profitable, or fun and easy for the powerful. Klein asserts that “A climate movement that embraces sacrifice as its answer or even as its temperament might do more harm than good.” The key question is, more harm for whom?
In this neoliberal market-optimist worldview, looting to provide the elite with their treats is just how the world works, extending the centuries-long trend of genocidal violence and plunder under liberal imperialism. This sort of optimism, twinned with justice-twisting “political realism,” sabotages material and moral progress that should prioritize gains for the less-blessed, least powerful, and most vulnerable.
Life in a biosphere-wide crisis can’t be a feel-good festival, a jolly moral picnic for the privileged. The climate and biosphere emergencies warrant a world-war-footing and fitting courage to face the needed hard work and sacrifice.
Yet Klein and company seem to lack the courage and integrity to even accurately inform audiences that multiple international climate authorities have declared rapid cuts in elite consumption to be essential. Climate analyst Chris Shaw has argued that liberalism lacks the conceptual resources to face such challenges: liberals act as if “free market choice is more important than the maintenance of a viable biosphere.”
Andrew Ahern is an ecological organizer and freelance writer based in New England. In a recent essay, he reviewed two books which assure us that capitalism can solve the climate and ecological crisis...
Bloomberg journalist Akshat Rathi’s "Climate Capitalism" and data scientist Hannah Ritchie’s "Not the End of the World" bring the reader to a similar conclusion: our existing social and economic system (capitalism) will deliver the necessary technological change due to market forces and government incentives to bring about an age of abundance, human progress, and the world’s “first sustainable generation.”
Whereas Rathi explicitly defends capitalism, Ritchie takes a different approach in defending business as usual. For her, despite a few cracks here and there, capitalism remains a progressive force. While admitting that certain things do need to change, Ritchie relies on highly selective data to tell a story of seemingly endless progress while ignoring studies and alternatives that counter the kind of green capitalism she is selling.
In the end, Ritchie's and Rathi’s books provide insight on how the capitalist class will continue to defend our destructive economic and social system. For those seeking alternatives to green capitalism, these books will help you understand the arguments of the entrenched powers and how we might counter them.
That's a brief excerpt from a long and detailed piece. Read the whole thing!
“Why aren’t you more optimistic? You have to give people hope!”
That’s what I sometimes hear in the comments on things I post. And I would love to be optimistic. That’s my usual attitude, my intrinsic outlook on life.
But when it comes to our climate and environmental crises, when I study the trajectory we’re on and see the pathetic (and disastrous) lack of meaningful action taken by our leaders, I’m convinced it would be misleading and dishonest to pretend I’m feeling good about where we’re headed.
I also think it’s important to offer an alternative view against the prevailing can-do techno-utopianism of green capitalists and their cheerleaders. Corporate media is owned and controlled by those capitalists, of course, and the message they want us to hear is always loudly broadcast.
So today I'll share a few posts with you that challenge the establishment's sunny enthusiasm and present a far more realistic look at the grim future we and our children are facing.
Are you shocked by this news? Or is it exactly what you would expect?
Major oil companies have made splashy climate pledges to cut their greenhouse gas emissions, but a new report suggests those plans do not stand up to scrutiny.
“There is no evidence that big oil and gas companies are acting seriously to be part of the energy transition,” David Tong, global industry campaign manager at Oil Change International, who co-authored the analysis, said in a statement.
The report’s authors used 10 criteria and ranked each aspect of each company’s plan on a spectrum from “fully aligned” to “grossly insufficient” and found all eight companies ranked “grossly insufficient” or “insufficient” on nearly all criteria.
The US firms Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil each ranked “grossly insufficient” on all 10 criteria.
“American fossil-fuel corporations are the worst of the worst,” Allie Rosenbluth, US program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement.
The authors found that the companies’ current oil and gas extraction plans could lead to more than 2.4C of global temperature rise, which would probably usher in climate devastation. The eight firms alone are on track to use 30% of the world’s remaining global carbon budget to keep global average temperature rise to 1.5C.
Leaders of capitalist industry will continually lie, cheat, and steal. They will do anything to make a profit. Business As Usual must go on!
“The UK and Ireland face a wetter, damper and mouldier future due to #climatechange Until the world reduces emissions to net zero, the climate will continue to warm, and rainfall in the UK and Ireland will continue to get heavier.”
The number of birds found at the Yasuní Biosphere Reserve, an area of Amazon Rainforest in eastern Ecuador, has dropped by half, according to a study published earlier this year.
Researchers point to a few possible causes for the declines, such as signs of reduction in insect abundance, but climate change is the common suspect in all cases.
The explosion of industry and commerce over the last 50 years, based on capitalism's endless insane drive for more growth and more profits, has pushed Earth's energy imbalance way out of whack. Temperatures keep rising, and our oceans are murderously hot...
Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program, said in a news briefing that around 60.5%, or nearly two-thirds, of the world’s coral reefs have experienced heat stress at levels high enough to cause bleaching, a major health threat.
The world’s oceans have gone “crazy haywire,” he said, with record-high temperatures imperiling coral reefs.
Conditions last year were so unusually warm in parts of the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico that heat stress levels were literally off the charts of NOAA’s existing alert system.
“We had to add additional bleaching alert levels to appropriately categorize just how hot it was,” Manzello said.
“For an Alert Level 5, we are estimating that approximately 80% or more of corals on a particular reef may die,” he said. “This is analogous to a Category 5 hurricane or cyclone.”
Key Findings of Oil Change International's "Big #Oil Reality Check" - Oil majors fail to align with international agreements to phase out #FossilFuels and to limit global temperature rise to 1.5ºC ... Combined, 8 ('oil majors') companies’ current oil and #gas extraction plans are consistent with more than 2.4°C of global temperature rise, likely leading to global devastation."
...
Every company is “Grossly Insufficient” or “Insufficient” on a majority of criteria.
Three companies (Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil) are “Grossly Insufficient” — our lowest rating — on all criteria.
These 8 companies alone are on track to use 30% of our remaining carbon budget to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
Of the 8 analyzed companies, 6 have explicit goals to increase oil and gas production. Even those without such plans are advancing new #FossilFuel projects and selling polluting assets rather than shutting them down, masking their actions as contributing to an energy transition while perpetuating #climate pollution.
Integrity: None of the companies we analyzed have set comprehensive targets to ensure their total emissions decline rapidly and consistently, starting now. Every company intends to rely on carbon capture and storage (CCS), offsets, and/or other methods that delay and distract from ending fossil fuels, and prolong the health and community safety impacts of dirty energy.
People-Centered Transitions: All companies fail to meet basic criteria for just transition plans for workers and communities where they operate. All companies fail to meet basic criteria on upholding human rights."
Our rulers have known since 1970 — for over half a century! — that burning more fossil fuels would release dangerous emissions and radically alter Earth's climate.
And what action have they taken in response?
None at all, except carrying on with Business As Usual.