Despite what’s going on — objectively speaking — with the Earth’s climate, the culture of full-fledged climate denial is still in full swing. Certainly, some of these climate change deniers are corporate shills, but that culture is now an independent organism that would produce distorted science and outright lies even without the far-right funding that is still flowing into it. This independent, lie-creating culture is mostly fueled by narcissism, it turns out.
Related: Cultural Narcissism, Ayn Rand and the Culture of Narcissism, Narcissism: Contagious, Infections, Cultural, The Malignant Narcissism of the Biden Administration
Most climate denial money isn’t resulting in complete denial of climate change anymore, though — instead, it is resulting in these very soft, “green capitalism” arguments. In other words, corporations are funding people (including politicians) who will argue that investment in green technologies will solve the problem of climate change. It will not. In fact, not only is it too late to stop the horrors of climate change, but professional climatologists are now of the opinion that climate change will quite literally end the human species. To be clear, 1.5C in change above the pre-industrial average is no longer possible, 3C in change would be disastrous, but the most likely thing is now 10 or even 11C in change (which is about 18 degrees in Fahrenheit), and that would end the human species.
Related: Dangerous Extremists and Climate Change
I’ll do my best to explain what this would be like: It’s not like a Hollywood movie where all of a sudden, things get all crazy and then a scientist (assisted by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) manages to press a magic button and the crisis is over. Even with things going wrong now that weren’t expected until 2050, this is a slow, boring extinction process. In the short term, people are going to have to move or die as their current location becomes uninhabitable; wars and even genocides will erupt, but usually, climate will not be directly cited as the reason. Every day, the habitable portion of our planet (and the overall carrying capacity of the Earth) will shrink slightly. Meanwhile, the US will use its absurdly overpowered military to keep US citizens comfortable and thus unconcerned and ignorant. Sorry if I’m stating the obvious.
In 1970, the carrying capacity was around 3 billion; it’s probably more like 2 billion now, but there are 8 billion of us and many of us (the rich and Americans, for example) are using 5 people or more worth of resources (and producing 5 people or more worth of waste) every year. If everyone lives like Americans, the current carrying capacity is more like 400 million. If we could magically reduce the world population to 400 million, the problem would be solved. Or if we could get everyone to live in a tiny house, stop driving everywhere, stop using air conditioning, and “eat local”, then we’d only have to magically reduce the world population to 2 billion.
How can we accomplish that?
We can’t. Even if we went full fascist, there literally is no way to erase that many people from the planet. Moreover, thanks to the various levels of climate change denial, most people are talking about how to expand access to air conditioning in response to climate change. I wish I were joking about that. And there is no technological fix; at this point, even if workable fusion happened today, it would not be soon enough.
In the face of all this, I have to admit that I was probably wrong: This isn’t really a “discontinuity” because that word implies that humanity continues on after the break in historical continuity and rebuilds. This is more of a “dramatic finale”, and we’re going to have to adjust our plans accordingly.
HOWEVER
…it is still valuable to slow down climate change whenever possible. The more we slow it down, the greater the possibility that a technological miracle will save us. Not all of us — most of us are going to die no matter what — but some of us.
Proponents of climate engineering are becoming more and more vocal, and they are absolutely right even though opponents of tinkering with the planet’s climate are also correct. The fact is that we are already tinkering; not just tinkering, but really throwing a wrench into the machine of climate. Climate engineering is just one of the many “unthinkable” things that we’re going to have to embrace to survive as a species. Others include:
- Increasing nuclear power
- Decreasing both per-capita energy use and overall energy use
- Scaling down or even eliminating transportation wherever possible
- Giving up on capitalism (and extreme wealth)
- Extreme population reduction
- Letting the wrong people die (i.e., abandoning climate justice)
- Reducing installation and use of conventional air conditioning systems
There is literally no political group in the United States of America that is OK with all of those propositions. To be clear, I’m not “OK” with most of them, either, but the point is that if you put this list in front of a panel of decision-makers consisting of 3 conservatives or libertarians, 3 liberals, and 3 leftists, they would approve exactly zero of them — and that’s why we are all going to die.
I’ll flesh out each of those 7 things for you a bit:
- Increasing nuclear power: We still don’t have nuclear fusion, so I’m talking about more of that nuclear fission and its toxic waste that basically cannot be stored safely. We need to be building fission reactors as fast as possible and decommissioning other types of power generation.
- Decreasing both per-capita energy use and overall energy use: Green capitalism continues to increase the renewable portion of total energy resources produced and used while increasing the total amount of energy (and carbon) produced. To survive, we must decrease the total amount of energy (and carbon) produced — dramatically. In fact, for over a decade, climate models that showed everything being OK included a period of time where human carbon production became negative — no such technology is currently practical and real-life carbon capture projects have been abandoned because they were not workable.
- Scaling down or even eliminating transportation wherever possible: Switching to EV’s isn’t nearly enough. We need to quit moving ourselves and resources all over the place all the time. I’m talking about ending air travel. I’m talking about requiring corporations to require all employees who can work from home to work from home. International trade needs to end completely.
- Giving up on capitalism (and extreme wealth): The bait for the trap of capitalism is this idea that you (a narcissistic rube) will someday become extremely wealthy, and therefore, the grand game of capitalism must be kept running. Well, no, it has to end immediately or well all die, and a great and practical use for all that excess wealth being held by the billionaire class is to restructure our economic systems to match the carrying capacity of the Earth (which means degrowth of “the economy” and the population).
- Extreme population reduction: There’s no way to do this nicely, and yet, if we don’t get that number down to 2 billion, the whole species dies.
- Letting the wrong people die (i.e., abandoning climate justice): The rich have way more children per capita than people living in poverty, and each of the children of the rich have a huge impact on the planet, but if you’re waiting for the rich to have fewer children before working to reduce the number of completely innocent people in the world, you’ll be waiting until every last human being is dead. Certainly, we should put the burden of climate mitigation where it belongs whenever possible, it just won’t usually be possible.
- Reducing installation and use of conventional air conditioning systems: We love air conditioning, don’t we? I mean, I certainly hate sitting around sweating in the humid Missouri summer. The most common action item liberals propose in response to climate change is, “More air conditioning!” — particularly for people who cannot currently afford it. Air conditioning is one of the greatest contributors to climate change, both because of electricity use and because HFC gasses used to make conventional AC systems work are powerful greenhouse themselves and tend to escape into the atmosphere.
Here’s what John Doyle, a climate resilience analyst had to say about a 10C increase in the planet’s temperature in May of 2020:
Roughly speaking, you’ve been told that we may be heading for 1.5c or 2c degrees above pre-industrial temperature. That’s not true. That’s basically very old science, and it’s essentially inaccurate. There isn’t a single independent scientist of the world that would support that position now. We’re actually heading for 10 degrees warming that could happen within 20 to 30 years. And, on the way to 10 degrees, we pass 4 degrees. Now, four degrees is interesting because that’s extinction for our species. So keep that one in mind. I’m not just making this up.
John Doyle, 10C Above Baseline
So, I’ve been saying that 10C is definitely the end of our species, but I was oversimplifying. Actually, it is 4C that kills us all and we’re going to hit that well within the next 20 to 30 years, because in 30 years we will be at 10C. The 4C point will be in the next 8 to 15 years. You’re going to have to watch your children suffer and die.
Now, go back to my list of 7 things we could do to slow this down and reconsider. Keep in mind, though, that these must happen at a worldwide level — you turning off your air conditioner won’t change anything.
The next time I’m up to writing about this, I’ll try to get into how both neoliberal and fascist governments are likely to respond to these facts as it becomes less possible to ignore them.
If this essay left you wishing for more horror, then I recommend this outdated, but detailed, essay: