Tag: climate change

Some but not all U.S. metro areas could grow all the food they need locally, according to a new study estimating the degree to which the American food supply could be localized based on population, geography, and diet. The modeling study … is published today in Environmental Science & Technology.

Eureka Alert article: Some but not all US metro areas could grow all needed food locally, estimates study

Original study: Mapping U.S. Food System Localization Potential: The Impact of Diet on Foodsheds

According to the study, Columbia, MO, which is central to mid-Missouri, is positioned well to localize its food supply. However, just having the potential to localize isn’t enough — we must actually do the work!

This is the third part of a 3-part presentation on climate change that has been converted to posts.
Previously:

• Part 1: Current Conditions
• Part 2: Worldviews

Let’s look at Columbia, MO, which is the biggest city in our club’s general area, and also a pretty good example of a small American city. It has a population of around 100k to 120k depending on how you are counting.

COLUMBIA’S PLAN

Columbia is doing a great job of reducing the ratio of people to carbon emitted… but it isn’t coming anywhere close to zero or negative emissions. Nowhere close. Still going up.

Climate Action and Adaptation Plan

Columbia organized a group of people to come up with a cohesive strategy for the city, and they really did a great job. Here’s a link to that:

Climate Action and Adaptation Plan

Purpose of the Plan:

• To prepare Columbia’s natural and built environments (neighborhoods, resources, and systems) and people to be more resilient to the impacts of a changing climate
• To reduce GHG emissions communitywide, through targeted municipal, residential, industrial and commercial activities

Emissions Targets:

• Communitywide Target: 35% by 2035, 80% by 2050 and 100% by 2060.
• Municipal Operations Target: 50% by 2035 and 100% by 2050.

Areas of Vulnerability:

• Heat Stress
• Air Quality
• Vector-borne Disease
• Mental Health
• Housing
• Stormwater Management
• Transportation
• Drinking Water Supply and Drought
• Surface Water Quality
• Drinking Water Quality
• Trees and Open Space
• Agriculture

Again, I want to emphasize that I think the group that worked on CAAP did a great job. However…

Problems with CAAP:

• Columbia’s report is based on the IPCC report, which is wrong — as a result, their strategy does not address the severity of the problem
• Promotes increase in total amount of air conditioning — air conditioning is one of the biggest contributors to green house gas emissions, and we need to find an alternative that is sustainable
• Assumes growth — As long as growth is a bigger priority than surviving climate change, we will not be able to come up with a viable plan to survive climate change because the growth of capitalism is dependent on increasing use of fossil fuels.
• Cannot achieve negative carbon emissions, probably not even zero emissions — based on the idea of “increasing efficiency” which never becomes zero.
• Does not prepare Columbia for powerdown — the reality is that in order to survive, we are going to have to completely power down most things in our lives. If we’re not preparing for a (hopefully temporary) powerdown, we are not preparing to survive.

RECOMMENDATIONS: Part 1 (Theory)

Columbia is located in Boone County, MO.

Rule of Thumb: 5-10 acres/person for sustained survival

442k acres of land divided by 178k people = 2.48 acres/person

This is not enough land. But we could have a significant population drop, down below 88k, as the university shuts down, dramatically reduces services, or switches to a mostly remote model.

5 Themes of a Just Transition

from Kingston, NY (Hudson Valley)/Movement Generation

1. Democratizing communities, wealth, and the workplace
2. Advancing ecological restoration
3. Driving racial justice and social equity
4. Relocalizing most production and consumption
5. Retaining and restoring cultures and traditions

A NARRATIVE FOR THE FUTURE

International Socialism is a solid idea, but it is boring and doesn’t really help people to understand how human technology can adapt to our future reality. We must find a compelling narrative for our children — something that allows us to adapt our expectations for the future, while still being optimistic.

We need to find a narrative for the future that emphasizes the themes of creativity, coping with adversity, making due with what you have, and finding novel solutions.

Fiction can offer models for adapting our expectations in terms of human technology. STEAMPUNK, SOLARPUNK, and HOPEPUNK are great ways to approach the future with your kids. These all offer an alternative future where people have to use creativity to handcraft solutions from the wreckage of the past.

Related: Hopepunk and Solarpunk: On Climate Narratives That Go Beyond the Apocalypse

Related: Don’t Be Scared About The End Of Capitalism—Be Excited To Build What Comes Next

RECOMMENDATIONS: Part 2 (Practice)

FOOD PRODUCTION and TRANSPORT

• Provide tax exemption for properties that produce food
• Remove any ordinance that makes it harder to grow food — including ban on roosters, other farm animals
• Convert unused lots and some roadways into farmland
• Create ordinances that encourage agricultural land to grow food for humans rather than livestock
• Expand CCUA (Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture), similar programs
• Remove city sales tax on food grown in Boone County
• Find ways to use city resources to move food from surrounding county into Columbia

RE-LOCALIZE, DEMOCRATIZE PROPERTY

• Dramatically increase the property tax for owners who do not live in the county
• Dramatically increase the property tax for locations that are not a primary residence
• Exempt first $100k of primary residences from property tax
• Tax reduction for worker-owned businesses
• Tax reduction for union-friendly businesses
• Avoid using eminent domain to increase food production

MANAGE INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES

• Remove automobile roads — e.g., Broadway from College to Providence
• Parking garages at edge of city
• End planning and zoning requirement for on-site parking
• Increase property tax on internal combustion engine transport vehicles
• Convenient, free light rail and bus service
• Rickshaw fleet (foot, bicycle, and small electric vehicles)
• Protected, separate bike roads and walking paths

MANAGE HEAT SANELY

• Work toward overall reduction in AC systems
• Find other ways to cool interior spaces; e.g.,
• Structural changes that maximize air movement
  • Solar-powered fans
  • Solar-powered systems that use the earth’s constant temperature… and no freon
  • Shade
  • Build structures further down into the ground

PROVIDE HOUSING

• Disallow unoccupied dwellings — tax them out of existence
• Give housing to owner-occupiers after a trial period
• Convert abandoned retail and industrial space to free housing

CONSOLIDATE YOUR HOUSING

• Physically consolidate where you live with friends and family that you are close to.
  • Reduces the cost-per-person of housing
  • Reduces per-capita carbon output
  • Provides a physically immediate community so we can better support one another.

This is the number one thing you can do to protect yourself and your people during this discontinuity. In Columbia, you can have up to 2 unrelated people in a home zoned for a single family. For example, if you have a 4-person nuclear family, you can have 2 additional people living there, for a total of 6.

NO MORE GROWTH

• New construction must take place in the footprint of existing buildings

RACIAL JUSTICE, SOCIAL EQUITY, RESTORING CULTURES AND TRADITIONS

• Re-make the Sharp End: The Sharp End was Columbia’s Black business district that was destroyed by bureaucratic shenanigans.
• Rename the city, perhaps after the people who originally lived here.
  • “Columbia” is one of the three goddesses of the United States, a symbol of nationalism and conquest based on Christopher Columbus. (The other two are Liberty and Justice, but everyone likes those.)

RENEWABLE POWER & POWER DOWN

• Eliminate all fossil fuel energy use by…
• Increasing renewable power infrastructure
• Eliminating energy use wherever possible
  “Collapse early and often!”
  • Switch back to paper
  • No more freon-based space cooling

COLLEGES CAMPUSES

• Our local colleges and universities are unlikely to survive as they are. MU has started eating itself.
• How do we want to use this resource if the state no longer is able to claim it?
• Maybe Columbia can continue as a place where people come to learn.

Are these solutions politically possible?

These solutions are not politically possible. In fact, not even the inadequate and non-disruptive CAAP is likely to be politically possible. They created the report, but I will be completely shocked if the city government actually implements any of it. The fact is that we are probably not going to make it, but we know what is necessary, so it is only a matter of doing it. Let’s hope that the majority of people wake up to reality soon. Every day we wait makes what is necessary for survival all the more horrific.

This is part 2 of a 3-part presentation that has been converted into a post. Links to the other three parts will be included here when they are ready.

Previous:

• Part 1: Current Conditions

THREE VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE

Let me be 100% clear: These are not conspiracies. A conspiracy is a group of people secretly planning to do something. This is not secret — it is out in the open, and these are not plans — rather, these are just distinct worldviews that groups of people have and the vision that those worldviews have for the future. Worldviews have natural conclusions, but they are not conspiracies. They change the world because people share the worldview and assume the same kind of future is both inevitable and good. And obviously I’m generalizing to try to make sense of things, and reality is a lot more complicated.

Here are your 4 choices. I’m only going to talk about 3 of them.

• Neo-feudalism — traditional fascism, God Emperor Trump
• Neoliberal Futurism — fascism, but as designed by accountants; corporate feudalism; Musk, Bezos, Gates
• International Socialism — the ideal of Karl Marx
• The Non-changists — Conservatives like the DNC or the pre-Tea-Party GOP have no position. They are just trying to keep things from changing which is not possible or even desirable. I’ll be skipping this one, but here is a quote that sums it up:

Nothing will fundamentally change.

Joe Biden, speaking to donors at a June 14, 2020 fundraiser

NEO-FEUDALISM                        

We all know this is bad, but let’s talk about it anyway. This is what the Trump Republican party believes in. It is the ideals of the Confederate south and American colonialism, on a global scale. Features:

• Fascist Anti-Revolution – This is basically just taking all the social progress of the last couple hundred years and reversing it — so that’s what happened under Trump.
• Christian Dominionism –  the right-wing evangelical plan to elevate their interpretation of the Bible above the authority of the secular state. It’s a whole lot of dominion and just a little bit of Christianity.
• “God Emperor Trump” – A figurehead is required for neo-feudalism. God Emperor Trump is a play on a character from the Dune novels by Frank Herbert — he’s a guy that’s so all-in on fascism that he makes himself into a giant, immortal worm-monster (this character is not in the movies or TV shows) — but this reference really is just meant to emphasize the supremacy of the leader in fascism. Trump probably won’t turn himself into a giant worm monster.
• White supremacy as doctrine – includes male supremacy, hetero supremacy, cis supremacy, etc.
• No legal rights for any minority groups — declared non-citizens — The way fascism works is through the idea of citizenship. Basically, it just declares a group to belong to a different “nation”, then strips them of the privileges of citizenship, and then once that has happened they can be disempowered, relocated, or even murdered at will. In contrast, the left rejects the idea of citizenship completely, and believes everyone should have rights regardless of the circumstances of their birth.
• Total war against all real and perceived enemies — Total war is an important concept to understand. It means that you have no rules about who may be killed, how they may be killed, or where and when they may be killed. In fact, total war means that total extermination of all enemies is compulsory, making them suffer before you kill them is a bonus.

NEOLIBERAL FUTURISM

A neoliberal dystopia where 10 people control most wealth… but 5 of them are women! These are the people who seem to be winning at the moment; the promoters of this worldview overwhelmingly supported Biden in the election, and most Americans agree with this worldview. If you want to know who the promoters are, just look at the richest 15 people in the world on the Forbes list. The central concept is that technological progress will inevitably make things better, and so economic and power inequities are both irrelevant and justified. Features:

• Corporate feudalism (a kind of fascism) — Corporate feudalism is the natural evolution of neoliberalism and the dream of the banking industry. This would end nation-states and replace it with corporate rule — we’re already halfway there. This is the correct meaning of “globalism” (and is the opposite of global Marxism). Under corporate feudalism, your rights come from your association with a corporation (like how you get health insurance through your employer).
• Reduction to 2 classes — You’re either someone who controls capital or a serf — no in between, a very simple hierarchy.
• Everything is quantified — especially YOU. Converts everything from material goods, to religions, and even people to quantifiable resources
• Requires poverty — It is inherently comfortable with poverty, and even requires that it continue to exist. It’s part of how a labor market exists — there have to be surplus workers to keep the cost of labor down.
• Technology as a religion — Technology is the pretty wrapper around the dystopia that gets naive people excited about it. They imply that other worldviews don’t have technology, but do we really think Socialists — or even Fascists — can’t make new technology? Some surface-level ideas that come out of this are: Occupying Mars, Transhumanism, and AI as liberator of humanity. In reality, Mars will never be anything more than a mining facility, or an expensive place to conduct experiments. Transhumanism isn’t for you — it’s for the rich. Like other kinds of automation, capital will use AI workers to make themselves richer and drive down wages — it won’t make your life better.

Side note: Ultimately, AI will be used to do more than control the means of production, though — it can be used to directly control the means of violence, which is the longterm checkmate in this game. The typical AI dystopian fantasy entails the AI rebelling and either destroying or enslaving humanity — but in the very near term, the issue is who is controlling AI, and how is it serving them — the concern is the same: destruction, enslavement.

• Violence, racism hidden —Pretends it doesn’t contribute to violence or racism. Still allows both to exist, though, which enables them. Initiates violence to enforce property rights, or gain control of a resource, but insists it is defensive violence. Pretends that racism doesn’t exist by insisting that the data indicates that everyone’s social position is justified by non-racial factors.
• Preparing for The Event — Neo-liberal futurism disconnects the fate of the rich from everyone else. They are preparing for “The Event” — the event is a disaster; billionaires will survive this disaster, and it will basically cleanse the world making way for the corporate feudal utopia that billionaires dream of. They see this discontinuity as something that can elevate their kind, if they can figure out how to survive it. The Event could be anything, though, including an asteroid hit or nuclear war or a new virus. I’ll remind you that this isn’t a conspiracy — this is something that’s being discussed fairly openly.

Related: We Appreciate Power — a song by Claire Boucher (stage name: Grimes), the mother of Elon Musk’s child. It’s about the inevitable global rule of AI and humanity living in a virtual reality environment. The ideas of neo-liberal futurism are securely wedged into human culture at this point.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

Karl Marx

Importantly, neoliberal futurism is what the far right thinks socialism is. (They are wrong.)

NEO-FEUDALISM vs. NEOLIBERAL FUTURISM

• Both hate the poor — poverty as a moral failure that should be punished further
• Both love a hierarchy — they just strongly disagree about the details
• Both are more focused on their fear of “Socialism” than on their own agenda
• Both are horrific, but Neoliberal Futurism is slightly better for most people
• Both are racist — Neoliberalism protects racism by pretending it doesn’t exist

Neither one is currently serious about addressing climate change …but both have mechanisms for doing so:

• Neo-Feudal: “Royal Forest” model (prohibiting the serfs from accessing resources that must be protected), eco-fascism (see Democracy Now: Ecofascism: Naomi Klein Warns the Far Right’s Embrace of White Supremacy Is Tied to Climate Crisis)
• Neoliberal: Accurately quantify nature

Both seek to protect those higher on the hierarchy from those lower on the hierarchy and offload the costs of climate change onto those with the least impact and responsibility. Given that conservatives erroneously think neoliberal futurism is “socialism”, they are technically correct that “socialism” will use climate change as a strategy to make their lives worse.

Ethical behavior leads to success.

“You cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individuals. To that end, each of us must work for his own improvement, and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful.”

Marie Curie

“[W]e choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone.”

Chidi Anagonye (a fictional character from TV show “The Good Place”)

So what’s the right answer?

INTERNATIONAL SOCIALISM

You knew we’d end up here, right? Features:

• “A political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”
• Uses a complex organization structure that maximizes local control and minimizes the influence of political parties or other collusions of the powerful; i.e., maximum democracy
• Actively works to minimize bigotry
• Advocates for all people, everywhere (the international part)
• Recognizes the obligation that the present has to the future
• Embraces the values that have been successfully villainized by the right wing: Empathy, Generosity, Kindness, Fairness, Community

Related: How democracy works in Cuba, Iroquois Confederacy

If the above features are things that you agree are good, but you just can’t stand it because I called it “International Socialism” then please go ahead and call it something else. We’re here to support good things no matter what they’re called. If you can only support some of the features I listed, then please go ahead and do that. We will support your support of those things, and agree to disagree on the rest. But if you’re going to tell us that goodness is obviously pure evil in disguise, then you really just need to pull your head out of your ass.

Fascism and Neoliberal Futurism both probably become socialism after they murder all the undesirables. In my opinion, fascism is the more likely of the two to completely eat itself.

Next:

Part 3: Strategy

This is part 1 of a 3-part presentation that has been converted into a post. Links to the other three parts will be included here when they are ready. Part 2: Worldviews; Part 3: Strategy

CONTEXT

Boone County, Missouri is our context. We’ve grown used to living in a global society — it’s only global in the sense that we receive resources from all over the world. It’s less energy intensive to get resources from closer to where we live and our ability to get resources from all over might change. 

City people take for granted that cities are good. Rural people take for granted that they are bad. Cities do not produce resources (similar to how refrigerators don’t produce food). But what are cities for? 

• Trading resources
• Processing resources into more complex products
• Socializing, Entertainment, Culture sharing, Fun
• Helping one another identify what is real through social interactions with people who have different worldviews
• Protecting people from violence

Cities don’t work alone! A city is part of a system that serves other geographical areas as they simultaneously serve it. So, we should be thinking about all of Boone County… at the very least.

DISCONTINUITY

A Discontinuity is a Time of Rapid Change… A distinct break in the basic characteristics of the world. However the world was before the discontinuity, it is different after. In contrast with a period of time featuring slow, constant change.

Historical Minor Discontinuities

• The Industrial Revolution (1760)
• US Civil War (1861-1865)
• Marriage Equality (2015)
• Invention of Agriculture (various, but around 8000 BC)
• Invention of Banking (2000 BC)
• Fall of Rome (200-476)
• The Internet (1990)
• Birth Control Pill (1960)
• Monotheism (around 1200 BC)
• I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (1981)

Historical Major Discontinuities

• Late Ordovician Extinction: 485-444 million years ago, 86% of species lost. Cause: Short, severe ice age caused by severe drop in CO2 triggered by plate tectonics.
• Late Devonian Extinction: 383-359 million years ago, 75% of species lost. Cause: De-oxygenation of the oceans via massive algal blooms.
• End Permian Extinction: 251 million years ago (60,000 years in length), 96% of species lost (nearly all life). Cause: Massive global warming and release of poisonous gasses initially caused by an enormous volcanic eruption.
• End Triassic Extinction: 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost. Cause: Rapid increase in ocean CO2.
• End Cretaceous Extinction: 66 million years ago, 76% of species lost. Cause: Climate change due to volcanic activity and asteroid strike

The important thing to note about this list of major discontinuities is how often they were caused by a change in the mix of gasses in the atmosphere or oceans.

OUR PREDICAMENT

We are facing a major discontinuity. It’s a predicament — not a problem. A problem has a solution; a predicament can’t be solved — only mitigated.

• Anthropocene Extinction: 1945-2450, 85%+ species lost. Cause: Rapid climate change due to industrial processes

It’s not just climate change… it is a multi-faceted, systemic failure of human beings.

There’s a fancy French word for this: “The Problématique” — The complex of issues associated with a topic, considered collectively; specifically the totality of environmental and other problems affecting the world. What we are facing might be related to the Fermi Paradox, which is the idea that scientists believe there should be abundant life in the universe, yet we’ve detected no life anywhere but Earth. The explanation that I find most plausible is the universal filter — A planet that attempts to develop intergalactic travel always kills itself before achieving that goal.

How did we end up in this handbasket?

The complete ethical failure of Western civilization was carefully engineered by three far-right groups starting in the 1930’s:

• Free market capitalists
• White supremacists
• Right-wing Christians

It was the free market capitalists who really succeeded, but part of their success was strategic cooperation with these other two groups of ghouls.

They didn’t really start succeeding until the 1970’s.

A few real villains:

• James McGill Buchanan
• Lewis F. Powell (the Powell Memo)
• Milton Friedman
• Rothbard
• Ayn Rand

They managed to villainize ideas traditionally defined as good, such as:

• Empathy
• Generosity
• Kindness
• Fairness
• Community

They convinced society to become so cynical and misanthropic that it assumes anyone displaying or endorsing these characteristics is actually evil.

“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy… and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation — and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

James Gustave Speth (American environmental lawyer and advocate)

But obviously, it took more than just being awful people. We had to do something awful, too.

From a practical perspective, the core issue is that fossil fuels are intimately linked to a destructive and exploitative global financial system that most people believe is inevitable. 

We started using fossil fuels — a destructive, limited resource.

We started using fossil fuel to make food — making our food production unsustainable. This is the Green Revolution. We started using fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides — all created from fossil fuels, and of course intense mechanization. And then the food is distributed all over the world using vehicles that burn fossil fuels.

Economic growth is imperative under capitalism, and the primary creator of economic growth is fossil fuels — so we had to use more fossil fuels.

The global financial system is tied to oil. Unfortunately, we can’t talk about climate change without talking about money and, specifically, the “petro dollar”. The petrodollar is any U.S. dollar paid to oil-exporting countries in exchange for oil. Since the dollar is a global currency, all international transactions are priced in dollars. As a result, oil-exporting nations must receive dollars. This creates an enormous economic advantage for the US because it compels people to buy things from the US; it was established by the Nixon administration and the House of Saud (i.e., Saudi Arabia) in 1970, and so is part of the Middle East debacle.

Money can also be thought of as debt, because we have a fractional reserve banking system. Related (all non-leftists sources): Fractional Reserve Banking Explained in Less Than One Minute, Money as Debt, How Petrodollars Affect the US Dollar and the World Economy

Combine those two things, and money basically represents future fossil fuel production. Since fossil fuel production means climate change, money itself is one of our enemies (as it currently exists). Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of capitalism. We can’t slow down fossil fuel production or it destroys everything… much like whale sharks must keep swimming or they don’t get enough oxygen and die.

Climate change should not have been a surprise. But for a while it was even odds that we would hit peak oil first. Peak Oil is the theorized point in time when the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum is reached, after which it is expected to enter terminal decline. Peak oil theorists did not take into account the illusory property of money, so didn’t realize that more money could be used to turn a normal production curve into something very different. They assumed that when the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) became 0, production would stop.

Why is climate change happening faster than the official IPCC prediction?

• Assumption of rational response from power elites
• IPCC is a product of capitalism — includes capital-controlled governments, capital-dependent scientists, and reviewers that are frequently direct representatives for capital
• Assumption that realism will cause cognitive incapacitation in audience
• Does not include feedback loops or new data

Columbia’s plan is based on the IPCC report which is wrong… but there’s a lot of good information here in this IPCC graph. The thing I’d like you to really take a good look at is how the emissions curve goes negative in each of these conditions. Emissions have to become negative, and nobody knows how to do that. We’re talking about 0 emissions but also removing some carbon from the atmosphere.

How bad is our predicament?

Here’s how Roger Hallam (Extinction Rebellion) explains it:

We are already 1.1C above the pre-industrial average. 

There is an additional 0.7C of carbon lag already locked in.

Once we stop burning fossil fuels, we will have an additional 0.7C increase due to removal of global dimming 

Due to the above increases, an additional 1C of soil carbon will inevitably be released.     

TOTAL: 3.5 C already locked in

(Roger Hallam’s math is a little bit off, but here’s his presentation on this part of the problem.)

But will we really stop emitting carbon anytime soon? Obviously not! The most likely scenario is now 4 degrees C of temperature increase above the pre-industrial average. What does that look like?

I double-checked the date, and 2050 is unlikely but possible for a 4C world. More likely not until 2100 — but hey, we seem to be trying really hard, so we might get there by 2050. But what we’re looking at is that none of the continental US is likely to be habitable, and before it becomes uninhabitable, there will be a constant grinding down of our ability to support our own lives. We’ll have to leave — presumably to Canada — or find ways to get everything we need to live from other places (traditionally, we’ve done this with war). The data source is the IPCC and the World Bank, which are both pro-capitalist institutions.

Related: World is Set to Warm 3.4C by 2100 Even with Paris Climate Deal

This is if we continue fucking up to the same degree we are currently fucking up, and might not include feedback loops, some of which are 70 years ahead of schedule.

This version of Earth would have a population of about 1 billion. The majority of the population reduction will probably come from people not having children… but let’s all be clear that a population drop of maybe 8.5 billion down to 1 billion will be the most horrifying period of time in the history of humanity. Imagine the Holocaust, but global and lasting a thousand years.

This is going to make it really hard to achieve environmental justice. I’m trying to be funny, but the bottom line is that it is probably not going to be possible. For example, things are not going to work out for the Amazon tribes — how can they when there isn’t going to be an Amazon?

What about technology? Scientists are already working on solutions to climate change… aren’t they? Sure they are. Most is vaporware. Some things, like new battery tech or photovoltaics are real — but they are not carbon negative!
Every renewable energy source we have requires the emission of more carbon to produce it.

Here’s the important thing, though: As long as we are living under capitalism, techno fixes for climate change will primarily be used to extend economic growth; they will not be used to create negative carbon emissions.

Related: Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think

Related: The Carbon Capture Ruse

The mere existence of technological progress has no bearing on whether or not we survive climate change… you always find things in the last place you looked… our civilization will be at its peak when it collapses.

I’m leaving out a lot of things because we don’t have enough time:

• Nuclear war – We are on the edge of nuclear war as long as Trump is in office, and it is likely that the next US president (i.e., after Biden) will be a similar person. Related: Forget Deterrence: Russia and the United States Must See Themselves as Partners in Survival
• Peak oil (yes, still a problem)
• Various health issues
• Population (real, but mostly used as a strategy to try to blame normal people for the failures of our elites)
• And many other things

What is the value of this capitalist economic system?

• A market is a socially constructed thing just like money, gender, race, social roles, or coolness.
• A “bubble” is the difference between the imagined value of something (according to “the market”) and the real value of that thing. 
• When the people (creators of “the market”) realize the true value of capitalism (negative), the economy will attempt to perform a “correction” and use all the money to mitigate climate change… including all of the billionaires’ money.
• When billionaires realize that this correction is about to take place, it will mean that the economic system has a negative value to them, specifically, and they will abandon the entire economic system…
• But they will still claim ownership of resources.

So, this is likely how capitalism will end.

Prominent US fascists have already said that they are willing to abandon capitalism because the market simply doesn’t support their model for dominating other people.

The death of capitalism is now inevitable. 

That means we have a lot of scary changes ahead, but if we can be ready for those changes, we can mitigate this predicament. Right?

So instead of panicking, let’s figure out what we need and figure out how to get it without global capitalism.

• Food
• Water
• Transportation
• Community Defense

Next:

Part 2: Worldviews

Part 3: Strategy