The Endocene

Time there was and plenty, but from that cup no more

  ~ Robert Hunter

The Anthropocene Era isn't going to last much longer - geologically speaking, barely past its recent coinage!  Instead, the Endocene is upon us.  There are many intellectual ways of approaching ecopocalypse and collapse and incipient extinction - and I don't pretend that one is a better explanation than another, because I don't really understand entropy all that well.  Some believe financial collapse will lead to social instability and nuclear war, others see resource constraints coupled with overpopulation, while many expect climate change, particularly methane outgassing from permafrost and clathrates, to finish us off.  Meanwhile I tend to think pollution is enough to do it, and soon.

Consider new research from Hawaii that has conclusively linked pollution to lethal tumors in turtles. and more generally to coral reef decline, in a situation analogous to the death of forests from ozone.

Humans have always had some dim inkling that we aren't behaving particularly well.  Cautionary myths and legends along those lines permeate virtually every culture.   Because there is such a plethora of doomsday scenarios doesn't mean they are wrong, to the contrary, there are so many because it is inescapably logical (although it runs counter to human inclination) that we can't continue to exploit a finite planet indefinitely.  The clever tricks we devise to push back the day of reckoning are ever more amazing, but still, there's no question there will be a massive debt to pay sometime, and nothing left to pay it with.  Like the souls adrift in the fabled Ship of Fools - in the satirical allegory Das Narrenschiff, just one of many in that motif - we are obliviously lurching our way to Narragonia - the fool's paradise.

Ship of Fools

~ Hieronymus Bosch 1490-1500

It's eternally fashionable among many phony activist cohorts to place the blame for all these converging catastrophes on white European capitalism - which requires ignoring millennia of other rapacious societies untainted by any contact with the Judeo-Christian culture located in, say, ancient Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas.  The comforting conviction that humans in far away times and places lived peacefully and sustainably is enhanced by judging behavior on stated norms rather than history - romanticized ideals instead of archeological evidence.  If that was the standard to judge European history, we would be able to imagine that the tales of warnings from the three dead to the three living held sway.  And of course we know they did not.

In which three corpses admonish the three horrified young men to
consider the transience of life and to improve their behavior before it is too late.

Oh but I digress!

Anyway...to my mind, there is a much simpler and equally persuasive explanation for the looming crash, and it is biological.  Humans are doing what humans do, have always done, and cannot (despite our fervent fantasies) do otherwise.  By way of explication, Monday saw the premiere of a classic example of the fundamental delusion and egotism that operates the human animal willy-nilly, which we will shortly examine.

The claim of human exceptionalism is familiar - the notion that our species is special, the crown of creation, subject to different rules and even unique evolutionary influences, than other more lowly animals - or plants for that matter.  This idiotic conceit underlies everything from fanatic veganism (if only we didn't eat meat we could save the world and feed 10 billion people!) to techno-worship (we can have infinite growth on a finite planet!).

But there is deeper variant of human exceptionalism that presents a final irrevocable obstacle to any prospect (long since obsolete anyway) that we might mend our ways.

We EACH think our own individual selves are exceptional, even within the already exceptional human race.  Which of course is why it is so perennially droll when Garrison Keillor introduces his Lake Wobegon  radio show with "...all the women are good looking, and the children are above average".  Or think about the environmental icon who inspired Earth First!, Edward Abbey, who loved the wilderness so much he was against immigration, calling for "...a halt to the mass influx of even more millions of hungry, ignorant, unskilled, and culturally-morally-generically impoverished people", but had five children himself - and loved the desert so much he liked nothing better than to tear around off road in his pickup truck.

This brings us to the absurdly ignorant, painfully ironic campaign to save nature AND humanity, concocted by the group known as Conservation International which debuted at the beginning of the week.  M. Sanjayan, an executive vice president and senior scientist at CI, describes the project as an attempt to "rebrand" environmentalism to be less about preserving wildlife and more about preserving humans, by emphasizing that people are dependent upon nature.  Like the World Wildlife Fund, also founded by royalty and other elites, the leadership is so steeped in privilege that they have no clue at all what a bitter taste emanates from their efforts.

There is a straight line between the oblivious, deliriously happy greedy hunter gatherers who casually and thoughtlessly extirpated the megafauna to this insanely, self-besotted organization, as we shall see.  

George Monbiot earlier laid out the case for human-caused megafauna extinction as presented by numerous scientists at a conference earlier this year.  It wasn't just a few species destroyed, there were dozens and dozens - it would be as if, today, all the lions, tigers, bears, leopards, elephants, whales, dolphins, wolves and cheetahs - and more - all disappeared (there are pictures of some of the vanished at the end of this post).

Now Monbiot believes it is time for us to reflect on the ongoing mass extinction, and in a recent essay wonders WHY humans are so ecocidal.

"In fairness to the modern era, this is an extension of a trend that has lasted some two million years. The loss of much of the African megafauna – sabretooths and false sabretooths, giant hyaenas and amphicyonids (bear dogs), several species of elephant – coincided with the switch towards meat eating by hominims (ancestral humans). It’s hard to see what else could have been responsible for the peculiar pattern of extinction then."

"As we spread into other continents, their megafaunas almost immediately collapsed. Perhaps the most reliable way of dating the first arrival of people anywhere is the sudden loss of large animals. The habitats we see as pristine – the Amazon rainforest or coral reefs for example – are in fact almost empty: they have lost most of the great beasts that used to inhabit them, which drove crucial natural processes."

"Since then we have worked our way down the foodchain, rubbing out smaller predators, medium-sized herbivores, and now, through both habitat destruction and hunting, wildlife across all classes and positions in the foodweb. There seems to be some kink in the human brain that prevents us from stopping, that drives us to carry on taking and competing and destroying, even when there is no need to do so."

So he attributes our compulsion to grow to what he calls a "kink in the human brain" - which is silly, since it isn't a kink at all, it simply IS the human brain.  After he writes cogently of the compelling evidence for an ongoing trend of over-consumption he then proceeds to spoil it by blaming modern culture as somehow unique (when you can see that exhibiting status through personal possessions is something people always do).

Getting back to Conservation International's vanity campaign, it's worth watching at least the first in their series of very short films with fabulously scenic backdrops and celebrity narrators, titled collectively "Nature is Speaking" (the others are linked at the youtube page and also here.)

 

Julia Roberts as Mother Nature sternly warns us naughty children that she doesn’t need us - oh no, we need her - and she is going to take away our toys if we don’t take better care of the gifts she has given us.  That's alright as far as it goes but then she declares:  “One way or the other, your actions will determine your fate, not mine. I am Nature. I will go on. I am prepared to evolve. Are you?”

This is ignorant on at least two levels.  First, humans cannot willfully evolve.  Evolution has no purpose, and it doesn't happen because we decide we want it to, and certainly not any any timescale that could matter.  Conflating natural selection with a wish that humans had a different brain wired for more altruistic behavior should not have made it through an organization that employs scientists.  Second, it isn't at all clear that Nature will go on, once we are no longer capable of trashing her.  A runaway Venus effect will do her in other than the laws of physics.

But to the more interesting question (at least, as long as humans are alive and capable of curiosity) which goes to the heart of the problem of consciousness, it seems fair, even requisite, to inquire - how are Julia and the other movie stars in these videos doing at reducing their impact on Planet Earth?  Well, let's see…Julia has three children and at least four houses - Hawaii, New Mexico, Malibu and New York, which she shuttles between via private jet.

Hey though, she makes up for it, as described in TreeHugger:

"The pretty woman will be helping biodiesel producer Earth Biofuels promote a program to encourage the use of biodiesel in more than 500,000 diesel school buses nationwide. A recent addition to the Earth Biofuels board of directors, Ms. Roberts will serve as a spokesperson for the eco-fuel. ''It's very important that we expand our use of clean energy and make a long-term commitment to it. Biodiesel and ethanol are better for the environment and for the air we breathe,'' Roberts said in an announcement about her new role. She will be joining current Earth Biofuels celeb board members Willie Nelson and Morgan Freeman."  [a couple of notes:  1.  Do I have to point out that biodiesel makes WORSE toxic pollution than regular fossil fuels? and 2. if you want to choke on vomit, watch this film narrated by Morgan Freeman promoting clean energy to solve the climate crisis.]

Speaking as the Ocean in another of the series, Harrison Ford recites:  "It’s not their planet, anyway.  Never was. Never will be. But humans, they take more than their share. They poison me and then expect me to feed them. Well, it doesn’t work that way."

"I’m only going to say this once, 'If nature isn’t kept healthy, humans won’t survive. Simple as that. I mean, I could give a damn. With or without humans, I’m The Ocean. I covered this entire planet once and I can always cover it again.'"

Let’s just check how Harrison is doing in terms of responsible stewardship, by reading his own words in an interview. 

1.  There's nothing better than seeing a herd of elk right outside the window of my house in Wyoming.   My land gives me an opportunity to be close to nature, and I find spiritual solace in nature, contemplating our species in the context of the natural world.

2.  All of my planes are great to fly, and that's why I've got so many of them.  I have a Citation Sovereign, a long-range jet; a Grand Caravan, a turboprop aircraft capable of operating on unimproved strips; and a De Havilland, a bush plane. I have a 1929 Waco Taperwing open-top biplane; a 1942 PT-22 open-top monoplane trainer; an Aviat Husky, a two-seat fabric-covered bush plane; and a Bell 407 helicopter. I also have more than my fair share of motorbikes - eight or nine. I have four or five BMWs, a couple of Harleys, a couple of Hondas and a Triumph; plus I have sports touring bikes.

3.  I'm a big fan of Prince Charles.  I met him because I worked on a little film project for The Prince's Trust last year, and he's a charming man, very nice and a very smart guy. We may be working together on an environmental project this year for Conservation International. I'm on the board, and we're very happy because Prince Charles asked to join us. A few weeks ago we voted to place him on our board of directors. We'll probably do something together soon connected with the protection of the environment.

Kevin Spacey is the voice of the rainforest.  I can't find much about him although I will say, staying on the 37-meter superyacht The Tango while in Sydney for performances of Richard III might have been less than ecologically prudent.

4.  Edward Norton, who is honest as dirt and humble too in the “Soil” segment, inherited millions from his grandfather, inventor of the modern American mall (thanks, Grandpop!).  In addition to the houses around the world he was left, he has since acquired more of his own - a pad in NY, a few houses in Malibu and a mansion in the Hollywood Hills.  He has a  Mercedes and a couple of Range Rovers - but they don’t count because he also, being a passionate environmentalist, has a hydrogen-fueled BMW.  See how that works?

5.  Penélope Cruz, who represents “Water” travels by private jet between her houses in LA, Madrid and NY - and various vacations spots like the Bahamas.  She takes helicopters for shorter jaunts - she doesn’t drive, ya know.

6.  Perhaps avid skier Robert Redford's claim to environmentalism is the most egregiously, outrageously hypocritical of all when he speaks to us as “The Redwood”.   Men's Journal recounts the adorable story about how he fell in love with Utah and single-handedly turned it into the luxury resort, Sundance, which is somehow presented as modest because it doesn't serve the numbers of Vail.

“…His master plan for the resort – which he insists is named for the way sunlight dances off the peaks and not his mustachioed character in 'Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid' – tops out at 106 artist studios and homes, none marring the open areas above the tree line. The ski resort is small – four lifts, 450 skiable acres, and a top elevation of 8,200 feet – and that suits him just fine.”

Especially because people ride horses to get there.  Oh wait no they take private jets?

Redford considers Sundance home.  “…a great, great part of it is still untouched, still pure. I came because I like being around hardworking agricultural people. I like the contrast of moving from an urban, edgy place like New York to this place with people working the land for generations."

"Utah is not the only landscape that has a hold on Redford - he's building a house in Napa and owns another in Santa Fe".  

It's not exactly the "landscape" that has a hold on him - it's the HOUSE he puts in the landscape.  It's like when people say, "That's such a pretty road, when it isn't the road that is pretty at all, it's the land it is slicing through.  What kind of pristine wilderness is this?  Redford is to Utah what Flagler is to Florida.  Thanks a lot for carving up the mountain slopes for your entertainment, from the bears and bobcats.

Yet to be announced are the narrators for the upcoming segments, “Coral Reef” and “Flower”.  Care to hazard a guess?  I’m nominating Donald Trump and Oprah.  (But first they should watch the fate of the movie actress in this public service announcement.)

Monbiot winds up his plaintive post with the rhetorical question:  "Is this not the point at which we challenge the inevitability of endless growth on a finite planet? If not now, when?"

Well, the answer obviously is, NEVER.**

Time for a poetry break (shared by Mike Kaulbars)

A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky
  ~ Lewis Carroll

A boat beneath a sunny sky,
Lingering onward dreamily
In an evening of July —

Children three that nestle near,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Pleased a simple tale to hear —

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die:
Autumn frosts have slain July.

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Children yet, the tale to hear,
Eager eye and willing ear,
Lovingly shall nestle near.

In a Wonderland they lie,
Dreaming as the days go by,
Dreaming as the summers die:

Ever drifting down the stream —
Lingering in the golden gleam —
Life, what is it but a dream?

Oh by the way, the videos - which are going to be featured on Virgin Air flights (!) - were the brainchild of Lee Clow, a collaborator on this piece of Apple propaganda from 1984...which in hindsight, isn't very funny either:

*because I just can’t laugh.

**oh, and if you really think it's time for a change, George, you would publish a story about the trees dying from air pollution instead of pretending it's not happening.

When Every Leaf is a Flower

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
~ Albert Camus

That certainly was once true...but no longer.  The leaves pictured here are typical right now in New Jersey, still weeks before "peak" fall color is traditionally expected nearer the end of this month.  Every autumn the leaves have had less vibrant color, displayed more egregious injury, and dropped sooner.  This year their condition is so dreadful, it is nothing short of shocking.

The leaves above, from the day before yesterday (October 4) belong to a tulip tree I planted which is now about ten years old.  Earlier, on September 29, it is exhibiting classic symptoms of ozone damage where the older, inner leaves are more damaged than the greener, younger leaves at the tips of the branches:

Just next to it, on the same day, is a sycamore, showing the identical pattern.  This type of decay cannot be from drought or UV radiation or warmth or cold.

The same sort of damage can be seen irregardless of species, or whether an annual plant or a tree.  Below is a branch from a redbud, where the leaves first go chlorotic (losing chlorophyll and their natural pigmentation) to having brown lesions.

Eventually the lesions become necrotic, and if the leaf doesn't fall off prematurely, they can turn completely shriveled and black.

Silky dogwood

This maple leaf on the ground gives only the merest hint of the brilliant color that should begin to emerge in early October.

But mostly they are scorched...

and falling to the ground a month ahead of normal.

They are already swirling in the creek.

They fill the gutters on the side of the road.  That tall tree on the left is an oak and shouldn't lose leaves until November, if then.  On the right completely bare branches of a massive black walnut protrude.

I watch the leaves flutter down in the slightest breeze...can't you see them?

They remind me of the people falling in silent anguish from the twin towers, so tiny and faraway, in a lonesome journey to their death.  If spectators understood what this early leafdrop portends, they would be shrieking with just as much horror.

In case you haven't heard,  there is major drama raging in the blogosphere about the Royal Society methane meeting and the exclusion of the data collected by Russian scientists...so that's a nice temporary diversion from the death of trees.  The preliminary account is here but I'm sure there will be more to come.  Major criticism is being leveled at Gavin Schmidt, the new head of NASA and one of the proprietors of Real Climate, for jeering crudely like a callow juvenile in his public derision of those who are a bit more concerned about methane than he.

Virginia creeper

That reminded me of how I wrote him way back in 2009 to ask him what he thought might be responsible for all the trees dying, and he answered:

From:

"Gavin Schmidt"

Thanks for your note. Unfortunately, I don't know of any pollution issue that would be responsible for this, and I am inclined to follow the statements of the people quoted in the piece that this is a combination of effects related to pests and drought. Sorry I can't be more help.

Gavin

bittersweet

So imagine how annoyed I was to later come across a post in RealClimate from 2007 about research from the UK Met Office - written by Gavin himself, no less - which states in part:

"It’s well known that increased ozone levels – particularly downwind of cities – can be harmful to plants, and in this new study with a carbon-climate model, they quantify how by how much increasing ozone levels make it more difficult for carbon to be sequestered by the land biosphere.  Actually it’s even more complicated. Methane emissions are one of the principal causes of the rise of ozone..."

And now here he is, in his infinite smugness, still pooh-poohing the significance of the threat from methane emissions, whether it is increasing ozone killing vegetation, or a outgassing from permafrost and clathrates.

wild grape

 Other than that, today's only link will be to a more recent study from MIT, published this July.  Following is the university press release on the research, which talks about the loss to major annual crops from ozone.  It's critical to remember that since damage is cumulative, trees and other longer-lived shrubs and perennials HAVE to be even more affected - as indeed they are.  Just go take a look at them!  In a few days, I will put together more comparative studies from autumns past.  Right now this is about all I can stand to post, what ought to be gorgeous looks so abominable.

Dull hues and transparent crowns

 Study: Climate change and air pollution will combine to curb food supplies

milkweed - sorry, Monarch butterflies

 Many studies have shown the potential for global climate change to cut food supplies. But these studies have, for the most part, ignored the interactions between increasing temperature and air pollution — specifically ozone pollution, which is known to damage crops.

A new study involving researchers at MIT shows that these interactions can be quite significant, suggesting that policymakers need to take both warming and air pollution into account in addressing food security.

The study looked in detail at global production of four leading food crops — rice, wheat, corn, and soy — that account for more than half the calories humans consume worldwide. It predicts that effects will vary considerably from region to region, and that some of the crops are much more strongly affected by one or the other of the factors: For example, wheat is very sensitive to ozone exposure, while corn is much more adversely affected by heat.

climbing hydrangea

The research was carried out by Colette Heald, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering (CEE) at MIT; Amos Tai, a former CEE postdoc who is now at the Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Maria Val Martin at Colorado State University. Their work is described this week in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Heald, the Mitsui Career Development Professor in Contemporary Technology, explains that while it’s known that both higher temperatures and ozone pollution can damage plants and reduce crop yields, “nobody has looked at these together.” And while rising temperatures are widely discussed, the impact of air quality on crops is less recognized.

Black Walnut

The effects are likely to vary widely by region, the study predicts. In the United States, tougher air-quality regulations are expected to lead to a sharp decline in ozone pollution, mitigating its impact on crops. But in other regions, the outcome “will depend on domestic air-pollution policies,” Heald says. “An air-quality cleanup would improve crop yields.”

Overall, with all other factors being equal, warming may reduce crop yields globally by about 10 percent by 2050, the study found. But the effects of ozone pollution are more complex — some crops are more strongly affected by it than others — which suggests that pollution-control measures could play a major role in determining outcomes.

Ozone pollution can also be tricky to identify, Heald says, because its damage can resemble other plant illnesses, producing flecks on leaves and discoloration.

privet

Potential reductions in crop yields are worrisome: The world is expected to need about 50 percent more food by 2050, the authors say, due to population growth and changing dietary trends in the developing world. So any yield reductions come against a backdrop of an overall need to increase production significantly through improved crop selections and farming methods, as well as expansion of farmland.

While heat and ozone can each damage plants independently, the factors also interact. For example, warmer temperatures significantly increase production of ozone from the reactions, in sunlight, of volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides. Because of these interactions, the team found that 46 percent of damage to soybean crops that had previously been attributed to heat is actually caused by increased ozone.

even ordinary grass shows greater damage lower on the stalk

Under some scenarios, the researchers found that pollution-control measures could make a major dent in the expected crop reductions following climate change. For example, while global food production was projected to fall by 15 percent under one scenario, larger emissions decreases projected in an alternate scenario reduce that drop to 9 percent.

Air pollution is even more decisive in shaping undernourishment in the developing world, the researchers found: Under the more pessimistic air-quality scenario, rates of malnourishment might increase from 18 to 27 percent by 2050 — about a 50 percent jump; under the more optimistic scenario, the rate would still increase, but that increase would almost be cut in half, they found.

typical maple

Agricultural production is “very sensitive to ozone pollution,” Heald says, adding that these findings “show how important it is to think about the agricultural implications of air-quality regulations. Ozone is something that we understand the causes of, and the steps that need to be taken to improve air quality.”

Denise L. Mauzerall, a professor of environmental engineering and international affairs at Princeton University who was not involved in this research, says, “An important finding … is that controls on air-pollution levels can improve agricultural yields and partially offset adverse impacts of climate change on yields. Thus, the increased use of clean energy sources that do not emit either greenhouse gases or conventional air pollutants, such as wind and solar energy, would be doubly beneficial to global food security, as they do not contribute to either climate change or increased surface-ozone concentrations.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Park Service, and the Croucher Foundation.

It's Cool to be a Nihilist ~ Glenn Beck

I saw this fabulous clip at an intriguing collaborative blog --Synthetic_Zero, which bears Nietzsche's remonstrance at the top "Light for some time to come will have to be called darkness".  I'm not quite sure what meaning is intended with the dead lion on the floor of Glenn Beck's studio - there must be some, right? - but anyway, I have to be grateful to him for putting everything else together.  Click here to listen to the NPR story he laments.

Five Stages of Awareness? (or is it Six?) ~ a Guest Post by Tim Murray

Tim Murray has graciously allowed me to post his recent correspondence.  If you think this is as brilliant as I do, you might want to later check out the marvelously irascible Dave Cohen's tour de force series, Adventures in Flatland Part I and Part II  ...(III is yet to be published).  They make for excellent companion reading to Tim's article here - and between them, I can hang up my hat when it comes to the immutability of human nature, the futility of activism, and the absurdity of life in general.

Untitled, Oil on Canvas ~ Judith Fouser
Wit's End Collection

Five Stages of Awareness?

(or is it Six?)

   ~ Tim Murray

I don't know if I have met anyone who is not, at some level, in a state of denial, including the guy I see in the mirror. Call it an essential human 'coping mechanism'

Reflecting on my own "evolution" (without any implication that I am 'improving' or 'progressing' forward), I am now of the impression that many of us follow these stages, or get stuck in one of them.

Stage one: Ignorance. We don't know enough to realize that this civilization is headed toward an imminent collapse, taking a lot of non-human species down with it.

Stage two: Knowledge: We know enough to realize that this civilization is headed toward an imminent collapse etc.

Stage three: Activism: We know enough to realize that this civilization is headed toward an imminent collapse...etc. But we don't know enough to realize that we can't stop it, so we invest our time in blogging, preaching, demonstrating, rallying, and marching.

Stage four. Resignation and Commiseration: We know enough to realize that this civilization is headed toward an imminent collapse etc., and finally realize that activism (blogging, preachin', demonstrating, rallying, and marching will not make a significant difference. We either call it a day and drop out, or we write endlessly about how we're "f***ked, and spend years "trading turds" (as Kurt Dahl termed it) on list serves--- until we get mad or frustrated and demand to be taken off the list.

Stage five. Displacement Behaviour or a Sense of Moral Obligation: Despite knowing that we are "f**ked, we persist with our activism, blogging, preachin' , rallying, and marching because:

 (a) we need to "do something" (displacement behaviour) to distract ourselves from any focus on our hopeless predicament. Like Richard Attenborough's example of a bird who suddenly realizes that he is in striking distance of deadly snake and that neither fight or flight will save him, so instead he preens his feathers.

and/or

(b) we would feel morally remiss if we didn't try to do "something". At least re-arrange the deck chairs or leave our cabin room tidy. Case in point.  I saw a young woman in the middle of a frigid alpine lake (Moraine Lake in the Rockies) cry for help after her canoe capsized. The lake was like an echo chamber. We could hear her screams and words as if she was ten feet away. But she was in fact 500 feet away. We knew that even if we could immediately grab a boat, we couldn't get there in time. But a couple of us tried to do it anyway because we felt we had to do "something". It wasn't even a case of wilful optimism. It was an attempt to deal with our anxiety and horror. Of course, as we expected, this poor, unfortunate woman disappeared long before anyone got to her.

 Imagine, though, if someone on the shoreline, someone like Chris Clugston, using math and physics, quickly proved  what we at least subconsciously knew to be the case--- that it would be impossible to save her? Suppose he handed us a sheet of paper that presented his iron-clad data.  That truth-teller would be greeted with anger or outright denial. "If you really belief it's hopeless, why are you bothering to write about it?" or "If people believe your message, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy..... We don't need Cassandras, we need motivators, morale-boosters not truth-tellers...."

Jack Alpert has experienced this reaction. People see his video on "How much De-growth do we need", but they simply dismiss his assessment of our scale of overshoot, even though they can't challenge his math. Why? They want to believe, they need to believe, that the planet can carry many more people than he estimates because they think that they can't "sell" their population reduction diet program if it calls for that amount of sacrifice. Better to cling to Eco-Footprinting Analysis. Better to focus on bio-capacity and ignore diminishing non-renewable resource stocks. Better to shop the WWF's Living Planet report because it says we only need another 4 planets to carry on BAU, not get down to Alpert's population level of 50 million.  The message, after all, must be "marketable". And like so many salesmen, they---to use Stephen Law's words---come to "believe their own bullshit." Bottom line, Cassandras are either dismissed or reviled, even if their conclusions are evidence-based.

 That, my friends, is the position that people like Chris Clugston are in. People don't want to hear the raw, brutal and complete truth.  They want hope. They can only take a limited, even if heavy dose of reality. That's why readers and publishers want manuscripts and books to end on a note of hope, however absurd. They want a happy Hollywood ending, even if it runs counter to all the evidence and arguments that lead up it.  A non sequitur. A conclusion that doesn't follow from the premises. Just like the way McKibben, Suzuki, et al argue. Like bible-punching preachers, they tell us that we're going to hell, that things are very, very bad, but wait....there's hope yet! The window is quickly closing but it's not too late! There is still time to repent! So keep your love money rollin' in , because my NGO (church) needs to pay the bills and pay its staff--I need you fund my crusade."

 Curiously, one notices that 20 years ago, many of these preachers said that the window would soon close way back then, the same way Oral Roberts used to do---in Suzuki's case, before the decade was out (the 90's are the "Turn-around Decade"). But apparently the apocalypse got another stay of execution because they are still talking about a closing window. The goal posts keep getting pushed further back. Ah yes, hope. "We must give them hope...."

BTW I went through all of these stages, and it took me damn near three decades to do so. I am currently stuck at Stage 5, but "hopefully", I will eventually  revert to Stage 4, chill out, and try to enjoy the downslope, maybe play another hand of poker before the ship goes down, or join the orchestra at the stern....Nah, I think I will just keep on fightin' and writin' (uselessly). It's in my nature. As William of Orange put it: "It is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere."

  

But hey wait...maybe there is yet another Stage. As Chris Clugston asks, 

“Can there be Stage 6 - something like "Acceptance" (like reaching Nirvana?!) - which would be different than Stage 4? Where you realize, "hey, no hard feelings; nothing personal; nothing to get hung about..." Just go and enjoy Strawberry Fields Forever - for however long that turns out to be... But I mean really LET GO, and not keep reverting to either stage 5 or 4? “

OK Chris, so here it is:

Stage 6:  Acceptance and just LETTING GO.

Tim Murray

September 26, 2014

Let Them Eat Pizza

I would have gone to the People's Climate March in Manhattan, even though, as a permitted Sunday parade, I didn't expect it to amount to anything more than tilting at windmills (ha!) - but I had already missed all of first daughter's competitions this season, and her last show for the year, in Saugerties, NY was scheduled for the same day.  I had a lovely weekend with her and was very glad I went, especially as she took two firsts. 

Thus, I was happy having learned there was to be another protest on Monday that I could join, #FloodWallStreet, especially because the plan was for mass civil disobedience and arrests.  I met up with a Wit's End reader, Lucas, who had come all the way from Hawaii and was willing to serve as jail support for me.

However, the march from Battery Park to the Stock Exchange was deflected, and the big banner buckled backwards around the barricaded Bull while we watched, incredulous, as the organizers negotiated with police.  Apparently the Mayor informed them that there would be no arrests, and we could have the street space AROUND the Bull, but were blocked from approaching Wall Street.  Astonishingly, the organizers informed the crowd that they had made a decision to stay obediently in place, and...declare victory!  Whatever happened to consensus?  There was no discussion, no mic check, we were just informed that rather than exercising our rights, we were to behave just like the Sunday Paraders and, as one commenter phrased it, whimper in a fucking free speech zone.

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At one point they encouraged us to sit and thump our chests like our beating hearts, I'm not sure why.

Reactions to the capitulation ranged from indifference to mild surprise to utter fury.  Luckily I had come across a friend from the Age of Limits Conference, Cameron Kelly, who also had traveled a great distance at non-trivial expense to take part in the mass civil disobedience.  She was decidedly in the latter category.  We pointed out to the organizers that the action was presented as mass CD - and the response was that if we still wanted to get arrested, we were free to dive over the barricades flanking the Bull.  However, if my goal was to be arrested for a single personal criminal act, I would rather choose my own symbolic icon...and it wouldn't be about capitalism.  When I pointed out that the action was titled #Flood WALL STREET, and we were stymied at Broadway and Morris, I was informed by several indignant organizers that we actually were *on Wall Street*  - since the financial district and Wall Street are synonymous.  So they conveniently redefined the very meaning of the words "Wall Street"...uhhhh, but what about this MAP they handed out to the marchers (that Camus so rightly wishes to chew up into mush)?   Do you see the arrow for the 12 PM ACTION pointing directly to the NYSE on the actual WALL STREET??

Apparently to mollify the disgruntled, we were informed that 100 free pizzas were being delivered, and that we would sing and dance.  Finally one courageous fellow named Sparks who, having come all the way from Fridley, Minnesota was not about to slink meekly away, bellowed "MIC CHECK" and urged the boisterous but confused assembly to move along to Wall Street.  Here he is with the famous firecracker Cameron, having finally made it to the intersection.

Even after we arrived though, other than a short tussle over the barricades leading to one incident of pepper spray, the pizza party continued in place for hours unmolested, presided over by glowering phalanxes of billyclub-wielding and mounted police.   Not wanting to wait hours more for the order to disperse and having long trips home, Cameron and Lucas and I left around sunset.  It wasn't until after darkness had fallen that finally about 100 people were "allowed" to relinquish their freedom, and were cuffed and bussed to jail.   The Sans Culottes must be rolling in their graves at this pathetic excuse for a revolution.  I don't suppose we'll ever know why the protest turned into a cheesy picnic - whether the organizers were outsmarted by the Mayor, lost their nerve, or are completely intoxicated with ego gratification from media attention - "...oh, we're on the front page of HuffPo right now!" one told me, by way of explaining that no further action on our part was necessary.  Actually, some of the slick promotional material makes the project smell suspiciously of moveon.org funding, which makes me wonder if the Sunday and Monday events, despite their ostensible differences, aren't both just mirrors of each other's deliberate ineffectiveness, like the two political parties in the USA.

The climate activist insiders were in short-lived heaven following the huge turnout for the PCM in New York and other cities around the world.  (Short-lived because nobody has the vaguest idea what to do next and the UN meeting is being widely denounced as a useless corporate festival.) Privately they are rejoicing what they see as the triumph of the climate movement over the environmental movement, something they been trying to eclipse for years. To put the rosiest perspective on this, you might say that they have shunned any association with holistic ecology simply because they believe that being tainted by tree-huggers is detrimental to progress - since hippies have a bad reputation for extremism and dirty toes.

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To look at it in a slightly more cynical way, you might conclude that the motivation stems from two pernicious influences...first, that climate change in theory lends itself to continued growth via a technological fix (if you ignore the fact that it's too late to avoid catastrophe, which virtually all activists and scientists do), which leads to the second motivation, a corollary to the first...there is oodles of money from corporate foundations, governments, book sales and speaking engagements for research and political activism in climate "solutions", as long as none of them include reducing population and consumption.

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This strategy has always struck me as an epic failure, since climate change is only one symptom of a more general, lethal overshoot.  The single-minded focus on carbon emissions over other issues, such as pollution, habitat destruction, and overextraction of everything from lumber to fish to minerals simply enables more of the same destruction to proceed even as it pretends to challenge the status quo, Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges notwithstanding.  In fact their supposedly more radical critique of capitalism is a red herring, and an insidious deflection of the true dimensions of the tragedy of the commons that has ensnared humans into ecocide.  Underlying their exhortations to change or even dismantle the economic system is the false belief that "green energy" will ensure free pizza forever.  While chants like "We are Unstoppable, Another World is Possible" and "Put up Your Fist, Resist, Resist" are rousing good fun, really, as Candide would say, we ALREADY are in the best of all possible worlds...as in, it ain't gonna get any better than this...and there is no obvious way to resist OURSELVES.  Here's all you need to see of Naomi Klein and her own special brand of bullshit.  (Well, hey, it sells books, apparently.)  [update:   OMG this is too funny.  This video has been taken down - in it, Klein is interviewed on HuffPo saying that so many people have reacted to her book by saying IT'S TOO LATE.  I guess that message was too scary so the record has been deleted.  TOO hilarious!]

Here's a screenshot from the video that has been removed, and here is a link to the clip still up.  This quote from John Gray's Straw Dogs sums up why the narrative she peddles is so wrong:  "The destruction of the natural world is not the result of global capitalism, industrialisation, “Western civilisation” or any flaw in human institutions. It is a consequence of the evolutionary success of an exceptionally rapacious primate. Throughout all of history and prehistory, human advance has coincided with ecological devastation."

It seems like this cohort of so-called activists, whether prancing in costumes for Sunday's celebrity climatepalooza photo-ops or moaning ineffectually about capitalism on Monday, is persuaded that all we have to do is WANT things to be different (you know, close your eyes and say I DO believe in fairies!  I DO!  I DO!) which is really just an extension of everything that is wrong with the very consumerist society we are urged to reject.  Mention the word "sacrifice" and the entire spectrum frowns.  When I was on my way to the city I was thinking about how many in the doomer community (invariably white middle-class) appropriate the culture of indigenous peoples and claim affinity with their supposed peaceful, sustainable, harmonious and spiritual relationship with nature when actually, most if not all hunter-gatherers (other than those who were defeated by overshoot, natural disaster or neighboring tribes) were proud warriors who trained boys from an early age to be fierce, and to defeat enemies.  The accumulation of ancient weapons, armor, fortifications, skeletal remains and artifacts testify to this universal human attribute.  Contemplating arrest with its very real potential for bodily injury is nerve-wracking, to say the least, and I took comfort from thinking about how tribal people prepared for conflict with an infinite variety of rituals to embolden them.  Too bad this willingness to confront harm isn't the inspiration taken by so many who claim to be "fighting" climate change by tapping on their computer keyboards or designing posters and t-shirts.  Hell, most of them can't even be inconvenienced, let alone put their safety in jeopardy (Tim DeChristopher being a shining exception).  I don't know if it is iphones or football or Cheetoes, but something has turned us into spineless wimps.

Following are some pictures of trees and leaves around Wit's End.

Remember the trees?

They are supposed to hit peak autumn color around the third week of October hereabouts.

Instead the leaves are falling off even earlier than they did last year, and those that remain look terrible.

The Virginia creeper lit by the setting sun into a bright scarlet from a distance actually looks dreadful close up.

The world is dying all around us, and most people still think there is time, if they think at all.

Let Them Eat Pizza!