Despair of making any material impact on the situation is one reason people don’t do anything. Another reason is that we in the global north are simply too goddam comfortable (and busy; and busy being comfortable). Sure, maybe it gets really cold and then really hot then really cold; but we have central air and heat still. Maybe those poor folks in Puerto Rico – or Houston – had their electricity and water supply knocked out for years; but ours still works. We have not been inundated by masses of displaced persons; not yet anyway. How can one possibly believe that the bottom is falling out, when the view out your window stays largely the same and when you can still get gas to drive your car?
If you do not live on a coast; if you do not get much of your food or livelihood from the oceans; if you do not depend on glaciers for your water supply; if you do not live in a desert; if you do not live in the tropics; if your dwelling is not likely to collapse in high winds; if all those things are true of you, you are one of the haves. And you will be joined, in just a few years (or months), by the have-nots – which is to say, a majority of the population of the planet, whether they live in lower Manhattan or Dhaka. It may be that most world cultures have end-of-the-world myths because many of their members have had to deal with the end of their world – or that of their neighbors. Apocalypse, Ragnarok, Qiyamah, the coming of Kalki or of Maitreya, the multiplication of suns and evaporation of all fresh water – take your pick. But a lot of these also provide for some kind of regeneration or rebirth – after myriad kalpas of time, maybe. A metaphor for a rebirth of human society? Or re-evolution after a mass extinction? Perhaps we need an end-of-our-world story – with a happy ending. Perhaps we will grow different emotions soon.
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A brief hiatus until next week, due to technical difficulties (more later). In the meantime, I recommend the "Climate and Economy" website, maintained by "Justin Panopticon," for an excellent digest of world news on those topics. Well worth supporting via Patreon.
The knowledge that one is to be hanged in a fortnight concentrates the mind wonderfully. – Dr. Johnson
I have been reading Roy Scranton’s latest book, We’re Doomed. Now What? As far as I can tell, his answer is: Keep doing the same things you’ve been doing – eating meat with every meal, going on cruises to the Arctic, flying around the world on book tours. At least that’s what he says he’s doing. And why not? If the horse has left the barn and the genie’s out of the bottle, who are we to try to get them back in? If you’ve already destroyed the earth, why try to save it? Or as William T. Vollman puts it, in Carbon Ideologies (vol. 1), “Nothing can be done, so nothing need be done.” On one hand, this is entirely logical. If no sacrifice, no effort, no change to your pattern of life will “make a difference,” then why bother? Resistance is futile. So rev up the ol’ SUV! Crank up the thermostat. On the other hand, this attitude strikes me as profoundly amoral, even pathological – like the serial killer who isn’t satisfied with slaughtering his victims, but has to eat them, too. Or: first you kill your mother, then you piss on her body. Part of the problem, it seems to me, is an ahistorical view of the world. “[T]he biggest problem[s] the Anthropocene poses,” Scranton writes, in his 2013 essay “Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene, “are precisely those that have always been at the root of humanistic and philosophical questioning . . . .” However, he goes on to say that, in “the epoch of the Anthropocene, the question of individual mortality . . . is universalized and framed in scales that boggle the imagination.” So, universal human nature you have always with you, but the current historical circumstances have changed the nature of human nature. This kind of contradiction brings out my inner Marxist. As the Old Man said (maugre the Young Hegelians), the fishness of a fish is different in a polluted river than in a pristine mountain stream. And water is different, viewed as a commodity vs. as Zen monks treat it, in a quasi-sacramental manner. Likewise, the thinking person who sees the coming end of all civilization on earth as being fundamentally different than, say, the fall of the Western Roman Empire is going to see being human in a radically different way than they did before. But I don’t get that from Scranton. The other issue, I think, is that, no matter how horrible the projected effects of climate change appear, they don’t appear to be real until they affect us – by which I mean us in the global north. We’re so used to seeing droughts in east Africa, tsunamis in east Asia, flooding in Bangladesh, that it always already happens “over there.” So, when it is Houston that is hit by a deadly hurricane or the Sierra foothills that are ablaze, it still doesn’t seem quite real, if we aren’t in one of those places. Thus Scranton can “look into our future” and “see water rising to wash out lower Manhattan. I see food riots, hurricanes, and climate refugees. I see 82nd Airborne soldiers shooting looters. I see grid failure, wrecked harbors, Fukushima waste, and plagues. I see Baghdad. I see the Rockaways. I see a strange, precarious world.” But what Scranton doesn’t seem to see – at least not vividly – is himself, in that world. Now, intellectually, he knows very well it will affect him, his partner, his child, his friends, his publisher. But he visualizes it as a seer envisions the future – like the Dream of Scipio meets the prophet Jeremiah. What will he do – be willing to do – to protect and care for his family, when life starts looking more and more like a zero-sum game? Scranton is 43 as of this writing. I’m 57. When the S starts hitting the F, I’ll be pretty old, without children. He’ll be my age or a little older, with a young adult daughter and possibly other, younger kids. What do you tell yourself, in that position? “They’ll be able to look after themselves”? “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it”? “I just gave them life, they’ll have to figure out how to live it”? “Go engage in humanistic and philosophical questioning”? After such knowledge, what forgiveness? People continue to ignore climate change because they (we) don’t know how to deal with these eventualities, and they know those eventualities will arise and will demand a response. Based on previous history, it would be reasonable to expect some kind of world-wide barbarism. In that event, what do I do as an individual? in a little place in the middle
continent yesterday: hi: 52; norm: 74 lo: 43; norm: 51 (Burcham Park is underwater Marais des Cygnes NWA is underwater) do with these numbers what you will but still: wettest 12 months on record here in the us of a (120 yrs) except pacific nw (record hi temps) 10 in. snow in Duluth flooding along great lakes ditto Miss. (state of emerg) india still burning up (literally, now) cyclone fani longest-lasting ever over bay of bengal another one moving into indonesia and carbon – CO2 LEVELS highest in 800,000 YEARS (that seems worth noting) insurance claims from nov wildfires calif.: $12, 000,000,000 australia either drying up or floating away paraguay floods continue siberian wildfires continue moreso it will continue to continue the poem that keeps making itself I grew up during the latter half of the Cold War and came of age during its . . . detumescence. We were always expecting the world to come to an end suddenly. The dreams of the flash and blast – always at enough of a distance that you’d have plenty of time to let it sink in, to suffer the after-effects. Often these dreams happened during violent thunderstorms. They disappeared after the fall of the Soviet Union – despite the fact that things have only become more volatile since then. And more violent thunderstorms.
Nowadays, nuclear weaponry is no longer the apocalypse of choice. Today’s threats seem creeping, not falling. I don’t have global warming nightmares – do you? Maybe if you’re looking squarely at the problem – not repressing it – it doesn’t infect your dreams. But maybe dream-state is the only way to get at the scope of the catastrophe, in words. This might suggest an approach . . . hindsight:
hi: 68; norm: 74 lo: 61; norm: 50 humidity if i can’t see it happen, it must not be but in tuktoyaktuk, north west territory – first-nations community – cemetery needs to move before thawing permafrost exposes graves (indigenous people everywhere on the s**t end) it’s already summer in portland dust storms coated colorado snowpack = more rapid melting (& dry august?) another day another levee break (st. charles co., mo.) miss. r. above flood stage six wks flash floods, and d.c. wettest jan-apr on record russian national parks: 110 wildfires in 2019 china: natural disasters in April affected 1.7 million 20 villages in bangla “marooned” after dam failure after cyclone in india, cyclone last week, heat wave, this (up to 115 F, the accuweather dude says). and 104 in yucutan the drought toteboard: 2 million somalis running short of food, 2.3 million angolans, half million namibians, livestock dying and dead while kenya, tanzania pummeled (good thing – only 70% rain in April) deepening drought in caribbean and then there’s this: s. african WINE GRAPE harvest at all time low! in e. indonesia, in paraguay, rain won’t let up permanent el niño in pacific? all time won’t let up The writer Roy Scranton famously argued, in 2013, that we should regard our civilization as already dead. Or as good as. When he served in the US Army in Iraq, he got up each morning and imagined all the ways he could be killed that day (IED, ambush, accident, sniper, etc.). That way, as he puts it, he could consider himself “already dead”; this thought helped him go about his day in a combat zone. We ought, according to him, do the same with industrial civilization. Indeed, he sees the US turning into another version of Baghdad c. 2003 – or, as he points out, New Orleans, 2005. In his recent book, We’re Doomed. Now What? he invokes Nietzsche’s term amor fati, love of fate. Embrace what you have coming to you.
Neither Nietzsche nor Scranton invented these ideas; the latter cites a handbook for samurai warriors as being his inspiration. And Nietzsche coined amor fati to describe the attitude of the Stoics – i.e., desiring things to turn out the way they do, not the way you hope. But another of their practices is perhaps more to the point; it was called the premeditatio malorum – best translated as “meditation on adverse events.” If you imagine yourself dying, or a loved one being injured, or losing all your money, then you will be better-prepared if disaster befalls you. And disaster is befalling all of us. What would this practice mean, applied to an entire civilization – especially a global civilization? I remember riding out a fairly substantial earthquake once. My roommate expressed disappointment that it wasn’t the “Big One.” How come, I asked? “I kinda want to see civilization in ruins,” he replied. Or, as Guy Dubord remarked, “There is something within each man [sic] that delights to see a car burn.” Of course, this proleptic spectatorship assumes that you aren’t buried under the ruins. But imaginatively, we can – indeed, read Parable of the Sower, the MaddAddam trilogy, American War, Odds Against Tomorrow, or any number of other dystopian novels, and they’ll do it for you. So take a moment, and imagine your neighborhood in ruins: apartment buildings shelled-out skeletons, house roofs caved in, rubble everywhere. Trees starting to poke up through the roofs; vines starting to grow over them. You and a lot of other people are walking in the streets, looking for whatever fresh water you can find. Groups of young men are walking in the streets, carrying automatic weapons. It’s not that hard to envision, because it’s already happening in much of the world – including, perhaps, your own city. What will be different is that it will be happening to formerly-middle-class white people. Envisioning such scenarios are often seen as calls for action (“We only have 10 years to save the earth!”). But they are also a way to prepare oneself for what increasingly looks inevitable. Hopefully it won't be that bad, and we'll be pleasantly surprised. But what skills will you need? What will you be called upon to do? What ethical choices will you have to make? And what will the writers write about? On what? And for whom? Stoic philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: “As if you had died and your life had extended only to this present moment, use the surplus that is left to you to live from this time onward according to nature.”* (7.56) In other words, act as though you’re already dead. You have realized what it was to be alive, now that you aren’t anymore; so you’ll appreciate the present more and take your actions more seriously. What would you write? Would you? ------ * “Live according to nature,” the Stoics’ motto, alluded to their belief that human beings are rational animals. They didn’t have neuroscience. a beautiful spring morning, as they say
“global-north privilege”(?) = we make the weather that happens somewhere else here: yesterday: hi: 78 norm: 73 lo: 47 norm: 49 not bad, lawrence! meanwhile hurricane fani – far fewer dead than 20 yrs ago – 39 in india, bangladesh (so far), 10,000 back then but how do you evacuate 2.8 million people from “hundreds of densely populated, low-lying communities along the Bay of Bengal, one of the most vulnerable regions to flooding in the world”? what do w/100s of 1000s homeless families? I know I promise no animals, but this is too perfect: “UN warns that 1 million species risk extinction because of humans and nature is declining faster than ever” – picture of beach strewn with flattened seal carcasses – this after an ad for a deck stain and sealant featuring cute cartoon elephant squirting water onto deck and man – and then a cartoon seal – I did not make this up and the birds go about their business as usual * * * Sources: Guardian disaster news page Weather Channel news page The American Psychological Association counsels its members to validate their patients’ anxieties about climate change/global warming and then to encourage them to do something to prevent it – to make them feel less hopeless.
This is sound psychological advice. Psychology researchers tell us that if you are suffering the deleterious feelings and symptoms occasioned by despair, the best antidote is to act as though you had hope. Even if you don’t. Perhaps this is why, the more hopeless the world situation looks, the keener I am on whittling away at the old carbon footprint. Even though I know it won't make a dime's worth of difference to the climate.* But maybe the scientists are wrong. I mean, not like the Climate Denier scientists. Just the ones that paint the direst picture. Sure, things will get harder, but maybe it won’t really be that bad. Or fast. It doesn't seem that bad where I am. And after all, the scientific reports keep saying “by the end of the century . . . .” Why, that’s plenty of time to deal with even a big problem! After all, coal is in decline and renewables are taking off; more people are riding bicycles; so, really, all we gotta do is help that process along by getting more Democrats elected to Congress. And then there’s the geoengineering solutions: carbon sequestration, reflective aerosols, and so on. Science caused it, science will solve it. Or at least hold it off. At least until I’m gone. And my children. And my grandchildren. And isn’t climate catastrophe and societal collapse just more Apocalyptic Thinking? I mean, how many times has somebody predicted the end of the world? And nothing happened. So why should it this time? I mean, it’s too bad what we’re doing to the endangered species, and all; but my job is still there and got to go to work and feed the family. So why worry? O man, I so wish I could say any of that and believe it. And there are plenty of flavors of hopium out there to choose from. If you can, then think of climate change as a “what if.” What if your ATM didn’t respond because there’s no electricity. What if you turn the tap and nothing comes out, 9 times out of 10. What if the supermarket has a big sign in the window: “Sorry, no food today! : )” In other words, what if, in the end, all the world were Puerto Rico (after Hurricane Maria)? If you believed (or knew) that scenario was coming in the foreseeable future, what would you write? More nature writing? Protest poetry? Or paint or dance? Today, tomorrow? What would you do? What will you? Is it some kind of bullshit faux heroism, some Romantic retread, to think that writers have a vocation (duty?) to look things squarely in the face and represent them as they see fit, regardless of whether anybody listens? Or should we write as if we had hope? Or demonstrate as much by writing like you always write and ignoring climate change? Until you can't. ------ * In fact, if everyone in the world started living like the Amish tomorrow – but without having any kids – it wouldn’t make it stop. Start melting the ice and the it doesn’t reflect the heat; it’s absorbed in all that dark blue water instead. The methane in the permafrost thaws, releasing a greenhouse gas 20+ times more potent than CO2. Which accelerates ice melt, and so on. This process is underway and the whole loop is accelerating. (the idea being to continue this record until i die which may or may not be long) here at 38° 58' 18" N / 95° 14' 6" W yesterday hi 64 norm 72 hi 50 norm 48 (which over time "Siegelman is using data from a single tagged southern elephant seal to study small-scale ocean features in a little-known part of the ocean around Antarctica." (may or may not 36 tornadoes in tx, ok, ar, mo, la the usual suspects – that’s not news may or may not be related to (prove anything) 1,200,000 humans evacuated, n.e. india – cyclone fani Kolkata flights grounded 5k shelters in odisha state everybody’s thatched roofs blew away meanwhile u.s. d.o.d. lacks money to rebuild bases (they take it seriously) flood and wind reports: paraguay; australia: n.e. victoria (as 1 ½ yr old toddler in adelaide sees rain for the first time) c. sulawesi, indonesia but in malaysia: “Limbang, Bintulu, Mukah and Daro districts are hit by floods while Mulu National Park is facing water shortage. Folk living near the national park in remote northern Sarawak are facing dry taps. Add your reaction: awful, upset, sad, agonized, grieved, scared” [only 1 response: scared] highest april temps ever in hong kong, saskatoon, and d.c. but then again it’s not april anymore, and it's always a record somewhere, so let’s move on – 5 more humans dead mississippi valley floods 3,000 homes here, state of emergency there, closed mississippi r bridges at t'other - record crest at davenport tigris and eurphrates burst banks in iraq; deaths from duststorms in the south hunger after cyclones in mozambique farmers already water fields in europe b/c of last summer’s drought (“after the drought is before the drought”) ditto for caribbean lowest-ever temps in scotland for mayday hightest-ever temps last year mayday u.k. parliament declares climate emergency (here, here; hear, hear) no money, no regulations, no action |
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |