Lambert here: Carpe diem….
By Jamie Bristow, who currently leads on public narrative and policy development for the Inner Development Goals and Rosie Bellon, a writer working primarily in public climate narrative and the inner dimension of sustainability, with collaborators such as the Climate Majority Project, Life Itself Institute, and the Mindfulness Initiative. Originally published at DesmogBlog.
In the escalating drama of climate breakdown — especially as we navigate the apparent crossing of the 1.5C warming threshold — a binary is emerging that wastes a huge amount of time, energy and passion, needlessly limiting our vision to confront and adapt to our situation at all levels of society: Are we (optimist) solutionists or (realist) doomers?
As “optimists” we’re committed to the idea that it’s not too late to fix things (think ever steeper net zero pathways dependant on direct air capture). As “realists,” we’re committed to telling “the truth” of just how bad things are already (think cascading tipping points and trajectories towards Hothouse Earth).
Both well-intentioned positions are easier to define through their fierce critique of the other. To optimists, the realists are doomers; peddling de-motivating despair and self-fulfilling prophecies, often with unwarranted certainty. If it’s already too late to solve our problems, why try? On this account, “accepting” the likelihood of permanently breaching the 1.5C red line is a betrayal of those who will feel the impacts most harshly. To realists, optimists are naive solutionists; trapping the public in a dangerous fantasy-land where incremental change will be enough; leaving consumerist ways of life largely intact. Trusting that smart people are out there fixing it all (and will do so just in the nick of time) we remain passive bystanders as our crises escalate beyond intervention. On this account, optimism is itself the betrayal, preventing publics from accepting that deep change is necessary to protect those most vulnerable.
There’s validity in both critiques. Optimists point to convincing psychological evidence around the demotivating effect of bad news. Realists invoke common sense: How can we expect people to support sufficiently radical climate action, with the sacrifices and trade-offs it entails, if they don’t know the true scale of the problem? In fact, almost all of the experts involved value both hope and realism, and consider themselves to appropriately balance the two (and, rest assured, nobody’s opinions are as simple as we’re painting them here). However, these respective strategies, and communication frames, emerge as antagonistic; tending towards paralysis. Citizens seeking a channel for their awakening climate anxiety are caught between two directives — distrust optimism, for fear of complacency; or ignore how bad things already are, for fear of despair.
Certainly, neither despair nor complacency is any use to us. Conversely however, both acceptance and optimism are functionally necessary. Acceptance of our current circumstances is a precondition of effective action in the reality we actually inhabit, whilst hope that liveable futures are possible remains a precondition of necessary effort to bring them about. Rather than play strategies based on one value off against the other, what’s needed is a middle way, where hope remains paramount – but what we hope for is allowed to evolve in-line with current realities and the many possible ways things could unfold.
Adaptive Challenges and Opportunities for Change
Between total, miraculous solutions and total, eco-induced societal collapse lie a wide spectrum of possible middle paths. None is better than addressing the climate crisis 30 years ago at a cost of only two percent of GDP. All are deeply tragic in contrast to a techno-solutionist dream. Without a sudden global epiphany, we won’t avoid loss and disruption at a scale difficult to comprehend from our current position. Many millions, perhaps billions, will experience loss of livelihood, loss of home or worse. Meanwhile, current precipitous declines in biodiversity and wild biomass will increasingly tip over into localised ecological collapse, even mass extinction. Nonetheless, the brighter of these pathways still hold promise of a future worth having for a great many across the world — even a much brighter future, long-term. And crucially, to realise those possibilities, every fraction of a degree of warming that can be avoided is going to matter. The scope of our optimistic imagination must therefore remain wide, and we should practise humility about what we can know for sure.
It’s our collective duty never to discount the suffering in humanity’s future — especially for those on the frontline of climate impacts. But we are likewise duty-bound to consider whether even catastrophic scenarios contain seeds of needful renewal, both in the medium term, and at civilisational scales.
Our ecological crisis is not an accident; at its very root lies a mindset — a way of thinking and perceiving the world that will continue to manifest destructive patterns for humanity and all earthly life, until we are forced to confront it. A modern illusion of separateness underpins global institutions and industries: Economic “externalities” allow for the unseen costs of pollution and exploitation to vanish from our balance sheets and moral considerations. Yet in reality, there are no externalities within our interconnected global ecosystem. As such, the climate crisis can be viewed as a “crisis of disconnection” — or more particularly, a failure among dominant cultures to perceive their connection with the rest of the world, and act accordingly. The same mindset of separateness that has underpinned centuries of colonialism and extraction is at the root of global inequality, social alienation and out-of-control ecological destruction today. What we face, then, are not just technical or material but adaptive challenges, requiring many of us to rethink our approaches to solving problems and develop entirely new mindsets. A desirable future depends on changing not just our actions but our perceptions and values; our widespread way of seeing the world. And collective mindsets can and do change: particularly in the face of crises.
Humans are poorly evolved to recognise abstract, diffuse and long-term threats like global warming as a call to deep change. As climate impacts become more tangible and immediate however, dominant cultures will be forced to transform in ways previously unimagined. The acute crises and failure of brittle global systems — that many experts think are now likely in just a decade or two without major course correction — may well serve to catalyse a widespread mindset shift.
We would not wish this upon ourselves: acute crisis will mean large-scale loss of life, toppling critical infrastructure and fraying social cohesion, with a greatly increased risk of cascading collapse and authoritarian capture. As such we must do everything in our power to improve societal resilience. However, such scenarios may also contain opportunities to develop a collective worldview more attuned to reality, and accepting of our intimate interdependence, fostering a culture of repair, regeneration and renewal. Such a collective mindset shift, whenever it becomes possible, stands to transform not only attitudes towards ecology but a raft of co-occurring crises — alienation, inequality, materialism, nihilism — reining in harm in the shorter term and laying a foundation for a radically better future. This is hope of a kind that goes far beyond our lifetimes. A tall order in the age of individualism — and yet conversely, the sooner we’re able to envisage such a shift, the sooner we’ll escape the solutionist-doomer binary — and the better chance we’ll have to keep the curve of collapse as shallow as possible.
Three Fields of Action
In hopefully contemplating this broad field of yet-to-be determined futures, we might imagine three interrelated ‘fields of action’ that call for our energy and commitment.
1. Immediate Mitigation and Adaptation
We must avoid the worst impacts of climate change through ambitious collective action to reduce emissions and rein in ecological destruction. Every tonne of carbon dioxide, every fraction of a degree of warming counts, and the hotter things get, the more true this becomes. We must also adapt to environmental changes in the short term, with countries at the sharp end of climate impacts receiving support. The vast majority of climate change discourse to date has been concerned with this first field.
2. Resilience to Future Shocks
Action can be taken now to prepare for acute crises or even partial collapse of systems in the medium term, preserving (some of) what’s precious and ensuring that critical infrastructure, communities and social order are sufficiently resilient to withstand significant shocks.
3. Foundations for Future Renewal
Philosophies and practices that can be foundational to a regenerative society may find more fertile ground among post-crisis mindset-shifts. We have an opportunity now to nurture existing wisdom and develop new ideas and approaches, building “islands of coherence” that could seed later civilisational renewal.
A Call to Action in All Three Fields
Action in each of these three fields supports the others, and focus on one need not draw energy away from another – rather, many virtuous cycles persist between all three. For example, increased attention to preparation for future shocks is likely to build public awareness and appetite for climate mitigation measures, and vice versa. Investing in community resilience can reduce unsustainable behaviour and foster a mindset shift towards greater appreciation of interconnectedness. Advocacy for paradigmatic transformation can energise the case for deep mitigation and adaptation. Shared efforts to reduce emissions, protect local ecology and build adaptive infrastructure can strengthen bonds of community; in turn supporting social order and preserving life amid crisis. The greater the effort invested now in all three fields, the shallower the decline we are likely to experience and the better likelihood of renewal.
The complex crises we face demand that we move beyond totalising attitudes to optimism and realism. We must embrace a more nuanced understanding that incorporates a range of adaptive strategies and actions. This model is intended not as a new, fixed framework for the way things are, but a device with which to loosen up our thinking around the challenges ahead. Reality will be infinitely messier, less clearly defined than this picture suggests – but within this mess, while we can’t avoid some degree of loss and suffering, we can direct our energies towards minimising impacts and preparing for a more resilient and beautiful future.
This article infuriated me, not because I in any way disagree that dominant ways of thinking (dominant in affluent segments of the collective West, at any rate) need to change, but because of its complete failure to name the economic and geostrategic arrangements that underpin destructive mindsets. Where is capitalism in this article? Where is empire? Who is “we”? Also, any writer who unironically and repeatedly uses the term “resilience” has my undying suspicion.
Afraid I have to agree. Al Gore gave us the “talking cure” for the problem and two decades later it has yet to produce results. The crisis is even seen as a way to further promote capitalism as in the case of Tesla. A Tesla that was serious about global warming would be turning out those 12,000 dollar electric cars like the Chinese–perhaps getting the Chinese to do it. For our elites symbolic gestures are seen as enough as they continue to fly around in their Gulfstreams.
Arguably a left that is serious about AGW also has to be serious about socialism. H’wood millionaires may not like this.
If Al Gore had taken the Presidency, would he have stopped at the “talking cure” or would he have attempted some “walking cure” as well?
Alas, we shall never know.
> post-crisis mindset-shifts
i can’t even…
Haha. My black heart is having a chuckle over this piece. Good luck to the author on implementing the action plan at the end.
I will now perform my impression of a western policy maker…(closes eyes envisioning stacks of cash, places front forefingers in ears and whistles “Dixie”).
Turns out humans stink at collaboration.
The chart included in the essay portrays “Collapse” as a place with defined boundaries. Like we all wake up some morning and have a collective realization that, during the night, the planet crossed the border into “Collapse.”
I think we slide into “Collapse” gently: bridge collapse by stranded astronaut by electric transmission line failure by massive wild fire by washed out Pacific Coast Highway by shrinking aquifer by rampant viral epidemic by homeless person by closed manufacturing plant by death of despair. Until it all becomes “Normal.”
This perhaps places me firmly in the ‘realist’ despair camp. Not so. I remain a ‘glass half-full’ person. Although the ‘glass’ may become smaller in time.
I will add that the slide, which is happening in real time, is cloaked in multiple distractions like pandemic, Ukraine, Gaza, Kamalot! The Musical, etc.
There are collapses now in the richer parts of the world, but they are either partial or intermittent. The partial collapses have become more frequent with the arrival of Covid, and can be seen in the drug shortages, empty shelves and rising housing prices that plague us currently. Intermittent collapses are increasing in frequency as well along with severity as storms knock out power for weeks for hundreds of thousands. As institutional competence continues to decline, the partial and intermittent will become more like what the poorer parts of the world experience: there will be no recovery, even partial, and things will get permanently worse and worse. At some point, impacts will be so bad that even the rich will no longer be able to buy their way out of trouble. The partial collapses will spread and become more generalized. Intermittent collapses will become permanent.
Collapse does not mean extinction. While today’s death tolls in the hundreds and occasionally thousands will mushroom to the hundreds of thousands and millions, billions will survive, tens of millions in our country, if we manage to avoid nuclear winter. Among those survivors, existing institutions will have lost all credibility because they will have failed to ameliorate the death and suffering. The dominant paradigm/worldview of “the one who dies with the most toys win” will fall in the face of shortages and economic collapse. The dominant societal goal of “profit uber alles” will become a memory as the consumer society evaporates.
What will replace this paradigm and goal? Octavia Butler explored that in her Parable series and the answer she proposed was a contest between two religious worldviews. The first is already with us: a return to harsh, Bronze Age, patriarchal monotheism that we can find in MAGA, especially now that Latin Mass Catholic J. D. Vance is a VP nominee. The problem is that going back to that Old Time Religion will do nothing to help people cope constructively with the changed reality since its precepts are a big part of what got us into trouble in the first place. Butler’s second contender, called Earthseed, is a better candidate with its Process Theology roots, but Earthseed’s goal of reaching another solar system so that humans might plant their seed seems a silly remnant of the 90s techno-optimism that prevailed in the 90s when Butler wrote the books.
There are currently hundreds of people working on alternative worldviews right now ranging from Erik Assadourian’s Gaianism to John Vervaeke’s quest to solve “The Meaning Crisis” to Jem Bendell’s “Deep Adaptation.” It’s currently unknowable whether any of these efforts will succeed or some worldview will arise from some unexpected source like Butler’s teenage girl whose life was shattered by climate change and social collapse or perhaps a new paradigm will come organically from some presently obscure countercultural praxis. What seems clear to me is that as far as the future is concerned, this is where the important action is taking place, and the author of this piece seems to agree with me:
Bristow’s other priorities, increasing resilience while still striving to reduce carbon pollution, are of more obvious importance, but if we want a better world–and a better world is possible eventually even if it is not one that envisions a giant pick-up in every heated and air-conditioned garage–that search for a new paradigm/worldview is critical.
This is an extinction event. Apex predators are not invited to see what comes next. I hope I am wrong.
The neat thing about species humanimalkind is that we are not limited to being an Apex predator. We are an omnivore. If there is nothing to eat but plants, we can become vegivores.
If there is nothing to eat but rats and roaches, we can become ratsenroachivores. We might not want to, but we can.
I’ve yet to be convinced that scientists have not gotten it wrong with regards to the worst-case scenario.
Carl Sagan once talked about Earth becoming like Venus. For various reasons, climatologists have told us this is farfetched and not possible. The fact that even their worst-case scenarios now seem like wishful thinking, I feel that full planetary extinction is now back on the table.
Humans being gone is one thing, all life is another.
Humans being gone is one thing, all life is another that’s the thing of it.
Jem Bendell did Deep Adaptation in 2018. It made his case in broad strokes that he later worked to clarify. The results were published in 2023 in Breaking Together: A Freedom-Loving Response to Collapse. It is even available as a free download. He calls himself a “Doomster” in contrast to a Doomer. He looks at research on different aspects of collapse, which he believes was underway in even advanced societies by at least 2015, and analyzes the causes to explain why it is happening (basically capitalism made us do it and regulatory capture will prevent fixing it). He opens with a chapter each on economic, monetary, energy, biosphere, climate, food, and societal collapse. He follows with freedom chapters on critical wisdom, “progress,” banking, nature, collapse, and fake green. Chapter 12, for instance, has the title “Freedom to collapse and grow — the doomster way.”
While Bendell thinks our high energy society is doomed to fail, and is already in the early stages of collapse, his doomster attitude is that humanity is not doomed, but rather is in need of finding a way to learn to live within nature, not against it. I would also add that reading what “optimists” say when they get serious, sounds a lot like what Bendell says, without admitting that they are basically describing the same thing. It will not be pretty, safe, or fun (for the most part), but with enough sassy pluck we just might find a way through to a new life that incorporates a synthesis of the best of indigenous and modern thought. So say goodbye to what he calls “Imperial Modernism” because it is dying already. Just plant a garden instead of building fortified silo. That will not work.
Another piece in a long line of hopemonger’s claiming the real problem is doomers’ attitudes.
The fundamental assumption, which is implicit in all these arguments, is that climate change is a linear, gradual process (implying that can always be mitigated by human intervention or mass action) when all the geological evidence of previous eras of climate instability show that it is anything but.
For example, how do you make the curve for the disappearance (collapse) of the Himalayan glaciers shallow? The primary water source of billions in China and India for thousands of years, that will likely disappear in a lifetime if not a handful of decades? The answer is that you don’t. No one can. No nation can. No collection of nations can, even if we stopped dumping all the carbon into the atmosphere tomorrow.
It’s easy to talk about collapse abstractly as something manageable with a vibe shift, but when you look at it materially and empirically, you are confronted with the reality that nature, and the laws of physics undergirding nature, are very much beyond human control or even influence, at this point.
Can we mitigate even worse outcomes? Sure, but we need to be honest that the outcomes that are already baked in, and wholly irreversible, are going to cause the death of billions directly, or indirectly through human conflict. We aren’t going to get the Himalayan glaciers back or the Amazon. And we aren’t going to save them because we are going to keep pumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere for decades, in spite of people’s hopeful attitudes, positive vibes, or militantly delusional optimism.
Yes. Sometimes I wonder if the human mind can comprehend non linear action. Or the enormous scale of the forces in play.
My only quibble is “ decades”. We don’t have decades.
More colorful language and navel-gazing. Dare I ask what the authors are actually doing beyond writing think pieces?
Much like Mark Fisher’s capitalist realism, it appears those who know the severity of the problem are doomed to tell others the necessity of thinking differently, but not much else. This biographical snippet says it all:
Our species doesn’t need more writers – not to mention whatever “the inner dimension of sustainability” means – it needs individuals willing to act in the world. To quite literally get their hands dirty.
But that doesn’t pay the bills and allow you to sit comfortably inside on the computer.
Sorry. It’s hard to think beyond the death and destruction of the two current major wars in to the climate change impact.
I could not disagree more strongly. We must address climate change in the hope of averting some of the worst and most destructive effects.The consequences of the Gaza genocide and the NATO-Russia war amount to village street brawls when set against the looming impact of climate change. To take but one instance, the sharp decline in insect populations has an effect like the ripples spreading around the impact of a stone in water. It touches everything. Again to choose but one effect, what will pollinate food crops when there are fewer and fewer insects? The scale of death and destruction that will occur in even the most optimistic of scenarios will make that of all the wars of the 20th century seem a walk in the park. There is refusal or reluctance to look seriously at what we have collectively caused because to do so means dismantling the present system of the world.
Well, I guess all the power centers on earth getting nuked in the death throes of a lunatic genocidal small west Asian country would change the climate change trajectory. It is a $&@!ty time when you hope to survive the near term apocalypse only to be pretty sure the slow moving one will get you.
heh heh “slow moving”? Which one, nuclear annihilation, pandemic, or climate disaster? A gentle reminder that the Arctic could cough up enough methane this week to off the lot of us.
Point taken. ‘The [relatively] slow moving one[s]’ then
Too complicated. Instead I would suggest just ONE action: imbibe some hopium.
The metaphor I have considered for decades now is when Homer Simpson drives off a cliff, apparently plummeting to his death, then lands in a massive pile of soft garbage and walks away. Our species is determined to drive off the cliff; maybe we’ll get lucky. Sort of the same sentiment as this article, but not framed in annoying NGO speak.
Re ‘mindset’ and ‘crisis of disconnect’ – a main driver IMO is the western concept (or better misconception) of Nature vs Culture. The late anthropologist Marshall Sahlins wrote a great essay (or pamphlet) on this:
https://irows.ucr.edu/cd/courses/202a/sahlins.pdf
Although he doesn’t explicitely focus on or even mentions our ‘environmental business’ the implications IMO are quite clear. Unfortunately this misconception has spread all over the world like (or with) capitalism, but I still think that non-western cultures stand a better chance of getting behind this. That’s another reason we need multipolarity with a strict respect for different cultures and viewpoints.
I think comments are pretty accurate. The limitations of the article are, missing critique of capitalism and those who control the world’s finances. Without this included, the reality is those making decisions will prioritize quarterly returns and their own piles of gold. Meanwhile billions will die and extinction is not unlikely.
However there is the possibility that revolution can occur. Change does happen, and crisis, the beginnings of already arriving, does provoke faster change.
I think game theory suggests that we are truly doomed unless trustworthy cooperation can be achieved
Neoliberalism is not helping
Seems like the US military, and the three-letter agencies, probably have fairly accurate projections of the ensuing jackpot. Obvioulsy, there will be bits and pieces ssquirting out, and stickie-outies, but the general trajectory and time line are probably well studied and fairly accurately plotted. And not shared broadly.
Oh, and that’s not the exclusive domain of USA. Many nation states are acting and projecting in the same way.
And the billionaires are prepping like crazy. I’m sure they have also seen the projections.
I hope that enough remnants of the non-rich majority survive to be able to create and place action teams of “left behinds” and “lie in waits” so that when the time comes, they can either kill all the billionaires in their bunkers, or kill them all when they come up out of their bunkers.
There was a study that the Pentagon did about ten, twenty years ago which led them to have a plan. Basically, America would pull up the drawbridges and keep everybody out. But that the elites in place like Europe would be allowed in as they would have their money with them which must have been a huge relief to people like Ursula von der Leyen.
Seems to me the US government certainly is NOT interested in pulling up the “bridges” when one takes a look at what has been happening at our southern border the last few years, if not decades.
What is “money”? What will it buy after an apocalypse?
The future is taking shape in the dark corners of our world now, where the wealthy can’t bear to look and the authorities struggle to maintain their control. It’s shaping up to be quite messy.
I didn’t make it past the authors’ bios:
who currently leads on public narrative and policy development for the Inner Development Goals
working primarily in public climate narrative and the inner dimension of sustainability
“we can direct our energies towards minimising impacts and preparing for a more resilient and beautiful future.”
Nile River cruises on special offer. Row your own boat and enjoy the cool breezes and beautiful scenery. (sarc)
I like Michael Dowd’s view of denial: it is an adaptive response to a predicament from which extraction is impossible. At an individual level it is probably kinder to allow it.
When I see such articles I am befuddled as to how the authors convince themselves that they are saying ANYTHING meaningful or actually providing advice at all. Nothing that takes as it’s starting point juxtaposing a couple of emotions in a completely abstracted form and trying to juggle a hypothetical balance between them while avoiding material analysis altogether is likely to go anyplace at all.
Gramsci coined “pessimism of the mind, optimism of the will” nigh on a century ago, and without inflicting a batch of cloudy jargon on his readers.
This sort of thing falls under Pauli’s “not even false” criticism.
Starting with my main point: Resiliency and hopium did not save any of the myriad of collapsed human civilizations littering the millennia (h/t to fall of civ’s podcast https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com).
So why is this time different? All these societies had doomers and optimists.
The point that stuck in my craw was that “Resiliency” is the solution. There is a world of difference between:
1. Resiliency in power grid engineering against severe ice storms (Texas, listening?)
2. Resiliency in the face of a series of Force 6 hurricanes that obliterated the southeast grid (Texas to Florida), without replacement transformers, tens of millions displaced and desperate (and armed) and hungry, oil importation and refining collapsed or blocked, most of the solar panels and wind turbines smashed, and China unwilling to sell the US replacements due to the war the US started over Taiwan. Heck, let’s toss in the strategic petroleum reserve emptied to boost a re-election bid (despite running two wars and considering a third, each of which could blow out of control).
In the latter case, resiliency requies post-apocalypse (doomer-prepper) systems, aka Mad Max.
Had I been asked me at the Cold War’s end; Resiliency would be the construction of a fair and well-integrated global system wherein different regions of the globe could and would help out those in need. Events since have largely trended in the other direction. And that is the worst neglected part of the discussion – it neglects human nature as it has manifested for the recent years / decades / centuries (consider the age of colonialism). Any solution must be a solution that works “in spite of” human nature.
Personally, I follow the zen path: Do what I can to counter climate change because it is the right path, not because I expect it to succeed or not succeed.
My reaction as well. The only future I can envision is Mad Max with more guns and less gasoline.
As UC Santa Cruz sociology Professor emeritus Andy Szaz quipped a decade ago, we’re “Shopping Our Way to Safety” — but it is our own mass consumption that is the problem. I try to consume better, but I’m not planning on going Amish any time soon…
Just make certain you know how to grow a veggie garden and raise chickens….
Post-apocalypse will be different, depending on the cultures and state/community levels of organization and abasyia…
It is not yet clear to me whether Anglo-Saxon neo-liberal infused societies will indeed move to Mad-Max or something different.
Realistically, I think Venus-level atmosphere is probably already baked in, and given human nature, nothing is going to change to stop the vast environmental processes we have already set in motion. Perhaps once all existing life has extinguished, the earth will repair itself in some millions or billions of years, and new life forms will emerge.
In the meantime, EnjoyTheApocalypse (TM). Our epitaph will be: “Their models sucked”
Who said it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism?
It appears (to me) they will come at the same time.
I enjoy being a pessimist because that way all the surprises are to the upside.