The Archdruid Report: Climate Change Activism: A Post-Mortem

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Climate Change Activism: A Post-Mortem

As I write these words, much of North America is sweltering under near-tropical heat and humidity. Parts of the Middle East have set all-time high temperatures for the Old World, coming within a few degrees of Death Valley’s global record. The melting of the Greenland ice cap has tripled in recent years, and reports from the arctic coast of Siberia describe vast swathes of tundra bubbling with methane as the permafrost underneath them melts in 80°F weather. Far to the south, seawater pours through the streets of Miami Beach whenever a high tide coincides with an onshore wind; the slowing of the Gulf Stream, as the ocean’s deep water circulation slows to a crawl, is causing seawater to pile up off the Atlantic coast of the US, amplifying the effect of sea level rise.

All these things are harbingers of a profoundly troubled future. All of them were predicted, some in extensive detail, in the print and online literature of climate change activism over the last few decades. Not that long ago, huge protest marches and well-funded advocacy organizations demanded changes that would prevent these things from happening, and politicians mouthed slogans about stopping global warming in its tracks. Somehow, though, the marchers went off to do something else with their spare time, the advocacy organizations ended up preaching to a dwindling choir, and the politicians started using other slogans to distract the electorate.

The last gasp of climate change activism, the COP-21 conference in Paris late last year, resulted in a toothless agreement that binds no nation anywhere on earth to cut back on the torrents of greenhouse gases they’re currently pumping into the atmosphere. The only commitments any nation was willing to make amounted to slowing, at some undetermined point in the future, the rate at which the production of greenhouse gas pollutants is increasing. In the real world, meanwhile, enough greenhouse gases have already been dumped into the atmosphere to send the world’s climate reeling; sharp cuts in greenhouse gas output, leading to zero net increase in atmospheric CO₂ and methane by 2050 or so, would still not have been enough to stop extensive flooding of coastal cities worldwide and drastic unpredictable changes in the rain belts that support agriculture and keep all seven billion of us alive. The outcome of COP-21 simply means that we’re speeding toward even more severe climatic disasters with the pedal pressed not quite all the way to the floor.

Thus it’s not inappropriate to ask what happened to all the apparent political momentum the climate change movement had ten or fifteen years ago, and why a movement so apparently well organized, well funded, and backed by so large a scientific consensus failed so completely.

In my experience, at least, if you raise this question among climate change activists, the answer you’ll get is that there was a well-funded campaign that deployed disinformation against them. So? Every movement for social change in human history has been confronted by well-funded vested interests that deployed disinformation against them. Consider the struggle for same-sex marriage, which triumped during the same years that saw climate change activism go down to defeat. The disinformation deployed against same-sex marriage was epic in its scale as well as its raw dishonesty—do you recall the claims that ministers would be forced to perform gay weddings, and that letting same-sex couples marry would cause society to fall apart? I do—and yet the movement for same-sex marriage brushed that aside and achieved its goal.

Blaming the failure of climate change activism entirely on the opposition, in other words, is a copout. It’s also a way to avoid learning the lessons of failure—and here as elsewhere, those who ignore their history are condemned to repeat it. Other movements for social change faced comparable opposition and overcame it, while climate change activism failed to do so; that’s the difference that needs to be discussed, and it leads inexorably to a consideration of the mistakes that were made by the movement.

The most important mistakes, to my mind, are these:

First, the climate change movement was largely led and directed by scientists, and as discussed here two weeks ago, people with a scientific education suck at politics. Over and over again, the leaders of the climate change movement waved around their credentials and told everyone else what to do, in the fond delusion that that’s an adequate way to bring about political change. Not so; too many people outside the scientific community have watched scientific opinion whirl around like a weathercock on too many issues; too many products labeled safe and effective by qualified scientists have been put on the market, and then turned out to be ineffective and unsafe; too many people simply don’t trust the guys in the white lab coats any more—and some of them have valid reasons for that lack of trust. Thus a movement that based its entire political strategy on the prestige of science was hamstrung from the start.

Second, the climate change movement made the same mistake that the Remain side made in the recent Brexit vote in the UK, and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign seems to be making on this side of the pond: it formulated its campaign in purely negative terms. David Cameron failed because he couldn’t talk about anything except how dreadful it would be if Britain left the EU, and Clinton’s campaign is failing because her supporters can’t talk about anything but the awfulness of Donald Trump. In exactly the same way, the climate change movement spent all its time harping about the global catastrophes that were going to happen if they didn’t get their way, and never really got around to talking about anything else—and so it failed, too.

I’m not sure why this sort of strategy has become such a broken record in contemporary political life, because it simply doesn’t work. People have heard it so many times, if all you can talk about is how awful this or that or the other thing is, they will roll their eyes and walk away. To win their interest, their enthusiasm, and their votes, you have to offer them something to look forward to. That doesn’t mean you have to promise rainbows and jellybeans; you can promise them blood, toil, tears, and sweat; you can warn them of a long struggle ahead and call them to shared sacrifice, and they’ll eat it up—but there has to be a light at the end of the tunnel, something that doesn’t just amount to the indefinite continuation of a miserably unsatisfactory status quo.

The climate change movement never noticed that, and so people quickly got tired of the big bass drum going “doom, doom, doom,” all the time, and wandered away. It didn’t have to be like that; the climate change movement could have front-and-centered the vision of a grand new era of green industry, with millions of new working-class jobs blossoming as America leapt ahead of the oh-so-twentieth-century fossil-fueled economies of other nations, but it apparently never occurred to anyone to do that. Instead, the climate change movement did a really fine impression of a crowd of officious busybodies trotting out round after round of doleful jeremiads about the awful future that would swallow us up if we didn’t do what they said, and that did about as much good as it usually does.

Third, the climate change movement inflicted a disastrous own goal on itself by insisting that nobody with scientific credentials ever claimed that an ice age was imminent, when anybody over fifty whose memory is intact knows that that’s simply not true. Any of my readers who are minded to debate this point should get and read the following books from the 1970s and 1980s: The Weather Machine by Nigel Calder, After the Ice by E.C. Pielou, and Ice Ages by Windsor Chorlton and the editors of Time Life Books. These were very popular in their time, and they’re all available on the used book market for a few bucks each, as the links I’ve just given demonstrate. Nigel Calder was a respected science writer; E.C. Pielou is still the doyenne of Canadian field ecologists, and the third book was part of Time Life Book’s Planet Earth series, each volume of which was supervised by scientific experts in the relevant fields. All three books discuss the coming of a new ice age as the most likely future state of Earth’s climate.

While you’re at it, you might also pick up a couple of really good science fiction novels, The Winter of the World by Poul Anderson and The Time of the Great Freeze by Robert Silverberg. Anderson and Silverberg were major SF authors in the 1960s and 1970s, at a time when success in the genre depended on close attention to scientific fact, and both authors drew on what were then considered credible forecasts of an approaching ice age to ground their stories about the future. If you’re going to insist, along the lines of George Orwell’s 1984, that Oceania has never been allied with Eurasia, you’d better make sure that nobody’s in a position to check. If they can, and they discover that you’re lying, your chance to convince them to trust you about anything else has just gone out the window once and for all. That’s how a great many people responded to the climate change movement’s attempt to rewrite history and erase the ice age scare of the 1970s and 1980s.

Every time I’ve brought up this issue among climate change activists, they’ve responded by insisting that I must be a climate change denialist. That’s the fourth factor that’s contributed mightily to the crumpling of the climate change movement: the rise within that movement of a culture of intolerance in which dissent is demonized and asking questions about tactics and strategy is equated with disloyalty. I’m thinking here especially, though not only, of an embarrassing screed by climate change activist Naomi Oreskes, which insisted with a straight face that asking questions about whether renewables can replace fossil fuels is “a new form of climate denialism”. As it happens, there are serious practical questions about whether anything—renewable or otherwise—can replace fossil fuels and still allow the inmates of today’s industrial societies to maintain their current lifestyles, but Oreskes doesn’t want to hear it: for her, loyalty to the cause demands blindness to the facts. As a way to alienate potential allies and drive away existing supporters, that attitude’s hard to beat.

Stunning political naïveté, a purely negative campaign, a disastrous own goal through a constantly repeated and easily detected falsehood, and an internal culture of intolerance and demonization: those four factors would have been a heavy burden for any movement for social change, and any two of them would most likely have caused the failure of climate change activism all by themselves. There was, however, another factor at work, and to my mind it was the most important of all.

To understand that fifth factor, it’s useful to return to a distinction I made here two weeks ago between facts, values, and interests. Facts are simply statements of what happened, what’s happening, and what will happen given X set of conditions—the things, in other words, that science is supposed to be about. Whether or not anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are causing the global climate to spin out of control, whether or not books published in the 1970s and 1980s by reputable scientists and science writers predicted a coming ice age, whether or not the project of replacing fossil fuels with renewable resources faces serious difficulties—these are questions of fact.

Facts by themselves simply state a case. Values determine what we should do about them. Consider the factual statement “unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for an ongoing increase in weather-related disasters.” If the rate of weather-related disasters doesn’t concern you, that fact doesn’t require any action from you; it’s when you factor in “weather-related disasters ought to be minimized where possible,” which is a value judgment, that you can go on to “therefore we should cut greenhouse gas emissions.” Not all value judgments are as uncontroversial as the one just named, but we can let that pass for now, because it’s the third element that’s at issue in the present case.

Beyond facts and values are interests: who benefits and who loses from any given public policy. If, let’s say, we decide that greenhouse gas emissions should be cut, the next step takes us squarely into the realm of interests. Whose pocketbook gets raided to pay for the cuts? Whose lifestyle choices are inconvenienced by them? Whose jobs are eliminated because of them? The climate change movement has by and large treated these as irrelevant details, but they’re nothing of the kind. Politics is always about interests. If you want your facts to be accepted and your values taken seriously, you need to be able to respond to people’s interests—to offer an arrangement whereby everybody gets something they need out of the deal, and no one side has to carry all the costs.

That, in turn, is exactly what the climate change movement has never gotten around to doing.

I’d like to suggest a thought experiment here, to show just how the costs and benefits offered by the climate change movement stacked up. Let’s imagine, for a moment, that there’s an industry in today’s industrial nations that churns out colossal amounts of greenhouse gases every single day. It doesn’t produce anything necessary for human life or well-being; it’s simply a convenience, and one that, not that many decades ago, most people in the industrial world did without and never thought they’d need. If it were to be shut down, sure, a certain number of people would lose their jobs, but most of the steps that have been urged by climate change activists would have that effect; other than that, and a certain amount of inconvenience for its current users, the only result would be a sharp decrease in the amount of carbon dioxide and certain other greenhouse gases being dumped into the atmosphere. That being the case, shouldn’t climate change activists get to work right now to shut down that industry, and shouldn’t they start off by boycotting it themselves?

The industry in question actually exists. It’s the commercial air travel industry.

You may have noticed, dear reader, that nobody in the climate change movement has been out there protesting commercial air travel, and precious few of them are even willing to cut back on their flying time, even though commercial air travel a massive contributor to the problems the movement claims to be fighting. I know of two scientists researching climate change who have pointed out that there’s something just a little bit hypocritical about flying all over the world on jetliners to attend conferences discussing how we all have to decrease our carbon footprint! Their colleagues, needless to say, haven’t listened. Neither has the rest of the climate change movement; like Al Gore, who might as well be their poster child, they keep on racking up their frequent flyer miles.

On the other hand, climate change activists are eager to shut down coal mining. What’s the most significant difference between coal mining and commercial air travel? Coal mining provides wages for the working poor; commercial air travel provides amenities for the affluent.

The difference isn’t accidental, either. Across the board, the climate change movement has pushed for changes that will penalize people in what I’ve called the wage class, the majority of Americans who depend on an hourly wage for their income. The movement has gone out of its way to avoid pushing for changes that will penalize people in what I’ve called the salary class, the affluent minority of Americans who bring home a monthly salary. That isn’t a minor point. There’s the hard fact that, on average, the more money you make, the bigger your carbon footprint is—but there’s also a political issue, and it goes to the heart of the failure of the climate change movement.

I’ve had any number of well-meaning climate change activists ask me, in tones of baffled despair, why they can’t get ordinary Americans to take climate change seriously. My answer is not one they want to hear, because I tell them that it’s because well-meaning climate change activists don’t take climate change seriously. If you don’t care enough about the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere to accept some inconveniences to your own lifestyle, how much do you actually care about it? That’s the kind of logic that ordinary Americans use all the time to judge whether someone is serious about a cause or simply grandstanding, and by and large, climate change activism fails that sniff test.

Ordinary Americans, furthermore, are all too used to seeing grandiose rhetoric deployed by the affluent to load yet another round of burdens onto ordinary Americans. It’s not the affluent, after all, who have been inconvenienced by the last thirty years of environmental regulations, trade treaties, or what have you. To wage class Americans, anthropogenic climate change is just more of the same, another excuse to take jobs away from the working poor while sedulously avoiding anything that would inconvenience the middle and upper middle classes. The only way climate change activists could have evaded that response from wage class Americans would have been to demonstrate that they were willing to carry some of the costs themselves—and that was exactly what they weren’t willing to do.

The bitter irony in all this, of course, is that the climate change movement was right about two very important things all along: treating the atmosphere as a gaseous sewer in which to dump wastes from our smokestacks and tailpipes was a really dumb idea, and the blowback from that idiocy is going to cost us—all of us—in blood. Right now all three of the earth’s major ice caps—the Greenland, West Antarctic, and East Antarctic ice sheets—have tipped over into instability; climate belts are lurching drunkenly north and south, putting agriculture at risk in far more places than a crowded, hungry planet can afford; drought-kindled wildfires in the American and Canadian west and in Siberia are burning out of control...and unless something significant changes, it’s just going to keep on getting worse, year after year, decade after decade, until every coastal city on the planet is under water, the western half of North America is as dry as the Sahara, glaciers and snowfall are distant memories, and famine, war, and disease have left the human population of the planet a good deal smaller than it is today.

That didn’t have to happen. It might still be possible to avoid the worst of it, if enough people who are concerned about climate change stop pretending that their own lifestyles aren’t part of the problem, stop saying “personal change isn’t enough” and pretending that this means personal change isn’t necessary, stop trying to push all the costs of change onto people who’ve taken it in the teeth for decades already, and show the only kind of leadership that actually counts—yes, that’s leadership by example. It would probably help, too, if they stopped leaning so hard on the broken prestige of science, found a positive vision of the future to talk about now and then, backed away from trying to rewrite the recent past, and dropped the habit of demonizing honest disagreement. Still, to my mind, the crucial thing is that the affluent liberals who dominate the climate change movement are going to have to demonstrate that they’re willing to take one for the team.

Will they? I’d love to be proved wrong, but I doubt it—and in that case we’re in for a very rough road in the centuries ahead.

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On a less dismal note, I’m pleased to report that the print edition of The Archdruid Report is up and running, and copies of the first monthly issue will be heading out soon. There’s still time to subscribe, if you like getting these posts in a less high-tech and more durable form; please visit the Stone Circle Press website.

372 comments:

doomerdoc said...

Let me pour some ice onto everybody reading this blog who would consider themselves fairly comfortable, income and money wise. Nothing wrong with that, but let me just pour the ice.

The vast majority of people on this planet, including the developed world, have one thing on their minds...how they are going to pay for food and housing. That, and that alone, is the only thing that even keeps them showing up for work, let alone getting involved in anything political or activism of any sort.

You think they are going to get involved in anything as esoteric as climate change?

So you have to convince people that without climate action, they don't have food, jobs, or housing. But that's not exactly correct, is it, because the system, the vast burning of fossil fuels, is the only thing providing them with food, jobs, and housing! Quite the catch-22.

7/27/16, 3:20 PM

Bill Pulliam said...

Decades ago I came to essentially the same conclusion you reach, via not exactly the same chain of thought. Sadly I feel we have reached the point where all I can personally do is monitor and adjust. I still try to reduce my carbon footprint (which is already negative considering how much carbon I am allowing the vegetation on our 40 acres to do its own thing rather than "managing" it). Just because murder is inevitable doesn't mean I should not worry about commiting it. But I think our large-scale fate is about as close to sealed as it could be. And I am willing to continue enjoying some of the fruits of this horrendously unsustainable and destructive civilization for the time in which these fruits continue to be available.

7/27/16, 3:33 PM

4threvolutionarywar said...

Great Essay! (As usual)

A couple of points:

-There are really serious questions about whether it will EVER be possible to construct a radical political coalition around "Environmental" issues. Humans are not wired to self-organize around carbon particles per million. So many apparently smart and well meaning people have devoted so much time and energy to this project, that I tend to suspect it failed because it is a political dead end that leads nowhere.

-I have been a radical environmentalist since the Reagan era, and in that time I have been exposed to more doomsday theories than I can count. The American environmental movement has produced is a vast literature of impending doomsday going back to the sixties and before. Most of it is extremely embarrassing at this point, but everyone who was skeptical about it at the time was treated to exactly the same moral and intellectual arrogance that is now on display in the "Climate Change" movement.

-Every previous prediction of immanent doom turned out to be wrong, and now you have a terminal credibility problem even with people (like myself) who are already convinced that consumerist civilization is fundamentally incompatible with the survival of the natural world.

-The primary strategy for dealing with this credibility problem has been to demonize anyone who doesn't agree with you as a holocaust denier or a retarded cretin. That strategy only works within your own bobo in-group. When you tell someone outside of your in-group that they are a retard or a moral abomination, you are insulting them and making them into a bitter enemy. (Why is this so hard for Liberals to understand?)

-So please understand, that when you accuse someone of being a "Denialist" (or a cretin or a paid shill of big oil) because they have some skepticism about your latest doomsday theory, you are showing them the door. You can't build real political coalitions by driving people out.

-Akira

7/27/16, 3:35 PM

Leo Knight said...

Check out "Trespassing Across America," by Ken Ilgunas. He hikes most of the length of the Keystone XL pipeline, and encounters some of the issues you raise here. I reviewed it at Goodreads (sorry, couldn't get my phone to make a link). The poverty, the desire for well paying jobs, the devil's deal endangering water sources (especially the Ogallala Aquifer), the hatred of environmentalists and liberals. He mentions that the Great Plains used to be called the Great American Desert, and in prehistoric times suffered droughts lasting centuries. Everything old is new again!

7/27/16, 3:44 PM

Caryn said...

Thank You, JMG. Nailed it! As usual.

Wild-fires here in Dubois WY. We are 10 miles from the flames, not yet, but presumably soon to be put on "Set", (then "Ready", then "Go" for evacuation). 950 people already evacuated, unknown number of livestock evacuated, Red Cross shelters set up at the local high school, 11,000 acres lost so far. 750 firefighters, helicopters, 747 jets dropping fire retardant mass coordination on the State level and as of yet, no containment. The air is thick with wood smoke, stinging my eyes and making it a bit hard to breathe.

It's being called a natural progression or cycle, the rejuvenation of the forests: Dried out timber burning to clear out for new growth - just not on human-pleasing timescales. In fact, We've seen this coming for decades: Winters for the past few decades have not gotten cold enough for long enough to kill the pine beetles, resulting in more and growing swaths of dead trees, not to mention lack of pine nuts, (the grizzly bears' favourite food), so not enough for them to eat, and therefore more grizzlies coming down into towns, ranches and campsites to forage and more grizzly (pun intended) deaths, (to tourists and bears alike.)

Perhaps this is #6: Fires like this ARE in fact a natural occurance. The forests DO rejuvenate this way, but Climate Change in the form of slightly warmer winters has made the dried dead zone of trees far bigger than it would normally be. One argument from the anti-climate change camp I've heard & read over and over again is that the weather disruptions we are experiencing are just unfortunate examples of nature's cycles. Sunspots, forest rejuvenation, etc. nothing we did and nothing we can do about it. In such exchanges, Climate Change Activists have usually denied these claims at all. From both sides there seems to be a need for it to be one or the other - proving me right / you wrong, or vice versa. It is sometimes both.

7/27/16, 3:44 PM

Venkataraman Amarnath said...

There is at least one scientist who practices what he preaches. Check Peter Kalmus's Life with 1/10th the Fossil Fuel - Turns Out to Be Awesome at becycling.life

7/27/16, 3:50 PM

John Conner said...

Slow down and take the Train. Have not been on a plane in 15 years. Miss the places, Beijing, Budapest, Brazil, Taiwan but not the trip too and from. Most of it was to work on railroads of all things.

There were some good plans for medium high speed rail back in 2008-2010. But the affluent conservatives (who couldn't conserve anything if they had to) did a good job shutting them down - by complaining they wouldn't be fast enough. Some of the plans for the Ohio area as I remember were absolute competition for the airlines. Travel between Cincinnati and Cleavland would be cheaper and only marginally slower than a commuter flight. And most of the base infrastructure was already available. Just needed upgrades and repair, along with rolling stock.

Oh well, not much hope until a really major event happens. And it will have to be too big to ignor. I'm not sure a Blue Water event (Ice free Arctic) or loss of one of the Antarctic Ice shelves would be enough.

7/27/16, 3:50 PM

Cacaogecko said...

Do you see any of these fancy environmentalists digging in the dirt, chopping weeds, planting beans, raising and slaughtering and plucking their chicken dinner, etc? They know next to nothing about working on the land, having never done it.

7/27/16, 4:01 PM

M Smith said...

John Michael, this is one of your best. A poetic post-mortem that breaks it down into digestible pieces and puts them all together. Beautifully summarized.

Timely, too. I won't hijack the forum with a Microsoft rant but shall we just say that after my driving 4 hours round trip yesterday through a dangerous city in dangerously hot temperatures to avail myself of an advertised, free, and for several reasons mandatory service, I realized that a personal web device is no longer worth the trouble. And when I decide a thing ain't fun no more, it stops.

I don't intend to get offline completely, but will use public computers every couple of days. No smart phone, no laptop, no tablet, nothing. I figure even one less "device" in the world is a good thing, just like one car off the road. But my practical and selfish reason is it's just too hard and taking too much of my time on Earth to keep up with MS's ever-changing software, each version as bad as the last, making it their customers' problem to keep "upgraded", hiring beautiful young people with big friendly smiles and the inability to check the properties of a hard disk to staff their help desks at the mall. They have machines now that recognize a fingerprint as authorization instead of a password, but that same machine will allow a virus that was known of 4 years ago to take over the operating system from online. This is Progress. Or is it a Wealth Pump?

It's more than frustration and expense, though. I don't know if I can put it into words, but it's become a matter of personal pride in the way in which I conduct my life. I want to stop rewarding people who churn out cheap, flawed, dangerous garbage which, even more than air travel, uses scarce resources for a luxury.

I've said that before, but this time I feel as if I have some big decisions to make about the direction I go for the next part of my life. I'm scared. It is an addiction. When I thought I'd lose my connection, my sleep patterns got disrupted and it was as if a huge gray boulder were in the room when I woke up, because I had to do battle with MS again today. Then I decided to change my perspective and pretend I'd already been offline for 6 months. What would I be doing right now? I'd be wandering around in my pasture looking for wild animals or anything else interesting, that's what. So, I went and did that - and found myself smiling for the first time that day.

7/27/16, 4:09 PM

Troy Jones said...

This post deserves a standing ovation. I have long felt a person will have much better luck changing the world with their example than with their opinion.

The pushback I seem to hear the most is that "there isn't time" to change people's thinking through positive examples that lead to voluntary, widespread adoption of more green-ish lifestyles. Instead, we are told, action must come primarily through legislation and regulation. The fact that the costs of said legislation and regulation burden developing countries (and the poor of this country) while not so much as even inconveniencing the affluent of this country is not something a polite person is supposed to notice. "Those people will just have to make do with less so I can maintain my opulent lifestyle." Yeah, I'm sure that attitude will change lots of hearts and minds.

If I say I believe my house is burning down and I will die if I don't leave the house right now, but then I sit down on the sofa and turn on the TV, apparently settling in for a night of brain-rotting boobtube, do I really believe my house is burning down? Lots of people wonder why "the right" simply does not believe the "consensus of experts" in regards to anthropogenic climate change. This is not too hard to figure out. They don't believe it because so many on "the left" plainly don't believe it either. Certainly Al Gore doesn't. Why should anyone take anything he says seriously?

Of course I know the messenger's character has nothing to do with the validity of the message, etc. At the same time, it is a natural human reaction to look at someone whose hypocrisy is in full view and say, "well, clearly he doesn't believe a word of that sermon he's preaching, so why should I?"

7/27/16, 4:11 PM

David, by the lake said...

A sobering essay, John. Thank you.

7/27/16, 4:16 PM

Bozack said...

I am sure that JMG is correct and that climate changer activists needed to lead from the front in terms of changing their own life-styles in order to not seem hypocritical. I wonder if a spiritual element could have transformed the sacrifice into something more palatable? Successful activism in the recent past, i.e. anti-draft Vietnam protest, civil rights and same-sex marriage, was driven by the possibility of improvement in life-quality for the activists involved, while climate change activists (if honest) needed to argue for something less palatable: suffer discomfort and inconvenience now, or we and future generations will suffer a lot more in the future: a hard sell both to oneself and to the rest of the world.

Not sure how many movements have succeeded on those terms: maybe Communism sort of fits the bill - the architects were middle class people who seemed willing to embrace suffering and loss of position in order to speed up an inevitable transition to a new society and minimise war and chaos... Are there lessons from that type of movement? I have certainly read people who described Communism in terms of Christianities Holy Trinity - maybe there was a compelling way to latch climate change activism onto such pre-existing paradigms?

7/27/16, 4:19 PM

Marcu said...

Dear Mr. Greer,

I find your timing unnervingly prescient. Yesterday I had the opportunity to see an early screening of the film The Age of Consequences here in Melbourne. I think it was a good film. Probably one of the best in the genre. They cleverly chose to go with the US military angle and focused on increase of global instability with the hope of appealing to a more right of centre audience.
The majority of the film consists of striking visuals from around the world with snippets of interviews from mostly retired military leaders. While the film was mostly negative it did end with the obligatory fly-over shot of a field of wind turbines and solar panels.
Afterwards the lights went on, people took out their smartphones, checked for any important messages they might have missed and life went on. I found the silence with regard to taking personal action deafening. During the panel discussion one of the panelists implored that we needed to do three things as soon as possible. Firstly we need to stop all greenhouse emissions tomorrow. Secondly, we need to remove excess C02 from the atmosphere (how this was to be achieved was not mentioned but it was stated that natural methods would take too long). Thirdly we need to look at controlling solar reflection which I assume is a code word for geo-engineering.
I was wondering how many of the people around me would have been willing to make sacrifices to their own lives in order to try and mitigate the unfolding effects of climate change that was being portrayed on screen.
One of the questions from an audience member at the end was how soon he could get a link for the film to send to his Facebook friends, which constitutes the full breadth of activism from most people.
I have to agree with you that I would love to be proven wrong but I won’t be holding my breath.

#############################

The next meeting of the Green Wizard's Association of Melbourne will be held this Saturday. All interested parties are invited to attend. For those people who are unsure about the nature of our meetings, imagine a long descent support group with some intentional living discussion mixed in.

If you are interested to join us, meet us on Saturday the 30th of July 2016 at 13:00. The venue is, Vapiano, 347 Flinders Lane, Melbourne Victoria, Australia.

Send queries and comments to limitstogrowth1972[at]gmail.com.

Just look for the green wizard's hat.

P.S. I have created a webpage where I will post the details of the next meeting and any further details for those who don't frequent the comments here. The webpage can be found at wormlamp.com/gwam

7/27/16, 4:20 PM

Cherokee Organics said...

Hi JMG,

Yeah, I've always been surprised at how the political campaigns have focused on the alternative message (i.e. negative outcomes) as a motivating agency. You know, when I was young marketing people used to say, don't talk about the oppositions products because that is what the public will hear. That fixation on negative outcomes leads people to consider that the promoted negative outcomes are inevitable. I mean look at Brexit. Oh, it will be so awful leaving the Euro. What do people hear: Leave the Euro.

I thought that they were smarter than that. It is very basic marketing.

What do you mean that Oceania has never been allied with Eurasia? Look, I don't want you to be thought of as an alliance denier, but Big Brother said... :-)! Hehe!!!

The last person I spoke with at Greenpeace, when I pointed out that none of this stuff all around us was sustainable in the long term said to me: I feel sorry for you dude. Well, I was pretty offended to say the least.

Naomi Oreskes is just wrong. Renewables will supplement the decline in the availability of fossil fuels, but they will never replace them in a like for like comparison as they are different. I've done the experiment and the results are not encouraging. They're good, but not a replacement. Of course, renewables is what our species will end up using in the long term, but it won't look like renewables today. It will be more like renewable energy in the 18th century (wind mills, water mills, wood, charcoal, sunlight collected by plants). Of course, electricity is out of the bag now and simple items and simple generators are exactly that, simple. They'll be around, no doubts about it and it was very nice of our ancestors to dig up and refine all those rare Earth materials. Just sayin...

It is a very difficult proposition to maintain credibility on the issue of global warming and travel. It is not impossible, but very difficult. People as a general rule aren't stupid and they have a very good radar for detecting hypocrisy. And that whole issue as you rightly pointed out offends peoples sensibilities and sense of entitlement. Travel is also part of the pay back for co-operating with the system as it stands.

cont...

7/27/16, 4:21 PM

jim said...

John
Although I agree with all your points, I think the big reason we haven't solved the problem of climate change is that there is no energy source that has the same or better qualities than fossil fuels. The dense concentrated energy in fossil fuels is really hard to beat. And we have a huge sunk investment in fossil fuel infrastructure and technology.

As an aside, i am keeping tabs on high altitude wind power.
euanmearns.com/high-altitude-wind-power-reviewed/
If this technology pans out, it should have a very high EROEI more than 100.
But of course there is a limit on how much wind power you can extract before you start having climate impacts.

7/27/16, 4:21 PM

Cherokee Organics said...

Perspective is a funny thing. I didn't find your essay today dismal at all. In fact, I see the many issues that you have discussed as more of an inevitability rather than a choice thing for humanity. That may get some people pretty angry, but from my perspective, once we started burning coal all those years ago, we were done for. It is like a giant test really. We've got this super duper energy source and can we set hard limits on its use and our relationship to it? Probably not. Life is like that as you are well aware. Because I grew up largely unsupervised, nobody got around to telling me that I was meant to expect limitlessness!!! It is kind of funny but true.

And the pay back for people throwing their support behind the burn, baby, burn, fossil fuel inferno is quite good (excuse my little 70's disco pun!). Marketers would describe that pay back as the: unique selling proposition. I once heard a young lady candidly saying that what she was looking for in a guy were three things: House; Job; and car. And therein is the pay back and of course that leads to the unstated promise of enjoying a family in security. That is why people get so fearful when they feel that their security is threatened...

On the other hand, nobody told me that those things were desirable, and I must say that I found working at the top end of town in a corporate gig for many long years to be mind bendingly dull. Life doesn't have to be that way, and I am having more fun now than I ever had before. Is it tough and challenging and impose serious limitations on my choices? And is it risky? Yeah, you bet, but I've seen worse, far worse and I can tell you what dismal actually is and wondering when your head is going to be next on the corporate chopping block is far worse and probably far more inevitable. And when I was very young bloke in my first full time job, they chopped my job at the height of the recession, so there is no love for them from me.

Cheers

Chris

7/27/16, 4:21 PM

Cherokee Organics said...

Hi doomerdoc,

Hmmm. Most people outside of the developed world aren't stupid enough to rely on purchased food for day to day survival. I suggest you consider your own reliance on that system.

I recall a story which may or may not be correct, in that the English historically imposed a household tax in parts of Africa which forced people to become involved in the monetary economy not because the people wanted to purchase food, it was because they had to pay the taxes. Just sayin... Tell me if you believe this still happens today?

Cheers

Chris

7/27/16, 4:26 PM

Shane W said...

It's always weird when I comment on something on the previous post, and it ends up being the theme the next week. Sometimes, I wonder if I triggered something, then my ego deflates and I think, "I'm sure he must've already had that planned."

7/27/16, 4:28 PM

YCS said...

Hi JMG,
When anyone in the middle-class suggests cutting down on some comforts, their suggestions are met with horror. I like to shock people by telling them that I loathe driving, not only the action, which is boring, tiring and repetitive, but also the idea of personal transport, which I strongly believe is ecologically immoral. Almost every instance I've been shouted down as a Luddite.

Another great example: in the consultancy I worked at over the winter break, half our team (high earning executives) flew to Canberra from Melbourne or Sydney for four days a week. All of them are so called 'intellectual' and 'educated' types, yet I heard them boast that 'flying is like taking a train earlier'. Of course, I could've asked them why they didn't just take the train (in the case of Sydney, the airport transit makes the travel time almost the same) or even better, temporarily relocate? If they cared about spending time with their children, how about they worry about their children's future too?

Of course, there's no direct train between the capital city of Australia (Canberra) and the second largest city (Melbourne). Such us the abject state of infrastructure here, which makes Sydney to Melbourne the second busiest air route in the world.

If all of us middle-class types want the government to do something about climate change, we should advocate for crippling taxes on driving (at least in cities) and flying, with the money to be put towards public transport, like Singapore does. Of course nobody does that, because the middle-class psyche in the western world is hollow and hypocritical.

YCS

7/27/16, 4:43 PM

JimK said...

Here is a paper I presented earlier this year at a conference on religion and climate change: https://app.box.com/s/i10mdngjrnupcqtj44lcn04bc86yqsx1 I expressed pessimism about the prospects for the survival of industrial civilizations and the civilized comforts many of us enjoy due to it. This pessimism was very poorly received. The notion was that even if pessimism is justified, it is an unacceptable message. I did try to provide an optimistic message as the conclusion of the paper but it didn't seem to be the sort of optimism that folks were willing to hear. By the way I took Amtrak to get to the conference and brought my folding bike along to get around town during the conference. Inch by inch!

7/27/16, 4:44 PM

W. B. Jorgenson said...

If I may offer a case study: I'm considering saying I will not use airlines to travel again, but I'm deterred by the social costs. It appears people are quite hostile to anyone who chooses to do without any form of technology identified as "advanced". In addition, the alternatives are fairly underdeveloped, sometimes even having been actively dismantled. It is much more difficult to travel without airplanes, not just because the travel itself is harder, but in many cases the alternative has been discontinued.

I already refuse to drive and the effect it has on people seems quite extreme. While it does restrict my lifestyle, it also saves me money, is good for the environment and my health, and is my choice. I've looked at the trade offs and decided not driving makes the most sense. However, it takes a lot of effort and time to try to explain this to people.

And as I have an upper class background, my family uses planes fairly often to visit places, especially since we have family on the other side of my very large country. My family is already concerned I don't like technology, which for some reason is a bad thing, and I don't want another fight like the one that occurred when I tried to explain why I don't like having a cellphone.

I'm also finding I will need to make new friends, as some of my current ones are actively hostile to anyone trying to live without those pieces of technology they have.

Thus, while it's less than a good thing, the refusal of environmentalists to abandon air travel makes sense to me. How they can then expect poor people to be happy to pay costs greater than what they refuse to pay is what baffles me though.

7/27/16, 4:50 PM

Jon Garrett said...

I read your stuff each week, even the fiction. You're a learned man and a great writer. It is always a pleasure to visit this blog.

7/27/16, 4:51 PM

Sinnycool said...

In a light-bulb moment years ago I came to the conclusion that our wildly different, often mistaken and commonly irrational conflicting convictions and beliefs were the key to the human species amazing survival.

Consider this unlikely event:

1. A wise and benign alien race sends a rescue spaceship to the Earth in order to pickup select human survivors ahead of a catastrophe they know is about to destroy our planet.

2. A small group of humans, aware of the catastrophe and the coming rescue ship diligently prepares for years for it's arrival.

3. As the ship nears the earth, hidden by the Hale-Bop comet, the group self-administers fatal doses of phenobarbital: death being the only means of transporting their spirits to the waiting vessel.

Yes - the Heaven's Gate religious group was prepared for and did exactly that.

Had they been correct, they would have lived and we would have died.

---

So, how is such a divergent, quarrelsome and irrational species going to unite in the face of a threat like climate change that demands exactly the opposite characteristics, unity of belief and rational self-less action?

We aren't.

7/27/16, 4:55 PM

David, by the lake said...

@Yellow Submarine (from last week)

In addition to the others' suggestions, I'd offer William Freehling's two-volume _Road to Disunion_ series. Volume I (Secessionists at Bay) reviews the underlying issues from 1776-1854, while Volume II (Secessionists Triumphant) covers the immediate period leading up to the war (1854-1861).

7/27/16, 4:55 PM

Tidlösa said...

The part about "interests" is very, very true! An additional factor, I suppose, might be that climate scares are associated with the Democratic Party and its presidential campaigns. Think Al Gore. Even the Hollywood blockbuster "Day After Tomorrow" seems to have been part of Democratic election campaigning. If climate change is seen as a "liberal" issue in a polarized political climate, those who see themselves as "conservatives" will gravitate towards the denialist side. I suppose this is a subset of the "interests" thing.

I suspect that you´re not watching the DNC, but several of the speakers mentioned climate change and green jobs as a "tremendous opportunity", "the biggest job creator in America", etc. However, they also push the line that "Trump doesn´t trust science". And I suppose Californian governor Jerry Brown took a commercial jet to Philly...

Too shaky to challenge Trump´s explicit statements that workers in coal and steel will get their jobs back if he´s elected and scraps the whole climate business thing (along with NAFTA and TPP).

Part of me hopes that the whole climate change businesses really is a huge mistake from the scientists, I mean, it´s not like we don´t have other problems on our hands!

7/27/16, 4:56 PM

Jim said...

I have a goodly number of middle class friends that fit your description quite well. As one of them put it "When even the high priests are hypocrites there's not much hope". Yet he goes to work every day certifying buildings to meet California's strict environmental criteria and driving his electric car.

Personally I don't think there is anything that can be done. Virtually everyone who has grown up in industrial socoety is hooked on the benefits and simply can't imagine another kind of life. It doesn't take much investment by denialists to ride that wave.

My opinion is that nothing will be done until some great catastrophe happens; New York underwater, starvation in China, Christmas delayed...and the catastrophe will have to happen in the industrial world because we have proven over and over again that we don't really care what happens in small countries populated by dark skinned peoples.

7/27/16, 5:11 PM

Sionna said...

Climate change activists also could have protested for increased use of public transit, ideas for re-working transportation, as well as alternatives such as you mention in Green Wizardry (which I have followed up on and have found very helpful in reducing carbon footprint and energy budgets--practical actions anyone can take without incurring the wrath of extraction industry workers.)

One idea I would like to suggest is for you to consider an option for access to your books such as that used by Cory Doctorow--maybe some free ebook versions to increase public awareness of these issues. I can't find all of your works in the Canadian library system, and online versions would sure come in handy.

I think the sharing ethos of some of the internet tech folks is a hopeful approach--we don't all need to own our own hardware store or personal libraries; sharing will cut down on extraction and production of goods. Perhaps our public libraries will start to stock more of your books, as well as some of the appropriate technology books I am trying to find, but for now... not so much.

So thanks for your discussion of the obvious. Cheers!

7/27/16, 5:23 PM

Tidlösa said...

Doomerdoc wrote: "So you have to convince people that without climate action, they don't have food, jobs, or housing. But that's not exactly correct, is it, because the system, the vast burning of fossil fuels, is the only thing providing them with food, jobs, and housing! Quite the catch-22."

Exactly. There is no class (social group, call it what you like) in modern society with a vested interest to abolish modern society (except perhaps nomads and subsistence farmers?).

Strikes me as a problem...

7/27/16, 5:24 PM

zerowastemillennial said...

Not that I don't agree with you, JMG, but being born, raised, and currently living in a sweltering Southern California that is continuously on fire these days, there's something else going on too. A little bit of people not putting two and two together or not having the desire to.

I get out quite often, see a lot of family, a few friends, and find myself in public a lot and listen here and there to what people are talking about (usually nothing good), but one of the things I have noticed around here, from the blue collar all the way through and past the white, is how people talk about the weather. A lot of my sample of average Angelinos will talk about the water restrictions (they are a fact of life now) but no one ever so much as makes a passing mention of the ongoing drought. 90+ degree heatwaves consistently continue to daze and confuse, even though a dozen weeks a year are now heatwaves. Rolling blackouts and brownouts are also a fact of life in the summer, but no one makes the connection between them and air conditioning use. Beyond the stylishness of the occasional xeriscape, people still cling to their lawns and thirsty rose gardens, and wonder aloud at why it's all so hard to keep alive.

Most people I know live as though these events and phenomena are outliers, forgetting about all the other outliers that have happened, and compartmentalizing them away from all the other outliers that are going on around them concurrently.

There is a HUGE disconnect. Nobody has anything to say when it's suggested that this is what global warming looks like in action, as though it never occurred to them that anything would happen here, or -anywhere-, really, in any concrete sense. In a way, I think there hasn't been enough doom and gloom; or at least, the right kind. So far scientists and the activists parroting their talking points have been really good at talking about big picture repercussions, because those are generally safer. Bring it close to home, though, and suddenly we have a threat on our hands.

So OK, the stick doesn't work, because being the bearer of bad news makes you the bad news. What about the carrot? Idk how it worked in the past with a whole lot of detail, but the carrot doesn't seem to work too much either these days - people are too suspicious. As much as I wouldn't have voted for Bernie either, by all accounts the man had a plan, and that plan would have helped middle and working class Americans quite a bit. But as a working class American I know put it, "you're gonna help people in need by stealing from me?"

As for leading by example, I've been doing it for a few years now and I'm often treated as either the butt of jokes, a novelty, a nuisance, or (my favorite), I'm treated as some kind of Lorax that people can unload their guilt or indignation onto. Maybe it's because I'm in a city/suburb environment, I don't know.

All I know is that you're leaving out what is, to my eyes, a huge swath of America that have not yet put two and two together.

7/27/16, 5:24 PM

latheChuck said...

In the schedule of Bible readings used by many Christians for Sunday worship (Revised Common Lectionary, year C, proper 13), this week we have a tale of a man who has such a rich harvest that he proposes to pull down his too-small storage barns, stash the harvest in new barns, and kick back for a long cheerful rest. But God tells him, "tonight you will die, and what good will your wealth be?"

As I thought about this reading (Luke 12:13-21), I heard it as "a nation built up a sprawling civilization of suburbs, airports, and long-distance refrigerated food transport. A leader stood up before the people and said 'this is the greatest nation on Earth!' But then a voice said 'soon, you will exhaust your supply of cheap oil, and then what good will this wealth be?'"

7/27/16, 5:30 PM

Repent said...

This was a very interesting summary. I'm in full agreement with you as well, the climate change movement is done. Fear mongering is a dead end street with no future.

I spend most of my spare time now trying to change myself, to evolve as a person, and yes to eventually lead by example. Many, many other people are doing this same thing as well and this is a cultural change in process.

People are tired of being lied to, seeing nature being run down. People are tired of corruption, and of false hope, and of business as usual. Culture is changing, and anyone can compare how life was different in the 70's than it is now, and how that in turn differed from lifestyle's in the 40's. Still the pace of cultural change is so slow that it is often not seen or noticed in day to day life.

It's a call to everyone to wake up and evolve as a species. As common working class wage earners are leading the way:

https://youtu.be/ZGIs6XbAz1E?t=1s

7/27/16, 5:35 PM

Cortes said...

someone who put his beliefs into practice may be of interest to you JMG and serve as example to readers?:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jun/21/bob-holman-remembered-activist-community-campaigner-glasgow-easterhouse

7/27/16, 5:36 PM

JacGolf said...

Thanks JMG, Perhaps the Climate Change movement could put forth a vision like oh, let's say, the Lakeland Republic? I know for one I would choose to live there. Probably tier 3 or 4 to start...In a funny way, it sounds like Galt's Gulch for the masses.

7/27/16, 5:45 PM

Jay Moses said...

painfully true. when al gore became the most prominent public voice in the environmental movement you just knew that effective action on climate change was impossible. i would watch him fly into some forum, often on a private jet, from his mammoth private estate, to lecture others on reducing greenhouse gases. even i, a strong supporter of climate action, wanted to punch his fat, simpering face.

when you look at who supports environmental organizations such as the sierra club, green peace, the world wildlife federation etc. financially it becomes pretty clear why they carefully avoid any talk of lifestyle cutbacks for the well to do. let the coal miners, loggers and truck drivers carry the weight.

7/27/16, 6:12 PM

Ian R Orchard said...

To quote Angie Palmer*: "In conversations about climate.... people often express their despair at what WE have done, at what WE need to do and what WE are unlikely to do, with faces grim and foreheads sagging. And therein lies my message. For me it is not so relevant how WE respond. Ultimately I am only responsible for how I myself tackle climate change and this is where it all begins."

(*Not sure which Angie Palmer, there are a lot of them out there.)

7/27/16, 6:55 PM

Anthony Romano said...

I can't really argue with the overall point of this essay. But I will quibble with this...

"On the other hand, climate change activists are eager to shut down coal mining. What’s the most significant difference between coal mining and commercial air travel? Coal mining provides wages for the working poor; commercial air travel provides amenities for the affluent."

The numbers vary by source, but it appears that coal mining and related activities (transport, coal fire plants, etc.) employs far less than 250,000 people nationally. Here's once source of that information
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Coal_and_jobs_in_the_United_States#cite_note-1

Forbes indicated that solar energy employs more people than coal mining in this article (putting the number of coal mine employees at 93,000)
http://fortune.com/2015/01/16/solar-jobs-report-2014/

In contrast, this information is taken directly from the Atlanta international airport
"Hartsfield-Jackson is the largest employer in the state of Georgia. There are over 58,000 airline, ground transportation, concessionaire, security, federal government, City of Atlanta and Airport tenant employees."
http://www.atlanta-airport.com/fifth/atl/atl_factsheet.aspx

Most of the jobs they listed in that blurb are wage-class/working poor jobs.

Chicago's O'hare airport employs a similar number of people.
http://illinoisairportsmeanbusiness.com/brochures/ORD.pdf

We can argue about how exactly to tally the numbers but it seems reasonably clear to me that airports support more wage-class/working poor jobs than the coal industry does. The numbers work out quite differently in the natural gas/petroleum industry, and on the whole I think your point stands.

I honestly thought you were going to use your thought experiment to call out the internet with its power hungry servers and pretentious silicon valley types. The descriptive paragraph certainly fits the mark.

7/27/16, 7:00 PM

Leon said...

Dear JMG,

While I do absolutely agree with 99.99999% of you reasoning and conclusions on other issues, I have to ask - as someone who understands that modern science is almost by definition incapable of predicting the complex living systems behavior and as someone who remembers well the "consensus" about the new ice age killing off the last humans around 1995 or so, how do you believe that the latest scientific theory of anthropocentric climate change holds any water? Earth's climate is probably the most complex system the humans ever attempted to analyze after all... and it's changing ... like always.

P.S. A bit of background - I record weather stats on our farm here in very rural central Florida every day at 6 am for the last several years. There are some weird years for sure (like this one, for example). But so far the averages are well within the 100 year range for the area. Which used to upset me because I started this whole thing expecting the imminent crush of the existing system and so far it's doing just fine, dang it :)

P.P.S. I try to drive as little as possible every day and plant as many trees as I can every year because it just makes sense to me. Intellectual Idiots that fly to a different far away location every year to show off their Sci-Fi channel FX models of climate change (masquerading as science) don't. Which is actually what your post is all about :) So, why do you believe them?

7/27/16, 7:02 PM

Bob Brown said...

Excellent post-mortem, the only thing I'd add is that I think desertification and deforestation are as much a contributor to climate change as green house gases (admittedly much of that is caused by machines spewing greenhouse gases).

I'm hoping we can reach the tipping point with permaculture. I've heard Geoff Lawton talks where he said in his research that it only requires 11-14% of people to adopt something for a movement to gain momentum and become the new normal. That offers people positive life improvements (food, quality of life etc.). As you point out offering better is the only way to get people to change the way they live.

Thanks,

Bob
http://investingwithnature.com/

7/27/16, 7:04 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Doomerdoc, you've got a remarkably simplistic idea of human motivation. All through human history, most people have mostly been concerned with how they were going to get food and housing, and yet that didn't prevent the building of the medieval cathedrals, or thousands of other situations in which people decided to put something else ahead of their immediate day to day concerns. The fact of the matter is that climate change advocates presented their case in a way that failed to appeal to anyone outside their own ranks. That's not a problem with the issue; it's a problem with the movement.

Bill, and that's also a reasonable choice. I happen to have enough of a public voice that I can push for something a little more proactive, but different choices go with different situations.

4threvolutionarywar, when you say "humans are not wired to self-organize around carbon particles per million," you've missed the point. Human beings are wired to self-organize around survival and the betterment of their offspring, and if you present the current environmental situation in terms that convince them that that's what's at issue, you get things like the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act. Again, it's a matter of strategy, not a problem with the issue!

Leo, thanks for the suggestion -- I'll check it out.

Caryn, exactly. Does climate change naturally? Of course -- and that makes it all the more stupid for us to pile anthropogenic climate change on top of naturally occurring climate cycles. The fact that a sleeping grizzly may have its own reasons for waking up in a bad mood is not an argument in favor of poking it with a stick...

Venkataraman, there are several, in fact. Their colleagues treat them as freaks. By the way, you don't have to put a comment through five times; once is usually enough.

John, no argument there. Once the environment got defined as a Democrat issue -- even though most of the major environmental reforms from the 19th century until 1980 went through under GOP presidents! -- the GOP has reacted reflexively against anything green. That's one of many things that has to change.

Cacaogecko, I'd be happy just to see them turn down the a/c and take public transit on occasion!

M Smith, excellent. I have to use computers to make a living, and get around the cascading crapification of Microsoft by buying old machines that run Windows XP, and running them until they die. Still, doing without has its temptations!

Troy, exactly. The character of the messenger may not have anything to do with the validity of the message, but if you have no independent way of verifying the truth of the message, watching the messenger for signs of dishonesty and grandstanding is generally the best option for figuring out whether to trust the message.

David, you're welcome.

Bozack, it's simply not true that "hard work now for a better tomorrow" is a hard sell. When Winston Churchill told Britons he had nothing to offer them but blood, toil, tears, and sweat, they cheered themselves hoarse and threw their energies into the task of survival. That same spirit could easily be roused again, if the people who were trying to rouse it gave any sign that they meant it!

7/27/16, 7:17 PM

Yellow Submarine said...

More evidence the silly season is upon us, while the clown show in Philly continues.

Protestors at the Democratic Convention say they are planning to have a "fart-in" on the last day of the convention. While I think this is hilariously funny, its also evidence of how unhinged American politics is becoming. The last day of the convention should be entertaining, if nothing else...

7/27/16, 7:22 PM

Christopher Henningsen said...

I wonder whether the denial of recent ice-age doomerism is an American phenomenon - I've never run into it here in Canada, and I've certainly seen more than enough of the other flaws you point out. The amount of literature on the subject certainly makes it seem an impossible fact to get wrong, but then again I've heard people tell me in all seriousness that Cannabis was native to North America and Tobacco introduced by European colonists... so it's not the strangest myth out there.

Speaking of strange myths, one of my favourite conspiracy theories is that the world really was headed for another ice age, but the global elite intervened and warmed the planet with a massive ritual requiring the unwavering belief of millions...

Utter nonsense of course, a benevolent cabal of powerful occultists wouldn't have much need for secrecy. Still, better warming than cooling as I always say.

7/27/16, 7:22 PM

MC_Farmer said...

I think that there were just too many negatives for too many people. Everyone would need to transform their lives in a very disruptive way and no one really wants to hear that. I think you are mistaken that the positive point regarding a new green economy was not made. It was made and it scared the pants off the powerful vested fossil fuel interests. When you have only one positive spin and it flies in the face of the power structure, you are in trouble. To a certain extent all americans are "powerful vested interests" in that none of us was willing to get out of our cars, rebuild our walkable cities etc. There was just too much sunk capital in the suburban project to coin a phrase of JHK. Heck most of us were in debt up to our eyeballs and had 30 year mortgages to pay on a suburban house by the time the scientists ever bothered to even tell us about global warming. I really did not hear much about it until the 1990's. The message also suffered from the apparent morning in america that occurred when Reagan and Thatcher seemingly "fixed" the dire problem of imminent peak oil that Jimmy Carter had introduced us to in the 1970's. We all figured that this was just another false alarm. I think the problem goes much deeper than messaging and examples. I don't think Jesus could have convinced us that climate change was important when we needed to believe it. Now we are starting to believe it but most of us are just too busy trying to keep our bills paid in this economy to worry enough about it. We are sure that if we stop paying our mortgage we will end up in the cold this winter whether the climate is warming or not.

7/27/16, 7:29 PM

Tabatha Atwood said...

Re: Other issues- besides travel to live your principles- local food. I have been trying to learn to garden these last 3 years. This year I have finally grown some very nice looking tomato plants from seed. This has not made me happy, however, but enraged. The amount of water the tomato plants demand- here in the tomato growing zone in the tomato growing season is outrageous. That tomatoes are available all year long in all groceries at all times here in the US is preposterous, particularly as we face drought in California . We should go back to growing zone appropriate food- tax it, ban it, tax it's movement. If you believe in local food- make policy that makes it real- make your lifestyle congruent with your values.

7/27/16, 7:32 PM

Ian R Orchard said...

Following on from Anthony's observations about the blue collar jobs involved in the airlines, we also need to take into account the huge numbers of tourism workers around the world who depend on those globetrotting tourists. Tourism is now officially New Zealand's biggest earning industry for example.
I've tried to envisage where future jobs will come from as we phase out fossil fuels (there's no obligation for them to exist at all).
A lot may arise from agriculture having to revert to manual labour as tractors & other machinery shrink or disappear. Manufacturing may enjoy a resurgence as the sheer complexity of modern "progress" proves to be its undoing, as noted in Retrotopia.
What is obvious, and is a major reason why so many of us would rather not think about climate change, is our lifestyles are overdue for a radical reorganisation.

7/27/16, 7:35 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Marcu, I've seen the same thing more times than I can count. It's that sort of reaction that has convinced me we have basically nothing to hope for from the supposedly progressive left.

Cherokee, yes, it is very basic marketing, isn't it? I'm still trying to figure out why that never seems to sink in.

Jim, stop. Stop right there. What obvious solution aren't you considering? I'll give you a hint: we can USE LESS ENERGY. No law of nature requires us to maintain the absurdly extravagant lifestyles those of us in the developed world have these days...and yet people act as though that's one of those unspeakable words that causes your face to melt off if you utter it. No proposed solution to climate change is serious unless it involves using much less energy, and much less of the products of energy. Period.

Cherokee continued, I somehow managed to grow up in a middle class suburban family and come to the conclusion that being a middle class suburbanite was, for me, a pretty good equivalent of being fried on a grill in the fifth or sixth circle of Hell. I wouldn't take that kind of lifestyle, or the kind of a career necessary to pay for it, if it was handed to me on a golden platter which I then got to sell for cash. So I'm definitely with you there!

Shane, once or twice, you have triggered something, but this time I'd already settled on the theme of this week's post when I'd finished the one two weeks ago. You may just be tuning in to my mind or something. ;-)

YCS, oh, I know. Here in the north central Appalachians, enough people can't afford to drive that I'm not that much of an oddity, but when I lived on the left coast the thought that I didn't own a car or have a driver's license made people either treat me as though I'd sprouted an extra head, or get really offended because my lifestyle choices made theirs look shallow and selfish.

Jim, many thanks for this -- I'll read it when time permits.

WB, may I make a suggestion? Don't tell anyone that you've decided not to fly any more. Just don't do it. Come up with an ostensible reason to take the train -- the scenery's so beautiful, it's so nice to be able to get up and stretch your legs, you get lots of work done on the train, blah blah blah. The fact that all of those are true makes the dodge easy to pull off. Doing it that way also makes it a little seductive -- other people, hearing of this, may be tempted to take the train themselves...

Jon, thank you.

Sinnycool, that's a copout. All of humanity doesn't have to get behind it -- it would be enough if a large number of us who live in the world's industrial nations were to back the necessary changes using the political machinery that's already there to allow collective decisions to be made. To my mind, all these arguments about why a constructive response to climate change is impossible sound very much like attempts to avoid taking responsibility for the impact of one's own lifestyle on a fragile planet.

Tidlösa, no, I'm not watching the DNC. (Off-topic note -- back in the day, when the editor of a science fiction magazine wrote "DNC" on the margins of your story before sending it back to you, that meant "does not convince.") If I wanted to watch a clown show I'd go to the circus.

Jim, and by then it'll be too late to do anything that matters. That being the case, it seems sensible to me to try to change the dialogue while there still might be time, remembering the old rule of strategy that says that any positive action is better than doing nothing at all.

7/27/16, 7:41 PM

Bill Hicks said...

Another suggestion: stop saying "by the year 2100, blah blah blah." Very few people, especially working class people, think beyond their next paycheck let alone next year. "The year 2100," sounds like something out of a science fiction novel.

7/27/16, 7:44 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Sionna, the one difficulty with making my books available for free is that I have to make a living, and writing is how I do that. It really isn't that expensive to buy a book now and then, you know, and that's what allows authors to pay their bills and still spend their time writing.

Zerowaste, in my experience, when that happens, everyone knows what the score is and is desperately trying not to think about it. California is screwed, blued, and tattooed in a future of climate change, and I think a lot of people are aware of it.

LatheChuck, nice. That's just it -- Christianity, if you take it at all seriously, has plenty of tools for thinking constructively about our situation; so do other religions -- and so does rationalism. It's just that so many people are committed to not thinking constructively about it!

Repent, well, I'll hope you're right and enough people are grappling with these things to make a difference.

Cortes, thanks for the link!

JacGolf, yep. That's why I'm writing it!

Jay, exactly, and I second the motion regarding Gore's simpering face.

Ian, good. Thank you. If everyone named Angie Palmer will please adopt that attitude, we'll have taken a step in the right direction.

Anthony, but that wasn't my point. My point is that to the affluent, the coal industry doesn't matter, because eliminating it causes them no inconvenience. The airline industry? They don't care in the least how many jobs it produces -- they want it because it provides them with amenities.

Leon, yes, I figured I'd get some of this sort of obfuscation. There's ample evidence -- a little of which was cited in my post -- that global climate really is tipping out of balance, and one set of reported observations on one Florida farm (which, let it be noted, I have no way to check) does not outweigh the ongoing collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, say, or the fact that each of the last fourteen months has been the hottest such month ever recorded.

Bob, well, I'd say give it your best try, then. What I've seen of permaculture so far has been a very mixed bag, but if it works for you, by all means.

Submarine, I hope nobody flicks a lighter while that demonstration is taking place...

Christopher, oh, I don't know. I'm rather fond of ice ages, all things considered.

MC_Farmer, the thing is, that isn't the only possible positive spin, and it doesn't have to be presented in the terms you've described. What I saw was that talk about the green economy was always a sideline, and yelling about the horrors of the future was front and center. I may do a post one of these days talking about all the different ways that a positive spin could be put on the necessary changes -- it won't be one of my shorter posts, either.

Tabatha, if local food is your issue, get out there and work on it. One thing, though -- if all you have to offer is outrage, people will ignore you, for reasons discussed in my post. How can you make local food, appropriate to your own ecological region, appealing? How can you make people want that? Figure that out, and you'll get somewhere.

Ian, all you have to do is change the tax codes so that automating a job away is prohibitively expensive for business, while hiring a human being to do something is more cost effective, and the unemployment problem will be solved at once. It really isn't that difficult!

7/27/16, 8:02 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Bill, that's also a good point.

7/27/16, 8:03 PM

Patricia Mathews said...

And yet ... when I was discharged from the hospital and needed care 24/7 for the first week, my oldest daughter flew out from Gainesville, FL, to do so for several days, and then my brother flew out from San Diego, CA to finish the job. I truly needed that care.

And I will fly out to visit them later this year. It's the least I can do. And if I were to say "No, because flying causes climate change," they'd agree in principle, but would not like it that I'd put an abstract principle over seeing my own family. And my own gut instinct finds something inhuman about doing so, especially after the care they gave me this spring.

As for trains ... we're west of the Mississippi. Sorry, folks. OK - shield up against rotten tomatoes.

7/27/16, 8:14 PM

Cherokee Organics said...

Hi JMG,

Watch out for that fryer! Ouch! Of course you dodged that one nicely! Total respect. I got sucked down that rabbit hole for a short while and then the rabbit hole ejected me unceremoniously into the bright light of day and I had to take a hard clear eyed view of the world around me. One of the things that worries me about such a system like this one is that if you tolerate that being done to other people and join in to that system, then you never quite know when your lucky numbers are going to turn up and that always worries me. I've seen that in action in both small and large groups. It doesn't look pretty.

Hey, I'm sure you've noticed that the Clinton campaign is pursuing the same basic mistake: Don't talk about the competition... Every time they mention Trump, all people hear is Trump. They are actually selling him. It genuinely surprises me that they don't actually employ real world marketing people who have to sell rubbish things that people don't want at the coal face. I have been wondering of late whether the powers that be in those campaigns just aren't listening or maybe they believe their own hype. Dunno. It is weird though.

But then I guess, any other selling strategy means that the Clinton campaign would have to come up with their own unique selling proposition, and that is a complex matter which they are doing their utmost best to avoid.

Cheers

Chris

7/27/16, 8:19 PM

Justin said...

Great post, JMG! Considering how important a topic this is, I'm amazed it's taken you over a decade to write about it, but well, here we are. Your observations square pretty nicely with mine. The popularly suggested initiatives to Save the Planet(tm) seem to come in two forms: pour money into renewable energy and then promise to change once renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels, or to put prices on the consumption of fossil fuels (who these prices are paid to and what they buy is a perfectly valid question the right has).

The problem with a carbon tax is that it doesn't affect people who can pay easily pay it, and because of the degree to which the products that salary class types buy so much of come from outside North America, the massive carbon footprint associated with those activities isn't captured. I don't think the Canadian government is going to have much luck imposing a carbon tax on salmon farms in Chile or electronics manufacturers in China. Carbon taxes, everywhere, really outside the leftist green parts of politics, are implicitly a problem for 'the little people'. I'm sure not a few members of the high chattering classes realize that if they had a way to impose such conditions, they could probably keep the private jets flying and the palaces in the desert cool for another 300 years if they could keep the support system for those activities running. The idea that they will succeed in such an endeavor is of course laughable. On the other hand, just type 'Agenda 21' into Google and you'll see all types of conspiracy theories that suggest that climate change is a ruse designed to cage humanity in soviet-style apartment blocks while leaving most of the planet as a playground for the rich. I doubt any part of that is really true, but on the other hand, the appearance of things suggests it.

JMG, lets hope that the first person to seriously offer Americans blood, toil, tears and sweat in service of a monumental task picks a good one.

A lot of the terrorist attacks by Muslims in the last couple weeks have been deflected by stories about how the person in question had extramarital sex (possibly even with other men!), ate pork, drank alcohol, didn't go to the mosque etc. The phenomenon these stories always forget about is that people who have been 'living in sin' for some time and then finally repent are often pretty serious about it afterwards, and throw themselves into their new ideology with incredible zeal. I don't mean to turn this into an anti-Muslim screed, but there's bits in the Quran and some of the Hadiths about how the get-out-of-hell-free-card is to die in battle against the enemy, which is one of the key tools that Islamic state recruiters use. There's some evidence that this is what drove the Nice truck attacker and possibly the Orlando one.

7/27/16, 8:21 PM

Justin said...

Tabitha, a funny story about local food and chattering class activism: In 2008 or so, when peak oil was almost an acceptable dinner table topic, a local actress of some fame made a big deal about how she was going to California to learn to be a permaculture farmer, and then come back and do that here in Nova Scotia. I've never actually been to California, but I've been told it has different weather than Nova Scotia. The sad part is, she seems like a nice person, and there's plenty of farmers here she could have done something cool with.

LatheChuck, I'm agnostic, but I do have a major soft spot for the Bible. If there's any book that drives home the message "this has happened before and will happen again, so deal with it" better, well, I'd like to read it.

7/27/16, 8:29 PM

jessi thompson said...

I don't think they expect poor people to surrender anything. They think if they can just get the right politicians elected they will pass the right laws and then green technology will save us all without any cost to anyone.

This goes back to the wage/salary divide Archdruid Greer talked about in a previous article. The salary class is totally oblivious to the fact that the wage class is constantly squeezed for taxes beyond their ability to pay so that the other classes can continue on business asusual. I do not want to typify people too much but I have noticed here in the US there's a rapidly increasing proportion of society that appears not to understand the concept of limits at all. As a waitress I deal with people who can't seem to understand why all restaurants don't carry their own favorite cheese. Why don't we have ALL the brands of soda they could possibly want? I am beginning to suspect we as a society have spoiled over half the population.

7/27/16, 8:35 PM

Bryan L. Allen said...

Bravo, esteemed Archdruid Emeritus! Always a delight to read your essays.

Naïveté, a negative campaign, intolerance, and a provably false assertion: all seeming to come from an attitude of superiority. "We are higher status and are your intellectual superiors; bow to our wisdom". So, to me at least, the word/concept "status" seems to have crucial relevance to why climate and environmental activists are often so clueless.

Buy a Tesla (80-100 kilo dollars), buy carbon offsets, or festoon your roof with solar panels and you demonstrate your high status. Wear old clothes, ride your rust-stained steel bike to work, and forgo owning a TV, smartphone, and car and not only have you diminished your social status significantly, lots of folks will fear you might be the next Unabomber. He did have a really ratty bike! :-)

A friend of mine likes to say: "Dollars are a pretty good proxy for environmental impact." The climate change movement has behaved as if we can buy our way out of any problems. Looks more like the solution is NOT to buy (much of anything.) And definitely pay attention that what little we buy enriches the working class rather than the effete well-to-do.

The bourgeoisie is seldom willing to sacrifice their social status under any conditions, especially when there is no threat of imminent destruction. Have there ever been cases where an entrenched bourgeoisie decided to diminish its status voluntarily? My wife is French, and so I'm aware of a case in 1789 where said class did not do so, with stern consequences...

7/27/16, 8:49 PM

W. B. Jorgenson said...

JMG,

Thank you for the advice, however I don't think it will work at the present for me. Currently, most of my travel is done with family, and at the moment we leave together from one place. This is why this is tricky: I can't make the decision without in some way affecting other people: either I stop travelling with them and make my own arrangements, or they also change how they travel, both of which bring these issues back to the forefront.

Once I have my own life in a few years, then it will work better: I'll then just make my own plans, travel and problem solved. But if I'm going to quite air travel now, then there is no way I can see to do it other than outright saying it.

7/27/16, 8:50 PM

jessi thompson said...

Wow that's really cool!! I've heard farmers and gardeners and livestock breeders who keep the most accurate records learn the most. That might be why I'm not a very good gardener, though, to be fair, every year my highest crop losses come from a random human with a lawnmower. (Seriously!!! It happens EVERY year, and it's always a different person.) But I really just came here to point out that the climate has warmed a little less than 1 degree Celsius over the whole planet over the last several decades, so to find the climate change at your location also requires an intense grasp of statistics.

7/27/16, 8:51 PM

jessi thompson said...

A wonderful and thought provoking essay as always. My question to you, something I ponder often, and would live your opinion:
Do you think peak oil will save us from the worst effects of climate change?

7/27/16, 8:56 PM

Karim said...

Greetings all!

A great post and what a coincidence too it is for me.

Last week I attended a meeting of a local green leftist party during which they all argued how climate change was really a grave issue.

So I asked them why don't we all begin to change our lifestyles one step at a time, and show that we can live decently by cutting down on wasteful habits? I told them that if you want to be an alternative to the current situation, live that alternative. The response was indignant.

Most people did not want to hear that. Although most of them belonged to the wage class. All they wanted to do is political activism with the apparent goal of changing things from the top, getting governments and corporations to act. For them leadership by example is simply unnecessary. No personal commitment to actual change needed. It is indeed maddening...

What a folly, what a folly!

7/27/16, 9:11 PM

Martin McDuffy said...

I read every week, but rarely comment. This week, I feel I must.

I'll start with what I think you hit right on the head, and that is the issue of interests. You focus on the elites and their air travel (a luxury I have abstained from for many years now) but neglect to point out that the lion's share of people in the first world have a vested interest in the comforts provided by the status quo. Ignoring the Al Gore's of the world for a moment, let's face the fact that most coal miners, diner waitresses, an public accountants want things like air conditioning, refrigerators, and fruit from a different hemisphere. If there is a solution to climate change, it absolutely involves the dissolution of capitalism as a way of relating to one and other, as well as the dismantling of the industrial project that has swept the globe over the last two centuries.

This also speaks to the lack of a positive outcome you think climate change activists have failed to offer. Perhaps, dear druid, there is no place where honesty and positivity meet, and if they do, it is in the mundane offer of survival. No more lattes. No more Xbox. A lot more time planting potatoes and swatting at mosquitos. Not exactly a sizzling offer.

As to climate change activists, this is a strange designation. I myself have spent much time, personal treasure, and personal freedom fighting against pipelines and oil infrastructure, and I did so with comrades who demonstrated intelligence, selflessness, and bravery. My friends and I have sat high in trees, dangled beneath bridges, camped inside pipelines, locked ourselves to machinery, and done oh so much more that cannot be written about. Some of us languish in jail now, others hop from location to location as stowaways on freight trains. I speak of my dear comrades in Earth First!

To condemn climate change activists as a whole I find disheartening. There are many of us who do live with less, who do speak about a world beyond capitalism, and who are willing to sacrifice ourselves and our safety to save a parcel of land, to halt an industrial project, or to perhaps, inspire a wider movement.

Your condemnation seems applicable to rich liberals.

7/27/16, 9:12 PM

Leon said...

Dear JMG,

I understand (I think) what you have to deal with being a public figure not exactly aligned with the mainstream values, so I understand your reaction to my comment. Let me assure you that obfuscation was not what I was trying to achieve though. But being on the front lines like you are some friendly fire is inevitable, I guess.

I didn't check the links in this post (guilty!) but I did try to check the links in many of your earlier posts (being a reader since 2008 or so) and every time for every link that says polar ice cap is smaller this year there was a link or two that said it's actually bigger. So, that was my actual question in the comment above - how do you know which ones to trust? I mean even after filtering out the usual suspects (Fox News,CNBS, NYT, etc.) there is still enough evidence to support whatever one wants to believe in. For those of us who don't spend the whole day on the Internet, is there an easier way to see which sources are trustworthy? That's what I meant basically when I asked Why do you trust them? Sorry it was not clear.

I understand that weather records of a single farm don't matter that much (BTW, if you're ever in these parts you're more than welcome to examine the raw data, as well as to taste our lamb, chicken and homemade beer - Alexandra Lake Farm, http://alexandralake.com/- just let me know a few days in advance) and this is exactly my problem. Last time I was in South Beach, Miami (about 3 years ago) I saw the seawater coming out of the storm drains and just a few days ago I talked to a friend on a fishing trip to the Russian tundra, who said it's been 100F or more for the last 5 days but that's exactly this - an anecdote. Does it reflect a long term trend? I don't know. How do you know? That was my question.

Anyway, please feel free to delete this comment if that's too much trouble to answer (seriously - I'm constantly amazed at how you find time to deal with all the comments and certainly don't want to add to the workload. Obviously, first I have to go and double check the links in this post.)

Thanks for all you do!

7/27/16, 9:33 PM

BoysMom said...

Sionna, I don't know about Canadian libraries (though I've gotten stuff on inter library loan from them before!) but here in the USA, in the several library districts I've lived in, the libraries have been very good about buying patron requests if they were affordable and available, which is to say, neither a $300 textbook nor a $200 out of print rare book. My local libraries would have no problem buying a Greer book upon request. (Each already has.)

It's great to have a book for yourself, but if you can get your library to stock them, that's also pretty good, for the author does get paid some (and I think does better by Canadian libraries than USA libraries) and also gets some increase in visibility.

7/27/16, 9:35 PM

Unknown said...

Hello,
I strongly disagree with your explanation for the failure of the climate change activism. Unfortunately I don't have your ability for clear exposition, but I will try.

I think the success of a movement depends more on what is the actually problem than the tools used to approach it. If the movement has a simple goal, limited duration and minimal impact on people then it can be successful. If it has none of this it will always fail.
Examples in the first category are second world war, same-sex marriage etc.
The second category contains most of unsolved problems of today - malnutrition (aka overpopulation), racism, climate change, pollution, democracy etc.
All of these require constant vigilance to detect problem, make the change and review the results. They also require almost all the people to change their lives.
Your quote from Churchill from the second world war was not what made the Britons fight. The implicit alternative (and the US support) did the trick.

The global long-term impact of climate change is what caused the "mistakes" in the climate change activism too. Even a politically savvy activist has some trouble putting stopping climate change in a positive light.

I appreciate your optimism and I think it's part of what makes your blog such a pleasure to read but I don't think climate change activism ever had a chance.

7/27/16, 10:15 PM

fudoshindotcom said...

JMG,

I would venture that the reason Mrs. Clinton's campaign is entirely negative is that she simply hasn't accumulated very many positive legs to stand on throughout her career.

The "Do as I say, not as I do." attitude of affluent climate activists seems rooted in their non-sensical belief that they somehow earned, and thus deserve, their privileges.

I don't expect to see any useful action regarding climate change until it noticeably impacts the wealth of the Affluent. At that point we'll see them hysterically wading around in their ocean front mansions wailing about how "we" must do something about this.

7/27/16, 10:17 PM

Maybe Next Year said...

I used to the be the kind of unrepentant idealistic jackass that would get upset with people who didn't recycle. That was until I read that the Department of Defense burns an average of 12.6 million gallons of fuel every. single. day.

After that it became difficult to care about whether people are buying plastic water bottles or not.

7/27/16, 10:17 PM

Hammer said...

Looks like nobody will do anything about the problem for the next 10 years, until the effects of climate change hammer down on a collapsing economy.

But fortunately we invented a revolutionary new carbon capture technology! One which produces energy instead of consuming it!
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/232244-new-form-of-carbon-capture-actually-creates-power-rather-than-consuming-it

"According to the researchers, the cell generates some 13 ampere-hours per gram of carbon captured — or about 13 million ampere-hours per metric tonne. That means that a single gram of carbon could produce enough electricity to charge a (very hefty) cell phone battery four or even five times over."

They don't specify the voltage of the cells, so ampere-hours is a useless unit. Maybe they don't specify it since there's no way 1 little gram of carbon can produce 45.6 watt-hours of energy, or enough for 4 smartphone charges!

(However, I did the math and commented that capturing all emissions would produce 0.3% of the world's current energy. So this technology might not be so dubious)

7/27/16, 10:24 PM

American Herstory X said...

First of all, thank you for sharing your vast stores of knowledge via this blog and other media.

Second of all, humans are very selfish creatures and have always felt they are entitled to use the Earth until it is dead. Its inhabitants are seen as disposable, existing only for human survival and convenience. There is no logical connection of actions and consequences, for instance, if humans cause the whole Earth to die, then they also die. Even the best and the brightest among us fail to see the forest for the felled trees.

For instance, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation (planes, trains, automobiles) combined according to the United Nations http://cowspiracy.com/ yet all of one percent of the Earth's 7.4 billion inhabitants are willing to eschew all animal products. So-called pasture raised meats -- I envision steaks floating about grazing on grass in a field -- are even worse as far as efficiencies go. Factory farms may be horrible but they are efficient. Among that one percent of plant-based people, only a fraction are avoiding flesh, dairy, and bird ova because they give a damn about Gaia.

Creating a biological child is an act of deliberate ecocide at this point, yet mention that which cannot be named, Voldemort ahem I mean anti-natalism, in a crowd and one can roundly expect shunning at an immediate or future date.

The human race acts a great deal like a Petri dish full of yeast to which a spoonful of sugar has been introduced. As one of them, I find it concerning there is no new planet to destroy, though the misanthrope in me is glad that our parasitic species will not pass Go and Collect 200 New Planets. Yes I know Star Trek: Beyond just came out. The whole premise is just so SILLY. Not a freaking chance.

7/27/16, 10:47 PM

Nicholas Colloff said...

With one eye on Tabitha's point on growing local, herewith a report from the UK's Daily Mail (not known for its progressive credentials) on Todmorden http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2072383/Eccentric-town-Todmorden-growing-ALL-veg.html

It is a very ordinary, mixed town in the north of England (and I do not know how well the experiment is continuing, though the article is two years in) but amplifies many of your arguments - focus on a positive, find ways to be inclusive, meshing together different concerns and interests and create stories of what change will/could look like.

I thought climate change activism was doomed when I asked a colleague in a large international NGO what was being pursued at Copenhagen - a 'just and equitable climate change agreement' - they replied and who is expected to rally for that (even knowing what that is) I thought!

7/27/16, 10:53 PM

patriciaormsby said...

I want to subscribe to the print newsletter, and will send a check, but could not find out how much I should add for overseas mail. If I can get a figure for a six month subscription sent to Japan, I'll send in the check.

7/27/16, 10:59 PM

patriciaormsby said...

Talking about demonizing honest disagreement, it looks like I'm going to vote for Vladimir Putin in the upcoming election. They've made it easy for me. I have my choice of Jill Stein or Donald Trump--either of them counts as a vote for the man who rescued Russia from the predations of neoliberalism! That news made my day.

I find myself and agreeing and sympathizing with Bill Pulliam today. I do what I can with my life to reduce my big footprint, and will try producing biochar, which sequesters carbon. But my husband really really wants that overseas vacation and I sort of do too, though for various reasons I have a half a mind to send him off alone. He'll then tell me I'm being hysterical (his English is downright abysmal, forget about any other foreign language). International events will soon put an end to our biggest sin, so I'll probably go along once again. And, yes, enjoy it.

Oh gawd how we have screwed subsequent generations!

7/27/16, 11:20 PM

MichaelK said...

So, many of the most intelligent, informed and comfortably-off, middle-class and above, passengers on the Titanic, actually observed the iceberg whilst strolling along the deck before luncheon was served. Protest they did, for a while, because it seemed incredible that the mighty ship wasn't altering course, though the crew promissed not to increase speed as much as they planned to. Sighs of relief all round. We're saved! Disaster, apperently averted. And then it was time for luncheon, caviar and champange on the menu, again.

It's on hell of a political culture we've seen evolve, where unlike the passengers on the real Titanic, we can't claim ignorance about what lies ahead of us. All one has to do is raise one's eyes from desert, and look over the railing. It's not as if the iceberg is hiding from view.

It's too easy to criticise the Greens and the 'movement', way too easy. Of course had an awful understanding of 'economics', but mainly they, and about everyone else didn't really take into account the nature of our political system. Our political system is a form of inverted totalitarianism and a parody of democracy, really a form of dictatorship where the great mass of ordinary people have next to no power or influence, which makes change near to impossible. What the people think or desire, doesn't matter anymore. What matters is the power, influence and interests of the less than 1% who rule, everyone else, like the passengers on the Titanic, are just along for the ride.

7/27/16, 11:21 PM

Wendy Crim said...

Woohoo! Print version of Arch Druid Report ordered. Can't wait.
Great piece, as usual.
I don't get flying. I've done it (when flying out of the country) but I mostly refuse to do it. I have taken the bus a few times in my life, the train twice, but mostly we just drive when we go out of town. Load everyone up with food and games and books on tape. I much rather (and enjoy) road trips for travel. Around town, more and more, we just hoof it. Walking can't be beat! But then, I'm one of the lowly wage class. Happy to be here.

7/27/16, 11:37 PM

Greybeard said...

Hi JMG, well said!

I think there is something in the interests and values categories that relates to guilt. Here in the UK, our Green voting areas are bohemian middle class with huge carbon footprints (London / Brighton / Bristol etc.). While they will have many good reasons for the political leanings, I have often wondered how much relates to guilt about their own lifestyles which they largely fail to address in any meaningful way.

Secondly, can I thank you for your comments on those in the green movement who fly but I don't think it those comments should be restricted to the Al Gores of the world. For example I can barely contain my anger when druid leaders fly repeatedly while claiming to love the Earth or green political activists regularly fly away for mini holidays every few weeks.

I have struggled to deliver the narrative of less carbon. Talking with people on doorsteps I find people who are either struggling to pay the rent and buy food or people who drive and fly regularly and would not entertain any suggestion that they might need to do less of it.

Finally, we have a society that continues to talk about aspiration but where many equate this with a high income and clean job, how do we sell a vision of a society that will need far more people working on the land? I'm speaking to a couple of hundred 16 year olds next month and I bet if I ask them who would like to be an agricultural labourer when they grow up the response won't be very high...

7/27/16, 11:40 PM

MichaelK said...

Dear Greer,

Whilst I agree with most of your analysis and arguments, I'm not too sure about your conclusions this time around. I think you're being unfair to the 'Greens' and the ghastly political culture that exists in the United States, which makes the task of any true opposition incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Your example of gay issues is, I would contend, irrelevant; as it's a niche area compared to challenging the entire structure and direction of US-style 'capitalism', which is in another league.

I think you almost veer into parody in your characterisation of the failures of the Greens to break through to most Americans. That's too easy and an avoidance of some harsh realities about US politics and economics. Sure the Greens haven't been 'eagle-eyed' about politics or economics, but who is these days? So, given their failings and the nature of US politics, that's hardly surprising.

Even if the US was a healthy and functioning democracy challenging the economic and social system would still be a colossal task, as it isn't, the failure of the Greens is not just understandable, it's to be expected.

I think it's unfortunate that you don't refer to the Green Party's leader Dr. Jill Stein and her views. Sure, she's very political and radical, but she basically agrees with you about the incredible challenges we face in relation to the environment and specifically the dangers of 'run-away' climate change, only she puts them into an uncomfortable and harsh political perspective. Basically, and I hope I'm not putting words in her mouth, she sees the US as a corporate/military/media... dictatorship run by the 1% who have both money and power. The entire system functions to protect and promote their interests at the expense of everyone else and the environment. What's needed, she argues, is a political revolution. Now, clearly this is a somewhat 'radical' viewpoint, but to ignore it and pretend that all the Greens are simply naive or stupid, seems a bit unfair.

7/27/16, 11:47 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Patricia, which is why an important part of climate change activism should be advocacy for rebuilding America's passenger rail system, with the kind of dedicated tracks you get in the northeast corridor, so that people can travel across the country quickly and comfortably at a tiny fraction of the energy consumption involved in air travel. Besides, think of all the jobs that would be created!

Cherokee, I think you hit the turkey square on the head with that last shot. The reason the Clinton campaign is spending all its time talking about Donald Trump is that it's kind of hard to talk about Hillary Clinton without dealing with the fact that she's basically George W. Bush in a pantsuit.

Justin, I had a few other things to write about first!

Jessi, I'm not at all sure I agree. The costs get dumped on the poor so relentlessly that somebody has to be noticing...

Bryan, no argument there. That's always the thing that drives Caesarism -- the abusive behavior of entrenched privilege classes mounts up to the point that the rest of the population turns to a charismatic demagogue.

WB, fair enough; you know your situation, of course, and I don't. Once you have control of your own travel arrangements, yes, it does get simpler.

Jessi, that depends on what you mean by "worst effects." Certainly there aren't enough accessible fossil fuel reserves on the planet to justify the high-end estimates for climate change that were being bandied around a while back, and the imminent human extinction brigade is simply the latest version of the mentality that gave us 2012. My predictions in an earlier post here are still my best guess.

Karim, exactly. The challenge is to keep on asking that question, no matter how unpopular it is, until it becomes impossible to avoid.

Martin, my condemnation was primarily directed at affluent liberals -- not just rich, but middle and upper middle class -- so you're not wrong. I've had a lot of encounters with radicals of the kind that are actually out there engaging in protest, and I have a great deal more respect for them than I do for the folks that can't be bothered to take action -- but I'm sorry to say that the problematic attitudes I discussed in my post, especially the first, second, and fourth of them -- extreme political naivete, a habit of engaging in wholly negative campaigning, and intolerance for honest dissent -- are in my experience extremely common among people involved in the protest end of things. Maybe I've met a nonrepresentative sample, though.

Leon, thanks for the explanation. I have certain advantages here, as I took quite a few college courses in ecology and botany, as well as experimental design and statistics; I can usually figure out when somebody's shoveling smoke. One basic rule is that I don't rely on the news media at all; I go to publications of research wherever possible. Another is that I compare recent data to data published in print sources decades ago -- that way you know the older numbers haven't been fudged.

Unknown, maybe not, but the activists could have given it a much better shot than they did. It's actually not that hard to reframe the entire issue in terms of specific goals that can be tackled one at a time, and presented in a positive light -- in a country that's desperately short of jobs, how much opposition would there really be to programs that hired hundreds of thousands of people at a living wage to do some of the stuff that needs doing, for example? I'll definitely consider doing a post on how the thing could have been done.

7/27/16, 11:54 PM

Somewhatstunned said...

ok JMG I take your general point, though when you say:

nobody in the climate change movement has been out there protesting commercial air travel,

that is not completely true.

(Though because one of my entry points into green thought and behaviour was that of personal transport, most of the greenies I know really do ride bikes and take the train. I also live in a city with a high level of walking - and of course, I'm not in North America. All of which means I tend to have a slightly distorted picture of what is considered normal behaviour in the 'developed' world)

7/28/16, 12:00 AM

John Michael Greer said...

Fudoshin, oh, granted. Aristocracies always seem to convince themselves that they've earned their position of privilege and can't possibly be evicted from it -- and that conviction is among the core reasons they always end up riding the tumbril, because they stop doing the things that keep the rest of society willing to put up with their antics.

Maybe, but if you use that as an excuse not to make changes in your own life, it's a copout. Leading by example is the only kind of leadership that really matters, you know.

Hammer, stuff like that gets reported every single week. It's a great way to suck in venture capital and sell stock -- and that's all it is. For thermodynamic reasons, there's no way to get a significant amount of energy from CO2 in the air without putting more energy in than you take out.

Herstory, it's easy to cultivate despair if you spend your time trying to make other people lead the kind of lifestyle you think they should. That never worked and it never will -- and, by the way, angry self-righteous denunciation is a good way to convince people not to do what you want them to do.

Nicholas, that's an excellent example. The town of Todmorden has done more good by that one practice than all the climate treaties ever signed.

Patricia, even for the Clinton campaign, the current round of Putin-baiting is stunningly dumb. Outside of her narrow neoconservative bubble, a lot of Americans respect Putin -- certainly a lot more than respect Hillary Clinton! -- and the thought of a rapprochement with Russia is a lot more appealing to ordinary Americans than Clinton's obsessive Cold War saber rattling. (Freudian slip report: every time I try to type Hillary's last name, it comes out "Clingon" the first time around. I suppose Star Trek did manage to leave some traces in my youthful psyche!)

Michael, there again, I think you're ducking the issue. The nature of our political system didn't keep the Clean Air Act from being passed, it didn't keep same sex marriage from becoming legal, etc., etc. The climate change movement failed because it pursued its goals with strategies so ineffective that the opposition was able to walk right over it.

7/28/16, 12:09 AM

John Michael Greer said...

Wendy, I've flown precisely once since I moved to a part of the country with rail service; that was to England, as part of my duties as head of a Druid order, and I'd have taken a ship if we still had regular, reasonably priced transatlantic passenger liners, as we did seventy-five years ago. Now that I no longer have that job and its attendant responsibilities, it's really doubtful that I'll fly again.

Greybeard, the way forward, as I see it, consists of making the idea of a low-carbon future enticing as a whole, so that people will accept (say) a steady job working in farming as their contribution to the better future. I'll talk about that in an upcoming post.

Michael, I'm not saying that all Greens are naive or stupid, and I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was. I'm saying that the specific movement to prevent global warming made five specific mistakes, which I described in detail, and that the failure of that movement is best understood as the result of those mistakes. Some of those mistakes are shared more generally by the left, but not all. What's more, preventing global warming didn't require "challenging the entire structure and direction of US-style 'capitalism'" -- again, those are your words, not mine. It really does come across as though either you didn't pay attention to what I wrote, or that you're trying to spin it to fit some agenda of your own, and either way I don't think that's helpful.

Stunned, hmm! Glad to hear that. That said, how much attention did that get in the broader climate change movement?

7/28/16, 12:20 AM

ed boyle said...

Queen

Text

Bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle bicycle bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride it where I like

ttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ncQsBzI-JHc
bicycle race queen, 1978

Culture can be fun. A guy at work said he was jogging to lose weight, said when he had a car he had gained weight, then talked later of buying a cheap car. I pointed out how a really cool bike, fitness lifestyle would make him healthy, fit, sexy, save money.

Prince

Little red Corvette
baby you're much too fast
little red corvette
you need a love that's gonna last

Bicycle love is slower but seen internally it is faster. Reading Iliad the individual killing is brutal, heroic, meaningful, not like modern warfare. Better the old ways. Just as much if not more exciting than anonymous stuffed highway or anonymous death by machine gun at half mile distance.

7/28/16, 12:29 AM

Dorda Giovex said...

Actually, its a post-mortem of the kind of activism that routinely has been used by the elites to hijack grassroot movements from the control of commoners. Enviromentalism but also trade unions and socialism as intended to attention and investment into the local community and considering public goods as part of a shared, communal ownership.
This hijacking which in Europe is practiced since a very long time goes like this: there is a problem perceived by commoners.. like for example the owners of companies using scare tactics on employees to lower wages. This lead to workers organizing into trade unions to fight back and regain some bargaining power. Power attracts the elites and soon some of them raises to the top achieving things thanks to the good connections. But shortly after they are in control they start adding to the core goals of the organization others which are romantic impractical or impossible for the working people. Soon these goals are given priority and the organization loses grassroot support ,is driven into the ground and then recognized and kept alive by the elites because it keeps another grassroot movement from coming into existance. So the organization created by the people to free themselves and to gain bargainig power becomes yet another mean to control them.
I read recently "Storms of our grandchildren" of james hansen. what stroke me is how big a chunk of the book is devoted to the life of the author and the description of his meeting and talks and mistakes in the higher echelons of usa governments. His climate change policy was about convincing governments to FORCE policy on commoners! Luddites were commoners rebelling against progress imposed by elites. This is something entirely different. It is dying. And that is good.
When commoners will have their house submerged for the n-th time or burned or cars washed away in yet another flash flood. When food will become scarce and yet more wars and terrorist scares will be organized by the elites something different will pop up. Suddenly and powerfully. All this crap will be washed away by tired and disillusioned people like communism from ussr.

7/28/16, 12:39 AM

Sébastien Louchart said...

Hi JMG,

I eventually got my copy of Twilight's Last Gleaming from that fine publisher Karnac Books in London. And guess what? I read the book in two days! Couldn't help put it aside I had to get back to it whenever I had some time. I'm considering purchasing your other books in english and I won't be waiting for a french translation as I used to do.

I recently discovered that Pr. Dennis Meadows was a great fan of your books as it appears in a text he published on Pr. Ugo Bardi's blog 2 weeks ago. From where I stand, that's a hell of a hat tip :)

"I read John Michael Greer's books as they come out. They stimulate me to think about that future without abundant oil. I expect that will be evident by 2030."

Concerning this week's post, I can't help but interpreting it with my own national brains and eyes. The situation regarding Climate Change here in Ecnarf has also worsened since the years Al Gore's movie hit this side of the pond. Grossly, nobody gives a damn. Everything climate related is either dismissed or, when it comes to enacted public policy, seen as another move against working people. For example a recent policy from Paris mayor has banned old cars from entering the city. Nothing has been said about what's still going on around the city with the Boulevard Périphérique (a ring of 4 lanes motorways encircling the inner Paris) still plagued with trafic jams, heavy trucks and diesel personal cars. Half of the country suffered from heavy rains in May, June, still recovering. A recent announcement from the gov't said that industrial cereal farmers will get some tax cuts and the like to compensate for the decrease in crop yield.

Personally, I tend to adapt my own lifestyle with as much less energy as I can do. I still have to attend to my workplace 20 minutes driving, I take the bus sometimes. I'm planning to take it more often. I totally phased off plane travel one year ago. I still visit friends and relatives all over the country but either I travel by train (a network that still works quite well but could be better and cheaper) or I carpool. I still have to work on my food input to rely less on industrial farming and processed goods, though.

Having read the Ecotechnic Future (twice), I'm still wondering how different are the US and Europe for the matter of spiraling into descent and whether your advices are tailored for the North American or can be applied to Europeans as well (counting Britons, yes, we still share a common fate).

Anyway, thank you for giving us these weekly insights and be well.

7/28/16, 12:57 AM

Mikep said...

Hi John,if I understand you correctly, had the proponents of climate change mitigation only followed the strategies of Gay Marriage advocates they may have had more success. Seems unlikely to me. Life is far to short and precious to list all the ways that these are two utterly different issues so let's simple call them a very hard thing to do and a very easy thing. The first involves people actually doing something, not just a few people in one or two Western Countries but most of the World's population changing their ways at least to some extent. The second involves writing some words on a piece of paper.
I do hope that you are not suffering burn out. Perhaps it's time for another break, I would miss my weekly fix of SWPL baiting if anything bad happened to you.
Best wishes and take care of yourself.

Mike

7/28/16, 1:16 AM

Mikep said...

This assumes that Climate Change is a problem, I don't mean that it's not happening but rather that it may not be a problem in the sense of having a solution that we might be able to agree on and implement in the real world. If it's not a problem in that sense, then the climate change deniers are as good as right.
Mike

7/28/16, 1:54 AM

Shane W said...

Sigh, I'm picturing activists at a major airport, like say Toronto Pearson or Atlanta Hartsfield, protesting, yelling "shut it down, shut it down", harassing and accosting passengers as they enter. LOL, when pigs fly (pun intended)

7/28/16, 2:18 AM

mr. no said...

Probably all of what you say is true. Personally, I tried to avoid some of the worse contributors to carbon emissions in my life (at the time, I identified red meat and flying among the worse, after reading a number of conflicting sources).
My plan was to drive less (I achieved it to some extent), eat only chicken meat and some pork, and avoid flying, at least for vacation. Then I would advocate the same to my neighbours and friends...
Well, I have to say I was discouraged two years later after some facts:
- The climate is already profoundly affected, and even scientist cannot predict if something can be done (that explains Paris conclusions, btw)
- At current rate, the collapsing economy (and a number of excuses, ajem, terrorism...) would reduce carbon emissions anyway, and lifestyles with them (incidentally, all possibilities for investing in renewables are also shrinking fast)

Now I still have a relatively reduced footprint wrt. my peers, but I don't care anymore.

Regards,
J

7/28/16, 2:20 AM

Peter Kalmus said...

JMG, my colleagues don't treat me like a freak (at least, not yet). As far as I know, they don't treat Alice Bows-Larkin like one, either. That said, I know of no other Earth scientist who is willing to give up air travel.

I'd argue that the movement's leaders' stunning failure to "walk the talk" is perhaps more emblematic of the really unprecedented challenge posed by global warming, than as a cause of the movement's failure (though it hasn't helped any). That is, our lives in industrial society are so entwined with fossil fuel that it's difficult even to envision what a new mode of living would look like, let alone to live it. Just look around you: embodied fossil fuel everywhere you look. Of course, we lived without fossil fuel a mere two centuries ago, but the myth of progress blinds us to this.

Maybe global warming is the greatest collective imagination failure the world has ever seen? The movement could use 5.3 billion pairs of magic sunglasses that allow us to see the fossil fuel embodied in nearly every aspect of our lives (we'll give the poorest 2 billion a pass, as their lives would look pretty much the same with or without the sunglasses). This is what really sets the global warming fight apart from, say, the fight against CFCs. Fossil fuels are everywhere, and there's no easy substitute.

Venkataraman, thanks for the shout out.

7/28/16, 2:24 AM

drhooves said...

While I wouldn't argue with your summary of reasons why the climate change movement stalled, as a former meteorologist and climatologist in the military, I look at it in a different context. The issue simply eclipsed the ability of the average American to understand cause/effect and consequences, and changes to address the issue directly conflicted with economic growth and sacrifice of lifestyles. It's one thing to succeed on the issue of gay marriage which is relatively "free" to all, but another game indeed when trying to pick the pockets of corporate owners.

IMHO, the movement would have, and could still have, far more success if highlighting the aspects of pollution, overpopulation and ecological damage of the current industrial society rather than trying to emphasize the impact that it has on the complexities of the earth/weather/climate model(s). I fear now the table has been set for a draconian event as in the form of war will now be unavoidable.

7/28/16, 2:27 AM

Barrabas said...

Here in Australia we were recently treated to the edifying spectacle of 20000 west australians flying across to victoria to watch cage fighter Ronda Rousey punch on with some other bird . Rhonda got knocked down unconscious in the early going and her opponent straddled her and continued to punch her in the face while she lay helpless as the crowd went wild , until the ref finally intervened before Rhonda got killed . Afterward , the 20000 got drunk in Melbourne and the next day flew back to west australia . The gdp and economy were going great guns as the panem et circenses really got going .
Fifty years ago in Australia this bout would never have happened and the twenty thousand would have either went fishing , camping, churching ot footballing .
Thats progress i guess !

7/28/16, 3:17 AM

Barrabas said...

Oh and by the way
Dry Ice is frozen CO 2 !

7/28/16, 3:19 AM

Coops said...

I'm just going to leave these here:

http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2015/09/climate-change-for-adults.html

http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/10/adventures-in-flatland.html
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/10/adventures-in-flatland-part-ii.html
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/2014/11/adventures-in-flatland-part-iii-1.html

It's not naivety, or stupidity, or anything consciously deliberate. It's just human nature. No one is going to fix climate change, because the great mass of people are incapable of acknowledging the threat.

7/28/16, 3:26 AM

Gunnar Rundgren said...

The main challenge for climate change activism is the fact that tackling the issues will be difficult and require fundamental lifestyle shifts from most people in the developed world. Changes that most don't want to do, at least not until the elite has made them first. People are desperately clinging to new technological innovations to save our civilization instead of acknowledging that it will wither.

On my side of the Atlantic I don't think the climate change movement or the environmental movement have played the doom card very much, rather the opposite, I think they try in vain to put a positive spin to the messages. I think there is an increasing understanding of that you can't fight a system built around instant satisfaction with argument of the same kind, http://gardenearth.blogspot.se/2011/05/which-values-do-we-support-with-our.html

I don't recognize the scientific arrogance of climate change activists that you describe, at least not as a general feature.

On a policy level the positive spin and the idea that there will be no hardship is "sold" under the chapeau of Green Economy or environmental jobs etc.

7/28/16, 3:35 AM

Wizard of Tas said...

Sounds about right. I own the property we live in and just bought a block on the other side of Tas. How long would I keep them if I refused to pay rates (tax).

7/28/16, 3:42 AM

nuku said...

@W.B. Jorgenson,
I sympathise with your mention of the "social costs" of giving up the use of various technologies; I’ve had a few friends make mildly disparaging remarks when I said I didn’t have a smart phone, just a simple old Nokia for text and phone calls. Ditto for not watching television. I’m in my 70’s and frankly I really don’t give a rat’s a--s what most people, including family, think of me. I’m comfortable with who I am, and the only person whose opinion I care about is my wonderful long-term girlfriend.

Aside from the issue of technology, I’ve had to let go of some friends who are deeply committed to the Myth Of Progress and will not even participate in a reasonable discussion. I found that I just could not be around them in any but the most superficial way, and that it wasn’t worth the energy it took to keep my mouth shut and avoid the inevitable fight.

I feel the same way about people who have a deeply held belief that women are inferior; there is no way I want to waste my precious time interacting with them as friends or even acquaintances.

So yes, its sometimes painful to cut loose from people whose beliefs you find abhorrent, but if you make an effort, I’m sure you’ll find a few friends who share your views. Good Luck!

7/28/16, 3:43 AM

Tony said...

Good analysis. On the new ice age consensus, wasn't there this paper that looked at the literature and concluded that the majority of research went for warming rather than cooling? I also seem to recall a more recent paper but can't find it.

However, I'm not sure that the activists could paint a rosy picture of the future with renewables (as envisaged by them) and not be dishonest. But I'm sure a lot of them tried. Hey, Al Gore even thinks the battle is being won.

Good point on activists not walking the walk. I presume Kevin Anderson is one of the scientists doing that. I'm not sure of the other, unless it's his colleague, Alice Bows-Larkin. Personally, I hate flying (not as in scared but as in the emissions), and try to limit it only to family visits (I emigrated a decade ago).

7/28/16, 4:06 AM

nuku said...

@Anthony Romano,
I think JMG’s point is that the climate activists deliberately chose to target coal mining as a “baddie” precisely because it was an easy target. A (relatively) small number of blue collar workers in a definitely non-sexy, dirty industry located in non-glamorous “hillbilly country”. Easy pickings and a pat on the back for a win for climate change.
They refrained from pointing the finger at the airline/travel/tourist industry NOT out of concern for potentially larger blue-collar job losses in that industry, but because it would have been a much harder sell to the people who actually run the country, the affluent classes. In addition, the climate activists themselves didn’t want to give up their own use of air travel.

7/28/16, 4:18 AM

FiftyNiner said...

JMG, et al,
It occurred to me as I did my rounds yesterday that the next POTUS will unquestionably be a person wearing pants who has spent at least the last THREE decades seeing the world only from behind the tinted glass of a chauffeur driven limousine! The Age of the Caesars has arrived for sure! However, I still view Trump in a more favorable light than Madame Clingon. It was interesting last evening to hear Obama and Bloomberg working so assiduously to hold down Trump's campaign expenses! This could turn into an honest-to-goodness LANDSLIDE!

7/28/16, 4:45 AM

Unknown said...

JMG,

Heavy hitting article today!

I'm guessing you may have read this because it comes from the same magazine that I've seen some of your work featured on, but for those who haven't, here's the exception that proves the rule regarding giving up air travel:

https://orionmagazine.org/article/confessions-of-a-recovering-environmentalist/

-Joel

7/28/16, 5:09 AM

Russ said...

John - I agree with most of what you've written but I have to throw you a curve. The comparison of the failure of the climate movement with the success of the same-sex marital movement is faulty. In the latter the yes or no vote doesn't affect everyone (a seemingly small minority of persons involved), neither would it cost any of us anything and it is backed by provisions of our constitution. One could argue that climate change comes under the provisions of the clean air act; it does but that requires a finding of fact that is subject to politics and debate.. AND, it affects everyone. The same-sex marriage situation is not similar. Many of us could care less about same-sex marriage since it wouldn't affect our lives or pocketbooks..
We, wife and I have been a behind-the-scenes advocates in the environmental movement for at least 50 years. When we could afford it we installed solar hot water and voltaic systems, insulation, geo-thermal heating/cooling, burned home-grown wood in our fireplace, stopped flying, bought a Prius and drove as little as possible. This computer uses XP and we don't have a smartphone or any other such electronic device except TV and stereo. The internet connection is hooked up to batteries fed by solar panels, etc. We're in our mid-80's so we don't spend a lot time learning how to raise our own food. I have been very forthright in discussions about renewables: they will not support the Western Civ. lifestyle. Enjoy your posts. Russ Day

7/28/16, 5:09 AM

Eric Backos said...

Greetings to the assembled Wizardren!
We in Northeast Ohio are following Melbourne’s example by holding well-advertised monthly meetings.
The monthly joint meeting of the Green Wizards’ Benevolent and Protective Association, Tower Number 440, and Ruinmen’s Guild, Local 440 will be held at 11:30 AM on Saturday, September 24, 2016. Our location is Ruko’s Family Restaurant, 9385 Mentor Avenue, Mentor, Ohio 44060, (440) 974-1914. Shining the Green Light! Public Welcome! Tables for Failed Scholars. Look for the table topper with the Green Wizard Hat.
Many thanks to John for the posting space on his blog.

7/28/16, 5:11 AM

Lawfish1964 said...

“The principal energy sources of our present industrial civilization are the so-called fossil fuels. We burn wood and oil, coal and natural gas, and, in the process, release waste gases, principally CO2, into the air. Consequently, the carbon dioxide content of the Earth’s atmosphere is increasing dramatically. The possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect suggests that we have to be careful: Even a one- or two-degree rise in the global temperature can have catastrophic consequences. In the burning of coal and oil and gasoline, we are also putting sulfuric acid into the atmosphere. Like Venus, our stratosphere even now has a substantial mist of tiny sulfuric acid droplets. Our major cities are polluted with noxious molecules. We do not understand the long-term effects of our course of action. But we have also been perturbing the climate in the opposite sense. For hundreds of thousands of years human beings have been burning and cutting down forests and encouraging domestic animals to graze on and destroy grasslands. Slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial tropical deforestation and overgrazing are rampant today. But forests are darker than grasslands, and grasslands are darker than deserts. As a consequence, the amount of sunlight that is absorbed by the ground has been declining, and by changes in the land use we are lowering the surface temperature of our planet. Might this cooling increase the size of the polar ice cap, which, because it is bright, will reflect still more sunlight from the Earth, further cooling the planet, driving a runaway albedo* effect? Our lovely blue planet, the Earth, is the only home we know. Venus is too hot. Mars is too cold. But the Earth is just right, a heaven for humans. After all, we evolved here. But our congenial climate may be unstable. We are perturbing our poor planet in serious and contradictory ways. Is there any danger of driving the environment of the Earth toward the planetary Hell of Venus or the global ice age of Mars? The simple answer is that nobody knows. The study of the global climate, the comparison of the Earth with other worlds, are subjects in their earliest stages of development. They are fields that are poorly and grudgingly funded. In our ignorance, we continue to push and pull, to pollute the atmosphere and brighten the land, oblivious of the fact that the long-term consequences are largely unknown.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

7/28/16, 5:25 AM

MigrantWorker said...

John,

I think there is more, a variation on the theme of political naivete if you like. It consists of presenting specific changes as an ultimate solution, without considering the effect of fundamentals on the specifics.

For example, you have mentioned many times how it would be an obvious thing to do to ditch the machines in favor of human labour once the tax code that favors machines is abolished. This one act would go a long way towards solving a number of environmental issues - but not even the Green party (at least not the British one) proposes it; instead they propose rather small tweaks at the margins of the tax code, which keep its current form essentially intact.

Another good example is the universal emphasis on creating jobs, understood as opportunities to work for a company or another person in return for a wage/salary. But the British Green party does not propose a similar drive to increase the number of people working for themselves - even though such a form of employment would go a long way towards relocalising industry.

I'm singling out the Green party because it is ostensibly representing the Green movement within the current power structures, thus giving it access to actual policymaking on a national level. They _could_ change the fundamentals, unlike the mere activists whose ability to change laws is greatly restricted. But they do not even try - while promising results which cannot be achieved without changing the status quo. Sure, these suggestions in paragraphs above have little support right now; but isn't it the job of a political movement to make its proposals accepted? Well, the Greens appear to have chosen an opposite route - start with what is accepted, and then make your proposals based on that. No wonder they have come to be seen as irrelevant; they basically promise an Atlantic Republic in Retrotopia's skin.

MigrantWorker

7/28/16, 5:31 AM

Kim Arntsen said...

Thank you for another thought-provoking post. I don't disagree at all with your overall point, but there's a few things I'd like to comment on, some of which have already been brought up by a few of the other commentators.

First, while this doesn't excuse the strategic mistakes of the climate movement at all, wasn't their objective a pretty tall order compared to most other social movements of the time? Like you said in your post on the Paris agreement, constantly emitting greenhouse gases is the foundation of "everything that makes modern industrial societies modern and industrial". Putting a stop to that would entail a major reorganization of society, and would involve nearly everyone from the rich to the very poor. I'd think that would be a very hard sell even with a good strategy. Especially when the consequences of inaction are so vague (on an individual level) and so far in the future.

I also think the comparison with same-sex marriage is kind of apples to oranges. Introducing same-sex marriage requires no new infrastructure, no energy inputs, and only involves a tiny minority of the population directly (or so I'd argue; the book I chose for your last reading assignment was a vehemently anti-same-sex marriage screed claiming it would invalidate every Christian marriage as well, but I'll get to that after your next education post). Another advantage for the same-sex marriage campaign was that it could easily be slotted into a Religion of Progress framework as the next step for Progress following on from civil rights for African Americans, feminism and so on.

The point about being able to promise people sweat and toil as long as there's payoff was interesting. Something I find slightly exasperating about the Norwegian Green Party (of which I'm an active member) is the dithering between willingness to be honest about the predicament of industrial society and wanting to keep telling voters everything will be okay and that Western middle-class lifestyles of course are sustainable with a few tweaks. There's a very strong fear of being "negative" and seen as "doomers" among some in the party, I'd say.

On the other hand, the party does promote a local equivalent of "a vision of a grand new era of green industry, with millions of new working-class jobs", even if it's not always clear where exactly all those jobs are going to come from. On that note, I'd also be very interested to see your full post on that in an American context.

7/28/16, 5:32 AM

superpeasant said...

Surely the question here is how the facts of anthropogenic climate change can be translated into the urgent necessary practical actions when it has to go through the utterly non-scientific process of politics?

You mention the recent referendum her in the UK on our continued membership of the EU. We have a parliamentary democracy here in which 75% of our elected representatives wanted to stay in the EU. The extreme right-wing of the Conservative Party pressured Cameron into holding the Referendum becausw they saw it as a way of overturning the will of our elected sovereign parliament .

Political elections are normally based on candidates 'laying out their stall' in their pre-election manifesto and we vote for our preferred choice. If, four or five later and we find out that they have failed on their tangible promises (higher/ lower taxes, more/less on health, education, law and order, military et etc) we can throw them out.

The referendum has been much more like a trial by jury. The 'outers' and 'remainers'(lawyers) made their persuasive arguments and then the British electorate (the jury) made their decision based on what it had heard. Bear in mind that this is not a regular election, but a once-in-a-lifetime choice. No sooner had the result been announced that the winning side were backing away from the promises they had made on slashing immigration, spending more on the National Health Service etc etc. Their campaign was based on lies. To make matters worse, the 'jury' had been grossly misled by the Murdoch media, along with other right-wing outlets such as The Daily Express, The Daily Mail etc into a vote which, very like that exploited by Trump, had hardly anything to do with Europe, but was a protest vote by the millions of the 'left behind' while the 1% prospered. The outcome is very likely to make them very angry indeed at having been cheated.

I make this comparison between Climate Change and the Brexit referendum because in both cases factually reasoned argument has been completely cast aside. In the face of a hostile media the UK Remain camp and Climate activists face equal defeat, just as Trump poses a serious threat to Clinton.

Some put it down to a complete failure of education that intelligent, reasoned debate and scientific facts are being cast aside in a wild fit of anger and unreason. I am sure that you will agree that a lot of this involves the abject failure of the American (actually worldwide) consumer dream. It has been a 50 year fraud which has driven into a state of disappointment, despair and debt which threatens the very viability of our natural life-support systems.

Finally, you end your piece by mentioning 'the centuries ahead'. We don't have centuries and if temperatures continue to rise at the current rate the world as we know it will disappear well before the current century is out.

7/28/16, 5:35 AM

Eric Backos said...

Hi John
Since asking your permission to use Retrotopia while student teaching, I’ve been surprised by the that-will-never-work remarks. Perhaps the matter could be considered in light of this week’s ADR – How can Green Wizardry be packaged to make as many friends as possible?
Eric

7/28/16, 5:39 AM

Ian Dowson said...

Hi JMG - As someone's who’s stopped flying, taking a leaf out of Kevin Anderson's book (no doubt one of the scientists you mentioned?) I like to think I’m ahead of the curve on this one ;-) Mind you, you'd think I'd admitted to being a mass murderer some of the looks I get from friends and family...

The point Kevin often makes is about how we take people along with us. So, instead of focusing on the people who have a package holiday each Summer, the people who need to cut down on flying are the middle class and business travellers taking 3,4,5 plus flights a year. Any talk of changing their behaviour by changing policy, more taxation or whatever, is rubbished so as not to stoke the ire of the great God of growth.

Anyway, I think the left should take a leaf out of UKIP’s book and look how they achieved Brexit - When James Goldsmith first started the referendum party in the mid 90's, he was viewed as a loon. Well now 20 years later we're out of the EU and the successor party, UKIP, regularly polls 15-20%. I think we need to realise this is a long game and things like degrowth, localisation, ecological economics may seem left field now but could soon be normal currency and neoliberal globalisation will seem crazy (I hope)!

The “left” whoever that is anymore need to just bite the bullet, start advocating these things now, as unpopular as they may at first be, then when the proverbial really starts hitting the fan in the coming years, we’ll be ready with an alternative.

7/28/16, 6:14 AM

hhawhee said...

Not to quibble, but the 1984 quote is:

"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia"

Your point about the doom-and-gloom rhetoric as a turnoff was brought home to me a few years ago when I saw a meme that my AGW denialist friends were sharing -- a short clip from South Park with a scarey loudspeaker-like device broadcasting baleful warnings about how global warming was going to get us all. The lightbulb went on over my head then: "oh, so THAT'S how they see us." Your first point was made in connection with the Iraq War, when a beloved family member who's all-in with the Global War on Terror said, "but you make us feel so stupid, so how are we supposed to listen to what you have to say?"

7/28/16, 6:24 AM

hhawhee said...

whoa, I was wrong about the "Eastasia" quote and Archdruid was right. That's how quick things turn around here in Oceania, I guess.

7/28/16, 6:28 AM

Violet Cabra said...

JMG, I can't help but agree with the importance of positive vision in the creation of mimesis. Many of my friends have been inspired by my actions in ways that I've found surprising. A quick survey:

1) after talking about Oswald Spengler non-stop for a year and a half, several of my friends got Decline of the West from the library and read it. They got a lot out of it and weren't people I'd have thought of as 'intellectuals'.

2) while farming I talked with everyone about how genuinely satisfying the work is. One of my friends, inspired, left his cushier life to work on organic farms, citing my example as a major point of inspiration.

3) Since getting deep with herbs, using them for all of my health needs, and teaching classes, many friends of mine have started making their own tinctures, and showing a large degree of sophistication in their extraction processes and displaying a grasp of materia medica that I find impressive. One friend quit her job so she could spend more time learning about herbs, foraging and gardening! I gave her personalized, free classes of course.

I mention all of these examples because they surprised me. I didn't design to have people follow my example, I wasn't advertising. Instead I was just sharing from my own life and doing my routine, sharing it with others. People saw this and appearantly changed on their own accord and in their own unique way. The choices we make and how we talk about them are clearly important. Personal example is even more so, as is availability to help people make the first few steps on the steepest part of the learning curve.

7/28/16, 6:34 AM

Johnny said...

Hi JMG,

Seeing your post makes me think I’ve made some mistakes in how I approached the issue of climate change. I learned about the idea first as a concept in science fiction and then in the late 80s as a real concern, when I was about 10. From then I started to focus on learning about what I could personally do – which is an ongoing process. I did make real sacrifices, although I think they are as you describe them, simply inconveniences (I’ve never driven a car, I stopped eating meat, and I don’t use airplanes if I can help it - I’ve taken about one trip a decade since then and the first trip was to see family when I was too young to really have any say, and the last was a business trip I couldn’t get out of), still in some cases this has meant tough decisions. I was never comfortable discussing my rationale for doing these things with anyone because I felt that it would be trying to impose my morals on others (although I did post once here about veganism because I thought it was relevant), I just usually say something like “I don’t like flying,” or “I like having being able to read on the train”. People know these things about me but they don’t understand what’s really behind it, and I’ve never tried to be part of a greater movement to change people’s opinion on climate change (I think at best I’ve contributed to the “doom, doom, doom” mantra). Do you know how we should go about trying to help? My concern has always been on trying to do more personally (I think I am still quite wasteful but I am trying to get better always). Am I going about this wrong? I try to be optimistic but I feel now like that amounts to just trying to be positive in the face of an awful and worsening situation.

7/28/16, 6:36 AM

Nestorian said...

JMG,

How about a similar post-mortem post on the Peak Oil movement as a public advocacy project?

Unlike climate change, Peak Oil never even really got off the ground in mass public consciousness, and it seems to me that some of the reasons for this failure coincide with the reasons you cite to explain the failure of climate change as a public advocacy project.

7/28/16, 6:36 AM

David, by the lake said...

John--

I work at in the utility industry (at a nice, socialist municipal utility). I can tell you that the industry has seen a considerable flattening of load growth, even some load decline, which for the old-hands is just unheard of. Our utility is smaller, but we do have solid-fuel generation. The good(ish) news is that we co-fire biomass. (We are actually air permitted for 100% biomass, but there are supply-chain, economic, and operational issues that would have to be addressed first.) I've been an advocate for an upstream carbon tax (tax applicable when it comes out of the ground or over the border), which would help levelize the playing field in the wholesale marketplace. I hope to be able to move some more of my ideas along in coming years, particularly if a possible advancement opportunity does indeed materialize.

On the election, I am still amazed at the incredible blockheadedness I witness in the discussion threads. A few people are starting to speak up about looking into the causes of the working class vote migrating Trumpward, but those voices seem drowned out by those who say those people don't vote for "us" anyway, have always voted against their own economic interests (!) and "we" just need to fire up "our" loyal supporters. Senility, indeed!

I played around with an interactive electoral map the other day and came up with my projection. I gave each side their "usual suspects" -- Clinton got the west coast, the northeast (except for NH and the one electoral vote in northern ME), HI, and the Lakes region of IL, MN, WI and MI, plus CO and NM. Trump got the "fly-over" country, AK, NV, AZ, NH, that northern ME vote, the southeast including FL, and OH. (Clinton kept PA.) The result? 270-268 Trump. I see this as a very plausible map.

7/28/16, 6:43 AM

tokyo damage said...

Another great column, which both raises problems and prescribes strategies which I hadn't ever thought about before!

To the point of the Failure of Climate Activism:

There's some other hurdles specific to this issue (i.e. not a problem for advocates of gay marriage or other successful causes): You're telling people you're trying to convert, that THEY are the problem, not the corporations or government. We don't like hearing that.

And you're not just fighting people's lifestyles AND big corps AND governments at the same time, you're fighting an ideology of 'growth forever at all costs' which is so unconscious/entrenched that all governments from capitalism to fascism to communism share(d) it.

And you're telling people, 'OK all you have to do is change yourself, corporations, governments, and basic foundational civilizational assumptions. . . and what is your reward, should you succeed? Living like Little House on the Prairie and spending your nights knitting your own handkerchiefs."

So there's some unique challenges here, marketing-wise.

7/28/16, 6:45 AM

John Dunn said...

Just some simple steps. I turned off the AC a few years back. Saves a lot of energy and money. We've come to accept AC as a necessity, it isn't. Buy a clothes line: why burn a fire in the basement to dry clothes?

Commute on a motorcycle. A small vehicle uses less metal, etc. in its' production, and burns much less gas. Poor man's Prius.

This type of thing was common knowledge in the 70's. --JD

7/28/16, 6:47 AM

Ezra Buonopane said...

Glad to see somebody finaly acknowledge that flying is far from the only way, or even the best way, to travel long distances. I recently heard that NASA was trying to delvelop a zero carbon commercial jet liner and thought: wouldn't it be easier to bring back ocean liners? They would take a few days to cross the atlantic ocean, but even a lowly tourist class passenger on the SS United States had more room, better food, and more things to do than a first class passenger on one of today's airplanes, and with a far smaller carbon footprint. If you need to go long distances overland, then lighter than air flight is an option. The test flights of the aeroscraft prototype seem to indicate that they've solved most of the problems (such as not being able to control your own buoyancy without ballast) of the first generation of rigid airships. I suspect that this technology will become quite widespread in the next few decades; a transportation option that can cary large payloads and needs nothing more than flat ground to land on would be very useful when we can't maintain freeways and airports anymore.

7/28/16, 6:48 AM

Mister Roboto said...

I can't help but be reminded of the foolish-sounding rhetorical Saint Vitus's dance being done by Hillary Clinton's supporters that we can count on hearing pretty much every election cycle.

7/28/16, 6:52 AM

Pat said...

Could you put a link on your homepage that goes to the "Retrotopia" series. I have recommended it to people to read, but is spread out throughout your many, wonderful, posts.

BTW - your work, and writing are great. Thank you.

7/28/16, 6:54 AM

Ben Johnson said...

JMG - Since I wasn't around at the time, would you say the environmental movement made similar (or the same) mistakes in the late 70s - early 80s regarding the limits to growth and movement away from fossil fuels?

7/28/16, 6:57 AM

Bob said...

Another distinction I would draw between the success of the Marriage Equality movement and the failure of the Climate Change movement is related to your final point about sacrifice, and bearing the cost. This relates also to recent debates on the American left about whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Whether I vote for Hillary or Trump, I cannot vote against big banks. The difference is this: Gay marriage is not a threat to Capitalism itself, or the people in control of (and at the top of) that system (large financial institutions). Goldman Sachs doesn't care who is or isn't allowed to get married, but they sure as heck care if the commercial air and auto industries survive. [As a side note, during your build-up, I thought you were referring to the Internet, not the Airlines. Surprise!] Meaningful climate action involves a fairly radical shift in societal behavior, as you have said many times. And while I disagree with you that NO ONE was arguing for a kind of Green New Deal (I do recall reading essays calling for letting the US auto companies fail, and having the US Government hire those workers to build wind turbines and the like), the larger point stands: Americans do not want to make sacrifices, especially if the beneficiaries are strangers. I am reminded of the old Dead Kennedys album, Give Me Convenience, or Give Me Death. 1960s radicals had to choose between Gilligan's Island and Janis Joplin, so getting people fired up and involved was eaiser (the Draft didn't hurt either), but now people have an infinite amount of entertainment at their disposal, and asking them to give even a small portion of that up sounds like a Betrayal of American Freedom, or something.

7/28/16, 7:25 AM

Ien in the Kootenays said...

Great post. I love your mind. Blaise Pascal formulated this basic marketing principle some centuries ago. "Before you can convince people something is true, you have to first make them wish it were true." For lefties such as myself, hoping for the downfall of corporatism, an environmental doomsday scenario has a certain appeal. Many good comments as well, though I have to stop reading them if I want to get to the gardens that are my passion, my sanity, and my contribution. I just wanted to give a shout out to some. Cacaogecko, I am your typical green liberal, and take great pride in my ability to raise and butcher chickens. Caryn in Dubois, I love what you say about two sides being right. Why is it so hard for people to think and/and instead of jumping to either/or? I did a blogpost once that starts more or less "If I could change one thing to make this world a better place, it would be to discourage thinking in binaries". Several people mentioned the cost in social relationships of living without. So true. Right now my electrity use is going through the roof. My husband has been reduced to skin and bones by a neuro degenerative disease. He keeps cranking up heat, even in summer. What am I suposed to do, let him freeze? I have been doing the eat local, with the seasons, for most of my life. I grew up that way in post war Europe and reverted back to it when I became a gardener. Overall, my life is relatively virtuous in green terms. But, oh, how I love my internet! Guilty as charged on that account. As for a positive vision, Bill McKibben offers a nice one at the end of "Eaarth". Simp,e, more local living, more done by hand, but we get to keep the internet to facilitate exactly that. When I despair of tne world I google Permaculture, urban farming, and bio char. Good things are happening.

7/28/16, 7:32 AM

Spanish fly said...

(Sorry, this is my definitive comment. Please, delete first one I wrote and publish this one, thanks).

Oh misery of clever middle class people!

"It's the masses who determine events"...Blah bla blah...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rXtuuUpBe0

In this old french movie we can see that people chattering in the bus. They are complaining about everything, but bus driver keeps on driving until...ooops!they aren't going to bus stop, they are being driven to...where?
Climate change activists have been sitting on the bus 30 years but they haven't moved their arses yet...I think that scene woould be a good allegory for them; although it weren't Robert Bresson idea when filmed that in 70s.
Climate change activists don't want to get off the jet named "progress", too. It's too cold out there...

7/28/16, 7:38 AM

Kirby Benson said...

As a species we have a built in denial of death. Ernest Becker explored this idea in depth in his book, 'The Denial of Death'. I think it then follows that if we accept the fact of climate change we then accept the fact of impending death. This we cannot allow as it points out our mortality. We defend our religious beliefs of life after death even to the point of killing others in order to be correct. So, in this regard the denial of death and the denial of climate change are closely related.

7/28/16, 7:48 AM

JimBobRazrBk said...

Recovering "religious right" member here- you're absolutely right about all the anti gay marriage rhetoric. In fact, some people went a good deal further than predicting it would force pastors to marry two men, claiming it would literally cause the end of the world. Back in the days when I still tried to talk to other family members etc. who still adhere to that movement, I was always amazed that they'd dismiss everything I had to say about Peak Oil as "conspiracy theory" and "irrational paranoia," yet somehow the idea that God would destroy the earth soon and send the antichrist down as punishment for homosexuality sounded perfectly logical to them. What amazes me about this is that Peak Oil lacks any supernatural component, being simply the scientific notion that a finite planet cannot contain an infinite amount of oil, and that the current lifestyle we live is dependent upon an enormous input of oil. Yet the conspiracy theory that homosexuality will cause the apocalypse is based in nothing whatsoever but supernatural belief, lacking any scientific basis. But then again, "science" has become something of a dirty word to the people who live outside the circles of academic privilege, so adding in "This is based on science" has actually become a way to convince people like this NOT to listen to anything you have to say (much like for Global Warming.)

7/28/16, 7:57 AM

Robert Carran said...

I certainly can't disagree with your points about the failure of the climate change movement. Al Gore is truly the poster child, with his massive footprint being totally out of step with his rhetoric.

However, I think the biggest problem, by far, with making any real gains is the massiveness, the inertia, of the current system. And there are YUUUUGE amounts of money being made from this system. I have been in the business of "collapse now and avoid the rush" for a good 25 years now. Well before climate change became a household word. And it differs from the gay marriage issue in a very important way: allowing gay marriage (or pot smoking, for that matter) doesn't require you to change your lifestyle or consumption one iota. AND, the powers that be probably also smoke pot before gay sex at the same rate as the rest of us : )

My focus has been very much along the lines of what you suggest: provide a positive vision and be willing to get by with less myself. It's not hard. Envisioning local food production, barter, and a lower tech existence is pretty easy, and frankly, quite fun and exciting. But convincing other people to change habits has been dumbfoundingly difficult. One simple example, (of which there are many): I was in an off-grid intentional community for 5 years and my girlfriend and I tried to start up a ride share system to town, because so many people were making solo trips 45 mins into town. These were people of mostly low income who were pressed for time as well. You would think it would be an easy sell: save time and money with the relatively small hassle of coordinating. But our effort failed, in an "ecovillage" no less.

When our whole system is based on fossil fuels, convenience, and the religion of progress, it is difficult for most people to put food on the table, pay rent, and change consumption habits for one's self, much less convince others to do the same. And the real kicker is that it would be much easier if other people were on the same track. It's a question of momentum, a catch 22.

I think it's going to take some serious crash of the current system to get people on board. My strategy is to be prepared, both psychologically and practically, for when that happens. I'm thinking it won't be long...

7/28/16, 8:03 AM

mr_geronimo said...

They can't lead by example because they are Toynbee's dominant minorities, not the creative elites. Dominant minorities lead by fraud and violence and of course the proletariats resists as much as possible. There will be no response, no one will take the lead, because the societies that matter - West, Russia, China, India, are deep into the Universal State period, ruled by dominant minorities. The muslims don't seem to be there yet and the africans are still in their heroic age, but the muslims and the africans are irrelevant when it comes to pollution.

And the ambientalists, being salaryman or 1ers%, are dominant minority. They are not looking for their societies, they are looking for themselves. That's why they want to dump the cost on the people and on the colonies. I'd rather see the cities sink below the seas then cooperate with the tyrants.

7/28/16, 8:06 AM

Hammer said...

Just build a few signs saying "Do not mow garden. You are being monitored" and hang up a few fake security cameras.

7/28/16, 8:12 AM

Mark said...

I remember seeing an Inconvenient Truth when it came out and reading the tiny little section of the final credits that described the things ordinary people could do: which amounted too getting a smaller car and changing one's lightbulbs. I suppose the calculation was that you have to meet people where they are, and better to get people started with the baby steps than freak them out with what is really needed. Or maybe Al Gore never really bought-in to collapsing now, later or ever - he's clearly a smart man who saw the problem; but also a man who seems to like his travel and like his stuff. Either way, as you say, the real need for major, major lifestyle change was never described.

But we're all conflicted to some degree, or most of us are. Lifestyle change is the key to it. But it's hard. I don't say that as an excuse. I've been reading you for a long time, and been aware of the issues for longer, and I've taken my lifestyle down a significant number of pegs. I feel like I'm part of the solution. But I still find it difficult, if I'm honest, to talk about the issues with "non-believers" without feeling defensive or embarrassed. I just don't have the verbal chops or ego presence. So I tend to do what I do quietly, setting what example I can, without promoting myself. More and more people I know are doing that, which is very positive in terms of tangible results. But it's happening bottom-up and spontaneously, in response to real needs. Not top-down in response to campaigns.

Maybe people who can take action in their own lives tend to make very poor activists/campaigners, for climate change or anything else? And maybe people who are pulled towards activism are pre-disposed to talk more and act less? It must certainly be hard to walk one's lifestyle away from the system, while still trying to work within the system to lead people away from it. Maybe good activists are just too clubbable by nature, especially those raised in this last generation of third-way spinners?

I do look forward to hearing more about how it could have been done better, how the picture of lifestyle change could have been better painted and promoted. But it would have taken a certain type of leader to both walk and talk the talk.

7/28/16, 8:16 AM

Jim Emberger said...

I am a reader of your column from its first days and find myself either agreeing with you, or being persuaded by you almost constantly. This column is no exception, but I do question some of its arguments.

For the last 5 years I have been the spokesman for an alliance of community groups fighting against shale gas and climate change. It was a long fight, but we have prevailed, at least for a while, as we have an indefinite moratorium on shale gas. In that battle we learned that no one style of argument motivates everyone.

For the base of the movement the motivation was clearly and overwhelmingly the fear of consequences. Doom and gloom are extremely powerful motivators, particularly if one can link actual current events to predictions made by the movement. Fear and doom are personal and for anyone with empathy, examples of those who have suffered consequences can be powerful motivators that provide the passion any movement needs.

So I think that fear was the appropriate and necessary tactic to start the climate movement, just as it was in the case of the Clean Water Act - I remember the images of burning rivers and millions of dead fish floating in Lake Erie, etc.
Fear and doom are the staples of both US political parties currently, and apparently engender a great deal of passionate support.

Climate activists have been promoting the positive economic and health benefits of fighting climate change for some time, but those who don't need jobs, for example, aren't passionately motivated by those arguments. They are just another argument on the plus side if you are in a debate. And the folks who need the jobs are often the most resistant to change of any kind - witness the attitude of coal miners in your neck of the woods. This was also the case in our shale gas fight.

The promotion of positive outcomes works with a segment of the population, but I think it is less widespread or emotional. I believe its impact is small until the problem reaches a crisis point that can't be ignored. Then 'hope' becomes a necessary ingredient.

Also, I don't believe your examples of the opposition to gay marriage and the Clean Water Act are appropriate ones. The first, despite the amount of disinformation, really affected very few lives personally, beyond those directly involved. The CWA was passed at a time when the environmental movement was being born, and there wasn't yet a sophisticated organized counter-movement against them, because there had been no need for one.

A better example would be the fight against tobacco. In that fight the 'denier' science had to be called out specifically. And I believe that is what Naomi Oreskes is doing. She is not attacking the legitimate discussion of the issue, but is directing her remarks to those opponents who disingenuously use it as an excuse for doing nothing or as a red-herring. The 'science' does matter to a sizable part of the movement.

Finally, while I am pessimistic, and agree with your views on the future, I don't think we can say yet that the movement has failed - only that it certainly has not yet succeeded. It continues, not just in the same old ways, but in courtrooms and novel approaches by a growing and coalescing of international interest groups that for many varied reasons are affected by climate change. Too many unknowns to declare victory or defeat - but positive steps are truly coming too slowly.

Having said all that, we are in total agreement about the failure to lead by example, an issue I struggle with in my own organization - specifically on air travel.

7/28/16, 8:21 AM

Glenn said...

On leading by example.

For the first few years after I retired from the service and settled on this island, I crabbed every year (two months in the summer, two months in the late fall) from an 18 foot open centerboard sloop with oars as auxiliary power. Noticing how long it took to rig up, one year I left the rig and some ballast ashore and did a whole summer season entirely under oars.

One of my fellow islanders, (a transplant from Maine, retired from the U.S. Forest Service) saw me rowing the heavy sloop down the bay one day, and offered me a Peapod (small, double ended boat, originally developed for lobstermen on the east coast). "You'll need to finish it" he said. It consisted of a building form, the center bottom plank, inner stems and the rest of the wood required for planking. I was attending a boatbuilding school at the time and they offered to provide the labour if I bought the rest of the materials, as a subcontractor's delay left one class without a project.

I put most of a Pell Grant into the materials, and my daughter now has a 13 foot peapod. And this summer she is crabbing out of it while I make windows to finish our very small house.

And we give both crab and eggs to our neighbors and families.

Work hard, walk your talk. Build community.

Glenn

in the Bramblepatch
Marrowstone Island
Salish Sea
Cascadia

7/28/16, 8:28 AM

Fred said...

I've never met anyone in person on the liberal left or the conservative right who walks the talk they spout out of their mouths. In fact the louder they shout, the more incongruent their lifestyle is with what they are telling everyone else to do.

If Trump looked at the resource and climate "balance sheets" and said to the American people, "You've been lied to for decades. Your leaders were stupid. The country is bankrupt and we are going to need to work hard together to fix this.", he'd win in a landslide. People know the system is rigged and they are regularly being deceived by those on the left and the right.

7/28/16, 8:56 AM

Nastarana said...

Dear Cherokee Organics, The Clinton campaign has no intention of winning this election. They plan to steal it, just like they stole the primary. The over the top scary Trump second coming of Adolph rhetoric is intended to intimidate enough of small officialdom across the country that those officials will--just this once, for the greater good,--go along with the plan, and be well rewarded. The reward is important because if they profit she gets to own them. Then, on Jan 20, Mme C. will fix us with her dominatrix glare, utter her trademark witches cackle, and say "Sure I stole it! Whatcha goin' a do about it, huh?"

7/28/16, 9:12 AM

Synthase said...

One thing that might appeal to the more aspirational set is an exploration of what actions one can personally take now, to give one's own descendents a real shot at a life of relative wealth and privilege in a deindustrial future.

7/28/16, 9:14 AM

PRiZM said...

A lot of valid points brought up in the article, many of which have been made before, so I've enjoyed reading the comments. I'm not trying to argue the point of climate change, just as Leon is neither trying to argue. There's no doubt the climate is changing and some awful dreadful extremes are happening. The one point to debate though is whether we can predict what will happen in the future, which you interestingly made strong arguments against trusting in science and scientists in your article but then used the argument in response to Leon that you specialized in ecology in university, and use different data sources than most others, and thus should be more trusted than others in how you come to conclusions. I found this reeking of hypocrisy, and all the more so as it follows an article in which you went at some length to help explain why many cannot trust those with so called scientific background. And further, I do recall when the ebola virus was of some concern in the African continent, you made a post about how it very likely could find its way to the USA and begin a major epidemic in that country, to which Bill Pulliam made a counter argument that it was not yet mutated enough yet to easily spread, which you frankly refused to consider. Now nearly two years later we can see that Ebola had indeed not mutated enough yet to cause a huge epidemic in the US. It could still indeed in the future, but we will have to wait to see. All of this I say, just to say there is no 100% determined conclusion as to what will happen to the world. I will need to consult with other mythologies, but I do believe the Norse Myth of Ragnarok concludes with the world burning for some years which is then followed by some years of never ending winters, a story which was perhaps inspired by more than just a few centuries of human experience...

7/28/16, 9:22 AM

Logan said...

Much as we all, no doubt, enjoy a good two minutes' hate on affluent liberals, it seems to me absurd to believe that if only the wage class could be convinced of the need to 'power down', then powering down in a controlled fashion would become possible. It would not.

The first comment above bears repeating: So you have to convince people that without climate action, they don't have food, jobs, or housing. But that's not exactly correct, is it, because the system, the vast burning of fossil fuels, is the only thing providing them with food, jobs, and housing!

Joseph Tainter got it right.

7/28/16, 9:24 AM

Rebecca said...

I'm a frequent reader but have never posted a comment. This well thought out article compelled me to do so. I have been advocating (online) that people cut back on consumption for years, while doing it myself. Over the last 10 years or so my husband and I have cut our consumption of everything in at least half. It was incremental of course, not overnight. I don't think a single thing we have done is a sacrifice. If anything it has increased our quality of life and we don't know why we didn't start sooner.

The thing is, I don't think most people notice so I'm not convinced 'leading by example' in our case has residual effects. In any case, leading by example was not a motivator for our lifestyle changes. They were purely personal and somewhat selfish (more free time, less stress).

I have friends and family who preach all the time about climate change and how we must "do something" (usually something drastic and top down) but they would not make even small changes in their lifestyle choices voluntarily. I don't say anything to them because I don't want to be preachy and because I would not have listened as recently as 10 or 11 years ago. I will occasionally 'preach' online even though the result is almost universally contempt and/or obfuscation as outlined in the article.

For example I have a cousin who is a self-proclaimed environmentalist and climate change warrior … but she drives 35 miles (70 miles r/t) in her mid-size SUV to get her hair cut at a boutique salon. There are numerous hair cutting places including fancy boutique ones within a mile of her home. This occurs every 6 weeks. I have never mentioned how incompatible this is with the bumper stickers on her SUV, which presumably are read many times in the mostly slow traffic to get her hair cut. And for all they know she is on her way to visit a sick aunt or something.

I also cut my husband's hair at home after watching intently men get haircuts at the local chain haircutting place and a YouTube video. I bought professional haircutting scissors and I've gotten pretty good at it. (First couple of tries I admit were frightful). I suppose we are depriving local haircutting people money but it is money we choose to spend locally on other goods and services. And since our finances are finite, it works out all the same.

I would not have been receptive to someone suggesting the lifestyle changes we have made. So apart from our own satisfaction and quality of life improvement, I don't think it is making a contribution to changing consumption habits.

Cutting overall consumption as we have done, if even 50% of people did the same, would cut GDP and jobs, mostly jobs overseas but also middlemen jobs here. I don't have an answer to that. Cutting consumption is necessarily going to cut jobs. Will this even out as people would require less wages/salary if they are consuming less? I don't know. I know that has been the case with us. They would have a lot more free time to pursue other interests but would they view this as a plus?

For us it was a relatively easy and stress free transition, but I'm not sure it would be for most people.
It is subjective in terms of what people think they need/want. However it is objectively true that we don't actually need most of the things we are conditioned to think we do and we are be better off without most of it … my husband and I have proved this to ourselves if no one else.

I'm also not sure the hypocrisy thing grates on most people.

7/28/16, 9:31 AM

Nastarana said...

Greybeard, in the USA, farming is considered a respectable occupation. There is hardly an election in rural areas of the country where you will not see several candidates bragging about how they are three or four or more generation farmers. The problem here is the high cost of land, and of rents in general.

7/28/16, 9:38 AM

Clay Dennis said...

JMG, I agree that without personal action by its adherents any kind of movement is stillborn. But climate change is such a tough nut to crack because really addressing it means changing nearly everything about our life in the modern industrial world. Even full knowledge and intellectual buy-in of the reality and consequences of climate change is not enough to make many people change. I have a good friend who left academia in early retirement because of its decline in to uselessness . He is a PHD scientist who fully believes in climate change and its consequences but clings to a future technological fix and in the eventual effectiveness of government to intact this yet unknown technological fix. He also thinks Hillary will somehow step up to the plate and become a great president (a reincarnation of FDR to be exact).

In another example My wife recently had a discussion with the water system director of a large gulf coast city. He believes in Climate change, and agrees with its affect on water supply and in fact has seen his own municipality go to desalination for a large portion of its water supply. But he firmly believes economic growth, population growth and progress will continue for this particular municipality, emotionally or intellectually ( or politically) not able to put the puzzle together and plan for the real future. I am not sure that with this kind of buy-in to the power of the status quo any amount of "example" on the part of climate change activists would have worked.

But they ( and we) should still change if only for our own sanity. My wife and I have downsized to a small condo in a district heated building ( shared system with city hall) next to light rail from Suburbia. I no longer drive ,except for using my wife's car to visit my elderly parents who live in retirement homes ( against my wishes) in exurban locals with horrible cycling access. I belong to a small urban csa where most of our food comes from and have been building up my cycling stamina so I can cover the entire urban area ( hills and all) by bike. I have also been moving my work( metal working) away from stuff in the high tech industry towards making things for farming, bikes equipment repair. Not really enough in the long run, but it makes all the difference to at least feel like you are moving in the right direction.

7/28/16, 10:03 AM

David, by the lake said...

John, et alia--

For everyone's consideration, the electoral map I referenced in my earlier comment:

http://www.270towin.com/maps/d1Nd4

Not necessarily likely, but I think it is plausible.

7/28/16, 10:04 AM

MichaelK said...

Dear Greer,

I did pay close attention to what you wrote, perhaps that's the problem? I'm not sure what you mean about my hidden 'agenda.' I'll skip that part as it's irrelevant.

I don't think you are being fair to the green, or climate change, 'movement.' I don't even think qualified as a 'movement', but perhaps that's just me?

I think your comparison and examples, of successful 'movements', like gay rights and the clean air act, are interesting, but... fanciful. Perhaps it's a question of scale that separates us? I think climate change, we are, after all, on the cusp of 'runaway' and 'uncontrolled' climate 'disaster.' A veritable planetary emergency; is way off the scale of challenges we face. I'd put it closer to the abolition of slavery in the United States, than something like the clean air act. Which compared to the fundamental and structural changes to the economy which are required, if we are going to deal with the enormous challenge of climate change, is a mere detail.

Do you really think that Congress passing a few pieces of legislation here and there is enough to change the way we live and save the planet? We can't simply 'tinker' with the system. It has to be 'replaced', or at the very least be 'reformed' root and branch.

Even if the 'movement' had recognised the five 'mistakes' you point to, would that have made any substantial difference? I doubt it very much. Power is Power and where it is in society. The powerful, who live in a 'vertual Versailles' as I term it, don't give a damn about what people or the 'movement' think or want. The people are, at most a necessary irritation, and at worse, at threat, but they are usually under control and coralled and steered away from Power.

Dealing with the challenges, (which are multiple and deeply rooted in our system of economics, call that what you will), is going to require a 'revolutionary' shift in power relationships in society.

7/28/16, 10:09 AM

Clay Dennis said...

JMG,

I could not agree with you more on your comment about Hillary demonizing Putin. Many people I know buy in to the media story that Putin is a deranged KGB megalomanic who is only out to pad his bank account, kill journalists and support his oligarch friends. What they don't get is many people are beyond caring about those things. They see Putin as an effective statesman who does what he says, puts the interest of his country first, and seems to be in touch with the reality of the world as it is and not how his banker friends want it to be. This is the reason people don't care when Hillary demonizes trump for his personal failing, because they just want someone who gets things done. A true sign of the senility in the Hillary camp is that the more they beat up and try and tie Trump to Putin, the higher his poll numbers.

7/28/16, 10:20 AM

Logan said...

preventing global warming didn't require "challenging the entire structure and direction of US-style 'capitalism'"

I think it would, though. Contemporary capitalism isn't the mythical agile beast of economics textbooks; it's rather locked-in to its paradigms. What I've surely learned over the years from your eloquent explanation of catabolic collapse on this blog, is that industrial society's baseline energy needs were set when fossil fuels were cheap, and now with diminishing EROEI we can barely afford to maintain infrastructure, let alone build tens of thousands of new "green" towns to replace suburbia.

And the physical, literal inertia of the fossil fuel paradigm is appallingly immense. Even if all Americans got over their sunk-cost psychology tomorrow, that huge physical inertia of concrete and metal and houses that are unlivable without air conditioning and automobiles would still be there. And America doesn't have the surplus capital anymore to undertake the work of changing it, does she? She's throwing everything she's got into hanging on hand-to-mouth, as it were.

At least that's the scene I've been led to see.

As for personal lifestyles: I don't drive an automobile either, and I certainly can't afford to fly. Does it matter, though? If one doesn't drink one's milkshake, someone else eventually will. Since reading The Limits to Growth, recently I've started wondering whether conserving fossil fuels is even desirable, in practice. Their simulation showed that conservation implemented by political and technical means just makes civilizations's Peak higher, the crash harder, and only a few decades later. In other words, more harm to the biosphere may be done in the long run, the more we supplement with 'green' energy!

Lastly: no brusqueness or disrespect intended at any point. If it's there I apologize.

7/28/16, 10:32 AM

Eric S. said...

One of the most depressing trends I’ve seen in the environmental movement in general, and in particular the climate change movement that also relates to its decline is the way that it’s imbibed the proverbial Kool-Aid on techno-fetishism. I’m on Facebook (shame, I know, but it’s how some of the organizations I volunteer with conduct their business meetings…), and occasionally peek in on some of the people I engaged with in the transition town movement, from my natural history and humanities focused environmental science degree, from work in the forest service, and of course the environmental activist wing of the neopagan community and it’s always some new gimmick (it looks like you’ve already fielded one this week)… a seizure inducing video on solar roadways, super solar conductors, fusion power that’s just around the corner, some new wind turban technology that’s supposed to be designed in an innovated way that will capture more energy than we thought possible… a food forest the size of the Eiffel tower that’s supposed to feed cities the size of Paris, always in the form of sketches and 3D models… i.e. conceptual), using GMOs for carbon sequestration or to adapt to changing biomes is a common theme… and sometimes it’s even something that would almost undeniably generate more problems than it would solve… I really hope all the geo-engineering fantasies that the oh-so-rational holders of our future like to advocate for never get off the launch pad (http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Geo-engineering). At best, it’s mostly the sort of “they’ll think of something” mentality that you have often talked about, and of course, you mentioned it this week, pointing out that anyone who raises an eyebrow at the latest techno-fix is going to be labeled as a denialist.

What disturbs me though, is that I was around these people and these communities in a day before this mentality emerged… and I remember the days when the discussions were on adapting households to fit a permaculture ethos, learning organic gardening methods, xeriscaping, food not lawns, grid free housing, and on down the line, of course a lot of it was rooted in the ecotopian ideal, and it took me years to shake that loose and begin assessing what somebody who lives alone, rents, and has few friends can do… it wasn’t perfect, but none of that’s even part of the discussion anymore. I remember neo-primitivism being in vogue and gosh-darn it, for all its problems I even miss neo-primitivism, it had a way of taking the prospect of a simple, horticultural society without progress or high technology and making it appealing instead of treating it with dread. None of that’s even discussed anymore, and it sometimes feels like none of that subculture ever even existed. I definitely remember that movement in the first decade of the century and it feels like it’s given up on itself. I’m looking forward to seeing where you take things next, on what can actually be done moving forward.

7/28/16, 10:51 AM

Paulo said...

I used to be a commercial pilot many years ago and quit for a few reasons, the main one being that what I did felt trivial and meaningless. I did it off and on for almost 20 years building up well over 10,000 hours. I have friends who have 25-30,000 hours flight time. Servicing remote villages felt okay, but flying tourists, fishermen, and hunters really bugged me. For myself, my last airliner trip was 17 years ago, and we have not traveled since except for short auto trips to visit relatives.

I do not argue with people about climate change anymore, especially if they have had a few too many drinks. Instead, I figure another one or two katrina's might do the trick. Last year I simply made a comment to my brother who was extolling the virtues of his bird-watching lifestyle and the superiority of Costa Rica. I told him that his 1 month jaunt to his ecological bird preserve spewed more carbon into the air than our driving would do for the entire year. When my sister gets the winter blues she heads for Hawaii as a cure. Last year they went to Turkey. This year to the south of France. I fire up the woodstove in the shop and build furniture or go for a walk when it quits raining.

Air travel is simply an outageous waste of resources in the same vein as the cruise ship industry. When some of my friends, workingmen all, feel an all-inclusive to a Carribean luxury resort is a natural entitlement of cutting down trees for a living I think to myself we have a very long way to fall.

7/28/16, 10:57 AM

M Smith said...

"Crapification." That's the word I was looking for!

I'd love to go back to XP, but the software is incompatible going back. IOW, I can't open any of my docs in XP because they were created in an earlier version of Windows. So, they've got me. If anyone reading knows something else to try, I'm all ears.

This morning my cell phone's website would not allow me to add more minutes, nor did it tell me why it failed. Another "device" that worked for six months. Guess I'm supposed to shrug, throw it in a landfill, and buy another. Oh, and you can create an account there, but you're not allowed to ask any support questions "till you've been here awhile". (Tracfone, for anyone who's wondering.)

Yeah. This wonderful at-my-fingertips tech has just caused another wasteful trip in the car for help with the blasted thing - unless I want to risk being cut off from the world, very scary when you live alone in crime-ridden, uneducated, unemployed rural area.

Which only strengthens my resolve to be done with them. This is part of the collapse, IMO. Stuff doesn't work and people are apathetic at this point. This is the new normal, along with rolling blackouts and flooded streets. The tech who insisted that an empty drive indeed had data on it is of the same mold as the LPN who will insist in the nursing home that one medication is the same as another, and when proven wrong, suffer no consequences at all just like the tech, who's still employed and still incompetent. The patient, though, that's another story....

7/28/16, 11:02 AM

Greg Belvedere said...

The way so many people concerned with climate change don't seem concerned with making changes in their own lifestyles has bugged me for some time and flying is one of the big lifestyle changes many more affluent folks I know don't want to make. Thanks for this one.

I find myself looking for more ways I can do with LESS and often feel like I come up short even though a lot of people can't imagine doing without some of the things I choose not to have (AC, TV, new clothes all the time, motorized lawn equipment). But I agree it makes more sense to show how enjoyable LESS can be. For example, people listen more if I talk about why I prefer the exercise and relative quiet of a push mower over the roar of a power mower.

There is always a balancing act. When I lived in Brooklyn I could walk everywhere conveniently, but my food needed to come from far away. Now most of my food comes from very close by, but walking or taking public transit where I live now would be very difficult, so I have a hybrid I bought used.

I think about these things a lot right now because I just bought a house and realized after buying it just how low a slope the roof has. It is not flat, but it is not pitched enough for shingles or even metal. I need to put a new roof on in the next few years and I'm hoping suitable "flat" roof options are still economical and available in 20+ years when the "rubber" EPDM roof needs replacement. It was really the best place in our price range and the rest of the house is well thought out and has many places I could utilize passive solar, but the roof. Maybe with global warming we won't get too much snow sitting on it.

7/28/16, 11:03 AM

shastatodd said...

i stopped traveling by air 6 years ago and eliminated most car travel too. it is part of my effort to try to live on a 3 ton/year c02 budget. mostly i feel like an idiot, restricting my behavior while all my "good green" friends are still living high carbon, non-negotiable lifestyles...

humans seem to delight in fueling our species funeral pyre. :(

7/28/16, 11:04 AM

Cyclone said...

Hello JMG, as I was reading your thought experiment about a greenhouse-gas-spewing industry that didn't recently exist, my mind leapt immediately to the internet! LOL. I suppose that comes from spending so much time around computers, dating back to the punch-card days.

I am posting here for the first and probably only time. I'm not much for posting things. I have a lot of lifetime experience with weather and climate (and computers), and I think the evidence is now overwhelming that something is up. The sudden quiet among some activists -- maybe that is fear?

Although in many respects the damage is already done, I agree that efforts must continue, to do what good can be done. If for no other reason than: it is never too late to do the right thing. (Yeah, moral judgement, heh.)

Perhaps the Trump campaign shows the way? Appeal to the interests of the non-affluent, the "wage class". Surely they have much at stake. I feel that is your message here -- am I correct?

For me, I plant lots of trees. Sequester that carbon! ...and grow tomatoes, and walk rather than drive whenever it is possible. And I've stayed away from flying for many years now.

And these days, I'm just down the road from you. I'm glad we're getting a bit of rain today! My trees are happier, and the mountains are so beautiful in the rain....

7/28/16, 11:07 AM

John Roth said...

I decided to do a little checking and found a few numbers. What I didn’t find was a nice line chart that gave the proportion of CO2 emissions by sector over time, broken down by automobile, air travel, coal electricity generation, oil and natural gas electricity generation, gas heating and etc. More detail would be useful. Where can I find such a beast? Preferably without a lot of pontificating to go with it.

The numbers I did find (at Bloomberg about 3 years ago) were that air travel accounts for about 10% of the carbon emissions in the US, while automobile travel accounts for 36%. Ten percent isn’t trivial, but it also isn’t the big ticket item.

And don’t think that the airlines don’t employ lots of working class people. They do. You’ve got the counter clerks, the baggage handlers and numerous others.

@Unknown

I think you’re right. It’s a cost-benefit decision. The more something costs, the more people seem to be able to distort the benefits. I’m reminded of one of those old Greeks, Aesop, who said something about “The Fox and the Grapes.”

Integrating gay and lesbian into normal society didn’t require people to make any substantial changes to their lifestyles. It still took a long time from Stonewall to today.

@Fudoshin

The reason that both campaigns are negative is that neither of them has a clue about what needs to be done, or any way to sell it. The difference is that Trump is a pathological liar, and Clinton refuses to lie, at least about something she may not be able to deliver.

@JMG

I have a much simpler reason why the climate change movement failed. It’s what I call the “action horizon.” It’s how close something has to be for it to create action. There are five tiers, organized by % of the population in the US:

1. 10 % 50 years or more
2. 33 % within 20 years
3. 32 % within 3 to 5 years
4. 10 % within 1 year
5. 5 % immediate

A prediction that something going to happen by 2050, that’s 35 years in the future, is only going to suggest action now to about 10% of the population. Everyone else is going to tune it out.

The exact numbers need to be taken as suggestive, but this one simple table explains a whole lot of what’s happening. At least to me.

7/28/16, 11:08 AM

M Smith said...

Tabatha Atwood said: "We should go back to growing zone appropriate food- tax it, ban it, tax it's movement."

Aaaaaand the SJW's come out in droves shrilling about ThePoor, TheDisenfranchised, you're TAKING FOOD OUT OF THE MOUTHS OF HUNGRY CHILLLLLLLLLLLDREN...who are already being fed on someone else's efforts, assuming they're on welfare. You CAN'T tax food! TheChildren! ThePoor! The Sad Little Girl with unbrushed hair, no shoes - you want them all to DIE, and you want them to die because of your racism!

It was not a good idea to allow and encourage the notion that the desires of ThePoor in this country, who have apartments with AC, TVs, frig, stove, and indoor plumbing, cell phones, medical care, and education all handed to them, to be placed above all other considerations, all the time, no exceptions. Because this is how it turns out: an entitlement-minded "community" and those whose lucrative careers depend on keeping them entitlement-minded and peevish decree that we can't tax and restrict anything that ThePoor might feel like having. BTW, as a cultural note, ThePoor don't seem to believe in even separating the glass and cans from the household garbage, but they do get a little chuckle out of those who do.

7/28/16, 11:26 AM

Bob Patterson said...

This was a great article. But let me expand your treatment a bit. Just as a young boy urinating in a brook is not the same problem as 100,00 people dumping their wastes in the same stream. Consider the increasing use of sustainables (wind and solar), with truly incredible rates of increase in Germany. What are the environmental effects of acres and acres of solar panels or millions of windmills? There are bound to be effects, but no one seems to be exploring or discussing them.

7/28/16, 11:35 AM

over the hill and down the other side said...

This comment is off-topic--except that it continues your project of directing attention to the suicidal follies of the westernized world.

A few days ago we tried to watch (but it was unwatchable!) a recent OO7 movie loaned through our local library system. We do not receive TV.

The shocker was a 4-5 minute trailer for one of the DieHard movies starring Bruce Willis. Explosions, gun-fire, corpses flying through the air--interspersed with shots of Bruce Willis smirking into the camera.

Propaganda for "violence is fun." This is sold to a billion young men around the world--only one of many such productions--through vast capitalist distribution systems...

And we blame religion or think pitiful efforts at gun- control will stop the epidemic of senseless cruelty!

7/28/16, 11:38 AM

nrgmiserncaz said...

JMG - A cogent essay that captures the issues pretty clearly. I believe that part of the problem has been that scientists have been trying to pick up the torch more and more as environmental groups and politicians have had little success. They are not particularly good at advocacy, as you've mentioned before, so they end up sounding dogmatic and dictatorial. It is for the political class to take up the mantle of climate change but I doubt they will find the strength to give us blood, sweat and tears - instead it will be more planes, trains & automobiles!

As an aside, I've been following Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre for quite a while and he has discussed air travel in the vein of your essay quite a bit.

http://kevinanderson.info/blog/failing-by-example-greenpeace-sanction-short-haul-flights-for-its-executives/

7/28/16, 11:49 AM

[email protected] said...

Great post Greer.

You absolutely nailed the strategic flaws within the climate change movement and the parallels with the Clinton presidential campaign.

For me, the blatant hypocrisy of the green movement was the sight of the billionaire Al Gore jetting around the world telling the world to use less carbon! Throw in the fact that he used a massive amount of carbon to heat his vast mansion and the stink is almost overwhelming.

Not surprising that the wage class totally ignore the climate change activists these days.

On the subject of the US elections, it is fascinating to watch the Donald progress in the polls post-Cleveland. I have written my thoughts on the Convention and why he is in a strong position to win the up-coming election in November.

https://forecastingintelligence.wordpress.com/

John, I have recently brought your twilight novel on the war between US and China over Tanzania. A cracking read so far!

Keep up the good work and would look forward to your own feedback on my blog.

Regards

James

7/28/16, 11:53 AM

Vincent said...

JMG

Will killing the oceans – is it possible to “kill” the oceans – be the greater threat to industrial civilization, or depending on your answer life itself?

7/28/16, 11:57 AM

sashi said...

The folks at the Possibility Alliance don't travel by planes. They don't even travel by cars. They mostly stay home and try to create a positive present and future. When they do travel, they bike or take trains and sometimes busses (they used to travel by horse and buggy but they had an accident and decided to study more about that). But they haven't inspired many people to do the same. Part of it is that most people don't want to give up all the things they're used to, including control over their work and finances, but also the means of survival they're used to, such as cars and computers and movies and cell phones. It's a public goods game (game theory) where people who "lead by example" either pay disproportionate costs, or externalize their cost to the others and piss them off.
This is Iuval from Sashi's account

7/28/16, 11:58 AM

Scotlyn said...

I read your post this morning, and read the following this afternoon, and it made hairs stand up on the back of my neck:

"The neo-Darwinist, mechanistic, non-autopoietic view and the principle myths of our
civilization are in complete consonance. It’s a dominant civilization that exploits the
weak. The countries that belong to our dominant constituency have currencies that
they can exchange with each other. In this money-based planetary civilization, geological and biological resources appear to be infinite. What’s more, their very existence is supposed to be a result of human activity. These myths of our technological civilization cannot apply to a Gaian, autopoietic view of natural history, like that of Chief Seattle, who said: “The Earth does not belong to man. Man belongs to the Earth. All things are connected, like the blood that unites us all” (Campbell, 1983). Neo-Darwinists have to reject that Native American perception, and any other non-mechanistic view, because it provokes cognitive dissonance in them. In the world of moneymaking machines, the Earth belongs to humans. In terms of autopoiesis, everything is observed by an observer immersed in the very thing he observes. In a mechanistic world, the observer is objective and remains separate from what he is observing. Mechanistic views should be replaced with others based on physiology and autopoiesis."

Lynn Margulis et al, essay, When the Environment becomes the Body

Link: http://go.yuri.at/edu/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=start:propioception.pdf

7/28/16, 11:59 AM

S.Treimel said...

fudoshindotcom,

An individual who understands the problem cannot wait for others to agree to a common solution before they act.
If we wait for this to affect the affluent, we may wait a long time. As Gail Tverberg points out in her latest essay https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/07/25/overly-simple-energy-economy-models-give-misleading-answers/ , the least affluent are the first people affected by scarcity of resources. If the affluent person's seaside mansion floods, they purchase land on higher ground. If security is a problem, they hire some thugs. If food is scare or pricey, well, they have lots of cash and can buy what they need in the market. The affluent will be the last people to be affected enough to have a change of heart.
Survival is not a spectator sport, it is a participatory sport.
Stephen

7/28/16, 12:19 PM

Unknown said...

@Unknown

WWII had a MINIMAL IMPACT on people?!?! Sorry, but I submit that WWII is a bad example for your point. Most data suggests that approximately 10% of the American population put on a uniform and went overseas. Heck, our entire demographic data is segregated based on the war years (The greatest generation, baby boomers, etc.)!

-Joel

7/28/16, 12:39 PM

Cathy McGuire said...

Lots of great points about climate advocates’ mis-steps. I’d go for no-airplanes and allow coal to continue – but ONLY if they stop the mountain top removals!! Let them employ people to go get the coal, rather than use machines to destroy whole mountains (and the surrounding valleys) to “make it easier”. I’m also in favor of ending the industries that produce all the smartphone devices – toxic chemicals indeed! ;-)

I’ve watched both RNC and DNC in their entirety (glutton for punishment/ keen observer of human nature – you decide) and there’s no question the negativity was with the Republicans this time, and the Democrats offered lots of hope, courage and caring – no contest at all. And a very good video on climate change (which Trump denies), although not enough about what sacrifices we’ll have to make, and they are hopeful about the global agreement which, as you say, doesn’t go nearly far enough. But they (and not the Repubs) are at least sounding the alarm, and highlighting the moral obligation to respond. As I go around every day in patched clothes (I refuse to stop wearing something that isn’t yet a rag ;-)) and live a low-energy lifestyle, I see how far my friends (except GW friends) have to go to get their heads wrapped around even a little change. I’m not hopeful, frankly.

7/28/16, 12:55 PM

pygmycory said...

Greybeard, you might try asking those sixteen year olds who wants to be a permaculture farmer, or who wants to get into local food. That sounds a lot higher-status than agricultural laborer, and is considered cool by many.

7/28/16, 1:00 PM

Rebecca Brown said...

JMG,
All of South Florida is having problems, not just Miami Beach. We are at a high point for the area (all of 12 feet about sea level) and the intersection just up from our house now floods whenever it rains instead of only during king tides. Sometimes it becomes impassable. Ft. Lauderdale just spent tens of millions of dollars building an elevated runway at the airport because of the more frequent floodwater intrusions. Our city has had to shut down 2 of 5 water wells due to saltwater intrusion, and a third will have to go soon.

Sea level rise is no longer debated down here. It's a fact, and the debate has shifted to what to do about it, with the usual technocentric vaporware solutions taking center stage. One engineer wants to inject plastic resin into the ground to keep the sea water from leaching up through the porous limestone. Other people can't understand why building levees won't work. People won't start leaving until there's serious flooding.

Speaking of, my wife has 22 months left on her contract (assuming funding holds out and the (sea) don't rise, and we're looking at relocation options. So far we're looking at parts of North Carolina, Maryland, and Rhode Island. The Cumberland/Frostburg region keeps popping up on our lists...how would a multiracial same sex family fare in your part of the world? Thanks.

7/28/16, 1:01 PM

pygmycory said...

Part of the problem with the environmental movement is that those who are the most visible are the ones who are flying all over the place and living in mansions. Many of us on here are making real changes and sacrifices in the name of doing what is right. But we don't have the megaphone of an Al Gore.

How do you deal with that?

7/28/16, 1:05 PM

Ed-M said...

Hi JMG,

Well now we know why the Climate Change Hypothesis and the attendant Activism are being refudiated, defunded and demonised all over the white English-speaking world! And Russia, too.

Here's my $0.02: it's not just talking about global warming and the coming dire events, real or imagined, that gets ignored when the speaker is an utter hypocrite who won't reduce his/her carbon footprint, most especially when it's Al Gore! Americans also dismiss those who actually practice what they preach, too; thinking of the speaker as a loser, a crank, a fringe archdruid emeritus (hehehe couldn't resist!) or even a nut who needs to be closely watched like Ted Kaszcynski.

As zerowastemillenial said, there is "a huge swath of America that have not yet put two and two together." And I'm not even sure if they'll ever do that, since being a believer in the Religion of Progress means that two plus two is always anything but four.

PS for all those who didn't read my last post on the last thread, my final version of the Retrotopia ca 2065 map is up. Thanks for all the advice and corrections, JMG!

7/28/16, 1:06 PM

Soilmaker said...

JMG,
Excellent points. My husband and I are both scientists who understand the problems of climate change and resource depletion. We are doers, not activists! We have been working on living sustainably for more than 14 years. We moved into a country home with 2.6 acres and began our work. Over the next ten years we invested in energy efficiency with insulation, new windows and doors, etc. In many cases we recouped our investment within a few years. We installed a wood burning stove in our fireplace and reduced propane usage by 50%. We planted gardens, an orchard, wind breaks and shade trees. We added a deep pantry in the basement, canned fruit and vegetables, built a chicken coop, and started a greenhouse.

Finally, after 12 years we made our largest investment by adding geothermal (GSHP) and two 5 KWh solar PV systems with backup batteries. I can't tell you what a relief it was that first day running on solar energy. We continued to use wood for back up heat and we spend less than $200 a year in total energy costs for a 4,000 sqft home. I should also mention that over time we replaced all the fixtures and flooring with the most durable materials we could find.

Last year, unexpectedly, a wonderful earth berm home with 5.5 acres of woods came on the market and after looking at it we decided to buy it. We had thought that someday we might want to build one, and had we known this would come on the market we wouldn't have added geothermal and solar to our other house. Hindsight! We took the plunge, another leap forward in sustainable living! This year we are closing the loop on this home's geothermal system and adding solar PV system. Next year we will add a solarium/greenhouse across the front.

Unfortunately we are having difficulty finding a buyer for our previous home. Recovering even a fraction of the cost for the geothermal and PV systems is proving difficult. Buyers looking for homes in our price range aren't interested in energy efficiency or renewable energy. I find it shocking that educated, affluent people who can afford a house like ours don’t understand the value of our home compared to the poor quality, inefficient, crappy house currently being built. It would seem that planned obsolescence now applies to homes as well as appliances.

We live in a city with a population of over 100,000. Our city is home to a prominent big ten university that prides itself on developing cutting edge science, engineering, and technology for a sustainable future. One would think that there would be at least one faculty member willing to invest in a home such as ours! One would think that there would be someone that would jump at the thought of having all the work done for them! Nadda.

I think it is exactly as you wrote, people with money who can afford to invest in sustainable living don't want the inconvenience. Even people who believe climate change is real, who know it is happening, who fear the threat to their children's future still won't take real actions.

Real action means real life style changes. It means putting our money (while we still have any) into things that have lasting sustainable value, developing hands on skills like gardening and cooking, herbal medicine, to name a few and hoping we make the right decisions.

I admire the families that have little extra money yet are doing everything they can to live better on less. Not much to admire in people who see the problem, have the resources to do something, but don’t. Even worse, scientists and engineers whom are paid to teach others about sustainable living.

Thanks for all you write, you are an inspiration!
JKT

7/28/16, 1:09 PM

SLClaire said...

Thanks for analyzing this so carefully! Every time I read a climate change activist argue that personal change makes no difference, that only legislative change such as a carbon tax is up to the task, I have to resist an urge to fling whatever I'm reading it on across the room. Makes no difference? You must be joking. My husband and I have done much to reduce our use of fossil fuels, and it has made much positive difference in our lives. We save money (imagine getting an electric bill of $50 or less all three summer months, even using air conditioning [set to 80F] during the worst heat), to begin. We enjoy a lot more of the sounds, sights, and feel of summer, such as birdsong, frog choruses, and insect calling, because we can hear them from inside and going outside to enjoy them at closer range isn't a big shock to our systems. Because I'm well acclimated to outside conditions, I have no difficulty keeping up the garden all summer long, so we enjoy delicious homegrown foods (which saves money on grocery bills, saves trips to markets, and improves the taste of our food and the health of our bodies). While it's true that so far few salary-class folks we know seem to be inclined to join me in all these benefits, they do admit that at least the better-tasting food is worthwhile. Frankly, I wish I could convince them to set a higher temperature for their air conditioning than I have so far. It's not fun to have to wear long sleeves and long pants inside their houses in the summer - and they have it on like that even when it's comfortable (70s to low 80s) outside.

We stopped flying over 20 years ago. It wasn't just because it's cheaper for two people to drive than to fly, although that was a big part of it (and, sadly, it's still cheaper for two people to drive than to take the bus or the train, something I agree with you on the need to change). It was also because air travel is the least pleasant and most carbon-intensive way to get someplace. I have flown once, one way, since then, in 2012 when my father was dying and my three siblings were already on the scene. I flew because he would have died during the three days it would have taken me to drive 1200 miles by myself, and going by bus or train would have taken as long (I checked). However, knowing I had no time pressures on the way home, I chose to take the train home - a three day ride, on three different trains, from Orlando to St. Louis (and my mom had to drive me two hours to Orlando at that). I enjoyed the train ride greatly. It's not the first train ride I've taken and I don't think it will be the last, but it won't be as often as I'd like until the rail system is improved out this way. Not flying does require some adjustments (like needing to spend more time traveling to see out of town relatives and friends), and I have had to tell folks that they can't expect me to visit them without adequate time for planning, or expect me to attend a destination wedding if it's out of car-driving range. If they don't like it, tough rocks. I'm responsible for my own life and choices.

7/28/16, 1:12 PM

Lawfish1964 said...

Not to be too technical, but commercial air flight is much more economical than traveling by car. A 747 burns 5 gallons of gas per mile, so a transatlantic crossing of 3000 miles burns 15,000 gallons of fuel. With 500 people on board, that's 30 gallons per person, or 100 miles per gallon per person.

Mind you I detest flying for many reasons, and I have crossed the Atlantic via ocean liner twice. That is by far the best way to cross, particularly going east to west. Each day lasts 25 hours, so not only is there no jet-lag, but you get to sleep later every day and not even feel it. And the food and accommodations - splendid! Far better than 8 hours on a jumbo jet.

Train travel is indeed the most economical, but this country abandoned rail travel long ago as a means of moving people (other than a small piece of the northeast corridor). I would love to be able to travel by train, but unfortunately, even with subsidies, the ticket is usually twice what a plane ticket costs.

7/28/16, 1:21 PM

Karl Ivanov said...

Have not posted in quite a while, but I felt something needed to be brought up in regards to this post. There was, in fact, at least one environmental activist who, in my opinion, tried to offer a positive vision for the environmental movement, and also a vision deliberately designed to appeal to the wage class. That was Van Jones, and his 2008 book "The Green Collar Economy," which called for a “Green New Deal” that would create millions of jobs building out an economy based on renewables. I even had high hopes the Obama administration would follow his vision when Jones was appointed “Green Jobs Czar”- but then he got let go because of a Republican political hit on his character. And the Obama administration chose healthcare, not the environment or the economy as its central project. And we saw how well that worked out. Jones never quite got around to the conclusion of "personal example over everything", but he certainly was very articulate in taking the climate change movement to task for its elitism, and its horrible disconnect from the working class. I really wish he would get around to reading TADR. I’m starting to see part of the mentality articulated here come up more and more among my fellow young people, as well as people of color in response not just to the police killings, but the state of our country in general: "the system does not have our backs. We must look after ourselves.”

7/28/16, 1:42 PM

Martin B said...

Elon Musk has revealed further details of his master plan to save the world. https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux

Those among us that own property will charge our mass-produced Teslas from our roof-mounted solar panels, enjoy our coffee and morning newscasts as it drives us to work, then send it off to earn some rental money while we are at work. A tap on the Tesla app on our phones, and it will return to take us back home.

Those slightly lower on the income scale will have to take the driverless Tesla minibus, which will pick them up at their front door then join the driverless Tesla trucks on the pollution-free highways.

Tesla is currently developing the machines that will make the cars, buses, and trucks with unparalleled efficiency.

It's all so automated and so perfect. Tesla factories look like operating theaters -- sleek and clean. But where are the workers? Who is providing the jobs and salaries to people so they can earn enough money to buy a Tesla?

Apart from a few highly-qualified engineers and investors with portfolios of government-subsidized renewable energy farms, I don't see an opportunity for anyone apart from becoming a cop to keep the great unwashed out of the electric vehicle only zones, which are undoubtedly coming, or cleaning bird poop off solar panels, or climbing to great heights to service wind turbines.

Here in South Africa with unemployment running at around 40% I don't see a future for young people. Maybe going to Mars is the better option.

7/28/16, 1:43 PM

Karl Ivanov said...

With regards to the election...I am very torn. I do not like Hillary. This election process truly disillusioned me once and for all about media bias and the power that the establishment has to promote its own and keep others out.
And yet… something I read right here on The Archdruid Report keeps haunting me:
“The hardest of all political choices, though, comes when the conflict lies between the bad and the much, much worse—as in the example just sketched out, between a crippled, dysfunctional, failing democratic system riddled with graft and abuses of power, on the one hand, and a shiny new tyranny on the other.”
Would Trump bring that tyranny about? In my opinion, that depends on three main things- his own will and beliefs (difficult to say with precision), how willing and able people in government will be to stand up to increasing abuses of federal power (they have already been ineffective at that in the Bush and Obama administrations- up to a point. What lines can they actually draw? Who knows.), and lastly and crucially how far the American people are ready to go. After the national humiliation and impoverishment of the First World War, the German people were ready to follow where Hitler and his cronies were leading. Thankfully, I think we are not there yet. But then- I recall it being mentioned in the comments here that no less a mind than Oswald Spengler made exactly that mistake, thinking Hitler’s positive qualities were worth the racist side, thinking that the extreme oppressive and authoritarian side of him would not end up coming out. Thoughts?

7/28/16, 1:44 PM

jessi thompson said...

That's brilliant!!!!!!! :D

7/28/16, 2:09 PM

John Brink said...

Great synopsis John. I've mentioned that people can turn off their air conditioners to help conserve on electrical consumption. AC is a major consumer of electricity. No way. I have seen some statistics claiming that the largest single consumer of energy in the US is the Federal Government. Hmmm.
We designed and built by hand a thermal heated and cooled house in a hard climate. All on wages. This should have been S.O.P. since the '70s.
Do massive numbers of office workers really need to commute to a central location to work so they can be supervised by some middle manager types trying to justify their position? Just like "a warrior is always aware of his own death" most office workers and middle managers need to know they are only an algorithm away from being unemployed.
Recently I have seen articles where elites actually sneer at the "idiot, moron, "muscle workers" in the elsewhere as if the elites IQ is so far above the unwashed masses. No matter what the circumstances the jet set envisions themselves riding the crest of any tsunami while the rest of us are submerged.

7/28/16, 2:23 PM

W. B. Jorgenson said...

@Nuku,

It's just annoying that I have suddenly realized I'm surrounded by people who can be called crazy, or from my new perspective seem to be anyway. I would like to live a new life, but, in addition to the costs associated with learning the new skills, forming new habits, etc. include the social aspect of it all, which at points seems likely to be worse. Maybe it'll get easier when I'm older, but for now, it seems like a very big deal.

I appreciate your good wishes, however it's not a fun experience, and I don't think there's anything that can change that. At the moment, I'm not really too concerned about keeping my current social group, as time passes I expect to shift out of it and find a new group that suits me better, but that inevitably is going to hurt.

On the bright side, not all of my friends and family are going to be problems, and those that are do have the effect of forcing me to slow down, which, given my tendency to rush into things and then realize I'm trying to do too much, is probably a good thing.

In any case, this is a process, and I will just have to see where it leads in the next few years. I'm planning to seriously simplify my life while I live as a "broke student" for a little while, and then just never add things back.

7/28/16, 2:25 PM

Nbxl said...

Good post. Reflecting on my own life, I have just turned 40. I am Dutch, but grew up in Brussels, as my father became an EU-official shortly after my birth. Growing up in an upper-middle class household in a diplomatic environment, with international school, and moving within circles of various nationalities. My parents who were actually hippies when they were in their 20's, with macro-biotic food, human rights activism, environment-friendly ideas, doing things different than their parents. They lost most of that over the years as my dad’s career in the EU advanced. The long hair of my father went, the weedplants at home disappeared and the gypsy-style dresses of my mum finally remained in the closet. Two cars, living in a wealthy suburb, a second house in southern Europe, frequent holidays by plane (let’s say once in two years, though we only went on holiday as a family in a plane for the first time in my life when I was 17, which for me also was the first time flying in my life) and in ideas a bit less hippie and a bit more conservative, though they never totally fitted in with the Brussels international community and never conformed completely to its petit-bourgeois ideals.
But I realise now what kind protective bubble I grew up in. I decided to study art-history, which career-wise was not very smart. My life is definitely more modest than my parents. Been struggling from little job to little job after my studies, as career opportunities in this field are small and most work is free-lance. Tried to give an international dimension to my working life, discovered that I did not fit in the country of which I have the passport, so I decided to return to Brussels. My parents are very much on their own, and as my father had to stop working after an accident in his 50’s and they are not networkers, I did not manage to advance my working life in an international direction (though spent the last 4 years with a blind friend in Africa, who worked there as a diplomat). With help of my dad I managed to buy a small appartment in a former brewery converted into lofts, located in that part of Brussels were many of the terrorists of the recent attacks come from. Though I love living there, a variery of people live here in this building. I have no car, have a little job at a call-centre, and use public transport. Can not complain, am happy.

7/28/16, 3:02 PM

Nestorian said...

I, too, was raised with a conservative Christian religious sensibility, and I would like to offer an observation about people steeped in that sensibility that may prove illuminating to some:

Many commenters on this thread have been waxing fiercely moralistic about the imperative to make personal lifestyle changes because of climate change. Such moralizing is repugnant to those imbued with the conservative Christian sensibility I am describing - and it is not merely because those of conservative Christian sensibilities are disbelievers in climate change.

It is also repugnant because those who champion climate-change-oriented moralizing generally tend to be professed moral relativists, and to throw that moral relativism into the faces of those same Christian conservatives when they moralize in absolutistic terms about their own pet issues.

But at least the conservative Christian moralizers about e.g. same-sex marriage are being intellectually consistent in staking their moralizing on the claimed existence of absolute moral principles.

Climate change moralizers, on the other hand, generally repudiate any such grounds for assenting to the moralizing of conservative Christians on issues such as same-sex marriage, but then try to have their cake and eat it too by sneaking in their own absolute moral principles through the back door in order to justify their own pet moralizing.

The same kind of thing also happens a lot with other issues, such as the typical liberal insistence on the moral imperative to be tolerant - when their professed relativism precludes them from enjoining the mandate for tolerance on anyone.

Rest assured that this form of moral inconsistency is extremely grating for those of conservative Christian religious sensibility (whether Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, and even Nestorian), and I think it needs to be added to JMG's list of reasons why the climate change movement has failed.

7/28/16, 3:07 PM

whomever said...

Firstly, I think this is probably the best thing of your's I've ever read. I read it going "yep! yep! nailed it! Oh year, I hadn't thought like that but..."

Sadly I think a big part of the problem is that trying to reduce and simplify looks, to a lot of Americans, like being poor. And the US still has this idea that if someone is poor it's because they brought it on themselves/they deserve it. I mean, a remarkably large number of places don't even let you have clothesline in your yard; it's literally illegal/against HOA rules. And the the people who passed/support this don't even bother hiding that this is just classism. Same with cars: only poor people don't have cars, don't y'know? A few years ago GM famously had an ad that basically mocked bicycling. Then there are explicit zoning rules to try and keep out the poor but in practice end up with overly large houses and huge commutes. You have rules against growing veggies in your yard (I mean, a surprisingly large number of places, Victory Gardens are illegal). I remember some years ago reading an article about some random subdivision in Arizona that was enforcing the "yes, you'd better get a lawn" rule. When asked about this in relationship to being, you know, in the desert, the HOA president got indignant and pointed out that they had their own well, so they "have enough water". All of this has been consciously/subconsciously internalized by a lot of people into "lets conserve the earth, but WE CAN'T LOOK POOR"

This by the way is why, while I don't agree with a lot of Orlov has to write, I 100% agree with him that collapse in the US will be a complete disaster. You go down, you get shoved aside onto the dumpster. Culturally the US can't handle it.

Personally, I live in NYC, which, yes, we'll be underwater in a few decades, and I'm aware of that (and have backup plans) , but I'll nevertheless defend it in the short term: I don't own a car and (relatively) a lot of others don't either, nor does anyone judge you for it, I bike as often as I can and when I can't I take a 100% electrical transportation system, dense housing is extremely energy efficient (relatively), and it has one of the best Urban water supply systems in the world (oh, and clotheslines and veggie gardens are 100% legal, as are bees and chickens). I'm also in an area that was considered the ghetto not so long ago and I'll take this as a place to collapse over some rich suburb. African American cultural is based on the South, which means that you say "hello" and greet your neighbors, but if you put in the effort to do that, in turn everyone looks out for each other (even me, a white guy with a strange accent) and they've lived through everything. The community garden on my block is doing veggies (and oddly, the people gardening are mostly muslim south-asians, but they happily welcome anyone in and show what they are doing). So at least I have more faith in my neighbors here then in some random upper-income burbclave, and you will notice that the overlap between everyone I've just described and "liberal environmentalists" is basically zero. But I'm also aware that this too will end.

In other news, just google for "Lake Mead" and get depressed. It appears that the solution to drought and climate change is courts and the US Senate, which clearly can fix it all.

7/28/16, 3:26 PM

Thijs Goverde said...

Dear Mr. Greer,

how funny that you should, once again, mention 'commercial air travel' and 'leading by example' in one of your excellent posts.
Because I can still pinpoint the exact moment when I stopped taking your blog as seriously as I once did. Yes, you guessed it: it was when you flew to a conference (or was it a lecture series? I forget) in London, airily (pun intended) dismissing all criticisms from those of you readers who'd been reading you long enough, and attentively enough, to remember your link to the dead-on blog post titled 'Hypocrites in the air'.
I'm not saying that one instance of commercial air travel immediately gains you the epithet "hypocrite", it's just that I clearly remember thinking 'Oh... Oh well... I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the one who so eloquently pointed out the appaling blackness of all kettles now turns out to be a bit of a pot'.

7/28/16, 3:31 PM

Unknown said...

(Deborah Bender)

@Greg Belvedere--If your roof is nearly flat and you live in a suitable climate, you might consider getting a foam roof. Our condominium building had an old modified bitumen roof which was wearing out. Six years ago we had a foam roof put on with a ten year guarantee. It's holding up well. They are no more expensive than conventional materials, you can walk on them, the foam is a good insulator, and they are light colored which makes them reflective of the summer sun.

It is important to have the roof installed by a company that has experience with this particular technology, and you need a couple of dry and warm days to install the foam and give it time to cure. If you Google The Eichler Network, there's a link to a company that installs foam roofs.

7/28/16, 3:41 PM

Bruce E said...

Wow, you nailed it today!

While reading it I wanted to point out what is probably obvious to you, but you at one point seemed perplexed about something: "It didn’t have to be like that; the climate change movement could have front-and-centered the vision of a grand new era of green industry, with millions of new working-class jobs blossoming as America leapt ahead of the oh-so-twentieth-century fossil-fueled economies of other nations, but it apparently never occurred to anyone to do that."

I think it didn't occur to them simply because they never believed it. At some level they always felt there should be hell to pay for what we've done and what we're doing, and there was no way out but through some sort of punishing hell, all the way to the end, through the mouth and out the anus of Satan himself where we followed Dante's path to the promised land. That, and they made no distinction between the suddenness of a wholesale economic crash a la 1929 and a several generations worth of ever-so-slow but still geometric contraction in our economy. Heck, even a century of barely-positive but less than 1% annual growth might as well be "DOOM, DOOM, DOOM!" in its pessimism.

In my most-optimistic moods I picture us already almost a generation into such a slow crash. If you ignore the growth in the financial sector and look at the rest we haven't been growing for the greater part of two decades, and even if you don't ignore it but extend the notion of inflation beyond consumer products to financial products (equities, derivatives, bonds, CDO's, etc.) and properly inflation-correct that portion of growth, you see a steady 1-2% annual GDP decline depending on how you judge your numbers, maybe a lot more if you're ShadowStats, pretty consistently since the turn of the century, maybe even earlier depending on how you view the tech bubble of the mid 1990's. Peak oil is behind us, population growth is slowing and in some places (Japan, for example) declining, and as productive GDP per capita falls, energy consumption per capita falls with it. I see it as, perhaps, the whole "conservation by other means," and people are fooled into thinking that the economy is still growing, albeit slowly, and the real recovery that we've been expecting since it all started in 2008 is just around the corner.

It's kind of like a "virtual prosperity," were I to coin a term, and it's almost as good as real prosperity, maybe even better because it comes with people tightening their belts without realizing they are doing so. Related to this, I sometimes get perhaps a little to helpful about one aspect of Moore's Law that doesn't get as much press, but the floating point operations per Joule of energy expended has also been getting halved every 5-10 years, and virtual reality is starting to come out and the early forays into that seem pretty damn cool.

Related to this, and your point about the airline industry, the energy it takes to fly a person like me, a privileged salary class employee who can afford it, and my wife from Montreal to Paris on our summer vacation -- that energy is pretty much fixed, and the efficiency of an airplane going a specific distance with a specific payload is probably not that far from ideal. Combine that with what happened in Nice just a couple weeks back, and throw in a very energy-inexpensive virtual reality trip to Paris or to the top of Mount Everest that is stunning and checks off a lot of the boxes of what you want to do on such trips, and take away all the bad stuff like loud crowded streets, crime, long queues that take hours to traverse (can you imagine being alone with the Mona Lisa, up close, with nobody trying to pick your pockets?), and you might just have an effective placebo for travel that can salve the loss of air travel.

A glass-is-half-full type of mind might even prefer it.

7/28/16, 4:01 PM

Shane W said...

@zerowaste,
Man, i hated fire season in SoCal. It was one of the reasons I left, and I always lived in the flatlands where no fires broke out. The unbearable heat from the Santa Ana's combined w/choking smoke and ash. Geez, I never got used to it. I'm so glad I'm not in your shoes! Join the exodus! I can't tell you how many Calif. plates I see in KY. I will add a note of agreement about the denial. I've noticed a lot of people lately are less environmentally aware then they were 15-20 years ago. Less willing to recycle, reduce waste, etc. I'm wondering if we're just in "I don't care" mode, as it is so obvious that the Titanic is sinking, that there's this pervasive nihilism about everything, environment and conservation included.
@patricia,
If you or you children were wage class under 50, you all couldn't afford to jet around. You'd either have to take the bus, or not see each other and rely on the phone, or your children would have to live close by. You'd have to depend on people there in your community to look out after you. I understand how hard it is. I live in a community where the strongly ingrained norm is that you only depend upon blood relatives and do not "impose" upon "strangers" (those not blood related) Social reciprocity has gone out the window where I live in the last 30 years. As I am an only child with two aging relatives w/dementia, one who drinks too much, the lack of familial support as well as the clannish isolation worries me.
JMG, I thought that the tropics were much less prone to heating than the poles, especially with unmelted ice? I thought all the energy went into melting the ice first before noticeable heating would take place in the tropics? Am I misinformed?
I do so love it when I "read you mind" and the next week's post validates a comment. I'm like, "nailed it!" lol Tho now I'm curious as to which posts I inspired. LOL

7/28/16, 4:26 PM

jessi thompson said...

Why not take a road trip? They're awesome, you can stop wherever you want and there's thousands of cool places to visit on the way. I LOVE road trips. Hate flying, haven't flown anywhere in over 10 years.

7/28/16, 4:52 PM

nuku said...

JMG,
Slightly off the topic of climate change, but related, is latest change to the solar PV situation here in New Zealand.
One utility company which owns a local electricity grid infrastructure is now charging a “solar surcharge or tax” on the bills of any customers who have a grid-tied solar electricity (PV) installation. The rationale is that the company‘s operating expenses come from billing each customer a small fixed daily charge plus a larger charge based on their kilo watt use. Since grid-tied solar customers use relatively less grid supplied energy than non-solar customers, but are still dependent on the grid during times of no or low sun, they “aren’t paying their fair share” of the grid maintenance/upgrade costs.
This surcharge was challenged in the courts and was deemed legal. Now its expected that ALL local grid owning companies will add the surcharge, making it even less economic to install grid-tied solar PV (the pay-back time was already 6-10 years).
This is a good case of the clash of interests on the issue of who pays for the grid: those with solar PV vs those without.

7/28/16, 5:03 PM

onething said...

American Herstory,

I find this attitude:
"For instance, animal agriculture is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation (planes, trains, automobiles) combined according to the United Nations http://cowspiracy.com/ yet all of one percent of the Earth's 7.4 billion inhabitants are willing to eschew all animal products. So-called pasture raised meats -- I envision steaks floating about grazing on grass in a field -- are even worse as far as efficiencies go. Factory farms may be horrible but they are efficient. Among that one percent of plant-based people, only a fraction are avoiding flesh, dairy, and bird ova because they give a damn about Gaia. "

to be very antilife. I don't want to get into a flame war, but the implication is that life forms are bad for the environment. Around here where I live, lots of people raise beef cattle, and I can't imagine what inefficiency you are talking about. They do provide hay in winter, but otherwise they live off the land. Grass grows for free, and rain falls from the sky.

Telling people that they are immoral unless they are vegan is pretty annoying but to think it is good for Gaia is a real puzzle. Veganism proposes an unbalanced way of living, pretending that all life forms and their manure are not part of a cycle, while wiping out large swaths of thriving ecosystems for intensive agriculture. Very strange.
If you had your way, our chickens wouldn't be alive at all. But they have a wonderful life and require only minimal feeding as they hang out at the edge of the forest and forage.

7/28/16, 5:11 PM

Fred said...

The comments over on resilience.org are a complete 180 from the comments here on your blog. How many of those types of comments do you have to screen out here?

7/28/16, 5:16 PM

Shane W said...

@FiftyNiner,
glad to see you've come around? (Or did I have you confused w/another poster? You are in Miss. or Ala, right?

7/28/16, 5:17 PM

jessi thompson said...

For the most trustworthy source of information on the arctic that you will ever find, go to

http://neven1.typepad.com/

Which is Neven's blog. Neven will tell you everything you need to know about the arctic, but you don't have to believe him, because in the first paragraph of the page he says "check out this page of arctic graphs" and "check out the arctic forum". The graphs page has information direct from the satellites. The forum has a really amazing community of people who are addicted to watching the arctic ice melt every summer. There are pictures from Arctic buoys. There's even a guy named Wipneus who figured out how to use raw satellite data to compute arctic extent numbers a few days before they're even released. Denialists and alarmists wander in there but you can tell right away who really knows what's going on. :D I found this blog because someone over there mentioned it.

7/28/16, 5:25 PM

latheChuck said...

Hammer- I followed the link to your "generate electricity while sequestering CO2" discovery, and found that it requires metallic aluminum as a feedstock. That's a problem, because metallic aluminum does not exist in nature, and reducing aluminum oxide to metallic aluminum requires lots of electricity. Now, MAYBE we can refine aluminum only when we have surplus wind/solar generation, but I'm doubtful that an aluminum refinery would respond well to intermittent operation. Though it describes aluminum as "cheap and abundant", those terms are to be taken "relative to lithium or sodium", not "relative to sand".

7/28/16, 5:42 PM

jessi thompson said...

They also don't specify the amount of time or materials it takes to remove that single gram of carbon from the air. But it could be promising. A single cell that removes CO2 from the air and creates energy and a useful resource at the same time? Sounds exactly like a plant cell. So my question is: is it more or led effective than a cell of say, algae.... Or a cell in a tree.

7/28/16, 5:53 PM

jessi thompson said...

100% agree!!! I like the bicycle too but its scary on rural roads. There's a lot of benefit in the wage class: you get to acquire real skills, you learn self-sufficiency and/or how to build a small local community AND you can't really afford to have a big carbon footprint :) I like it here!

7/28/16, 6:02 PM

latheChuck said...

It is possible to travel across the Atlantic Ocean without an aircraft: container ships have accommodations for guests.

https://www.freightercruises.com/seaworthy_news_1502.php#anchor_rickmers

That said, it takes almost two weeks to get from Philadelphia to Antwerp (and about $1000).

7/28/16, 6:39 PM

Nestorian said...

Re JMG's decision to fly to London, here is another anti-moralizing argument:

It doesn't matter in the end. If he hadn't flown, his seat would have empty, or else occupied by another passenger. Either way, though, the plane would have flown, and no less fuel would have been turned into carbon had JMG not accompanied it.

The same applies to any individual decision to fly or not to fly. The plane flies either way, and just as much fuel gets burned regardless.

So why moralize about morally identical outcomes?

7/28/16, 6:43 PM

Troy Jones said...

Apropos of this post about air travel and climate-change activists, I just read a little while ago that it's come to light what Bernie Sanders' asking price was for selling out to the establishment. Are you ready? He asked the DNC for the use of one of their private jets.

I am sorry if this offends anyone, but people who tool around in private jets are climate change deniers with their actions, no matter what rhetoric they may be spouting with their mouths. I did not agree with everything Bernie believed (or claimed he believed), but I have always thought he was a man of principle. Apparently not though. All that passion was just an act, a persona he put on for the cameras. Bah.

7/28/16, 6:47 PM

Varun Bhaskar said...

Archdruid,

Spot on, sir, spot on. Late last year I had an encounter with a radical vegan, who insisted that anyone who wasn't vegan can't call themselves an environmentalist. The statement was made in a conversation where she asked me to write an article about one of the big names in the vegan community, a guy who wrote a book called "eating our way to world peace." Apparently the writer was on an international tour promoting his book. I am really surprised my eyes rolling weren't heard in the rest of the country.

So all this begs the question. How do small time environmentalists like myself, and the other readers of your blog, break the hold of the jet-set crowd? We don't have the resources to fight a machine funded and fronted by the hollywood- new york crowd.

Regards,

Varun

7/28/16, 6:48 PM

Nastarana said...

Dear Karl Ivanov, I would ask you to consider that we have a constitution, and that Mr. Madison, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Jay knew very well that every so often the populace elects a demagogue. A little over a hundred years before our own Revolution, a farmer turned demagogue named Cromwell had taken over the British govt. Presidents can be impeached. Supreme Court Justices can be impeached. Justices have to be confirmed by the Senate. Congress can rewrite laws that the Courts have thrown out. The constitution itself can be amended. Yes, these processes can take a while, and it is a good thing that they do.

While I have no brief for Mr. Trump, and I am afraid that wife #3 is a deal breaker--irrational, I know, but there it is-- there is enough evidence on the internet in various places to convince me that Mme. Clinton and her handlers, chief among whom is our, New Yorkers', very own Senator from Wall Street, are even now plotting to launch what would undoubtedly become WWIII. A site called Down With Tyranny has been covering the unsavory details about how Mr. Schumer, Ms. Wasserman Schultz, and others have been conspiring, not too strong a word, too pack the Congress with compliant conservadems, like the stuffed blazer who has never won an election, but who was nevertheless elevated to the Senate candidacy in PA.

There are also two alternative parties worth considering, Green and Libertarian. The Greens have a fantastic, from a leftist perspective, platform but are a bit amateurish. They are still scrambling to get on the ballot in all states, even though anyone with a grain of sense could see last winter that the Democratic establishment was never going to allow Sanders to win.

The Libertarians have a typical small govt. platform, but are calling for a non-interventionist foreign policy and drawdown of overseas bases, which, IMHO, must happen before other urgent matters can be attended to. They are also on every state ballot, the candidates are former governors with real live governing experience and no obvious scandals, and do have a slight but very real chance to carry enough states to throw the election into the House.

Clinton will naturally carry NY, but it would be quite embarrassing to her if the Greens were to get 20 or 25% of the vote, and that might be enough to convince members of the NY congressional delegation that rubberstamping whatever the WH asks for would not be good for their careers.

7/28/16, 6:48 PM

Justin said...

Ivanov, no, Spengler was an almost unalloyed critic of Hitler. Hitler did solve a few very real problems, and had he had a stroke in 1932 or so would have been remembered positively by Germans and the world, and rightfully so.

7/28/16, 7:07 PM

Patricia Mathews said...

@Whomever: Every time I start getting upset about Albuquerque's Nob Hill neighborhood being gentrified out of recognition, something like this reminds me how much worse it could be. It began as a hippie district just east of the University, and still has a (rich, aging) hippie vibe.

In Nob Hill, bicycles, backyard gardens, and even backyard chickens, are *fashionable*! As fashionable as Bernie Sanders yard signs and Save the Bees bumper stickers. Fruit trees abound, also.

And nobody has ever complained about my clothesline.

This makes up for a lot of "-tique" - iness (Ant- and Bou-, and even, replacing the old glasses shop, Opt-. ) It almost makes up for rent-grabbing "upscaling" landlords running out the last of the bookstores.

7/28/16, 7:08 PM

Tracye said...

I like this explanation of the failures of the climate change activists. I would add that deregulating the airline industry back in the 80's made the price of air travel on par with bus and rail and offered a quicker commute. Before deregulation, few in the middle classes could afford such tickets.

7/28/16, 7:33 PM

Moshe Braner said...

Slightly off-topic: M Smith wrote: "I'd love to go back to XP, but the software is incompatible going back. IOW, I can't open any of my docs in XP because they were created in an earlier version of Windows."

- you mean a later version, of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc) not Windows. On XP you probably had Office 2003. You can install Office 2007 or 2010 on Windows XP, and they can open documents from Office 2013 and 2016 ("365"), no problem. I do that myself. Of course Office 2007 or 2010 are not free, but you can find legal used copies cheap. Or, if you are shopping for a used computer with XP, look for one that has Office 2007 or 2010 already installed.

7/28/16, 7:34 PM

siliconguy said...

A particularly good post.

I'll second the approval of E.(for Evelyn) C. Pielou's book. It's very well done, and quite calming when you see what the North American biosphere went through during the great warm up as the glaciers melted back. What's happening now is not unprecedented.

Any good temperature plot of the 20th century shows a decline from the late 1930's until about 1980. That is what had people concerned, especially since the Milankovitch cycles clearly say the climate is headed down. (David Archer, the Long Thaw, has a good description of that effect, with a great chart in the second to last chapter. We may have stopped the next ice age in 2000- 3000 years, but there is really big bottom in the cycle about 50,000 years out. We need to save the coal we have left for then.)

And yes, I've also noticed the hypocrisy of the climate change movement flying all over the world to discuss how to cut back on CO2 emissions. Hello? Skype for business? AT&T Go-to-Meeting? In the evil old heavy industrial chemical business (aka, work) we use both of them to cut down on travel. Why not the environment movement? Are they all extroverts who only function when herded together?

And the less said about vice-hypocrite Al Gore the better.

And this one was near and dear to my heart and pocketbook;

"What’s the most significant difference between coal mining and commercial air travel? Coal mining provides wages for the working poor; commercial air travel provides amenities for the affluent."

Clinton, Gore, and Babbitt used policy (and flat violation of the law in the case of Babbitt) to shut down as much mining and logging as they could in the intermountain West. Tens of thousands of wages class jobs gone, and not a few salaried jobs went with them, including mine. What was supposed to replace those jobs? Eco-tourism. Minimum wage, seasonal, and benefit free jobs in the tourism industry. It took me until W's second term to dig out of that hole; my own personal lost decade.

As I said, great post.

7/28/16, 7:36 PM

siliconguy said...

"But then- I recall it being mentioned in the comments here that no less a mind than Oswald Spengler made exactly that mistake, thinking Hitler’s positive qualities were worth the racist side, thinking that the extreme oppressive and authoritarian side of him would not end up coming out. Thoughts?"

Good thought up there; Hitler was surrounded by a like-minded group of cronies; Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich to name two. (Hitler called the latter "the man with the iron heart" and yes, that should scare the wits out of you.) So it comes down to how many like-minded cronies does Trump have, vs how many does Hillary have?

Trumps customers are mostly wage class, those being hammered economically are not helping his bottom line. Hillary is a tool of the 0.1%; she is promising to keep the good times rolling, as well as making some prime vacation/retirement properties in Appalachia available at very attractive prices as the miners starve out.

Which evil do you prefer? Cthulhu's indifference is probably preferable to either.

7/28/16, 7:54 PM

Anthony Romano said...

@JMG and Nuku

Fair enough, but I'm talking the numbers about who is on the receiving end of the proposed changes and how that affects the movement at large. Coal related jobs account for roughly 250,000 people out of 350 million people in the United States. Are those 250,000 people enough to derail the climate activist movement?

If so, then campaigning against commercial air travel would have caused climate change activism to fail even more spectacularly because more wage class people (by orders of magnitude) would be the direct targets of the proposed change.

Again I don't disagree with the thrust of the essay. Having prominent, highly visible, climate activist jetting around the world is terrible optics and a disservice to the cause.

I think that climate change activist set their sites on the biggest global emitter of greenhouse gases which happens to be coal fire power plants. It wasn't a deliberate attempt to disadvantage wage class workers. Setting their sites on a lesser emitter, air travel, would have disadvantaged just as many wage class workers.

There is no way to not disadvantage wage class workers when we are talking about changing the global economy to something sustainable. Not in the short term anyways.

So yeah the messaging is a problem, but I don't see how the movement could have addressed this differently. Coal fire powered plants are a problem from a climate perspective, and purposefully shifting the economy (as much as possible ) to alternatives would be an improvement in the short-term.

I am certainly not arguing that people shouldn't lead by example and reduce their own carbon footprint, and again, the argument JMG laid out is fair, Al Gore's lifestyle results in terrible optics.

I'm not sure how else you address this massive problem though without tackling coal related emissions.

Cheers,
Tony

7/28/16, 8:22 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Ed, maybe it's just here in the north central Appalachians, but the sort of young guys who used to go hotdogging around in cars are now hotdogging around on bikes. I consider that a very hopeful sign.

Dorda, I haven't read Hansen's book, but that doesn't surprise me at all -- and of course you know as well as I do that government policies meant to force change on the masses will always exempt the affluent from unwelcome restrictions. Typical.

Sébastien, thank you! That's something any author likes to hear. :-) As for the differences between European and American historical trajectories, that's one of the reasons my writing focuses on America -- I don't know the rest of the world well enough to hazard more than the very occasional guess.

Mikep, of course there are differences between climate change and same sex marriage; so? There are differences between any two issues you care to nane. There are still lessons that can be learnt by comparing the failure of one movement and the success of the other. As for whether it's a problem -- at this point, granted, it's mostly made the transition from being a problem to being a predicament. There are still adaptations and constructive policies that could be pursued, and they aren't, because advocacy for such things has been such a spectacular failure.

Shane, unfortunately, yeah, it would probably take some such hugely counterproductive form.

Mr. No, caring is a choice. If you choose not to care, that's not something I or anyone else can do anything about.

Peter, thank you for commenting! I'm glad to hear your colleagues aren't treating you like Max the Two-Headed Man; it would be a little more encouraging to hear that some of them were starting to follow your example, but that may be a bit much to hope for. The complexity of climate change as an issue simply means that it needs to be broken down into more easily digestible chunks, in the same way -- and for many of the same reasons -- that you'd break down a complicated research project into a series of investigations, each of which brings you closer to the goal. Since any decrease in the rate of greenhouse gas pollution helps spare our descendants some of the misery we're piling up for them, each step along those lines matters, and each can build momentum and pin down opposing forces. In a future post, I'll sketch out in more detail how this could be done.

Drhooves, that simply points up the failure of activists to make those cause and effect linkages visible in ways that make sense to others. That's a problem that every writer deals with all the time, and it's not an insuperable one -- you just need to know who your audience is, what they know and care about, and how not to insult them -- and of course this latter was one of the big problems with climate change activism.

Barrabas, panem et circenses indeed. Yech.

Coops, that's a copout. People can understand anything if it's explained to them in a suitable way. That latter means, among other things, not insulting them and not waving obvious evidence of dishonesty or hypocrisy in front of their faces.

Gunnar, to my mind it's actually a mistake to insist that there's no hardship. You can sell hardship by making sure that it's shared out equally, with the privileged classes first in line for their shares; by showing people that there's something good to be gained by it; and by presenting a powerful image of the better future that can be achieved by accepting hardship here and now. History shows that that's actually a very easy thing to do -- see every combatant nation in the Second World War for a set of good examples.

7/28/16, 8:41 PM

Yellow Submarine said...

Meanwhile as the Philly clown show comes to a close, things don't seem to be going too well for the Syrian hippogriffs, er "moderate Syrian rebels". Kesselschlacht, anyone?

Needless to say, the neoconservative regime change agenda being pushed by Dubya, Hillary and their fellow neocons seems to be failing pretty miserably these days, and that's not even counting the collateral damage being inflicted on the EU as refugees from Syria, Libya, Iraq and other regime change wars started by the Dubyobama admininstration pour into Europe.

7/28/16, 8:44 PM

FiftyNiner said...

@ Shane W,
I don't know about "coming around" so much as throwing in the towel. It is obvious to me now, if it wasn't in the past, that the political elites of this faux binary political system of ours is about to go on life support. Clinton has not a clue as to what the future holds for this country! Trump probably doesn't either and the Democrats are going to try to scare the wits out of the country trying to make that point. Trump rises or falls on how well he handles that onslaught. If anyone is equal to the task it is Trump. I just hope that he understands at his core that the old Reagan idea of trickle down economics is to be well and properly buried and that capitalism in any form that Americans understand has to start with creating prosperity at the bottom and letting the money flow back to the top. It may be too late already for such social engineering on the massive scale that would be required. The 1% will have to be led gingerly into financing infrastructure projects that are sorely needed. Admittedly, it is a retro fix that has been tried before. But I've heard no economists with bold ideas on how to create a new economy for a new age.
On a personal note: I have a brother just younger than I who is a veteran and on medicare.
He has been severely diabetic for over ten years and has already had a toe amputated about four years ago. Now the same foot is in danger of being lost. He spent four days in the hospital getting IV antibiotics and after four days at home he had a severe reaction to the same drug he had been taking all the while. The surgeon and the infectious disease specialist--who is African--were totally stumped as to why he had the reaction so late in the therapy. (I mention that the doctor is African because I believe that his aggressive stance toward all infections has saved many lives in the area since he came. He has educated the medical community that microbes are not to be trifled with!) To my point, however, he ordered a change to a drug that the compounding pharmacy called and told me the co-pay due from the patient was to be $6000 dollars! Needless to say we are unable to come up with that kind of money so he must settle for a much cheaper and older drug. So much for OBAMACARE! Or, as my brother says: "Obama doesn't CARE and neither does HILLARY!
I am enough of a gambler to want to see what Trump will really do with health care.
It's Alabama.

7/28/16, 8:44 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Wizard, well, there you are.

Tony, I never said that the new ice age thing was a consensus -- it wasn't. it's simply that it was presented to the public by some apparently authoritative voices as thought it were one. (There's a lot to learn here about the disconnect between how scientists interact with each other and how they interact with the lay public.) In the same way, there were also SF novels of the same period -- Edgar Pangborn's Davy is an example worth reading -- that took the opposite tack and imagined a future of global warming and sea level rise. Understanding the way climate science was presented to the public in the 1970s and 1980s can't be done using simple black and white categories; it was a complex, nuanced situation that's been hopelessly falsified by all sides in the current debate -- and that didn't have to happen.

FiftyNiner, I know. I read this morning that Trump is now within three percentage points of Clinton in Oregon, for Dagon's sake. It must be nice to have your putative opponents so hard at work alienating the voting public!

Unknown Joel, yes, I'd encountered that, and thought highly of it. Thanks for the link!

Russ, yes, there are differences between the campaigns for same sex marriage and against climate change; so? There are still lessons to be learned from the success of the one and the failure of the other. Look at the differences in strategy and tactics between the two movements and you'll learn a lot.

Lawfish, yes, as I noted in my comment to Tony above, the subject was still very much a matter of debate among scientists back then, and both sides presented their point of view to the public as an accepted consensus. There's much to learn there about the way that scientists use public exposure as a medium for professional disputes -- as long as you don't try to force the issue into a simplistic black-and-white mold. Did you take a look at any of the books I cited, by the way?

MigrantWorker, the Green Party, like the Democrats, represents the interests of affluent liberals -- it's just that it appeals to a segment further left than the donkey is willing to go these days. Of course they keep all their proposals within the current terms of discourse, because those latter are set to preserve the interests of the affluent against those of everyone else.

Kim, of course dealing with climate change was always going to be a tall order. That's why a politically competent movement would have broken it down into a bunch of more readily achievable goals, each of which would cut a significant amount of greenhouse gas production, and each of which would build momentum and reinforce the overall movement. It would have been just as possible to build all this into the Religion of Progress, with energy efficiency and sustainability as the next great leap forward -- that was fairly common talk in the 1970s, though it's been silenced since then. More on this in a future post!

7/28/16, 9:13 PM

Wendy Crim said...

Yes! "Regular, reasonably priced transatlantuc passenger liners" is right up my alley. One can dream...

7/28/16, 10:40 PM

jessi thompson said...

When you get tired of fighting with XP, if you're a little bit tech savvy you can switch the computer to Linux. It's free and awesome, I did it with my old laptop. Still a few headaches to deal with, but once you use Linux (and all that free software!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) You'll be spoiled for life. Do some research about it first. You can even pick up someone's really old no longer used desktop and switch it first to get the hang of what you're looking at.

7/28/16, 11:13 PM

Somewhatstunned said...

@Anthony Romano

Sorry to interrupt - (especially as we shook hands last week!) ... but when you say:

more wage class people (by orders of magnitude) would be the direct targets of the proposed change.

you do need some stats to back that up because the picture might be more complicated than you assume. In the UK at least the majority of low-waged people take no flights at all. Of course as there are more low-waged people than high-waged, the total impact could be greater. But at any rate the true picture would need some quantitative input - and of course things may be very different in north america.

7/29/16, 12:08 AM

John Michael Greer said...

Superpeasant, it's not a failure of education. It's a reflection of the fact that for too many decades now, labels such as "science" and "reason" have been used to justify policies that benefit the affluent at the expense of everyone else. Do that long enough, and when you talk about science and reason, most people will stop listening -- even if the things you support really are backed by science and reason. The rejection of EU membership was a case in point -- the benefits of EU membership mostly accrued to the affluent, while the costs were carried by the working poor, and every attempt by Remain campaigners to evade that point was met by boredom and contempt on the part of the ordinary blokes who voted Leave in such large numbers. Their equivalents are probably going to put Donald Trump in office for the same reason: they know that if Hillary gets elected, all they'll get is the same shaft they've been getting since her husband was president.

As for centuries ahead, yes, we do. Please do some reading in the paleoclimatology literature about rapid climate change in the prehistoric past. Humanity's already survived one really nasty bout of very fast global warming, at the end of the Younger Dryas period about 11,800 years ago. Now of course modern industrial society won't survive chance on that scale, but it's not going to survive anyway.

Eric, the best package I've been able to think of so far is the one called Retrotopia... ;-)

Ian, good. Exactly; if you never ask for what you want you're never going to get it, and being willing to spend some time in the wilderness is an essential step on the path to making things happen.

Hhawhee, your second comment should have denied that you made the first comment! That's how it's done in Oceania...

Violet, thank you. In the face of some of the reactions this kind of post inevitably fields, it helps to hear from people who are actually leading by example and thus doing the work that has to be done.

Johnny, no, you're doing fine. The last thing you want to do is to get in people's faces or try to present yourself as being morally better than your friends -- that'll just make people turn their backs and walk away. Simply lead by example, and talk about it to those people who are open to having such conversations: that's the starting point.

Nestorian, the peak oil movement also made the catastrophic error of nailing itself to a set of predictions based on a simplistic understanding of the economics of crude oil, and those predictions failed. The fact that some of us tried to correct that in advance did nothing to save the movement as a whole. But yes, there were also some of the other issues involved.

David, yeah, I hear the same thing all the time. Your map is plausible, though the way the polls are going -- with Clinton getting basically no bounce from the convention -- it's possible that Trump will win by a much larger margin. If her campaign continues to shoot itself through both cheeks the way it's been doing to date, Trump may just win in a landslide.

Tokyo, good. All of the things you've described are among the massive strategic mistakes that global warming activists made, and kept making, and are still making. None of them are necessary. It's actually not that hard to reimagine the whole subject so that you don't have to market any of those things. I'll be discussing that in an upcoming post; in the meantime, by all means try to work it out for yourself.

John, indeed it was -- in fact, that's when I learned it.

7/29/16, 12:12 AM

jessi thompson said...

Because to fly even once is to pay for a plane ticket. An empty seat means the airline made Lee profits and may start to run a particular flight at a loss. Even if another passenger flew, they may have got a discount to convince them to fill the seat at short notice. Eventually when less people fly, airlines have to offer fewer flights and charge more for then to cover costs, which in turn discourages more people from flying. That's the whole point of boycotting something, and if enough people do it, it works very well.

7/29/16, 12:19 AM

John Michael Greer said...

Ezra, I wish! I would enjoy nothing more, I think, than a transatlantic trip in a cheap cabin on an old-fashioned liner -- it would even beat out train travel, which for me is a positive pleasure, something I look forward to eagerly. I don't know if there are any multimillionaires reading this who might be willing to invest in an ocean liner or two, but if there are, please consider getting that very pleasant technology back in service!

Mister R., yeah, it's already tiresome, and it's likely to get much, much worse.

Pat, I'll consider it. Remember, though, that the whole thing will be available in book form within a few months!

Ben, I discussed some of the critical mistakes made by the environmental movement a ways back in this post. Some were the same, some were different, but catastrophic political naivete was certainly present and accounted for!

Bob, of course there were distinctions, and of course the issue would have required a less self-defeating framing than the one the climate change movement gave it. I'm far from sure, though, that the American people are as incapable of sacrifice and hard work as you seem to think. Still, that'll need more discussion as we proceed.

Ien, thanks for the Pascal quote! That's good, and worth remembering. Enjoy your gardening!

Spanish Fly, funny. Yes, it's a great metaphor.

Kirby, I don't see your logic. If that were true, nobody would ever fasten their seat belts or buy life insurance, since those things also require acknowledging the reality of death. I really do think that a lot of people are trying to find some excuse for the failure of the climate change movement other than the disastrous missteps that movement's leaders and supporters made...

JimBob, exactly. I'm very careful about using words like "science" these days, because they're so often used as a putdown directed by the affluent at the poor. I suspect that drives a lot of the dismissal of science on the part of your relatives et al.

Robert, of course it's a big issue. One of the things to keep in mind, though, is that there are equally YUUUUUUGE profits to be made in a transition to sustainability, and there are also millions of weekly paychecks that could be being handed out to working class people. That's why it's crucially important to drag this whole issue out of the cloud of self-righteous hair-shirt asceticism that so often envelops it, and reimagine it in ways that make people want to pursue the goals it presents. Can that be done? You bet -- but my discussion of that will have to wait for a later post.

Mr. G., you're speaking with the voice of the internal proletariat. I know things may have gone too far down the slope to see a genuine creative minority emerge on the scene, but as with so many other things, it seems worth the attempt.

Mark, oh, I know. It ain't easy -- but then nothing worthwhile ever is.

7/29/16, 12:28 AM

DiSc said...

I think you can add as a mistake of the climate change movement the marketing of everything green as a luxury product for the well-off.

A few weeks ago I went to the organic shop in our town and was welcomed by a shelf full of "pure" bottled water from Iceland (I am in the Netherlands).

That is when I thought: "We are all screwed".

If the people who are supposed to care about the environment carelessly buy water shipped from 2000 km, then there is just no way the rest of the population can be enlisted in any environmental cause.

I mean, it is not as if there is no water in the Netherlands: it rains every other day!

And I live in a low-income neighborhood. Many people are on benefits, there are many single-earner families. How can those people take seriously the do-gooders who splurge it on bottled water from a thousand miles away, while they themselves can barely pay for their daily necessities?

The environmentalist movement has completely lost control over organic foods, green energy, sustainable development and everything "green". It has all become a toy for spoilt rich kids and girls in designer clothes.

The potential impact of climate change on politics is confined to the small, few green parties in the richer countries of Europe.

Climate change activism is dead.

7/29/16, 12:32 AM

Crow Hill said...

Even more immediate, tragic and palpable than climate change is the extinction of wild fauna and flora. Here any form of transport has negative impacts as it cuts through remaining habitats or makes them accessible to humans.

7/29/16, 1:03 AM

koen said...

You're writing a novel about deindustrialization. Agriculture, animal husbandry and industrialization are great inventions.

Now, agriculture and animal husbandry require foresight. In agriculture, it's important not to eat your seed corn, even if you're hungry. When raising livestock, it's important not to eat your stud bull, even if the steaks look nice. We found out the hard way, through hunger and famine.

Compared to ten thousand years old agriculture and animal husbandry - industry is a very recent invention, only 200 years ago. I suppose industry has it's "seed grain", it's "stud bull". Something you first have to lose before you realize you really need it. But what is it? Does the Lakeland Republic have it?

7/29/16, 3:02 AM

nuku said...

@Greg Belvedere,
Re your almost flat roof: Thinking outside the box and as a woodworker/carpenter; it would probably be not much more expensive than replacing the rubber to simply build a second, steeper pitched roof on top of the existing one. You can then use less expensive metal roofing (shingles are a fire hazard, not as waterproof, and don’t last as long as good quality metal) AND put in decent insulation in the space between the roofs. Don’t know where you live and what the building regs are like, but just saying....

7/29/16, 4:13 AM

Jo said...

What I don't understand about the environment movement is that really, it should be such an easy sell.. this would be my approach..

a)there is a terrible problem with the way we have been living.. oops, we've fouled our own nest and we need to fix it, but the good news is..YAY..

b)..the solution is more fun, better for us, our families, our financial bottom line and our health than our old way of living. Whew!

We can walk and bike more and eat better, therefore be in better health than before and save billions in health costs. Hooray!!

We can quit our lifestyle based on stuff and have a lifestyle based on meaningful experiences instead. We can also have meaningful work based in local agriculture and artisanal businesses. We can revive old crafts and have cool festivals in our small regional cities. There will be live music everywhere, and puppet shows and theatre and poetry slams instead of reality TV, and artists will once again be able to make a living.

Scientists and engineers will be in demand to provide solutions for low-tech living and to make small-scale agriculture more productive, and to keep us all healthy without costing the earth.

c)Much of the planet will need to be left alone for a bit, and returned to wilderness to recover from our not-so-great experiments in consumerism, but how brilliant is that, because wilderness is cool, and we will get to watch our wonderful planet heal herself in front of our very eyes. Magic!

d)In order to do this we will have to dig in - live local, live deeply instead of widely. We will be rewarded by becoming closely connected to our own corner of the earth, we will develop brilliant communities, and also, there will be fabulous local beer.

e) This will be a huge task, requiring the combined efforts of our hearts, minds and souls. But we are human beings, men and women of good cheer and much resourcefulness. We have survived ice ages and almost-extinction. We have among us many cultures which have gone to the edge, and come back, with thousands upon thousands of collective years of wisdom and knowledge about how to live in nature, and with it. We can learn from each other.

d) Were you worried that your boring life of meaningless work and consumerism is all there is? Fear not, there is a new path to blaze into the future, for we are the pioneers of a new age. Get ready to be AMAZED.

...what do you think, who's in??

7/29/16, 4:43 AM

nuku said...

JMG,
re ocean travel: if one has the time, it is still possible to travel by ship. Most freight shipping companies have “freighter travel” as an option. By law if you have fewer than 12 passengers on a ship, the ship isn’t a “passenger liner” and doesn’t have to have all the bells and whistles. So many cargo ships also have cabins for paying passengers. The cabins are functional, but no fawning waiter, shuffleboard, swimming pools, etc. Take some good books and enjoy being on board a working ship for the 3-4 days of a trans-Atlantic trip. The cost is about the same as air travel if you factor in food and accommodation. The days of wandering “tramp” steamers are gone, so all these cargo ships do tightly scheduled runs.
In the 80’s, Canadian Buddhist teacher used to take 8-10 students on extended voyages on (mostly) Russian cargo ships. No distractions, the perfect environment for meditation, etc. After a month or so (having done 6-8 consecutive voyages on the same ship), he’d turn the students loose in a place like New Zealand with the suggestion that they “live the teaching” for a couple of months before getting back on another ship. One of his students ended up establishing a mountain retreat center near where I live.

7/29/16, 4:49 AM

Eric S. said...

It doesn't exactly push in the direction of convincing anyone to advocate for more proactive climate change prevention policies, since, as you mentioned that's a lead by example sort of agenda... but one of the more promising projects within the climate change movement as far as taking climate change activism away from the prestige of science and convincing people that climate change is happening and is a problem that must be dealt with has been the extreme ice survey (http://extremeicesurvey.org/). They've been monitoring glaciers around the world with time lapse photography, in order to allow them to speak for themselves and bring the subject down out of the abstract realms it tends to inhabit in public discourse. It's pretty hard to deny that something's going on when you sit down and watch a glacier turn into a lake over the course of a decade right before your eyes. Actual emissions reduction is subject to the problems laid out in this week's essay, but part of the problem right now is convincing people that climate change is even happening... It seems to me as though aiming for the partial victory of at least convincing the public that, whether it's a natural planetary cycle, greenhouse gasses, or an act of God, the climate is changing the seas are rising and we've got to do something about it. If the conversation could be couched in those terms, then even in the light of a failure of activism for lowered emissions -something- would be happening. But that's part of the "all or nothing" refusal to allow dissensus within the climate change movement aspect of the failure... Still, even if it's unlikely to gain widespread notice outside of the spheres of those who already care, the EVI is doing good work, and I'd recommend tracking their work to keep track of the present situation and just how far things are progressing. You can see some of their time lapse videos from Iceland, Greenland, and Alaska here: http://earthvisioninstitute.org/media-room/videos/.

7/29/16, 7:06 AM

Hereward said...

As usual, a very clear analysis of a very pertinent topic. I found myself nodding in agreement to pretty much everything you wrote, with the only slight exceptions being due to the differences between how climate change is being handled in North America compared to Europe. For the record, outright denialism is only way out there on the political fringes in Europe, the general idea adopted by most governments and the EC is a (very) gradual transition to renewables.

On the other hand, at the end of your essay I found myself wondering for whom you actually wrote it. Probably, like many readers, I thought about the changes I had already made and what else I might do. Then, with a few pangs of guilt, remembered that I had not actually given up air travel yet. That is already a result, but still not what prompted you to write it. No doubt the perfect outcome would be if a green organisation were to take your analysis to heart and, with a fully fledged action plan (and hopefully a charismatic leader who also walks the talk) start lobbying government and individuals to bring about real change without making the same old mistakes. Is this just wishful thinking? Is any organisation close enough in ideology and ready to take up the challenge? Did you write this for anyone in particular?

7/29/16, 7:20 AM

Dennis D said...

One of the biggest elephants in the room that is directly related is the number of people on the planet. Even mentioning any intent to address this will have almost every group out there pointing out that Hitler was such a nice guy compared to you. I have heard conspiracy theories that mention the evily evil evilness of those who want to control the increase of population. Apparently it is only politically correct to allow mother nature to control populations, and she tends to excess when reducing numbers.

7/29/16, 7:40 AM

Mark Mikituk said...

Dear John,
Regarding plane travel, and avoiding it. I read somewhere that one can in fact still cross large bodies of water without increasing your carbon foot print at a low cost, but increased travel time. Apparently it *is* possible to legally hitch a ride on a cargo ship, and there are a few brave souls who regularly do so. The cargo ship is gonna leave port with or without you, and you hitching a ride on it ain't gonna encourage it to travel more often, so footprint = 0. I can't quite remember the modus operandi, but I do think it did involve some payment and perhaps some work. I would guess that internet connections may not be all too regular on the high seas, but I bet they have a sat connection on many ships :)

7/29/16, 8:52 AM

william fairchild said...

JMG-

Hi, my name is "Bill" and I am a climate change activist.

(Hi, Bill!)

So you diagnose the failings very well. I used to march, protest, donate, etc. I no longer do. If I thought it would make a damn bit o' difference, I might hit the streets again,but...

The target audience, the ones who actually could make a difference are the very people who benefit from the status quo. It is not the wage class, as you put it, who drive up the emissions, it is the salary class and the elites. I see it every day. Consume, consume, consume. And consumption drives the economy.

I work, for the moment, in the commercial aviation industry that you decry. I see so very many people who regard flying as a right. Last week we had multiple diversions racked up on the ramp due to thunderstorms in ORD. The planes sat on our ramp so long that the crews turned into pumpkins (crew rest requirements). You should have seen the heads explode in line as 150 people realized they were stuck overnight.

So, for the salary class, dependence on fossil fuel, and all the goodies it allows, is a god-given right, up there with freedom of religion and speech.

By the same token, fossil fuels are for the wage class, not a right, but a near necessity. Depending on where you live, public transit is not an option. And this leads us to Cash for Clunkers, a feel-good program that was a giveaway to the auto companies and finance companies and did little to help the climate.

Of course, it costs far more in carbon to manufacture a new, fancy, efficient car than to keep the old one running. But that is never factored in. And the auto companies pay far more attention to the seamless integration of Bluetooth enabled devices than to petty details like MPG.

Meanwhile the apple cart of the used car market is totally upset. Where, once, there was a thriving market of low end cars, now a wage class person is locked into buy here pay here rackets for cars they cannot afford because the affordable ones all got their engines intentionally seized.

So you are absolutely right about the costs and benefits. The auto companies got a boost. The salary class got payouts to trade their cars in. The wage class got the shaft.

I came to the conclusion that what will happen, will happen. No matter how the argument is framed, I can't convince the soccer mom, with her "I want to talk to a manager" haircut to take the bus. Nor can I convince my fellow "ramp tramps" or coal miners to accept unemployment and take one for the team.

Maybe it is fatalistic, but we are locked into overshoot and collapse, decline and fall. Just as well get ready, eh? Or as you put it, collapse now and avoid the rush.

7/29/16, 8:56 AM

Scotlyn said...

JMG, re one of your replies above - transatlantic travel may not be that cheap (it counts as both travel AND accommodation as it can take from 7-14 days). Still it is doable.

This link gives some options - ignore the "cruise-y" bit at the top and scroll down to see options such as booking passage on cargo ships, etc. http://www.cruisepeople.co.uk/transat.htm

The reason this interests me personally is that my family is located in Central America and I am in Ireland, and I really do not want to fly again. Since I do hope to see them again, hopefully at least once more during my 80-year-old parent's remaining lifetimes (they are fairly healthy, thankfully) I am now going to spend some time researching this matter more thoroughly.

Perhaps the more of us look into it, and book such options, the more likely basic, non-cruise-style passenger lines will get moving on the seas again.

7/29/16, 9:10 AM

Scotlyn said...

@ Lawfish,

You said: " For hundreds of thousands of years human beings have been burning and cutting down forests and encouraging domestic animals to graze on and destroy grasslands. Slash-and-burn agriculture, industrial tropical deforestation and overgrazing are rampant today."

I have a couple of quibbles.
1) Grasslands need grazers.
2)"Slash-and-burn" may be the epithet supercilious Europeans used to express contempt for a very well adapted and sustainable form of forest gardening practiced for thousands of years. It is known in Mesoamerica as the Milpa system - for example, see this: http://mayaforestgardeners.org/forestgardening.php or this http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/january-2011/article/the-legacy-of-el-pilar-the-maya-forest-garden

7/29/16, 9:38 AM

Shane W said...

Against my better judgment, I watched most of Hillary's acceptance speech. I kept thinking it was the same boilerplate. I really felt that the speech could have been interchangeable w/one she gave @ the '92 convention. I heard all the wonderful promises, and wondered why she'd never acted on them before. I kept seeing the cheering delegates, and I was thinking, "what planet are these people on? How in the world could one possibly get excited about Hillary Clinton?" I mean, really, of all the people w/two X chromosomes, this was the best they could come up with? Really?
For all those who are saying the goals of the climate change movement could not be accomplished, need I remind you of JMG's example of the national response in the 70's to the US hitting peak oil and understanding limits to growth? Really, the solutions to peak oil/limits to growth are the same as the ones to climate change. Had we stayed on that promising path and not detoured into the neoliberal counterrevolution, we would have necessarily lowered our carbon footprint via conservation, appropriate tech, and fossil fuel replacement. Had we done this when Hubbert first predicted peak oil in the 1950s, fossil fuels would have lasted indefinitely. If fossil fuels were judiciously guarded and used as if they were gold, then the environment would have been more than capable of absorbing the CO2 from their conservative use.

7/29/16, 9:55 AM

Shane W said...

JMG, regarding Hillary sending voters into Trump's hands, I'm finding that's exactly the effect with me. The more they paint Trump as in Putin's back pocket, the more I breathe a sigh of relief that he won't start WW III w/Russia like Hillary will. The more they talk about Trump & Putin, the more convinced I am that the Dems are beating the war drum against Russia...

7/29/16, 10:00 AM

Shane W said...

@FiftyNiner,
I may have had you confused w/HalFiore, who I think lives in Miss. One of you was saying that you were voting for Hillary b/c she was the more conservative, less radical, or some such...

7/29/16, 10:02 AM

M Smith said...

Moshe Braner, thank you. Yes, I meant what you said. Good to know - from someone who isn't trying to tell me it's raining while wetting my shoes - that Office 2010 can work on an older OS but still open newer docs. I really like the idea of buying a used machine next, since I'll always want word processing and spreadsheets...aaaand with any luck, I may start a business that requires frequent online access. But it will be a desktop machine, not a portable "device", and it will stay out of the main living area.

7/29/16, 10:05 AM

Bill Pulliam said...

Some notes about the transition from "coming ice age" to "global warming," as I remember it vividly as a young scientist in training. I'm not sure it was actually mainstream climatologists on the whole promoting the sensationalist books and TV shows about the coming freeze; as usual it's a few loud voices oversimplifying a complex situation that get the press. But there was general evidence that throughout the pleistocene (which we are really still in) the general pattern of the cycles indicated another ice age was "due" in a geological sense. Meaning in the coming millenia, not the comming decades. And there were some tentative indications (now well-confirmed) that the switch from warm to cold conditions could happen very rapidly, in much less than a human lifespan. Combine that with some notable record-breaking cold waves of the 1970s and early 1980s in the eastern US, and indeed the media fury did take off.

In contrast with this, the potential for greenhouse-gas-induced warming as a result of fossil fuel burning was also well recognized as far back as the mid 20th Century. I remember seeing the Mauna Loa CO2 graph when it only spanned about a dozen years, not over half a century as it does now. And like many, the thought I had was "Hmmm... I wonder which will win?"

Given the irregularity of the Pleisticene ice/warm cycles, it was pretty irresponsible of anyone to actually claim that they could scientifically "predict" an ice age in the "near future" as conceived of by humans. And there probably will be an ice age within the next tens of 1000s of years or so, after the oceans eventually suck up all the fossil CO2 and the natural pleistocene cycles resume. Geologically that time frame is nothing. But the media and popular book publishers have a tendency to translate "in the next few thousand years" into "in the coming years" and then into "right around the corner."

Personally I remained agnostic about this warming/cooling trend into the late 1980s. But by the end of that decade, enough things were evident in the climate records to convince me that warming was indeed winning. And of course the last 26 years should not have left any doubt in the mind of any person who has an honest, empirical, scientific approach to data. As I sit here, the all-time record "high-low" termperature for our little hollow, with 14 years of data, has been broken 3 times this summer. Long-term records from nearby stations confirm this is not just an anomaly of only having recent data. This indicates significantly higher humidity than in earlier years, mostly due to elavated sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico. Which is EXACTLY what the climate models were predicting in the late 1980s would be happening by the early decades of this Century, based on greenhouse-gas-induced warming. As for what they predict for the second half of this Century.. let's just say I am getting increasingly glad that I will not have to live through them.

7/29/16, 10:16 AM

Damo said...

RE: Computers and windows XP
Speaking as an IT professional (appeal to authority haha), if said computer is connected to the internet you are at best, in for a world of substandard web browsing (are you finding that some websites just don't seem to work correctly?). At worst, your computer is already infected, not just with the *officially* sanctioned government backdoors, but all manner of darknet spyware and infections. You can expect all manner of additional advertisements, slow browsing and abnormal internet data usage.

The answer? Well, on the surface Windows 10 is not completely horrible. Although by the time you read this the free upgrade period is over. In addition, it has a lot of regressions when compare to the much maligned Windows 8 or the generally well regarded Windows 7. My advice?

cont..

7/29/16, 10:19 AM

Damo said...

If you have Windows 7 or above. Don't change. Make sure windows updates are enabled and working (software is hard, complex software is impossible, updates tend to block the known security holes so keep them coming). Remove your antivirus software and just use the free Microsoft Windows Defender (renamed to Security Essentials for Windows 8/10). It works just as well, is faster and free. Use Mozilla Firefox for your browser, install the free extensions ublock and a script blocker. Most ads will be blocked, your computer will be relatively fast.

If you have Windows XP. Take a deep breath. And then change. It really is a problem on the internet. On a stand alone computer, sure no problem. Connected to a network of insecure IT devices, assuming it even renders web pages correctly (which it won't), it will be slow and tedious. Luckily, as mentioned above, there is a free alternative.

Linux. In particular, Linux Mint, which all the cool kids are using nowadays (Ubuntu got stuck in a quagmire of group think). Using your favourite search engine, find the Linux Mint homepage and goto downloads. If your computer is less than 5 years old - grab the 64bit Cinnamon version. If older, grab the 32-bit MATE edition. You will need to download an ISO file, which can be 'burned' to a blank DVD.

Reboot your computer with this DVD in the drive and select the boot from CD option. A new desktop will appear (don't worry, your files are safe). Have a play around, check out Libre Writer and Calc (the free versions of office). You will find they open and save the MS Office formats just fine in almost all cases. Open the browser and check out the web. Unless you use unusual hardware/software, most of you will have all your needs met by this completely free operating system. There is a software package manager which can install all manner of free and open source software. Feel superior in the knowledge you are using an OS preferred by the nerdiest and most tin-foil-hat corners of the internet (yet is still strangely user friendly).

If, after some experimentation, you think this could be for you, transfer your personal files and photos to a USB drive, then click that big icon called INSTALL MINT.

Sorry JMG if this is too off-topic, I just can't help myself when I see people proudly announcing their continued use of outdated software. I know outdated is a loaded term on this blog (and I broadly agree with your general viewpoint on 'progress'), but if you use a computer on any network, you are really in a world of pain if it is outdated. Recently I started volunteer work for a small college in a developing nation. As you can imagine, paying Microsoft the correct license fees are way, way down on the list of concerns. Yet, I still have to fix the inevitable viruses, software incompatibilities or just strange issues that result from the mish mash of pirated operating systems in use. Although my testing is still limited to half-a-dozen or so machines, I can confidently assert to any readers that Linux Mint is far superior to windows XP for an internet connected machine on todays internet.

Disclaimer: My computer uses Windows 10, but it is a tablet hybrid that won't work on Linux Mint (or at least not very well). Anyone out there with a bog standard desktop or laptop should have no problems - and the boot CD lets you try with no permanent change to the hard drive.

7/29/16, 10:19 AM

M Smith said...

jessi thompson, thank you for reminding me of Linux. I would caution that you need to be more than "a little bit" tech savvy, and if, for example, your ISP doesn't offer a Linux version of their product, as mine does not, you're right back with your choices of MS, Apple, or Do-Without.

Now if you can rig up your own ISP or you live near "free" wifi, maybe it's not a problem. But the point is, make sure you know what you're getting into BEFORE you start choosing and installing OS. I'm an old Unix code monkey, and I did have to write and debug scripts in the Linux OS I installed on another long-gone machine. But I was in IT for 25 years and have all kinds of reference books. From what I see online, many people know, but don't care, that they write English incorrectly - hey, they'll tell you that "language evolves" - and would be disinclined to write Linux statements correctly either. I can, and maybe you can. But Linux is rare because it requires knowledge and effort.

7/29/16, 10:41 AM

Emmanuel Goldstein said...

@Cherokee Organics--
Last Spring while visiting Vancouver, I saw a large metal GreenPeace ship at dock. It had a billboard light display on its side that kept streaming the message, "Oil Platforms - Get the Shell out of the Arctic Ocean!"
I found myself wondering what brand of diesel fuel they used to refill their tanks. Assuming it is even possible to tell where the diesel in the pump comes from, is diesel from Iraq (for example) more virtuous than diesel from Arctic Ocean crude? Maybe GreenPeace would have a greater impact if they started using a Windjammer for their nautical activities...

7/29/16, 11:08 AM

Emmanuel Goldstein said...

On a positive note, while looking for something else entirely, I stumbled on a very informative review of solar energy that appeared in the Smithsonian's Annual Report for 1915, starting on page 141. It is available for free online reading at books.google.com.

The plates have several good pictures of Solar steam-generating plants, and a description of the Augustin Mouchot solar steam boiler that is good enough to use as instructions to make one. Building a better steam boiler was one of the obsessions of the era from about 1850 to 1920, but their designs are easily adaptable to solar cookers. If anyone is interested in solar cooking, it is well worth the read...

Here's a link on books.google.com;
https://books.google.co.in/books?id=p8wWAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

If that does not work, you could browse it up by title;

Ackermann ASE. The Utilisation of Solar Energy, pp 141 - 161 in; Annual report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for 1915. reprinted, by permission, from the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, London, April 30 1915.

7/29/16, 11:43 AM

donalfagan said...

"Let’s imagine, for a moment, that there’s an industry in today’s industrial nations that churns out colossal amounts of greenhouse gases every single day. It doesn’t produce anything necessary for human life or well-being; it’s simply a convenience, and one that, not that many decades ago, most people in the industrial world did without and never thought they’d need."

My first thought was the internet.

7/29/16, 11:55 AM

Trebor Resro said...

A couple of interesting (hopefully not redundant) tidbits that I've found in my internet searches:

UQx DENIAL101x 6.2.2.1 Worldview backfire effect - YouTube
The Debunking Handbook Part 4: The Worldview Backfire Effect

They give some good examples for why facts don't win arguments and offer some suggestions for ways to overcome different forms cognitive biases.

The same would likely apply to the GMO debate.

Worth a look.

7/29/16, 1:18 PM

Ed-M said...

Hi Rebecca Brown,

In your post, 7/28/16, 1:01 PM, you stated that you're at +12 feet above sea level and an intersection just up the street from you now floods in a regular thunderstorm?

Wow! Looks like you have a drainage problem on top of sea-level rise, which, IIRC, is only about little over a foot down there. Maybe the rains are heavier or the seawater intrusion is pushing the (fresh) ground water table up?

I lived in South Florida (Miami-Dade) in my college days and a couple years after. I remember there was no street flooding, period, there unless the rain was really heavy. The worst flooding I remembered was in June of '83 when it rained non-stop for several days... gods, that was a mess.

Meanwhile, here in New Orleans, ground-water monitors are detecting increasing amounts of saltwater intrusions inside the levees. What does that mean for the stability of the floodwalls and embankments? Dunno...

7/29/16, 1:34 PM

gwizard43 said...

JMG - I do not recall any other past post that received as many comments that soundly criticized your arguments while offering no specific rebuttals to the highly detailed points that comprised the argument. In and of itself, this seems good evidence of a point you've often made:

"You don’t actually know a time or a culture until you discover the thoughts that its people can’t allow themselves to think."

At any rate, thank you for another incisive and in fact actionable analysis. This framework of looking closely at costs and benefits and to whom each befall - it really has some legs.

7/29/16, 2:39 PM

onething said...

Fiftyniner,

" To my point, however, he ordered a change to a drug that the compounding pharmacy called and told me the co-pay due from the patient was to be $6000 dollars! Needless to say we are unable to come up with that kind of money so he must settle for a much cheaper and older drug. So much for OBAMACARE! "

I like to keep hammering the point that the problem of not having a nation health care service is only one problem. The fact is that medical care costs are going through the roof due to noncompliance with laws that are already in existence, such as laws to control monopolistic behavior and price transparency, as well as laws against price gouging to those in extremis.

I would not necessarily consider using an older drug to be a bad thing. Coming up with new, slightly tweaked drugs and making people think they are better is another racket, and in fact sometimes people get burned as they do not have the long (relative) safety records of the older drugs. Quite a few drugs get pulled from the market after people are damaged or die and lawsuits slap the hands of the drug company.

7/29/16, 3:05 PM

Bill Pulliam said...

Yes, airline travel may have a smaller carbon footprint per person-mile than private vehicle travel. BUT, no one in their right mind would consider, say, driving from Tennessee to Oregon for a long weekend. The driving would occupy the entire "vacation." The only people who do this are over-the-road truckers, and they are doing it for work, not for pleasure (and that round trip takes at least 6 days for a solo driver to do legally). Meanwhile, many middle-class people will hop on planes to make this type of trip several times a year, just for fun. So yes airline travel may be more efficient per passenger-mile, but it encourages a LOT more passenger-miles to be traveled.

7/29/16, 3:19 PM

Helix said...

JMG,

Having agreed with your main points, I think there is another overriding reason that we've reached post-mortem time for climate-change activism. It comes down to the interests you pointed out in your 5th fizzle factor.

Earlier in your post you pointed out that the same kind of disinformation campaign was deployed against same-sex marriage as is being used to undermine action on climate change. But from the point of view of interests, the two issues have some pretty big differences.

In the case of same-sex marriage, there was strong opposition from some people on religious grounds, but the reaction of most people I know -- including staunch conservatives -- was: "This affects me how? Ummm... it doesn't." So even though many of them weren't thrilled by the prospect, it didn't work directly against their own interests, either. So many of them were willing to adopt a live-and-let-live attitude.

This is way different than what was being asked of people in order to address the climate change issue. What's being asked of people here is to turn their backs on life as they know it. Or at least is seems that way. Everyone implicitly understands that adopting a smaller carbon footprint, at least in the near to medium turn, is going to impose some pretty hefty costs either in (what they perceive as) reduced standard of living or up-front investment in alternative energy systems. Businesses understand that reliable and steady electricity is vital to their operation and that they will immediately find themselves on the "bleeding edge" if they move to adopt "greener" business practices while their competitors suck down coal-generated juice to their hearts' content.

And finally, everyone understands that this is a global problem, and without global action, the problem simply won't be solved. This is a classic "tragedy of the commons" scenario. And the global elites are the most invested of anyone in the status-quo. The last 20 years have demonstrated conclusively that they will try to sabotage any actions that work against those interests.

In short, adopting a smaller carbon footprint does not appear to be in just about anyone's short-term interest. Thus, as you correctly point out, even climate-change activists find it difficult to accept the adjustments needed to make an honest run at a sustainable long-term lifestyle.

I think the reason that climate-change activists did not put forth a positive program is that it's hard to envision what a world would look like. I mean, other than just harkening back to the 19th century, possibly gussied up with a thin varnish of modest technology. Tough to live like that in the modern world. Just paying your property taxes pretty much requires you to be plugged in to our present economic system. Some people of extraordinary vision and determination can do it, but most can't. That's where we are.

It costs somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000 to fit a home for solar power -- photovoltaics and hot water. Perhaps more if a northerly home is to be converted to passive solar space heating. Doing a little math, it would appear that diverting about 1/3rd of our war budget to a national program to convert our domestic infrastructure to solar could get the job done in one two-term federal administration. Why doesn't anyone mention this?

You know the answer. There are powerful and well-funded special interests invested in the US war machine, and other interests that have no interest in seeing their coal mines and power plants idled. Given that, even with such a domestic program, people would still suffer some inconveniences compared to their lives now, I think the chances of mustering up the political will to put such a program in place are near zero, until the choice is forced upon us.

7/29/16, 3:44 PM

Jason B said...

Again, because of the talk about politics, I have to share something that I found online: this is an imagined letter from a expat Brit fighting for ISIS in Syria. He talks in it about the concerted efforts that group has been making towards upending the "crusader edifice." It's really interesting, the kind of bedfellows politics makes for. According to the letter's writer, ISIS will try to do something big to ensure Trump's victory in the fall. I can only imagine what that might be. He also talks about his dismay that Corbyn joined forces, in Britian, with conservatives, because ISIS desperately wants the west to bring the fight to it, and Corbyn is a "peacenik." The letter explains that Brexit was better than the group could have hoped for, that they will do everything within their power to be sure Frexit happens next, and that they will help Le Pen be elected in France. It is amazing what the internet and media has done in heading humans down this road towards catastrophe!

Here's the letter, called, "Raqqa to the World." https://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/raqqa-to-world-letter

7/29/16, 5:19 PM

Anthony Romano said...

@donalfagan

I was thinking the same thing. But really it could be applied to all manner of modern conveniences.

7/29/16, 6:18 PM

Kevin Warner said...

I'd like to share a small story here of probably why so many people are off-side with climate activists or anything else to do with dealing with climate change. Several years ago this part of Australia was in the midst of a major drought. In response, the State government came up with a $7 billion Recycling Scheme to 'drought-proof' it. The heart of the scheme would be that plants would take wastewater from major cities and make purified recycled water for supply to homes. The phrase 'toilet to tap' arose at this time and people were heavily against it but the government went ahead nonetheless. There were all the assurances from the experts that the water would be perfectly safe to drink.
One major drought-stricken city had a referendum and a majority of its citizens voted No when asked if they’d drink recycled sewage but they were ignored. Legislation was passed, though, that gave blanket immunity to the Government, water service providers & operators in the event of any health damages associated with drinking recycled sewage. Also, it was noticed at the time that government offices were running up an enormous bill with bottled water deliveries.
Remember too that sewage can contain substances such as heavy metals, organochlorines (pesticides, pharmaceuticals, etc), viruses, and protozoa which is far, far more concentrated than you would find in any polluted river. The people in Flint, Michigan might have something to add to this topic.
And here is where it all fell down. The average person was fully aware that the major consumers of water in this state were not users - not even close - but farmers and the mining industry who were happy to take even the wastewater but the government absolutely refused to consider this option. People would be forced to drink recycled sewerage and that was it. No argument. And they would pay extra for the privilege. The open suspicion at the time was that those that could afford it would simply buy water bottled elsewhere (your wage versus salary class at work again).
In the end the billions were spent but the scheme was mothballed upon completion. It never made it to people's taps but instead produced water for local power stations but even that was stopped when it was found that the water produced was corroding equipment. And this water was considered safe for drinking purposes? If the government had built a pipeline to carry wastewater to farming communities it would have had support across the board but the government refused to look at this option and it is this sort of obstinacy and arrogance that makes most people dubious about climate activism.

7/29/16, 6:20 PM

Bob Brown said...

JMG

Thought this would be of interest:
http://www.smallfootprintfamily.com/grass-fed-beef-and-global-warming?inf_contact_key=86b5185b27ac40c8166d5bf907560488668c46b8db504fc9d91c306c0bd341b3#sthash.FWUjjmK5.uxfs

You mention having mixed experiences with permaculture in response to my comment. Do you refer to dealings with people involved with permaculture (have heard about some rigid people that really turn people off - not my experience though) or applying permaculture practices?

Thanks,

Bob
https://investingwithnature.com/

7/29/16, 6:58 PM

Damo said...

@M Smith
Re: Linux

The hardest part is burning the iso file to a dvd. Some computers require you to press an appropriate button at the right time to boot from DVD. It you can get past these two steps you can install and use Linux mint. I have done it 6 times in the past week, it only failed once on a computer and that was due to a faulty hard disk.

Re:isp
No one should be installing software to connect to their ISP. Broadband modems and Wi-Fi routers are just a standard network device. No doubt there is the occasional exception (in Australia Telstra did require software, but that was dropped over 12 years ago) that proves the rule :p

I suggest giving it a go (especially if you are on XP), by default Mint runs from the DVD with no changes to your hard disk so it is risk free to try.

7/29/16, 6:58 PM

Myriad said...

In a comment a few weeks ago I discussed my recent involvement with a particular part (the "climate defender" project) of an environmental activist group here in Pennsylvania. This post and some of your comment replies have clarified why I find this particular effort attractive and rewarding. Consistent with what you suggested in your reply to Kim above, we're focused specifically on one incremental measure, the Clean Power Plan, addressing a specific segment of the problem, emissions from electrical power generation. And yes, progress, efficiency, and sustainability are invoked. This seems to have traction, for several reasons:

- There's a natural mental association between power outages and climate-change-related extreme weather events, including some recent ones in the region. Keeping the power flowing at all is an intuitively clear reason for diversifying and localizing its sources while also underscoring the need to take action to reduce the extreme events the future holds.

- Perhaps because of the above, the public in the state, of all general demographics, is in favor of reduced carbon emissions from power plants.

- People are already familiar with saving electricity, and are comfortable with the idea of conservation in that specific context which, unlike traveling less or purchasing fewer consumer goods, doesn't sound like arbitrary major lifestyle sacrifices at this stage.

- Fossil fuel extraction and fossil fuel power plants, besides carbon emissions, have other local and regional detrimental effects, especially (as usual) in poorer areas.

- We're advocating employment programs, especially in renewable energy, for displaced extraction workers (who are at risk of losing their livelihoods due to market forces in any case) as a necessary component of the Plan.

- It's a commons situation, and the effective remedy for the tragedy of the commons is legislation. We're focused on generating consensus (and leveraging the consensus that already exists), such as by petitioning, to lobby for legislative measures at the state and ultimately national level. Rather than trying to talk people one at a time into using less electricity or buying from lower-carbon suppliers.

In the end, the effect of implementing this or any other effective climate plan is that people will pay something a little closer to the true cost of the electricity they're using, via increased prices to cover the cost of implementing the reductions in the Plan. We don't exactly advertise it that way, but nor is it a secret that greater use of renewables, phasing out and replacing coal generation, promoting conservation, and similar measures will involve price increases.

It's too little too late to prevent disaster. But preventing worse disaster is still worthwhile.

I'm sure there's still a lot we could be doing better, though. I look forward to your future how-it-could/should-be-done post.

7/29/16, 7:04 PM

Justin said...

@Bill Pullam, I happen to agree. Also, as a plus, if the rich can't jet off to wherever, maybe they will spend their money and influence making their home communities and states better.

7/29/16, 7:42 PM

Matthias Gralle said...

I haven't posted earlier because I have been mulling this over in my head. This week's post implicitly points to Retrotopia: if the climate change movement (the Peak Oil movement etc.) had worked towards an economy that both included working class people and reduced ecological impact, maybe they would have succeeded in reducing CO2 output.
However, years ago you proposed the spell "There is no brighter future". We all know that even if Retrotopia-style economical arrangements were made today all over the world, populations would still inevitably drop a lot, much knowledge and art would still be lost, and climate would still change substantially.
I see a conflict between proposing to the population at large a "brighter future" in the form of Retrotopia (trade barriers, corporation reform, decentralisation, taxation of resource use instead of labor, and all the rest) while the ones who are really in the know are perfectly aware that this is not a permanent solution, merely one step on a long descent. Wouldn't such an approach be a form of manipulating the masses (thaumaturgy even) ?

7/29/16, 8:27 PM

Matthias Gralle said...

Loosely connected to my preceding comment:

Climate change activism has not suffered a decline in prestige in the countries I know best, Germany and Brazil. In Germany, the anti-nuclear movement got a huge boost in 1981 from the stationing of NATO nuclear tactic missiles, and again in 1986 from Chernobyl. Not coincidentally, the Green party was elected to the federal parliament for the first time in 1982 (if I remember correctly), and they were very much anti-establishment: the salaries of the representatives were in part passed on to the party, representatives resigned after two years in order to "rotate" their power to other party members, Green party officials were expected to use trains all the time etc. Overall, the electoral share of the Green party has steadily increased over the years, especially after Fukushima. In 1998, they proposed reducing the taxation of labor through increasing the taxation of CO2 production, which would have triplicated the price of gasoline (in Retrotopia spirit). In spite of an uproar, they managed to enact a more modest proposal in this direction after coming to government in the same year. All of this happened even before the decisions to close down all nuclear reactors and build up PV and wind turbines, which are more or less consensus nowadays.

It seems to me that the environmental movement in Germany, and even in Brazil, where it is weaker, avoided many, if not all of the five mistakes you enumerated in this week's post, which is why a large majority of the population in both countries continues to believe in a human contribution to climate change. They did what you suggested here. And yet, all environmental reforms that have been enacted pale in comparison to what needs to be done.

7/29/16, 8:41 PM

endgame said...

Jo:

I've been trying to answer this question for a while. I think there are some reasons other than what JMG mentioned in this week's post. Fear might contribute to why I and many other people, who know what the real future will look like, can't bring themselves to change their lifestyles.

First, there's the fear that losing first-world comforts is worse than it actually is. I've reasoned with myself that a second-world lifestyle isn't so bad, and when I think about it more deeply, I see that eventually the loss of those extra luxuries won't matter much to my happiness. But for some reason, when I consider changing my lifestyle, I think of all the negative aspects rather than the positive aspects.

Second, there's the fear of doomsday. Whenever I think about living more sustainably, images of war, disease, starvation, and dictatorship immediately pop up, and I focus on fearing and imagining the future rather than thinking about making gradual changes. It's probably because I still haven't broken free of the dual-opposite thinking mode of modern culture. Or maybe it's because I have a scientist/engineer mind, and for reasons discussed 2 weeks ago, I try to make everything uncertain into a certainty.

Third, there's the fear of missing out. At the end of the day, Americans don't even care about the planet enough to give up their SUV. No real change will happen until the collapse breaks people's mindsets and we can rebuild society. So I've become a defeatist and I think enjoying today's luxuries while they're still here, then blowing my head off if/when it gets so bad that the meaning of life is about subsistence/survival, instead of progress/success/enjoyment, is a sound strategy. Plus I unburden the planet a little!

The fourth reason is that I and everybody else who knows the damage they're doing to the world, but don't make any changes, are selfish and immoral. I know exactly the harm I am doing to the lower classes, future generations, and the stability of the world. Yet I would rather enrich myself at the expense of everybody else, since the future will be the same even if I don't.

That's just hard reality. Perhaps I'm thinking too negatively, bordering close to doomer thinking. But for now all I can do is prepare as best as I can, within the boundaries of social conformity and time, while drinking the last few sweet barrels of oil.

7/29/16, 9:59 PM

Doug Manners said...

Completely off-topic, but given your interest in beer, gardening and alternative energy sources, you may find this interesting:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/07/27/solar-powered-machine-turns-urine-into-beer/

7/29/16, 10:58 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Jim, oh, of course you have to include the negative -- just don't spend all day every day talking about it. As for your choice of examples, if you want to use the fight against tobacco as a model, I won't argue too loudly; still, don't dismiss the lessons that can be learned by careful study of dissimilar cases. A couple of things the campaign for same sex marriage did were brilliant, and involved deliberate rejection of some of the worst bad habits of the contemporary left. More on this as we proceed.

Glenn, and there you have it. Thank you.

Fred, unlike you, I've met some activists from left and right alike who do in fact walk their talk. A minority, granted, but they do exist.

Synthase, yes, and that's also an option, though it's one for which I'd feel enough distaste that I'd want to leave it for somebody else.

Prizm, you misunderstood what I was saying. The commenter mentioned that he wasn't sure which climate sources to use, and I explained that I wasn't a good person to ask for suggestions as I bring some additional skills to the examination of climate-related news squibs that some others don't have. I'd invite you to show me where I claimed that he should believe what I say just because I have some scraps of a scientific education! Still, if you want to yell "hypocrisy" on the basis of a misunderstanding on your part, by all means...

Logan, you're approaching the question in a very simplistic manner. All energy isn't equal. If, let's say, we replace half the fossil fuel energy currently used in manufacturing with energy derived from human muscles, that involves providing jobs to one heck of a lot of working class people -- in what way does this prevent them from having food, jobs, and housing? In the same way, moving from fossil fuel agriculture to intensive human-powered agriculture creates jobs and lowers carbon output at the same time. Looking at "energy" as a black box blinds you to that. I will be arguing, in fact, that the optimum energy per capita in terms of providing jobs, food, and housing for human population is considerably lower than what we're using today -- but that will have to wait for a later post.

Rebecca, clearly hypocrisy doesn't grate on members of the affluent classes; they seem to have a remarkable tolerance for it, in fact. It's the working classes who are becoming incensed at the hypocrisy of the affluent, and that, to my mind, is the prime political fact of the next half century or so. Your cousin the environmental hypocrite may want to think about what happens when the foundations of her comfortable lifestyle go away, because the people who have been carrying the costs while she gets the benefits are no longer interested in sitting down and shutting up...

Clay, that's why cutting greenhouse gas emissions has to be taken one step at a time -- and that's as true on a political level as it is a personal one.

David, many thanks!

MichaelK, if you're going to make a constructive response to climate change wait on the complete transformation of modern society, you're never going to accomplish anything. That's been one of the millstones around the neck of the radical left since the 1960s. I'm not talking about a couple of laws being passed by Congress, and it's frankly disingenuous of you to claim that I am -- I've discussed at great length the scale of the changes that will have to be made. It still seems more useful to me to try to make those happen than to sit on my backside waiting for a revolution to do them for me.

Clay, I suspect an honest poll would find that more Americans respect Vladimir Putin than either Clinton or Trump!

7/29/16, 11:54 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Logan, again, if you're going to wait for capitalism to be overthrown, you're going to wait a long, long time, and seawater is going to be rising around your neck long before that happens. Of course there's no guarantee of success, but for me, at least, that doesn't justify throwing up my hands and doing nothing.

Eric, interesting. Maybe it's just that I hang out with lots of Druids or something, but I still know a lot of people who are into the low-tech green wizardry approach.

Paulo, exactly. What a tremendous waste.

M Smith, you might want to see if a current version of OpenOffice will run on an XP. That'll open and work with current Word versions.

Greg, it's always a balancing act, no question. With regard to your roof, have you considered having a second, peaked roof built over it, with the space between well ventilated and the space below the old roof insulated to a fare-thee-well? That would be the obvious old-fashioned appropriate tech response...

Shastatodd, do you think they enjoy their lifestyles any more than you enjoy yours? Really?

Cyclone, you may be right about the sudden quiet among activists. Most of the things that people used to be yelling about are happening right now -- the methane emissions, the ice caps melting, etc., etc. It's got to be uncomfortable for them to reflect on that!

John, 10% is a very, very good start. That's one of the things that a successful strategy needs to keep in mind: it's not about solving everything with one single solution, it's about applying one fix after another to drive down greenhouse gas emissions notch by notch by notch. As for the time factor, people do amazing things in the hopes of getting into heaven after the Second Coming, which is some indefinite distance into the future, so I question your basic assumption!

Bob, and that's another point worth discussing. There are some studies about the environmental downsides of renewable energy, but not enough.

Over the Hill, I know. There are many good reasons not to spend much time watching little pictures jerk around on glass screens...

Nrgmiserncaz, that may also be part of it. Yes, Kevin Anderson is one of the people I had in mind when I mentioned scientists who walk their talk!

Lordberia3, thank you! I'll make some time to visit your blog as circumstances permit.

7/30/16, 12:04 AM

Sébastien Louchart said...

Hello JMG,

Thank you for your kind answer. I'd like to reply to your comment on mine. Historical differences of course exist and abide and their consequences basically pervade the domains of politics, values, interests, how our societies works and, especially, how our respective societes have shaped the geography of their territories. However, in my opinion, the differences between Europe and North America are more geographical than historical when it comes to how our respective future will be shaped. For example, my guess is that Europe has less ressources in arable land than North America just for a matter of size, the rates of the artificial degradation of soil being roughly equal. As an independant research exercise, I'm currently compiling data on the topic for Western Europe and I try to pin-point the different policies enacted in the EU that impact the articifial degradation of soils. Depending on the results of this work, I'm considering creating a blog to share my findings and thoughts. If you or any of your readers can give me hints about sources on the topic that pertain to North America, I'd be thankful.

7/30/16, 12:41 AM

John Michael Greer said...

Vincent, the oceans have been through this many times before; look up "super-greenhouse events," which have happened fairly often in the planet's history. The oceans go anoxic and entomb gigatons of carbon in sediments, and then pick right up and carry on. I discussed this in the second half of this post, and should probably do a longer post about it as we proceed. The short form: it's a normal process, and we have many more serious things to worry about.

Iuval at Sashi, it's not necessarily a fast process. I'm glad they're doing it.

Scotlyn, nice. Thank you.

Cathy, glutton for punishment, definitely. ;-)

Rebecca, I'm impressed. I'd assumed that people in southern Florida would keep on denying the reality of climate change until the water rose over their heads. As for Cumberland, we have a lot of mixed-race couples here and the only drag queen pageant for three counties in any direction, so it might be worth your and your wife's while to consider it.

Pygmycory, I'm doing the best that I can! ;-)

Ed-M, of course it's more complex than that -- but I'd argue that the five issues I've raised played an important role.

Soilmaker, have you considered renting your old house to young people who are interested in sustainability, so they can learn how to work with renewable energy? A lot of people I know who are into such things don't have the resources to buy a house, but can make rent.

SLClaire, thank you. No argument, of course.

Lawfish, so much of commercial air travel consists of trips that would not otherwise be taken at all -- how many people would drive to Mazatlan for the winter? -- that I think the point still stands. As for trains, well, obviously rebuilding the US rail system would be a priority of any climate change initiative that wanted to get popular support. Think of all the working class jobs!

Karl, thanks for the heads up -- I'll see if I can find Jones' book.

Martin, er, and if you believe that I have a great deal on the Brooklyn Bridge to offer you. Musk is a huckster who has figured out that government subsidies are among the easiest ways to make big money these days; if you wait for him to save the world, you'll be waiting a long, long time.

Karl, while it's fashionable to paint Trump as a potential tyrant, I don't buy it. To my mind, it's just the political insiders screaming because he's not one of them.

John, three good points. With regard to the last, it's one of the ironies of history that the people who think they're permanently on top are always first against the wall when really significant change happens.

7/30/16, 12:45 AM

Jo said...

endgame,

You know, I can't help noticing that all of those luxuries that you are not prepared to give up, don't seem to be making you very happy.

I'll let you into a little secret: a low carbon lifestyle will make you a much happier human being. Forget about the future, forget about 'giving up convenience' for a noble cause, or saving trees, whales or humanity. Just think very selfishly about how you could be a happier person.

Because you are a scientist/engineer type, you can do all this research yourself (also, I am lazy and incompetent at adding links).

Putting the car away and walking/running/biking everywhere will make you strong, fit, healthy, and crazy high on endorphins. I am insanely lazy and live on the side of the steepest hill in town, but since swearing off the car I find myself happy to be alive every time I drag myself out into the fresh air.

Shopping locally makes you happy. Farmers' markets are the most cheerful shopping environments I have ever been in, also I bump into everyone I know there. Shopping at the local grocer, deli, butcher and baker with my little trolley on wheels means I connect with people who work with food every day. Cooking, not my thing, but when I drop into the butcher to pick up my local, pasture-fed meat, she tells me exactly how to cook it and what to serve with it. I not only get food, but connections and conversation. Good for mental health. First time in my life that shopping=happy.

When I decided not to buy more 'stuff' a whole great new world opened up to me. Instead of buying stuff, I beg and borrow from friends and neighbours, which makes them feel comfortable to do that with me. This last week I have been building a retaining wall, and instead of buying power tools, I borrowed them from a friend, spent half an hour chatting with him, getting tips and admiring his latest DIY project. Later this week my neighbour, a lovely old bloke who loves a chat, is bringing his chainsaw up to cut off some posts for me. So instead of being independent and buying stuff I have increased my feeling of well-being by practising community, which also makes me feel secure, because I know we will be there for each other in hard times.

The other brilliant thing about buying second-hand or local is the possibility for creativity. You sound like a practical person - I tell you, you will never have more fun than limiting yourself to second-hand materials to complete a project. If you are an engineer you would just love my local tip shop. It is like a giant, challenging puzzle to work out how to make something old into something new. Limits, of any kind, are an enormous spur to creativity.

(cont..)

7/30/16, 2:24 AM

Jo said...

(cont..)

I have decided not to fly anywhere for holidays, although I will jump on a plane for a family emergency. And you know, I don't see this as a sacrifice. I am planning to continue to dig deep into my island state - climb the mountains, swim the lakes and beaches, camp and walk and hike. I believe that a sense of place and a connection with the land I live on will make me happier than any exotic holiday.

Lastly, getting rid of the TV - I thought that would be hard, not for me, but for my teenagers. Nope. They have become readers. We walk to the library every week and stock up. Me, I have always known that a good book was the was one of the straightest paths to happiness, and now I can stop being distracted by all the moving coloured pictures and really get stuck in to that list of must-reads..

I don't believe that all those Americans (or my fellow Australians) who refuse to give up their SUVs are particularly happy. They don't really seem to be. And I don't really think the environmental movement believes in itself. Clearly many environmentalists also think it would be really hard to give up 'stuff' and 'convenience'. But we all know deep down - happiness is about connections with people, about finding what we are good at and doing it well, about being involved in a project larger than ourselves, and even as simple as giving our bodies what they were designed for - good food and lots of exercise.

'Stuff' and 'convenience' is a terrible lie. Choose one thing, endgame, one thing that will make you truly happy, and give it a go. Yes, the world is full of terrible iniquities, but you aren't going to change a single one of them by being miserable about it. Cast away fear, get out of that car and go for a walk. Make the world happier by one single person. Why not??

7/30/16, 2:24 AM

Shane W said...

Off topic, but are a lot of people seeing a lot of "reverse Okies" in their communities? Show of hands... Just let us know in your comment if you're a "reverse Okie" or see a lot of ex-Californians coming to your community...

7/30/16, 2:25 AM

Shane W said...

I have to agree w/DiSc that the organic food end of green is as elitist and class conscious as anything in the green movement. No wonder the prols eat Cheetos and Taco Bell when organic "artisanal" is consistently marketed as a high end, wealthy, salary class thing, and class barriers erected. Of the farms I've worked on, only the one in Ontario was not elitist, and she was laid off wage class who used her severance package to buy her farm, and her son drove cross country semi before farming. One of the most interesting aspects of Canada was that there seemed to be less class barriers, I remember being shocked to see grocery cashiers and other wage class members participating in biodynamic and other organic organizations--that would certainly not fly in my part of the US, as we enact strict barriers between wage and salary class, and organics is no exception. Of course, the wage class in Canada doesn't make the poverty wages that they do in the US.

7/30/16, 2:36 AM

Anthony Romano said...

@somewhatstunned

My earlier post in this thread (time stamp 7/27/16 7:00pm) puts some numbers on it, for the US at least. I may have oversold with the phrase "orders of magnitude" Lets say I revise that down to "Double" instead.

7/30/16, 3:36 AM

Rebecca Brown said...

@Ed-M,
It's saltwater intrusion, not fresh. One of the unique topographical features of south florida is the porous limestone that makes up the bedrock throughout the state. The cracks and fissures are so filled with saltwater that we have saltwater intrusions coming up miles and miles from the coast. The entire southern portion of the state basically floats on a bed of saltwater. The drainage and seawater issues have led to street flooding all through the area.

As for sea level rise, my wife works with the people who measure it locally, and it's up to an inch a year here for the last few years. This year it's expected to be an inch and a quarter. That's a huge increase in one year! A lot of people are getting worried.

@JMG,
There are still plenty of people with their noses in the sand down here, but there are also a couple of mayors who got elected on sea level rise issues and the counties are making plans for moving infrastructure. Of course, they are using outdated and ridiculously low levels for the projected rise this century.

7/30/16, 4:43 AM

Ben Johnson said...

JMG - I reread that post and the other two in the series(late 2009 was around the time I started making a weekly pilgrimage to the ADR so it has been a while since I'd read those posts). It sounds like you pin much of the failure on the hubris of the systems thinkers, as well as their dependence on subsidies to fund their projects?
At this point, since the federal pie (and the general pie of industrialization) has stopped growing, in real terms, and will probably start a real contraction (if it hasn't already) from here on out. So for those of us on the fringes, I guess our way forward is on our own or in small communities/groups? That's an idea you've floated on and off here at ADR, and in Long Descent and Green Wizardry, so do you think that mass movements are, at this point, relatively pointless (at least in affecting material or policy change)?

7/30/16, 5:50 AM

Cherokee Organics said...

Hi JMG,

Today, I attended the Green Wizard's meeting in Melbourne. I had a very enjoyable time as the discussions - just like here in the comment section - vary far and wide over a huge diversity of topics. I urge anyone who has considered attending to come and join the lively and friendly discussion group as I believe they will enjoy it too and find it worthwhile. Greetings to the Ohio tower too! :-)!

However, I'd like to pose you with a, well it wasn't quite a question that was posed today, it was more of a search, or perhaps even a confusion, honestly I fail to put words to the many thoughts, so please forgive me if my English if is not quite up to the task of expressing the nature of the dilemma posed...

Now, I personally believe and I stated it today at the meetup that you are too clever to be pinned down to a particular and singular response to the predicaments facing industrial society. My gut feeling is that you prefer a dissensus approach when it comes to practical responses hoping that scatter-gun approach will succeed where perhaps a more rigid and defined response will be a weakness. I agree with you too, if it means anything. You may be very interested to know that I am now producing quite a good grade of rice wine (sake), whilst at the same time learning to reproduce the yeast. Just sayin... You know what I mean.

The thing is that my path involves unpleasant activities such as moving many cubic metres of manure, much manual labour and also a definitive loss of social status and other perquisites. Mind you, I have had high status in the past and I pointed out today that if something that was so easily lost, what was it worth in the first place? Anyway, my gut feel was that people were looking for some sort of direction, but I'm not really sure on that score to be honest.

Like you, perhaps, I have no desire to lead on this occasion as I'd prefer if people discovered their own paths, but the payoff for supporting things as they are - despite the finite lifespan of that option - is quite good, even still.

It was hard to explain that I chose the path that I did because of accumulated experiences and so I drew a line in the sand and said I will go no further. But then that speaks to my sense of the understanding of the beauty and power of limitations, but other people have troubles seeing that as it requires much to be given up in the process. And I feel their pain too, that I cannot help but feel.

I was sort of hoping that you may have some words for those people?

I'm sure that Fidel felt like Galadriel as he put dissenters into gulags during the special period...

"And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!”

I would feel no different, but still would do the same.

Cheers

Chris

7/30/16, 6:19 AM

Eric S. said...

"interesting. Maybe it's just that I hang out with lots of Druids or something, but I still know a lot of people who are into the low-tech green wizardry approach. "

There are still a few, and it's work that definitely happens at my grove and in some of my immediate community where we still hold regular workshops on canning, gardening, herbalism, and such and have spent the last several years responding to our omens of "something's coming, look out for each other, build bridges, and build skills," and we're always growing herbs and vegetables and doing various projects around the grove... There's a lot of good work in reskilling, sustainability, etc. out at the local troth kindred that has a lot of membership overlap with the grove as well. But I also encounter more space cadets and techno-Druids than one might expect in various places.

I'm more thinking about what's become of the people I knew through my environmental activist organization in college, or in my environment and humanities degree program, or in the transition town movement. Or in the forest service or in the Quaker meeting I did a lot of environmental work through... What it feels like is that the scene has dwindled from what it was in 2006-2010, and as a whole become committed to spouting conventional wisdom, opposing personal action, and directing it's attentions on either technological fixes, or on top down political change... Or have just followed the political winds of the mainstream left and shifted completely over to activism on social issues.

7/30/16, 6:25 AM

Cherokee Organics said...

Hi Martin McDuffy,

Surely your handle here is a joke? Perhaps not. Still, your comment regarding those particular trades was a sweeping generalisation which was not appreciated here. You are wrong and I desire none of those things.

Hi Tabatha Atwood,

My farm is subjected to summer temperatures that regularly exceed 100'F and I grow at least 100kg (220 pounds) of tomatoes per summer for my own consumption. Honestly, they require less than 10 minutes of watering per day from a single sprinkler all summer long and I only have a finite amount of water here stored in above ground tanks.

I am curious about the sort of growing conditions that your tomatoes are growing in to require so much water? If you describe them to me, I may be able to provide you with some hints and tips to reduce your water usage to a reasonable quantity (certainly less than the average persons shower) and still achieve a good harvest. I'd appreciate it if you also described the sort of tomatoes that you are growing too.

Cheers

Chris

7/30/16, 6:41 AM

Fred said...

A new podcast called Warm Regards has an episode posted last week which dovetails with your essay - The Global Cooling Myth. Only 15 minutes long and very informative.
https://soundcloud.com/warmregardspodcast

7/30/16, 6:48 AM

Fred said...

My copy of Twilight's Last Gleaming came in the mail yesterday and my favorite part so far is the two Americans in suits in the bar who clearly look like military, and all the information the Tanzanians collected from whore houses from Americans who talk like no one is listening. I've lived overseas for several years and Americans really are that obvious!

Did you set the book in Africa because of the interesting intersections of past colonialism and current politics? Or do you think there really could be a massive oil find there at some point? I've been following the last decade or so the increasing US military operations across the continent and scratching my head wondering what the point of all of it is. There is a variety of terrains and I know they like to practice in different environments, and I know there are some rare earth metals, oil off shore in the west, and uranium, gold and diamonds in the south, but it doesn't explain the build-up of military bases.

I get the point of the novel is we are one bad situation from being shown up by the Chinese, and I totally agree with that, just curious about the setting.

7/30/16, 6:59 AM

Fred said...

You mentioned you know several on the left who walk the talk of their politics. Care to share names? I have found locally that the people who do organic gardening well, live on less, and are raising really phenomenal kids, don't blog about it, post it on Facebook or really talk about it at all. I've found them mostly by serendipity. When I attend gatherings of activists, permaculturalists, and the like, I am bored by hours of talking about "the issues" that other people caused and how we are all screwed and then everyone drives off with their iPhones in their Prius and posts about it on Facebook. So I just do my own thing and don't talk about it online or in person.

7/30/16, 7:03 AM

Patricia Mathews said...

@JMG: Convincing the Culprits, a.k.a. Reframing the Language.

That is, if you wish to convince them, and not just give them holy hallelujah for their sins.

This came to me because I was thinking about how I would present the material in this column to someone who believed in climate change but was subject to the hair-trigger defensiveness you described. I sometimes pass on your ideas, summarized but with proper attribution in the form of, to a friend of mine, and have found her reactions to be enlightening, and considered what I'd tell her. (Pointing out where it was my own words, not yours.)

It occurred to me that one minor change, using (alas) the jargon of today, would defuse some of that defensiveness. Refer to these points as "The Five Marketing Errors of the Climate Change Movement." Because "marketing" is a tactic easily changed, and doesn't strike at the heart of their identity the way "strategic" does, for some reason, let alone "why you cut your own throats here." And some of it is, pure and simply, *marketing" problems anyway! Put that way, I think some of them would listen, and probably work for the changes you and I want.

Those that aren't, of course, are the more serious ones. "Many of you all don't walk your talk .... " with local examples. (They know all about Al Gore. He's like the drunken uncle they're already defensive about. Local hits home.)

And yes, the promise of green jobs for wage class workers, is the best talking point ever. It needs to be pounded on by the movement with some well-thought-out plans.

Anyway, just a thought.

7/30/16, 7:12 AM

PRiZM said...

JMG, I apologize for using the hypocrisy card when it was a misunderstanding on my part. I'm definitely lacking in some of the reading comprehension skills I once had. Again my apologies. Sometimes I know subconsciously I want to find something to prove you wrong about, but unfortunately so many things you say are so well thought out, and backed up.

7/30/16, 7:17 AM

Brother Guthlac said...

Sebastien,
If Dennis Meadows is regularly reading J.M. Greer, yes, that is worthy of note.

7/30/16, 8:06 AM

John Roth said...

@Nestorian

I’ve never understood the term “moral relativist.” As far as I can tell, it means “you don’t subscribe to the same list of moral precepts I do.”

@Emmanuel Goldstein

Yes, it’s possible to tell where bunker oil (any oil that’s used on a ship) comes from. Not that it matters all that much. The bigger the ship, the more likely that it’s using something like #5 or #6, which has a consistency something like paraffin at room temperature and has to be preheated before it’ll flow into the furnace. It pollutes like nobody’s business, and I’ve heard that shipping puts out enough particulates and sulfur dioxide that it has a cooling effect.

@JMG

Yes, 10% is definitely worth tackling - assuming that it can be tackled.

What you or I think of the time frame for the Second Coming doesn’t matter. It’s what the preacher can convince the man and woman in the pew about it that matters. And the preacher has got all the bible verses nicely lined up to show that nobody knows, but it really could be tomorrow. If not tonight.

As far as Trump is concerned, I expect you’ve already figured out that we’re working from radically different playbooks in some respects. When every Michael channel I know of pretty much agrees on his overleaves, and that matches what I can observe from his personal behavior over time, then I’m not buying that talk of him starting a tyranny is simply the elites being against him for not being one of them. There’s certainly a lot of that - the conventional wing of the Republican party is in a state of shock about what’s happening. I spare no pity for what Trump has done to the Republican party and their conventional wisdom about where the country needs to go and how to get there. There’s a lot more going on than that, though.

7/30/16, 8:52 AM

Mark said...

JMG- with regard to taking steps to create a Lakeland Republic, I suggest your readers look at this: http://www.election-justice-usa.org/Democracy_Lost_Update1_EJUSA.pdf A sample:

"Unlike other technologically advanced countries such as Germany, Canada, France, Ireland, Italy, Denmark, Finland, and 53 other countries, election ballots in the United States are not counted by hand and in public. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany (the German version of the US Supreme Court),in 2009, effectively banned the use of computers to count Germany’s ballots. In order to be able to verify the results of their elections, Germany reverted to the hand counting of all ballots in front of citizen observers."

7/30/16, 9:03 AM

Toomas (Tom) Karmo said...

Coordinated Universal Time (= UTC = EST+5 = EDT+4): 20160730T161351Z

Dear JMG,

Over timestamp "7/29/16, 11:54 PM" you make a remark which should be highlighted, and which I hope your comment-writers will also be pondering: /.../ the optimum energy per capita in terms of providing jobs, food, and housing for human population is considerably lower than what we're using today/.../ I had not thought of this before.

What I have, admittedly, already noted in my own as-yet-unwritten attempts at social analysis (weaker than your attempts) is that some of the particular, specific 20th-century technologies have been developed beyond an optimum point. This is one of the themes of the 20th century, perhaps destined to make it known in history books as the Epoch of Excess.

Passenger aviation is of some use, in moving key government, managerial, scientific, or performing-arts personnel around quickly, as in the early 1940s. But the later 20th century took it beyond its optimum, to a point at which it has been encouraging people to make frivolous journeys. (In wartime Britain, the railway stations had good posters, with the words "Is Your Journey Really Necessary?" I do not think we have seen that in the postwar airports.)

Computing is of use in government and science. The technology attained a kind of maturity in the mid-1990s with the advent of the personal Linux or BSD Unix workstation, running a bare-bones graphic user interface in the "X Window" environment. But since then we have taken a good thing too far, to the point where our social fabric is fraying under the impact of Twitter, Facebook, and porn, as people mistakenly consider computers appropriate for recreation.

Radio, in its state of maturity in the 1930s, was good (radio universal on ships, and common in police cars in some jurisdictions; transmitters rather readily available to the amateur experimenter; mass broadcasting sufficiently advanced to allow even such things as the BBC "Empire Service"). What came later - most strikingly, mass-market television - was less good. One notes here the insight of the 1930s BBC head, Lord Reith, in accepting a prewar television set into his home only with reluctance, and in predicting that this emerging technology - I think the government, the engineers included, forced it on the 1936 BBC rather against Lord Reith's will - would eventually prove toxic.

In general, I have been thinking of technologies as resembling plums. There is a point at which they are green and immature. There is a point at which they are past their peak, being overdeveloped and overripe.

What I now take from your posting of "7/29/16, 11:54 PM" is that the metaphor of an optimum point applies also to per-capita expenditure on energy. Do please in future consider writing an essay or book on this, as your time may permit.

Tom

http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com

7/30/16, 9:49 AM

Toomas (Tom) Karmo said...

Coordinated Universal Time (= UTC = EST+5 = EDT+4): 20160730T171005Z

Dear Matthias Gralle,

Thanks for your "7/29/16, 8:41 PM" posting on the Deutschland Greens. This is an eye-opener, as it draws notice to the gulf separating the Canadian and Estonian Greens from their German counterparts. Here in Canada, we have only one Green in Commons. Estonia, unlike Canada, has proportional representation. But the Greens have not recently passed the 5-percent-of-votes threshold for returning a member to the Riigikogu.

Voting in Canada, I grit my teeth and do vote Green.

In Estonian elections, at the ballot box here in Toronto, I have hitherto made the (prudent) calculation that moderate-Right Isamaa-Res Publica Alliance (Alliance = Liit; IRL) needs every vote it can get, in the face of threats to national sanity both from the Savisaar left and from the emerging, strident, farther Right. Now I realize that in taking Estonian decisions, I will have to keep Deutschland more in view, even if I do not in the end change this pro-IRL calculation.

It is said that politics is the art of the possible. However, we do well not to underestimate the limits to what might in one or another country prove possible.

Tom = Toomas

(in Estonian diaspora, just north of Toronto)

http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com

7/30/16, 10:24 AM

pygmycory said...

The railway that used to run where I live shut down in 2011. I have no car. If I need to go anywhere long-distance, it is either a potpourri of buses and ferries, or flying. Visiting my mom is a royal pain of a 9-12 hour trip that I do about once a year. I'm lucky I don't live in Vancouver, since the long-distance bus to Powell River shut down for months last year, leaving flying or hitchhiking/carsharing as the only way to get from one to the other if you don't have a car.

I also have friends in Calgary who I haven't seen in years, since not-flying would mean a 3 day train or bus journey, plus ferry, plus multiple buses that would really not play well with the fibromyalgia. The train would also cost more than double a plane ticket. The bus looks likely to be so painful as to be not worth it. Visiting my english relatives, which now includes my dad, is impossible without flying.

Result, I don't go visit them. I haven't been anywhere outside the southern portion of the BC coast since 2009. Not flying means close to not travelling at all for me.

7/30/16, 10:31 AM

Greg Belvedere said...

@Unknown Deborah, Nuku, and JMG

Thanks for the input. I have thought about putting a pitched roof over the current roof. I need to replace the back half of the roof before the winter, but I think when it comes time to replace the front it might be worth the investment.

7/30/16, 11:15 AM

David, by the lake said...

John--

I'd just like to thank you, again, for your considered and powerful post which, among other things, prompted this reader to get up off his backside and take action long contemplated. I am now the proud owner of a cruising bike (a very functional 1969 Raliegh, complete with cargo rack) which will be used for cross-town visits to the community garden and about-town errands, with seasonal use for commuting to work (~7 miles each way). I have also verified that the local bus line would also work come winter, requiring only a half-hour adjustment to my schedule in either direction. All in all, minor inconvenience. Plus exercise and a beautiful lakeshore commute.

7/30/16, 11:29 AM

Soilmaker said...

@JMG regarding your response to my earlier post:

"Soilmaker, have you considered renting your old house to young people who are interested in sustainability, so they can learn how to work with renewable energy? A lot of people I know who are into such things don't have the resources to buy a house, but can make rent."

Yes, I have thought about renting but I'm not there are many young people who could afford it or who are will to take care of it. There is no work involved with the solar energy system, it runs itself. But if we can’t find buyers it is one of the options we will explore.

I would like to hang onto the property and pass it on to one of our sons. We have two sons in college, a freshman studying culinary arts and a junior studying engineering technology, who live at home. My hope was that after college they would find work here, settle in our community and raise a family. Unfortunately, graduation and finding work are several years in the future, and who knows if they will find a job here after college.

Another issue is that having grown up living this way they aren’t keen on the idea of living this way. It requires a great deal of work! It takes a real commitment, cooperation, and lots of helping hands to make it work. I know of families dedicated to sustainable living, whose children aren't interested in continuing to live like this.

On the bright side, our sons understand the reasons for doing what we do. They both love to cook and eat fresh food. They sometimes make comments about how nice it is to hear the sound of frogs at night or the wind rustling through the trees (the rewards of a simple life). My younger son works for his university department's Head Chef, who grows fresh food in raised bed gardens on campus. My older son uses new technology but he is interested in learning to make charcoal and blacksmithing. They talk to us about social and environmental issues and I’m so proud that they really do understand the issues.

We don't always agree on solutions and it can be disconcerting to face their certainty that they are right and we are wrong. It's very true, having a PhD makes it really hard to not to say "Don't argue with me, I'm an expert!" It's not easy letting them have the last word, but someone has to stop arguing and agree to disagree!

I understand what life is like when you are 18 to 24 and you want to break out of the mold your parents set for you. There are some things our parents taught us that we didn’t appreciate until after we passed 30. Children need to make their own choices about who they want to be as adults. Our sons know how fortunate they are to have had the opportunities and education we are providing them. Their future may not provide them with the same economic opportunities or security we have had, but they have a good foundation to grow upon.

I know there are difficult and uncertain times ahead, and I wish every young person had the same opportunities we've been able to offer our children. I think that by teaching young people to invest in things of lasting value, to think for themselves, to work with their hands, to value the rewards of hard work and a simple life, we give them the best chance we can to meet the challenges of the future.

sincerely,
Soilmaker

7/30/16, 11:45 AM

Roger said...

JMG, My recollection is that, from early days, climate change activists have been touting "data and evidence". If it was just that, a matter of "data and evidence", and diligently explaining concepts and numbers and charts and graphs, then maybe I would have a better attitude.

But it's this towering moral superiority and talking about "settled science" that gets up my nose. My instincts tell me that for such complex phenomena as climate, never mind climate CHANGE, the science could not possibly be anywhere close to being "settled". That's not to say that what there is has no basis. But that's to say that a lot of work still needs to be done. In short, it looks to me like a case of stifling dissent within the scientific community in aid of other agendas be they careerist or political or whatever.

I really don't like the word "settled". In my humble opinion saying that science is "settled" implies boundaries on investigation and inquiry. Last I checked this isn't Galileo's era and the scientific community isn't the Roman Catholic Church. There needs to be a lot more humility. As you say don't demonize honest disagreement. After all the dissenter might have a point.

As you say this isn't just a matter of pure academic interest that has no immediate application. And so there are personal and collective interests at stake.

I can't help remembering how enforced consensus clamped down on archaeological investigation to the point that scientists would ignore physical evidence that contradicted the Clovis First theory. Either shut up and pretend that contrary evidence isn't there or risk your professional standing. Of course, the evidence piled up and then the dam burst. Defying academic unanimity doesn't come without a career "body-count".

Science isn't just about facts and evidence. I've read about other instances of Clovis First-like behaviour. There's ambition and egos and careers and rivalries and who's hipper and more progressive and all that toxicity. And this climate change issue seems to be unusually toxic. I look at the guys standing tall and lecturing and the chicks looking up adoringly. Makes me laugh.

Frankly, I'm past being "hip". Too old. Too much posturing. Can't be bothered. Besides, I won't impress any chicks. And I too remember the ice-age scare.

7/30/16, 11:54 AM

zach bender said...

i would like to register my agreement with the commenters who have said, in effect, consumer capitalism is a primary obstacle to getting much done on climate change. and that analogies to the push for normalization of homosexuality are inapt, as this does not pose a threat to capitalism -- quite the contrary, the more we welcome blacks and women and people with varying gender identities to the mainstream, the more stuff we can sell. and all the controversies along the way make for good television.

the fundamental mechanism of capitalism, extracting profits, by its very nature requires externalizing costs -- closing and/or trashing the commons, wage theft, you name it. persuading ordinary folks to shoulder these externalities by taking on a great deal more manual labor requires asking them to question the basic assumptions under which their lives are structured. a worthy project, and one that i have tried to undertake at an extremely grassroots level in my own life.

unlike some commenters here, i have experienced very little pushback from people who learn i have not had a television for nearly twenty years, or a car for about a decade. or much in the way of presentable clothing, or that if i am expected to show up at a meeting ten miles from my home they can expect me to arrive on a thirty year-old bicycle in torn jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt, with slightly more presentable clothes stashed in a messenger bag, and to spend a few minutes sponging down before joining them.

possibly some of these people -- largely aspiring salary class, which is where i used to be -- are harboring negative thoughts they are not sharing with me, and possibly the impressions i make contribute to my not finding as much freelance work as i might like, but for the most part it seems the substantive contributions i can make to whatever is the discussion at hand are what people care about.

i might say, when i share this kind of info with people i am not taking an overtly moral stance, i am simply describing in matter of fact terms the realities of my life. i do sometimes make humorous references to the idea we might have seen the end of "growth," etc., etc., but again no one seems to take this kind of thing as a personal rebuke.

my project is to normalize through my example the idea that people can liberate themselves from the conditioning that enslaves us to the existing systems.

7/30/16, 12:38 PM

Ed-M said...

Hi JMG,

"Ed-M, of course it's more complex than that -- but I'd argue that the five issues I've raised played an important role."

In addition to Spengler and Toynbee, have you read Morris Berman, especially his Twilight of American Culture / Dark Ages America / Why America Failed trilogy? It seems he has hit the nail on the head why this country seems to be not only slowly collapsing, but suffering from a grand derangement: the culture of America is one of hustling and getting ahead; the pursuit of happiness is, for the majority, the acquisition of ever more money and ever more consumer goods; and the religion of America is what he calls the religion of technology and what we call the Religion of Progress (modelled after Christianity of course especially in its eschatology). How are you going to sell Global Warming mitigation to a population like that? Only if you can prove it's going to SAVE them money not only in the long term but also in the near-to-mid term as well.

7/30/16, 1:02 PM

Ed-M said...

One more thing, JMG, s'il vous plait,

Regarding your response to Tony on 7/28/16, 9:13 PM: “I never said that the new ice age thing was a consensus -- it wasn't. it's simply that it was presented to the public by some apparently authoritative voices as [though] it were one. (There's a lot to learn here about the disconnect between how scientists interact with each other and how they interact with the lay public.)”

I suspect it was the news media acting as the go-between as it usually does, and doing what it does best: cherry-picking the evidence and going with what sells. Back then, if they mentioned that scientists say the climate was going to warm, people would have thought, oh nice… no more brutal winters! But if they said, which they DID say, scientists say we’re headed for a new ice age, then they can put a WE’RE DOOMED spin and slant on it and get more eyeballs and ears to read, watch, and listen, which would be better for THEM cause then the advertisers get to shell out more money for ad space and air time.

I am soooo cynical… ;^)

7/30/16, 1:05 PM

Richard DeBacher said...

JMG: For me,it's been clear for many years that climate change is, so to speak, just the tip of the iceberg of global environmental implosion. But then my metaphor melted with the rest of polar ice!

We're living in the Anthropocene and advanced industrial societies and burgeoning consumption driven by consumer capitalism with its relentless advertising and the siren song of its media is drawing most of the developing world down the road to ecocide. Consequently we face not only a warming and less hospitable climate, arable land is disappearing due to chemical fertilizes and industrial agriculture. Our waterways and wetlands are imperiled by these same practices. Forests are cleared for expanding populations, for cattle grazing and for palm oil plantations for cosmetics and junk food. The entire ocean food chain is imperiled as the base of the chain, the phytoplankton, face depletion. The coral reefs are disappearing and with them the many species that reside therein. Industrial fishing practices threaten countless species. The sixth extinction event is well underway, the only such cataclysm sparked by a single species -- us.

This is not a comforting message to convey. As I've written elsewhere, even if we somehow stopped all fossil fuel emissions tomorrow, we'd still face a host a dire environmental threats due to the wanton consumption habits of modern advanced societies.

Just a few quibbles: The climate change movement stands guilty as charged in most respects. However, the comparison with the gay rights movement is facile. Once most folks learned that their marriage was not imperiled by the nice gay couple next door getting married, things began to change rapidly. It didn't take science to belie the propaganda. A more apt comparison would be with the the tobacco industry and the fight to restrict smoking. We know that the fossil fuel industry is using the tried and true tactics of Big Tobacco to cloud the air, so to speak, with misinformation. Naomi Orestes, if for nothing else, deserves credit for her book "Merchants of Doubt" that exposed the industry funded misinformation campaign.

I recently gave a talk at the 50th reunion of my college graduation class entitled: "Retiring Green in the Anthropocene" in which I argued that those who grew up as mass consumer culture came into its fullest, most wasteful expression, owe it to our children and grandchildren to mend our ways in the final quarter of our lives. Among the targets of my proposal: air travel. No generation before ours who hit young adulthood as Frank Sinatra was crooning "Come Fly with Me" took it for granted that they could traverse a continent or an ocean in a few hours time. Such habits were the result of a fluke convergence of technology, cheap energy, and affluence. It can't and it won't last. Thanks for underscoring that fact.

In that talk and others I give, I pick on another major industry we could do without -- the sugary soft drink industry. Each day thousands of diesel spewing trucks hit the road to carry sugar laden soft drinks from factory to distribution centers, then to retail outlets. Countless gallons of water are used to produce products with no redeeming value -- they contribute only to the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. Want a suggestion for step one in changing your lifestyle? Get rid of that Coke, Pepsi, or Dr. Pepper and enjoy a cool glass of water.

Peace

7/30/16, 4:03 PM

Steve in Colorado said...

JMG

I not sure the difference between the gay marriage movement and climate change is so hard to understand. In the former, there was little or no person expense or inconvenience for people to accept it (with the possible exception of the few who took it as a moral outrage that they could not live with). And it came with some significant financial incentives from the community involved.

Climate change, on the other hand, could offer only negatives at least in the short term. Regardless of class, everyone would have their life style moved down a notch or two. As usual, the wealthy would suffer less, but everyone would feel the pain.

I think this reality explains a lot of the history of the climate change movement. Just like when the link between tobacco and cancer was first publicized, there are those who denied it (with the help/reinforcement of the tobacco industry), those who thought they could escape the ill effects if they only took the right vitamins, those who believed but found it hard to quit, and those that were quick to adopt and accept the new info. You can find similar camps with climate change, the big difference is the sacrifice is a much bigger one for all. That is why Al Gore flew to give his speeches, why most struggle so hard to come up with a way to continue personal transportation by car, the ability to run their AC in the summer, and use heat in the winter. These modes of energy use are so ingrained that it is too big a leap for most to give them up. Especially if few of their neighbors/friends are abandoning them, and they themselves are not being forced to do so. Even when the warning signs of more weather extreme events should be seen as a warning shot over the bow.

Your class analysis is valid (as usual), but not IMO the reason for the political failure of the movement. The working class has as much to loose in their day to day life as any other class, perhaps more. Yes the well off use more carbon, but they have more of everything, and in this society there is a fossil fuel component to everything we do or have. Most working class folks I know would be very hard pressed if fossil fuels went away or were severely limited. Yes, for them it may well be a matter of survival, whereas for the wealthy it is more an inconvenience, but the stakes are just that much higher for them, no?

Limiting fossil fuel use will disrupt everyone's life, from the uber wealthy to the homeless. That is why it has been such a hard sell, IMO. Very few people want to be early adopters (unlike the latest gadget or video game), no gain for a long time to come.

It's one thing when someone is yelling a tsunami is coming and you see them running for the hills. Another when they are yelling global warming is coming and they continue flying around. In the first case the risk is immediate, in the second not only is it not coming soon, but it doesn't seem critical enough for that speaker to change their lifestyle, at least not yet.

You might think gov't would step in and have the long term vision needed to address this, but you'd be wrong. Gov't has more immediate problems, a lack luster economy, a distrustful voting population. Sacrifices for some future vision which worsens those immediate problems does not get you re-elected. You need only look at Trump's stated views on climate change to see where the majority of his supporters come down on that topic and its importance.

No in many ways, the problem of climate change is perhaps the perfect storm for modern man. Due to our political structures and cross-class societal distrust, it is impossible to deal with the problem in a rational way. Unless that changes, and soon, it will likely be our downfall.

7/30/16, 4:13 PM

M Smith said...

Damo, thanks much for both your well written comments. Ubuntu was what I tried in 07 or 08. Next chance I get, I'll try Mint. Should be fun - I still like dinking around with scripts, even though no one pays me to do it any more! Glad jessi got us both talking about Linux in the first place. It's easy, like in politics, to forget that there are more than the Big Two options.

Thank you too, John Michael, for the heads-up about Open Office and Word.

One of the many things about this blog that soothes my chapped soul is the willingness of all to offer their experience and encouragement.

7/30/16, 4:17 PM

Shane W said...

RE: sewage, only in KY can you say, "don't dump that down the drain, that might end up in someone's bourbon!" or "dump no waste, drains to distillery". My city's treatment plant dumps its treated effluent into Glenn's Creek, which has a well known distillery on it, and another soon to open. In high school, one of our environmental club's responsibilities was testing the water in Glenn's Creek. Now, not too many years ago, they did a multimillion dollar upgrade to the treatment plant, so I don't think pathogens are a concern, but things like pharmaceuticals and other chemicals that treatment can't get would be a concern.

7/30/16, 5:19 PM

Nastarana said...

Dear pygmycory, are you perhaps reviving the gentle art of writing letters? I well remember, in the days before email the excitement of getting mail, the lingering over letters, the careful selection of just the right container in which to keep them. And then there is conferring of bragging rights on your correspondents. Mom can be gently mentioning the weekly letter from you while her neighbor is wondering how much longer the irritating in law and noisy grands will be staying.

7/30/16, 5:37 PM

Karl Ivanov said...

In response to Nastarana:
We do have a constitution, and that is why the Democratic Party argument that states, “Trump will immediately undo every progressive reform of the past 50 years!” does not convince me. That said, what I would be most worried about with Trump is the emergence of some type of “brownshirt” style political thug organization. I will grant, the press way overblows his supporters violence thus far- but who knows what it could turn into. That said, that sort of violence also has a real chance of blowing up if he loses. And you are definitely right about Hillary’s militarism. That has always been the biggest strike against her in my mind. As a politician… I see her as no more corrupt than most, and probably better than some, which isn’t saying much. The same actually could be said about Trump’s racism and the white population of America in general. There is a great facebook meme going around that says “Hillary: Everything that’s wrong with our government; Trump: Everything that’s wrong with our culture.” ‘Bout sums it up.

7/30/16, 7:00 PM

zach bender said...

thinking aloud here, critiques welcome.

the people who were around a hundred years ago were not themselves personally required to adjust to the technological and social changes we see around us today. they are gone. as an advocate for safer access to public rights of way for pedestrians and bicyclists, i sometimes mention to people that the built environment we see today was created for the most part in the past fifty or sixty years to promote and accommodate greatly increased use of the private automobile. it did not have to be this way, and it does not have to be this way going forward. but people have gotten used to it, and it seems hard to let go.

similarly, if the future requires that we retreat from the inappropriate use of many technologies, while that may seem like a difficult sell to those who have been acculturated to define these as necessities, it really need not be seen as a catastrophe or even much of a burden on people who mostly have not been born yet.

whereas leaving those future kids with no air to breathe and no water to drink and rampant antibiotic resistant bacteria and so on would.

not sure how to frame this as a marketing strategy, but the bottom line is the people on whom we are going to impose a largely imaginary or a very real set of hardships are mostly not here yet.

i guess what i am thinking is, if we look back and examine how people were persuaded to let go of the way they used to do things, which was a combination of cynical marketing and also blind accident -- as in, i doubt general motors thought much about the dislocation of communities as highways were built -- then we might think of adapting similar tools to the project at hand.

i remember when my mother got an automatic washing machine, and i remember the hand wringer and scrubbing board that still sat in the basement alongside. this was of course promoted as a labor-saving device, and it did have a significant effect on bringing women into the consumer marketplace. but what were they actually promised? was the supposed benefit that now you can go out and get a paying job? or was it that you could spend more time with your family?

if we now are asking people to walk or bike to the grocery, use public transit, hand wash your dishes, use grey water to flush your toilet, etc., etc., what is the selling point? your grandchildren will not be hiding from warlords in a mud hut? or you can experience more meaning moment by moment in your daily life, with heightened awareness of everything around you?

again, for the moment the best i have been able to do is live out the example, and be unafraid to explain my decisions to people who are not quite unwilling to hear it.

7/30/16, 7:08 PM

Karl Ivanov said...

Sorry to bring up something I already mentioned, but re-reading Van Jones’ book, I found he has a chapter critiquing the activist left from a standpoint quite similar to the one in this week's post:
“Many of us on the left define ourselves in wholly negative terms, and then we wonder why people run the other way when they see us coming” (p.106)
“We ourselves are part of the problem. Every day, almost all of us are working and consuming in the pollution based economy… yet we each have an understandable aversion to giving up our own money or status, We are trying to change the status quo. But we all have a stake in it too. We all rely upon it to survive. And so, every day, we end up feeding the monster we are fighting. This is a humbling fact.” (110)
“A lof of environmental rhetoric remains rooted in “crisis” language. It is evident that people who already have a lot of opportunity are sometimes powerfully motivated to act by tales of a planetary crisis. But people who already live in a constant state of personal crisis are not so moved. In fact, they often have the opposite reaction to hearing about things like global warming… But if you tell people who are living in a state of constant personal crisis about the economic solutions inherent in the green economy, then they get excited.” (p.103)
“To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people. The time has come to move beyond eco-elitism to eco-populism. Eco-populism would always foreground those green solutions that can improve ordinary people’s standard of living- and decrease their cost of living” (p.98)
Van Jones, The Green Collar Economy, 2008.

7/30/16, 7:21 PM

David, by the lake said...

@Zach Bender

My wife and I have a house built in 1929, complete with functioning cast-iron radiators. When we had major work done in the kitchen, we purposefully did not have a dishwasher installed. I use dishwashing as a meditation exercise.

7/30/16, 7:30 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Nbxl, okay. Perhaps you can tell me what this has to do with the subject of this post.

Nestorian, fascinating. It's entirely possible to make a moral argument for reducing greenhouse gases from a relativist standpoint, but you have to use the kind of consequentialist argument Aristotle used: "greenhouse gas emissions cause x, y, and z, and if you agree that x, y, and z are unwelcome, then we need to cut greenhouse gases." That sort of argument doesn't work as a basis for self-righteous indignation and sneering contempt for disagreement, of course, which may be why it's not so popular these days -- though it may explain why I find Aristotle far more congenial than most of today's writers on the subject of environmental ethics! What you're saying, I think, amounts to the suggestion -- which seems justified to me -- that people who don't believe in an absolute standard of right and wrong handed down by a divine lawgiver have no business acting as though they've smuggled in a surrogate Jehovah just for this one situation. Would that be a fair description?

Whomever, as I've been saying for years, living in cities is a valid choice, and can be made as ecologically sustainable as living on the imaginary thirty acre homestead that most people seem to have welded into their brains as the only green option.

Thijs, as I mentioned in response to another commenter, I was carrying out one of my duties as head of AODA when I took that flight. Now that I've stepped down from that position, I no longer have the duty in question. Still, if you want to have a moral purity trial, why, I'm sure you can find some other reason to dismiss what I have to say, if that's really what you want to do.

Bruce, you may well be right. One of the things I'm trying to do via the Retrotopia story, and a number of my other posts here, is to point out that using a good deal less energy and the products of energy can be more fulfilling and more fun than the options we've got now, but the Puritan streak in American culture won't admit that possibility. The cult of self-righteous hair-shirt asceticism in the environmental left doesn't help that, either.

Shane, you're misinformed, but it's an understandable mistake. What happens is that as more heat enters the atmosphere, the efficiency with which heat is conveyed from the tropics to the poles increases sharply, and so the poles heat up far more quickly than the equator. In the same way, during an ice age, the tropics cool mildly and the poles drop into the deep freeze, because the efficiency of heat transport from the tropics drops off sharply.

Nuku, yep. Since grid tied PV does impose certain costs on the whole system, due especially to intermittency, a case can probably be made for the fee.

Fred, the only things I've had to delete here were some climate denialist trolls and some people who used profanity. I occasionally check out the comments to my post on resilience.org if I want a good laugh, but not otherwise.

Jessi, I'm fond of Neven's blog as well -- thanks for giving it a shout.

LatheChuck, hmm. That sounds interesting -- and two weeks of relative solitude and calm crossing the Atlantic could be very, very pleasant!

Nestorian, but if I hadn't booked that seat, it's possible that it might have gone empty, in which case the airline would have lost a little money and had a little less incentive to add new flights, or what have you. No, it's an issue, but -- as I said at the time -- my carbon offset consists of never having had a car or a driver's license. We all make the best compromises we can, which is why the kind of hectoring moral self-righteousness you've criticized is never a good idea!

7/30/16, 8:05 PM

pygmycory said...

Nastanarana, I typically use email and/or phone unless I'm sending christmas cards and the like. And the alberta friends came here to see their various friends in BC, and I put them up(my landlady has a spare bedroom she lets me borrow on occasion). The christmas cards are usually hand-made by me, and with a lot of writing on them.

I may well get on a plane again at some point now that my dad has moved to England. He and my stepmother are going to get too old to come back to Canada to visit all his friends here, and me, at some point. Of course, by then, who knows whether flying will even be an option.

7/30/16, 8:31 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Varun, oh man. Do not get me started on the moral posturing of the vegan crowd. I hasten to say that I've known some very reasonable, pleasant people who happen to prefer a plant-based diet, but I've met way too many people whose shrill denunciations of everyone else's evil carnophagy was all too obviously motivated by a desperate longing for just one bite of a bacon cheeseburger! (And we won't even talk about the huge number of loudly public vegans who binge on meat whenever they can do so out of sight of their fellow believers.) As for your broader question, that's easy. As Ernest Thompson Seton used to say, there are two ways to do things: throw lots of money at it, or know what you're doing. I'll be covering the latter approach as we proceed.

Tracye, yes, that was certainly part of it -- and the crash in the price of oil over the years that followed made it stick. At this point it's just a matter of unsticking it.

Siliconguy, square on target. Thank you.

7/30/16, 8:34 PM

Ahavah said...

I just finished reading "Who cooked Adam Smith's Dinner?" by Katrine Marcal. Her primary points were that modern economics refuses to admit that people are interdependent, that the work performed primarily by women in regards to carrying for family and household economics is grossly undervalued and ignored in GDP calculations, and that the modern "homo economicus" construct embodies only traditionally masculine attributes such as violence, competition, and greed at its core, purposely excluding other values.

This relates to the climate change debate. "Economic man dominates through the force of his masculinity. A company's profits can in the same way be allowed to dominate all other ambitions... Justice, equality, care, the environment, trust, physical and mental health are subordinate... And that's the very function of economic man. To flee. To deny the body, emotion, dependency, and context. ... Dependency had for centuries been seen as shameful. It was something that slaves and women were."

Westerners can't embrace climate change because it flies in the face of not just the myth of progress but the modern myth of just what man is - an autonomous individual that makes his own destiny. How can you sell the opposite?

If you have to wait on a bus you're not a conquering warrior. Arriving someplace hot and sweaty from biking, or soaking wet, puts you down on the level of field hands, the unwashed "am ha'aretz" that Western people largely imagine they are above and beyond. Etc and so on.

Not using the same amenities as everyone else makes you look poor, as someone else mentioned - the worst sin in an economy that believes, as Mercal put it, that "the econometric analysis of value is the only one that exists."

They can't cooperate, not really, because it's all about competition, profiteering, and status. They don't want to be either fair or equal. Trying to sell those to them is a waste of time. They won't buy it, especially when there are still going to be people who are more equal than others. Most people will not change until they can no longer afford to pay for their supposedly non-negotiable American way of life. It is not "rational" to do so either economically or socially at the present time.

So we are irrational, and we have to convince them to be irrational, in an economy/society that severely punishes irrationality. We should not great ourselves up for not being able to do this. The spiritual / mental / philosophical wind that could have carried this movement simply isn't yet in place and won't be until more people see the light - and it will some sort of further crisis, most likely.

7/30/16, 8:41 PM

Ahavah said...

But the way, I am not saying her book is great. I actually feel like she swam all around some really important point but never quite found it. I am just not yet sure what it is.

7/30/16, 8:43 PM

Nastarana said...

Dear Karl Ivanov, Possibly I am politically naïve, it wouldn't be the first time, but I am not able to take Trump's loudmouth supporters very seriously. A Trump rally provides them an excuse to cut up, behave badly, say things their wives won't let them say at home. I think they tend to wave their slogans around until the beer runs out and then collapse on the front sofa. What is very frightening is the rise of militarized police "enforcing" some purely arbitrary and subjective notion of law and order, but I am not seeing Trump as being in charge of that.

I find it far more frightening that Mme. C. can blithely steal a primary in a number of states and then, in effect, dare us to do anything about it.

I also recall that successful fascism needs an ideology, however illogical, such as National Socialism. Trump doesn't give the faithful anything to believe in except the greatness of Trump. 'Winning' is an advertising slogan, not an ideology.

Don't forget that you have also a congressional election. If you decide you can't stand Clinton, for example, you might want to check out the Republican running for congress as a reliable vote for impeachment.

7/30/16, 9:46 PM

nuku said...

JMG,
On moral posturing; my ex-wife was at one time enthralled by an Aussie woman who claimed to be a....wait for it....Breath-a-tarian. This lady claimed she had existed for years with NO food, getting her sustenance only from the air. Needless to say, she was eventually busted at 3am on a hidden video camera sneaking food from her fridge (which was there only for her less holy disciples).
Boy did I have a good laugh out of that one, though my ex didn’t see the humor in it.
“If it looks to good to be true, it probably ain’t...“

Here in New Zealand, we are fast catching up with the social/political situation in the USA. A growing number of homeless people, most real productive jobs off-shored, a neo-liberal Gov’t, led by a multi- millionaire ex-Morgan Stanley currency trader (nicknamed “The Smiling Assasin“ by his ex-work mates), completely out of touch with the common folks, with no vision for the future.
There’s a small, mostly nonvocal, group of people who agree with the premises of this blog. They for the most part just get on with collapsing and opting out of the system as best they can, leading from the rear so to speak.
For me, the scary thing is the threat of an eventual take-over by the Chinese, who are already buying up everything they can get their hands on, aided and abetted by the Govt whose motto is “Everything is for sale, at the right price.”
Thanks once again for the sane voice and the wry sense of humor!

7/31/16, 1:39 AM

Pantagruel7 said...

Apropos of last week's post, admittedly, Graham Greene was no H.P. Lovecraft, but your dismissal of him seemed odd just the same. The two works I was referring to were "The Quiet American" (novel), and "The Third Man" (screemplay for the 1949 film).
Apropos of this week's post, I think another factor in the success of LGBT efforts versus the failure of climate chance activism is the fact that giving ground on LGBT stuff in no way affects corporate profits. Climate change is quite another matter.
-Pantagruel

7/31/16, 3:06 AM

Pantagruel7 said...

I forgot to mention in my previous post that I completely agree with you about air travel, and since 1998 I have been arranging my life to avoid it.
-Pantagruel

7/31/16, 3:25 AM

Cherokee Organics said...

Hi Emmanuel,

Hehe! That is amusing. Nice one. And yeah, I wonder about all of that too. Do you ever wonder whether they even concern themselves with those issues? It does seem a bit odd doesn't it?

Cheers

Chris

7/31/16, 4:18 AM

Morgenfrue said...

@greg belvedere
Have you looked into "green roofing", i.e. a grass/succulent roof. They need to have a low slope and can be quite long-lived. Depending I the construction you have now, you may be able to lay the membrane directly over your present rooftop, but you would want to make some weight calculations. (Remember any snow load.)As far as I understand you can do the work yourself if you are handy. A roof with succulents can handle fluctuations in aridity and the water content of the plants minimizes fire risk. The roof is naturally insulating. Here where I live we have intense summer rains and cloudbursts with risks of flooding as the storm drains become overwhelmed, part of the public strategy for absorbing storm runoff on site is more living roofs.

7/31/16, 4:38 AM

Nestorian said...

JMG,

Yes, your summary of my position is a fair description, with the caveat that absolute moral principles do not necessarily derive from arbitrary divine commands.

I and most conservative Christians subscribe to some form of Platonism and/or Stoicism - that is, the idea that moral imperatives are embedded in the very essence of what things are, and/or that nature's laws inherently include absolute moral laws. (In other words, we reject the Humean claim that there is a "naturalistic fallacy" in deriving an "ought" from an "is.")

If climate change activists want any hope of winning over this particular constituency, then sneering at them in disdain for their stances on abortion, same-sex marriage, etc., will only achieve the exactly opposite effect - as an examination of any internet comment thread that somehow involves climate change within this particular cultural sphere will quickly reveal.

At the very least, climate change activists would need to cultivate the art of "dissensus" sufficiently to understand and empathize with where the cultural conservatives might be coming from on these issues. And more fundamental considerations of relativism versus objectivism would also have to be duly discussed and settled in some mutually agreeable way. (The Aristotelian/utilitarian approach you suggested might hold some promise in this regard.)

But I really see no evidence of such a willingness in the posts on this thread.

7/31/16, 5:51 AM

Shane W said...

Well, I just signed a petition to put Jill Stein on our ballot here in KY. I was surprised that the Greens weren't already on the ballot, as there are always a ton of down-ballot third parties every time I've ever voted for president in KY. Now, I fully expect KY to go Trump by a wide margin. Regardless, I do think people should be given that option (Green), as I expect the third party protest vote to be significantly high this year due to the uninspiring GOP & Democratic options.
I'm still not buying the excuses for inaction. The 70s example shows that we can find the power to embrace LESS and enjoy it. Honestly, the 70s are popularly remembered as The Last, Great, Fun Decade Before Everything Went South and Got Really Dark Afterward. Even people in their 20s & 30s who weren't even alive have this warm fuzzy feeling about the 70s, and people who weren't old enough to have actually experienced the 70s are wistful that they couldn't (I turned 5 in 1980) Now, if LESS were really that horrible of a sentence, destroying all that's good in life, why the fond collective memory of the last time we collectively embraced LESS, as well as the negative memories of the neoliberal reaction starting in the 80s? Sorry, not buying it.
RE: Tobacco control. I'm not so sure that this is a good example to use. I think that is proves, as JMG has said, that humans are not rational creatures and cannot be made rational w/out severe damage. In spite of draconian anti-tobacco restrictions (outdoor bans, exorbitant taxes, etc.), a robust 10-20% of adults still smoke. Since at least the 1960s, smoking cannot be considered rational because it flies in the face of all the evidence. Yet that 10-20% still smoke, and it's taken draconian measures to even get the rate down that low (eventually, the biophobia behind it will wear off, people will lose interest, and the rate will go back up even w/out a powerful tobacco industry) The anti-smoking effort makes the mistake of thinking that people are rational, and make decisions based on rational evidence. People don't smoke for rational reasons, they smoke for non-rational reasons. Poor people in the US smoke (and take other risks w/their health) because their lives are wretched and the thought of living to 80-90 sounds like a nightmare--an earlier death would end their suffering. Yet the rational, salary class intellectual health movement does not account for this.
JMG, re: vegans, smoking, hair-shirt ascetic environmentalism, etc.--are Americans just cursed for all eternity w/Puritanism and a stark-raving fear of joie de vivre, or will a severe enough collapse/disruption drive a stake in Puritanism once and for all? Just wondering how resilient our Puritanism will be. For our part, the South traditionally always eschewed Puritanism/idealism/"city on a hill" as a foreign, Yankee idea, and it really didn't take root here until the explosion of evangelical Christianity amongst the lower classes in the late 1800s-early 1900s.

7/31/16, 6:09 AM

Shane W said...

So, JMG, the solution to excessive airline travel would be a high enough sumptuary/luxury tax to reduce travel? I won't hold my breath...
RE: freighter travel, this sounds like an awesome, guilt free way to see the world! I googled it, and found high end, high cost options (fully furnished staterooms, expensive dinners) Is there a bargain bunk w/the crew kind of option?

7/31/16, 6:14 AM

rapier said...

Cultures don't change quickly because of consciously made decisions. When they change quickly it is because change is forced upon them, often by natural forces or military force. I believe that every available calories worth of available fossil fuel was and still is destined to be burned because among many reasons it's easy. Then too of course every powerful economic and political group gains in every possible short term by the continuation of the burning of fossil fuels at a high rate. The fruits of energy use are the very mother and father of our elites.

While no holds barred energy use didn't "have to happen" in some large cosmic sense, in the sense of how humans and their cultures and their political economies operate it did have to happen.

7/31/16, 8:17 AM

onething said...

Richard DeBaker,

I think the same as you do about multiple environmental converging catastrophes. As to soda: "Countless gallons of water are used to produce products with no redeeming value -- they contribute only to the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and tooth decay. Want a suggestion for step one in changing your lifestyle? Get rid of that Coke, Pepsi, or Dr. Pepper and enjoy a cool glass of water."

Hah. I tell people this all the time. I tell the pretty young nurses who have lost their good figures due to being just a bit fat that if they would just give up the soft drinks they would likely drop 20 pounds without even dieting. I am met with silence. Apparently soda is non negotiable.
_______________
Nestorian,

You've assumed that moral relativism is not useful at all. But it is. Just because there are no absolutes does not mean there are not partials. So, if we say that we need the environment to live and something or other pollutes it, it is possible to say that we don't want to do that. Moral relativism can make a decision that something is good or not good for oneself, and one can get together with others and likewise decide as a group on whether something is good for us. What doesn't survive moral relativism is the golden rule.

And JMG, by the way, I find it an error in thinking that the moral absolutes are handed down by a divine lawgiver as if it were arbitrary. I think the moral absolutes are true in all times and places because they are built into the structure of life and spirit and are how the universe works. Like karma.

7/31/16, 8:38 AM

Patricia Mathews said...

@Richard deBacher: getting off the soda pop is hard. I did so entirely by accident 5 years ago, while I was trying to wean myself off coffee (and failed) and suddenly found my desire for diet coke (my addiction) was totally gone. As if something just snapped.

Something similar happened in getting off the cigarettes in 1967, but that was helped along by being so sick it hurt to breathe, and by realizing that withdrawal symptoms would be lost in the amount of pain I was having anyway.

And I thought I was off the sugar until I went lifetime on Weight Watchers - yes, WW DID help with the nutritional details, if you ignore their sales of fake food and the latest in apps - and the taste for it slowly crept back. (The trick is to ration the sweets.)

Cigarettes, coffee, soda pop, all hijack your reward system somehow, say I, who was on all three since the early 1950s!

7/31/16, 9:02 AM

team10tim said...

Hey hey JMG,

I just want to add two personal experiences for other to see.

I quit driving ten years ago because we are running out of oil and the best way to prepare for running out is to stop using it now. Whenever someone asks me why I don't drive I say "We are running out of oil and the best way to prepare for that is to stop using it now." I sometimes add that using oil isn't very good for the planet or that my principles are sometimes tested when I look at motorcycles, which I used to love. I've fielded a handful of negative responses, but only one or two in the strongly negative. The majority ~90% acknowledge or understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. It only comes up with people I already know when it inconveniences things. I don't go around advertising and I don't try to push it on anyone.

This summer I started commenting on the weather. I'm living in the town I grew up in and the weather has changed noticeably since the 80s and 90s. Whenever the topic of how hot or dry this summer is I try to mention how different it was 20-30 years ago and then say something to the effect of "and it's probably going to be like this (or get worse) for the rest of our lives." There is usually a heavy or sad moment and then the conversation moves on. So far no one has exploded or gotten angry with/at me. I don't mention CO2 because I don't need to. I just state something that I believe is a fact as a fact without emphasis.

Thanks,
Tim

7/31/16, 9:06 AM

Shane W said...

An interesting article about class, Appalachia, and Trump:
http://nypost.com/2016/07/30/why-white-trash-americans-are-flocking-to-donald-trump/
Actually, Trump's election MAY reduce greenhouse gases. IF he follows through on trade & tariff, then "onshoring" jobs will reduce fuel used to transport imports from overseas. Higher prices for domestically produced goods means less consumption, which means less carbon emissions. IF he manages to somehow level the playing field, throw the salary class under the bus, favoring the wage class, then that would reduce consumption, since the salary class consumes a whole lot more and has much higher carbon footprints as a result. IF we get the expected whammy of a downturn and he follows through on defaulting/renegotiating the national debt, as he has indicated, then that too may have a positive effect on consumption and carbon. Lastly, if he pulls back on military adventure/neoconservatism, and engages Russia/Putin in a detente or better, that too will have a positive carbon impact from reduced military consumption.

7/31/16, 9:19 AM

Mark said...

@ endgame - "for some reason, when I consider changing my lifestyle, I think of all the negative aspects rather than the positive aspects."

It seems you mind has been colonized by corporations.

One way to liberate it is choose a new identity and name. Also a new handle- "Opening move" or "daily movement"? Develop a plan to plant trees on a regular basis, from seeds. Take care of the trees as well. When they begin to live and grow, ask respectfully if they could talk to you. When they do, and they will, listen to what they say.

7/31/16, 10:13 AM

Toomas (Tom) Karmo said...

Coordinated Universal Time (= UTC = EST+5 = EDT+4): 20160731T180835Z

Dear Ed-M,

Thanks for citing ("7/30/16, 1:02 PM") a vivid author, writing in terms not unlike JMG's: /.../ have you read Morris Berman, especially his Twilight of American Culture / Dark Ages America / Why America Failed trilogy? It seems he has hit the nail /.../: the culture of America is one of hustling and getting ahead.../

For my part, I found Mr Berman an eye-opener, just as I have found JMG to be. - Perhaps other readers of this blog have had a similar Berman experience?

Tom

http://toomaskarmo.blogspot.com

7/31/16, 11:12 AM

Unknown said...

(Deborah Bender)

A counterfactual thought experiment: A town dweller in the Roman Empire decides that slavery is immoral (that's the counterfactual part). He or she vows not to buy or consume any goods or services that have been produced by slave labor. That person would have grave difficulty keeping the vow because so much food and other household products was made by slaves. A couple of centuries earlier, when the Roman economy was based on small farms worked by free labor, a person could have kept that vow, though he would have been looked upon as an eccentric philosopher.

Dwellers in the industrialized world are in a similar situation with regard to their carbon footprints. Reduction is possible; elimination is not. The billion or so herders and farmers who live in traditional economies consume very little that was produced or transported by fossil fuels, and if we all lived as they do, the amount of methane and carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by human activities would be about enough to prolong the interglacial period awhile longer.

7/31/16, 1:25 PM

stephen said...

“If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

7/31/16, 1:36 PM

Shane W said...

It's interesting that ISIS would support Trump, Le Pen, etc. Makes me think that it really is true that they really just desperately want the West out of the Islamic world/Middle East...

7/31/16, 1:36 PM

Shane W said...

Even before I started reading the ADR and JMG explained why, I had this incredible sense that I'd missed something special and awesome by missing the 70s, and I'm by far the only Gen X'er, millennial, post-millennial to feel that way...

7/31/16, 2:08 PM

Bill Pulliam said...

Shane -- From someone who was 9 when the 1970s began and 19 when they ended...

I think the reason things that happened then cannot happen now is because of fundamental changes in culture and society. In the 70s people were connected. Social life, work, education, recreation, art, entertainment happened collectively. We went to movies in theaters with dozens or hundreds of other people. A garage band was a group of people in a garage with instruments, it was not an application on a computer. A club met face-to-face at least once a month. We all watched the same TV shows at the same time, and discussed them in person at work and school the next day. In short, people participated in society as a web of personal, in-the-flesh interactions.

Now, people are isolated inert atoms. We live in bubbles of information, entertainment, and ideas tuned specifically to our own idiosynchrocies. There is no network of actual people. There is not a real society of people who interact in real space and real time daily whether they want to or not. We are self-indulgent larvae attached to feeding tubes. There's no basis for collective action to become a MAJORITY phenomenon.

7/31/16, 2:36 PM

latheChuck said...

nuku: re: the Chinese are buying everything... with the money that we send them in exchange for the things that they manufacture for us, using processes that are too dirty for our side of the world. Every time we buy an item, we grant power to the person who made it (implicitly taking power from anyone else who might have made the item, perhaps locally, if we'd made a different decision). Money is power!

7/31/16, 2:50 PM

latheChuck said...

In a climate-related development that I don't recall ANYONE forecasting, old anthrax spores have been released from melting Russian tundra, killing reindeer and the people who herd them.

http://thebarentsobserver.com/arctic/2016/07/military-biological-protection-troops-sent-stop-yamal-anthrax-outbreak

I really like this Internet thing, and will be sad when it's gone.

7/31/16, 3:04 PM

John Roth said...

@Nestorian

You said: If climate change activists want any hope of winning over this particular constituency, then sneering at them in disdain for their stances on abortion, same-sex marriage, etc.,

A little background. I’m a member of one of the less usual Unitarian-Universalist congregations. To tell how unusual, a few weeks ago we had a pagan service: our CUUPS chapter opened the service with a calling of the elements while the sermon was three sermonettes by a Wiccan, a Druid (ADF) and a member of our CUUPS chapter. All members of the congregation, and two of them were members of the Worship Committee. That’s far out even for UUs, especially for a congregation that’s one of the dozen largest congregations in the denomination.

Today something unusual happened in the service. It was one of the extremely rare services where we have a Christian theme, which started out with a reading from Genesis. I don’t have to take my socks off to count the number of times that’s happened in the seven or so years I’ve been a member of the congregation.

She went through the process where the Christian right was coopted by the moneyed classes back in 1940 as part of the reaction to the New Deal, by a minister who’d invented the “prosperity gospel,” although he didn’t call it that then, and Rev. Angela didn’t call it that either in this sermon. Then she mentioned that the Bible has a couple of thousand verses about the poor, maybe a dozen about divorce, and nothing whatsoever about abortion or same-sex marriage. Zero. Zilch. Nada. It's hard to even twist something out of shape to address those issues.

When she finished, something happened I have never, ever seen in any church service I’ve ever attended.

She got a standing ovation.

I don’t care whether the current corrupted Christianity listens to me. Jesus had something to say about what would happen to it at the End of Days. If you want my respect, you’ll take a good, hard look at what the old testament prophets had to say about the poor and the way the wealthy class (mis)treats them. And then about what Jesus and Paul are supposed to have said about the same subject.

7/31/16, 3:08 PM

Matthias Gralle said...

@Toomas: I may have painted too rosy a picture of the German Green party, since my argument was that in spite of Green officials often using public transport, and in spite of proposing a massive shift in taxation from labor to CO2 production ("Oekosteuer"), the Greens have not transformed Germany into a country that is truly prepared for climate change. For a very negative view of the Green party, see this scathing review. In fact, since Fukushima there has not been a huge difference between Greens and other parties, in my opinion.

7/31/16, 3:33 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Anthony, what derailed the climate change movement was its own internal failings, not how many working stiffs it affected. Of course coal energy had to be addressed, but there were (and are) ways to do it that don't come across as a bunch of privileged middle class activists throwing the working class under the bus, and the movement never even considered that this was how it was going to come across. That made life incredibly easy for the other side.

Submarine, why, yes, the Russians have just a little bit of experience with trapping hostile armies in an urban environment and tightening the screws. If Turkey continues its rapprochement with the Russia-Iran alliance, the hippogriffs are toast.

Wendy, one can indeed. I hope I have the chance to sail on one someday.

DiSc, good! Yes, that's one to add to the list. Notice, along the same lines, that the federal subsidies for rooftop PV systems were tax rebates -- meaning that if you don't make enough money to pay enough taxes to cover the cost of a PV system in a reasonable time frame, the subsidies don't benefit you. Once again, something that was marketed as an environmental measure turned out to be a fashion statement for the affluent.

Crow, yes, I thought I'd see attempts to distract the discussion from "what can we do" to "what can we get upset about." That sort of deliberate distraction also plays a large role in keeping constructive change from happening.

Koen, actually, no, Retrotopia isn't about deindustrialization at all -- the Lakeland Republic has plenty of factories turning out the products of industry. It's a novel about the benefits of decomputerization. You're right, of course, that industrial society is very new -- as I suggested in The Ecotechnic Future, it's merely the first tentative sketch from which the far less wasteful and self-destructive technic societies of the future will eventually evolve -- but that's another issue entirely.

Jo, thank you. That sudden outburst of sanity earns you this evening's gold star.

Nuku, hmm! I'll look into that. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Eric, you've spotted one of the crucial ways in which the culture of intolerance in the climate change movement hamstrung its chances at success: the all or nothing attitude. I forget who pointed out here, some years ago, that one of the big differences between the right and the left is that the right looks for allies to embrace, while the left looks for heretics to exclude. Which one of those is a route to success? The history of the last forty years answers that.

Hereward, good. I wrote it for the next generation of activists, in the hope that they can avoid making the mistakes that will be pushed on them by their elders as "what you have to do if you want to make social change."

Dennis, that's another distraction. This really is entertaining -- discuss the reasons conventional activism fails, and people will find excuses to talk about absolutely anything but the reasons conventional activism fails!

Mark, you and Nuku have convinced me to look into that. Thank you.

William, I'm going to challenge that. You'll have to wait a few weeks, because it's going to take an entire post, but I'd like to suggest that it's possible to convince a very large number of people to back real cuts in CO2 emissions -- not grudgingly, but with enthusiasm -- if you approach it the right way. More in due time!

Scotlyn, I'll definitely be looking into it.

Shane, you have a stronger stomach than I do.

7/31/16, 4:46 PM

Rita said...

Rapier--you assert that major changes are not made for moral reasons, only if forced. This may generally be true, however I read a book several years ago that gave three examples of cultures making major changes. _The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen_ by Khame Appiah. The author is hoping to show a way to end the system of honor killings in the Muslim world. The examples he studied were the cessation of dueling in Western Europe, the end of foo-binding in China and the end of slavery. In the case of dueling he points out that the practice ceased within one lifetime--it was illegal but still practiced when Jane Austen wrote and all buy unheard of a few decades later. And this was a practice that had defined upper class honor for centuries. As for foot binding, he asserts that Chinese educated in Europe saw that the practice was considered barbarian by other nations and began to campaign to end it. I think we are seeing something similar in the move away from female genital mutilation. No Western power is sending in armies to stop it but African leaders themselves are responding to moral pressure. Anyhow, something to think about.

7/31/16, 5:59 PM

John Michael Greer said...

Shane, exactly. I wonder at what point Trump's going to turn that one on Clinton. My guess is he'll wait until late September, and then do the equivalent of LBJ's ad with the little girl and the mushroom cloud, insisting that a vote for Clinton is a vote for World War Three.

Bill, that's pretty much the way I remember it, too. I was in high school 1977-1980, and did an essay in an 11th grade writing class on the coming ice age; I thought at the time it seemed very plausible. By 1990 I'd changed my mind as the evidence came in.

Emmanuel, thank you! That's worth having.

Donalfagan, yes, that's also a good example!

Trebor, I'd like to see some research into that effect that integrates class issues into the analysis. I know a lot of working class people who automatically assume that when a suit says something, he's lying, and the more purported facts he drags in to support his claim, the more sure they are that he's lying. I suspect that may be an important factor here.

Gwizard43, yes, it's been amusing, hasn't it? Everybody desperately trying to talk about everything other than the point of the post...

Helix, if you were approaching this from the point of view of someone who actually wanted to bring about change, wouldn't your first response to that analysis be, "Let's see, how can we repackage the changes we need to make so they don't look so overwhelming"? That can be done, quite easily, by breaking the work to be done into separate sub-issues that can be addressed one at a time -- but nobody in the movement seems to have been interested in doing that, since that would quite possibly have made for real change.

Jason, an "imagined letter"? That is to say, disinformation, trying to smear Brexit, Trump et al. by associating them with Daesh. No, there isn't anything to which the status quo won't stoop, is there?

Kevin, that's an excellent point. Stupid top-down programs that ignore people's needs -- yes, that would do it.

Bob, oh, it's with the people, and in particularly those in the US who have turned it into green equivalent of "est" -- I don't know how many people remember Werner Erhard's little content-free psych cult from the Seventies, but the way that permaculture gets marketed in the US often reminds me rather too much of that. The ideas themselves are fine.

Myriad, that's actually a great example of one of the core concepts I want to get across -- instead of trying to tackle a global problem at a single bite, take one specific part of the problem that people can understand as an issue in their own lives, focus on that, accomplish what you can, and go on to the next project. That's the way successful environmental projects have always worked: you don't try to save every species at once by a single program, you campaign to get this pesticide banned, to get that habitat protected, and so on, and build momentum as you rack up successes. It's not rocket science!

7/31/16, 6:09 PM

zach bender said...

repeated references in the comments about the 70s as though something significant had happened then, there was some kind of sense of community pulling together, etc.

i was there, and i must have missed all that.

of course, i am someone who did not feel a sense of community in the wake of nine eleven, so maybe there is just some molecule missing in my brain chemistry.

7/31/16, 6:28 PM

nuku said...

@latheChuck,
Re Chinese buy up. Amen to what you said, I quite agree; that’s why I try to buy locally to keep the $ in New Zealand.
Sadly, the process of off-shoring all manufacturing jobs is almost complete here, and for many items one has no choice: either do without or buy imported goods.
Aside from buying only what I truly need, I generally avoid cheaply made crap from Asian countries in favor of long lasting locally or European made high quality goods. But even then its ultimately “made in China” if you look closely at the label.
There’s a large amount of good quality UK made used tools, etc still floating around here, available in weekend markets and the growing number of recycle shops.
I like your handle BTW, I just scored a free 40 year-old NZ-made wood lathe which with a bit of TLC is now up and running.

7/31/16, 9:53 PM

heather said...

I find myself surprised at the number of commenters pointing out that comparing climate activism and the campaign for gay marriage equality is like comparing apples and oranges. Yes, it is. While apples and oranges are not the same, and the differences really matter if you are, say, making a pie, they are also both fruit. They're juicy. They grow on trees, are roundish and roughly the size of baseballs, and are good to eat. That is to say, there are important attributes that they share. When making an analogy, context matters, right? JMG was focusing on the role of disinformation by opposing campaigns in his comparison. Objecting about other, irrelevant-to-that-point differences between the two risks burying the thread of the argument. I guess I can see that some readers were just analyzing the same comparison in another way, focusing on the interests involved- but I wondered if there was another reason so many folks went down that alley instead of staying on the "main street" of the argument? I'll just admit that I, personally, squirmed in discomfort as I recognized some, ah, familiar features in some of the mistakes made by the climate activist crowd.
--Heather in CA

7/31/16, 10:18 PM

Fred said...

Listening right now to the Permaculture Podcast and the guest is talking about the concept of private property and how it is all a lie and in the future there will be no property owners. This is the first I've heard from an anarchist and his ideas are terrifying. He really believes that we can create systems where we all can share the resources and not own anything. If we were just present to the wonder of nature and practiced living in the present moment, we could all get along!

Does this anarchist not realize he can live his rage against the machine life because there is the structure of society he can float through? There are civil laws, people hired to enforce them and jail law breakers, free schooling teaching the basics, and a medical system that keeps massive outbreaks from occurring. Yes our systems aren't perfect and we all can name things to make them better, but jeez our quality of life exists because of the systems we have in place.

Maybe we can create anarchist homelands where we can put them all on natural land and they can have a go at it. We can video tape them and broadcast the results on TV for entertainment.

8/1/16, 5:51 AM

W. B. Jorgenson said...

Sorry this is wildly off topic for the comments prior, but something has made me think of this again: I've sometimes wondered if the failure of climate change activism wasn't at some deep unconscious level intentionally self-imposed. After all, campaigning to save the world feels good, but the steps you have to take hurt (as I'm discovering as I slowly try to make my life more environmentally friendly).

So, what would work better than a campaign that intentionally can not succeed? And given the influence our subconscious minds can have, this sounds possible, to me at least.

8/1/16, 6:12 AM

Fred said...

I recall reading a decade ago that our uniting on peak oil and climate change would look like the US efforts at home during WW2 - rations, community gardens, bond drives to fund initiatives, etc. The US Government was able at that time to paint a clear picture of the enemy and put out a lot of messaging to have people fear the evil forces taking over the US. I don't think the US Government is ever going to do that kind of effort, even if the new way to navigate DC between the White House and the Capitol was by boat!

Do you think the US Government would ever put out that kind of propaganda to unite us on climate change and peak oil? Your perceptions and views of what is occurring are so spot on and I could totally be missing something.

8/1/16, 6:17 AM

Fred said...

Regarding est and Werner Erhard - it still exists in a company called Landmark. I took several of the courses and what they train you in is how corporate and political thinking and operations work. That isn't how they would term it, but I worked for decades in the corporate cubicle and was amazed and offended many times a year at how those at the top could speak one thing and do another. "We stand for integrity and valuing the customer" is something one might hear in a corporate talk. The corporation makes it profit from raping the land, manufacturing overseas paying people $2 a day, and pay employees barely a living wage. A person off the street would think "how do they sleep at night?" and "why doesn't anyone stop them". At Landmark I learned all the language games and tricks they use and the personal philosophies people develop to act as they do. Nothing someone says to the people in power will stop them. Its amazing to take the courses, learn their principles and then see it operating out in the world. So I'm no longer agitated by what the words they use and how they don't match the actions. I used to get so frustrated and angry. I can just go "ah, that's Landmark thinking again" and keep moving forward in my own life.

8/1/16, 6:29 AM

Helix said...

@heather - re " I guess I can see that some readers were just analyzing the same comparison in another way, focusing on the interests involved- but I wondered if there was another reason so many folks went down that alley instead of staying on the "main street" of the argument?"

Well, no. JMG's fifth fizzle factor revolved around interests, but one of the main differences between the same-sex marriage issue and the climate-change issue is the glaring difference in interests involved. So while I understand the "main street" of JMG's argument, I still think the fact that adopting a smaller carbon footprint will entail sacrifices for everyone concerned (as well as political consensus that appears highly unlikely at the moment) figures much more prominently in the climate-change equation than they did in the struggle for same-sex marriage.

That is a crucial difference, and many commentators felt that should be pointed out.

8/1/16, 7:03 AM

Helix said...

JMG - re: "If you were approaching this from the point of view of someone who actually wanted to bring about change, wouldn't your first response to that analysis be, 'Let's see, how can we repackage the changes we need to make so they don't look so overwhelming'"?

With the advantage of hindsight, probably so. Back then, though, I can understand why things went differently. There was no doubt that tackling climate change would require concerted political action due to the sheer dimensions of the problem. And so the focus was on trying to build political consensus.

It's pretty clear by now that any such political consensus is still a long ways off. So I'm hoping that the focus now will shift to a more personal level. As you say, this probably should have been a priority from the get-go.

I think the flooding in south Florida and the sheer oppressiveness of this year's heat wave in the East have people thinking about climate change again. So I'm thinking the opportunity to take action maybe not have slipped away entirely. But I'm still not seeing any coherent plan of action being promoted. Hopefully this deficiency will be addressed as part of Climate-Change Action 2.0. This forum might be as good a place as any to start.

8/1/16, 7:51 AM

zach bender said...

@ heather

i don't think it really buries the thread. if a disinformation campaign is effective over here but not over there, one might look for multiple possible explanations. since about 1947 or so, americans have been persuaded to frame the entire meaning of their lives in terms of acquiring material comforts. and more recently, in terms of holding on to whatever they have been able to secure, as everything seems to be heading downhill. the push for normalization of alternative gender expressions fits comfortably within that narrative, while any campaign to scale back consumption in the interest of averting some future catastrophe clearly does not.

8/1/16, 9:02 AM

onething said...

As someone who is far from convinced of the climate change science, there are certain things which disturb me about this debate. I went over to Resilience and the commentary there was somewhat shocking:

"I agree that the posting JMG's badly veiled denialism is a grave waste of everyone's time, and is actually immoral."

He does not think that website should allow JMG's posts! It always saddens me when I see that people do not believe in free speech or open debate, and these days it is the left which is becoming more scary to me.

I see a lot of rage and hate without the slightest consideration that they might be even slightly wrong, yet I agree with a prior poster that all biological systems are almost infinitely complex, and the earth system and its weather at least as much, so how certain is it that the scientists have really got it entirely right? It would be a first.

Because most of the proponents are completely sure of themselves they repeat various memes of ad hominem such as long analyses of what psychological or political reasons the denialists can have for their dishonest stance. It reminds me very much of when Dawkins said that those who "claim" not to believe in evolution are either stupid, insane or wicked.

I don't buy that all the arguments I read were insincere and not all are paid by oil companies. There is a strong trend to want to criminalize or scare away any debate. These things do not convince me, rather they are red flags that something is wrong.

As someone who looks for patterns in human behavior, I see patterns that worry me.

8/1/16, 9:24 AM

Soilmaker said...

I've read many posts where people talk about their struggle to change life style, reduce their carbon foot print, or increase sustainability. We know or believe we need to make changes but don't know where to begin or how to continue. We worry it will make us different from our friends.

Our decision to change may be motivated by many things, but it will only become long term change when we experience a benefit. Voluntary simplicity embraces life style changes that reduce consumption but also increase life satisfaction. I suspect this may be human nature and linked to biochemistry. We are all driven by our hormonal system! I doubt humans will maintain voluntary long term change if it leads overall to pain and discomfort.

Making a major change can make us feeling differently from others but I have found this to be a short term feeling. Once changes are firmly made they cease to be novel and become normal. For example, I recall the euphoria of getting my first flock of chickens. I was so excited I wanted to tell everyone I met, "I just got chickens!" If I ran into someone talking about chickens there was this natural desire to share and compare lessons learned. After having chickens for more than 5 years, it stopped being novel. I no longer feel compelled to talk about chickens, but I'm happy to offer advice if asked. I no longer think of owning chickens as being unusual, but to be honest there are a lot of families in my community that own chickens making it more normal in general.

There are initial costs and learning curve to owning chickens, but once the coop and fencing are installed it becomes routine. I enjoy collecting and eating fresh eggs. I enjoy starting a new batch of spring chicks every few years. I dislike seeing the mess of feathers and knowing that something got into my coop last night. It is dusty and unpleasant cleaning out the coop in the spring but my garden benefits.

Every few months I pull up at the local feed mill, pet the office cats laying on the counter looking fat and lazy, and pay for my order. As the guy or gal loads my feed into the back of my pickup truck we usually comment on the weather or exchange some other pleasantry. It's just what "farmers" do. For both of us it's just another day but somehow the exchange makes it a feel like a nice day. Life in the slow lane!

Soilmaker

8/1/16, 9:25 AM

Ed Suominen said...

Nestorian, the reason each individual decision to fly has an impact is that a bunch of those decisions by a number of people will impel the airline to offer more seating capacity. Eventually, another plane will be added to service that route, or a bigger plane will be used.

Your example of the empty seat just being taken by someone else works as long as the threshold isn't reached where a change in the service occurs. Imagine an alternate scenario: Your decision to fly is the proverbial straw the breaks the camel's back, and some computer determines that, OK, we really need to bump this flight up to a 777. That one choice on your part would be responsible for many tons of additional emissions! Unlikely, yes, but ultimately it's how the individual decisions translate into collective results.

It's a lot like voting, actually.

8/1/16, 9:31 AM

Scotlyn said...

@Cherokee Chris - I saw your subtle question to JMG, and for some reason, while I was working in the garden earlier it came to me that there was something I wanted to say to it, I hope you don't mind.

First a story. One day our sheep broke out into the longer, juicier neighbour's grass. My husband and I rounded them up and he patched the gap they'd made. Then, from the house above we had a good view of what slowly unfolded. One sheep, but only one, went up and down the fence looking for a weakness. The others grazed, but now and again looked over with some interest. And then she found it. Used her body to open a new gap and slip thru. The others, noticing one by one what she'd done started to head over. (of course we moved them elsewhere & did a better job on fence).

Ok, so, the moral of this story, that came to me in the garden, is that you are a natural leader. Not that you seek to lead. But nevertheless others will follow you. Why? Because you are pioneering a path, yes, doing the extra hard work of tramping it while it is rough & full of obstacles and unknowns.

Also, you have personal qualities that shine forth here. I won't go into detail, but I think you're a kind of "show, don't tell" kind of person.

I don't think you need to change anything you are doing. Followers are going to follow. And as long as you are a bit uncomfortable about that, you're going to be ok.

Well, thats my two garden cents.

8/1/16, 2:14 PM

Scotlyn said...

@Jo Yes! I wanna be in
your gang! Thanks for the uplift!

8/1/16, 2:16 PM

MawKernewek said...

I read a book by the cosmologist Fred Hoyle, called Ice written in 1981 about the prospect of a new ice age. It didn't make the claim that the new ice age was imminent, only that it would happen at some point. I commented on this blog before though that some interpretations of the Milankovic cycles projected forward don't have a trigger for a major northern hemisphere glacial epoch for well over 100kyr NOAA.

Re: organic fruit and veg, I don't know how much of the additional cost of organic veg goes to higher costs of the operation, and how much goes to extra retailer profit knowing they are selling to people with money.
I was in the local supermarket this evening, and saw several types of blueberries, looking near-identical and imported from the same country. There was one with the supermarket's 'fake farm' brand name which made it sound like it could be a farm in Britain though it was imported. These were the cheapest per kg, followed by the supermarket's regular own brand, which looked almost the same but were more expensive. The 'organic ones' looked just the same as the cheap brand, except a bit larger. They were the same variety and imported from the same country. One might expect the organic ones to be smaller since they haven't been pumped full of chemical fertilizers to make them grow more. Could it be that the organic and discount brand were from the same source, just they got sorted by size and the bigger ones sold for a premium price under an organic label?

I think the reason that the 'climate change movement' seems to have got stalled, is that firstly it hadn't really made as much progress say 10 years ago as some among it had liked to think, also I think the post-2008 economic crisis and the austerity agenda has led some people to think of environmental protection as a luxury that couldn't be afforded any more and become more focused on restoring economic growth by any means possible.

8/1/16, 3:57 PM

donalfagan said...

Regarding EST, in the late 1980s I was working in Great Falls VA, and a coworker kept telling me to attend this seminar called The Forum. He said the leader was Werner Erhard. I said, "From EST?" He had never heard of EST. Anyway, I was curious and went. It wasn't as bad as that scene from Semi-Tough, where Friedrich Bismark is pushing a self-awareness program called BEAT. But they kept telling us to take out our credit cards, or borrow the money and sign up for the course and it would be the best thing we ever did. I left early.

8/1/16, 5:31 PM

Raven Wood said...

Leon, I too am in Central Florida, have been following climate/weather my whole life, and actively began gardening about 10 years ago. I've been watching the changes here, though not recording them (as I had intended to do), and across the country. It seems in Florida (and I am close to Dade City), we may be experiencing some benefit of moderate temperatures (for now) due to being on the peninsula. The middle of the continent seems to experience more radical swings in temperature, extreme highs and lows: hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. While my observations are strictly anecdotal, I've closely watched cloud patterns, compared them to satellite when that technology came to be, and as a naturalist tend to observe small details that many people don't notice. The patterns seem to be changing, but my south-facing front porch in Tampa is nearly always 80-85 degrees and breezy. I am shortly leaving the noisy city to try and enjoy whatever time I have left in a quieter space in nature. Being in the city leaves me feeling so disconnected.

JMG, as always, I enjoy the clarity with which you unpack a subject. We are already seeing so many weather extremes across the world. I've been telling people for many years "don't be surprised by anything you see," and yet I somehow always feel a bit of a shock myself with each new change I see or read about. And while most find it horrific, I feel honored to live in such interesting times...

8/1/16, 10:03 PM

Rita Narayanan said...

Note to JMG : been watching your video interviews/conversations on youtube...loved the Brexit conversation & the particular point about *human cost vs political idealism*, so true of India (as well as the tragedy of the possible).

your points about elite environmentalism is equally true...see it all the time with the only alternative being the Bhutanese one.

regards.

8/2/16, 12:12 AM

P. Coyle said...

i have been enjoying the ADR for a long time. i take inestimable pleasure whenever i can steer one of my friends to this blog and hold out hope that they will continue reading it, and learn something. i regret to say that i have had somewhat middling results, but, in their defense, and to paraphrase Bokonon, people sometimes get "busy, busy,busy."

i would have been commenting here a long time ago, however i have no idea about what i am getting into by logging in through open id (i admit happily to being functionally computer illiterate) and yet fully aware of what i am doing by logging in through my google account. sort of like the good ol' trump/hillary dichotomy. today, however, i ran across something that makes me throw (privacy) caution to the wind.

a while back you were on the topic of something along the lines of portents of pending collapse, articles that catch your eye and remind you of similar themes from previous eras. i ran across this article and couldn't but help my brain from screaming out "this is what JMG was talking about!" the link is to zerohedge, so it's got that sort of tinfoil hat cred, but it links to the daily bell, which is something i cannot vouch for, other than the fact they hit several touchphrases, which i think you might find telling:

"The rise of populism and contempt for experts, according to the Financial Times, is leading to active dislike for big business, the banks and globalization.

We too have problems with populism. But as we’ve pointed out, globalism is being set up as an alternative to populism.

Western elites obviously have in mind contrasting the smooth technocracy of globalism with the raucous simplifications of populism in order to make a case for continued, robust internationalism.

The “expert” meme is part of this larger, putative, pitiful celebration. Technocratic experts march hand-in-hand with globalists to create a better, “new” world."

and then:

"Over time, it is impossible to anticipate the future because people will not necessarily travel in one direction but will adapt their behavior as necessary.

That’s why, most notably, Thomas Malthus was wrong when he predicted starvation in Britain in the late 1700s here. He saw the population was growing faster than the food supply and predicted starvation where the lines crossed.

But it never happened. Perhaps people started to plant gardens instead of waiting to starve.

Human action."

anyhoo, here's the link:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-08-01/mainstream-media-wrong-about-experts-populism-and-internet-truth

i trust that you edit your comments, and i hesitate to send links to either of those sources, even when relevant, due to the commentary that comes along as it's often offensive baggage. i both assume, and wholeheartedly endorse, your right to edit my post, not post it, or do anything else with it.

that all being said, i thank you for doing what you do. you are obviously an inspiration to many, i finally trust google to grant me a place in the chorus...

as an aside, i also would like to note that i have seen some ZH links in your blog comments in the past, and several links to ADR on ZH as well. the hedgers aren't all racist nutjobs.

wednesday night is my favorite night of the week: i never have commitments after work and always get to come home to my weekly bout with sanity. thank you so much for helping me cope with what is to come, one day or another, in a way that i, the gods willing, can help others.

8/2/16, 12:20 AM

Scotlyn said...

@ Mawkernewek - Regarding the additional cost of organic produce, there is also what I am now calling the "Discordian" angle (Bureaucracy is the Fourth Stage of Chaos). That is to say, it is one thing practicing organic principles, and quite another to be granted permission to display a label that says "Organic".

My husband and I are currently applying for the second, even though we have a holding that is (mostly) being already operated using organic principles.

Essentially, sticking an Organic label on our farm products requires us to join a certification body, be audited regularly, keep very comprehensive records (extra time and effort in the office diverting us away from the farm), buy any off-farm inputs from other certified producers at a premium price, and all the extra costs that come with having to support an extensive bureaucracy well as your farm.

Personally, I think the label has some value, but if we can develop sales directly to local customers who can come and see our operations at any time and satisfy themselves about our animal welfare, the ways we are discovering to maintain and improve soil, water and flock health, boost biodiversity, etc, then, hopefully, we might be able to dispense with the label and the need to support the bureaucracy.

From the purchaser point of view, I'd say the same thing. Locate your local growers, visit, find out about them, set up local buying networks to help them feel more secure their livelihood. If they can be secure in selling local and direct, they might be able to dispense with organic LABEL bureaucracy as another cost that to pass on to you.

The bureaucracy only exists, after all, because we are no longer close enough to our food sources to conduct our quality control in person.

8/2/16, 4:46 AM

Johnny said...

Hi JMG,

Seeing your discussion briefly of veganism with a commenter. You might be interested to know that the biggest stirring currently there is a massive growth in the "plant based" community which is about favoring a diet of whole plant foods (some still eat small amounts of meat) due to the positive effects people have felt on their health, often people with quite serious illnesses. I went to a "vegfest" to see a doctor talk about this but showed up an hour early for the talk. The speaker before was poorly attended (maybe 10 or 15 of us - all of whom stayed for the next speaker I should add) and spoke about standard animal abuse things and the example of activists who have "liberated" animals, but for the plant based doctor it was absolutely packed in there with many people standing during his presentation to hear him. If this and what I've noticed online are indicators I suspect in a few years this plant based community will completely eclipse the vegan one - I've even joined a plant based group online that is explicitly not vegan and bans anyone for posting irritating vegan messages (animal abuse videos, attacking or judging others etc). It would be nice, in my opinion, if this does become the new standard because I think 1000 people who eat a small amount of meat has more benefit to "the vegan cause" than one person who is boycotting next to everything in an ascetic quest, and it's nice that people can come and go from this lifestyle to whatever degree they want without being a failure (personally I have always done things other vegans do not approve of like eat honey sometimes or wear leather but I never thought this was a problem and just use the word "vegan" for convenience). Also, if it does turn out that some amounts of animal products are essential for human health it would be good to approach that issue rationally and not dogmatically (from either side).

You might also find it interesting too the way this scene both values science and medicine and is highly suspicious of them. In many ways I think this is macrobiotics in practice but with growing support from scientists and doctors so it's claims are judged pragmatically.

Sorry to ramble about this - not actually trying to steer you or any of your other readers this way, I just think this mirrors much of what you've been discussing here.

8/2/16, 5:48 AM

Bill Pulliam said...

JMG -- your suggestion about Trump and the mushroom cloud ad... thing about that though, is that Trump is not LBJ, former vice president and incumbent president. His persona is as a bomb thrower and a speaker of over-the-top things. Such an ad would have zero impact, it would just fit in with the narrative of "Trump says another ridiculous thing." In fact, Clinton would likely have more success running an ad like that against Trump. And Re: my prediction a few weeks ago, Trump's convention bounce barely pulled him even with Clinton, and in the polls he has now sagged back down substantially. Ergo by my prediction, we don't have a race. Time to start contemplating the reality of President Clinton II, or as I think of her, President Obushinton V

Note to all who might lambaste me for "supporting" Clinton: This prediction does not constitute an endorsement. I don't want either of them as President and will almost surely vote third party. So holster your weapons.

8/2/16, 7:26 AM

Jason B said...

More from the twitter-verse...I think this sort of summarizes what I was trying to say when I claimed, on this blogsite, that Trump and Clinton are two sides of the same coin. No matter what level of negative press Trump receives, the story of 9/11 will never leave the American psyche, and will never gain traction in mainstream news because it does absolutely nothing, to me, pokes a glaring hole in the status quo.....http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/07/nine-reasons-doesnt-matter-president.html

8/2/16, 9:39 AM

Steve in Colorado said...

Re: personal decision to fly or not...

An interesting side line to this, is a conversation I had at a party almost 10 years ago. The brother of the host was a pilot for a major airlines. This was back when peak oil was still a lively topic still. The pilot was talking about how he was pleased that when he flew his plane, the effective "gas mileage per passenger" was in the high 20's, much better than most cars at the time. Of course his numbers did not factor in the possibility of there being more than one person in the car, or all the associated support energy in keeping the airports open and planes flying safely, etc.

But what struck me was the implied assumption that these people are going to travel to Chicago, Vegas, NYC or wherever anyway, so we just need to manage the energy usage to be more efficient. The possibility that they just won't make the trip never comes into the conscious decision making process. Until it does, and for the majority of people, the airline industry will continue to fly.

8/2/16, 11:37 AM

Eric S. said...

@Onething: Out of curiosity, I ran over to look at what went on at Resilience. It looks like those comment threads over there got hijacked by a troll (click the comment thread of the person you mentioned who made the "climate change denial" accusation and implied that JMG's essays should stop being hosted over there. He's the one... it's rather obsessive, and highly amusing), who has hijacked the entire conversation and forced it into an endless loop of ad-hominem attacks and vague innuendo about crazy Druid wizards who believe in magic and moderators feebly asking the person to calm down and be civil, deleting the occasional post that gets too far out of bounds. It's a mess over there, but it really does look like it comes down to a single person who has spent the last year week after week obsessively trying to shove his dislike for the author of the essays down the throats of all of the rest of the commentators and actively preventing constructive conversation from happening. Everyone else at least looks like they're at least trying to stay on topic.

8/2/16, 1:50 PM

Thijs Goverde said...

Dear JMG,
do you really think I'm trying to "find a reason to dismiss what (you're) saying"? That is a rather interesting take on my comment, in which I was only trying to confirm what you're saying - using an example that everyone in this forum can relate to.

8/2/16, 3:00 PM

Shane W said...

@Bill,
RE:70s. That doesn't capture the totally of the mood change. As JMG has said, the mood change from the 70s to 80s was a 180 snap that we've been in ever since. I well remember the AIDS scare and everyone saying the "gay plague" was good, and what that engendered. I remember the "war on drugs", missing children scares and "stranger danger"/fear of strangers/abduction, ,the Tylenol poisoning scare, the scare of contaminated Halloween candy, the worst American cars ever built and people abandoning American automakers in droves. However, what I don't remember was a drastic, dramatic change in technology. I remember the first PC's w/no hard drives, that ran on 5 1/4 disks, were not online, and the first word processing software. I remember the first expanded cable, w/MTV, CNN, and HBO. I remember the first generation video games on Atari & ColecoVision. All of these seemed like relatively minor changes in technology that did not have the dramatic atomizing effect that would come much later, in the late 90s, with the spread of the internet. So I'm not really sure that technology, as opposed to a nihilistic embrace of neoliberalism, was responsible.
@MawKernewek,
I don't really think that organic farms are inflating their prices that much to exploit the "organic" label. Having worked on organic farms, there's just not a lot of profit margin, and the more ecologically responsible you are, the lower your profit margins will be. Most of what I was thinking of was the psychology of how organics are marketed, and how exclusionary it seems. Personally, I think we need a whole lot more producers and a whole lot fewer consumers, of good, wholesome, organic food. The only way a lot of people are going to be able to afford good wholesome, organic food is if they grow it themselves. A whole different mindset in how we get our food is necessary, one from consumer to producer.

8/2/16, 3:03 PM

W. B. Jorgenson said...

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but there's talk of the Russians possibly hacking the 2016 election: http://www.npr.org/2016/08/01/488264073/hacking-an-election-why-its-not-as-far-fetched-as-you-might-think

While this is possible, and highlights why electronic voting is a stupid idea, it's still disturbing to see it talked about only now. I think the reason we're seeing this now is that people are worried that Trump may win, and are inventing any narrative they can think of to explain it.

Of course, they may not stop at using it to explain Trump's victory, but use it to actively prevent it. It wouldn't surprise me to see some weird proposals over the next few months of how to "secure" the voting system.

8/2/16, 3:08 PM

Shane W said...

Now, now, Bill, this is no ordinary politician we're talking about. We're talking about none other than Hillary Clinton! If anyone can snatch defeat from the mouth of victory, it's her. Remember the '08 primary with all the favorable headwinds/polls that evaporated into thin air? She turns snatching defeat from the mouth of victory into an art form! Besides, Mssr. Assange still has some dumping to do. The election season's still young.

8/2/16, 4:27 PM

onething said...

Eric,

Look again. He was the worst, but there were at least a couple of others. Also saw quite a lot of egregious misunderstanding of what JMG has written. I didn't see moderators or perhaps I didn't realize who they were, but our German friend Hubertus was valiantly over there defending our druid and correcting some misunderstandings.

8/2/16, 5:44 PM

jessi thompson said...

You forgot to mention the bottled water came in plastic bottles, I assume? I used to feel really conflicted at the grocery store because the best, most ethical organic free range eggs came in a clear plastic carton, but the "free range vegetarian eggs" came in recycled paper. By the way, if you know anything about chickens, if they are outside, they aren't vegetarian, they're eating bugs. I'm not sure why "vegetarian chickens" are a good thing to eat.

The green advertising, "greenwashing" I blame on advertising companies. The affluent just fall for it more readily. If you talk to a real, authentic crunchy hippie, they don't talk about green washed stuff. They talk about cheap and easy ways to save the earth by doing more of the work yourself. But nobody hears about that because everybody gets their information from TV instead of talking to their elders.

8/2/16, 7:27 PM

jessi thompson said...

No I knew nothing at that point the highest skill level in tech I had achieved was just keeping windows xp running after the updates stopped). I totally winged it, and I was astonished at what Linux could do when I wasn't screwing it up. It took me months to fully change the OS though, so I recommend trying it on someone's old desktop that they want to throw away before you do it to your real computer. I knew nothing but I'm a fast learner n have always been a natural on computers, but with no previous experience with coding or scripts.

8/2/16, 7:55 PM

jessi thompson said...

I can tell you what motivated me. I grew up on an untouched beach (national seashore) surrounded by ranch land. I saw wilderness from a very young age, and I saw what happens to it when humans decide to build things. I acted out of love. I made small steps because they were easy (what? Make glass cleaner out of water and a little vinegar? I can do that! So easy). I did it out of love but then I realized I was saving a ton of money (a gallon if vinegar is cheaper than the glass cleaner, wait, then you dilute the vinegar with a lit of water). THEN I realized these things were also healthier for me. All my household cleaning chemicals are actually edible now. Not tasty, but regularly used as food ingredients. Incidentally, it took me 5 years to save enough money to replace the SUV I inherited, but I did it. Guess what? Now I'm saving money on gas.

8/2/16, 8:16 PM

Berserker said...

After Trump publicly asked the Russians to hack Clinton's email it occurred to me that "Troll" also starts with "Tr." Perhaps Trump is a crypto-Discordian!

8/2/16, 9:45 PM

Helene Jones said...

In my humble opinion you have done yourself a disservice in this post. You have neglected, perhaps because you are unaware of, a number of crucial reasons why climate change activism failed. The first and perhaps most important of these is that our entire economies are based on carbon dioxide producing industries. Individually it was hard, infact almost impossible to change activities that modern societies force upon us to maintain our places within society. Things like driving to work, where no public transport options even exist and like purchasing clothes of a type suitable for work and having them always spotlessly clean were not opt outable. Without political agreement and legislation any nation or individual doing so would have disadvantaged themselves profoundly and political agreement and legislation did not happen. Another thing is that there may well have been other well funded oppositions but there never was one as well funded as the fossil fuel lobby was. But the most crucial factor, at least in my country, Australia, was an alliance between the right-wing media and our right wing political party. Both of these organisations raised the issue from intellectual to emotional. This elevation and altering of the the way that this discussion was perceived was based on an increased understanding of mob psychology which has evolved very much over recent years. The moment an issue becomes emotional the ability for most people to reason and the effectiveness of reason and logic go out the door. It became a team sport and the greatest predictor of a person's political allegiance was their opinion on climate change. You have done yourself a disservice by not mentioning the roles that these issues have played in the reason of why climate change activism has failed. Here in Australia, the media simply stopped reporting any issues about it, and it is synonymous with the falling of a forest tree, if no one hears about it regardless of whether it has made a noise or not it effectively didn't occur. To my knowledge the media have never acted in this way before and are primarily responsible for the citizens of my country being so blase about the issue.

8/2/16, 10:39 PM

heather said...

@Helix and zach bender-
Thanks for your reasoned replies.
I do agree, most definitely, that the materialistic interests of our culture are a major source of climate activism failure, and with your analysis that this just isn't the same kind of problem for the same-sex marriage equality movement. No argument there. I'm pretty sure that point occurred to JMG too, though he wasn't explicit about it. I was just pointing out that in my reading of the essay, he was limiting his comparison of the two movements to the issue of disinformation. (It didn't stop the same sex marriage movement, despite some really vile slander in advance of various marriage referendums [referenda?], so the climate activism movement can't claim that disinformation hamstrung its success. You know, "It's their fault, not ours.") I don't think we substantively disagree; I was just interested in the pattern of reaction. From my view, it looked like the response to "Here's one excuse that doesn't wash," was a chorus of "Yeah, but..." When I have the immediate reaction to argue with something, I'm trying to learn to take a closer look at whether there's some reason my buttons got pushed. I've mentioned before that Shane W's posts are often really good at making me gulp, and then think. I was just wondering aloud if a similar phenomenon might be in play here. But I agree that the issue of interests is important in this argument- it just doesn't invalidate the earlier point.
I really value the exchange of ideas in this forum, and have learned interesting things from both of your comments in the past.
--Heather in CA

8/2/16, 11:10 PM

jessi thompson said...

No, they weren't all insincere or paid off, but a really high percentage of the most vocal ones on TV were. It's been documented. Also, a lot of people genuinely believed "facts" stayed by these deliberate liars and spread the misinformation with sincere intentions. For example, perhaps you heard "Earth stopped warming in 1998.". Every quote said 1998 because that was a record high el niño year, so if you pretended it was a normal year you could make the chart look like it shot up to 1998 and leveled off (until now, since we just had another record el niño). When you compare that to data from climate scientists, each data set is complete, the entire record of a given set of measurements, and they cross compare data. Stop listening to pundits (on either side) and start looking at the studies themselves. For example, a climate denier recently blogged about data from a broken, decommissioned satellite to refute data from several other satellites that were functioning and in agreement with each other. But you don:'t have to listen to me or that guy because most of the raw satellite data from all these satellites is available to the public.

8/3/16, 1:23 AM

Cherokee Organics said...

Hi Scotlyn,

Thank you and I am genuinely touched by your comment.

Best wishes for the organic certification.

Thanks

Chris

8/3/16, 3:47 AM

Shane W said...

The "Republicans for Hillary" campaign is off and running--that should reassure "Bernie or Busters", CEO Meg Whitman is the latest on board. We should think of some fabulous, old-fashioned circus act and name for the Great Implosion Artist, able to implode into nothing in a single breath, Hillary Clinton. LOL

8/3/16, 4:44 AM

Fred said...

I put Twilight's Last Gleaming down for a couple of days knowing its about the fall of the US and didn't want to read about it. Picked it up again last night and up to Part 3. Holy moly I can't believe all that has happened already. Would you take a movie option for this if someone offered it? It would be a great movie or TV series.

8/3/16, 8:09 AM

Ed-M said...

Rebecca Brown (7/30/2016 2:36 AM),

I though that because fresh water floats on top of salt, the salt water would wedge underneath the fresh and push it up, making it a higher water table... thus the drainage problems. Saltwater intrusions, even seeping through to the surface, means the locals are in for a world of hurt down there.

An inch and a quarter... yikes! That's about 10 times the global sea-level rise which is around 3 mm (1/8th inch).

Avahah (7/30/2016 8:41 PM),

"Westerners can't embrace climate change because it flies in the face of not just the myth of progress but the modern myth of just what man is - an autonomous individual that makes his own destiny. How can you sell the opposite?

"If you have to wait on a bus you're not a conquering warrior. Arriving someplace hot and sweaty from biking, or soaking wet, puts you down on the level of field hands, the unwashed "am ha'aretz" that Western people largely imagine they are above and beyond. Etc and so on.

"Not using the same amenities as everyone else makes you look poor, as someone else mentioned - the worst sin in an economy that believes, as Mercal put it, that "the econometric analysis of value is the only one that exists."

"They can't cooperate, not really, because it's all about competition, profiteering, and status. They don't want to be either fair or equal. Trying to sell those to them is a waste of time. They won't buy it, especially when there are still going to be people who are more equal than others. Most people will not change until they can no longer afford to pay for their supposedly non-negotiable American way of life. It is not "rational" to do so either economically or socially at the present time."

Exactly! :^)

Tom (Coordinated Universal Time: 20160731T180835Z = 7/31/2016 11:12 AM),

"Thanks for citing ("7/30/16, 1:02 PM") a vivid author, writing in terms not unlike JMG's: /.../ have you read Morris Berman, especially his Twilight of American Culture / Dark Ages America / Why America Failed trilogy? It seems he has hit the nail /.../: the culture of America is one of hustling and getting ahead.../

"For my part, I found Mr Berman an eye-opener, just as I have found JMG to be. - Perhaps other readers of this blog have had a similar Berman experience?"

I'm thinking some of the others have because their thinking is very similar to ours. Like Avahah's above.

Raven Wood (8/1/2016 10:03 PM),

"While my observations are strictly anecdotal, I've closely watched cloud patterns, compared them to satellite when that technology came to be, and as a naturalist tend to observe small details that many people don't notice."

My observations of clouds in New Orleans compared with the Gulf of Mexico enhanced satellite imagery enabled me to predict that Hurricane Katrina was going right for New Orleans on the late afternoon of the Friday before she struck. She had only crossed South Florida the night before and was still a-churnin' in the Gulf.

8/3/16, 11:27 AM

latheChuck said...

P Coyle wrote, quoting a story on ZeroHedge:

"That’s why, most notably, Thomas Malthus was wrong when he predicted starvation in Britain in the late 1700s here. He saw the population was growing faster than the food supply and predicted starvation where the lines crossed.

But it never happened. Perhaps people started to plant gardens instead of waiting to starve.

Human action."

The author of this piece first insults the people of 1700s, pretending that they weren't already gardening their fingers to the bone to raise enough calories! The "human action" that made the difference was the development of coal, and then oil, for transportation, industry, and agriculture. Just Google "Malthus coal", and grab a link.

<"P. Coyle"? MSU 1978? lathechuck, BSEE MSU 1981.>

8/3/16, 3:41 PM

Bill Pulliam said...

Shane -- I dunno, right now Trump looks like the champion defeat snatcher. Just today Fox News poll shows Clinton up +10 nationwide, a first, AND from Fox

8/3/16, 5:08 PM

Fred said...

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/two-recent-court-decisions-make-climate-scientists-e-mails-public/

Climate scientists emails sued for in court and released!

8/3/16, 10:18 PM

F Mat said...

Reminding others that Jesus urged people to love one another doesn't mean that they should become fundamentalist Christians. Not eating animal products doesn't mean that one must become a fundamentalist vegan either. It provides a powerful option to help the environment in a small way every day and at every meal.
See "Veganism and the Environment by The Numbers" here: http://www.culinaryschools.org/yum/vegetables/
Sometimes it's hard for me to tell who is the fundamentalist.....vegans or omnivores???!!!!

8/4/16, 10:25 AM

Beny Shlevich said...

Hey Cherokee,

You are completely right about the forced introduction of conquered peoples into the money economy as means of control. The anthropologist David Graeber wrote of one such example from his field of research, Madagascar, colonized by the French, in his (recommended) book, "Debt: The First 5000 Years". Some of the text follows:

"“I have already mentioned that one of the first things that the French general Gallieni, conqueror of Madagascar, did when the conquest of the island was complete in 1901 was to impose a head tax. Not only was this tax quite high, it was also only payable in newly issued Malagasy francs. In other words, Gallieni did indeed print money and then demand that everyone in the country give some of that money back to him.

“Most striking of all, though, was language he used to describe this tax. It was referred to as the “impôt moralisateur,” the “educational” or “moralizing tax.” In other words, it was designed—to adopt the language of the day—to teach the natives the value of work. Since the “educational tax” came due shortly after harvest time, the easiest way for farmers to pay it was to sell a portion of their rice crop to the Chinese or Indian merchants who soon installed themselves in small towns across the country. However, harvest was when the market price of rice was, for obvious reasons, at its lowest; if one sold too much of one’s crop, that meant one would not have enough left to feed one’s family for the entire year, and thus be forced to buy one’s own rice back, on credit, from those same merchants later in the year when prices were much higher. As a result, farmers quickly fell hope- lessly into debt (the merchants doubling as loan sharks). The easiest ways to pay back the debt was either to find some kind of cash crop to sell—to start growing coffee, or pineapples—or else to send one’s children off to work for wages in the city, or on one of the plantations that French colonists were establishing across the island. The whole project might seem no more than a cynical scheme to squeeze cheap labor out of the peasantry, and it was that, but it was also something more. The colonial government was were also quite explicit (at least in their own internal policy documents), about the need to make sure that peasants had at least some money of their own left over, and to ensure that they became accustomed to the minor luxuries—parasols, lipstick, cookies—available at the Chinese shops. It was crucial that they develop new tastes, habits, and expectations; that they lay the foundations of a consumer demand that would endure long after the conquerors had left, and keep Madagascar forever tied to France.

“Most people are not stupid, and most Malagasy understood ex- actly what their conquerors were trying to do to them. Some were determined to resist. More than sixty years after the invasion, a French anthropologist, Gerard Althabe, was able to observe villages on the east coast of the island whose inhabitants would dutifully show up at the coffee plantations to earn the money for their poll tax, and then, having paid it, studiously ignore the wares for sale at the local shops and instead turn over any remaining money to lineage elders, who would then use it to buy cattle for sacrifice to their ancestors.19 Many were quite open in saying that they saw themselves as resisting a trap..”"

8/5/16, 11:23 PM

Unknown said...

Hi JMG,

Look at the policies climate change activism called for from a historical perspective. For example the policy that "80% of fossil fuels will have to stay in the ground."

Did activists not realize that "80% of fossil fuels" amounts to something on the scale of $200 trillion in mineral rights? Confiscation of that much property would make the Bolshevik confiscation of Russian farmland look like knocking over a convenience store.

The Bolsheviks had to kill hundreds of thousands of people to confiscate that much property. How many people did climate change activists think they would have to kill to confiscate those mineral rights? I believe the factual answer to the question is something like zero, when it should have been something like, I don't know, five hundred million.

8/17/16, 2:26 PM

Linnea said...

"It might still be possible to avoid the worst of it, if enough people who are concerned about climate change stop pretending that their own lifestyles aren’t part of the problem, stop saying “personal change isn’t enough” and pretending that this means personal change isn’t necessary, stop trying to push all the costs of change onto people who’ve taken it in the teeth for decades already, and show the only kind of leadership that actually counts—yes, that’s leadership by example. It would probably help, too, if they stopped leaning so hard on the broken prestige of science, found a positive vision of the future to talk about now and then, backed away from trying to rewrite the recent past, and dropped the habit of demonizing honest disagreement. Still, to my mind, the crucial thing is that the affluent liberals who dominate the climate change movement are going to have to demonstrate that they’re willing to take one for the team."

Wow! Nice job of blaming the entire climate change-related mess on affluent liberal climate change activists. Sounds like you've finally found a scapegoat.

I'm not saying you're wrong about that particular portion of the population needing to change their lifestyles, because everybody does (although poor folk likely the least).

As a climate change activist reading this, though, it really does look like you're blaming us for having failed to save the world from climate change. And given that we're really not a homogenous group of wealthy liberal Americans, you may have used that black brush a little too widely.

8/17/16, 4:03 PM