I work with people, call it a coach, a guide, whatever title I dislike them all.
At this stage when someone ask about spirituality I say it is the ability to live with open eyes to reality ( by opposition to all the stories we make about it).
So indeed the future is a story too, we don’t know exactly how it is going to turn out, but we have a good general idea, and granted miracles are always possible, the future is grim .
And yet you would think it would wake us up, we could set aside the bulshit and say here we have a real problem to solve, let’s do it.
But we don’t. And I don’t believe we will anymore, because I have followed all the earth summit since the first one before Rio… we never did anything real. So I don’t think we will now.
In fact, if we look at the larger picture, we are only making the problem worse, wars, economic competition, authoritarianism , technological surveillance…
We are preparing for hell.
And while the picture is dark, it is not about doom, it is about living with open eyes and celebrating life in anyway we can, now. Taking responsibility for our part, caring for theirs and by that I don’t mean just humans.
I wish more people understood that we're not just replaying the greatest hits from the 20th century. Everything we say and do is happening against this new backdrop.
Yeah, the new backdrop is running out of the resources that made the feeding frenzy possible and destroyed an inhabitable planet. Sure, most are aware of climate change, but how many have heard of overshoot? How many are aware of the Sixth Extinction? How many think wind and solar will allow BAU? Of the people protesting hyperscale data centers, how many understand the insidiousness of AI and application to our already advanced surveillance state? How many understand we now have concentration camps in America, and it won't just be brown people imprisoned in them?
The convergence of so many issues make this a time like no other. I smell economic collapse in the wind. 40 million in the west running out of water and with it, electricity. US farms are going bankrupt at increasing rates and farmer suicides are 3.5 times that of the general population. India is on the verge of being uninhabitable. And of course Europe is frying. And I'm just touching the surface in this rant.
First, a trivial aside. Opening Safari, I get a preview image of Medium, created many years ago in the bobblehead era. Your avatar is there. I've been reading your writing for a long time, perhaps not at the "loyal reader" level, but a bit. There were many "doomer" writers at the time. Many are gone, have soured or have become excessively cynical. In your recent articles, your thinking continues to evolve, displaying the critical thinking that many only imagine they do. It saddens me when I hear the bullies are still showing up. Whether it's COVID or climate change, you're always digging into the deeper patterns underneath.
Thank you. It means a lot. I think it's crucial to evolve. Otherwise, you wind up exactly like those people, marinating in your own mental hell. There's still plenty in this world worth fighting for, and even though we have to listen to science, it's also deeply presumptuous to assume we know exactly how it's all going to end.
« This is the part where emotionally fragile adults start whining and demanding that we, the ones who pay attention, present them with solutions that they find convenient and acceptable. Well, sorry, buddy, there are no convenient or acceptable solutions. »
The verbatim version I got more than once is:
« You can’t talk about problems if you have no solutions »
I have been eyes-wide-open for years now, and still have one foot in corporate business. This allows me to conduct live observations of our species in a living lab called BAU. It’s fascinating, and terrifying. The level of denial or persistent unawareness (and disinterest) is astonishing.
We're working with Roger Hallam [co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Burning Pink, Insulate Britain, etc.] on this project. Would love to connect with you and share ideas.
Also, we're launching a 4 Billion Dead podcast and would love to have you on.
Haven't seen that yet! I like it. I'll reach out soon. Roger Hallam sent me his book months ago, back when I was pretty sure this newsletter was a dead shark. It's picking up (knock on wood), and I'll be doing book reviews again. More to come.
Hi Jessica - Roger Hallam would like to meet you [Zoom] - please let me know if you're open to chatting with Roger. Please reply here, and if you're a "yes", then DM me with your contact details so we can make it happen. Thanks! Jonathan
Lyle Lewis's book "Racing to Extinction" was my first real encounter with the scale of our self-inflicted destruction, the ferocity of our predicaments, the deep cutting truths I had to confront. We are on a trajectory that is breathtakingly hard!
For even climate change is just a symptom of something way deeper, our collective ecological overshoot! We use too much, too fast, pollute sheer endlessly, before Earth can even remotely reestablish the resources, let alone heal in a human timescale.
In one of the rare occasions where I talked to people about these topics, I was asked why I would read about this, do I hate life? But nothing could be further from the truth. For I love life, I am devastated.
I prepare, live as free, loving and caring as I can. For myself, my wife, my two wonderful daughters ❤️ And people that want to work together.
I am a doomer because I see very little hope for our future.
The sheer amount of momentum that the capitalist extraction paradigm has is beyond daunting, and has almost all of us adding to that momentum simply because we live our lives within the machine. There are few options, if any, for doing things differently, at scale, when those that control the direction of humanity flat out ignores the science and demonizes anyone who speaks the truth all for self enrichment. Even those politicians who say they believe will come up with limp, watered down policies that still caters to capitalism which is the mechanism that put us here in the first place!
As more self reinforcing feedback loops get triggered, we will find that what we thought would be happening 25, 50 or 100 years from now is happening way sooner than expected. Even though I personally hold very little hope for future generations of life on earth, I would rather have the truth (sitting at the adult table) than to be fed some hope filled fantasy.
Truth is what will get people motivated to to change this juggernaut of a system; pretending half assed tweeks will save us will bring the doom I feel is headed our way.
Short v long-term compresses in the lifetime of most readers here and certainly their children’s. Water and the laws of physics don’t give a fig about religion or politics.
Facts and expertise are needed when they are least popular. (Daunting, when our Builder in Chief screws up a national monument in his backyard on a whim.)
Vote for fact-based, life-preserving leaders as if your life depends on it. Because it does.
Jessica, I know you are right. Why oh why are there people who a) don’t even think about our fascist govt and b) don’t or won’t understand the climate emergency we’re in right now. This country must get busy NOW. Thank you Jessica.
The global north is not only killing itself it is killing every ecosystem that sustains life on earth. Who cares of the economy collapses if we can't eat? And do I want to live in a world devoid of wildlife? China has been taking measures to combat climate change but the military industrial complex of the global north (Israel, USA, UK, EU, and all NATO states) is the greatest gross polluter and contributer to the climate crisis. I didn't have children because I listened to the warnings in the 1990s, I don't eat meat for the same reason. I eat local, I grow my own food and still. It doesn't matter when is a systemic issue.
I think it'll crash long before 2050. Although that won't stop temperatures from rising, even if we stop using fossil fuels immediately. There's too much heat already working through the currents already and too much CO² in the air. The last time that number was this high there was no permanent ice at the poles. That means that the locked up methane will be released. I think we're headed to a hothouse world whatever we do. If any of us pull through, it'll be by the choices we make in the moment as we go along. Something new will crystalise from the chaos that fits the conditions. The alternative is extinction, which I prefer to believe we can evade.
We "might" already be there. It depends, I think, on how long industrial civilisation keeps going. I suspect that not all humans, planet wide, are equally contaminated, and if the source of the pollution stops, then enough might survive to continue. Our last bottleneck took us down to a few thousand individuals. Out of more than eight billion, the survival of a few thousand people, capable of reproduction, isn't that far fetched, in my opinion.
Goodness, so convinced it's impossible that any of us can survive. I know all that stuff. I've known since the 1970s. I sat reading the oil drum back before conventional crude peaked in 2007-08 wondering if that would be enough to tip it over. Yes, there are a multitude of horrendous things. All over the world. And I still think that it isn't beyond the possibility of reason that enough of us endure until the world's ecosystems start to recover without the perpetual beating that industrial civilisation performs on it. Do you really think this is as bad as the Chixulub asteroid that killed anything larger than 2kg? A nuclear war might do it, but we haven't had one yet, and melting down nuclear power stations aren't H bombs.
Extinction means none of us survive. You're the one who's taken that position. As for pole shifts and AMOC slowdowns, if what you say is so, which I don't necessarily dispute, if they happen as regularly as you say then we've lived through a number of them already as a species. Why do you think I'm attacking ad hominem? I have no idea who you are. I just think it's mistaken to assume that every one of us will end in the near future. Yes, we will become extinct one day. But we are the only current members of the genus Homo. Once technological civilisation breaks down, speciation becomes possible again. I wonder if new hominid species will follow us. Don't be angry with me just because I think there's a reasonable chance that our species won't end in the next century or so. Yes, there are all sorts of horrors coming, but I suspect that we're more adaptable than you think.
Gracias a nuestro Niño, para el.año que viene, algún mes podríamos superar los 2° por encima del nivel preindustrial.
Eso significa temperaturas del aire a 2 mt del.suelo y a la sombra de 50° C en el sur de la Península Ibérica. Temperaturas incompatibles connla vida humana.
Which would bring us to the question of what to do with the bodies?
Natural burials and human composting are going to play a large role in the environmentalism of the future. Whether it’s this heat scenario or the collapse of life sustaining systems (or both) there is a predicted sharp population decline between 2040/50 and 2120. Most environmentalist cite 2 billion as sustainable, and we are over 8 billion. Makes me wonder what does everyone think is going to happen?
Honestly, the planet will be fine when the humans are gone, and I've been living with that thought for 30+ years now. I hope we're all burned off in this fever because the world is way more beautiful without this infection.
Another great article, Jessica! It's hard for me to comment on these, because I hate giving the impression of "giving up," as opposed to "moving on," as I think you put it in one of your earlier pieces. The fact of the matter is that I think a lot of additional climate change is already baked in, even if we went net zero tomorrow (which isn't going to happen; China and India 34 and 44 years away from their net zero targets; the U.S. will just keep drilling until the end). On the flip side, if - by some miracle - we actually could do that, I like to hope that change would slow down faster than we would otherwise believe. Remember at the start of the pandemic, when the Earth visibly began to recover in just a few short months with a major reduction in human activity?
But then we went right back to effing things up. This is why I have to roll my eyes at anyone saying that "our doom isn't written in stone - we can still change!" We haven't been able to get people to wear masks to protect one another from a devastating disease; does anyone REALLY think we can get people to make even a tithe of the sacrifices that would be necessary at this point to achieve net zero quickly? To use a famous Obama quote, "Come on, man!"
Like you, I've largely "moved on." It's not a question of defeatism. I'm a career intel analyst by trade, and all the strategic indicators I see are pointing to "Bad Things Ahead." We've trapped ourselves in a Kobayashi Maru scenario. I'm not saying we shouldn't do what good that we can; just don't fool yourself into thinking the light at the end of the tunnel isn't the train coming. :-(
I appreciate you so much Jessica…
I work with people, call it a coach, a guide, whatever title I dislike them all.
At this stage when someone ask about spirituality I say it is the ability to live with open eyes to reality ( by opposition to all the stories we make about it).
So indeed the future is a story too, we don’t know exactly how it is going to turn out, but we have a good general idea, and granted miracles are always possible, the future is grim .
And yet you would think it would wake us up, we could set aside the bulshit and say here we have a real problem to solve, let’s do it.
But we don’t. And I don’t believe we will anymore, because I have followed all the earth summit since the first one before Rio… we never did anything real. So I don’t think we will now.
In fact, if we look at the larger picture, we are only making the problem worse, wars, economic competition, authoritarianism , technological surveillance…
We are preparing for hell.
And while the picture is dark, it is not about doom, it is about living with open eyes and celebrating life in anyway we can, now. Taking responsibility for our part, caring for theirs and by that I don’t mean just humans.
But you already know that…
I so appreciate you…
Exactly this. Thank you. :) No doom here. Just reality.
Unfortunately, this aligns with my research as well. Thank you for being a voice of truth.
I wish more people understood that we're not just replaying the greatest hits from the 20th century. Everything we say and do is happening against this new backdrop.
Yeah, the new backdrop is running out of the resources that made the feeding frenzy possible and destroyed an inhabitable planet. Sure, most are aware of climate change, but how many have heard of overshoot? How many are aware of the Sixth Extinction? How many think wind and solar will allow BAU? Of the people protesting hyperscale data centers, how many understand the insidiousness of AI and application to our already advanced surveillance state? How many understand we now have concentration camps in America, and it won't just be brown people imprisoned in them?
The convergence of so many issues make this a time like no other. I smell economic collapse in the wind. 40 million in the west running out of water and with it, electricity. US farms are going bankrupt at increasing rates and farmer suicides are 3.5 times that of the general population. India is on the verge of being uninhabitable. And of course Europe is frying. And I'm just touching the surface in this rant.
So it goes.
First, a trivial aside. Opening Safari, I get a preview image of Medium, created many years ago in the bobblehead era. Your avatar is there. I've been reading your writing for a long time, perhaps not at the "loyal reader" level, but a bit. There were many "doomer" writers at the time. Many are gone, have soured or have become excessively cynical. In your recent articles, your thinking continues to evolve, displaying the critical thinking that many only imagine they do. It saddens me when I hear the bullies are still showing up. Whether it's COVID or climate change, you're always digging into the deeper patterns underneath.
Thank you. It means a lot. I think it's crucial to evolve. Otherwise, you wind up exactly like those people, marinating in your own mental hell. There's still plenty in this world worth fighting for, and even though we have to listen to science, it's also deeply presumptuous to assume we know exactly how it's all going to end.
Indeed. That last sentence says it perfectly.
« This is the part where emotionally fragile adults start whining and demanding that we, the ones who pay attention, present them with solutions that they find convenient and acceptable. Well, sorry, buddy, there are no convenient or acceptable solutions. »
The verbatim version I got more than once is:
« You can’t talk about problems if you have no solutions »
I have been eyes-wide-open for years now, and still have one foot in corporate business. This allows me to conduct live observations of our species in a living lab called BAU. It’s fascinating, and terrifying. The level of denial or persistent unawareness (and disinterest) is astonishing.
Hey Jessica,
SPOT ON! Have you seen https://4billiondead.org/
We're working with Roger Hallam [co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Burning Pink, Insulate Britain, etc.] on this project. Would love to connect with you and share ideas.
Also, we're launching a 4 Billion Dead podcast and would love to have you on.
What's the best way to connect? DM me!
Love & Action ~
Jonathan
Haven't seen that yet! I like it. I'll reach out soon. Roger Hallam sent me his book months ago, back when I was pretty sure this newsletter was a dead shark. It's picking up (knock on wood), and I'll be doing book reviews again. More to come.
Hi Jessica - Roger Hallam would like to meet you [Zoom] - please let me know if you're open to chatting with Roger. Please reply here, and if you're a "yes", then DM me with your contact details so we can make it happen. Thanks! Jonathan
Lyle Lewis's book "Racing to Extinction" was my first real encounter with the scale of our self-inflicted destruction, the ferocity of our predicaments, the deep cutting truths I had to confront. We are on a trajectory that is breathtakingly hard!
For even climate change is just a symptom of something way deeper, our collective ecological overshoot! We use too much, too fast, pollute sheer endlessly, before Earth can even remotely reestablish the resources, let alone heal in a human timescale.
In one of the rare occasions where I talked to people about these topics, I was asked why I would read about this, do I hate life? But nothing could be further from the truth. For I love life, I am devastated.
I prepare, live as free, loving and caring as I can. For myself, my wife, my two wonderful daughters ❤️ And people that want to work together.
Thank you for everything!
I am a doomer because I see very little hope for our future.
The sheer amount of momentum that the capitalist extraction paradigm has is beyond daunting, and has almost all of us adding to that momentum simply because we live our lives within the machine. There are few options, if any, for doing things differently, at scale, when those that control the direction of humanity flat out ignores the science and demonizes anyone who speaks the truth all for self enrichment. Even those politicians who say they believe will come up with limp, watered down policies that still caters to capitalism which is the mechanism that put us here in the first place!
As more self reinforcing feedback loops get triggered, we will find that what we thought would be happening 25, 50 or 100 years from now is happening way sooner than expected. Even though I personally hold very little hope for future generations of life on earth, I would rather have the truth (sitting at the adult table) than to be fed some hope filled fantasy.
Truth is what will get people motivated to to change this juggernaut of a system; pretending half assed tweeks will save us will bring the doom I feel is headed our way.
You've got to laugh at marketing and propaganda, or cry. We're frogs in the near-boiling pot, hanging on to our bucket lists and SUV's.
When actuaries talk, I listen.
Short v long-term compresses in the lifetime of most readers here and certainly their children’s. Water and the laws of physics don’t give a fig about religion or politics.
Facts and expertise are needed when they are least popular. (Daunting, when our Builder in Chief screws up a national monument in his backyard on a whim.)
Vote for fact-based, life-preserving leaders as if your life depends on it. Because it does.
Jessica, I know you are right. Why oh why are there people who a) don’t even think about our fascist govt and b) don’t or won’t understand the climate emergency we’re in right now. This country must get busy NOW. Thank you Jessica.
The global north is not only killing itself it is killing every ecosystem that sustains life on earth. Who cares of the economy collapses if we can't eat? And do I want to live in a world devoid of wildlife? China has been taking measures to combat climate change but the military industrial complex of the global north (Israel, USA, UK, EU, and all NATO states) is the greatest gross polluter and contributer to the climate crisis. I didn't have children because I listened to the warnings in the 1990s, I don't eat meat for the same reason. I eat local, I grow my own food and still. It doesn't matter when is a systemic issue.
I think it'll crash long before 2050. Although that won't stop temperatures from rising, even if we stop using fossil fuels immediately. There's too much heat already working through the currents already and too much CO² in the air. The last time that number was this high there was no permanent ice at the poles. That means that the locked up methane will be released. I think we're headed to a hothouse world whatever we do. If any of us pull through, it'll be by the choices we make in the moment as we go along. Something new will crystalise from the chaos that fits the conditions. The alternative is extinction, which I prefer to believe we can evade.
We "might" already be there. It depends, I think, on how long industrial civilisation keeps going. I suspect that not all humans, planet wide, are equally contaminated, and if the source of the pollution stops, then enough might survive to continue. Our last bottleneck took us down to a few thousand individuals. Out of more than eight billion, the survival of a few thousand people, capable of reproduction, isn't that far fetched, in my opinion.
Goodness, so convinced it's impossible that any of us can survive. I know all that stuff. I've known since the 1970s. I sat reading the oil drum back before conventional crude peaked in 2007-08 wondering if that would be enough to tip it over. Yes, there are a multitude of horrendous things. All over the world. And I still think that it isn't beyond the possibility of reason that enough of us endure until the world's ecosystems start to recover without the perpetual beating that industrial civilisation performs on it. Do you really think this is as bad as the Chixulub asteroid that killed anything larger than 2kg? A nuclear war might do it, but we haven't had one yet, and melting down nuclear power stations aren't H bombs.
Extinction means none of us survive. You're the one who's taken that position. As for pole shifts and AMOC slowdowns, if what you say is so, which I don't necessarily dispute, if they happen as regularly as you say then we've lived through a number of them already as a species. Why do you think I'm attacking ad hominem? I have no idea who you are. I just think it's mistaken to assume that every one of us will end in the near future. Yes, we will become extinct one day. But we are the only current members of the genus Homo. Once technological civilisation breaks down, speciation becomes possible again. I wonder if new hominid species will follow us. Don't be angry with me just because I think there's a reasonable chance that our species won't end in the next century or so. Yes, there are all sorts of horrors coming, but I suspect that we're more adaptable than you think.
Gracias a nuestro Niño, para el.año que viene, algún mes podríamos superar los 2° por encima del nivel preindustrial.
Eso significa temperaturas del aire a 2 mt del.suelo y a la sombra de 50° C en el sur de la Península Ibérica. Temperaturas incompatibles connla vida humana.
https://substack.com/@climatecasino/note/c-277847740?r=2hhgpk
Which would bring us to the question of what to do with the bodies?
Natural burials and human composting are going to play a large role in the environmentalism of the future. Whether it’s this heat scenario or the collapse of life sustaining systems (or both) there is a predicted sharp population decline between 2040/50 and 2120. Most environmentalist cite 2 billion as sustainable, and we are over 8 billion. Makes me wonder what does everyone think is going to happen?
Honestly, the planet will be fine when the humans are gone, and I've been living with that thought for 30+ years now. I hope we're all burned off in this fever because the world is way more beautiful without this infection.
Another great article, Jessica! It's hard for me to comment on these, because I hate giving the impression of "giving up," as opposed to "moving on," as I think you put it in one of your earlier pieces. The fact of the matter is that I think a lot of additional climate change is already baked in, even if we went net zero tomorrow (which isn't going to happen; China and India 34 and 44 years away from their net zero targets; the U.S. will just keep drilling until the end). On the flip side, if - by some miracle - we actually could do that, I like to hope that change would slow down faster than we would otherwise believe. Remember at the start of the pandemic, when the Earth visibly began to recover in just a few short months with a major reduction in human activity?
But then we went right back to effing things up. This is why I have to roll my eyes at anyone saying that "our doom isn't written in stone - we can still change!" We haven't been able to get people to wear masks to protect one another from a devastating disease; does anyone REALLY think we can get people to make even a tithe of the sacrifices that would be necessary at this point to achieve net zero quickly? To use a famous Obama quote, "Come on, man!"
Like you, I've largely "moved on." It's not a question of defeatism. I'm a career intel analyst by trade, and all the strategic indicators I see are pointing to "Bad Things Ahead." We've trapped ourselves in a Kobayashi Maru scenario. I'm not saying we shouldn't do what good that we can; just don't fool yourself into thinking the light at the end of the tunnel isn't the train coming. :-(