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PILLAR 1: ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION
Our most pressing and urgent concern should be the protection of the environment,
particularly in the form of rapid, aggressive, and systemic change to our economies
and infrastructure in order to get to zero carbon emissions.
- A Primer on the Science and What It Entails
- Tactics of Deceit and Deflection That Keep Us Docile
- Myth #1: "We can't do anything about it. We just have to learn to adapt."
- Messianic adaptationism
- Stoic adaptationism
- Myth #2: "Green energy will harm our economy and we will fall behind China."
- Policies While We Still Have Fossil Fuels
- Replacing Fossil Fuels With Renewables
- Myth #3: "Environmentalists are closet socialists."
- Conservation, Tradition, and Old-Fashioned Values
- WHAT WE DO NOW: SKIP STRAIGHT TO THIS SECTION IF YOU'RE ALREADY CONVINCED
- Think GLOBALLY, Act LOCALLY
- Be Compassionate and Listen Sincerely
- Arm Yourself With Knowledge: Scientific, Economic, and Political
- You Cannot Save Humanity by Being Inhumane
- Please, Please, PLEASE Do NOT Be Soy
- A Final Word
1. A Primer on the Science and What It Entails
The fact that our planet has a stable, livable climate is a miracle that is hard to
fully do justice to. Having four seasons that are stable and livable is something
that humans have took for granted and thought was an eternal law of nature for a
long time. In fact, it is an extremely recent phenomenon in the history of our planet.
One of the primary reasons that homo sapiens have been able to form complex, organized
societies is because the ice age ended, the climate became more temperate, and we
were no longer forced to migrate around when places became uninhabitable. We now
stand at the precipice where the greenhouse gases we emit are impacting the climate
to a degree unseen in human history. It has already shifted, and likely for good.
But the fact that it is anthropogenic (caused by humans) should give us hope as
well: it means that we can have some agency over what happens now. It is very
unlikely that we will ever return to the climate "as it was." But the choices we
make now matter. If we continue on our current course, we will be on a planet that
is once again completely hostile to human life by the end of the century. If we
make changes, a decent and livable global human civlization may just continue.
The most common term for this state of affairs is "climate change." Of course,
it's accurate. One of the reasons it is preferred to the older term "global warming"
is that in the past, people were pretty narrowly focused on things like rising sea
levels and increased temperatures. But of course, you can't increase the temperature
without causing the climate to shift. The term climate change encapsulates the vast,
interconnected effects that I will go into in this article. But I still dislike
the term. Both the terms global warming and climate change were largely imposed by
Bush administration PR teams in order to obscure the severity of the issue. The word "warm"
has generally positive connotations. You enjoy a nice "warm" cup of coffee on a cold
winter morning. But at least "global warming" still calls attention to the horror
of the situation: the planet being heated up. The bastards didn't want the proles
catching onto that, now did they? So the term "climate change" was created. It sounds
mild, simple, and natural. After all, things "change" all the time in nature, don't
they? It's a perfect term to divert the fact that it is the practices of humans,
particularly a small group of very powerful and rich humans, that are responsible for these
"changes," and that they are "changes" that are existential threats to oragnized human
life on earth. For that reason, I prefer to use the term "global heating" instead.
I think the most accurate term would be "planet rape," but that would get a little
vulgar if I repeated it so often.
First things first, I want to give you all the science. It's always difficult to
advocate on something that is mostly based on science, because unfortunately we
often have to simply rely on the authority of people making the claims. And,
unfortunately, we live in an era of widespread distrust in institutions. Of course,
you could study and empirically verify everything that climate scientists have
proved, but who has the time and resources available to do that? Having a healthy
skepticism is always a good thing. Science is not my field, but we live in an era
where no one can afford to be ignorant about climate science anymore. So I think
everyone advocating for policies to mitigate global heating should be able to
give a basic explanation of the facts. So I'm going to explain it to you assuming
that you're on the same level as me: a lowly humanitiesfag who gladly forgot
everything he learned in science and math class the moment he left high school. I
could get even more thorough than I've gotten here, but I'll leave that to
Lawrence M. Krauss, who wrote an excellent and completely non-partisan primer
called The Physics of Climate Change.
Why was there an ice age in the first place and why did it warm up before humans
ever came close to industrializing and adding carbon to the atmosphere en masse?
The climate was as complex back then as it is now, but one thing that regularly
affects the climate of our planet are what are called Milankovitch cycles. Over
tens to hundreds of thousands of years, our earth's orbit slightly shifts and
becomes shaped more like an oval than a circle, before returning back to a circle
again. The average global temperature shifts along with them, because it means
the earth is closer or further from the sun than average. It leads to shorter
spikes of warm periods followed an incredibly sharp downturn into longer periods
of cooling. This is accompanied by the earth itself tilting or "wobbling" on its
axis, which leads to less ice on whichever pole is closer to the sun. That is
because that side is angled more towards the sun and catches more direct heat.
Of course, ice is white and white surfaces reflect heat from the sun. That's why
you get hotter wearing a black shirt in the summer than a white one. When there's
less ice, there's less white cover on the earth to reflect the heat of the sun,
which adds to the warming process. [1]
Source
The best record we have of this is contained in ice cores. One of them from the
Vostok Station in Antarctica goes back 420,000 years. It records the temperature
(in red), carbon dioxide (in blue), and methane (in green) levels for any given
period. More recent temperatures are on the left, not the right.
You can see the general cycle: long, cool "glacial" periods segmented by quick,
sudden spikes in warming called "interglacials." Some people will see this and
argue that the current warming is simply due to an overdue uptick in the
Milankovitch cycle and that our current period of warming will soon give way to
another ice age. As someone who loves the cold, ice, and snow, I can't tell you
how much I wish that was true. But it simply isn't. Here are the three main
reasons that Milankovitch cycles and any other non-human process we know cannot
explain the current warming the earth is going through:
Source
1. According to the current progression of Milankovitch cycles, our interglacial
period is supposed to be nearing its end. We are supposed to be cooling, with a
new ice age on the horizon in about 50,000 years. The amount of heat we are
receiving from the sun is actually DIMINISHING. It would make no sense for the
earth to be warming if there wasn't something else causing it. And no, before
you ask, the cooling of the sun will not be enough to offset our current heating.
The heating effect of our activities is about six times stronger than the cooling
effect of even the greatest "solar minimum" recorded in human history (approximately
1650-1715 AD), which is far below what we are on path towards because of orbital
effects anytime soon. [2] [3] [4]
Source
2. It is true that the past interglacial spikes upward in temperature have been
fast compared to the cooler periods between them, but our current warming is
sudden and extreme on a far different level than any of those past ones. We are
seeing the kind of warming that should happen over the course of thousands of
years, not over the course of less than 100. When we look over the course of
hundreds of thousands of years, the current warming period is so small that it's
hard to see how sudden the spike is, but it becomes much more apparent if you
shrink it down to the last 2000 years. [5]
Source
3. Our atmosphere consists of the stratosphere (the upper part of the atmosphere
where weather balloons etc. are) and the troposphere (the lower part of the
atmosphere where we all live). If warming was due to the sun, you would expect
both of these to warm. But the troposphere (lower part) is warming while the
stratosphere (upper part) is actually COOLING. This makes no sense if the warming
is supposed to come from the sun, but it's exactly what you'd expect with a
climate that traps excessive greenhouse gases. The sudden upward spikes in the
above graph are due to particularly large volcanic eruptions during which sudden
and extreme but very short-lived amounts of heat escape into the stratosphere.
They aren't enough to obscure the general trend of cooling.[6] [7]
Change of daily temperature anomalies locally and globally from 1951-1980 and
2009-2018 [8]
As a final scary note, a lot of denialists will show graphs of temperature data
from ice cores to try to prove that the world has had comparable temperatures
some 150,000 years ago, a time when homo sapiens started to move out of Africa.
This is supposed to show that this level of temperature is bearable and livable.
Of course, this is ignoring the fact that back the number of homo sapiens was
infinitesimal compared to now and that they were nomadic and so could escape
uninhabitable regions far more easily. But even if we forget that, the fact that
global temperatures were once comparable is not something that should make you
feel calm. That's because these people rarely show you how the carbon dioxide
(CO2) levels compare. Here's how the current amount of CO2 now compares to the
Vostok ice core data:
Source
Keep in mind that CO2 can often take years and years to "activate" its heating
once it's in the air, so our current level of temperature rise is nowhere near
what the amount of CO2 we have in our atmosphere effect actually entails. The CO2
we already have in our atmosphere is enough to lock in warming way beyond anything
homo sapiens have lived through. The latent CO2 just needs more time to complete
all its warming. The last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere was some
55 million years ago. At that time, it was so hot and humid that there were
crocodiles and palm trees in the Arctic circle. And there will likely be much
more considering the fact that we pump 51 billion tons of the stuff into the
atmosphere every year. Fuck.[9] [10]
So it's not the sun, it's emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that
are warming the earth. Greenhouse gases trap heat from the sun and keep it
lingering around in earth's atmosphere. Most people will tell you as much, but
few of them actually can explain why that happens. Let's fix that.
When radiation in the form of electromagnetic waves from the sun reaches our
planet, a certain amount of it is reflected back and floats back out into space.
The spectrum of electromagnetic waves is broad. Everyone knows that the different
colors we distinguish are really different wavelengths of visible light, which is
only a small fraction of the electromagnetic spectrum. On the very low end are radio
waves and microwaves. On the very high end are UV rays from the sun, X-rays, and
gamma rays. These waves reflect back outwards from the planet into space. [11]
But there are certain kinds of gases which absorb too much of this outward-reflecting
energy and thus generate excess amounts of heat. These are called greenhouse gases
because they keep our atmosphere warmer than the space around it, like how a
greenhouse keeps the plants inside warmer than what is outside of it. The most
common ones are carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Having some amount of
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is a good thing. Otherwise our planet would be
a frozen ball. But like everything in the environment, they need to exist in a
balance. We now have way too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and are
moving towards the opposite extreme: a hothouse earth.
Source
Why do some chemicals absorb heat while others don't? For example, why do carbon
dioxide (CO2) and nitrous oxide (N2O) absorb radiation from the sun while oxygen
(O2) and nitrogen (N2) don't?
First, let's remember some basic high school chemistry that I had forgotten because
chemistry was the bane of my existence in high school. Chemicals like oxygen (O2)
and carbon dioxide (CO2) are made of molecules, which are in turn made of certain
combinations of atoms. The formula names (CO2 and O2) are basically representations
of how their molecules look. A molecule of carbon dioxide is made of one carbon
atom and two oxygen atoms (C + O + O). A molecule of oxygen (O2) is made up of
only two oxygen atoms (O + O). Atoms are never at rest. When hit with lower
wavelengths, they vibrate and collide with each other more slowly and create less
heat. When hit with higher wavelengths, they vibrate and collide with each other
more quickly and create more heat. But why does carbon dioxide (CO2) generate more
heat than oxygen (O2), for example?
The molecules of O2 look like this:
While the ones for CO2 look like this:
Diagrams from The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence M. Krauss [12]
Because the two atoms in the above graph are not mediated by a third atom, they
can vibrate at a very rapid rate. That means that only very high-frequency radiations
are strong enough to get them to vibrate and capture the heat. In contrast, the two
vibrating atoms in the lower graph are mediated by a third, so they can't collide
with each other as quickly. This makes it an easier process to activate, and means
that much lower-frequency radiations can activate them. That means that a much
broader range of the wavelengths that leave the earth can make them vibrate and
generate heat. Still though, the wavelengths need to reach a certain threshold
to activate them. Energy being reflected back from the earth tends to have a higher
wavelengh than energy coming down into it, so this explains why these greenhouse
gases "trap" heat on the way out but not on the way in.
The climate will respond in all kinds of weird ways to an increased global temperature,
which is why the term "climate change" is now preferred to "global warming." That's
not because the earth isn't warming; the temperature is only moving in one direction.
However, the many environments and biomes on earth respond in weird ways to warming
temperatures that are not always intuitive. The results will, however, be severe
everywhere on earth: rising sea levels, droughts, more extreme storms and hurricanes,
flash floods, forest fires, shrinking lakes and rivers, etc. Global heating can
even cause unexpected freezes and snowstorms, due to destabilization of cold air
from the warming Arctic (pushing freezing cold air downwards) and increased
evaporation from bodies of water in cold regions (making more snow and less ice).
It will cause massive problems for the entire world, but especially coastal cities
built at sea level like Toukyou, Jakarta, Shanghai, New York City, Mumbai, Ho Chi
Minh City, etc. and regions already plagued by heat and droughts like Pakistan,
Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Sudan, etc.
Global heating also exacerbates the rate at which zoonotic viruses (ones that
leap from animals to humans) become pandemics. That's because when animals'
habitats are destroyed, they become vagrants and start wandering into human
settlements, increasing the rate at which humans come into contact with them and
the viruses they carry. This doesn't happen as often in places like North America
or Europe, but it happens a ton in places that are less industrialized like rural
Africa and Southeast Asia. And the viruses that spill over anywhere will find a
way to people in rich countries in an economic system as globalized and
interconnected as ours. COVID-19? Swine flu? Ebola? Monkeypox? That's nothing.
Many more are coming, and they could very well even more deadly than any of the
above. Of course, a shift in climate isn't the only thing that leads to habitat
destruction. But global heating is the biggest and most consistent contributing
factor to ecological degradation around the world.
What adds greenhouse gases to our atmosphere? There are some natural sources: gas
release from the ocean, decomposing vegetation and flora, volcanic eruptions,
naturally occurring wildfires, and even animals like cows farting and burping.
But these are negligible on their own and easily offset by natural absorption of
greenhouse gases by plants and bodies of water. The amount of greenhouse gas
releases required to massively change our climate can only come from human activity.
Deforestation and agriculture plays a big role in it (less trees, more cows,
more farts), but the overwhelming source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is
the burning of fossil fuels like petroleum, coal, and natural gas. These fuels
are millions of years old and thus represent millions of years of carbon that has
been removed from the atmosphere. We are putting millions of years' worth of
removed carbon back into the atmosphere in the space of a few hundred years. To
put that into perspective: right now, we are putting something like three times
the amount of heat of the atomic bomb that fell on Hiroshima into our atmosphere
every single second. If there is any chance of avoiding complete environmental
collapse, it is necessary to abandon the use of fossil fuels and rebuild our
energy economy using renewable, green energy. [13]
Source
I won't lie to you. The situation is beyond grim. Rhetoric that talks about how
we need to "stop" or "prevent" global heating has been out of date for 20+
years now. The climate has CHANGED. Past-tense. Change is here. Warming is here.
We are not going back to the climate as it was. Especially now that some of the
worst tipping-points, like the chance of ice-free summers in the Arctic as soon
as the 2030s, are now all but inevitable according to the latest research. These
will undoubtedly make heat waves, forest fires, and flash floods even worse. [14]
And that in and of itself is a tragedy beyond words. But I don't endorse being
doomerpilled and doing nothing. We can't turn time backwards and recover the
climate of the past, but we can absolutely have a role in how bad it will become
and how quickly or slowly. And if you are not a geriatric old fuck, you have every
reason to be concerned. And it should concern you for completely selfish reasons.
These are things that are affecting you right now and will become far, far worse
in YOUR lifetime. Not your childrens' and not your grandchildrens' lifetimes.
YOURS.
It's a very difficult thing to come to terms with this idea. As human beings, we
are naturally skeptical of doomsaying. People have told us that the world will
come to an end for over 2000 years now. Everywhere we look there are false prophets,
and the idea that a civilization as resourceful, as technologically savvy, and as
"gifted" as ours could be wiped out in less than a century just seems hard to wrap
our heads around. So let me be a little more precise. I might say things like the
"end of human civilization" or "destroying the planet" or whatever in this article
in order to be concise and drive home the importance, but it's not exactly correct.
The planet itself as one big organism is fine. It's going through a mass extinction,
as it has in the past, and it will heal and renew itself. But the planet as a home
for humans is in freefall. It is true that there will probably always be some kind
of organized human life even in the worst case scenario. Even if the earth becomes
identical to Venus, the AI-immortalized ghost of Elon Musk will probably have built
his fruity little Mars colony where he can micromanage the 30 other Twitter users
who still exist. But if we go on our current course, we might not all die, but
the kind of life we will have on the earth will suck. It will suck so, so, so bad.
I'll talk more about what that life would look like later on in this article, but
no matter what political persuasion you are, trust me, you would do anything to
avoid it.
2. Tactics of Deceit and Deflection That Keep Us Docile
Global heating first entered public consciousness in the year 1988, when scientists
noticed that the much-feared anthropogenic effect might already be detectable.
Fears over it never truly went away since then, but it hasn't been until the 2010s
or so that the effects have truly become so bad that even people in rich, prosperous
countries can't afford to ignore them. But the science has been clear for a much
longer time. In fact, nobody said it better than James F. Black, senior scientist
of fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil, all the way back in 1977:
There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind
is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning
of fossil fuels... There are some potentially catastrophic events that must be
considered... Rainfall might get heavier in some regions, and other places might
turn to desert... [Some countries] would have their agricultural output reduced
or destroyed... Man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for
hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical...
Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible. [15]
What do we do when we discover an uncomfortable scientific truth? ExxonMobil was
faced with just such a dilemma. They had to come to terms with the fact that they
had built an empire on resources that were poisoning their planet and ours. They
had to come to terms with the fact that if they didn't abandon fossil fuels soon,
they would be gambling away their childrens' and grandchildrens' futures. The
decisions that need to be made in light of this are indeed hard ones. They had to
choose for how much longer they wanted to kick the can down the road, knowing that
the problem would only get worse with time. And what did ExxonMobil do? They
panicked, stuck their heads in the sand, and chose to protect their profits
instead. And they lied. They lied through their teeth, misinformed the public,
and obscured the fact that they mortgaged the future of a stable, safe, and
beautiful climate for the sake of their own greed.
Source
ExxonMobil is the company I most love to spew venom over because they
are far and away one of the most bad faith, destructive actors. But the fact is
that ExxonMobil is by no means
unique. Many other giants in the petroleum and coal business like Koch Industries,
Chevron, Shell, British Petroleum, and Peabody followed suit. Automobile giants
like Ford and General Motors got on board by lobbying to prevent American cities
from shifting to urban planning and infrastructure designed for walking, biking,
and public transit. The overdependence on cars in many American cities has made
abandoning fossil fuel dependence even harder. Food giants like Tyson refused to
cut back on destructive agricultural practices. Of course, while America has such
a large population and GDP and therefore has a particularly high carbon footprint
(second largest after China), it is not alone. The same thing happens in Canada,
in Russia, in China, in Brazil, in Saudi Arabia, and in many other countries with
coporations that have vested interests against environmental conservation.
Some denialists will try to simplify the case to make it sound absurd: "You want
to regulate us and tax us in order to stop hurricanes from happening? News flash,
you can't control nature!" This is on its face a stupid idea. It uses a false
dichotomy of controlling nature completely or not at all. We can't completely
stop a hurricane from happening, but of course we can exert some influence over
nature. Dump toxic waste in a river every day and see if you don't have some
effect on it.
But the real problem here is one of language. To paraphrase George Lakoff, the
problem is that no languages on earth have a good way to explain causation that
is indirect and systematic. Our understanding of causation is direct. For example,
I spilled a glass of water on the floor and now the floor is wet. But there are
ways that we cause things that are indirect. We have to use the same language,
"X causes Y" to explain things that have a much more complex process of causation.
When we say that big corporate and government policies are "causing hurricanes,"
it sounds kind of silly. But that's just because we don't have a simple verb to
compress the way that emitting greenhouse gases does not automatically cause
hurricanes or whatever else, but it causes a lot of chain reactions in the
atmosphere that make it much more likely for these kind of natural disasters to
occur (increasing temperature leads to increased humidity of the air which leads
to increased evaporation from the sea which leads to higher chances of hurricanes
occurring and with greater ferocity). Emitting greenhouse gases does not directly
cause things like hurricanes, but it severely increases their chance of occurring
and extremity. [16]
Of course, you can't just lobby by admitting that you want to fuck over the future
of humanity to increase your short-term profits (unless you're in Russia, maybe).
That's where the "scientist" spokesman comes in. There have been many scientists
whose ideological fears of "socialism" and "big government" were more important
than their integrity and honesty as scientists, and these figures were hired to
masquerade as authorities and keep the American public confused and in the dark.
This is, of course, a tactic that was used for more than fossil fuels. Figures
like Fred Singer, Fred Seitz, Bill Nierenberg, and Robert Jastrow were lackeys
of any business wishing to drum up fears of an invasive, authoritarian socialist
government to avoid being regulated out of harming people and the planet. Some of
them like Bjørn Lomberg, who is still active to this day, just seem to be addicted
to contrarianism. They disingenuously argued against objective evidence of harm,
from tobacco smoke to acid rain to ozone depletion to global heating. The full
sordid details of the campaigns of misinformation are studiously spelled out in
an excellent book called Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway.
Source
It makes sense that all these huge corporations are so scared shitless about
regulation. I will let you in on a little secret that these companies desperately
want you not to know: EVERY great environmental and public health/safety success
story in the history of the United States, and probably the world over, has come
through the regulation and punishing of big corporations. Banning DDT to save bird
and insect populations? Restricting sales and public use of tobacco to avoid lung
problems for non-smokers? Putting a cap on sulfur emissions to reduce acid rain?
Phasing cholofluorocarbons out of air conditioners and refrigerators to protect
the ozone layer? EVERY SINGLE ONE came by regulating businesses that could not be
trusted on their own to behave responsibly, and every one had to be pursued in
spite of aggressive pushback from corporate insterests. Historically, no
environmental movement has ever believed that environmental protection could
reasonably happen by a lot of individual people "doing their best." It comes
through the government punishing bad actors.
Fossil fuel companies love to deflect reponsibility back on the individual, whose
agency over averting climate apocalypse is a microscopic speck compared to theirs.
They love nothing more than to make YOU pay attention to YOUR carbon footprint,
rather than the carbon footprint of a big corporation like ExxonMobil. They love
nothing more than for YOU to go vegan, to ride a bike, or anything like that.
Because they know that it will never catch on. They know that your little bit of
influence won't come close to hurting their profits. But if enough people got the
government to put a price on carbon? To have stricter cap-and-trade policies? To
deny them the right to drill on federal land? To implement a Green New Deal
requiring petroleum to be illegal by 2050 (with job security for the blue-collar
workers so they aren't left in the dust)? They would shit their pants. The fact
that big corporate entities who get rich off destroying the planet like the Koch
Brothers are the ones ecouraging you to focus on your own carbon footprint should
be enough to make you realize that it's not going to make a difference.
Source
Other companies do this too. Everyone above a certain age in America knows the
"crying Indian" commerical aimed at raising awareness about littering. It shows
a native man who looks at all the litter and trash strewn around America and
crying at how his land has been so polluted. It's a great message and I will not
argue with the legitimate positive effect on raising environmental consciousness
that it had. But don't be mistaken: the commercial is evil in intent. And no, I'm
not talking about the fact that the actor is an Italian-American or any of that
liberal arts college idpol bullshit. I'm talking about the fact that this
commercial came after a long effort from Coca Cola, Pepsi, and other beverage
giants to obstruct laws requiring them to enforce a minimum refundable deposit
on beverage containers to encourage recycling and reuse. Remember, it's all YOUR
fault, consumer. Not the multi-million dollar company that sets the standard for
business. Go vegan! Never ride on a plane again! Walk everywhere you go! Turn off
your air conditioner even when it's boiling outside! Nothing is too extreme to
help save the planet! ...except cutting into our profits and making it a little
harder for our CEO to afford another yacht, that is! [17]
The sad news is that these deflection and misinformation campaigns haven’t gone
anywhere. They've just had to evolve with the times. For one thing, there are
very few outright global heating "deniers" any more. I use the term in this article
here and there, but technically it's inaccurate for most people these days. Almost
no one can just outright deny global heating anymore. The evidence is just
empirically there. Any scientifically dubious claim will now be something to the
effect that the earth is going through a natural cycle and we can't know for sure
how much of a role we play in it. I've refuted this in the first section of this
page. But let me address the mindset and make a clear distinction between good
and bad skepticism.
Being a skeptic is the first step to being a good scientist or even just a good
thinker. Since the scientific revolution, we now do science empirically. That
means that we believe that nothing in nature can ever be 100% proven. That is why
we have a "theory" of evolution, a "theory" of relativity, and even a "theory" of
gravity. If we are good scientists, we will remain humble about even the most
seemingly universal laws and say that they are only our current best educated
guesses. We have to observe what we come to know empirically, use Occam's Razor
to decide what seems like the most likely explanation, and then take that as
"truth" for pragmatic reasons while always being on the lookout for a better
explanation. If we waited for everything to be "proven 100%," we would wait forever
because nothing is ever proven 100% in science. Some things are only shown to be
more likely and more congruent with empirical data than others.
Source
A lot of propagandists with vested interest in halting environmental policy try
to turn the tables and say "the science isn't settled," "let's wait for more
consensus," etc. Of course, it's silly considering the 97% consensus among
scientists at the Interational Panel on Climate Change. You would be hard-pressed
to find many agreements in science that have a similar degree of consensus. This
line of propaganda functions by turning people into "inactivists." If you convince
people that we should only enforce environmental policy after things are "proven
100%," then they will never support environmental policy. That is because science
never proves something with 100% certainty. So it gets them to wait for a day
which will never come, all the while they can still keep pumping poison into our
atmosphere.
But I'll even entertain this (deluded) idea that science can reach a 100% certainty
and that scientists do not have consensus on the causes and effects of climate
change. If the drink you had in your hand had a 97% chance of containing cynaide,
would you still take it because the science "isn't settled"? What if it was 75%?
What if it was 50%? What if it was 1%? Would you walk through the site of a nuclear
meltdown because the science was still unsettled about how dangerous the radioactive
waste was? I hope you see the point I'm getting at. Even if it was possible to
achieve 100% scientific certainty about something, it would likely take a lot of
time and effort. But we have to make decisions, indeed even essential decisions,
on the basis of incomplete knowledge. No one could live if they waited for
comprehensive understanding of everything before acting.
But propagandists are starting to realize that they can't play on doubts about the
reality of global heating anymore. There are now much more devious methods to get
people to be afraid of or apathetic towards policy solutions. And the internet has
made it easier than ever for them to be more brazen and dishonest, because pundits
on the internet have lower standads of regulation than even the trashiest American
propaganda networks like Fox News. And fossil fuel shills understand the fears
and desires of disenfranchised Americans even better than our sorry excuses for
politicians, so they are a potent and powerful enemy to deal with on social media.
That's why it's more important than ever to recognize the messages of foul actors.
In the next couple sections, I will address the main myths and rhetorical traps
you need to look out for.
3. Myth #1: "We can't do anything about it. We just have to learn to adapt."
This is only true if you think that the only thing of value we can do is reset
everything and return to a pre-industrial revolution climate. That is almost
certainly an impossibility unless we invent a time machine. The climate has
changed and it will probably never go back. Propagandists take advantage of how
severe and horrible of a tragedy this is to experience. They make it seem like
now anything we do would be a band-aid on a gaping wound, an exercise in futility,
a mere idealistic wishing. This is completely wrong. The things we do now can make
enormous differences of just how bad the effects of global heating will be. And
not just in terms of "adaptive" things like building up seawalls, setting up
Marshall Plans for endangered communities, creating advanced early warning systems
for natural disasters, etc. (though these are important). The fewer greenhouse
gases we emit, the better. The less we emit, the slower the rate of warming will
be and the more time we'll have to prevent the worst tipping points and find out
how to adapt to the ones that are inevitable. It's not a binary doomed-or-saved
scenario.
This "adaptionist" message is sold to us by propagandists in a lot of different
ways, some more explicit than others. I mention two of them which are the most
common. They are effective propaganda because both have a bit of truth in them,
but they are nevertheless corrosive and I will explain why.
a. Messianic adaptionism:
"Technology will save us. Look at how much we've invented that was revolutionary."
Source
The ClimeWorks "Orca" direct carbon capture plant in Iceland
There is a definite truth to this claim. If we have any salvation, it will indeed
be via technology. Namely, one kind of technology: renewable energy. And the good
news is that we already have this technology. We just need to scale it up. Of
course, this is not the way this message is normally sold. Normally this message
is sold as a soft form of messianism: some brilliant scientists will come along
with an earth-shattering new technological thingamajig and save the whole world.
Some BASED guy like Elon Musk will invent some Carbon Sucker 5000 (TM) and perform
a deus ex machina to atone for all of our sins and allow us to continue living the
same life with the same status quo we've enjoyed up until now. It's not a helpful
way to think.
I don't want to rule out the idea of amazing, breakthrough technologies to help
with our climate crisis. Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say, and
there's never been a greater necessity than the survival of organized human life
on earth. But most people don't understand how scientific breakthroughs really
happen in the modern era. It is highly unlikely that there was ever a time where
scienctific breakthroughs happened via the lone genius having a sudden flash of
inspiration in his lab. But even if there was, that time is certainly not now.
No major technological breakthroughs have happened this way in the 20th century,
even if it looks that way from the outside. Think about computers and the internet,
for example. We remember the mavericks and charismatic leaders like Bill Gates,
Steve Wozniak, and Al Gore, but not the accumulated discoveries of decades' worth
of publically-funded research performed through the apparatus of the state that
they would not exist without. Yes, technology will save us. But technology is not
an alternative to policy. Technological breathroughs are dependent on policies
that support and guide research, funding, etc. And policies are enacted because
of activism. [18]
b. Stoic adaptionism:
"Change is inevitable. All things are impermanent."
Source
Buddhist relief from Ajanta Cave No. 6, Upper Floor in Maharashtra
This is the deepest form of climate propaganda because it speaks the most to
highly intelligent and introspective individuals. And therefore it is the most
insidious.
There is a tendency in much of the media to sell a weird and hyper-cucked
worldview that appropriates language from psychology and religion praising
stoicism, renunciation of desires, and acceptance of the inevitability of our
suffering and transience. This form of propaganda is the most subtle and difficult
because it hijacks a lot of important parts of spiritual growth. And like messianic
adaptionism, there is a truth here, and a profound truth at that: Nothing lasts
forever. As humans we have to come to terms with the transience of all things.
But the message sold by the propagandist is only one part of growth: learning to
accept what we do not have the power to change. It does not account for the other
imporant part: learning to change what we have the power to change for the better.
It reminds me of how Christian slaveowners in the colonies had special bibles for
slaves that had all the sections about freedom and equality removed. The docile
slaves of fossil fuel companies now need a John Brown to expose their charade and
show what true spirituality really is. I am here to show that their goofy
"enlightened" worldview is corrosive and perverse. And it's not real enlightened
spirituality. The enlightened figure is the one who acts not because he has a
chance of succeeding or not, but because it is the right thing to do even if it
seems completely impossible to succeed. He is the one who fights an army of tanks
and rifles with sticks and stones because he is beyond all success and failure.
The samurai who has let go of desire and made peace with oblivion is a fearsome
opponent indeed.
Source
Tragic Prelude (1938) by John Steuart Curry, oil and tempera mural at the
Kansas State Capitol
The "enlightened" figure tries to appear wise or cool or edgy or whatever else by
dismissing all action, saying that averting it is impossible so we shouldn't even
waste our time. He thinks that he is a rebel but he is the opposite. He is the
perfect stooge of the fossil fuel industry: encourage taking no action and instill
in people the idea that nothing they do matters. Of course, it's understandable
to be afraid, to be pessimistic, to see no path forward, and to become cynical and
resentful. I am by no means writing this article because I have an optimistic
idea of the future. I am doing it because it is the more ethical choice to believe
that improvement is possible, even when it is hard to do so. But pessimism is never
a reason to shut down people trying to make the world a better place. Doomerism is
the final weapon of the fossil fuel industry. And it is for cucks and pussies who
don't want to take a chance on anything that might fail.
Just as the ocean remains undisturbed by the incessant flow of waters from rivers
merging into it, likewise the sage who is unmoved despite the flow of desirable
objects all around him attains peace, and not the person who strives to satisfy
desires.
Bhagavad Gita 2:71 [19]
Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe
that the future can be better, it's unlikely you will step up and take
responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there's no hope, you guarantee
that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom,
there are opportunities to change things, there's a chance you may contribute to
making a better world. The choice is yours.
Noam Chomsky [20]
Now, to address the question of adaptation. Adaptation is not a substitute for
mitigation, but it is a very important part of action on global heating. As I
said, the climate has changed and that change will continue to have negative
effects. There are all kinds of ways we need to adapt. But one of the best ways
to adapt is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. More greenhouse gases will make
all the bad effects worse. There will be a few bumps along the way of adapting
to a green economy, but they are negligible. A society based on renewable energy
is far easier to adapt to than the world that we are on the way to with greenhouse
emissions continuing on their current trajectory. Now, let's talk about what such
a shift to a sustainable economy would mean for all of us, being clear about what
that actually entails and not just throwing around words like "green" and
"environmentally-friendly" as a meaningless pretense of good faith.
4. Myth #2: "Green energy will harm our economy and we will fall behind China."
Source
Highest countries by per-capita CO2 emissions. "Middle East A" refers to the
non-Saudi oil giants like Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab
Emirates. Yes, China emits the most of any country, but not per-capita. Not to
say that they shouldn't cut back, but clearly other developed countries still
have a long way to go...
I heard a friend say that fossil fuel company propagandists used to rely on the
public not understanding science, but now they rely on the public not understanding
economics. I'm sure you've heard someone say something to this effect: "If we switch
to green energy, our economy will suffer and we will fall behind countries that are
doing a worse job of reducing their emissions anyway like China or India. Go fix
China and India instead if you really care about the climate!"
It's kind of a silly idea. There are a lot of things I would do if I could influence
China. But I don't live in China and even if I did I wouldn't have much of a voice
to dissent. So we have to affect the world with the policy of our own country. And
it's especially stupid if the person saying this is an American. We aren't some
tiny little country that everyone can ignore. We're the biggest superpower in all
of human history! And there are things we can do to "fix" China and other countries
with worse environmental policies. For example, the majority of China's emissions
are due to them manufacturing plastic junk for the rest of the world and shipping
that across the globe. We could both boost our own economy and help reduce emissions
by onshoring our production. Of course, a lot of these jobs will be lost to
automation forever, in China as much as in the US, but the point still stands.
Not only is the reasoning stupid, but it's also just plain cowardly. It's just
shifting the blame to whoever you can find who is worse than you in some way or
another. It's essentially the same as dumping a plastic bottle in the middle of
the ocean and then when someone attacks you for littering you respond with "If
you really care about the oceans, you should attack the companies that are
destroying them through acidification because of carbon emissions! I'm just one
person!" They aren't wrong, but it doesn't excuse their bad behavior either. It's
just a stupid thing to say. Of course, it's true that the United States and a lot
of other modern western countries are reducing their carbon emissions. The US decreased
emissions even with Trump doing all he could to stop it. It's true that much of the
future of the planet rests on China and India. Having a realistic idea of the scale
of what you do is important, but why would you not do whatever you can to make the
world a better place? And what is more important than reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
While I am no lover of the CCP and will not make excuses for their crimes, I
personally find the aggressive anti-China rhetoric to be very tiresome, distasteful,
and strategically foolish, but I'll leave the geopolitics aside for now. I'll tell
you why it's good for us to shift our economy to one based on green energy even
if you have the most aggressively chauvinistic, China-hating mindset possible.
Now, let's talk about what shifting to a post-fossil fuel economy means for the
United States and probably most other rich countries. I'll talk about some of the
most important elements of shifting the economy to a sustainable one.
a. Policies While We Still Have Fossil Fuels
A lot of (stupid) environmentalists will oppose things like carbon taxes or
cap-and-trade policies. According to them, they're just band-aids on an open
wound. They won't settle for anything less than an economy with no fossil fuels
at all. Obviously that is the goal. But unfortunately it won't come overnight.
The good news is that carbon taxes and cap-and-trade policies actually will go
a long way to helping reduce emissions. We need to do other things along with
them (redesigning cities and machines with a focus on energy efficieny, continuing
to invest in renewables, etc.), but some policies that exist in the current
framework are going to be necessary. The perfect is the enemy of the good, as
they say.
Much of this section is basically a summary of Michael E. Mann's book The New
Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, just to be transparent. He
has pointed out that "the fossil fuel industry has been given the greatest market
subsidy ever: the privilege to dump its waste products into the atmosphere at no
charge." [21] A good way to solve this and allow renewables to compete fairly with
carbon-emitting fuels is to put a tax on carbon-intensive fuels and/or the products
made with such fuels. You can also bolster this with carbon credits for products
that offset carbon emissions.
Some might read this and think it's unfair because a sales tax on carbon-intensive
products/fuels is going to punish the poor by making them pay more for products.
Of course, it's perfectly possible to only have that sales tax for manufacturers,
not consumers. But it would be more effective to have it across the board. And
it can be passed in a way that is "revenue neutral." That is to say, the same
price that increases in a carbon tax is detracted from other taxes the consumer
has to pay, like an income tax, etc. [22] But let's even take the worst-case
scenario, where the consumer has to pay extra. If you are a capitalist, you should
believe that another company who can make better products for a
better price while also using less carbon can't jump in. Aren't all the capitalist
buzzwords like innovation, creativity, entrepeneurship, etc. supposed to mean something?
Source
Now let's talk about cap-and-trade. It's a good way to not only put a price on
carbon emissions like a tax but also set a limit to them. Ideally, the limit
should become stricter over time and get all the way to zero, but clearly an
economy can't go from 100 to 0 overnight, as nice as that would be. Then
companies can receive allowances to go over their limit a certain amount, either
for free or through an auction. This is important because it allows the market
to continue functioning. For example, companies who cut their pollution faster
can sell their allowances to companies that pollute more or "bank" them for
future use. It's a way to allow companies to have all the flexibility they should
have in an ideal capitalist world. [23]
It might seem like a half-hearted way around the problem. But it really works.
One of the best success stories in environmental regulation in the US was
reducing sulfur emissions to prevent acid rain. And it was done with a cap-and-trade
policy passed under "radical leftist" George H.W. Bush. Cap-and-trade has been
on the Republican agenda as recently as 2008 in "dirty commie" John McCain's
presidential campaign. A massive propaganda campaign by the Koch Brothers was
largely responsible for making the Republican party abandon any responsible
environmental policies they may have had, so now they forget this. [24] And not
only does cap-and-trade have real environmental success, it has great
economic success too. The strongest GDP in the United States by far, California,
also has a very strict cap-and-trade policy. [25]
b. Replacing Fossil Fuels With Renewables
It seems to me as though the image most people have is that in one day we will
outlow fossil fuels and only allow renewables, no one will have time to adapt, and
everything will shut down like with the 1973 oil crisis. While we have to move
quickly and aggressively, it can't happen so quickly that people have no time to
adapt and integrate it into their lives. Yes, this includes job security for the
blue-collar workers in the energy industry (their disgusting CEOs, on the other
hand, deserve to be tried in the fucking Haag). Green energy is a huge job creator,
just ask China which is becoming the world's leading supplier of renewable hydrogen
and solar panels. [26] [27]
It's related to another talking point: "renewable energy can't provide all the
energy we need in the US!" That seems like a stupid argument to me. We shouldn't
do anything because it can't power 100%? Shouldn't we want to use the minimum
amount of fossil fuels possible, even if we can't immediately use 100% renewables?
We all should want that, unless you're a fossil fuel company shill, perhaps. Of
course, the dream of 100% power by renewables is quickly becoming a dream no
longer. A green energy economy could not only have a small cost, but a negative one. A
University of Oxford study suggests that switching to green energy could save
trillions of dollars. [28]
It's also worth noting that ideally, we should not only be trying to fulfill
our current energy needs by only using renewables in place of fossil fuels, but
also trying to reduce the amount of energy we consume in the first place. And this
will not come by means of an "eat ze bugs" dystopia ruled by Silicon Valley
corporate oligarchs. I'm talking about making cities more efficient. It is simply
obscene how much energy is wasted in the United States because of horrible city
infrastructure. A study from 2011 showing a possible plan for global carbon
neutrality by 2050 shows that almost half of the goal is met through increased
energy efficiency. [29] While the study is old and has almost certainly been made
way more difficult by criminals like Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro,
Scott Morrison, and Justin Trudeau, it does show how much can be done without
making peoples' lives worse. In fact, it can often be done in ways that make our
lives better in other ways besides the obvious "not continuing to destroy the
prospects for organized human life on earth" thing.
If we take energy efficiency (not "de-growth") into account, the day where
renewables can supply 100% of our energy is nowhere near as far off as you might
think. It might have been a pipe dream at one point. It is simply not today, at
least in terms of the technology. Back in the 1950s, you might have had a good
argument that solar panels and wind turbines won't work because you can't always
rely on the weather. Now we have smart grid technology that is very reliable.
Read about it here if you don't know. To quote Michael E. Mann, "utility-scale
'big battery' systems like those produced by Tesla are now outperforming and
outcompeting fossil fuel generators in providing grid stability to blackout-prone
regions like South Australia." [30] Even famously cloudy areas like the
Pacific Northwest can be effectively solar-powered today.
Source
We have the technology, now we just need to scale it up. And it can be done
effectively. And with good bipartisan support. Did you know that the tiny,
conservative, Republican town of Greensburg, Kansas was rebuilt with 100%
renewable energy after being effectively destroyed by a tornado? [31] Probably
not, because it doesn't line up with the media narrative that only THEM DAMN
LIBERULZ should care about the environment. Granted, that town has something like
740 citizens. Not all cities can recreate so quickly and completely. But all
cities can follow a similar pathway to greening.
Let's talk about some other workarounds and solutions that people float around
as potential alternatives. Natural gas is a false prophet. It doesn't emit as
much carbon but it releases a ton of methane, which is arguably worse because it
heats at a far faster rate even if it doesn't stay around in the atmosphere for
as long. Fracking, unlike oil drilling, actually releases the greenhouse gas
directly and immediately into the atmosphere. So that means that it adds methane
to the atmosphere in much more immediate spikes. Anything involving fracking is
just as bad as oil drilling if not worse, and even at its best natural gas is not
sustainable in the least. NO LIQUID NATURAL GAS! IT IS DANGEROUS!
All the "geoengineering" sci-fi solutions that technocrat nerds get hard over are
extremely dangerous and much more difficult to accomplish than transforming our
economy to one based around green energy. Tell me, honestly, do you think it's
easier and more feasible to replace fossil fuels with green energy that has been
proven to be scalable upwards and is popular for almost everyone but certain
mega-rich CEOs, which would cost about as much of the US GDP as was spent in World
War II, or to coat the entire planet's atmosphere in a layer of sulfur that has
to be maintained constantly by every country on earth working in cooperation and
then requires all kinds of other miracle technological breakthroughs to prevent
the destruction of weather systems? Read Under a White Sky: The Nature of the
Future by Elizabeth Kolbert if you want some good discussions about why they're
so unbelievably dangerous.
Now let's assess the most trendy one that all the fossil fuel companies love:
carbon capture. The fact that ExxonMobil and their ilk are the ones pushing it
should make us immediately skeptical. But I'll engage with its pros and cons in
good faith. Greenhouse gases weren't doing us any harm when they were sequestered
underground, so the idea is simple: put them back down there before they have the
chance to escape into the atmosphere during burning. Carbon capture and
sequestration or CCS technology works by capturing the emitted carbon, compressing
it, turning it to liquid, then pumping it down into the earth where it can start
to form limestone. Sounds like a way to have your cake and eat it. Sounds too
good to be true. Well, that's because it is.
The problem with this is that we globally emit some 51 billion tons of carbon
every year. Logistically, finding enough places with that kind of space for
dumping makes scaling CCS upwards a big issue. Also, earthquakes and other
unforeseen natural processes could easily disrupt the "safe" underground storage
spaces and cause a bunch of that carbon to spew back into the atmosphere all at
once. Lastly, even the best CCS technology we have at the moment can only capture
about 90% of the emissions. That might sound like a lot, but ANY more carbon in
the atmosphere is a death sentence in the long run. It can also competely undo
the good of CCS if that sequestered carbon makes its way into a tapped oil well,
which is likely since it has to be sequestered nearby to where the oil is siphoned.
If it seeped into the tapped oil well, the oil siphoned out of that well would
just put all that captured carbon back into the atmosphere, and it would do it at
a far, far faster rate. No thanks! Final verdict on carbon capture: do it while
we can't close the oil refineries, and then work to close them as quickly as
possible. Only keep the refineries open and capturing carbon if absolutely
nothing else works. So almost never. [32]
Let's talk about the most controversial one: the nuclear option. A lot of
conservatives have railed on environmentalists in the past for opposing nuclear
energy. They say that they delayed the shift away from fossil fuels because
they wouldn't just get on board with nuclear. Personally, I'm interested in
whatever is most effective. I'm totally in favor of switching to nuclear energy
if it's the only feasible option in a given place besides fossil fuels. Of course,
I don't think I need to go over the dangers of nuclear energy. Chernobyl,
Fukushima, Three Mile Island... the names are etched into our memories. And that
doesn't even get into the problem of safe disposal of nuclear waste, which would
only become more of a problem if it is scaled up globally. Of course, all
technology can be made more safe with more breakthroughs and there is no reason
to believe that nuclear energy is any different. But we should also understand
that nuclear reactors can very quickly be a gateway to the development of nuclear
weapons, which are the other greatest threat to human life on earth besides climate
change. So overall, nuclear is scary. But if it's the only realistic option to
scale upwards with appropriate safeguards? I'm all for it.
But the reason I tend to prefer non-nuclear options is that they have not only
been proven to be scalable to 100% but are also cheaper than nuclear right now.
Yes, you read that right. Nuclear power generation currently averages about $100
per megawatt-hour while solar is $50 and onshore wind is $30-40. [33] Cheaper,
cleaner, scalable, etc. I see no reason to be against renewables. It seems like
the attachment to nuclear from a lot of conservatives is just tribalism because
back in the day everyone protesting against nuclear plants were smelly hippies.
I'm not making a tree-hugger argument right now. I'm in capitalist mode and to
me it just seems like the more business-savvy option right now. They can even be
scalable in the most remote and "primitive" parts of the world. There are
examples of villages in Africa, for example, which have never had landline phones
and instead made the jump from nothing to smartphones. There's no reason they
can't also skip fossil fuel industrialization and go straight to renewables. As
someone who believes communities like these should do all they can do resist
globohomo without massively suffering, seeing that kind of thing makes me
depressed for different reasons, but if that kind of rapid development and
interconnectedness is inevitable, it should at the very least be done in a less
carbon-intensive manner. I can't blame them for wanting air conditioners, after
all.
Source
Some propagandists will focus on the apparent damaging effects of green energy,
such as turbines disrupting bird flightpaths, etc. Some cases like this do exist.
The sad truth is that we probably don't have any energy technology that has no
poor effect on the environment. We just have to pick the one that is the least
harmful and try to make up for the harms in other ways. But I have good news!
In every single case, the damage caused by renewables are negligible compared to
those caused by fossil fuels. The propagandists love to cry about bird flightpaths
obstructed in a few isolated cases by turbines, but not about the massive die-offs
of birds (and many, many more species) caused by heatwaves and droughts which are
made worse and more frequent by global heating. Don't fall for it! [34]
Some have argued that forcing green energy standards is unfair on developing
countries, small businesses, etc. The costs of not taking good precautions against
global heating are in pretty much all cases greater than the cost of doing so.
It is difficult to accept this because the averted costs of global heating are
more long-term, but think about the increased costs of air conditioning,
responding to natural disasters like fires, floods, and hurricanes, and sickness
caused by pollutants. As it stands, green energy is already cheaper on the broad
scale than fossil fuels. In the long-term, it will also save untold amounts in
external costs.
Well, I hope I've shown that making a transition to green energy is not the
economy-killer that pundits would have you believe. Of course, it's kind of
absurd to have to argue for green energy "because it's economically advantageous"
instead of "because not doing it will render large swaths of the earth uninhabitable
before the end of the century," but such is the hellscape of corporate tyranny
that we live in.
5. Myth #3: "Environmentalists are closet socialists."
Source
Observe, the great Aral Sea! A testament to the USSR's legacy of environmental
conservation and responsible use of natural resources! Granted, the fall of
communism certainly hasn't changed anything about its mismanagement, but it
still stands: all industrial socities have a dirty environmental history. Communism
and socialism aren't magic band-aids. Venezuela, for example, has remained a petrostate
throughout the 21st century.
Here's one of the oldest lines of argument. Many of the early propagandists against
environmental protections had deep, pathological fears of authoritarian socialist
governments to the degree that they were motivated to give up their scientific
honesty and start parroting bullshit instead. So I have to address this now: Will
transitioning to a carbon-neutral economy involve limiting some freedoms? Yes, it
will. Every law exists to restrict from freedom or another. An argument against
limiting any freedoms in business is an argument for slavery, child labor, and
16-hour work days. It is an argument to dump toxic waste into rivers and lakes. It
is an argument for being crushed by buildings with no construction regulations
and eating poisonous food with no health and safety standards. The type of person
who would unironically believe in this sleeps with an Ayn Rand body pillow.
Imagine, if you will, a world living on a cruise ship. Each country is a particular
division of the ship. And the economy of most countries is sustained by an industry
that involves drilling holes into the hull of the ship and letting water in from the
ocean. Everyone starts to call on the government to restrict their ability to drill
holes into the bottom of the ship. But some people call out "If we can’t drill holes
into the bottom of the boat, what’s next?!" or "I don’t want the government to tell
me what to do!" or "Anti-hole-drilling is part of the woke agenda" or "tell China to
stop drilling holes into the bottom of the boat... they drill way more than we do!"
and suddenly you start to see how silly this whole argument seems.
Simply put, the entire idea that "because we regulate companies not to destroy the
environment, you won’t be able to eat meat, ride a plane, etc. is a slippery slope
fallacy. And it is a revealing one. It only emerges as a fear as long as you remain
locked into the "it’s all the consumer’s responsibility" narrative of these large
corporations. It only seems like we will have to be personally restrained based on
the idea we've been fed that WE'RE all responsible and not the corporate overlords
who have carbon footprints thousands of times larger than ours. A "Great Reset" where
everyone is forced to live in a pod and eat ze bugs would indeed be terrifying. But
the ones who want us to be forced into it aren't a bunch of communists. They're a
bunch of rich capitalist CEOs who want to make all of US pay for THEIR emissions. And
I say fuck that. It's high time to abandon the soy, progressive environmentalist
messaging of "let’s all do as much as we can because we’re in this together guys!" and
remember the old school environmentalist messaging of "SUE THE BASTARDS!" that the
Environmental Defense Fund used back when they had balls.
So yes, there will be the restriction of freedom in the sense that some large companies
will no be longer be allowed to drill holes into the bottom of the boat. Forgive me for
not caring about that. Let me also make something very clear: The entire process of
transitioning to a carbon-neutral economy could be funded by the richest 1% of the USA.
And it could be done without them ever noticing that money was gone. It could be done
without you ever having to give up anything substantial. It could be done with only more
benefits to you. You could (read: not be forced to) ride light rail services that are far
cheaper, cleaner, and faster than cars. You could (read: not be forced to) eat food that
is produced locally instead of being shipped from half the country away. Why is green
energy so costly? Why is it so inaccessible? Why are our cities not designed around it?
Because certain very rich companies lobby to keep it that way. But it doesn't have to
be that way.
Of course, while it should never be an excuse for doing nothing, it is true that China
and India have far dirtier energy infrastructures than the US. There is no future
to lowering emissions without some kind of international cooperation. Let me be frank.
I am in the anti-globohomo camp. I think it is disgusting and tragic how much the whole
world is starting to look alike and morph into one politically correct corporate
monoculture. If I lived in an ideal world, countries would all be able to turn
completely inward and let all other countries "live and let live". But unforunately our
environment does not have borders. I wish it wasn't so, but the time for isolationism
in politics has passed. The only way countries can cooperate and all decarbonize at
once is through international cooperation. And if you want to blame this sorry state
of affairs on someone, you should blame it on the hideous reptilian scumbag fuck CEOs
and politicians who have kicked and stamped their feet like children whenever scientists
have pointed out that what they are doing will destroy the world. If we took some
reasonable steps in the 1990s to reforming our energy infrastructure and worldwide
economic systems, the effects of global heating would not have been as bad and we would
have to take much less drastic action now. But we sold that great opportunity so that
the upper1 % in our countries could afford more yachts instead.
Allowing companies to act with next to no regulation has been a societal, economic,
and above all an environmental disaster. There is no secure future in Reagan's
government-is-the-problem era of unchecked neoliberalism. We hae 40 years worth of
data and the results are clear as day. But what's on the opposite side of
that? Socialism? Not if you don't want it. Any mitigation of global heating will
have to happen within capitalism. And it can be done. Economist Robert Pollin
estimates that a Green New Deal in the United States could be funded with an amount
of GDP use and mobilization comparable to what we did in World War II. And I would
certainly argue that what we are facing now is far more severe. The US could also
purchase controlling interests in most of the largest fossil fuel companies (read:
drilling-holes-in-the-bottom-of-a-sinking-ship companies) like ExxonMobil, Chevron,
and ConocoPhillips for less money than was spent in one year of the COVID-19 pandemic
bailing out large corporations [35]. And that would hardly
be the end of capitalism. In short, I do not support government intervention to achieve
carbon neutrality because I want invasive government overreach. I support it because
I want the least invasive solution possible, but clearly we are past the point where
there is a solution involving no government intervention. And the longer we wait the
more "eat ze bugs" that solution will have to be.
6. Conservation, Tradition, and Old-Fashioned Values
Sometimes people will smear environmentalists by pointing out that compared to
other nations at the time, the Nazis were fairly environmentalist. This isn't
just an urban legend. It has a lot of truth to it. The Nazis indeed cared a lot
about preserving pristine nature and animal populations. Because both the Nazis
and modern American hippies love and want to protect the beauty of the land they
live on, somehow this means that American hippies are the same as Nazis. You see
how stupid these talking points are once you strip them of the rhetorical fluff?
I think it proves something else: That environmentalism is the most universal
good. If people as fundamentally different as Nazis and American hippies can be
compared in that they love the natural beauty of their land and care about its
livability, that means that it is the ultimate no-brainer. It's as obvious as
the fact that Nazis and the American left both drink water.
There has been an insidious and damaging campaign in the United States to turn
environmentalism into a "left-wing" issue. It wasn't always this way. But now
it's considered "conservative" to worship Mammon like the fossil fuel CEOs who
drive opposition to environmental regulations. And a lot of stupid environmentalists
have played into it! I am here to officially take it all back. ENVIRONMENTALISM
IS CONSERVATIVE. It is about CONSERVING the land that makes us who we are as a
culture, a people, and a community. It is about wanting to pass onto our children
what we were brought up in. It is about passing the "sense of wonder" that Rachel
Carson talked about to future generations so that they can continue to preserve
what is valuable about past generations. Most great traditions are tied to the
land they were created in and it is harder for future generations to inherit these
great traditions when they don't have the same landscape to practice them in.
I want future generations to feel the chill in the air as they enjoy Halloween
in autumn. I want them to play in the snow on Christmas and New Years'. I want
them to be able to see fireflies in the summer. How can we pass on the values of
the past to our children if the environment is unrecognizable? How can they enjoy
the forests, the lakes, the rivers, and the oceans that we grew up with if they are
destroyed by heavy industry? When you see the world changing and weep and try to
preserve that important thing that nobody can name and yet you know has value and
will be a tragedy if lost--that is conservatism, true conservatism.
In the face of change, what is the force that sees what valuable things may be
lost in such upheaval? It is conservatism. And with a changing climate we truly
can now see how many valuable things will be lost. I have never understood the
idea of environmentalism as inherently left-wing. To me, it seems like the most
conservative movement of all. Yes, in the long run the earth must change and
evolve. And inevitably some of those changes would have meant game over for the
human species, even without us speeding it on. But the mindset that sees what will
be lost and tries to preserve it--that is conservatism, true conservatism.
I want to officially disconnect any other liberal policy positions from what I
consider environmentalism. You don't have to be a progressive to support good
environmental policies. I urge you to build a conservative environmentalism if
that suits you. I am a lot more conservative than most people my age and yet am
more concerned about global heating than anyone else I know. Anyone who rejects
you from the environmental movement because you might disagree about abortion or
LGBT shit or whatever else is being extremely short-sighted. Those are areas
where public sentiment can change and things can go back and forth with the
vicissitudes of time. Global heating, however, will reach tipping-points that
can never be reversed. It's obvious which one is more important right now.
Dead Man's Letters (1986) by Konstantin Lopushansky
This is one of my favorite films about the end of "the world" (but not of humans,
at least not quite yet). It's set after a nuclear apocalypse and focuses on a
small community who remains alive in an abandoned museum. In spite of the fact
that the future prospects of human civilization seem hopeless, the lead character,
a historian, continues to teach children about the customs and values of the world
as it was. One of the final scenes has him teaching them about Christmas and
teaching them how to make a Christmas tree underground in the bunkers. THIS is
the kind of conservatism that we need and that I hope to embody. I want to be the
old wise man who carries on knowledge and values and worldviews that would
otherwise go extinct. Because he knows that if he didn't, something incredibly
human would be lost forever.
Environmentalism knows no parties or partisanship. It only knows people who know
the beauty of the natural world and will miss it when it is gone.
7. WHAT WE DO NOW: SKIP STRAIGHT TO THIS SECTION IF YOU'RE ALREADY CONVINCED
This transition from one organization of life to another is not accomplished
by degrees like the sand running through the hourglass grain after grain. It is
more like the water filling a vessel floating on water. At first the water only
runs in slowly on one side, but as the vessel grows heavier it suddenly begins
to sink, and almost instantaneously fills with water. It is just the same with
the transitions of mankind from one conception--and so from one organization of
life--to another. At first only gradually and slowly, one after another, men
attain to the new truth by the inner spiritual way, and follow it out in life.
But when a certain point in the diffusion of the truth has been reached, it is
suddenly assimilated by everyone, not by the inner way, but, as it were,
involuntarily.
Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You [36]
Now, let's talk about what to actually do about it. Carbon pricing and cap-and-trade
are good ways to start, but the United States, like the rest of the world, needs a
fully-fledged Green New Deal to recreate its economy. I'm not talking about Alexandria
Orcasio-Cortez's legislation in particular. I would prefer a Green New Deal with
a lot less progressive baggage. It's best for climate legislation to be as non-left
and non-right as possible. Of course we all know the little things we can do:
drive less, walk more, grow your own food, plant trees, eat less meat, etc. Those
are important, and you shouldn't give up on them. But they aren't going to do it
alone. The only thing that will do it is to MAKE FOSSIL FUELS ILLEGAL, RECREATE
SOCIETIES WITH GREEN ENERGY, and HELP THE WORKING-CLASS EMPLOYEES TRANSITION.
I can otherwise summarize my advice for all of you in activism, at whatever level
you want to participate, in the following points:
a. Think GLOBALLY, Act LOCALLY
It's an activist cliche for a good reason. Never think that fixing the little
area around you is unimportant. Of course, we need to have massive large-scale
reform in something like a Green New Deal. But one of the best ways to get more
people on board with these things is showing that they can work at the local
level. What works in a neighborhood can be an example towards the surrounding
city, that towards the surrounding state, and that towards the surrounding
country. You might feel powerless to control your whole country's government,
but you would be very surprised how influential you can be over your city if you
show up at town hall meetings, organize activities like teach-ins and protests,
etc. But you need to have good, boring knowledge too. You can't just keep hammering
on the moral side of it, you need to know the economics of transitioning to a post-fossil
fuel economy. Economics is not my thing and I'm still learning. But here are some
things that are good to demand of your city:
＊Invest in renewable energies like solar, wind, biofuels, etc. Most of these are
very good for the autonomy and independence of cities. Solar is the ultimate "get
off my back" energy for those of you who hate being reliant on big government and
big business!
＊Have your city take back control of its electricity and energy. A lot of cities
can have better, more democratic control over where their energy comes from if
the city government controls it instead of a private company. And no, it doesn't
create socialist hellscapes. Austin, Texas is a good example of a city which has
taken back control of its electricity from a private company and had great green
energy breakthroughs because of it.
＊Improve your city's infrastructure. American cities are particularly bad at this,
of course. Most European cities are very walkable and have good public transit.
America needs more of this. Of course, it is good to add more buses in rural areas
almost no matter where you are. This is the kind of stuff that requires intimacy
and familiarity with your own city though, because there are no one-size-fits-all
solutions. A bike rack outside of a building doesn't mean much if the roads around
it have no bike lanes.
b. Be Compassionate and Listen Sincerely
The biggest reason people vote against their own interests in terms of the
environment is that they think environmentalists are snooty big-city liberals
who don't give a shit about the poor working class. It's because a lot of them
are. You need to talk to peope with big differences from you and prove that no,
you are not trying to push whatever other cultural issue (abortion, LGBT, etc.)
onto them. They think that we are using global heating as a trojan horse for other
issues. Prove to them that we aren't and that we are ready to accept the people
even with truly abhorrent views into our movement. If you have any "dealbreaker"
issues besides climate action, you should reexamine them and probably reject them.
In Japanese there's a phrase: "chase two rabbits and you won't catch either of
them." It might come across as privileged or callous or whatever to say this, but
global heating has to be the most important rabbit. The issues we need to focus on
in the United States are regulating (if not fully publicizing) the energy and
transportation sectors of the economy and getting fossil fuel corruption out of
the EPA. The less other stuff you have to rope into that, the better.
I'm not telling you to give up on everything else (I have four pillars in this
section, not one, after all), but you do have to separate your climate activism
from your other activism. "Intersectionality" is not what we need right now. When
blue-collar Republican voters hear "intersectionality," they hear "I am going to
do the most extreme mental gymnastics I can do somehow spin this so that you are
racist and I am allowed to groom your kids." The good news is that you can talk
about all that good intersectional stuff in ways that appeal to conservatives: a
struggling white fisher in rural Louisiana will probably feel a lot of solidarity
with a struggling Unangan seal hunter in Alaska. Both of them are much more familiar
with their environments than liberals living in large cities. And both are having
their way of life screwed over by large corporations that don't give a fuck. Leave
it at that and don't try to give him your pitch about why it's "problematic" for
him to refer to a little meeting as a "pow-wow" or some gay idpol shit like that.
We are on a sinking ship and it is not the time to refuse to get in the lifeboats
until the captain uses your preferred pronouns.
Similarly, always keep in mind who the real enemies are. They aren't the poor
coal miners in West Virginia. They are the oil and coal CEOs and the politicians
they buy off. The blue-collar workers in the industry deserve our love, respect,
and wholehearted support in keeping their jobs. Many of them suffer more than we
can imagine. Just explain to them, calmly and compassionately, that their industry
is dying, just as other industries have in the past. Typewriter companies had to
evolve and branch out after computers were invented and became widespread. Toy
and board game companies had to learn how to make video games. It happens. We can
find places for the workers with minimal changes to their lives. It's better than
the world being destroyed. The coal miners' union in West Virginia has already
supported moving towards green energy. There will be a lot of dying industries in
our age of superintelligent AI, so we should be getting very used to finding out
what to do with all these unemployed workers with no transferable skills. And
that's not their fault. They don't lack transferable skills because they're
stupid, but because they've spent their whole lives busting their ass for a
company that has fucked them over along with every other human being on earth.
And for that they deserve the utmost respect and sympathy.
Nobody likes being spoken to like they are a dialogue tree, so be ready to listen
sincerely and to be surprised. But speak to them in a way they will relate to.
And find what it is about global heating that will hurt their conservative
worldview most. Such as the massively increased amount of immigration it will
cause. Many of them love to talk about how their cities and countries in Europe
are becoming flooded with immigrants and the culture is dying because of it.
Imagine how much worse it will become when most of the Middle East and North
Africa is unlivable. Learn to speak their language and appeal to their values.
City-dwelling liberals are often very out of touch with the conservative
worldview, while conservatives actually understand progressive worldviews much
more because of how ubiquitous they are in the media. Show yourself to be the
exception.
If I was going to speak in fuck-rhetoric mode I would say something like "Our real
enemies are politicians and media pundits who get double-teamed in the ass and
mouth simultaneously by Charles and David Koch on a daily basis. Even the fresh
Dutch sea air of the International Criminal Court detention center in the Haag is
too good for them. On a personal, pathological level I want to get Rex Tillerson,
Donald Trump, Scott Pruitt, Jamie Dimon and others tied up to a bed and anally
raped every day for the rest of their lives in their geriatric assholes by the
African warlords they should be tried alongside while their filthy riches are
redistributed to the people they have denied a future." ...That's how you should
definitely NOT speak to the conservatives you want on board, by the way. And it's
important to speak to them. If the election of Donald Trump proved anything, it's
that you can't just keep banning people with bad ideas from your college campuses
and social media platforms and hoping that they will blip out of existence. And
doing so is the primary drive of "ideological capture," which is why so many people
now have lost faith and trust in large organizations like the IPCC.
c. Arm Yourself With Knowledge: Scientific, Economic, and Political
It's a lot harder for people to feign ignorance about the science these days. But
anywhere there is uncertainty will be seized upon by bad actors. I highly suggest
reading the articles, watching the videos, etc. of denialist propagandists to the
degree that you can without giving them your money (uBlock Origin is the adblocker
of choice these days... you ARE using Firefox, right?). Learn to identify their
arguments, find out why they are false, and learn to explain the answer in simple
language. Is it unfair that you have to do this? Absolutely. But it is the only
way out now. I've tried to give some of the most important bullet points for the
typical bonehead talking points in this article.
I'm always looking for good resources to help. Here are sites that I tend to use:
Skeptical Science: The site looks pretty dated and a lot of the entries are old,
but most of the information remains rock-solid. This is a huge repository of
denialist talking points and why they are wrong. Their section on economic answers
is shorter and could perhaps use more meat since that's where the battle largely
is these days, but it's still an invaluable resource.
Climate Feedback: Check articles related to global heating against the opinion
of experts to ascertain the degree of reliability they have. It's hard to know
what to trust nowadays and it's not only the denialists that distort things.
Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies: Read carefully and learn to pick out bad
reasoning, including your own. When propagandists have no more fake information
to lean on, they will instead argue fallaciously.
A Skeptical Human: No matter what you think about his other
videos, his ones on climate science are incredibly useful and informative.
I have a lot of good books at the bottom of this page which will further help you.
The next step is to spread this knowledge. Teach-ins are some of the most important
forms of activism. They have been relied on for a very, very long time. I also love
them. Nothing gets me pumped like explaining something I'm passionate about to
others. The way to combat propaganda and fake news is education. Always has been,
always will be. Do your part.
d. You Cannot Save Humanity by Being Inhumane
The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)
Episode 68: "The Shelter"
One of my favorite episodes of this iconic series is about how humanity should
behave when coming face to face with its own oblivion. Skip the next five
paragraphs if you don't want to be spoiled but do please watch it if you haven't.
The story is about an ideal American community of a few suburban families. They
are having a nice party together. But then there is an emergency announcement on
the radio: unidenfitied objects are spotted in the sky and the government warns
everyone to hide in shelters if possible because they may be inbound Russian
nuclear weapons. But only one of the families, the Stocktons, consisting of father
Bill Stockton, his wife, and their one son, had the foresight to create a fallout
shelter in their basement and stock up on food supplies. And the shelter and their
resources can only sustain three people. Everyone scrambles for survival and Mr.
Stockton has to turn away all the other families, because his duty to his family
has to come first, as sorry as he is. They shout venom back and forth at each
other: Mr. Stockton says that all of were lazy and complacent as to not invest
in their own survival by building a shelter and now have to live with the
consequences. They shout back that he is selfish and cruel for only saving his
own family when all of them are doomed.
Of course, this appeal is hollow, because every one of the families turns on
each other. After realizing that their only hope for survival is breaking down
the Stocktons' shelter door down with a battering ram and killing the Stocktons,
they mobilize, come down into the basement where the shelter is, and break down
the door. But since the shelter can only fit three people, every family explodes
in anger at each other, trying to say that they have more of a right to be saved
than any of the others. Their speech becomes resentful, angry, and violent. They
start saying hateful things that they'd kept hidden for years. Right as the men
of the families begin to physically brawl, another emergency radio broadcast
begins and everyone goes silent: It announces that the objects in the sky have
been confirmed to be satellites. They are completely harmless. The state of
emergency is called off.
The families rejoice and try to smooth over their bad behavior. The families
who broke into the Stockton house have a moment of realization at how inhuman
they'd been acting in their desperation for survival, and sheepishly begin
apologizing, patting each other on the back that they'd just "gone off their
rocker" for a minute... One of them eventually turns the conversation towards
Mr. Stockton: "We'll pay for the damages, Bill... We'll take up a collection
right away!" The next person says that they should all have a block party in
celebration that they survived and he concurs: "Anything to get back to normal,
huh?"
Mr. Stockton replies, shaken to the core: "'Normal?' I don't know. I don't know
what 'normal' is. I thought I did once. I don't anymore." He gets assured that
the damages would be paid for. And he replies: "'Damages?' I wonder if any one
of us has any idea what those 'damages' really are. Maybe one of them is finding
out what we're really like what we're like when we're 'normal.' The kind of people
we are just underneath the skin--I mean all of us. A bunch of naked, wild animals
who put such a price on staying alive that they'll claw their neighbors to death
just for the privilege. We were spared a bomb tonight, but I wonder if we weren't
destroyed even without it."
Then the episode's closing narration:
No moral, no message, no prophetic tract, just a simple statement of fact:
for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.
The episode doesn't say it explicitly, but when I watch it, I always take this
lesson from it: Since it's impossible for every family to fit in the shelter
together, wouldn't it be better for the families who love and care for each other
as a community to sit together and wait for their inevitable destruction,
comforting each other and meeting their doom together in love and friendship?
Even if the Stocktons survived, their child would inherit nothing but rubble and
radiation. And they would have said their goodbyes to civilized life in anger,
resentment, and selfishness. This is a good moral to keep in mind when we face
massive existential threats and have to think of how we want to engage not just
as a community, but as a common human race.
I'm going to give you some advice from someone who started drifting into becoming
a reactionary in his college days: It is extremely important to set boundaries for
what is acceptable in your movement and call your own out when they act poorly.
And when you try to excuse behavior that we can obviously all recognize as wrong,
you lose people. All great social movement are popular and therefore don't have
official borders, but we all set what the norms are of them together. And anywhere
there are anti-establishment, radical movements, there are bad actors who are there
just to take advantage of the chaos and get off on doing evil instead of making
the world a better place. Here's the kind of thing I heard all the time in college:
"Well, I don't think saying something like 'we don't need any more white men in
the humanities' is very professional for a teacher to say, BUUUUUUUUT I can
understand that there is a long history of Eurocentrism in the field and that can
obscure people's struggles and blah blah blah"
Now, I understand that you think you are agreeing with them and building bridges.
You are not. Here's a hint for communicating effectively: When someone asks you
about radicals who share your political views, they are secretly saying "I want
to trust you, but I need you to reassure me that you aren't going to secretly
do or support something I find objectionable." Take any example. A college
professor "punching up" against white men in an extremely unprofessional manner.
Black Lives Matter-affiliated rioters burning down buildings. Roe v. Wade
supporters doxxing supreme court justices and acting cute as if they aren't
encouraging violence. Even if you denounce these, when you follow that up
immediately with a "BUUUUUT...," it sounds disingenuous and makes it seem like
you aren't really sure if you really disagree with them or not.
You remember those fucking disgusting wastes of human flesh who smeared red paint
on a Monet painting in the name of climate action... somehow? I hope they rot in
prison for life. Full stop. As someone whose field is art history, it is so
unbelievably pointless, barbaric, and despicable. I would watch LiveLeak for
hours before watching videos of iconoclasts destroying priceless works of art.
And I'm greatly disappointed that most of the people in comments sections who
decry these criminals seem to be climate deniers instead of fellow climate policy
activists.
Now, I could think about it a little more. I could say "Well, it's true that a
lot of museums and other cultural institutions receive funding from fossil fuel
companies who do it in order to make themselves look more benevolent and caring
and it can be valuable to organize in museums in order to show people that the
evil talons of fossil fuel companies extend into all areas of society, and tons
of invaluable archaeological sites and ancient monuments are going to be destroyed
by clobal heating anyway, especially in poorer countries which can't afford to
conserve them, and blah blah blah..." But I won't. I'll save those conversations
of tactics for my activist friends. You know why? Because it's extremely tone-deaf.
I know what people are really asking me when they bring up the radicals who I
agree with. And I know that this is the kind of thing you flatly denounce. And I
have no problem flatly denouncing iconoclasm because it's hideous and inhumane.
You lose nothing by doing so and only gain trust. Learn to read the air, autist.
That isn't to say that I don't support radical action. I think one of the reasons
that the UK has some of the best climate policy in the western world is because of
the presence of Extinction Rebellion, a particularly militant, confrontational, and
radical activist group. But I do not believe in committing violence on people or on
paintings. While it's true that the earth is more valuable than a Monet painting,
I believe that destroying great works of art is criminal for more than just the
cultured elites of a society. And we all know this, because we recognize it when the
shoe is on the other foot. We recognize that it is just as great of a crime when ISIS
demolishes ancient temples in Iraq and Syria as it is when they kill and enslave
people there. It is cultural genocide, and cultural genocide is often harder to
make up for than simple ethnic genocide.
And the effects are obvious. People watch climate activists vandalize great works
of art and feel immediate antipathy towards them. They give the denialists a great
gift when they do it. Compare that to the people who stood out in North Dakota to
obstruct pipeline development. It made the oil companies appear as the evil scumfuck
rat bastards that they are. I encourage you to destroy pipelines, cause a disturbance
outside of the offices of oil companies and those who fund them, chain yourself to
their cars and buildings, and to hold yourself to a higher law that does not respect
the current law which bankrolls the architects of annihilation. But part of that higher
law is to be humane, and that includes great works of art and cultural touchstones.
Part of fighting for the future is fighting for the continued existence of everything
beautiful within our walls along with that which is outside of them.
e. Please, Please, PLEASE Do NOT Be Soy
They Live (1988) by John Carpenter
One of my favorites from the good old days when resistance to capitalism
wasn't associated with being an effete, busybody, soymale faggot.
The best attitude you can have is being cool, calm, collected, and professional.
By all means we should (re-)normalize acting like an adult in the political world.
If you can't be professional, the second best attitude you can have is being edgy.
People like anyone who has an air of challenging "the man." The worst attitude
you can have is being soy. People will instinctively want to shove your head in
a locker. I wish the American people responded more to the first of these and
hope that the adults in the room will continue to lead our government. But I know
for a fact that they respond to the second of these attitudes and not to the
third. And when it comes to the internet, being soy is NEVER cool.
When I was in college in 2013-2015, I warned people around me all the time: you
have to take the stick out of your ass and be more fun to hang around. Being edgy
and anti-establishment is cool. Being a stodgy moral majority who can't take a
joke or cut loose makes you incredibly fun to bully and piss off. I warned them
that keeping up this attitude would make being a right-wing reactionary into a
cool, fun thing to be, just how being anti-war and anti-America in the post-9/11
early 2000s was the cool, fun thing to be. That's when Jon Stewart was cool and
based, not the finger-wagging nanny he is nowadays. Nobody listened to me. Then
Donald Trump got elected and they all acted like it was such a mystery that people
voted for the candidate that triggered the libs. Let's learn from our mistake,
please. It would be nice if no one was swayed by attitude and merely focused on
the facts, but unfortunately human beings are too stupid for that.
Of course, the chud meme proves that opinion is starting to turn. Nowadays people
mock both the extreme right and extreme left online. That's probably for the
better. We need to ride that wave. It's unfortunate that we're in the position
where we need to say something like "get involved with your community and fight
for justice, guys!" It sounds super fucking gay. It's not as easy to be edgy and
"based" in advocating for climate policy. But it can be done. If you can't, just
stick to being professional and even-handed. People don't want to support climate
action because when you soy out you look like fucking weenies. Learn to be a man,
have balls, have a good sense of humor, and have inner strength and peace even when
you fight for something better.
A Final Word
In 1992, George Carlin said that humans are pretty damn self-important to
think that they can "save the planet" when they can't even look after each other.
Besides, the planet doesn't need saving. The planet is FINE... the PEOPLE are
fucked! That's the difference!
The earth will continue on for however many billion more years until it crashes
into the sun, and it will do just fine without these self-important little apes
called homo sapiens on its surface. That brings me a feeling of peace. But I
just happen to be one of those self-important little apes and I care a lot about
the life that we have constructed for ourselves and what our home means to us,
as unimportant as it is from a cosmological perspective. So I will do all I can
to protect all that I love in it, even if only for a little longer. I hope that
you will do what you can.
Recommended Reading
Practical Texts for Activism:
＊The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet (Michael E. Mann)
Probably the best summary of everything people need to know: Why it's real, why
bad-faith actors lie, why it's bad, what can be done, how to be active. Very
reasonable, efficient, effective text.
＊Internationalism or Extinction (Noam Chomsky)
＊The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of
Saving the Planet (Noam Chomsky & Robert Pollin)
Whatever you think of his answers, Chomsky is almost always a trusty weathervane
of what the most important thing to worry about and act towards fixing at any
given moment is. He is informative about far more than the climate, but rightly
takes it as the single most important threat facing humanity at the moment. Pollin
has some of the great economic homework to back up the policy prescriptions.
＊This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate (Naomi Klein)
It's hard not to find the passion of this book infectious. And it points out a
lot of really scummy behavior on the part of others. I don't necessarily agree
with the idea that anti-capitalism and environmentalism have to come hand-in-hand,
but the book is good food for thought. Naomi Klein is a polarizing figure and I
don't always love her takes but I think she's one of the good guys (er, gals) on
the lefty side who is anti-globohomo.
Intellectual Texts for Contemplation:
＊The Physics of Climate Change (Lawrence M. Krauss)
If you ever meet someone who doesn't trust the IPCC etc., give them this and ask
them if anything in it seems unreasonable. They will quickly fold and pivot to
another point, probably economic or political. That's what the other books here
are for.
＊Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues
from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming (Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway)
Fair, objective reporting on IRL Captain Planet villains and some very reasonable
takeaways. Exposes a ton of now decades-old tactics of misinformation and
propaganda.
＊The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (David Wallace-Wells)
The apex of climate doom porn. Read it if you want some scenarios that are
frightening enough to motivate people. Just be clear that a lot of the things
in it are "worst-case scenarios," not written in stone. Most have a high degree
of likelihood, but don't take them all as ironclad predictions.
＊The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate
Disruption (Dahr Jamail)
Beautiful but harrowing book about many of the "frontlines" of global heating
(the Arctic, the Amazon, the Great Barrier Reef, etc.). Some cringe lines here
and there but mostly it's a wonderful book that puts into words things that we
all secretly feel. It might give you some degree of peace in the face of the
terrors to come.
＊The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Elizabeth Kolbert)
＊Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (Elizabeth Kolbert)
The first is an excellent book to understand what exactly we mean to the earth
on a geological scale. The answer? Almost nothing. Which is both a comforting and
somewhat scary thought. The second is not as essential but has some interesting
information about technological advances to mitigate environmental problems, from
the promising to the completely ludicrous.
1. Tereza Pultarova, "Milankovitch cycles: What are they and how do they affect
Earth?," Space.com, 2022/06/14
2. Ibid.
3. "Is the Sun causing global warming?", NASA Climate FAQ
4. Alan Buis, "Why Milankovitch (Ortibal) Cycles Can't Explain Earth's Current
Warming", Ask NASA Climate, 2020/02/27
5. "There Is No Impending 'Mini Ice Age'", Ask NASA Climate, 2020/02/13
6. Caitlyn Kennedy, "2012 State of the Climate: Temperature of the Lower
Stratosphere", Climate.gov, 2013/07/30
7. Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of
Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming,
Bloomsbury Press, 2010, "Introduction," p. 2
8. Lawrence M. Krauss, The Physics of Climate Change, Post Hill Press, 2021,
"Climate Change Today," p. 103
9. Bill Gates, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the
Breakthroughs We Need, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2021, "Introduction:
51 Billion to Zero," p. 24
10. Michon Scott & Rebecca Lindsey,"What's the hottest Earth's ever been?",
Climate.gov, 2020/06/18
11. "The Electromagnetic Spectrum", NASA: Imagine the Universe!, 2013/03
12. Lawrence M. Krauss, The Physics of Climate Change, Post Hill Press, 2021, "The
Birth of Climate Change," p. 48
13. David Herring, "Doesn't carbon dioxide in the atmosphere come from natural
sources?", Climate.gov, 2020/10/29
14. David Carrington, "Too late now to save Arctic summer ice, climate scientists
find", The Guardian, 2023/06/06
15. Michael E. Mann, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back the Planet,
PublicAffairs, 2021, "Introduction," p. 1
16. George Lakoff, The ALL NEW Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and
Frame the Debate, 2014, Chapter 4: "Systemic Causation," p. 90-97
17. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., Chapter 3: "The 'Crying Indian' and the Birth of the
Deflection Campaign," p. 91-104
18. "Does Noam Chomsky Hate America?", Valuetainment
19. Holy Bhagavad Gita
20. "Noam Chomsky on Choosing Optimism", Sustainably Motivated, 2017/03/12
21. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., Chapter 5: "Put a Price on It. OR NOT.," p. 166
22. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., p. 169
23. "How cap and trade works", Environmental Defense Fund
24. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., p. 167-168
25. "California Cap and Trade", Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
26. Ismael Arciniegas Rueda, "Can China's Green Energy Acceleration Put at Risk
the West's Hydrogen Plans?", RAND Corporation, 2023/04/02
27. Sara Schonhardt, "China Invests $546 Billion in Clean Energy, Far Surpassing
the U.S.", Scientific American: E&E News, 2023/01/30
28. Laura Allen, "Green energy is cheaper than fossil fuels, a new study finds",
Science News: Explores, 2023/01/20
29. James Wight, "Zero Carbon Australia: We can do it", Skeptical Science,
2011/03/19
30. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., Chapter 6: "Sinking the Competition," p. 237
31. Patrick Quinn, "After devastating tornado, town is reborn 'green'", USA Today,
2013/04/13
32. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., Chapter 7: "The Non-Solution Solution," p. 247-254
33. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., p. 282
34. Michael E. Mann, Ibid., Chapter 6: "Sinking the Competition," p. 211-218
35. Noam Chomsky & Robert Pollin, The Climate Crisis and the Global Green New
Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet, "Appendix: A Framework for
Funding the Global Green New Deal," p. 199-201
36. Leo Tolstoy [trans. Constance Garnett], The Kingdom of God Is Within You,
WikiSource, 1894, Book X, Section 251
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