Yes, all signs point in that direction, except perhaps the ones we can’t see.
Note: my thanks to Dooey for providing me with his permission to link his diary and use his name in the text of this article. :-)
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/17/2186431/-How-hot-is-too-hot
20 years ago, I suffered a personal tragedy of the first order. Had I not been stronger it would have deranged me and probably shortened my life — perhaps bluntly.
After the initial ‘explosion’, I was in need of legal counsel and a close friend arranged for me to get advice from one of the top NYC lawyers in the appropriate legal field.
Afterward, he told my friend that he did not think I had what it took to confront the rigors of litigation and my friend passed that on to me. Rather than taking the wind out of my sails, it steeled me for what I was to endure. 15 years later, during which time I paid for 9 lawyers (on both sides), I was finally successful and as a byproduct, proved him wrong. Although doing so was far from my primary motivation, which was peace of mind, and it wouldn’t have sustained me if it had been, I tell this story to make a point.
People who have the right mix to rally functional determination and make a ‘binding’ personal commitment, are not easily put off.
When it comes to climate commitment, these are the people who are making meaningful change. To cross the ‘Rubicon’ it is necessary to have such a high level of conviction about purpose and goal, that the courage instilled, while it may falter from time to time, remains stubbornly resilient and nearly indestructible.
In the face of the ever worsening environment and the nightmare of El Niño, this resolve gets tested past limits, with each blow either strengthening or ultimately winnowing those tested and ‘burned’.
Recently, one of my ‘guardians’ on this site, posted a potentially contentious diary, which gave voice to his conviction that we have passed any possibility of halting environmental collapse and we need to prepare people for what is now coming.
Dooey supported me as I struggled to make people on DK wake up to the dire threat of climate collapse while there was still time. He was perhaps the first to offer me encouragement and advice. He himself works tirelessly, reclaiming land through responsible husbandry and is one of, at most, a couple dozen people here, that are actively committed and engaged in aggressively promoting environmental awareness.
But, without knowing him better, others sometime label him as a ‘doomer’.
I am hoping soon to post a diary that addresses ‘dooming’ from a more measured perspective— one that I acquired from knowing Dooey.
Daily, I struggle to maintain a balance between ‘optimism’ and ‘pessimism’, especially in the face of Pakalolo’s posts, as I strive to keep my thinking unfettered by such pre-determined mental states.
My goal is to establish and maintain a view that is as close to realistic as I am capable of getting.
I attempt to do this by absorbing as much information as I can, through a variety of sources and across multiple disciplines. Much important information is not being widely enough disseminated and important facts and ideas are coming in from a wide range of fields.
As things stand now, there is a possibility that ‘Doomers’ will prove to be correct in their assessment and I agree that we need to be prepared for this possibility. But it is still too soon to accept it as inevitable. One of the cornerstones of the doomer outlook is grounded in what I have come to see as our collective PTSD. Over and over, the assumption is made that humans will do nothing, because they have so far done so little, and if we choose to, our ‘track record’ can be seen as abysmal. This, I feel, is a myopic, ‘glass half empty’ view, that is not accurately based in a more well-rounded understanding of human nature. It is propagated in the current zeitgeist and that is in the process of shifting. Once it ‘flips’, everything will look different.
For many years I held out little hope for our survival prospects, until finally information started surfacing that gave me a broader perspective. I started hearing about the many things being done by private individuals and organizations and I also began to understand the roles innovation and human ingenuity were to play. But even now this more balanced view gets knocked around, see-sawing between hope and despair as I absorb climate news, pro and con.
When I read the statistics and learn of the catastrophic events attached to them, I am initially afflicted by raw fear and an attack of despair. Taken face value, such information leads me see hopelessness as logical and therefore doom as inevitable.
All the signs certainly appear to point in that direction — except perhaps the ones we can’t see.
For there are thousands of major efforts being made, many of which have been being quietly pursued for decades, as well as multiple millions of (or perhaps more accurately, ‘countless’ because most can’t be tracked) engaged individuals.
There are also tools and solutions in the process of being innovated, as well as innovations yet to come. Human innovation flourishes under ‘hot house’ conditions and there is currently an explosion of technological advances and creative thinking underway. There are also regular unexpected ‘breakthroughs’, which do not necessarily reach the evening news. (The ‘Traitor’ is a ‘gravedigger’, burying much we need to know.) Cement batteries are a remarkable example:
www.sciencedaily.com/...
And then there are the unknowns, the non-verifiable and the unexpected.
All of which should take prediction off the betting table.
But for some it does not.
As a species, we’ve never been comfortable with uncertainty.
We seek answers, because a lack of certainty unsettles our inner gyroscope, and answers become more accessible and acceptable when they aren’t examined too closely.
Perhaps the most daunting aspect of coping with environmental collapse is its wild and unwieldy nature and the huge level of uncertainty inherent to a situation that moves savagely outside the boundaries of our collective experience.
War is the closest relevant comparable, having many close parallels. But at its most destructive, it pales when compared to what we are facing, which, even with the blinders of denial removed, defies any level of encompassing comprehension.
We are ‘the blind men’ and this ‘elephant’ is the Hadron Super Collider. Good luck with that.
Nevertheless, when faced with the reality of a possible environmental ‘super nova’ our minds naturally struggle to make sense of it and the ‘easiest’ path for resolution leads to doom.
In the comments for Dooey’s post, there is a long exchange between the author and a member I think quite highly of, as he speaks well, defends others, remains courteous and always has very cogent and insightful points which help build a healthy and informative dialogue. He is at his best here and in many ways, so is the diarist. Their back and forth is highly valuable because it touches on so many of the issues surrounding the tensions between dooming and pro-action, some of which are generated by misconceptions which arise from our tendency to polarize issues.
While he takes Dooey to task about his message and the detrimental effect it can have on climate proaction, I have a different way of parsing this.
Although blunt and forceful in communicating his conviction, Dooey is not what I have come to think of as a ‘militant doomer’.
In general (and it’s amazing how ‘cookie cut’ they are) ‘militants’ project their ‘convenient conviction’ aggressively with a superior attitude and while demeaning others, delude themselves. They are almost always ill-informed and incapable of constructive discourse, largely because they have, at best, a very tenuous grip on their egos. They do themselves no service when they open their mouths.
By contrast, Dooey sincerely believes we have moved into the ‘end’ phase of collapse and that it is normal that many cannot accept that ‘fact’. He is well informed and his diary is littered with links which he provides to support his position.
Although, to the best of my knowledge, while not scientifically veritable — yet — his message still falls well into the range of valuable and healthy discourse.
Dooey’s conviction has the effect of testing the ‘metal’ of DK readers. While it certainly does not provide a ‘positive’ rallying call or reassurance for those of us struggling to ‘keep our chins up’, exposure to it separates the ‘woke’ from the ‘chaff’.
If it gives some the excuse for copping out by avoiding action as ‘futile’, these are people who are not ready yet to make a difference. You can’t build a united front, with unseasoned materials.
Over the years I’ve read every climate post I could on DK and if I was going to succumb to despair and avoidance, I would have done so almost from the start. History has shown us abundantly, that committed determination carries more weight than a numerically superior force of the ‘forced’.
For decades many of us tiptoed around climate issues naively, worried that we would scare people off. That didn’t help, because, they simply weren’t ready and whether using ‘kid gloves’ or ‘boxing’, both approaches only served to enable their denial. For the most part, I think that still applies. Worrying about scaring them off now, probably won’t make an appreciable difference in our overall climate response either.
While I personally would prefer it if we could keep the climate action dialogue positive as a boost to moral, and I essentially agree with Dooey’s protagonist regarding the benefit of this, I also feel that we would run the risk of softening the threat, by sidelining the scenario Dooey presents.
Although we’re not all on the same page, we’re in the same book, striving to create a fuller, more informed response.
There is room for opposing convictions in our climate house on DK, provided they are well meant, well considered and shared respectfully.
If we are not strong enough to support that, we won’t be strong enough to weather what lies ahead.