Gosh, this brilliantly captures the harsh truth that we've been conditioned to ignore. It’s chilling to think that we’ve been kicking the can down the road for so long, leaving future (and current) generations to face the fallout. It’s a stark reminder of how deeply entrenched our denial is—and how urgently we need to break from it.
Three years ago, I decided to start investigating our plight because of "doomers" and climate scientists I met or became aware of on Twitter. I started with a bias, even as a teen 50 years ago I felt the insanity and unsustainability of the world we have created. My research and writing has found much of the same as yours, so I can appreciate the amount of time and understanding that went into this essay. Some days I ask why I persist. The outcome, whatever the details of the scenario, are cast. I suppose I do it because once your eyes are open, they can never close and as a way of processing grief. I'm well into the acceptance phase at this point. I'm glad to find solace in meeting others the world over who live in realty recognize our situation.
It just could be that while some are giving their lives to struggling with climate change and some have given up on finding a way, that a solution comes from what neither are contemplating. Unarguably, the best chance we have is if everyone is on the same page with all hands on deck to address the challenges. That would require a shift of consciousness, and that’s something we could work on. It’s even riding the horse in the direction it’s going, which is so requirement #1 for a massive change.
I agree, it would require a paradigm shift in consciousness. Perhaps newer generations will be able to instigate that. I just fear it is too late, and am sad about the mess they are inheriting. Best wishes.
It is comforting to meet the few rare individuals who are aware (IRL); it's like an entire huge WALL isn't in the way of the connection. I'll be philosophising about how to deal with being collapse aware in parts 4 & 5 Keep up the good work. Best wishes.
My personal grief and the grief I feel for our collapsing world are now intertwined. I'd been able to somewhat separate the two, but now I regularly sit in my (empty) bathtub and weep. It's maddening not to sit with the full devastation.
You have my deepest sympathies. I know how that feels (as I described in Part 2: Depression).
My best advice is to disconnect completely from everything that triggers sadness and anxiety in you. Put on your own oxygen mask first, and maybe return to the topic(s) sometime in the future from a more robust place. Also pets, hugs and nature. I hope you have someone. Best wishes.
PS. The Matter With Things is very high on my TBR pile :)
Thank you! Pets and nature and indeed the best. II sit in my bathtub to keep from upsetting my dogs and prevent them from trying to comfort me. I think grieving is necessary.. Courage and hope are the antidote to despair, but if you don't have the courage to allow yourself to sit with the pain, then there is no hope. Grieving doesn't diminish your inner resources. Grieving makes space.
My plan for the group is to read the book slowly, so it doesn't take up all of our time, but also so that we can really think about it and explore its message in our psyches and minds.
Best overall summary of the elements of climate collapse I've seen anywhere! Thank you for the pain. No pain, no gain. Enlightenment is just the other side of grief. Only the courageous may enter here. However, the one, perhaps most important element you left out is our massive human overpopulation/overconsumption. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were the last ecolgically balanced self-sustaining population of migratory Hunter-Gatherers/pastoralists just a few thousand years ago. What could go wrong? Everything?
A few corrections to your stats: we are now heating at the rate of 0.2 degC annually (C3S), so 1 degC every 5 yrs., but accelerating, so any child born today may get to burn-up by their 23rd BD in 2047. Still want to birth another innocent life into this dying world? No, well neither do 47% of American 18-50 by a recent survey. Only open borders and allowing mass migrations from desperately overcrowded nations like, well, more than half of Africa and most of Haiti. So, close the borders with already over crowded/overpopulated countries to FORCE the native populations to forgo reproduction and jack-up the UN to furnish CONTRACEPTION to their/our entire population.
You did not mention the 6th Extinction: we are 33% of the terrestrial mammalian biomass, our "domestic" animals 64-68%, so that leaves 1-3% "wild". Also, you did not mention the movie "The Planet of the Humans", a realistic take down of the "alternative energy" fraud. Math math estimates that every one of the 115M rooftop solar panels actually absorbs and re-radiates 34,500 BTUs on an average sunny day, and the average human metabolizing carbon based foods generates 11,000 BTUs/d. when mostly resting. Polymath Eliot Jacobson calculates that we are generating the heat energy equivalent of 20 (not your graph's 13) Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases 63 trillion BTU's. The 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice annually, 3.3 billion tons/d, is the canary in the cola mine, where one pound of ice absorbs 144 BTUs. You do the math.
Thanks for the book references. Some of us still read longer posts than tweets, so you might wish to mention my free online e-book PDF, "Stress R Us". The fossil fuel lobby and its propaganda arm (think Goebbels) is largely responsible for the fog of denial prevailing in our collapsing environment and your financial analysis seems right-on to me. Thanks for all your work!
Gosh, this brilliantly captures the harsh truth that we've been conditioned to ignore. It’s chilling to think that we’ve been kicking the can down the road for so long, leaving future (and current) generations to face the fallout. It’s a stark reminder of how deeply entrenched our denial is—and how urgently we need to break from it.
There is no extreme left🙄 Not even sure where you got that ides. Both parties are owned by the corporations.
*Idea.
Three years ago, I decided to start investigating our plight because of "doomers" and climate scientists I met or became aware of on Twitter. I started with a bias, even as a teen 50 years ago I felt the insanity and unsustainability of the world we have created. My research and writing has found much of the same as yours, so I can appreciate the amount of time and understanding that went into this essay. Some days I ask why I persist. The outcome, whatever the details of the scenario, are cast. I suppose I do it because once your eyes are open, they can never close and as a way of processing grief. I'm well into the acceptance phase at this point. I'm glad to find solace in meeting others the world over who live in realty recognize our situation.
It just could be that while some are giving their lives to struggling with climate change and some have given up on finding a way, that a solution comes from what neither are contemplating. Unarguably, the best chance we have is if everyone is on the same page with all hands on deck to address the challenges. That would require a shift of consciousness, and that’s something we could work on. It’s even riding the horse in the direction it’s going, which is so requirement #1 for a massive change.
I agree, it would require a paradigm shift in consciousness. Perhaps newer generations will be able to instigate that. I just fear it is too late, and am sad about the mess they are inheriting. Best wishes.
Thanks, Geoff. Yes, some very few of us are simply unable to look away, like C. Ingram in her fantastic essay Facing Extinction https://www.huffpost.com/entry/facing-extinction-humans-animals-plants-species_n_5d2ddc04e4b0a873f6420bd3
It is comforting to meet the few rare individuals who are aware (IRL); it's like an entire huge WALL isn't in the way of the connection. I'll be philosophising about how to deal with being collapse aware in parts 4 & 5 Keep up the good work. Best wishes.
Thank you for writing this Jan, and capturing so well what a lot of us are thinking and feeling. Keep up the good work. It is appreciated.
Thank you, Matt, I appreciate it. And likewise, and thank you for the rec. Best wishes.
My personal grief and the grief I feel for our collapsing world are now intertwined. I'd been able to somewhat separate the two, but now I regularly sit in my (empty) bathtub and weep. It's maddening not to sit with the full devastation.
You have my deepest sympathies. I know how that feels (as I described in Part 2: Depression).
My best advice is to disconnect completely from everything that triggers sadness and anxiety in you. Put on your own oxygen mask first, and maybe return to the topic(s) sometime in the future from a more robust place. Also pets, hugs and nature. I hope you have someone. Best wishes.
PS. The Matter With Things is very high on my TBR pile :)
Thank you! Pets and nature and indeed the best. II sit in my bathtub to keep from upsetting my dogs and prevent them from trying to comfort me. I think grieving is necessary.. Courage and hope are the antidote to despair, but if you don't have the courage to allow yourself to sit with the pain, then there is no hope. Grieving doesn't diminish your inner resources. Grieving makes space.
My plan for the group is to read the book slowly, so it doesn't take up all of our time, but also so that we can really think about it and explore its message in our psyches and minds.
That was meant to be psyches and lives.
Also, did you know the ozone layer is back and is worse than ever per WMO report?
Do you mean the hole in the ozone layer? I did not; can you link a source, please?
https://library.wmo.int/viewer/68835/?offset=#page=24&viewer=picture&o=bookmark&n=0&q=
Best overall summary of the elements of climate collapse I've seen anywhere! Thank you for the pain. No pain, no gain. Enlightenment is just the other side of grief. Only the courageous may enter here. However, the one, perhaps most important element you left out is our massive human overpopulation/overconsumption. We are now 3,000 times more numerous than were the last ecolgically balanced self-sustaining population of migratory Hunter-Gatherers/pastoralists just a few thousand years ago. What could go wrong? Everything?
A few corrections to your stats: we are now heating at the rate of 0.2 degC annually (C3S), so 1 degC every 5 yrs., but accelerating, so any child born today may get to burn-up by their 23rd BD in 2047. Still want to birth another innocent life into this dying world? No, well neither do 47% of American 18-50 by a recent survey. Only open borders and allowing mass migrations from desperately overcrowded nations like, well, more than half of Africa and most of Haiti. So, close the borders with already over crowded/overpopulated countries to FORCE the native populations to forgo reproduction and jack-up the UN to furnish CONTRACEPTION to their/our entire population.
You did not mention the 6th Extinction: we are 33% of the terrestrial mammalian biomass, our "domestic" animals 64-68%, so that leaves 1-3% "wild". Also, you did not mention the movie "The Planet of the Humans", a realistic take down of the "alternative energy" fraud. Math math estimates that every one of the 115M rooftop solar panels actually absorbs and re-radiates 34,500 BTUs on an average sunny day, and the average human metabolizing carbon based foods generates 11,000 BTUs/d. when mostly resting. Polymath Eliot Jacobson calculates that we are generating the heat energy equivalent of 20 (not your graph's 13) Hiroshima nuclear bomb blasts PER SECOND, where each one releases 63 trillion BTU's. The 1.2 trillion tons of melting global ice annually, 3.3 billion tons/d, is the canary in the cola mine, where one pound of ice absorbs 144 BTUs. You do the math.
Thanks for the book references. Some of us still read longer posts than tweets, so you might wish to mention my free online e-book PDF, "Stress R Us". The fossil fuel lobby and its propaganda arm (think Goebbels) is largely responsible for the fog of denial prevailing in our collapsing environment and your financial analysis seems right-on to me. Thanks for all your work!