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.
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.
Counterpoint? We'll see what I can come up with in Part 4 of 5: Bargaining :o)
Gosh, it must be so hard to witness our follies for so long, Suzanne. The curse of increased wisdom and deeper understanding that comes with age also comes with increased frustration. So much inner work must be done to stay sane in an insane world and keep madness, despair, depression and apathy at bay. It's tempting to embrace ignorance and stop paying attention, but some things one sees just cannot be unseen. The lucky of us find ways via love, connection, gratitude & acceptance, and meaningful work. Some of us are not so fortunate and are left drowning alone in a storm.
Thank you for all your efforts throughout the years; I'm sure you have affected a lot of people in a positive way. I'll check your substack out. 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.
Came to adulthood in 1970s. Knew we were going in the wrong direction. And have watched as the crisis is just accelerating at a faster pace. So it has become personal not just theoretical in this decade. Canadian wildfires produce smoke that spreads to Europe. I spent days unable to go outside without a mask due to the particles. The fires are even normalized by government and media as they become part of a feedback loop. Here in Ontario, we are getting destructive tornadoes. Used to be rare. My neighbours had trees fall on their homes and vehicles. The area looked like a war zone afterwards. So amongst all this evidence in front of our very eyes, life goes on as usual. Yes the insurance companies are the realists. They can’t look away.
Cognitive dissonance. Hell yeah. And now we have a madman throwing our shared Earth into reverse and driving us all off the cliff even faster.
At my age of 72, I am much better at accepting reality and facing the inevitability of death. So I guess I’m accepting the notion of my own death. And even the death of our planet. It is still possible to accept reality while mourning the losses we face.
Yes, it seems as if there is an attempt to normalize these increasingly boggling disasters. I wrote about the horrors of the Canadian wildfires of 2023 (I breathed it in Buffalo, NY), and had a cynical chortle as Premier Tar Sand Oil Smith lamented Jasper burning in 2024. And yeah, now we have a madman dismantling the inadequate attempts being made to slow this daily horror show of drought, fire, rising oceans, and permafrost melt. Unbearably on top of that we're watching fascism roll over the US as people are abducted by masked ICE agents and deported without due process or legitimate charges to notorious prisons in dictatorial countries. There is also a massive build out of domestic prisons taking place.
The Big Beautiful Bill is set to expand ICE and prison funding stunningly, I'm collecting figures. Never when I started writing about climate change four years ago did I anticipate feeling obligated to write about such things or the blatant, horrifying genocide of Gaza.
I'm a little younger than you, but given where we are heading getting off the planet may look pretty appealing in the near future. It's easy to see a terrible acceleration of these issues here and now.
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!
Thank you very much! I did mention overpopulation/overconsumption (overshoot) in parts 1 & 2, but, as many people may stumble upon this article without having read the first two, it deserves mentioning here also. I have, therefore, added a paragraph on it. The 6th extinction event was already mentioned.
I'm not a physicist so delving into details about BTUs is a bit above my level of understanding. I am a pragmatist, however, and I respect experts, so while I see different calculations on the number of Hiroshima bombs since they're all in the countless billions per year the exact number is fairly moot given that all numbers lead to the same conclusion: it ends in doom and we should slam the brakes.
I have noticed something: the most pessimistic people of all seem to be physicists, probably because they know for a certainty that we cannot break the laws of physics. I like this quote:
“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
― Arthur Eddington
Thanks for the C3S resource tip and for sharing your PDF. Best wishes.
Life in its innate power to bring a higher order or organization of matter from simpler energy forms is neg-entropic, is it not? Death follows the 2nd Law perfectly.
Seeing it laid out so simply hurts. I'm often the one to bring up these truths and recently have also been the one to realize most people don't want to hear about it. Hard to exist, but you know that
Jan, this is an amazing effort - your tremendous writing that I have enjoyed so much! I do not know how I stumbled over these articles but its been a journey just reading it all and going through the maze that are your hyperlinks!
I am so looking forward to the next Parts. Yes, its a frightening future world but its so clear how this engine keeps going. Actually since I am getting 'older' I am selfishly thinking I might escape the worst but I am not naïve so probably I won't! Like all of us we have knowledge of the suffering all around the world but just cannot imagine that could be us!!! But it literally could. Oh no, I would not like that at all. :(
Thank you so much, Karina. I'm very glad you're enjoying it. I'm looking forward to the next parts myself, haha. I'm taking my sweet time thinking about them and also needing some breaks from this insanely heavy topic just to stay sane (I recommend the same when it all starts feeling like way too much to handle).
The older anyone is, the less of the descent they will witness. I guess that's a silver lining to not being a spring chicken anymore. I have found that a major difference in how well people handle this is whether or not they have children. I speculate that it's much easier to handle if one is eventually shuffling off this mortal coil without leaving anyone behind one loves so unconditionally as one's children.
There's no selfishness involved, please don't feel guilty of anything. You were born into this mess and if you contributed to it in any minute way, so would anyone else have done in your shoes. All we can do is try to do one's best. "Don't do unto others..", practice random acts of kindness, and be grateful for what one has, however small. The usual stuff, really. And don't catastrophise. The future is a bell curve of probabilities that will be heavily affected by our (unpredictable) behaviour and a ton of happenstance. Some people focus on the EROI collapse (energy/Seneca cliff) within a scary short timeframe of 6 years; here I try to bear in mind that we have been wrong before in our ability to kick that can down the road.
I'm glad you enjoy the links. I tried to include some juicy stuff. There's more on my resource page, accessible from my main page. Beware, it's an infinite topic that may swallow all your time and focus, to little good end. But also incredibly fascinating, complicated and horrifying. It's hard to look away once you begin delving. Good luck and best wishes.
Thank you so much for your awesome response Jan. I totally agree with everything you wrote and will keep it all in mind as I scramble around to learn more. Very best wishes to you as well Jan.
I am disappointed with everybody. Am I collapse aware? I have been for decades. I was applying the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross model to what was going to happen when peak oil hit America when Elisabeth was giving a talk about her book at the fifth Ave Theater in Seattle Washington. I was there. All of you are wrong to apply the model because the world is not going to die. In a world of 8 billion 7 billion can die leaving 1 billion remaining. A remnant survives, and you have the power to make things better or worse for this remnant. Acceptance, the end stage does not help whatever future comes. It makes you comfortable where you are, and a future will come. Kübler-Ross modeled a certainty that comes for us all. The only certainty that applying Kübler-Ross to climate change does is make sure that you will do nothing to mitigate whatever the future brings, and unlike people who do die, the future does not die. The future always comes, and there is always something you can do about it. You may not like what it brings, and it does bring doom. I said at the beginning I have been collapse aware for decades. Get over your acceptance and do something to bring about a better future. If you are here you have bitten from the Apple, leave now the garden and do the work that must be done.
Really well put together and have shared on various forums. I myself have put together a presentation on Ecologicial overshoot and regenerative response, including update on current Government head in the sand measures. However, yours is far more comprehensive. Understanding the profound changes that will happen within decades, allows us to understand the importance of community and working with nature.
Bravo, Jan! Brilliant, comprehensive and creative summary! (with great cartoons and video clips). As many others have done, I’ve dedicated decades to educating myself, educating others, and advocating for climate action. Clearly those of us who have done so did not adequately expose the corrupt powers undermining our efforts every step of the way. Social engineering for ignorance has worked against us in a strategic, criminal manner for 50 years. Despite knowing this, we shall carry on with love for Nature and do our best in the coming unknown. Thank you.
Thank you for the time and effort you are putting into this series . I’m 72. Went to the first Earth Day event in 1970 and have watched in anger, disbelief, dismay, horror and sadness as this has unfolded over the last 50 years.
It’s comforting to at last find others, lay people, who understand the magnitude of what’s happening in our planet. The information has been available but ignored and in my experience this isn’t a topic most people want to discuss.
As a species we will not, cannot stop what we have set in motion. At best, as individuals, in our own ways, we can try to mitigate the suffering that is coming.
I definitely catch myself feeling anger when I try to talk about these issues even in a light way. There is always what seems like a mandatory eye roll. It creates anger. Almost as if you wish you could shake them to awake!
The whaling tours watch the dying of a species as it entertains them before sinking to the bottom in starvation.
The louder the splash, the more of the last morsels in food, will be stunned for a final supper.
The most intelligent and gentle creature has been sacrificed in technology, garbage and soliciting greed of an educated 1% diet.
The one percent is one person in 100 of your friends or relations or associates every day, they are ‘cold’, practical, narcissistic of practice, not heart, transparent of obsequious behaviour, teacherly and easily offended in conversation, even environmentalists, because any cause for concern, is a cause for profits.
I feel like there is an extreme left and right. The people in the middle are being crushed. At least it seems that way to me.
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.
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.
Counterpoint? We'll see what I can come up with in Part 4 of 5: Bargaining :o)
Gosh, it must be so hard to witness our follies for so long, Suzanne. The curse of increased wisdom and deeper understanding that comes with age also comes with increased frustration. So much inner work must be done to stay sane in an insane world and keep madness, despair, depression and apathy at bay. It's tempting to embrace ignorance and stop paying attention, but some things one sees just cannot be unseen. The lucky of us find ways via love, connection, gratitude & acceptance, and meaningful work. Some of us are not so fortunate and are left drowning alone in a storm.
Thank you for all your efforts throughout the years; I'm sure you have affected a lot of people in a positive way. I'll check your substack out. 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.
Came to adulthood in 1970s. Knew we were going in the wrong direction. And have watched as the crisis is just accelerating at a faster pace. So it has become personal not just theoretical in this decade. Canadian wildfires produce smoke that spreads to Europe. I spent days unable to go outside without a mask due to the particles. The fires are even normalized by government and media as they become part of a feedback loop. Here in Ontario, we are getting destructive tornadoes. Used to be rare. My neighbours had trees fall on their homes and vehicles. The area looked like a war zone afterwards. So amongst all this evidence in front of our very eyes, life goes on as usual. Yes the insurance companies are the realists. They can’t look away.
Cognitive dissonance. Hell yeah. And now we have a madman throwing our shared Earth into reverse and driving us all off the cliff even faster.
At my age of 72, I am much better at accepting reality and facing the inevitability of death. So I guess I’m accepting the notion of my own death. And even the death of our planet. It is still possible to accept reality while mourning the losses we face.
Yes, it seems as if there is an attempt to normalize these increasingly boggling disasters. I wrote about the horrors of the Canadian wildfires of 2023 (I breathed it in Buffalo, NY), and had a cynical chortle as Premier Tar Sand Oil Smith lamented Jasper burning in 2024. And yeah, now we have a madman dismantling the inadequate attempts being made to slow this daily horror show of drought, fire, rising oceans, and permafrost melt. Unbearably on top of that we're watching fascism roll over the US as people are abducted by masked ICE agents and deported without due process or legitimate charges to notorious prisons in dictatorial countries. There is also a massive build out of domestic prisons taking place.
The Big Beautiful Bill is set to expand ICE and prison funding stunningly, I'm collecting figures. Never when I started writing about climate change four years ago did I anticipate feeling obligated to write about such things or the blatant, horrifying genocide of Gaza.
I'm a little younger than you, but given where we are heading getting off the planet may look pretty appealing in the near future. It's easy to see a terrible acceleration of these issues here and now.
https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/theres-something-in-the-air
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!
Thank you very much! I did mention overpopulation/overconsumption (overshoot) in parts 1 & 2, but, as many people may stumble upon this article without having read the first two, it deserves mentioning here also. I have, therefore, added a paragraph on it. The 6th extinction event was already mentioned.
I'm not a physicist so delving into details about BTUs is a bit above my level of understanding. I am a pragmatist, however, and I respect experts, so while I see different calculations on the number of Hiroshima bombs since they're all in the countless billions per year the exact number is fairly moot given that all numbers lead to the same conclusion: it ends in doom and we should slam the brakes.
I have noticed something: the most pessimistic people of all seem to be physicists, probably because they know for a certainty that we cannot break the laws of physics. I like this quote:
“The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation - well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the Second Law of Thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it to collapse in deepest humiliation.”
― Arthur Eddington
Thanks for the C3S resource tip and for sharing your PDF. Best wishes.
Life in its innate power to bring a higher order or organization of matter from simpler energy forms is neg-entropic, is it not? Death follows the 2nd Law perfectly.
Seeing it laid out so simply hurts. I'm often the one to bring up these truths and recently have also been the one to realize most people don't want to hear about it. Hard to exist, but you know that
Jan, this is an amazing effort - your tremendous writing that I have enjoyed so much! I do not know how I stumbled over these articles but its been a journey just reading it all and going through the maze that are your hyperlinks!
I am so looking forward to the next Parts. Yes, its a frightening future world but its so clear how this engine keeps going. Actually since I am getting 'older' I am selfishly thinking I might escape the worst but I am not naïve so probably I won't! Like all of us we have knowledge of the suffering all around the world but just cannot imagine that could be us!!! But it literally could. Oh no, I would not like that at all. :(
Thank you so much, Karina. I'm very glad you're enjoying it. I'm looking forward to the next parts myself, haha. I'm taking my sweet time thinking about them and also needing some breaks from this insanely heavy topic just to stay sane (I recommend the same when it all starts feeling like way too much to handle).
The older anyone is, the less of the descent they will witness. I guess that's a silver lining to not being a spring chicken anymore. I have found that a major difference in how well people handle this is whether or not they have children. I speculate that it's much easier to handle if one is eventually shuffling off this mortal coil without leaving anyone behind one loves so unconditionally as one's children.
There's no selfishness involved, please don't feel guilty of anything. You were born into this mess and if you contributed to it in any minute way, so would anyone else have done in your shoes. All we can do is try to do one's best. "Don't do unto others..", practice random acts of kindness, and be grateful for what one has, however small. The usual stuff, really. And don't catastrophise. The future is a bell curve of probabilities that will be heavily affected by our (unpredictable) behaviour and a ton of happenstance. Some people focus on the EROI collapse (energy/Seneca cliff) within a scary short timeframe of 6 years; here I try to bear in mind that we have been wrong before in our ability to kick that can down the road.
I'm glad you enjoy the links. I tried to include some juicy stuff. There's more on my resource page, accessible from my main page. Beware, it's an infinite topic that may swallow all your time and focus, to little good end. But also incredibly fascinating, complicated and horrifying. It's hard to look away once you begin delving. Good luck and best wishes.
Thank you so much for your awesome response Jan. I totally agree with everything you wrote and will keep it all in mind as I scramble around to learn more. Very best wishes to you as well Jan.
Very good. Mother Earth will be fine once she shakes us off- the planet is not in danger.
I am disappointed with everybody. Am I collapse aware? I have been for decades. I was applying the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross model to what was going to happen when peak oil hit America when Elisabeth was giving a talk about her book at the fifth Ave Theater in Seattle Washington. I was there. All of you are wrong to apply the model because the world is not going to die. In a world of 8 billion 7 billion can die leaving 1 billion remaining. A remnant survives, and you have the power to make things better or worse for this remnant. Acceptance, the end stage does not help whatever future comes. It makes you comfortable where you are, and a future will come. Kübler-Ross modeled a certainty that comes for us all. The only certainty that applying Kübler-Ross to climate change does is make sure that you will do nothing to mitigate whatever the future brings, and unlike people who do die, the future does not die. The future always comes, and there is always something you can do about it. You may not like what it brings, and it does bring doom. I said at the beginning I have been collapse aware for decades. Get over your acceptance and do something to bring about a better future. If you are here you have bitten from the Apple, leave now the garden and do the work that must be done.
Want something to do? Spread the word: https://youtu.be/AcPgHDGc8_0
Carbon Fee and Dividend, learn about it! There will be a quiz. How is this different from other carbon schemes?
Really well put together and have shared on various forums. I myself have put together a presentation on Ecologicial overshoot and regenerative response, including update on current Government head in the sand measures. However, yours is far more comprehensive. Understanding the profound changes that will happen within decades, allows us to understand the importance of community and working with nature.
Thank you, I appreciate it 🙏🏻
Bravo, Jan! Brilliant, comprehensive and creative summary! (with great cartoons and video clips). As many others have done, I’ve dedicated decades to educating myself, educating others, and advocating for climate action. Clearly those of us who have done so did not adequately expose the corrupt powers undermining our efforts every step of the way. Social engineering for ignorance has worked against us in a strategic, criminal manner for 50 years. Despite knowing this, we shall carry on with love for Nature and do our best in the coming unknown. Thank you.
Thank you very much! And bless you for your efforts. I wish you best of luck.
Thank you for the time and effort you are putting into this series . I’m 72. Went to the first Earth Day event in 1970 and have watched in anger, disbelief, dismay, horror and sadness as this has unfolded over the last 50 years.
It’s comforting to at last find others, lay people, who understand the magnitude of what’s happening in our planet. The information has been available but ignored and in my experience this isn’t a topic most people want to discuss.
As a species we will not, cannot stop what we have set in motion. At best, as individuals, in our own ways, we can try to mitigate the suffering that is coming.
I can't imagine what it must have been like to spend a lifetime watching it all.
I completely agree with your assessment. I hope we can soon fully awaken and begin full scale mitigation. (I'm not counting on it)
I definitely catch myself feeling anger when I try to talk about these issues even in a light way. There is always what seems like a mandatory eye roll. It creates anger. Almost as if you wish you could shake them to awake!
The only thing required is sensitivity.
The whaling tours watch the dying of a species as it entertains them before sinking to the bottom in starvation.
The louder the splash, the more of the last morsels in food, will be stunned for a final supper.
The most intelligent and gentle creature has been sacrificed in technology, garbage and soliciting greed of an educated 1% diet.
The one percent is one person in 100 of your friends or relations or associates every day, they are ‘cold’, practical, narcissistic of practice, not heart, transparent of obsequious behaviour, teacherly and easily offended in conversation, even environmentalists, because any cause for concern, is a cause for profits.