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WEDNESDAY, OCT 16, 2019: NOTE TO FILE
Deep Adaptation
Getting Real About the Climate Apocalypse
Eric Lee, A-SOCIATED PRESS
TOPICS: HOPE, FROM THE WIRES, THINKING IN SYSTEMS
Abstract: Having read the subtitles of one XR video, I was also sent another video to view—titled: Deep Adaptation: Getting Real About the Climate Apocalypse, panel discussion at Byline Festival 2019, Roger Hallam, Professor Rupert Read & Marc Lopatin.
COOS BAY (A-P) — I got one second into the 1:14:57 long video, enough to start vetting sources. Having already vetted Hallam and Read as sources, I looked into Marc Lopatin. He is co-founder of TruthTeller.Life. He is known to Clare Farrell (XR 'cofounder'/activist, Raising Up!) and described as a 'communications strategist' on XR website.
Otherwise, last year he became a journalist by self-publishing on Medium so I read his featured offering because you have to start somewhere, and going with the best seems fair. Nov 8, 2018, 4 min read, Buying Time (1/3): Climate change and the case for ‘global breakdown cover’
It took me 25 minutes to read it, because I'm an idiot (I follow links and consider claims, highlighting and right-clicking as needed). First link was to the first XR manifesto which I didn't reread by 'about a hundred' mostly academics, including Rupert Read. If it gets too hot to grow potatoes, will farmers grow different crops? Or will we all die in a climate Armageddon? I'm an agronomist, but I don't know. Is Patin a wordsmith? Check. A 'doomer'? Check. Did he dance 'like gangbusters around the big pink party boat'? Maybe. Is 'Marc Lopatin... a former communications consultant to UN Environment and Royal Dutch Shell.'? Apparently. Was he an enthusiastic servant of the SYSTEM? Probably not. Did he make any points of interest, even though I agree with most? No.
As for Read, I did a search for something he had written, and being as he's an academic, no surprise that I found: Climate Change and Deep Adaptation, 8th February 2019 published in 'The Ecologist', and after an hour of so of following links and considering search results, I read the article.
First link to SkepticalScience and to a claim by Alan Marshall from climatechangeanswers.org. His URL is dead. For $4.99 I could buy it from GoDaddy. But inquiring minds want to know, so who is Alan Marshall? Academic, author, and artist working within the discipline of environmental studies.
My modus operandi is to vet sources, then, if at all credible, what they claim. To avoid spending what remains of my so-called life going endlessly deeper, I have to triage sources and claims. So, okay, read what Marshall claims about delayed feedback loops of up to 40 years given that he is not a natural scientist nor climatologist. He summarizes credible sources who make no extraordinary claims. Could Anthropocene global warming exceed that of the Permian? Check. Is it currently a significant (>5%) driver of species extinction? No. Will climate change be the cause of the coming Armageddon and Zombie Apocalypse? I don't know, and neither does anyone else, so moving on.
As usual, there are distractions. Rupert Read refused, it seems, to be on a BBC show, in the same room with a climate 'denialist' who was not mentioned by name. I eventually found the cretin was Philip Foster, another not-a-climatologist, but at least he has a degree in natural science (biochemistry) unlike Read. I agree with Read that the BBC should do a better job of vetting their sources and should not have given Philip Foster airtime. Then they wouldn't have felt obliged to invite another non-scientist who didn't know enough to have an opinion on how to be fair and balanced. I'm guessing that if I asked each who was the evil twin, they would point at each other. Believing in 'climate change' or a coming 'climate apocalypse' are narratives that are both in error, ignorance, and illusion as nothing is a matter of belief/disbelief. Nature doesn't care what you believe.
Unlike atavistic illiterates like me, Rupert is progressive enough to make each sentence a paragraph, so third paragraph, second source: Towards Deep Hope: Climate Tragedy, Realism and Policy, by John Foster.
Of course to vet a source, I start with the host or publisher. So there is a Green House Think Tank that likely Foster belongs to. Since 2011 their aim has been 'to lead the development of green thinking in the UK.' So what to do? Read the About page. Members were asked to name ten books and the list, without duplicates, is offered as Tree House Reading List with notes, which I read. The ones I haven't read look to be of interest to those who believe in political solutions, which I don't.
I'm guessing all are academics, but I'm often wrong. Offenwrong is my middle name.
Tim Jackson (and I've read 'Prosperity Without Growth' which is a quotable and credible reference, if at times facepalming) and Rupert Read are on the advisory group, which also includes an ecofeminist economist, political ecologist, former politicians, a Professor of Green Political Economy, and assorted academics, authors and advisors. One is Professor of Wildlife Epidemiology, but he appears to be the token scientist who may also have political interests in saving the world, however.
Okay, back to Deep Hope that presumably goes with Deep Adaptation. 'John Foster is a freelance writer and philosophy teacher, and an associate lecturer in the department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University, UK. He has been a sort of environmentalist for nearly forty years, and is a former Parliamentary and local election candidate for the UK Green Party.' Read is also a politician, UK Green Party.
Life is short and I'd normally pass at this point, but I'll read it anyway since I could be wrong about everything.
Okay, there may well be 'well-grounded in scientific evidence and hard-headed economic, sociological and political observation as any empirically-based counterfactual' verities, but interpreting them, much less offering 'real solutions' via politics, even if not as usual, is not clear or realistic especially if undertaken by those who view climate change as central and fail to see it as, compared to other drivers, the distraction it is. That we have zero chance of 'turning the super-tanker of the carbon-dependent global economy around' is clear. But, 'therefore vote Green Party' is not.
It is not clear that when climate change becomes a significant driver of extinction that there will be a significant remnant of life on Earth left to cause the extinction of. Assuming zero climate change, we Anthropocene enthusiasts, which includes even those who fail to self-describe as servants of the SYSTEM, are currently the driver of mass extinction and will continue to be even if humanity turns governance over to Citizens' Assemblies to tell them what to do as guided by XR, the Green House Think Tank (and advisors), and Rupert Read personally if necessary. However, ignoring the real drivers of species extinction to beat the drum of climate change while marching into power is criminal negligence and a most dangerous game having human extinction as likely outcome.
But Foster proves I'm not merely often wrong, but in my prejudiced way, that I've completely misjudged him. As he notes, climate change is 'no longer something we must find ways of avoiding, but something we are going to have to live with' and 'that global temperature rise will be at the very least 3-4°C over pre-industrial levels by 2100, and more likely 4-5°C'. I'd guess 5-6°C, but why quibble?
Foster goes on, 'a "perfect storm" of food, water and energy shortages, entailing famine, disease and homelessness on an epic scale, with associated worldwide migratory pressures and resource wars, is not going to form the starting point of any election manifesto under current arrangements'. This is likely even if the Green Party is in power and all changes related to climate have been fully addressed and successfully reversed to 1950 levels, when the Great Acceleration began because nothing else will have been addressed, let alone reversed.
'It is far easier for the political and policy community to stay in denial with the paradigm of "sustainable development" and its climate change corollary of managed incremental emissions constraints.' Is he quoting me? 'It looks as if what is already firmly on course to be a disaster won’t be addressed, or even recognized, in time to prevent its escalating into a global catastrophe.' He sounds like a doomer, as some mistake me for, but clearly he is not. 'Against the realism of disillusion, however, some would set what they would claim to be the realism of hope.' Could I agree more?
'What the realism of disillusion inclines us to overlook, in other words, are the transformative possibilities inherent in human action', such as the act of disbelief creating a 'teachable moment'.
'Confronting a prospect such as we now face, we need hope for life and action as crucially as we need food.' Foster may not be an extreme cornucopian optimist like Lovelock or myself, but he is close enough.
'The open-ended uncertainty inherent in polycentric networked human action addressing a massively complex and rapidly-moving ecological and political situation is here offered as a basis for what we might reasonably call counter-empirical hope.' I could have used fewer words, but what's to not agree with?
'Tragedy, unlike mere disaster, strikes at our values so deeply as to shake the whole structure.' This allows real change and real solutions, so tragedy, inherent in an unmanaged commons, is our best and only hope.
'The key idea is to see all measures of localisation, community empowerment and precautionary technology management as different specific upshots of a general policy approach which I will call, for the sake of a working label, underreaching.' To mitigate our overconfidence, our hubris the size of a planet, we must avoid the 'danger of overreaching'.
'The danger of this kind of overreaching, generalised, is hubris – in ancient Greek tragedy, the overconfidence that led men to mount catastrophic challenges to the gods. We may think of it in contemporary terms as the attitude which doesn’t just overlook how ignorant, headstrong and fallible human beings always are, but tries to forget that we are inherently exposed to irresolvable value-conflict which is always liable to combine with events in undermining any attempt at decisive mastery of our situation.' Have truer words been typed?
'Study the available options, and whenever you meet with one which strikes you as particularly neat, smart, win-win, cutting-edge, cost-effective, idiot-proof… – discard it from the list'. I often have to do so.
So we are enmeshed in a 'persistent delusion that we can happily manage complexity in which we are always also entangled. This delusion, which also lies behind everything to which precaution does apply, is close to the root of the environmental and climate crisis, and is absolutely central to the sustainability paradigm through which most policy still seeks to address it. To build into all policymaking a recognition of its hubris would be a major shift towards acknowledging our inherently tragic nature across the board. This practical suggestion is offered in good faith and perfect seriousness. It is also, as I said, meant as a kind of litmus test. The extent to which policy-makers and others familiar with the present policy world might find it hard to take the proposal quite seriously is a measure of how far we have still to move towards a climate policy paradigm subserving the realism of hope.' This is ecolacy. Wordsmiths may have to boil this down before chiseling it in granite, but printed and hung on a wall will work. And no, I'm not being snarky-ass. As words go, I'm singing along.
Clearly Foster could be Federation. He would never join the Federation or serve the Ecolate Party, but his thoughts tend towards naturocracy. So there may be hope indeed for us hubris-mans.
Before XR, Read stood as MP candidate for Cambridge in the 2015 general election and received 8% of the vote. When XR gains majority support worldwide, Read, or whomever, may be made World Potentate with Awesome Powers, but meanwhile the pace of planetary destruction will continue until someone who can tell the truth to power tells a better story that no one who votes, or thinks humans get a vote, can believe. May all people become know-nothings who iterate towards knowing.
Or humans go extinct. Either way, no one gets a vote other than, perhaps, one of voting with their feet which doesn't require moving your mouth or listening to the prattle of those who wish to inform you. It involves listing to Nature, who has all the answers, which the believing mind cannot do.
Back to Read. Fourth paragraph starts a new section on True Leadership, which is to say we haven't had any yet. Section ends with a link to his Some Thoughts on ‘Civilisational Succession’ paper of 2018, which begins and ends with 'This civilisation is finished', but the next one, maybe not.
The next section is about Transformational Adaptation. The first link is the same as the last one. So next civilization, 'we have to get serious about the processes of transformational adaptation and deep adaptation that are now necessary.' Next link is to Rupert on YouTube talking about 'This Civilisation is Finished' which is obvious, so I'm not going to watch 59 minutes that would involve vetting sources and claims. But it was featured one week on the Collapse Chronicles with 3.17K subscribers having 10,565 views, Jan 6, 2019, with 318 upvotes and only 27 downvotes, so maybe I should watch it (read subtitles later).
Next link is to Facing up to Climate Reality: Introduction to the Project by Brian Heatley & Rupert Read, another report for the Green House Think Tank.
Finally, we get to Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, IFLAS Occasional Paper 2, July 27th 2018 by Professor Jem Bendell BA (Hons) PhD. This one I will just have to give careful consideration as it is Deep Adaptation that is being considered and this is the ground-zero reference.
So I know the routine, who is Professor Jem Bendell? There are videos to watch, but I usually go for the Wikipedia article, if any, and there is one. He 'is a Professor of Sustainability Leadership, founder of the Institute for Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) at the University of Cumbria and founder of the Deep Adaptation Forum, an online forum to support practitioners and concerned citizen involved in preparing for what he considers as a very likely collapse of industrial civilisation. He regularly comments on current affairs and approaches that may help humanity face climate-induced disruption.' I'll probably just end up agreeing with everything he says, but I'll read his paper (36 pages text only) that was rejected for publication (which could be a good sign), but I'll take the dogs for a walk first.
To not drone on and on, Bendell's Deep Adaptation note sees one source for all our existential threats, climate change, and he sees no way to avoid 'inevitable near-term social collapse due to climate change'. A methane burp is likely to cause near future human demise/extinction (your choice of futures) and some readers have had to seek psychotherapy or consider eating babies. Read's take on the human condition is helping to 'inform' XR supporters. Some professors admit that climate change could have an anthropogenic component, but is likely to have beneficial effects on humanity overall (and the economy, but same thing). On the other thin edge of the Bell curve are those academics who foresee a climate apocalypse.
About nine percent of scientists say they are 'conservative' while 52 percent describe themselves as 'liberal', and 14 percent 'very liberal'. The corresponding figures for the general public are about 37, 20 and 5 percent. Among the general public, moderates and independents rank higher than any party or ideology. So perhaps (100-9-52-14=) 25 percent of scientists are not such political animals that they would rather know than believe. If 60-75 percent believe in political solutions, then their ability to think well about politicized issues may be compromised. It is likely that any political bias scientists have is 5-7 times more left-leaning, such that the catastrophists far outnumber the right-leaning, and are over represented in the media, mainstream and social.
'Responsible' scientists tend to err on the conservative side when projecting their best-guess into the future, so as things develop, 'worse than predicted' should be expected, just not catastrophically worse than predicted, but the consensus could be wrong. So as climate change unfolds, more 'worse than expected' news will be heard and should be expected. But this shouldn't be used to support worse-case scenario claims as certitudes. There could be a methane burp and 98 percent of all life on the planet could go extinct, including humans and our pets. If ending all fossil fuel use by 2025 results in a 90 percent depopulation event (p=0.95) of humans, pets, livestock, and crops (a good guess?), and if climate change was the only existential threat to humanity and the biosphere, then a 90 percent depopulation event to maybe avoid a possible burp (and 100% extinction, p=0.01) would be questionable. Should we end all fossil fuel use by 2025? Yes, but for reasons that Rupert Read and ilk are oblivious to and cannot think about, since 'real solutions' are outside their Overton window.
Note that if science as a way of knowing is working, there would be a Bell curve but not two with one 5-7 times larger, and no Overton window as all things should be considered and would be thinkable. The above plots only the views of scientists who have a narrative the media parses to be on a 'side' as including 'both sides' is their mandate (at best). Journalists do not vet sources apart from the for-and-against narrative that is the norm in the politicized society they serve, which in science is cognitive pathology.
