This Discontinuity 1: Current Conditions

This is part 1 of a 3-part presentation that has been converted into a post. Links to the other three parts will be included here when they are ready. Part 2: Worldviews; Part 3: Strategy

CONTEXT

Boone County, Missouri is our context. We’ve grown used to living in a global society — it’s only global in the sense that we receive resources from all over the world. It’s less energy intensive to get resources from closer to where we live and our ability to get resources from all over might change. 

City people take for granted that cities are good. Rural people take for granted that they are bad. Cities do not produce resources (similar to how refrigerators don’t produce food). But what are cities for? 

  • Trading resources
  • Processing resources into more complex products
  • Socializing, Entertainment, Culture sharing, Fun
  • Helping one another identify what is real through social interactions with people who have different worldviews
  • Protecting people from violence

Cities don’t work alone! A city is part of a system that serves other geographical areas as they simultaneously serve it. So, we should be thinking about all of Boone County… at the very least.

DISCONTINUITY

A Discontinuity is a Time of Rapid Change… A distinct break in the basic characteristics of the world. However the world was before the discontinuity, it is different after. In contrast with a period of time featuring slow, constant change.

Historical Minor Discontinuities

  • The Industrial Revolution (1760)
  • US Civil War (1861-1865)
  • Marriage Equality (2015)
  • Invention of Agriculture (various, but around 8000 BC)
  • Invention of Banking (2000 BC)
  • Fall of Rome (200-476)
  • The Internet (1990)
  • Birth Control Pill (1960)
  • Monotheism (around 1200 BC)
  • I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter (1981)

Historical Major Discontinuities

  • Late Ordovician Extinction: 485-444 million years ago, 86% of species lost. Cause: Short, severe ice age caused by severe drop in CO2 triggered by plate tectonics.
  • Late Devonian Extinction: 383-359 million years ago, 75% of species lost. Cause: De-oxygenation of the oceans via massive algal blooms.
  • End Permian Extinction: 251 million years ago (60,000 years in length), 96% of species lost (nearly all life). Cause: Massive global warming and release of poisonous gasses initially caused by an enormous volcanic eruption.
  • End Triassic Extinction: 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost. Cause: Rapid increase in ocean CO2.
  • End Cretaceous Extinction: 66 million years ago, 76% of species lost. Cause: Climate change due to volcanic activity and asteroid strike

The important thing to note about this list of major discontinuities is how often they were caused by a change in the mix of gasses in the atmosphere or oceans.

OUR PREDICAMENT

We are facing a major discontinuity. It’s a predicament — not a problem. A problem has a solution; a predicament can’t be solved — only mitigated.

  • Anthropocene Extinction: 1945-2450, 85%+ species lost. Cause: Rapid climate change due to industrial processes

It’s not just climate change… it is a multi-faceted, systemic failure of human beings.

There’s a fancy French word for this: “The Problématique” — The complex of issues associated with a topic, considered collectively; specifically the totality of environmental and other problems affecting the world. What we are facing might be related to the Fermi Paradox, which is the idea that scientists believe there should be abundant life in the universe, yet we’ve detected no life anywhere but Earth. The explanation that I find most plausible is the universal filter — A planet that attempts to develop intergalactic travel always kills itself before achieving that goal.

How did we end up in this handbasket?

The complete ethical failure of Western civilization was carefully engineered by three far-right groups starting in the 1930’s:

  • Free market capitalists
  • White supremacists
  • Right-wing Christians

It was the free market capitalists who really succeeded, but part of their success was strategic cooperation with these other two groups of ghouls.

They didn’t really start succeeding until the 1970’s.

A few real villains:

  • James McGill Buchanan
  • Lewis F. Powell (the Powell Memo)
  • Milton Friedman
  • Rothbard
  • Ayn Rand

They managed to villainize ideas traditionally defined as good, such as:

  • Empathy
  • Generosity
  • Kindness
  • Fairness
  • Community

They convinced society to become so cynical and misanthropic that it assumes anyone displaying or endorsing these characteristics is actually evil.

“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address those problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy… and to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation — and we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

James Gustave Speth (American environmental lawyer and advocate)

But obviously, it took more than just being awful people. We had to do something awful, too.

From a practical perspective, the core issue is that fossil fuels are intimately linked to a destructive and exploitative global financial system that most people believe is inevitable. 

We started using fossil fuels — a destructive, limited resource.

We started using fossil fuel to make food — making our food production unsustainable. This is the Green Revolution. We started using fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides — all created from fossil fuels, and of course intense mechanization. And then the food is distributed all over the world using vehicles that burn fossil fuels.

Economic growth is imperative under capitalism, and the primary creator of economic growth is fossil fuels — so we had to use more fossil fuels.

The global financial system is tied to oil. Unfortunately, we can’t talk about climate change without talking about money and, specifically, the “petro dollar”. The petrodollar is any U.S. dollar paid to oil-exporting countries in exchange for oil. Since the dollar is a global currency, all international transactions are priced in dollars. As a result, oil-exporting nations must receive dollars. This creates an enormous economic advantage for the US because it compels people to buy things from the US; it was established by the Nixon administration and the House of Saud (i.e., Saudi Arabia) in 1970, and so is part of the Middle East debacle.

Money can also be thought of as debt, because we have a fractional reserve banking system. Related (all non-leftists sources): Fractional Reserve Banking Explained in Less Than One Minute, Money as Debt, How Petrodollars Affect the US Dollar and the World Economy

Combine those two things, and money basically represents future fossil fuel production. Since fossil fuel production means climate change, money itself is one of our enemies (as it currently exists). Fossil fuels are the lifeblood of capitalism. We can’t slow down fossil fuel production or it destroys everything… much like whale sharks must keep swimming or they don’t get enough oxygen and die.

Climate change should not have been a surprise. But for a while it was even odds that we would hit peak oil first. Peak Oil is the theorized point in time when the maximum rate of extraction of petroleum is reached, after which it is expected to enter terminal decline. Peak oil theorists did not take into account the illusory property of money, so didn’t realize that more money could be used to turn a normal production curve into something very different. They assumed that when the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) became 0, production would stop.

Why is climate change happening faster than the official IPCC prediction?

  • Assumption of rational response from power elites
  • IPCC is a product of capitalism — includes capital-controlled governments, capital-dependent scientists, and reviewers that are frequently direct representatives for capital
  • Assumption that realism will cause cognitive incapacitation in audience
  • Does not include feedback loops or new data

Columbia’s plan is based on the IPCC report which is wrong… but there’s a lot of good information here in this IPCC graph. The thing I’d like you to really take a good look at is how the emissions curve goes negative in each of these conditions. Emissions have to become negative, and nobody knows how to do that. We’re talking about 0 emissions but also removing some carbon from the atmosphere.

How bad is our predicament?

Here’s how Roger Hallam (Extinction Rebellion) explains it:

We are already 1.1C above the pre-industrial average. 

There is an additional 0.7C of carbon lag already locked in.

Once we stop burning fossil fuels, we will have an additional 0.7C increase due to removal of global dimming 

Due to the above increases, an additional 1C of soil carbon will inevitably be released.     

TOTAL: 3.5 C already locked in

(Roger Hallam’s math is a little bit off, but here’s his presentation on this part of the problem.)

But will we really stop emitting carbon anytime soon? Obviously not! The most likely scenario is now 4 degrees C of temperature increase above the pre-industrial average. What does that look like?

I double-checked the date, and 2050 is unlikely but possible for a 4C world. More likely not until 2100 — but hey, we seem to be trying really hard, so we might get there by 2050. But what we’re looking at is that none of the continental US is likely to be habitable, and before it becomes uninhabitable, there will be a constant grinding down of our ability to support our own lives. We’ll have to leave — presumably to Canada — or find ways to get everything we need to live from other places (traditionally, we’ve done this with war). The data source is the IPCC and the World Bank, which are both pro-capitalist institutions.

Related: World is Set to Warm 3.4C by 2100 Even with Paris Climate Deal

This is if we continue fucking up to the same degree we are currently fucking up, and might not include feedback loops, some of which are 70 years ahead of schedule.

This version of Earth would have a population of about 1 billion. The majority of the population reduction will probably come from people not having children… but let’s all be clear that a population drop of maybe 8.5 billion down to 1 billion will be the most horrifying period of time in the history of humanity. Imagine the Holocaust, but global and lasting a thousand years.

This is going to make it really hard to achieve environmental justice. I’m trying to be funny, but the bottom line is that it is probably not going to be possible. For example, things are not going to work out for the Amazon tribes — how can they when there isn’t going to be an Amazon?

What about technology? Scientists are already working on solutions to climate change… aren’t they? Sure they are. Most is vaporware. Some things, like new battery tech or photovoltaics are real — but they are not carbon negative!
Every renewable energy source we have requires the emission of more carbon to produce it.

Here’s the important thing, though: As long as we are living under capitalism, techno fixes for climate change will primarily be used to extend economic growth; they will not be used to create negative carbon emissions.

Related: Climate Change Will Cost Us Even More Than We Think

Related: The Carbon Capture Ruse

The mere existence of technological progress has no bearing on whether or not we survive climate change… you always find things in the last place you looked… our civilization will be at its peak when it collapses.

I’m leaving out a lot of things because we don’t have enough time:

What is the value of this capitalist economic system?

  • A market is a socially constructed thing just like money, gender, race, social roles, or coolness.
  • A “bubble” is the difference between the imagined value of something (according to “the market”) and the real value of that thing. 
  • When the people (creators of “the market”) realize the true value of capitalism (negative), the economy will attempt to perform a “correction” and use all the money to mitigate climate change… including all of the billionaires’ money.
  • When billionaires realize that this correction is about to take place, it will mean that the economic system has a negative value to them, specifically, and they will abandon the entire economic system…
  • But they will still claim ownership of resources.

So, this is likely how capitalism will end.

Prominent US fascists have already said that they are willing to abandon capitalism because the market simply doesn’t support their model for dominating other people.

The death of capitalism is now inevitable. 

That means we have a lot of scary changes ahead, but if we can be ready for those changes, we can mitigate this predicament. Right?

So instead of panicking, let’s figure out what we need and figure out how to get it without global capitalism.

  • Food
  • Water
  • Transportation
  • Community Defense

Next:

Part 2: Worldviews

Part 3: Strategy