The Future Is a Landscape
ecosophia.net
ecosophia.net
If you don’t think those lifestyle changes will have an effect, then say so. If you think they’re effective but you don’t want to live that way (that’s me) then be honest about it. But simply saying “the climate activists aren’t making any lifestyle changes, so we don’t have to listen to them!” is incorrect, and even worse, boring. We’ve been hearing that same South Park song for over a decade, it’s getting old.
We need to actually engage on this topic and find solutions that will do as much good as possible, mitigate as much harm as possible, and be practical for as many people as possible. It’s going to be a messy combination of practices, policies and technology that get us there. One might go so far as to call it a “Landscape”.
Or maybe he's talking about "climate envoy" John Kerry and his private jet. At any rate I hope he meets some climate activists that he likes someday because this is a valuable addition to their conversation and a good antidote to some of the worst doom-and-gloom tendencies in those circles.
I like framing climate change in a further reaching time context, but if anything I think the author has reached too far. The point I took away was something like “it’s all going to happen anyway, and we’ll all be dead, so why bother”.
I think the sweet spot of forward-thinking is somewhere between next financial year and the next geological epoch; I propose around 5 generations (150 years?).
I think if we spent more time imagining and talking about the world our grandchildren’s grandchildren will inherit, it’s close enough to feel a personal connection, and far enough away we can meaningfully direct our destiny.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-07-31/dark-age-ameri...
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2014-08-07/dark-age-ameri...
Seeing things as landscapes, gradients, allows for choosing where to be on the spectrum.
So climate change is happening? What will you do?
>In the Hypsithermal, the period of higher-than-present global temperatures that followed the end of the last ice age, the West from the coastal mountains to the Mississippi was far drier than it is today—Nebraska was a desert with sand dunes, for example, and quite a bit ofthe land west of the Rockies was uninhabitable wasteland of the sort you find these days in the Sahara Desert.
From my recent reading on the long term moisture story in the western US, the period after the end of the last ice age was much wetter in the NM/AZ area, because the still-present ice to the north tended to "push" pacific storms in ways that led to precipitation in this area. As the ice receded more and more northwards, this pattern came to an end.
Comparing the Triassic Period and its warmer climate to our situation is misleading. The speed of change is what is unprecedented here, thus only comparable to other more catastrophic events in Earth's history.
For everything we do, we can develop and scale technologies to substitute carbon emitting tech for clean tech. We can fight desertification, and restore habitats. Arguments against this usually boil down to "Well, it hasn't happened yet, so it can't happen and it won't happen".
But it will, though it won't be easy. As Covid vaccinations show, there's really nothing in the world that would make everyone do the simple, sensible thing, so we'll stumble forward, but we'll get there.
Arguments for this usually boil down to "Well it hasn't happened yet, but it's only a matter of time before technology without current expression/science that doesn't yet exist/a miracle occurs and it inevitably, without doubt, happens."
Both stupid arguments.
The question is whether we can move around in parameter-space to reach another optimum, without having to transition trough rather sub-optimal areas of the cost-function for some time.
We may be caught in some local minimum, without society having enough "energy" to climb out of it.
Changes in liberal democracy happen very slowly as it takes time for information and belief to propagate to all voters and decision makers. Take for example marijuana legalization. It took it decades of lobbying.
The timescale of such a change in policy is also reflected in the markets as well. Consider money printinting, inflation, interest rates, etc. All these rarely make huge differences over night.
Psychology of the masses is hard to predict and influence as the timescale gets smaller. It took Hitler around 15 years to become a chancellor of Germany after joining the DAP after WW1.
Nothing happens overnight and nothing is simple and sensible.
I personally don't see any fast way except ecodictatorship. The urge to take the path of least resistance and most short term joy is just too strong when there is no overseer to punish us for it. But who will control the controller? The core issue of all forms of autocracy. Perhaps AGI, if reached, would also be our saviour here.
Roads won't be free of ICE cars for 30 more years at least and make that 50+ for the 3rd world countries.
Energy generation with solar panels and wind turbines is not stable. Only long-term solution is nuclear so that our children in 20 years breath less coal-burn exhausts.
It will probably happen eventually but we will live through a lot of weather related suffering until then. Thank you previous generations.