#TalkCollapse because the #AMOC collapse is coming as early as 2025:
“…when it happens, the changes are irreversible on human timescales.”
“…adaptation would be impossible.”
“It will be devastating.”
AMOC collapse – new research
#TalkCollapse because the #AMOC collapse is coming as early as 2025:
“…when it happens, the changes are irreversible on human timescales.”
“…adaptation would be impossible.”
“It will be devastating.”
Just Collapse
While I am a fellow Doomer, I think it’s important to avoid creating more fear, and this article is an excellent example of how headlines are written to grab attention, while the content of the article is really quite different in tone. As always, the conclusion is that nobody can really predict exactly what will happen or when, only that ‘it’ will be devastating. Doomers already know that. The only question worth asking is how can we make things better in the present, especially for those in most need.
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We agree that a focus on what can be done now is important – this is why we advocate for a Just Collapse and insurgent planning.
Mainstream media used to routinely include a hopeful ending to articles like this, but now they don’t necessarily. Why? Because we are really f**ked – though the details for when and how remain unclear as you point out. This article restates this, but also, importantly, emphases that things are a lot worse than initially thought. Is it really possible to be too alarmist given the nature and severity of our global predicament?
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It isn’t possible to be too alarmist, but I think our back and forth just points out that there are many ways to respond to the inevitable. Each of us interprets whatever we read through a personal filter we have been ‘developing’ over our entire lifetimes. Our different reactions to the article demonstrates this, and I think we should keep in mind the inevitability of those differences, even among those who share the same general view of the future.
One possible reason for those differences may lie in what we are doing/not doing about the whole mess. I have been an activist of various sorts for my entire adulthood, but as my capabilities – cognitive and physical – decline, I have decided it best for me to concentrate on ‘individual acts of kindness,’ rather than on pursuing organizational goals. For instance, I wish you well with the ‘insurgent planning,’ but I doubt I would be much help ‘on the front lines.’ LOL
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We are with you on personal acts of kindness, but you misunderstand insurgent planning. Our promotion of this is not about what should happen, it is about what is happening, and will continue to happen. People will inevitably organise together locally as global systems, including supply chains, breakdown. All we’re doing is giving people a chance to start early and build as much capacity as possible before things start getting really tough.
We are not like organisations that set aspirational goals and make false promises about impossible futures. We act in reality and have already achieved all we have set out to achieve. Collapse is inevitable – tick. People are acting for partial and relative socio-ecological justice to help ease the descent – tick. Communities are organising (insurgently planning) – tick. It would be win-win, except given global socio-ecological collapse it’s win-win-lose.
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You’re right. I am confused. You have already achieved all you set out to achieve? Then why continue to exist at all? I agree that people will be/are organizing locally to respond to the crises, but not nearly enough of us are participating in such endeavors to ensure that at least a ‘few’ of our species survives. What am I missing?
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Because there is always more to be done. Even if there is no win, there is always socio-ecological justice to be fought for and things to be achieved. It about recognising justice as a process, rather than an end point.
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Agreed. The irony, for me at least, is that the only way for any of our species to survive is to return to modes of thinking that don’t even have words for concepts like ‘justice.’ As we were for 100s of thousands of years, we will be another animal in whatever biome we inhabit. Cooperating will, once again, be an ‘instinct,’ not a ‘value’ needed to be taught. It will take ‘a while’ for that to happen, but, if we manage to get there, it will signify, perhaps, the most successful evolutionary process, ever – the species that all but eliminated all life on the planet, including itself, managed to change course and not only saved itself, but a good deal of other life as well. That is my hope.
More irony: ‘Hope’ is a product of ‘civilization’ which will no longer be needed; so it, too, will disappear.
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For decades we’ve been hearing about the possibility of AMOC stalling out as a result of the climate catastrophe, and yet global GHG emissions continue to rise. Now this disaster is imminent and inevitable. Meanwhile, Civilization and its insane addiction to growth, consumption and fossil fuels holds the human world captive. Well, well. The least we can do is to thank The Guardian for doing the job of reporting this disaster as accurately as possible while Life on Earth (including but not limited to us) goes over the cliff.
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