Butterflies disappear, solar panels appear

Butterflies disappear, solar panels appear

By Japp Tielbeke [excerpt from article published in De Groene Amsterdammer]

The world as we know it is doomed to death. Are we fooling ourselves with optimistic predictions? Or is it useful to keep hope? What can we really know about the future of our planet?

There’s a group called Just Collapse, and according to its sympathizers, we’re at the beginning of the end. At first I interpreted the ‘just’ in their name as ‘just’, like: just let the whole thing collapse, let’s get it over with, but what they mean is that the collapse has to be just. The strongest shoulders have to absorb the hardest blows.

The idea that technology will save the day, or that humanity is able to curb its greed after all – according to Just Collapse, both are equally unrealistic. We humans will not improve our lives. We are less resourceful than we think. In fact, we are quite stupid and that is why we do not even realize when, under the guise of progress, we are undermining the conditions of existence of our civilization. Solar panels are added, but in the meantime the butterflies are disappearing.

One of the goals of Just Collapse is to influence the zeitgeist by weaving the idea of decay “into everyday conversation.” Would that work? That someone at a birthday party complains about the heat and then you shrug your shoulders and say: just wait, the worst is yet to come. At the moment, the zeitgeist is that governments and companies are finally, after a long delay, taking climate action, because they realize that the fossil economy is becoming unsustainable. Progress, you might think, but the followers of Just Collapse know better: after this phase of self-delusion, we come up against ecological reality. We are going down because of decisiveness.

The collapse is a fact and the only question that remains is where the debris will fall: on the slums or on the Teslas of the rich? There is something paradoxical about it: Just Collapse mocks the belief that we can make something beautiful out of it if we all put our shoulders to the wheel, but seems to believe that we can steer the apocalypse in the right direction by organizing ourselves into resilient local communities that can absorb the shocks of the Anthropocene.

The texts on the Just Collapse website resemble a cult, as if they have a monopoly on a truth that the rest of the world has not yet seen and it is their job to proclaim this not so happy message, with the difference that these prophets of doom evangelize in a light-hearted way with memes and hashtags (#TalkCollapse).

I find myself susceptible to it. That it doesn’t take much to convert me.

Last year I went to Rome by train, a sixteen-hour journey, and my friends laughed when they saw what I was reading. Who takes a book called Apocalypsophy with them on holiday? And it sounds crazy, but I was hoping to find some comfort in it. This book ‘does not reassure, but it does offer tools for living in times of extinction’, the blurb promised.

At the bottom of Just Collapse’s website, there’s a short announcement: ‘Engaging in Collapse can be confronting and unsettling. We don’t have the expertise to help people who are weighed down by negative emotions because of this. If this applies to you, seek support from a trained healthcare professional.’