Probability of our civilisation to survive without facing a catastrophic collapse estimated at less than 10% in most optimistic scenario

I started writing a response to this article in these comments, but it got too long, so now it’s another article!

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I’ll look for that! I was wondering if you would pick up on the distinction in the WaPo article. I had been just glancing at SC while out and posted that link without comment, but if I had taken my time (which I see I should have – mindful posting!) then I would have qualified that.

I can’t demonstrate this, but I reckon that the Grauniad writer added that detail without being prepared to have it fact-checked, and it was not fact-checked. Or perhaps Mann has an offhand example or two, relayed it because it sound sensational, and the journalist left it in.

I think it’s of far, far less importance than the issue greenwashing, which Mann’s book is really about and which is far more consequential than any foreign trolling. It’s inseparable from consumer culture now. I and virtually everyone I know has bought into it to some degree, but climate reversal can never happen because enough nice people reduce, reuse, recycle, boycott Amazon, buy Priuses and post scary articles on social media. There has to be radical systemic change (like the Green New Deal and the Green Marshall Plan), but it’s being successfully delayed indefinitely in part by successful greenwashing. I suspect the young doomers either see clearly or sense the disingenuousness, and are reacting against the fashionable virtue signalling that passes for climate activism (adults are hypocrites!!) far more than responding to Russian bots.

EDIT: I didn’t realize on first read that you had already written and linked to your article. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. Still getting used to the forum! I’m sort of new.

I am glad to have read it and I suspect I will reflect be reflecting on it. One note though… as suggested in prior paragraph here, while none of can know for sure because it’s not available yet, Mann’s book seems to comprise timely, vital critiques of poor policy and arguments as well as constructive criticism of current reformist policy proposals, and not condescending intergenerational armchair psychologizing. So calling it “fallacious” seems a bit overstated.

Seems like it’s also a friendly challenge to AOC!

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Hi Bhante, to make up for posting a link that did not contain the requested info, I will post one that does.

The congressional committee report found that 4% of Russian troll activity was about climate change, and as has been noted in the thread, the primary purpose was to inflame division. To that end, they targeted conservatives with memes such as the ones in the article linked in this post.

Oh, absolutely. And it goes back a long time.

Well, I’m not talking about his book, but about his anti-doomerism. Mann has been anti-doomer for quite some time.

And whenever I see the anti-doomer sentiments, they seem to completely miss the mark.

In the above article, Mann criticizes Thunberg:

“Swedish activist Greta Thunberg echoed the sentiment in her speech to the World Economic Forum, declaring that ‘pretty much nothing has been done’ on climate change.” That one of leading youth activists on climate is falling prey to a certain degree of futility is alarming to Mann. “Not enough has been done, for sure. But to say that nothing has been done is simply false. It is dismissive of the actions that countries, states, cities, companies, and individuals are taking every day to move us off fossil fuels, and neglects the hard data … demonstrating that we are indeed making progress toward decarbonizing the global economy.”

But the quote is out of context, and it misrepresents what Thunberg said. The full quote is:

Pretty much nothing has been done since the global emissions of CO2 has not reduced. If you see it from that aspect, what has concretely been done, if you see it from a bigger perspective, basically nothing … it will require much more than this, this is just the very beginning.

Her point being, not that no action has been taken, but that such action has not resulted in a significant overall reduction in global CO2 emissions. Which is similar to the argument I make, except I focus on global CO2 levels (as emissions tell only part of the story: what matters is the sum of emissions over absorption, and that is accurately measured by the overall CO2 level in the atmosphere.)

Mann goes on to say that China “are going to exceed their [Paris] commitments”. Which is true, but it ignores the fact that in many respects China’s policy is weak and even regressing (new pro-coal policies, phasing out renewable subsidies, etc.) Some good news popped up today, though!

China is complicated!

Berkeley climate scientist David Romps echoes his criticism of doomers:

To those who say we are already doomed and so there is no point to switching away from fossil fuels

Who exactly are these people? I mean, I’m sure they exist, there are all kinds of irrational views out there. But I’ve never met anyone who argues this, nor have I seen any serious advocate.

If you look at the responses to the Guardian article in /r/collapse you’ll see how Mann is alienating people who might even become potential climate activists. I’m not saying you should look at it, nor am I endorsing or encouraging doomerism. I’m encouraging acceptance of the fact that people will have a wide variety of responses to the climate crisis, and that this is normal and reasonable. There is a sense of realism and acceptance among the doomers that is genuinely deeper, I think, than the shallow “hopism” of conventional environmentalists. One person on the thread summed it up:

We made sure young people had no hope so now we’re mad they’re not hopeful

All I’m saying, really, is: meet them on their turf.

Indeed. It’s no accident that the article I link above is from Berkley. There’s a rising sentiment among young progressives in the US to react against the comfortable, boomer gradualist approach to social change, as exemplified by Berkley academics. That attitude is expressed clearly by Mann:

I’m committed to the belief that there will be a moment, perhaps not in the too distant future, where the political winds writ large will be more favorable. I think at that point, we will see the tipping point on climate action

There it is: he is committed to the belief. I’m not. I think this is wishful thinking, the kind of “hundredth monkey” fallacy I’ve heard my entire life from old-school greenies.

I just saw Australia through the worst bushfires in history. Everyone was saying the bushfires would be a tipping point. I didn’t believe them. I pretty much think that when civilization has collapsed and there is one denialist left alive on the planet, they will die gasping of thirst and fire, and with their last breath they will croak out, “But the climate has always been changing!”

The Liberal (read “conservative” for those overseas!) government, which is ranked worst of 57 countries in their response to climate change, is currently favored 54% over 46% for re-election. If you want to persuade me that there’ll be a tipping point, give me a reason, not a belief.

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Ha! That’s a good question. The doomer I know is convinced that we have to return to a pre-industrial society, or it’s over. So, this person does get very despondent whenever the conversation comes up, predicting the mass of extinction of most life on earth until I talk them down by pointing out that the world has been trying to make the switch to renewables, etc. The impression I have is that social media has been full of “environmental news and analysis” that focuses on “but that’s not good enough!” messages. As in, “solar power isn’t the solution because you use energy and plastic to manufacture them and did up all those rare earths!” So, these people have been painting themselves into a corner of despair. Their hearts are in the right place; it’s just amazing what social media does to people.

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Thanks for the links! While I had a feel for the doomer v boomer debate, I didn’t know much about the details or the origins.

Overall I’m pretty sympathetic to your take. It’s a bad look for Mann to be picking on kids, although I think his anti-doomerism is on surer ground w/r/t to Wallace-Wells and Franzen and their respective highly prominent and influential publishers. I’m not sure how it can be clearly demonstrated those parties dampened climate activism and provoked popular doomerism by (over)emphasizing worst-case scenarios, but but google and social media trends might hold evidence, and anyway it’s a reasonable charge. Were there anything to that charge, then it was an own goal for Wallace-Wells who wanted to get people moving, not give up. Franzen seems genetically a doomer without a genuine science bone in his body and sophisticated readers know that, but a lot of people just understand “the New Yorker says we’re doomed.”

The heart of the issue is responsibility in communicating science that has political implications. It has to be simplified because science has its own language which the general public can’t be expected to learn, so it needs to be translated. A Christian can dispense with a priest and read the Bible themselves, but that’s not analogous to scientists and science journals. And so, whether real or perceived, bias and spin is introduced in translation no matter what – the political charge of the topic ensures that. When there are not just political but existential implications, it becomes even trickier. The communicator – i.e. one who holds some sway or power in the discourse – has to take responsibility for the emotional impact of their words. It’s comparable to bedside manner.

An oncologist could come in a patients room and say, “So we got the results back, and holy moly dude, you might be seriously doomed! All the tests are bad. Like all of them! And check out this x-ray… your tumor is HUUUGE. Are your kids around? Hey kids… come check out your dad’s brain tumor. It’s bananas! And with your dad’s lifestyle, I don’t think he stands much chance of getting better. We all know he’s not going to put up with chemo or change his diet or anything. I guess you could try and get him to change, but honestly… do you think he will?”

If a doctor actually did that, he might very well have his medical license suspended or at least prevented from engaging with patients – even if he was right.

So by this analogy, I’m not convinced hopism, boomerism, optimism, “faith in humanity” etc. is in and of itself bad and must be called out and discredited. For we unenlighteneds, positive thinking generally needs to be encouraged for positive change to happen. I assume Mann to be making a good faith, well-supported argument, and the hopefulness he underpins it with his choice to make. Is he giving false hope? Anyone can say he is, but no one can say for certain. Intuitively, I’m pretty sure that if more people gravitated to the boomer side and fewer people gravitated to the doomer side, positive change would be more likely to happen – assuming the same set of facts. I’m talking about noble lies or well-intended propaganda, I’m talking about attitude independent of facts.

I appreciate your point that hope v despair is a false dichotomy and artifact of Christianity, but the people with the power to stop the CO2 problem mostly live in a Judeo-Christian world and there, hope and despair must be accounted for. I’m not sure pushing a “bare reality” approach actually helps solve the existential problem we face as a world-wide community, even if it helps free the individual. I was also wondering what the Buddhist equivalent of despair v hope would be. My best guess would be the hindrances of doubt & torpor v faith & energy.

I do agree that Mann could be alienating people in his anti-doomerism, however (that reddit sub seems cool). In any political discourse where there is a power dynamic, you only punch up, never down. He’s so used to being a punching bag, he might not grasp how much power he now has. It’s comparable to Hilary Clinton and her “deplorables” gaffe.

Having written all that, I’m not actually satisfied. :face_with_raised_eyebrow: Maybe it’s a dialectical thing… what’s the synthesis of the antitheses of doomerism and boomerism? I get that you’re not encouraging doomerism.

As for gradualism, granting some exceptions, we are all gradualists because gradually is the only way things change barring violence – actual law-violating violence, not rhetorical, and actual violence is forsworn by most everyone on the science side of the debate. Maybe kids refusing to go to school is violent – in a sense they are hurting themselves, holding themselves hostage. Never going to happen tho.

I had seen that China story – interesting! The version I saw was that it was in part politically motivated so as to position China as the anti-America (Trump version). Pretty savvy… it’s certainly going to help their image on the world stage and facilitate the development of their competing pointillist empire, the belt-and-road initiative. Hopefully they really mean it too.

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Well, tell 'em from me that I think that sounds nice.

The crucial question, for me, as to whether something is an “-ism” is the standard of proof required. Among the “hopists” we regularly see people speak, as Mann did, that they are “committed to the belief”. That’s an ideology right there.

I’m not committed to any belief. I’m looking for evidence. And when the hopists show me their evidence, it just doesn’t seem convincing.

It’d be interesting to see to what extent this is social media in general, and not just some peoples’ feed. That’s why I was trying to follow up on the “Russian bots fuel doomerism” claim.

I can’t help feeling that there is a false dichotomy between doomersim and denialism. We know for a fact that the richest and most powerful entities (Exxon, Fox, GOP, etc.) have been deliberately lying at an industrial scale to promote denialism, and this has been going on for decades. And the Russians were able to amplify this. But there doesn’t seem to be any comparable scale of promotion of doomerism. A couple of prominent articles and books? A few radical scientists and disaffected environmentalists? How is this a movement? If doomerism has indeed become so prominent based on so little, what does that tell us?

Well, what would happen to a doctor who, when the patient’s prognosis really was fatal, then told the family that they still must have hope? So the family had no time to properly grieve, to say their goodbyes, to spend time in acceptance with their loved ones? That’s what I would want. I don’t want a doctor who lies to me.

Citation required. My opinion, as a monk of twenty-five years, is that this is an assumption, conditioned by Californian pop psychology.

https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Sided-Positive-Thinking-Undermining-America/dp/0312658850

I agree, I don’t think it solves anything. I don’t have any particular theory that one way is going to work or not. I don’t do what I do in order to achieve an end. In fact, I think that calculating your message by how effective you think it will be is also part of the problem. I’m just trying to be honest, that’s all.

Don’t synthesize, avoid the extremes! :wink: Don’t subscribe to an -ism, look for the facts. Believe it or not, every day I look for reasons to have an optimistic view of the future. I just haven’t found them.

Indeed, I’m sure that is a big part of it.

In spite of all the anthropogenic causes, something this might be more likely IMHO…:comet::boom::smile:

I mean, why worry, right? We can spend years fretting about climate change, then an asteroid just plops right down and, well, problem solved, I guess.

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Personally, I didn’t even know doomerism was a thing until it was brought up here. I can only add my own anecdotes. There’s definitely strange things afoot among environmental interest groups for years now from what I’ve seen. The trouble is that aside from scraping data from public social media platforms like Twitter, it’s only the owners of the social media platforms that really know what it taking place systemically. Cybersecurity researchers are probably the best source of hard studies on these things. It’s a big ecosystem of actors that are out there. “The Russians” is really just a meme now for all of them for most people who don’t realize it.

Myself, what I find disheartening is that people have allowed themselves to fall into hard us vs. them thinking, and then those people are becoming the main energy in politics. The result is lots of ineffectual conflict. I have hope that we don’t know exactly how the future will play out. It’s not necessarily all bad. The world is reacting to climate change, but it looks like it was too late to avoid sea level rise and big changes in rainfall. Still, I do think that these big systems like the world’s climate and ecosystems are resilient in terms of surviving imbalances. Is it really destructive sometimes? Yes. Humanity isn’t invincible; paleontology tells us that much.

I am heartened, though, by the fact that I see evidence of major policy changes around me. Wind and solar farms are everywhere. Local and state governments have embraced the need to build our renewable energy sources across the board. The political rhetoric doesn’t indicate it, but the ground level of government even here in the US is largely on board with the need to do these things. We just have a completely dysfunctional national political scene ATM.

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Good news, sort of…
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/23/climate/california-ban-gas-cars.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

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Yes, governor Newsom hasn’t minced his words lately, and the state party obviously takes this issue seriously. He gave a speech recently at a fire location on climate change.

California Governor Says ‘This Is a Damn Climate Emergency’

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I think we are talking past each other a bit. I was aiming to investigate what it means to be a producer and disseminator of climate change info, while you are mostly talking about those who consume and process the info. I see these roles having different sets of considerations.

Who does? You’re talking about a binary, life or death, but climate change and cancer prognoses are not binary propositions. They need to be communicated not just carefully but expertly.

How about common sense? If you don’t believe something can be done, then it doesn’t get done regardless of whether it’s actually possible.

I should have phrased this differently to avoid this very trap, but since we are talking about it… I’m aware that “positive thinking” has a bad rap because it gets associated with pop psych and get-rich-quick schemes, but it might also be a real thing. FWIW…

Fair enough. I think I misunderstand “engaged Buddhism.” I’ll have to read and think more about it.

This sounds like you are invalidating the art of rhetoric and skill in persuasion.

Certainly not! And I do! As Rortian pragmatist, I shall never be pinned down and I shall ever be rational. I’m also pretty leery of discussing -isms and neologizing them, but while it may be unlovely and sometimes lazy, it’s also effective. Why else do we use them?

I was thinking “gloomerism” for that which is not doomer or boomer. Perhaps I’d nominate Andrew Yang for head gloomer.

“We are too late,” he said on Wednesday night’s debate. “We are ten years too late … we need to start moving our people to higher ground, and the best way to do that is to put economic resources into your hands so you can protect yourself and your families.”

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This is also my experience, more or less, and reflects a lot of my thinking as well.

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I am not sure that people so much fall for easy answers as let them blossom inside them. The manure of desperate desire for a solution where “I am not to blame” is always present.

The world is difficult, navigating it is full of pitfalls, ones hope and dreams tumble down those holes. That’s what’s falling. What rises up is the desire for this to, truly, be the fault of someone else.

Scapegoating was an important religious practice after all: it’s something that can give great succour.

To conclude, I honestly think that you don’t have to give people an in-group and an out-group. They will happily make those themselves if you let them. But giving such ideas legitimacy so they become popular currency certainly helps to create a mass movement.

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Well, yes, this is natural thing that happens in people’s minds. It was more the second half of the sentence that disheartens me; that the political system has allowed a virulent, emotional national dualism to take over and prevent much of anything from being accomplished. Instead, we get to watch an endless opera of pointless conflict over philosophical questions are that unresolvable. In the US, this isn’t so much the case on the local level of government because the people (both political actors and voters) generally ignore local politics, so the elected officials and bureaucrat are able to conduct more normal business. Thus, we see all sorts of renewable energy policies coming from the lower levels of our government and industry, but on the national level its a giant car pileup, metaphorically speaking.

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I’m no expert – and neither am I infinitely prolonged – but from the standpoint of my limited experience and wisdom, human systems tend towards self-perpetuation more than anything else.

As you say, this is top-down, not bottom-up. Some people at the top of one mountain see it crumbling due to demographic change and a purposeful relinquishment of decency, and dangit they’ll keep shouting made up swear-words at the rising tide until it gives up! CRAMBLING FUDGECLOAKS.

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Beautifully said, Bhante. :heart: As someone who used to work on Wall Street and now works for a small non-profit helping our community I can vouch for the soul-destroying quality of work that leads to harm. One numbs to the actual consequences of what one is doing and becomes attached to the little ego gratifications the system provides to its minions.

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