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Post by Admin on Sept 13, 2023 22:54:28 GMT
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Post by Admin on Sept 20, 2023 12:51:09 GMT
EDITORIAL Collapse is the word on the street (just not online) Like me, at some point in the past it probably felt too painful to allow yourself to consider the possibility that it’s too late to avoid catastrophic damage to communities around the world, including one’s own. Like me, you probably still experience moments when it feels too painful. I still distract myself from it - and quite often. Maybe that’s why I have a passion for English Premier League football! I’ve tended to keep that one quiet. Someone just wrote to me about feeling distraught and confused, and that he envied my life with devotional music and regenerative farming. I’m about to reply and mention that this summer I read about all the football transfers and was wondering who will have the best midfield this season. My point is that we all have various ways to distract or entertain ourselves, with some being nourishing, others less so. We need to find what works for us right now, without then lying to ourselves about reality, or postponing the decisions we know we need to make. I might need to take the decision to become far less bothered by people not being able to face reality! They’re not unusual, after all. And I was the same for many years. But knowing the benefits that can come from recognising the environmental predicament facing humanity, it feels sad for so many of my friends and colleagues to be duped by the two main narratives being promoted by different factions of capital today. One narrative is that technology and enterprise will fix the problems and the other is that the climate agenda is a total hoax. Big finance, big tech, clean tech, big pharma and nuclear are backing the former, whereas big oil is backing the latter. Both narratives are popular as they help to suppress anxiety. On the one hand, the techno-salvation story offers a path of calm obedience, and on the other the climate conspiracy story offers a way to eternal self-righteousness. Yet both stories lead to ineffectiveness and a lack of attention to what is happening and what is to come. It’s why I addressed this decay of public dialogue during my speech to launch my book Breaking Together. I argued that we need to articulate a positive ‘doomster’ story instead, where we celebrate the many of us who are changing our lives positively and helping others precisely because we believe we are in a new era of disruption and collapse. But there is no faction of capital behind that ‘doomster’ response - we tend to be rather post-consumer. Maybe that’s why I was booted off Twitter without an explanation and have been ‘shadow banned’ by other platforms (the evidence and process of which I explain in Chapter 13 of my book). My wish for greater civil society discussion and initiative on the matter of societal disruption and collapse is why I teach the online Leading Through Collapse course. But beyond having skills and a clear strategy, something far more simple is now necessary. The suppression of information from collapse-acceptors means that if we want others to hear about positive ways of responding, we need to go back to ‘good old word of mouth’. That doesn’t occur through social media anymore. Instead, we need to contact people directly and make ourselves available to discuss. So I recommend you forward this newsletter to a few people who haven’t already discussed such things with you, and offer to chat. To help with that, I hope you find something of interest in this newsletter. As we didn’t reach our fundraising target for producing the DA Quarterly every 3 months, from now on it will be produced every 4 months or so. So we have renamed it the Deep Adaptation Review. With ‘word of mouth’ in mind, next year I will be going back to that old modality of a book tour. I already know the cities I intend to visit (see here) - as long as the world and ‘yours truly’ are still functioning OK. I hope I’ll get the chance to discuss things in person with many of you. Perhaps we could even watch a football match at your local pub? Warmly, Jem Bendell, Publisher of the Deep Adaptation Review Author of Breaking Together
Active links in subscribed e-mail.
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Post by Admin on Sept 25, 2023 18:37:11 GMT
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Post by Admin on Dec 17, 2023 21:33:24 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jan 5, 2024 23:50:07 GMT
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Post by Admin on Feb 15, 2024 23:41:33 GMT
The world is slowly starting to talk collapse (Active links in subscribed e-mail)
The new head of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has publicly accepted the obvious – that the pace of climate heating is speeding up, and rapidly. The WMO has always been more able to declare what the science currently concludes than the cumbersome, cautious, and catastrophically misleading IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). One of the most famous environmentalists in the UK since the 1980s, Jonathan Porritt, wrote that the IPPC should be “put on notice”. That’s because, “forced to comply with the UN’s highly politicised, consensus-based decision-making process, its Assessment Reports (and occasional Special Reports) do not tell the truth. The IPCC has rarely managed to reflect the frontline science going on all around the world; its generic reassurances (that 1.5°C is still alive, for instance) are now a travesty of what good, responsible science is all about."
Whereas I’m lampooned as a “one man IPCC” by journalists who think they are respectful of science, rather than having a poor understanding of scientific processes, hundreds of climatologists and research analysts have critiqued the IPCC. For instance, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, explained over 5 years ago in a seminal report, that "experts tend to establish a peer world-view which becomes ever more rigid and focussed. Yet the crucial insights regarding the issue in question may lurk at the fringes... Therefore, it is all the more important to listen to non-mainstream voices who understand the issue and are less hesitant to cry wolf. Unfortunately for us, the wolf may already be in the house." Being the founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, he knew what he was talking about. But both he and that report were ignored. So were Dr Ye Tao and myself, when we went to the UNFCCC CoP Summit in Egypt in 2022 to call for rapid action against heating from the reduction of aerosols. This reaction is because there are incentives for paid professionals in climatology to avoid concluding the obvious. For instance, in the Deep Adaptation paper in 2018, I noted that there was already good evidence that the pace of global sea level rise was increasing, which would only be possible if the pace of heating was increasing. That’s a simple indicator, which could have shifted more of us onto an emergency footing (with disaster management and adaptation being key), perhaps if careerist ‘climate users’ hadn’t blocked it when prioritising their own emotions, income, and status.
Jonathan Porritt is a doyen of the corporate sustainability movement, which I was part of once. His article is therefore significant for how it invites the environmental profession to abandon stories and strategies for a managed transition. "My criticism here applies just as much to those NGOs as to all those government delegations and businesses enjoying the latest CoP tourism offer. They’re either totally naïve or deeply dishonest,” he wrote. “And I hate to have to say this, but that particularly applies to many of those “stubborn optimists” or “resolute climate solutionists” who still cannot accept just how fast things are changing around the world."
He is not alone. Another leader in that field since the 1990s is Simon Zadek. A new report he co-wrote recognised that the 1.5C target was part of “the fictional prospect of a ‘win-win’ transition to a future world much like today’s - just without the carbon. Through this lens, peddled by most of our political, business, and civil leaders, we remain constrained to act within the confines of conventional wisdoms embedded in today’s status quo." The report succinctly stated the dangers of wishful thinking: "To not prepare for a life beyond 1.5C is a reckless disregard for humanity."
The importance of such a shift was recognised by a leading facilitator of multi-stakeholder dialogues and collaborations, Mille Bojer. “As a scenarios practitioner I find the glorification of virtuous hope and optimism (and the shaming of "doomsday prophets") that happens in places like Davos and elsewhere to be a dangerous part of the problem,” she wrote. “We need to surrender to reality and activate our imagination.” These are indicators that in professional circles, admissions of defeat for reformism and transition are no longer just muttered in the hotel bar but could begin shaping strategies and projects. After years of ignoring or vilifying people like me, it’s a relief to see more of the sustainability profession escape the ‘seven sins of denial’ that I wrote about last year. That means the conversation on collapse risk and readiness will expand within the sustainability profession, and that’s something I’ll explore in my speech in Brisbane next month. But the wider situation is still difficult for such conversations, as I want to recap on now.
Unfortunately, in wider society, the managerial classes in charge of the world’s top institutions and media outlets are still ideologically policing our public conversation. They continue to suppress discussion of whether it’s too late to avert catastrophic damage, and instead promote elite-friendly stories of our techno-salvation. I experienced one instance of that when a senior manager within the National Public Radio network decided to withdraw a documentary on Deep Adaptation to climate chaos. It had been commissioned, cost them a bunch of money and staff time, and been edited and fact checked, before a last-minute sanction. Such suppression of discussion means that, empirically demonstrable, rising public anxiety about our planetary situation seeps out through the popularity of creative arts. This is something we note in the culture section of this review.
As I have explained for years, suppression is counterproductive. This is because without an open discussion in civil society, various unconscious patterns, or psychological games will be played out over time. For ease, we might describe them as the ‘blame game’ and the ‘safety game’. The first game is a natural way for people to try to shift the difficult emotions of grief and fear. It’s why we get angry at someone or a group. Some people will target those who are easier to blame and where support can be won for such blame. For instance, blame a nation, a corporation, an industrial sector, a generation, a gender, or a species (that’ll be us, the human race). Some people will tell grand stories of why this tragedy befell humanity, in ways that affirm their ideology and power, or avoid critiquing it. Which brings us to the ‘safety game’.
Concluding we are in a situation of the creeping collapse of modern societies can trigger a sense of existential threat to one’s worldview and identity, not just to one’s future, or the future of one’s children. That threat is therefore to the ‘ego’ and its deep-seated desire that we exist in a significant way that persists despite death. Therefore, as things fall apart, some people will decide their role is to try to grab as much as possible for themselves and their kind, whether they're small-scale preppers, or large-scale military strategists. In order to feel like they are still in control and matter to the universe, other people will even try to accelerate the process of societal collapse. That includes the ‘accelerationists’ who flutter around those tech bros who appear irreconcilably alienated from the wildness of real life. Others will seek multi-year grants to fund nice lifestyles in advanced cities located on top of a pyramid of global exploitation. We will hear them talk about polycrisis, metacrisis, multicrisis, or permacrisis rather than collapse. They will warn about the rise of protectionist sentiments in the Majority World, or the general public’s alienation from the credentialed classes. Some members of the environmental profession who are listening to Porritt, Zadek, and Boyer might be tempted by that limited response, which avoids the worldview-shattering implications of societal collapse.
Turning away from such responses, other people may naively claim that safety comes from growing our own food. That is what some people think I am doing by co-founding an organic farm and farm school. But I know that Bekandze Farm is not likely to make me safer in isolation, as my neighbours will need food, along with their neighbours, and political changes after societal disruption could scupper any of my plans. This doesn’t mean that collapse-ready organic farms aren’t a great idea, but that we shouldn’t make them our own ‘safety game’.
To help more of us transcend the blame and safety games in an era of unfolding societal disruption and collapse, we need to talk more about collapse and offer alternative narratives for living meaningful lives in this new context. That includes narratives about how we got into this mess, how to be with this knowledge, what to do about it, and what not to do about it. We can celebrate the freedom that ‘doomsters’ are finding to live more courageously, kindly, and creatively since we woke up to the unfolding collapse of a society that we no longer assume is sane or legitimate.
Without such discussion and alternative narratives, the general public will only experience those narratives that serve elites and factions of capital. In particular, I see one binary beginning to dominate. On the one hand, the clean tech, big tech, and nuclear sectors promote techno-salvation and therefore demonise alarmist readings of the science and current data. On the other hand, the fossil fuel and heavy industry sectors promote the idea that manmade climate change is uncertain, or a hoax, or just not that important. As we humans make sense of the world through stories, articulating narratives to counter those delusional ones is going to be as useful as anything else we could do at this time. So thank you for reading this review.
I am grateful that this issue received voluntary input from Matthew Slater and Stella Nyambura Mbau, who supported myself and Associate Editor Jessica Groenendijk. We thank our individual sponsors at the end of the review. If you supported us, thank you. Please consider taking some moments to forward this newsletter to a few people who you think might be suffering eco-anxiety but not yet know about a post-doom Deep Adaptation response. Perhaps bring them along to an event? I will be participating in various ones online and in Australia, Hungary, Belgium, Mexico, and USA this year (see the Courses and Events section). If you fancy trying out hearing from me more often on collapse risk, readiness, and response, then please subscribe to my blog.
Warmly,
Jem Bendell Publisher, Deep Adaptation Review Author, Breaking Together Cofounder, Bekandze Farm
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Post by Admin on Feb 19, 2024 9:45:57 GMT
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Post by Admin on Feb 26, 2024 16:09:18 GMT
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Post by Admin on Feb 26, 2024 19:25:43 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 12, 2024 0:26:15 GMT
State Department-Commissioned Report Warns AI Could Be an 'Extinction-Level' Threat The report says the U.S. government must move "quickly and decisively" to address the threat of artificial intelligence. www.commondreams.org/news/state-department-commissioned-report-warns-a-i-could-be-an-extinction-level-threatA report released on Monday that was commissioned by the U.S. State Department warns that artificial intelligence could pose an "extinction-level threat." "Given the growing risk to national security posed by rapidly expanding AI capabilities from weaponization and loss of control—and particularly, the fact that the ongoing proliferation of these capabilities serves to amplify both risks—there is a clear and urgent need for the U.S. government to intervene," the report states. The report compares the development of AI to the development of nuclear weapons and claims it might "destabilize global security" if it's not properly regulated. The report says the U.S. government must move "quickly and decisively" to address the threat of AI. 🚨 A new report commissioned by the U.S. government has identified "urgent and growing" national security risks "reminiscent of the introduction of nuclear weapons" - including "extinction-level threat to the human species" - from the development of advanced AI & artificial… pic.twitter.com/SvLrdEzz9e — Future of Life Institute (@fli_org) March 11, 2024 "The three authors of the report worked on it for more than a year, speaking with more than 200 government employees, experts, and workers at frontier AI companies—like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Meta—as part of their research," Timereports. "Accounts from some of those conversations paint a disturbing picture, suggesting that many AI safety workers inside cutting-edge labs are concerned about perverse incentives driving decision making by the executives who control their companies." The report recommends that the U.S. create a new federal agency to regulate the companies developing new AI tools and limit the growth of AI. Experts say such a move does not seem likely. “I think that this recommendation is extremely unlikely to be adopted by the United States government,” Greg Allen, director of the Wadhwani Center for AI and Advanced Technologies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told Time. AI is a rapidly developing, and experts have warned that many of the companies creating new AI tools are not acting responsibly. A report from earlier this month also noted how generative AI is increasing the spread of climate disinformation and using up valuable resources. The U.S. was one of 18 countries that joined an agreement in November to keep AI systems "secure by design," but further action will be needed to accomplish that goal.
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Post by Admin on Mar 28, 2024 18:07:19 GMT
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Post by Admin on Mar 29, 2024 22:24:45 GMT
Philosophy at the End of the World Featuring Ben Ware, Elsa Dorlin, Judith Butler, Frédéric Gros, and more. 28 March 2024 www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/verso-philosophyOn Extinction: Beginning Again At The End by Ben Ware www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2604-on-extinctionPhilosophy at the end of the world On Extinction takes us on a breathtaking philosophical journey through desperate territory. As we face ‘the end of all things’, Ben Ware argues we must face our apocalyptic future without flinching. In fact, extinction is the very lens through which we should examine our current reality. Radical politics today should not be concerned with merely averting the worst but rather with beginning again at the end. To think about the future in this way is itself a form of liberation that might incubate the necessary radical solutions we need. Combining lessons from Kant, Hegel, Adorno, and Lacan, as well as drawing on popular culture and ecology, Ware recasts the most urgent issue of our times and resolves that we can only consider our collective end by treating it as a starting point. Reviews On Extinction is a formidable intervention. The end is too serious a matter to be treated as tragedy or heroic sacrifice; rather, as Ben Ware shows, thinking it requires the materialist dialectic and its predilection for comedy: stubbornly beginning again, and again. Alenka Zupancic, author of What IS Sex? A sweeping tour of our crisis present…Ben Ware offers a series of incisive and unforgiving readings that guide and impel us through the wreckage of contemporary capitalism. Benjamin Noys, author of The Matter of Language An important book for our time. On Extinction follows what the late Gustav Metzger always told me: it is not enough to talk about climate change, we have to talk about extinction. Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director Serpentine Galleries, London
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Post by Admin on Apr 14, 2024 0:13:50 GMT
APRIL 12, 2024 Uncharted Territory Dead Ahead BY ROBERT HUNZIKER www.counterpunch.org/2024/04/12/uncharted-territory-dead-ahead/When America’s leading authority on the climate system Gavin Schmidt of NASA throws his hands up in the air, exclaiming, we’ve got a knowledge gap for the first time since satellites started tuning into the planet’s climate system, what does this imply about future conditions for the planet? Gavin Schmidt, Director, Goddard Institute for Space Studies: “In general, the 2023 temperature anomaly has come out of the blue, revealing an unprecedented knowledge gap perhaps for the first time since about 40 years ago, when satellite data began offering modellers an unparalleled, real-time view of Earth’s climate system.” (Source: Gavin Schmidt, Climate Models Can’t Explain 2023’s Huge Heat Anomaly – We Could be in Uncharted Territory, Nature, March 19, 2024) This admission by the nation’s top climate scientist, stating we may be in uncharted territory, is beyond disturbing, especially within the context of a chaotic climate system that, by all appearances, has gone haywire. Hopefully, it is only “an anomaly,” as stated by Dr. Schmidt because if it is the opposite, or a “new normal,” then big trouble is already at the doorstep. After all, 2023 was way beyond normal with an extraordinarily negative upward trajectory, but if it is now the new normal, what’s next? Already, current temperature trends are knocking the socks off previously much lower trends, in fact, setting new records one after another in rapid-fire succession; it’s obvious that something is seriously out of kilter, March 2024 is the ninth consecutive month of record-setting heat, each month hotter, and according to NOAA scientists, ocean temperatures for 2023 were “off the charts.” Who’s guessing where this is headed? Radio Ecoshock by Alex Smith, broadcasting on 105 radio stations, is one of the best sources (a gem) when searching for answers as to what’s going on with the planet. A recent Radio Ecoshock headline addresses this burning issue head on: “Why So Hot So Fast?” Gavin Schmidt is interviewed d/d April 3, 2024. Radio Ecoshock’s opening statement: “Climate models can’t explain 2023’s huge heat anomaly – ‘we could be in uncharted territory.’ Meanwhile, so much ice is melting at the Poles, Earth’s rotation is changing.” That’s a mouthful that should rattle the cage of anybody who’s even the least bit concerned about the future of life support on Earth. Uncharted territory is not a welcomed concept in the context of a climate system that’s already off its rocker. The evidence of ongoing climate chaos is found as animals of all stripes head for the hills or overpower foreign frontiers for survival. Animals, wild ones as well as tame humans (?) catch the scent early when things change and migrate northward. This is a prime example of what’s behind America’s sticky migration issue. Central American environs are a hot house where crops don’t grow so well any longer. According to the World Meteorological Organization, 2022 relative to 1991-2020 in central and eastern Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula and Guatemala and El Salvador registered +1°C to +3°C throughout the region. Whereas Paris ’15 set a key threshold holding temps to less than +1.5°C (but compared to 1850, not 1991) or trouble ensues. Well, the consequences of excessiveness are only too evident. One solution for too much heat – Migrate north. According to the US Institute of Peace: Climate change has disrupted up to 70% of crops in some regions of Central America. Solution – Move north. Germanwatch’s Global Climate Risk Index claims Honduras is the single most impacted country by climate change in the world over the past decade. According to the Council on Foreign Relations: “Climate migration occurs when people leave their homes due to extreme weather events, including floods, heat waves, droughts, and wildfires, as well as slower-moving climate challenges such as rising seas and intensifying water stress. This form of migration is increasing because the world has not been able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt global average temperature rise, which leads to more climate disasters.” (Source: Climate Change Is Fueling Migration. Do Climate Migrants Have Legal Protections, Council on Foreign Relations d/d December 19, 2022. According to Schmidt’s Nature article: “For the past nine months, mean land and sea surface temperatures have overshot previous records each month by up to 0.2 °C — a huge margin at the planetary scale. A general warming trend is expected because of rising greenhouse-gas emissions, but this sudden heat spike greatly exceeds predictions made by statistical climate models that rely on past observations. Many reasons for this discrepancy have been proposed, but yet, no combination of them has been able to reconcile our theories with what has happened.” What then is the outlook according to NASA? “If the anomaly does not stabilize by August — a reasonable expectation based on previous El Niño events — then the world will be in uncharted territory. It could imply that a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates, much sooner than scientists had anticipated.” (Schmidt) To say a warming planet is already fundamentally altering how the climate system operates is tantamount to saying that the climate system’s aberrant behavior is on automatic pilot. Isn’t this what everybody has been dreading for decades? According to Schmidt, the answer to that disturbing prospect will be obvious by August 2024. That’s only 4 months away. Meanwhile, migrants are already at the doorstep, even as the climate system may only be 120 days away from entering uncharted territory, which can only mean things will get a lot worse. Assuming we officially enter uncharted territory, where will the massive overbearing onslaught of the hungry, the thirsty, the lost souls, these itinerants go? The Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.
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Post by Admin on Apr 22, 2024 19:55:23 GMT
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Post by Admin on Apr 24, 2024 16:45:09 GMT
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