Every 4 months the Deep Adaptation Review provides a free round up of significant news and opinion on the topic of collapse risk, readiness and response. If you aren’t subscribed then I recommend you have a look at that ’round up’ section from last month’s review, below. If you would like an email with that kind of info a few times a year, then sign up. You can read the rest of the DA review, including my editorial, where I discuss how more professionals are inching towards discussing collapse, here.
[Winner, 2023 Wildlife Photographer of the Year People’s Choice Award. Ice Bed/Credit: Nima Sarikhani, Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Source.]
Excerpt from DA Review #15, February 2024.
Elitist ‘wagon-circling’ on the environmental predicament continues. For instance, Britain’s Prince William commented on how we should all feel about the environmental predicament. He backs the Earthshot Prize, which funds mostly good projects, as a basis for claiming that isolated innovations prove we can save the world. He stated, without evidence, that not believing we can innovate our way out of catastrophe is unhelpful. In fact, the evidence from many psychological studies is that we are radicalised by our awareness of failure. However, elites can feel threatened by such radicalism, so their ‘moodsplaining’ will continue. They now have a book – ‘Not the End of the World’ – upon which to generate lots of misleading commentary in the world’s mainstream media. Brazilian researcher Claudia Gasparovic offered a rapid debunking of its arguments, in a post on LinkedIn. Similar concerns were put to the book’s author by journalist Rachel Donald for Mongabay. Simply, one must be blind to the material dimensions of energy generation and storage to believe that modern societies can maintain current consumption patterns by switching to entirely renewable energy. Moreover, the momentum of change in our oceans and atmosphere, coupled with a dramatic loss of cooling aerosols and cloud-seeding forest cover, means we are already within a scary climate situation.
On leaving the employment of mainstream media, environmental journalists have the chance to explain how they have been maintaining an ideological stance in their writing. Former BBC journalist Roger Harrabin wrote in the Independent newspaper: “Forget optimism – despair will be the prevailing emotion for many. We environment reporters are urged not to say this because it may sap the will of the public to take action on climate if they believe it’s too late.” When Roger uses the passive tense of “are urged”, he is hiding that it is the top bosses who ideologically police their journalists to maintain false hope and thus avoid anything that might lead to radicalisation and rebellion. Neither the journalists nor their bosses are psychologists, so their views on what may or may not motivate the public or how political change might occur, is a self-serving projection. It helps them mask from themselves how their pay cheques and prestige require them to lie to the public – because lies involve both omission and commission.
The accelerating wagon-circling of elites is likely to make them dizzy as data on collapse continues to grow. The obvious issue is the latest observational data on changes in our oceans and climate, which far outpace the predictions from mainstream climatology. What is fascinating is how radical climate activists were closer to the truth on climate than the people paid to work on it full-time. That is not surprising to anyone aware of the way institutional dynamics shape scholarly endeavour, but is an incomprehensible threat to the worldview of some commentators and journalists who pretend that the IPCC is correct and its critics wrong, even when the opposite is factually undeniable. That is why seventy scholars from 16 countries signed a public letter in support of climate activists who were undermined by senior climatologists. At the time of writing, the editorial team of the Deep Adaptation Review do not know of any public apologies from such scientists. Instead, those scientists who are responsible enough to admit their failure in public have been taking it in their stride, to say they need to do more science, rather than understand their own identity, ideology, and perverse incentives as well as what damage they might have done.
Elsewhere, some senior scientists are allowing the environmental predicament to dissolve their past confidence in their profession and skill set, and to respond with a new curiosity. Physicist, Professor Tom Murphy of the University of California in San Diego, confessed that his profession hasn’t helped us respond to the environmental predicament. One senior climatologist has now broken ranks more fully. In the last few months Dr Wolfgang Knorr has been writing a series of articles for websites like Brave New Europe and Resilience that challenge the dominant short-termist attitudes within his profession. In particular, he has been warning about how scientists will face a decision about whether to support greedy or abusive policy agendas as disruption and anxiety spreads throughout the world. In one article he notes that “as climate impacts become more frequent, we will see increasing nervousness on the side of the authorities, and a clinging on to the illusion of control.” In sociology, this is known as ‘elite panic’ and is outlined in the book ‘Breaking Together’ by DAR-publisher Jem Bendell.
More scholars from a variety of relevant disciplines are joining Wolfgang in communicating the danger we are in. For instance, Dr Marshall Brain, an NCSU professor, spoke about “The Doomsday Book: The Science Behind Humanity’s Greatest Threats” in an interview last September. More worryingly (yes, that’s possible), Dr Jack O’Connor, at the UN University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security, authored the ‘Interconnected Disaster Risks Report’ that looked at tipping points impacting human security. Discussion of such news is still quite marginal, on specialist youtube channels. Imagine what might happen if Jack had been on primetime BBC, CNN, or even massive podcasts like Joe Rogan? It seems even numbers don’t make a difference for media penetration. “15,000 Scientists Warn Society Could ‘Collapse’ This Century” was the headline in Vice. But no major prime time discussion ensued. Perhaps that’s because ‘this century’ is pretty vague and so many people are already preoccupied with the decline and even breakdown of their own way of life. That is experienced as rising prices, debt, crime, strikes, wars, and disruptions of all kinds.
Some activists understand that because collapse is upon us already, to differing degrees in different places and economic classes, their approach needs to change. One example: some co-founders of the climate activism group Extinction Rebellion (XR) in the UK have launched the Humanity Project. It seeks to work with community groups to help people cope better with a declining standard of living, in ways that don’t make the environmental situation worse and prepare better for further disruptions. This contrasts with the way XR appears to some people to have got stuck in an agenda that serves the clean tech and nuclear sectors, but little else.
There is a growing diversity of views on what to think and do once we accept collapse is inevitable or unfolding. The blogger at “OK Doomer” is an interesting contributor to the conversation. Some of her articles, like this one, express a bold and proud nihilism – it is something we hear from some collapse commentators. The article illustrates how some people assume that the only way to respond positively to collapse would be more of the same corporate and technocratic managerialism that got us into this mess. Such a reaction is not unusual, as we saw when a narrowly corporate-medical agenda on Covid-19 was keenly supported by so many people who were, nevertheless, collapse-aware. Instead, we could be curious about what doesn’t work and so explore what else might reduce harm, whether on public health crises or other matters.
Other emerging doomeratti sometimes add a misanthropic condemnation of human nature to an exasperated outlook on the future. Although that kind of venting may play to the digital gallery of thumb-jerk likers and re-posters, it is something that responsible doomsters might consider challenging. An example of this was when Renaae Churches challenged a twitter doom star when he wrote: “We are a plague. Are you brave enough to handle that? Can you own it?” She replied: “I will NOT own this stance, instead I see there is a different kind of courage. It is one that does not cope through numbness and hatred of our species. It does not require flawed stories of ecological inevitability to avoid feelings of shame. And it does not resort to believing one has superior knowledge or character than most of humanity.”
Some doomeratti like to preach that humanity is going through a dark night of the soul to emerge with a higher consciousness. Strands of that thought include the idea that there is a direction to evolution, with humans at the leading edge. Often this story emphasises the benefit of understanding the planet as one sphere in space. In an interview for Buddha at The Gas Pump, our publisher Jem Bendell challenged this view as a product of modern culture, rather than transcending that culture. “It can arise from an emotional avoidance,” he said, “by displacing attention from how to be wise and compassionate in the unfolding malaise, and instead sharing stories about various kinds of salvation. People who live closer to nature, in cultures that are closer to nature, neither pontificate about a global awakening nor need to do that in order to experience unity with nature, or to be kind and wise towards people and beings in their local sphere of influence. To valorise global thinking is, at best, racially unaware, and could, at worst, lead to backing for globalist totalitarian schemes.“
There are many other emerging strands of ‘doomer’ thought. The prepper mentality focuses on preparing to try to get through a brief period of social unrest. Some popular YouTube channels take this approach, focusing on topics like storing food and purifying water. One writer on Substack, Justin McAfee is seeking to connect that mindset with ecological awareness and a greater community spirit. There will likely be many more people and initiatives coming into this space, especially as the managers of mainstream media seek to hide, lampoon or vilify the issue and the people engaged with it.
Clearly, we would all benefit from hearing diverse views on how to make sense of the situation. One person doing important work on that is Dahr Jamail, with his Great Unraveling podcast. In December he interviewed Dilafruz Khonikboyeva. An Indigenous Pamiri and a transformational conflict expert, she explained that conflict is not something that should be avoided or seen as shameful. Transformational conflict can be used to reframe how we perceive what is happening around us and to foster a sense of community beyond physical space. It can also help us avoid a ‘herding stalemate’ and pull each other in. As she points out, the world is experiencing horrific dark days, but this is also a positive development because it has brought the conversation about societal disintegration to many more people. That could lead to significant change.
Since the previous DA Review, an important contributor to conversation in this field, Reverend Michael Dowd, passed away. Michael’s very last sermon captured his post-doom ethos and personality perfectly. That is, he faced the dark, allowed it, and exuded a positivity about life, notwithstanding. In so doing, he invited us all to be our better selves precisely because of our understanding of the great predicament facing humanity. A five-minute artistic reflection of photos and music created by Michael Dowd’s wife and mission partner, Connie Barlow, conveys that positivity.
You can read the rest of the DA review, including my editorial, where I discuss how more professionals are inching towards discussing collapse, here.
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Prof Jem Bendell 