The Dangers of Climate Dogma – and what we can do about it

“We are already in a manmade climate emergency and it is probably not primarily due to CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s because the pace of change in our climate is what makes this an emergency, and that is largely due to a decline in the Earth’s reflectivity, primarily from a loss of cloud cover, which is due to a fall in cloud seeding, with strong evidence that is mainly from a degrading of forest cover and ocean health. Downplaying this ecological dimension to global heating due to a dogmatic allegiance to carbon-only explanations and targets, has become as bad a response as that from people who dismiss it all as a climate scam.”

How do you feel when you read these lines? Who would say such a thing? Could it be true? Please read on to explore why we can update our understanding of climate chaos and what to do about it…

Being curious despite our fear  

If you have been noticing the temperatures around the world over the last 2 years, then you will have felt some degree of shock and trepidation. Both on land and in the oceans, the thermometers have been going up faster than we were told to expect – and faster than the top scientists have been able to explain. We’re talking about present day measurements – so the facts of observation – not the latest theories about what might, or might not, occur. Living in a world that’s reached 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial averages, years before past predictions of worst case scenarios, is both scary and a challenge to the claimed expertise of mainstream climatology. Or so it should be. That does not need to be something to be feared and avoided. Instead, science is, by definition and methodology, an ongoing dialogue with nature, which requires an openness to unanticipated or anomalous data, which might lead to the ditching of old ideas, the testing of new hypotheses and even the transition into new paradigms. Unfortunately, that is not how all climate science is being practiced and communicated today. Instead, it has become a field plagued by dogma and tribalism, which results from multiple commercial and institutional interests. 

Although the field of ‘Earth System Sciences’ has sought to develop climatology away from a narrow focus on the carbon cycle, the field is still far from a pan-ecological paradigm. In this essay, I will summarise the latest insights on the declining effect of forest cover and ocean health in naturally seeding clouds that cool the planet, and how these ‘biohydrological’ processes are global, not just regional, phenomena. There is not yet widespread scientific confidence about this biohydrological theory, and we still need more scientific analysis of it. However, if these processes are confirmed to be as significant as some now claim, then the implications for our understanding, activism and policies are huge. That means unless we challenge the dogmatic parts of climatology, then a limited and counterproductive set of policies will continue to be pursued and even enshrined in international law. To support reflections on how to return to a more scientific approach, I will share some ideas on why the dogmas exist. Then I will suggest where impetus could come from to return us to a more open-minded scientific inquiry. 

Taken together, these insights shape an evolution in my own understanding of climate change, which now includes a theoretical ‘biohydrological’ opportunity for humanity to slow the damaging speed of global heating, and perhaps even its general trajectory. I am not confident that a pan-ecological paradigm can re-shape climatology and climate policy, or that there will be significant action based on any such shift. That is because climate chaos is a symptom of the structures of power which continue to exploit both people and planet. However, that does not mean we should not try. The implications of this updated perspective on climatology for the fields of collapse preparedness and deep adaptation is something I’m reflecting on, so will be discussing with others through the metacrisis meetings during the coming months. 

Unanticipated acceleration

At the time of writing, in September 2025, the last 12 months were about 1.52C above the pre-industrial global average temperature. In their 2021 assessment, the pinnacle institution of climatology, the IPCC, anticipated 1.2C for this year, as a worst-case scenario. Their previous reports had projected the current temperatures as many decades in the future. Reflecting widespread opinion and current observational data, earlier this year a group of climatologists stated in a peer reviewed article that “Global warming has accelerated.” 

There have been some dissenters on this issue, such as renowned scientists Michael Mann and Katherine Hayhoe. In May 2024, they wrote that anthropogenic climate change is not accelerating, as: “what is actually happening is that we have gone through a major El Niño event that contributed to the global heat…” There was some scientific backing for focusing on such Pacific Ocean dynamics, as two experts on that had assessed back in 2017 that the world might warm beyond 1.5C around 2025. Their results didn’t fit the consensus at the time. Unfortunately temperatures have not come down. The El Nino ended in May 2024, with the opposite La Nina beginning December 2024, whereas January 2025 was the hottest ever recorded, and temperatures have remained persistently high during 2025. The senior scientists Mann and Hayhoe were right that the temperature increases were unlikely to continue at the same pace, but it is worrying that they haven’t settled back in the range of past projections. Worse, the World Meteorological Organisation calculated a 70% chance of the 5 year period to 2030 would average at least 1.5C over pre-industrial averages, thereby ending any wishful thinking that the recent temperatures are temporary aberrations. 

The implications of this unanticipated acceleration are still being explored. In addition to El Nino, some of the contributing factors to recent temperatures include, inter alia, the water vapour put into the atmosphere by a massive underwater eruption, the loss of clouds over the north Pacific due to new regulations on the types of shipping fuel allowed, and a period of high solar activity which reduced cloud-seeding from cosmic rays. However, some scientists acknowledge that the reason for the acceleration is beyond the understanding of the current scientific consensus. Although some climatologists are merely recommending more funding to do more of the same with higher resolution climate models, others are quietly wondering whether a paradigm shift is needed. That is, to a more deeply ecological understanding of our changing climate. 

Waking up to the ecological atmosphere

When I took a year out from my University job in 2017 to read climate science in some depth for the first time since my undergraduate degree, I concluded that mainstream climatology had been maintaining a narrative that no longer seemed true to me. That narrative was that the process of anthropogenic climate change was slow and due to the warming effects of CO2 emissions rather than other factors. By slow, I mean that significant shifts in our climate appeared to be many decades away, as the warming effects of CO2 were small and gradual. In the Deep Adaptation paper of 2018, I concluded that there had been insufficient attention to temperature-amplifying feedbacks, as well as the slowing or ending of the moderating effects from nature, so there would likely be more rapid climate change and thus impact on society. Crucially, I pointed to the evidence that there was already so much momentum to these changes that although we should reduce and drawdown CO2 emissions, we needed to prepare practically and psychologically for major disruptions to life as we know it – and ultimately the collapse of industrial consumer societies. 

In the subsequent years I realised that I had overlooked the significance of the seeding of clouds by the pollen and bacteria rising above forests and the aerosols produced by burning dirty fuels. Therefore in 2023, I updated my commentary on climatology in Chapter 5 of Breaking Together. That included summarising the science that indicates that forest cloud seeding delivers a global impact on cooling clouds and thus temperatures, rather than just a local or regional one. The massive rise in deforestation, globally, could be correlated with the recent decades of global temperature rise – and not due to the carbon released. I explained that these processes of cloud seeding by forests and sulphurous fuels had been insufficiently incorporated into institutional climatology, public communications, and recommendations to policy makers. I organised panels at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt to try to raise attention to these aspects, and how to respond. 

My book came out just before things went ‘gobsmackingly bananas’ with the world’s ocean and air temperatures. By January 2025, with the unusual heat persisting beyond the end of the Pacific El Nino phenomenon, I decided to look again at the non-CO2 drivers of climate change. Doing so has consolidated a shift in my perspective about where we should focus our efforts on climate – which is why I’m writing this essay, so you too can assess whether you want to respond differently in future. 

Forests, oceans and clouds: biohydrology

As the theory had been dismissed by top scientists, I had given little attention to the claim that large forests provide a so-called ‘biotic pump’. It is the theory that because forests cause water vapour to rise above them, this adds to the amount of condensation into liquid, which reduces pressure and sucks in air from elsewhere, such as that over the oceans. This process is claimed to enable massive forests such as the Amazon to influence regional winds, not just local precipitation. The process accentuates the impact of natural cloud-seeding by pollen and bacteria that rise above forests during evapotranspiration. Some versions of the theory include how this biotic pump leads to energy transfer from the Earth’s surface to the higher atmosphere, as latent heat is released upon condensation, and thus enables greater energy transfer into space, thereby regulating global temperatures, not just local ones. Some scientists have contested the significance of the condensation-caused drop in pressure for driving regional winds, especially as latent heat released from the same process would counteract pressure changes. However, that comes from swift calculations rather than detailed debunkings. Instead, there is evidence from historical studies of past reforestation and of recent deforestation, which describe major impacts on precipitation and temperatures. It is important to note that these are not experiments or modelling, but observed outcomes at large scales. 

Interestingly, the co-author of a recent book on the topic, Rob De Laet, explained to me that they have correlated the droughts in the Amazon this century with global temperature spikes and reduced global cloud cover during the same periods. I recommend Rob’s book, Cooling the Climate, written with Peter Bunyard, for a detailed and passionate articulation of this aspect of climate dynamics. Their book champions a more holistic and ecological paradigm for understanding climate change, and therefore also mentions the importance of ocean health – something which I have learned far more about this year.

In my previous work, I assumed that changes in our oceans, such as rapid warming, microplastics, toxic chemicals, acidification, and overfishing, were relevant to the global climate in terms of the release or sequestration of CO2 into or from the atmosphere. However, what I did not understand was how much a healthy ocean regulates our global climate by producing clouds. That is because the phytoplankton that exist in large quantities in a healthy ocean release dimethyl sulfide (DMS) which then reacts in the atmosphere to form ‘cloud condensation nuclei’. Particular areas of the ocean, such as coral reefs, give off even more, and lead to regional rainfall variations. The amount of cloud cover over the oceans is important to the global climate because they cover 71% of the planet’s surface and absorb far more sunlight as heat than the land does. Although modellers could forever discuss their calculations for how much net reflective benefit (albedo reduction) there is for cooling the climate from clouds over differing types of landuse, any increase in cloud cover over oceans is extremely salient to the Earth’s Energy Imbalance. Unfortunately, changes in the oceans have been leading to rapid declines in the amount of phytoplankton, with conservative estimates and more alarming ones. The causes for this decline are many, including the microplastics and toxics that I mentioned earlier, as well a reduction in nutrient cycling as deep waters don’t mix as much with surface waters due to decades of warming. Worse, ocean acidification from dissolved CO2 is shifting the species of phytoplankton towards those that produce less of the DMS-precursors to cloud condensation nuclei. As some climatologists give new attention to how the Earth’s general reflectivity has fallen ‘in sync’ with recent temperature spikes, there is a chance for more attention to natural cloud seeding by phytoplankton. 

Recognising the extreme importance of the climate cooling effects of natural cloud-seeding by healthy forests and oceans does not imply that carbon dioxide and methane are unimportant to the current climate situation. It even appears that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of CO2 in our atmosphere might be significantly greater than what mainstream climatology agreed in the past. That means the long term scenarios are bleak if we do not curb and draw down emissions. However, both CO2 and methane can be regarded as important amplifiers of other temperature-forcing factors which impact on the climate more rapidly – and which we can also try to do something about.  

A vast new, yet old, agenda for action: pan-ecologism

The biological drivers of clouds and the impact on Earth’s reflectivity and latent heat transfers to space are areas that have been under-prioritised by research funding in climatology. The lack of a larger body of research will cause reticence amongst some scientists, despite that lack ironically being the outcome of processes within the profession that I will return to below. It means that it has been left to non-specialist research analysts and philosophers, such as Charles Eisenstein, to point towards a more fully ecological understanding of climate change – without challenge or updates from mainstream climatology. If the analysis on biohydrological processes described above proves to be correct, then the implications for our understanding, activism and policies are huge. That is because the current paradigm of climatology and climate policy does not sufficiently include the biohydrological dimensions. A group of scientists summarised it in the peer-reviewed and esteemed scientific journal Global Environmental Change back in 2017: “Forest-driven water and energy cycles are poorly integrated into regional, national, continental and global decision-making on climate change adaptation, mitigation, land use and water management. This constrains humanity’s ability to protect our planet’s climate and life-sustaining functions.” Also poorly integrated into decision-making on climate are the water and energy cycles driven by healthy oceans, which are probably even more important than those involving forests. 

Despite the emphasis of ‘Earth Systems Sciences’ on ecological processes involved in climate change, it appears that the focus of its contributions to mainstream climatology have been framed within carbon-centrism. Therefore, the focus has mostly been on how living systems might accentuate, or not, warming from CO2 as well as future CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Therefore, what we need for better science on the climate might even constitute a paradigm shift. What I am naming as a ‘pan-ecological paradigm’ would recognise that the pervasiveness and complexity of living systems is such that they are salient to any natural phenomena, while being beyond our full comprehension, so that our research methodologies should consciously avoid deprioritising the significance of living relationships. Therefore, in the context of climatology, such an approach or paradigm would mean that biohydrological processes would not be deprioritised for either research or inclusion in models, due to any methodological impediments, including those arising from institutional and historical factors. 

What this more holistic understanding of climate change opens up is greater possibility: theoretically, we have time to work with nature to replenish the natural cloud seeding by forests and oceans to decelerate global heating in the coming decades, thereby securing more time to transition off fossil fuels for our energy, while allowing some continued usage for agriculture, medicines and other applications. On land, such efforts at replenishment could include agroforestry, forest conservation, reforestation, and afforestation. Forests could also be better helped to migrate according to the already-changing climate. Even more important will be efforts at marine climate restoration. That could include reducing pollution of the oceans. However, the evidence is that reduced nutrient cycling due to ocean stratification from rapid global warming is the main global cause of a decline in phytoplankton. Therefore, it would be wrong to assume that a pan-ecological paradigm must restrict us to natural interventions. Instead, one of the most urgent interventions can be to mechanically increase nutrient cycling, through wave-driven pumps, and fertilize the ocean with increasingly-lacking nutrients such as iron. How this is done and who pays for it should be central issues of global environmental and global security policy agendas. 

Such efforts at climate repair through partnership with nature might turn out to be too little too late, due to the feedbacks from current and inevitable near-term heating, as well as the acidification of oceans by CO2, which will lead to some further climate destabilisation. However, we don’t know that for certain, while the consequences are so grave for humanity, so we must try. But who is “we”, when not even the climate science and climate activist communities are pushing for this holistic agenda? This brings us to consider why this important agenda is being overlooked and even marginalised, and what to do about that. 

The dangerous double dogma on climate change

A sensible response from climatologists to the unanticipated acceleration of climate change in recent years would be to admit past mistakes in their professional field might not have been an accident, and so explore the psychological and institutional factors that can lead to such mistakes in any scientific or professional community. Talking with climatologists around the world last year, I did not hear that view. Instead, I heard that many of them regard themselves in a battle against misinformation, a lack of public understanding and lack of political will. That is understandable, but it means they are not all alert to what might be their own dogmatism. 

I perceive that there are now two dominant corporate-friendly dogmas on climate change. Within any dogmas, adherents ignore data and analysis which does not fit their pre-existing position. They regard a topic as a battle and are incapable of nuance. The first dogma is that any climate change is naturally caused, and so we can burn fossil fuels and expand economies without concern for the environment. We can call it the climate-scam dogma. The second dogma is that climate change is only or primarily about CO2 emissions and so humanity must be prepared to trash some habitats and depress societies to cut emissions. We can call it the carbon-centrism dogma. 

These dogmas lead to tribalism amongst competing adherents. Reflecting on the sidelining of a more ecological approach to climate by mainstream climatology, “Science, as I know from forty years of reporting, can be surprisingly tribal,” wrote the vastly experienced Fred Pearce in his book: “A trillion trees : how we can reforest our world.” 

The power of these dogmas in maintaining two tribes that appear to live in different worlds was illustrated by responses to a court case involving the senior climatologist Michael Mann, mentioned earlier. When he won the case for defamation against people who critiqued some of his research, it was widely reported in climate, environment, and mainstream media, but with nothing in the ‘climate skeptic’ media. Subsequently, when Professor Mann was reprimanded by the judge in the same case for “bad-faith trial misconduct” on financial calculations, it received wall-to-wall coverage in the climate skeptic media, but initially nothing in climate and environment media. Only a couple of outlets reported on it after Mann’s lawyers appealed the judge’s decision (unsuccessfully, at the time of writing). 

Dogmas are not how we should do science. Tribalism is not how we should approach scientific dialogue. So why do these dogmas exist? That could be the topic of a whole book drawing on the history and philosophy of science. Here, I will briefly mention those factors that are important to consider so we can imagine paths out of the current dogma and tribalism. 

The first driver of climate dogma is the commercial influence on science and its communication – either by direct grants for some work and not others, or through shaping the field of knowledge that grant makers, policy makers, and editors exist within. On the one hand, the climate-scam dogma is promoted by the faction of international capital invested in fossil fuels. There is a huge amount of evidence on this influence from the largest industry sector in the world. On the other hand, the carbon-centrism dogma is promoted by one faction of international capital invested in low-carbon energy. Adherents to carbon-centrism have been keen to criticise the financial support for  climate-scam dogma, but ignore the role of financial support for their own views. That is despite the ‘global energy transition market’ being valued at USD 3.1 trillion in 2024 – already well over a third of the global fossil fuel market. 

This commercial influence flows into the second driver of climate dogma, which is what sociologists call ‘occupational closure’. That is because the financing provides career pathways for people, who then assume that certain forms of expertise and views are valid, and others are not. This works subtly, as any profession comes to define what is esteemed and what is not. We can take the highly-regarded Carbon Brief website as one example. A search on their site reveals that it has not covered either of the biohydrological drivers of climate change that I describe above. They have been meeting the knowledge needs of an industry of professionals working on carbon emissions reduction. The key is in the name: carbon, not climate, brief. 

The way that occupational closure leads to dogma is also due to the sheer volume of content that a professional is engaging with. To have relevant knowledge on life and society, rather than career progression, then the key challenge is salience identification amongst a large volume of research data, papers and people. If the approach taken is to amalgamate from the volume of research (as the IPCC reporting process does), then the mainstream view is then likely to reflect the cultural, economic, political, institutional and psychological influences on research. Those of us who have read into the history and philosophy of science, as well as the social psychology and anthropology of academia and scientific endeavour, know that the existence of systematically-produced bias is normal. The difficulty to identify salience amongst a mass of information might be why outside research analysts can often be ahead of the orthodoxy in any field. 

A third reason for dogmatism is the understandable emotional charge of this issue. For any topic, it can feel easier to hate some person or idea than to consider information that might shake the foundations of your identity, purpose and career. When the topic is one of life and death for humanity and planet, then these emotional reactions can be heightened. That can explain why I have experienced illogical vitriol from adherents to either dogma. It is predictable, therefore, that if someone from the mainstream climate profession gives attention to this essay, I will be accused of supporting the fossil fuel industry. That’s because they will prefer demonising a person than trying to understand analysis that breaks a simple story of them being on the right side of a struggle between good and evil. 

A fourth reason for dogmatism is that a growing public perception of the commercial capture of science, expertise, and policy, have led to a collapse in confidence in climate science. That is despite the rise in the experience of present-day climate changes around the world. The growing dismissal of scientifically-grounded warnings on public affairs is rooted in recent experience of the science, practice and policy on medicine and public health. Many of my readers may not realise that the disaster of that particular area of corporate-capture is still unfolding. That is because they don’t follow the science which now indicates that lockdowns and other policies were often ineffective and sometimes even counterproductive, and that people are still experiencing negative consequences – economically, physically, and psychologically. 

The dogma of carbon-centrism could even kill

Some scientists have argued that due to the effects on the climate, fossil fuel burning actually kills people. However, it is also true that hundreds of millions of people would die if fossil fuels were not supporting agriculture today. That points to how not only is the climate-scam dogma dangerous for undermining bold action on climate change, but the carbon-centrism dogma poses its own deadly risks, which I will mention briefly before exploring what we can do about it.  

Unfortunately, the dogmatic approach to climatology means that the crucial water-cycling aspects of our climate situation aren’t appearing enough in mainstream climate science, policy, or activism. The consequences of that dogmatism pose existential consequences for life on Earth. That is because environmentally-interested members of the public, of professions, and of political movements, are not informed about the importance of action on forests and ocean health. An example is how the 2025 ‘tipping points’ conference was framed primarily in terms of carbon emissions, so any analyses of ‘positive social tipping points’ were directed at that, rather than forest conservation and ocean health. That is even despite the hosts being amongst the most ecologically-minded scientists within climatology. This means we miss out on potential efforts to cool the Earth’s climate before widespread catastrophe. 

Second, a ‘fake green fairytale’ is being promoted that leads to trashing more of our precious environments, while sidelining issues of equity which drives alienation against bold climate action. For instance, it is massively tragic and ironic that the Brazilian government is justifying further destruction of the Amazon rainforest in order to produce the metals for batteries for the energy transition. They are not unusual amongst governments, some of whom also expand destruction on behalf of the fossil fuel industry at the same time. 

Third, the partial and potentially counterproductive carbon-centric view on climate is increasingly being enshrined in law, rather than a broader response to the climate emergency. That was highlighted in July 2025, with the International Criminal Court recognising the IPCC as the authority of climate change when courts assess whether governments are doing what they should on the issue. The consequences for policies are unclear, but it could mean more legal backing for a rapacious and destructive approach to forests under the cover of an energy transition. 

Fourth, rather than climatologists exploring the failures of the subtle governance of their own profession in the ways I’ve alluded to in this essay, they are advancing towards making proposals for rapid and large-scale social and political change. On the one hand, it is admirable that they want to be relevant to such an important issue for humanity. On the other hand, they have little to no grounding in psychological, social, political, economic and cultural studies, and will bring a worldview grounded in natural science and success within academic hierarchies. As climate scientist Wolfgang Knorr mused last year, if coming from a narrow carbon-centrist perspective, climatologists might end up advocating techno-bureaucratic attempts at mass surveillance and manipulation, thereby stoking a public backlash.

What most professionals working in this field don’t seem to understand is that their assumption they are the good guys, working hard for the good of humanity, is not true if they are promoting a narrow and counterproductive understanding of the situation and what to do about it. Therefore it is key that past adherents to carbon-centrism, such as myself, break free from that dogma, and work on a more holistic agenda. It is why I have written this essay, and why I wrote the summative statement in the opening (italicised) paragraph. Unless we speak out, most interested and well-meaning persons will defer to the IPCC and senior climatologists, despite the current observational data demonstrating their serious limitations. 

A revolution from the edges

Data is meant to be the foundation of science. Well, data from the world’s thermometers tell us beyond doubt that some of the most high-profile climatologists were not only partly incorrect in their scientific conclusions, but also wilfully wrong to vilify research analysts and activists who have been more correct in their assessments over the last decade. Despite this situation, which many of scholars have pointed to, I have not read any serious challenge to the elites in institutional climatology from the world’s leading publications and broadcast media. How might we encourage more introspection from the scientific community, and those who communicate their research to the public and policy makers, so they do not continue to make mistakes like those I am pointing to in this essay? I believe that to escape climate dogma and return to a more scientific approach will require some networks of people on the edges of the climate community to organise. The following are four communities in particular that could help. 

I will address each of them directly… 

To Young Scientists: As you are in the early stage of your career, you have a privileged amount of time and access to resources on this topic. You have witnessed how hierarchical and careerist your sector is, and how narrowly focused most of the research is, so you are not incentivised to integrate disparate knowledge or identify salience for humanity. But unlike those who came before, you begin your research career with the availability of AI, which you can use to explore the more hidden corners of your field. That means you can become confident about different aspects of a pan-ecological approach to climate change, even if that is not what you are funded to do. Then, you can speak out on it, in blogs, videos, social media posts, and even academic papers. You may find allies amongst those senior colleagues who began as researchers inspired by theories of a self-regulating planetary Gaia to then develop the field of Earth System Sciences. Don’t give in to the idea you must merely focus on qualifications and career, for these are both desperate and exhilarating times. 

To Climate Activists once in XR, JSO and Sunrise: You were so deeply moved by the existential threat being explained to you by the more alarmist readings of climate science that you decided to get involved and take personal risks to put this matter on the political agenda. Since then we have witnessed little policy change, a worsening climate, the loss of civil liberties and the growth of baseless conspiracy theories. We knew the agenda was bigger than carbon, but that became lost in the drama of activism and simplicity of media reporting. It is time that we accept that we were misled into being carbon-centrists, move through the regret about time lost, and explore the new opportunities for bold action from a pan-ecological paradigm that centres the restoration of biohydrological cycles. You will find many activists already on this path, such as XR founder member Skeena Rathor. 

To the Climate Sangha of Plum Village: You have sought the psychological support of mindfulness and Buddhist philosophy to help you stay engaged in work that exposes you to deep worry and frustration. You also know that mindfulness can help you to notice any of your internal attachments to stories of self and world, so that you can be more present and open to new information which less mindful people might ignore. You are also intuitively aware of interbeing and thus the truth of a more holistic pan-ecological paradigm on climate change. The sangha you are part of is international and well-connected, and could help people to quietly process the implications of a paradigm shift in their professional work. 

To Conservation NGOs: Your crucial work on the many threatened ecosystems of the world has slowly become a poor cousin to the massive funding for campaigning and investing on cutting carbon emissions. Your work on toxic chemicals, habitat loss, and species preservation, as well as the systemic causes of all of that, has not received the attention it once did from the environmental movement or its financial supporters. The evidence of the critical climate role of healthy forests and oceans is an opportunity for you to reclaim your agency within contemporary environmentalism. You can show us what a pan-ecological paradigm on climate change looks like in practice. 

Returning to possibility

Becoming more immersed in a pan-ecological paradigm on climate change this year has shifted my general emotional disposition. That might not be logical, as the outlook on the long term has worsened, as recent research suggests the atmosphere will slowly heat to a greater degree than was previously calculated for the same amount of CO2 emitted.  However, I now recognise that there is wider scope for action to curb some of the global heating in the nearer term i.e. in the coming twenty years. Therefore, I am less certain that climate-driven mass death will be occurring in the coming decades, although it remains likely due to the momentum in the climate system, the embeddedness of socio-economic systems that cause the crisis, and the unfolding breakdown of so many of the systems that so many of us depend upon. Now I can see that if the biohydrological theories are correct, then if humanity acted boldly on forests and oceans in the next decade and we became lucky that existing temperature amplification did not push us past too many ‘tipping points,’ then the early death of hundreds of millions might be averted. I’m still a ‘doomster’ as I perceive an already-unfolding breakdown of ecological, economic, social and political systems, which will continue due to the dominant systems driving the overshoot of Earth’s resources and the exploitation of humanity. However, I am now more positive that something could be done that would prevent the worst from climate chaos rather than just reduce its impact on society. 

Will that be done? We can’t know. Will it be successful? We can’t know that either. But as I have given up my attachment to outcomes for activities that seem worth trying, the difficulty and unlikeliness does not deter me. If you check my sources, discuss with others, and come to the same conclusions as me, I think it might affect your own sense of the future and where to focus your efforts. 

Over the years I have been criticised, often personally, for my conclusions on the unfolding pace and future damage from climate change. Many scientists assumed that people like me would give up on our environmental and social efforts because we anticipated great tragedies ahead. I always thought that was a theoretical concern that was not evidenced in practice, as so many of us with dark outlooks had become more active on environmental and social issues, not less. But now I realise that the carbon-centrism of the anti-doomer scientists is, ironically, the source for many people’s feeling of resignation. Instead, a pan-ecological paradigm on climate change that centres action to restore biohydrological cycles offers new avenues for hope for anti-doomers. In the article I cited earlier, scientists Mann and Hayhoe sought to offer what they described as an “antidote to doom“. That will not arise from dogmatically sticking to an old-paradigm of carbon-centrism, but from embracing a pan-ecological paradigm on climate change. 

I am still processing my thoughts and feelings on the implications of a pan-ecological paradigm on climate change and its implications, if any, for collapse-preparedness and deep adaptation. If you think this an important topic, please share this essay, reach out to relevant people, and consider joining the Metacrisis Meetings Initiative. The author of a book on this topic, Rob De Laet, will join our meetings in October. 

Maybe see you there? Thx, Jem

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To join the Metacrisis Meetings, you’ll need to be a member of the initiative, so you will receive an invite towards the end of September for the ones where we will discuss this topic. The times of those meetings are:

6th October in Europe, Africa and Asia e.g. 11am London, 6pm Bali: Check the time in your time zone for Metacrisis Meeting #2a.

6th October in the Americas e.g. 8pm Sao Paulo, and 7th October in Asia e.g. 7am Bali: Check the time in your time zone for Metacrisis Meeting #2b

For meetings that are free-of-charge, consider the Deep Adaptation Forum.