I'm a British national living in Indonesia. I am known for my work on societal collapse risk and response. That includes the Deep Adaptation paper and Breaking Together book. I cofounded Scholars’ Warning to help academics communicate about a post-Sustainability agenda for reducing harm in the face of catastrophic ecological change. I cofounded Bekandze Farm School to enable smallholders to switch to organic and resilient farming methods. Last year I quit my full Professorship to focus on deep adaptation to societal disruption and collapse.
Last week I released a free audio of my chapter on the need for ‘critical wisdom’ in an era of societal disruption and collapse. I linked to it from an essay on a counterproductive phenomenon I refer to as ‘conspiracy porn,’ which has taken off as Big Oil seeks to capture widespread and justified anxieties about regulatory capture and government overreach during the last few years. The outlandish theories about the causes of disasters, promoted through social media, are just the latest efforts of a sector that has spent decades and millions of dollars in promoting denial of climate change (e.g. see here and here). As anxieties grow, people will be more vulnerable to manipulation of all kinds, with both mass media and social media providing avenues for ‘psychological warfare’ on the public by different factions of capital.
Look at those trees! Unburned! That proves weapons were used and it’s a conspiracy!
Oh, wait, that is a picture of a fire from a decade ago, before any ‘Directed Energy Weapons’ had been trialled. The unburnt trees are standing next to burned out houses in Valparaiso because that’s what happens with urban fires. Wooden houses catch fire easily from being hit by burning embers blown on the wind. But green leaves on living trees don’t catch fire so easily from those embers. Have you ever tried putting green leaves on a bonfire? It might get a bit smoky, but they don’t burn easily. In case you’re in any doubt, you could pick from a list of major fires in the 2010s, and search for images to discover how many of the trees ‘mysteriously escaped’ any of laser beams (which didn’t exist).
The reason a wildfire can burn many trees in a forest, not an urban area, is because the fire can pass through the canopy, so an actual flame passes from tree to tree. Crucial to such wildfires is the amount of dry matter on the forest floor, and the number of dead trees due to disease – as they can catch fire easily. Extremes of heat and cold, dry and wet, as well as the shrinking of forest area due to felling, are all known to increase the number of diseased trees, and therefore the likelihood of localised fires becoming massive wildfires. That is the best explanation for why, globally, forest fires have roughly doubled in the last 20 years. In case you didn’t know it yet, I am writing about these fire dynamics because of the tragic fires in Hawaii. In particular, there is strangely popular theory about the deadly fire in the town of Lahaina. The theory has meant that popular youtubers with massive audiences have chosen to ignore the reasons why forest fires became worse in recent years, and what we could be doing to try to reduce that in future. The conspiracy theory goes like this: the fires are started by Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), to create panic about climate change, and to force cities that resist adoption of ’15-minute smart city’ policies to curb private vehicle use. Some of the conspiracy theories also like to claim that the 15-minute smart cities agendas will curb personal movement rather than just cars (although there have been no such proposals or initiatives). The ‘evidence’ put forward for this view of the fires in Hawaii, includes: the fires only burned properties not trees, that the ashes look weird, boats were burned in the water, there are images of Direct Energy Weapons being used, and that Hawaii is hosting a 15-minute smart cities conference. Writing more than a week later, there are still many videos being widely shared on TikTok and other platforms that make some or all of these claims (see the ‘screen grab’ one of the most popular).
Every 5 months or so I send out a summary of some of what I’ve been doing. Last weekend I sent the latest. It follows below. If you would like to get the next into your inbox in about 5 months, sign up here.
How is your experience of social media these days? There is quite a lot of stress-inducing news and modes of interaction online. In my case, being kicked off Twitter a month ago with no explanation has had an upside – and not just less screen time! It has given people the opportunity to express their views on dialogue and censorship. Friends and colleagues have sent me messages from all kinds of people who are saying my account should be restored, as well as senior-ranking academics who are actually celebrating me being censored. That’s quite revealing, isn’t it?
Psychologists know how our fear of feeling painful emotions can lead to us suppressing them by directing our anger at people whose existence reminds us of the reason for our painful emotions (they call that response ‘experiential avoidance’). If you disagree or deny that environmental disruption is already so severe and self-reinforcing that the breakdown of industrial consumer life is unavoidable, then you may feel more uncomfortable as reality hits home. The world is witnessing major disruptions, ocean temperatures are freakish, and the month of July was globally 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial temperatures, indicating that many self-reinforcing feedbacks are likely [see endnotes]. As I describe in my book’s chapter on the food system, a ‘multi-breadbasket failure’ with huge implications for grain markets has been calculated as near certain within 3 years of such a global temperature rise. In response, many senior ranking climatologists are doubling down on criticising those of us who warned 5 years ago, or more, that the current situation was the most likely scenario. In my book chapter on climate, there is a section where I revisit the claims in my Deep Adaptation paper of 2018, and show that 2023 observational data and climate science corroborates what I concluded back then (you can listen to the chapter for free, or get the whole audiobook).
Bekandze Farm School – growing healing with local partners
Now that I am stepping back from academia, I’d like to tell you more about a new initiative I am co-creating. You probably know that I consider modern societies to be unravelling & won’t recover. There are many ways to respond. In my case, I am working with colleagues to grow a collapse-ready regenerative farm in Indonesia.
The following text is from August 2023, announcing the launch of the project.
Beginning in February 2023, our farming project is proceeding at pace, having confirmed the land lease, farm infrastructure, family involvement, staff profit sharing, organic NGO partnership, and local temple involvement. But we aren’t doing this project just to enjoy a little bit of farming. Our plan is to work with our local NGO partner to support small holders in the area around Tampaksiring (Bali) to convert to, or take up, collapse-ready regenerative farming. Our local partner is achieving this around Kedisan, a neighbouring town, with 30 families switching production methods so that they regenerate soils and biodiversity, reduce toxicity and capture carbon. Together, our new initiative will provide the basis for a collapse-ready regenerative business network that will enable the re-localisation of a range of production.
As it is coming up to a month since I was suspended from Twitter, without any explanation or any response to my immediate appeal, I went into my account and looked at what I tweeted just before I was suspended. It might have been a complaint, or a hack, or an algorithm… but someone didn’t want me tweeting. It had been an uneventful day online, with limited visibility and only a few reactions to my tweets on corporate irresponsibility, radical environmentalism, wise women, climate data, military profiteering and US government involvement in online censorship. What has surprised me since the suspension is that all my past tweets, since 2009, are no longer visible to anyone but me. All the immense wisdom and verifiable foresight, distilled into tweets like botanical gardens into essential oils.. all gone in an instantaneous digital bonfire! I jest. But some of what I shared was a bit nice. For instance, my very last tweet before suspension was on the short talk at my book launch, by the wonderful Satish Kumar. It read:
I recommend you see his magical 5 minute talk. I have screen shot that tweet along with the other essential oils from that fateful day. If you feel like using them as pictures in your own tweets, that would be great. And I shall pray that you don’t get banned. In the meantime, I recommend subscribing to this blog, where I intend to keep sharing ideas on collapse readiness and response. As I am now leaving my employment, I would also welcome any financial support to encourage me to keep writing essays on such topics.
Update: as there is some amusing projection happening on twitter by folks who don’t know me (unlike how they know their inner repertoire of human characters) at the end of this blog I append a screenshot of my updated appeal, where I ask for any info on why this suspension occurred.
Donate to keep Jem writing / Read Jem’s book Breaking Together / Read Jem’s key ideas on collapse readiness / Subscribe to this blog / Read the Scholars’ Warning / Visit the Deep Adaptation Forum / Receive Jem’s Biannual Bulletin / Receive the Deep Adaptation Review / Watch some of Jem’s talks / Find Emotional Support.
As we reel from the impacts of strange weather and the news of unprecedented ocean temperatures around the world, the moodsplainers are out in force. They tell us we are right to be anxious but wrong to not believe that our way of life can be saved. In our favourite news outlets, they tell us that it is both morally and practically important to stay positive, stem panic and bypass despair. They warn us not to abandon fairytales of change and salvation. It might be OK if they wanted to live in a self-protective bubble of delusion. But in their public advocacy, they’re dangerously suppressing necessary dialogue that might help us all to reduce harm in this era of societal disruption and collapse.
Last week in London I began my talk about Breaking Together by asking the people gathered to raise their hand if they felt proud of being human. Only a couple of people did. I then asked for a show of hands on the question on whether humans are inherently destructive to nature. A small majority supported that idea. I asked these questions to get to the heart of the issue of how environmentally-conscious people understand our situation. Because I know how sadness, anxiety and frustration pulse through us in regular waves. I wanted to explore how we can love ourselves and each other, fully, despite the destruction that has been caused by modern societies – and how that can guide our future action as situations become more difficult.
I shared some lines from Chapter 9 of my book, where I use the latest archeology and anthropology to debunk some of the assumptions that help people to conclude that humanity is inherently bad for nature, and that ecocide was in some way a ‘choiceless’ destiny for homo sapiens. The chapter is now available as a free audio on soundcloud. In it I explain some of the following insights.
“When people like you fly over Africa you want to see wild animals. When I fly over Africa, I don’t want to see dead Africans.” I still remember this statement from one of my former bosses at the UN, about 20 years ago. I was shocked at his idea that caring about the environment meant caring less about people. It seemed an attitude born of an urban life, forgetting the need to sustain the environmental basis of the livelihoods of billions. It showed me how hyper-modernist some leaders from Africa could be – perhaps from too much time flying over things to talk to people who fly over things. Since then, I always thought it a baseless form of rhetoric to claim that environmentalists prefer nature to people. Even if some might be like that, their lack of power on this planet means critiquing their psyche was a distraction from serious policy discussion.
However, there is indeed another form of misanthropy, or people-hating, which can arise in environmentalism, as people become more anxious about the state of the planet. It is more subtle, involving a general denigration of humanity or the human condition, so people conclude we need to be controlled for our own good. This sentiment is not marginal to power and is facilitating the recent growth of authoritarian views within parts of the Western environmental movement. In my book Breaking Together, I explain how it is a fear-driven and illogical response which risks making matters worse as we go deeper into an era of societal disruption and collapse. The following is an excerpt where I explore this phenomenon. In it I mention various terms and chapters – if interested, the book is now free as a pdf from my University (clearly I haven’t got the hang of that ‘doomer grift’).
As I have been suspended from Twitter, I’d like to ask your help so that a Q&A on my book can be heard about. I was heartened that over 80 people joined me to discuss “Breaking Together: a freedom-loving response to collapse.” The event was hosted by Katie Carr of the Deep Adaptation Forum. The video follows below.
Why have I been booted from Twitter? Short answer: dunno. I received no warnings and no explanations. The text on my account says “After careful review, we determined your account broke the Twitter Rules.” Although I can be radical and forthright, at times responding to what I consider unfair criticism, I aim to be civil. Without further information, I’m curious as to the reason. Possibilities include some censorship code from old Twitter being triggered by a recent uptick in attention to my account. Or perhaps new Twitter doesn’t like my views on the unfortunate limits of renewables and electrification to transition humanity to sustainability. Another possibility is that the account was hacked in a sophisticated way so Twitter suspended it. I have submitted an appeal.
After another week of frightening temperature anomalies around the world, I gave a talk to supporters of the MEER project, which is trialling various means of locally-led climate adaptation that involve reflecting the sun’s rays. The video and transcript follow below. References for all the factual statements made in my presentation can be found within Chapters 1 and 5 of Breaking Together, which is available in all formats and regions, including a free epub download. Free audios of those chapters are also available. In the talk I am critical of mainstream climatology, as well as BigTech censorship of science-based analyses of the climate crisis that lie outside their preferred view of a manageable problem with technological solutions. From the talk:
“The so-called ‘fact checking’ group ‘Climate Feedback’ didn’t even consider two top climatologists worthy of a reply when they complained to them about helping Facebook to shadow ban an article that concluded we are inevitably heading for over 2 degrees global warming that will likely set off feedback loops. My understanding is that Professor Will Steffen died without even the courtesy of a reply from Climate Feedback. Dr Wolfgang Knorr still awaits one. So, we need to reclaim environmentalism from elites and officers of the establishment. We must stop pretending we are on the same side and instead build alternatives from below.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.