Tag: climate change

Blinded by The Light (newspaper)

jembendell

As with many countries in the Western world, the UK has seen a rise of ethno-nationalist politics in recent years. One politician who led the Brexit agenda to leave the EU, is Nigel Farage. Not being able to blame the Eurocrats anymore, the lie took hold that Britain’s ills could be blamed on poor immigrants rather than greedy elites. Recently, Farage has come under fire for his alleged expressions of antisemitism. Although that focused on his childhood, his appearances on the podcast of alt-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was also discussed. During an appearance, Farage claimed that ‘globalists’ are trying to override national sovereignty by creating one world government. Some critics have claimed that it was ‘dogwhistling’ about threats from Jewish elites. The concern arises because Jones and Farage claim there are evil cabals of people, rather than members of a transnational capitalist class, who are serving the extractive demands of international capital. They don’t discuss capitalism in an intelligent way, because then they would be criticising their friends, funders, and the system that has promoted their views to huge audiences. Discussions in the mass media about who ‘globalists’ are and whether we should be concerned about them (and the structures of capital they serve) could be welcomed, if those discussions go beyond the lazy and nasty tropes of antisemitism. Unfortunately, such discussions seem difficult to have in the UK and elsewhere, as political discussion is often febrile and superficial. I was reminded of that recently in the town of Stroud, where one independent newspaper seems to have generated new debates and fractures between people who previously worked together for social change. In this essay, I want to share what I noticed from reading that newspaper and from experiencing the community fractures that emerge around its arguments. If the mass media weren’t so badly misinforming people in order to protect elites, perhaps this situation would not be so difficult. But in such a poor information system, there is work to get people talking about what can be done together at community level as life gets increasingly difficult for so many.  

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The Mirage of Climate Action at the Summit in Brazil

jembendell

In this era of societal disruption and metacrisis, international climate summits provide us a Shakespearean display of the human craving for credible myths to avoid daunting truths. Four lanes of greed carve through one of the remaining lungs and heat-shields of our planet — and this month it speeds 50,000 souls towards reassuring each other that they are noble, not needy, and well-informed, not foolish. Earlier this year, the summit secretariat rushed to tell everyone that this new highway through the Amazon Rainforest would have been built anyway. They’d probably heard how new roads cause – and then enable – deforestation. The Brazilian government responded with some more commitments on rainforest protection. That’s promising, but they still give permits to dig up the Amazon for the metals under the trees. The mirage shimmering above the asphalt, seen by delegates as they approach the city of Belem, is a symbol for what passes as scientific curiosity, environmental care, and responsible leadership on the world stage in 2025. 

Ahead of the latest tropical junket, I spoke with the Climate Emergency Forum about what the climate has been telling us through the crazy temperature readings over the last two years. The changes can’t be explained through carbon gases alone. There are various contributing factors — and an important one is that human activity has badly disrupted the biohydrological processes where large forests and oceans naturally seed clouds. I explained the need for a paradigm shift in climatology and related activism and policy, and mentioned my recent essay on the topic, where I summarise the evidence. As many people have followed my analysis on the topic since 2018, I thought it important to summarise my latest understanding — beyond ‘carbon-centrism’.

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Restoring Forest Cover and Ocean Health as the Frontline in the Climate Fight – an FAQ

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After my essay on September 5th on the need for a pan-ecological understanding of climate change and how to respond to it, I received a range of feedback and questions. “Does it change your anticipation of collapse,” was one question. Ahead of next week’s Metacrisis Meeting on this topic, in this blog I am sharing my provisional answers. An 800-word summary of my essay on the topic can be found below the following FAQ.

The renowned Professor Bill Rees, who popularised the concept of ecological footprint, welcomed the climate dogmas essay as follows:

“Most climate science sees climate as mainly a physical system with scant attention to  systems ecology… Your essay goes a step beyond, to see the climate as a biophysical phenomenon, as a product of the interactions among the physical drivers— atmospheric gases, the solar flux, etc. — and biological processes both marine and terrestrial.  I.e., it forces recognition that the climate system cannot be understood in isolation from the biosphere. To acknowledge and fully understand the role of the oceans (e.g., dimethyl sulfide), forest cover, soils production, evapotranspiration, etc. and their effects on atmospheric gases (hydrological cycle), albedo, heat balance , etc. would be a massive leap forward for climate science.  I suspect, as your article implies, it would go a long way toward revealing why (more or less in the words of top US climate scientist Gavin Schmidt) present climate models cannot explain what’s actually been happening for the past decade or so… I agree completely that what you are calling a ‘pan-ecological paradigm’ would “recognise that the pervasiveness and complexity of living systems” and that related bio-processes “are salient to any natural phenomena” including the climate systems.

As a sociologist and transdisciplinary research analyst, rather than a climatologist or ecologist, I am grateful for such feedback, and hope it encourages you to read the essay and look at the sources and references I link to from it. 

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

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“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. 

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A new role for the UN in an age of collapse

jembendell

Not long ago, I sat across from a UN civil servant at a quiet café in Geneva. She had worked for over two decades in the UN system, from humanitarian relief to climate diplomacy. As she stirred her coffee, she confessed: “I feel disappointed, bewildered. Sometimes I wonder if anything we do makes a difference anymore.” Her voice was tired, but not bitter—more like someone watching a dam crack and realising she only had her teaspoon to stem the flood.

She is not alone. In conversations across UN agencies, I’ve been hearing similar expressions of despair. As institutions strain under the weight of cascading crises—climate chaos, ecosystem breakdown, spiralling inequality, violent conflict, and the abandonment of international law—many international civil servants find themselves in a moral and professional no-man’s land. They are loyal to the ideals of the UN, yet unable to reconcile those ideals with what they now see daily: the world is not just “failing to meet the SDGs“—it is unraveling.

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“Water is Love”: restoring an ecological approach to climate change and beyond.

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Skeena Rathor was a founder-member of the campaign group Extinction Rebellion, which changed the conversation on climate change in 2019. The group called for carbon neutrality in Britain by 2025. So the growing global emissions and worsening climate has been generating some reflection amongst activists. I invited Skeena to share her experiences and why she is now focusing on the importance of water. In the following essay, she shows how we can experience nature and climate as part of us, and vice versa, so we meet the challenges of social and ecological breakdown in a more holistic way. We publish on World Water Day to encourage attention to a wonderful new documentary on this theme: Water Is Love. Over to Skeena…

Water is more than just H2O. For times immemorial, many Indigenous and other wisdom traditions have regarded water as a living, spiritual entity, as a medium connecting the physical world with the spiritual, and as an essential force that sustains all life. For example, the Akan people of West Africa see it as a divine energy, the Māori view rivers and lakes as living entities with spiritual significance and the Lakota tradition reveres water as “the first consciousness bestowed upon Mother Earth” (Tiokasin Ghosthorse).

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Global Justice Starts at Home

jembendell

I invited Malika Virah-Sawmy to share her reflections on the changes in approaches to international solidarity at a time of rising poverty and political disquiet in Western nations, as well as the degradation of the global environment. I met Malika through working on Deep Adaptation, and she served for a time as a holding group member of the DA Forum. I hope you find her perspective important for your own efforts.

Witnessing the political saga in many Western countries over the past year gives the impression of deep political upheaval. As inflation persists and family budgets become increasingly strained, frustration is manifesting in various ways. Elites are promoting narratives that shift attention away from exploitative economic systems. That means migrants like myself, refugees, and even bureaucrats are blamed – but never the rich. It leaves me wondering what politics will rise after people wake up to this false dawn promised by the xenophobes and anti-bureaucrats. Because it can’t take that long for people to realise their pay hasn’t increased and their bills haven’t decreased as a result of backing the opportunist politicians. At that point, the path might be open for more meaningful engagement with the difficulties in this era of ‘permacrisis’. If you are not satisfied with the ideas from your political leaders and pundits, then I’d like to offer an outside perspective. It is a view that might not only help citizens in the West, but also help people in less wealthy regions of the world.

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No Rogan on a Dead Planet – and other essays

jembendell

Both mainstream media and the newly powerful alternative media aren’t incentivised to present the realities of either climate chaos or societal collapse. We see the consequences of that in the poor quality of discussion around the wildfires in Los Angeles. Examples included the unchallenged dismissal of climate change on an episode of Joe Rogan, which reaches tens of millions of people. More extreme than that were widespread conspiracy theories of am evil cabal with (not-yet-available) weapons choosing to destroy neighbourhoods. It can be easier for onlookers to imagine evil people than face a painful predicament that will eventually engulf them as well. Which is why such nonsense gains an audience, even amongst otherwise intelligent people. There are real consequences from this, as the agendas of both climate adaptation and deep adaptation are sidelined from conversation – so the opportunity to reduce harm in future is foregone for many. What to do about it is the topic of an essay I penned last week – “No Rogan on a Dead Planet.” I explain that the importance of free speech means that all of us, and our governments, should encourage more self regulation from content providers and platforms, and then systematise that with international standards. That means podcasters need to accept that with their increasing influence comes greater responsibility and opportunity to lead the sector. To my knowledge, this is a different angle to the current debate about government and BigTech censorship versus an entirely hands-off approach.  

That essay was the latest in a series with the -zine Brave New Europe over the last 3 years. Below I list my previous essays with summaries – all on climate and the environment. 

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Some reasonable essays on collapse

jembendell

In my annual personal update (not the Deep Adaptation Review), I included a summary of the essays I wrote in 2024. I thought it useful also to post these to my blog. I group the essays by topics of: integrating collapse awareness into your working life, the broad trends in Deep Adaptation, the political implications of collapse awareness, making sense of the latest climate data and science, plus personal reflections on motivations in this age of consequences. Next year I will be writing less, as I focus more on the organic farm school (please help!) and music (new single: Aspirations). I hope that both my book and these essays will support your own life choices. For more support, consider joining our online short course. Thx, Jem

Integrating collapse awareness into your working life

The essay “Keeping your job at the end of the world (as we know it)“ addresses the conundrum facing many people who are questioning everything due to collapse anticipation, but can’t quit their job, for financial or other reasons. Written to coincide with a speech at Griffith Business School, where he was an Adjunct Professor, Jem Bendell discusses ideas rarely, if ever, heard in professional contexts. That is because he not only mentions people who have chosen to “keep serving (reveal and recommit in post)” or “repurpose your job (refocus in post)” but also those who de-prioritise their employer’s interests. This includes “quit quietly (retire in post)” and even to “sabotage non-violently (rebel in post).”

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Collapse-relevant publications in 2024

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The Deep Adaptation Review is an independently produced look back at the year on the topic of collapse readiness. There are a few sections in it, with one of them covering interesting new publications. I want to share with you that part, below. The full review is available here, where you can also subscribe to receive it once a year. Thx, Jem

Publications in 2024

Perhaps the most important paper on climate in the past year was co-authored by a range of leading climate scientists, including those who have actively vilified scholars whom they consider to be too alarmist or doomist. The 2024 ‘state of the climate report’ was co-authored by Professor Michael Mann and concluded “We find ourselves amid an abrupt climate upheaval, a dire situation never before encountered in the annals of human existence.” It should be noted that even the analyses so despised by Mann and others just six years ago, such as the Deep Adaptation paper, did not conclude that the planet is already experiencing abrupt climate change. Don’t expect apologies, however, or a depth of reflection into why so many climatologists undermined the more alarmist and radical response to the science over recent years. That’s despite very real negative consequences in the lives of activists and others. 

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