In response to a post earlier today analogizing 2012 US hot temperature records with the East German women Olympic swimmers on steroids, a frequent commentator and interlocutor had some thoughts about what is 'appropriate' behavior for ones who are aware of how serious the situation is when it comes to mounting catastrophic climate chaos. Note that NNadir, whose tag line is "ignorance kills", is (a) extremely knowledgeable, (b) extremely passionate, (c) an extremely strong advocate for nuclear power, (d) a parent like myself, and (e) terrified (or stoic) about climate chaos' implications for humanity, the United States, and his children. Not all of our interactions have been genial or necessarily (emotionally) rewarding for (either of) us, but value rarely comes from unanimity or perfect harmony.
Sparking me to turn this interaction into a post were two interrelated comments.
One thing I like about you Adam is that you never stop hoping that someone will care, even after it's much too late for anything meaningful to be done.
Truthful, perhaps, on multiple levels. Yet, as I responded to him,
"Anything meaningful ..." We have what any sane person would define as catastrophic impacts already apparent. And, as we both know, these will get worse. I retain some 'hope' that we can act to impact (reduce) how much "worse" the situation will get.
NNadir responded with a metaphorical differentiation of our approaches to climate chaos.
we're both on the Titanic, and you're trying to organize the lifeboats, and I'm listening to the beautiful rendition of "Nearer my God to thee."
The most appropriate response that I can consider is actually the tag line of the only other commentator in the thread, The Fan Man:
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
I am planting apple trees -- that will, I hope, bear some fruit for my and others' children for generations to come.
While there are those ordering full speed ahead even as climate chaos' iceberg crushes into the metaphorical Titantic's hull, for those in the reality-based world the question becomes: which is the right response?
The relevant parts of this exchange follow.
NNadir
What I find interesting is that grain crops are collapsing not only in the American midwest, but parts of Europe as well.
From where I sit, no one is paying attention.
The media couldn't care less, probably because Americans couldn't care less.
We are so numb that we couldn't care less where our food comes from.
Maybe we'll all have famine advertised as a wonderful weight loss program.
As for getting Americans (or anyone else) to care or do something, let me quote General Sherman in another context: "You may as well appeal against a thunderstorm!"
One thing I like about you Adam is that you never stop hoping that someone will care, even after it's much too late for anything meaningful to be done.
The technical and financial effort required to do even trivial things would be enormous, and still we have to ask people to stop thinking about the Olympics for 20 minutes.
If, at this point, you still have to beg people to look away from the Olympics to care that the world food supply is obviously under threat, how optimistic are you, seriously?
A Siegel
Optimism?
1. As with you, with kids, how can we abandon hope -- even if for ameliorating the damage?
2. "Anything meaningful ..." We have what any sane person would define as catastrophic impacts already apparent. And, as we both know, these will get worse. I retain (back to point 1) some 'hope' that we can act to impact (reduce) how much "worse" the situation will get.
NNadir
My kids are becoming men. The oldest will be off to college within two years. My youngest will be finishing junior high this year.
I have apologized to them as often as I can for what my generation has done to them, but anything that remains will fall to them.
What can I say or do for them at this point? Give them internet links to what Greenpeace says they can do by 2090? They already know it's absurd.
I may have used this image before in a conversation with you, and I apologize if this scrapes up against Godwin's law, but when I speak to my sons about this, I am trying to be more and more like that man I read of somewhere who when bringing his children to the pits at Babi Yar, kept pointing to the birds, the trees, and the skies and remarking on how beautiful each of these was.
A few weeks ago, I took my oldest boy to the Museum of Modern Art. We remarked on how beautiful so many of the paintings were.
I have personally come to the conclusion - I and think you may appreciate that I have studied the situation seriously and in many places on the deepest level that my abilities allowed - that the situation will be managed by catastrophe.
I don't really believe that there are, or ever will be, enough windmills and solar cells or electric cars or even (what may have been more realistic when there was still time) nuclear power plants to save very much.
We've had grain crop collapses on every continent where grain grows in the last 10 years, in Russia, in Australia, in France, North America, South America. How many electric cars and whatever would it take to prevent all of the crops collapsing at the same time at some point in the next decade?
To mix metaphors, we're both on the Titanic, and you're trying to organize the lifeboats, and I'm listening to the beautiful rendition of "Nearer my God to thee."
I'd remark on how beautiful the trees are around here, except that so many have already died and so many others are obviously dying.
Comments
Both outlooks can coexist beautifully
I feel so simpatico with NNadirand; he says it so beautifully, with so much grace than I have ever imagined. My response, I fear, is a tad arid by comparison. I was thinking, "What is anyone supposed to do other than what they usually do?" What if there were no climate change, and this was the last second of your life? What would you choose to be doing? What if in any moment, you contemplated that question. The purest answer does not change with changing circumstance, does it? Adam advocates, educates, cajoles, explicates, etc. That was my first response, but as I write this, it occurs to me that there is a deeper aspect to this. To me for the West, the most crucial, challenging, and transforming Eastern spiritual practice is non-attachment. Non-attachment does not mean not caring or pretending not to care about material things. Non-attachment means doing one's labor without thought of result, not making one's work or focus contingent on outcome. There is inherent corruption in the nearly universal human practice of negotiating behavior on the basis of imagined reward, as though our lives were up for barter, as though our very life energy were worthless unless we got the pay-off we imagined. Have you ever noticed that neither pay-offs nor disappointments are ever the way they were imagined? l It's best to make decisions from the present, which can be known through practice and study. So, it looks as though I'm singing the hymns, but my hymn is a work song. (I was troubled by the way the religious people were depicted in the film Titanic--huddling together in terror. It has been shown in studies many times over that people with true religion respond to crises better than non-believers. There is a good chance that the hymn singers were relatively calm.l Faith is real, you know, whatever the status of the object of faith.)
Of course, we have a duty, I believe. We don't know the future. If nothing else, keeping alive the habit of study, work, and response to circumstance will position us to grasp at any unanticipated strategies of adjustment that present themselves.
I have already mentioned two things today that I'll repeat in this thoughtful diary. The first is a reference that has stayed with me vividly. Biologists in the Soviet Union as it was disintegrating and the economy was collapsing, realized that they were going to starve to death. They were aware of the whole process, and they spent their days together at the university tracking the physical and mental progress of the disease. They continued to do what they do until they couldn't do it anymore. Anything other, to me, is hubris.
The other is the way Harold Pinter ended his scathing Nobel Lecture:
Perhaps that is our task--maintaining our dignity. From where I sit, you both exemplify the dignity of man very well.
From my "We're Doomed" diary:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/06/27/1103441/--We-re-doomed
There is a tremendous certitude in NNadir's stance ...
... in the face of tremendous uncertainty. And not risk, but uncertainty ~ its more not not know which roll we will make with the dice, its not knowing whether we are throwing dice or darts.
The range of possible outcomes run from causing great expense to a tremendous number, through causing death and destruction to a tremendous number, through causing the collapse of our current industrial civilization, through such an acceleration of the ongoing Great Extinction event of the past century that we experience an ecosystem collapse that drives the human race to the brink of extinction, through to the human race actually going extinct.
And we do not know in reality which of those thresholds we are certainly already past, which we are heading to without an immediate course direction, and which, if any, we can avoid if we start to correct our course sometime in the next decade and accelerate strongly from there.
What is scary about the scientific consensus that we are certainly seeing human-caused climate change is that much is clear even given the primitive lenses that we are turning to the question.
That is the problem with the Titanic analogy. We are on a cruise ship that is running through fog in waters that we know to be dangerous, and we are starting to brush against icebergs. We do not know how many icebergs there, are, how big they are, and do not know how well designed the ship is to take a direct hit, but the captain and crew are down below decks, playing at the casino, getting drunk on expensive whiskey and flirting with the cuter of the passengers.
Good metaphor
Seems about right. In addition to inherent tendencies toward activism or contemplation, another difference between the two of you may simply be in focusing more on what is likely known and on extrapolation based on current tendencies vs. focusing on what needs to be done and what can be done. I truly don't think there is a right and wrong here. As the book on optimism concluded--optimists are more effective salesmen, but every company needs a pessimist keeping the books, because pessimists tend to be more accurate, or at the very least, more willing to face bad news squarely.
Yes, I think you are right there.
Though I doubt I could have A Siegel's patience with NNadir, I believe I am profoundly more pessimistic than NNadir about how bad it could eventually turn out to be.
But of course, given the genuine and massive uncertainty, even though it is unlikely that what we do will do any good, there is no rationale basis for certainty that it will do no good, and without certainty that it is hopeless, then given the potentially cataclysmic nature of the climate crisis, one must try to do what one can.
One must do what one can
As Harold Pinter says, "It is, in fact, mandatory." Of course, what one can do varies from person to person. Imo, none of us can stand on a place of certitude from which to pass judgement on others. These are tough, confusing times.
Not for the first time ...
Thank you for reflecting on the material and enriching/expanding it.
"Getting drunk on expensive whiskey ..."