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<p><font size="+2"><i><b>March 10, 2022</b></i></font><br>
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<i>[ it's called GLOBAL warming ]</i><br>
<b>Climate change will fuel greater displacement</b><br>
What can we do to reverse the trend?<br>
Alexandra Bilak Director, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre<br>
8 Mar 2022<br>
For the first time, there is high confidence among scientists that
the impacts of climate change are increasingly driving displacement
in all regions of the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change’s (IPCC) latest report, published on February 28, recognises
that climate change is one of several multi-dimensional factors
contributing to forced movement today, and that “peace and mobility”
are at significant risk from its effects. Without global efforts to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and better adapt to the effects of
climate change, say the authors, the number of people displaced will
grow in the coming decades...<br>
- -<br>
Solutions exist but more reliable and robust data is needed to focus
our actions. The number of people forced to flee, their conditions,
needs and aspirations, the duration and severity of their
displacement and the risk of future forced movement must all be
better quantified so that governments and the international
community can plan and respond accordingly.<br>
<br>
As we look ahead to COP27 later in the year, when leaders will be
given a final chance to act before it’s too late, we hope that this
report inspires urgent, renewed commitment. As the authors conclude:
“The scientific evidence is unequivocal: climate change is a threat
to human well-being and the health of the planet. Any further delay
in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing
window to secure a liveable future.”<br>
<i>The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do
not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.</i><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/8/science-says-climate-change-will-fuel-greater-displacement">https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/8/science-says-climate-change-will-fuel-greater-displacement</a><br>
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<i>[ follow your stock money ]</i><br>
<b>Shareholders asked oil giant Chevron to cut emissions. Now some
want the chairman ousted.</b><br>
A shareholder advocacy group announces that it will campaign to
block the reelection of the chairman and a director.<br>
- -<br>
Environmental groups and scientific reports say emissions cuts are
critical to thwarting climate change and to the broader health of
the planet. But some shareholder groups say companies also have a
narrower financial reason to move away from fossil fuels:
Eventually, governments will impose stricter limits on their use,
they say, and even if they do not, alternative energy sources
eventually will become cheaper and shrink the demand for oil and
gas...<br>
- -<br>
More than 60 percent of shareholders sided with the reformers.<br>
<br>
Today, much of the case against Wirth and Sugar turns on that
resolution and the company’s conduct since then. Van Baal said the
company had ignored the will of the shareholders, calling its
actions over the past year “a snub.”<br>
<br>
Even so, the case against the directors faces some head winds. Both
withstood a similar effort last year. With gas prices rising, so are
Chevron share prices, and that might make some shareholders less
willing to force a change on the board. Moreover, the Russian
invasion of Ukraine has led to calls for companies in the West to
produce more oil, not less, to reduce dependence on Russian
resources...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/08/chevron-shareholders-climate/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/03/08/chevron-shareholders-climate/</a><br>
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<i>[ Opinion in the Atlantic, yikes! ]</i><br>
<b>On Top of Everything Else, Nuclear War Would Be a Climate Problem</b><br>
Even a “minor” skirmish would wreck the planet.<br>
By Robinson Meyer...<br>
- -<br>
If you are worried about rapid, catastrophic changes to the
planet’s climate, then you must be worried about nuclear war. That
is because, on top of killing tens of millions of people, even a
relatively “minor” exchange of nuclear weapons would wreck the
planet’s climate in enormous and long-lasting ways.<br>
- -<br>
And even before that, climate science and nuclear-weapons
engineering were twin disciplines of a sort. John von Neumann, a
Princeton physicist and member of the Manhattan Project, took
interest in the first programmable computer in 1945 because he hoped
that it could solve two problems: the mechanics of a hydrogen-bomb
explosion and the mathematical modeling of Earth’s climate. At the
time, military interest in meteorology was high. Not only had a good
weather forecast helped secure Allied victory on D-Day, but
officials feared that weather manipulation would become a weapon in
the unfolding Cold War.<br>
<br>
The worst fears of that era, thankfully, never came to pass. Or at
least, they haven’t happened yet. It is up to us to make sure that
they don’t...<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/03/nuclear-war-would-ravage-the-planets-climate/627005/">https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/03/nuclear-war-would-ravage-the-planets-climate/627005/</a><br>
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[ a Mongabay report ]<br>
<b>In destroying the Amazon, big agribusiness is torching its own
viability</b><br>
by Sarah Brown on 7 March 2022<br>
<blockquote> -- A new study has found that the transition zone
between the Amazon and Cerrado in the northeast of Brazil has
heated up significantly and become drier in the past two decades.<br>
-- The research points to deforestation in the Amazon and global
climate changes as factors prolonging the dry season and warming
up the region, leaving it susceptible to severe droughts and
forest fires.<br>
-- Ironically, the changes being driven by the intensified
agricultural activity are rendering the region less suitable for
crop cultivation.<br>
-- The authors of the new study say there needs to be a balance of
sustainable agricultural solutions and an environmentally focused
political agenda to protect the region’s ecosystems, its economy,
and its people.<br>
</blockquote>
The transition zone between the Amazon and the Cerrado, where the
world’s greatest rainforest melds into its largest tropical savanna,
is heating up, posing severe threats to both biomes, a new study
warns.<br>
<br>
The combination of agriculture-driven deforestation and global
climate change are prolonging the dry season in this mixed landscape
of open grasslands and closed forests, the study says, aggravating
the risk of severe droughts and forest fires in the Amazon and
across the Cerrado.<br>
<br>
“This is the only region where increasing temperatures, reduction of
rainfall, and increase of the number of dry days ‘collide,’” study
co-author Juan Carlos Jiménez-Muñoz, an associate professor of
remote sensing at the University of Valencia in Spain, told Mongabay
in an email. “We noticed that when all the trends were combined, the
worst scenario was observed in the Amazon-Cerrado transition zone...<br>
- -<br>
The impact of climate change<br>
Previous studies warned that large areas of the Amazon could
transform irreversibly into a savanna-like region under increasingly
warmer conditions, destroying critical habitats for species adapted
to jungle life. It could also affect the productivity of agriculture
in the region, which would impact food security, livelihoods, and
the economy.<br>
<br>
“[Droughts] will have a huge impact on agribusiness, as it’s one of
the key reasons for the economic growth in Brazil,” Marengo said.
“If the climate continues the way it has been over the last 40
years, it could result in a collapse in the region.”<br>
<br>
Arthur Bragança, a researcher at the Climate Policy Initiative at
the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, told Mongabay
by phone that “there is accumulated evidence that deforestation of
the Amazon impacts the climate of Brazil and affects the soybean
production in [the Matopiba] region.”<br>
<br>
But Bragança, who was not involved in the recent study, said
agriculture there has had a significant boost on the local economy,
a key reason for its continued expansion.<br>
<br>
Past droughts in northeastern Brazil have shown just how much damage
they can wreak. According to the National Confederation of
Municipalities, droughts between 2012 and 2017 affected nearly 28
million people in the region and caused more than 100 billion reais
($19 billion) in damage...<br>
- -<br>
Solutions to regional climate change<br>
Both Marengo and Ribeiro said that slowing down the temperature rise
will take a combination of minimizing deforestation, improving water
management, and assisting small farmers implement low-resource
technology.<br>
<br>
Marengo also called for sustained global efforts to reduce global
warming and, in Brazil, political incentives in place to conserve
the environment.<br>
<br>
He said the key is to find ways that reconcile both the need for
economic and societal growth and the protection of the environment.
“It’s necessary to have an environmental agenda that doesn’t think
[only] about profits, but taking care of the environment,” Marengo
said. “It doesn’t need to be radical conservation, but sustainable
conservation that secures food security and leaves something for the
next generation.<br>
<br>
“The climate is maintained by vegetation,” he added. “If you change
the ecosystem by deforestation, be it the Amazon or Cerrado, to
another that is more agricultural-like, it’s not sustainable in the
long term.”<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/in-destroying-the-amazon-big-agribusiness-is-torching-its-own-viability/">https://news.mongabay.com/2022/03/in-destroying-the-amazon-big-agribusiness-is-torching-its-own-viability/</a><br>
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<i>[ The Boston Globe likes to print numbers ]</i><br>
<b>It’s worse than we thought: 15 numbers that show we’re not
prepared for climate change</b><br>
By Dharna Noor Globe Staff, March 7, 2022<br>
<br>
The United Nations’ latest landmark climate report is a tome more
than twice the length of the Bible. To compile it, hundreds of
scientists from all over the world pored over thousands of studies,
summarizing the latest authoritative scientific information.<br>
<br>
Though its contents are complex and often difficult to parse, the
assessment’s key message is simple: The climate crisis is upon us
and that the world has utterly failed to prepare. It’s also peppered
with alarming facts and figures that illustrate that urgency. Here’s
a taste of what the report includes:<br>
<blockquote>Percent of the world population currently exposed to
potentially deadly heat for 20 or more days a year: 30<br>
<br>
Percent that could be exposed to deadly heat for 20 or more days a
year by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions continue growing at the
present rate: up to 76<br>
<br>
Number of people globally who could face chronic water scarcity by
2100 if temperature rise exceeds 2 degrees Celsius: up to
3,000,000,000<br>
<br>
Number of people globally who will be at risk of hunger due to
climate change if greenhouse emissions continue to grow at the
current rate: 80,000,000<br>
<br>
Number of people in low-income countries expected to become
undernourished if greenhouse emissions grow at the current rate:
183,000,000<br>
<br>
Surface area, in square kilometers, of glaciers on Africa’s Mount
Kilimanjaro in 1912: 12<br>
<br>
Surface area of glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro forecast to remain
in 2040 if emissions continue at their current rate: 0<br>
<br>
Number of people in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and South
Asia who could be displaced by weather extremes by 2050 if
greenhouse gas emissions continue growing at the present rate:
143,000,000<br>
<br>
Number of times more people killed by droughts, floods and storms
in the world’s poorest coastal countries than the richest nations:
15<br>
<br>
Percentage of all land species that will face a high risk of
extinction if the world warms by 2 degrees Celsius by 2100: 18<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/03/07/science/its-worse-than-we-thought-15-numbers-that-show-were-not-prepared-climate-change/">https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/03/07/science/its-worse-than-we-thought-15-numbers-that-show-were-not-prepared-climate-change/</a><br>
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<br>
<i>[ great conversation ] </i><br>
<b>Peter Ward: “Oceans - What’s the Worst that Can Happen?” | The
Great Simplification #08</b><br>
Feb 23, 2022<br>
Nate Hagens<br>
On this episode, we meet with author and paleobiologist Peter Ward.<br>
<br>
Ward helps us catalogue the various risks facing Earth’s oceans, how
the Atlantic Ocean’s currents are slowing due to warming, what
happened in Earth’s history when ocean currents stopped, and why a
reduction in elephant poaching is contributing to the destruction of
coral reefs.<br>
<br>
Peter Ward is a Professor of Biology and Earth and Space Sciences at
the University of Washington. He is author of over a dozen books on
Earth's natural history including On Methuselah's Trail: Living
Fossils and the Great Extinctions; Under a Green Sky; and The Medea
Hypothesis, 2009, (listed by the New York Times as one of the “100
most important ideas of 2009”). Ward gave a TED talk in 2008 about
mass extinctions.<br>
<i> </i><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eM1aakTzMw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eM1aakTzMw</a><i><br>
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<i>[ When we know, we have to act - now this brief article ]<br>
</i>03-05-22<br>
<b>How to get past despair and take powerful action on climate
change</b><br>
There’s no denying human activity has driven climate change. But our
actions can also change things for the better.<br>
<br>
BY THOMAS S. BATEMAN AND MICHAEL E MANN<br>
Our species is in a race with climate change, and a lot of people
want to know, “Can I really make a difference?”<br>
<br>
The question concerns what’s known as agency. Its meaning is
complex, but in a nutshell, it means being able to do what you set
out to do and believing you can succeed.<br>
<br>
<b>How well people exercise their agency will determine the severity
of global warming—and its consequences.</b><br>
<br>
The evidence is clear that people are changing the climate
dramatically. But human actions can also affect the climate for the
better by reducing fossil fuel burning and carbon emissions. It’s
not too late to avert the worst effects of climate change, but time
is running out.<br>
<br>
Despite abundant technical agency, humanity is alarmingly short of
psychological agency: belief in one’s personal ability to help. A
10-country-survey study in The Lancet, a British medical journal,
found that more than half of young people ages 16 to 25 feel afraid,
sad, anxious, angry, powerless, and helpless about climate change.<br>
<br>
As professors, we bring complementary perspectives to the challenges
of taking action on climate change. Tom Bateman studies psychology
and leadership, and Michael Mann is a climate scientist and author
of the recent book “The New Climate War.”<br>
<br>
<b>BELIEVING “I CAN DO THIS”</b><br>
Human activities—particularly relying on coal, oil, and natural gas
for energy—have dramatically affected the climate, with dire
consequences.<br>
<br>
As greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuel use accumulate in the
atmosphere, they warm the planet. Rising global temperatures have
fueled worsening heat waves, rising sea levels, and more intense
storms that become increasingly harder to adapt to. A new report
from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change describes some of
the dangerous disruptions already underway, and how they are putting
people and the environment at risk.<br>
<br>
Just as humans can choose to drive gas-guzzlers, they can also
choose to act in ways that influence the climate, air quality, and
public health for the better. Scientific knowledge and countless
opportunities for action make that agency possible.<br>
<br>
A key part of agency is one’s belief, when faced with a task to
perform, a situation to manage, or a long-term goal like protecting
the climate, that “I can do this.” It’s known as self-efficacy.<br>
<br>
This may be the most important psychological factor in predicting
how well people will cope with both climate change and COVID-19,
recent online survey data from Europe indicate. People feeling
adequate agency are more likely to persevere, rebound from setbacks,
and perform at high levels.<br>
<br>
With climate change, a high sense of self-efficacy strengthens a
person’s willingness to reduce carbon emissions (mitigation) and
prepare for climate-related disasters (adaptation). Studies confirm
this for actions including volunteering, donating, contacting
elected officials, saving energy, conserving water during extreme
weather, and more.<br>
<br>
<b>HOW TO BOOST YOUR SENSE OF AGENCY</b><br>
To build agency for something that can feel as daunting as climate
change, focus first on the facts. In the case of climate change:
Greenhouse gas emissions cause the most harm, and people can help
far more than they realize.<br>
<br>
Successful agency has four psychological drivers, all of which can
be strengthened with practice:<br>
<br>
<b>1) Intentionality: </b>“I choose my climate goals and actions
for high impact.”<br>
<br>
Deciding to act with purpose—knowing what you intend to do–is far
more effective than thinking, “My heart’s in the right place, I just
have to find the time.”<br>
<br>
In the big picture, one’s highest climate efficacy is in
participating in larger efforts to stop fossil fuel use. People can
set specific ambitious goals for reducing personal and household
energy use and join others in collective actions.<br>
<br>
<b>2) Forethought:</b> “I am looking ahead and thinking
strategically about how to proceed.”<br>
<br>
Once you know your goals, you can think strategically and develop an
action plan. Some plans support relatively simple goals involving
individual lifestyle changes, such as adjusting consumption and
travel patterns. Wider-reaching actions can help change systems—such
as long-term activities that advocate for climate-friendly policies
and politicians, or against policies that are harmful. These include
demonstrations and voter campaigns.<br>
<br>
<b>3) Self-regulation: </b>“I can manage myself over time to
optimize my efforts and effectiveness.”<br>
<br>
Worrying about the future is becoming a lifelong task—off and on for
some, constant for others. Climate change will cause disasters and
scarcities, disrupt lives and careers, heighten stress, and harm
public health. Seeing progress and working with others can help
relieve stress.<br>
<br>
<b>4) Self-reflection: </b>“I will periodically assess my
effectiveness, rethink strategies and tactics, and make necessary
adjustments.”<br>
<br>
It’s difficult to imagine a greater need for lifelong learning than
as we navigate decades of climate change, its many harms, and
efforts by fossil fuel companies to obscure the facts.
Reflection—or, more precisely, keeping up with the latest science,
learning, and adapting—is vital as the future keeps presenting new
challenges.<br>
<br>
<b>PERSONAL AGENCY IS ONLY THE FIRST STEP</b><br>
Even seemingly minor first steps can help reduce carbon emissions
and lead to paths of greater action, but individual actions are only
part of the solution. Big polluters often urge consumers to take
small personal actions, which can deflect attention from the need
for large-scale policy interventions.<br>
<br>
Individual agency should be seen as a gateway for group efforts that
can more quickly and effectively change the trajectory of climate
change.<br>
<br>
“Collective agency” is another form of agency. A critical mass of
people can create societal [tipping points] that pressure industry
and policymakers to move more quickly, safely, and equitably to
implement policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.<br>
<br>
Helping to elect local, state, and national officials who support
protecting the climate, and influencing investors and leaders of
corporations and associations, can also create a sense of agency,
known as “proxy agency.”<br>
<br>
Together, these efforts can rapidly improve humanity’s capacity to
solve problems and head off disasters. Fixing the world’s climate
mess requires both urgency and a sense of agency to create the best
possible future.<br>
<br>
Thomas S. Bateman is professor emeritus of organizational behavior,
University of Virginia; and Michael E. Mann is director of Earth
System Science Center, Penn State.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90727977/how-to-get-past-despair-and-take-powerful-action-on-climate-change">https://www.fastcompany.com/90727977/how-to-get-past-despair-and-take-powerful-action-on-climate-change</a><br>
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<i>[ Writer discusses ] </i><br>
<b>An Interview with Roy Scranton</b><br>
Amy Brady <br>
This month, I have for you an interview with Roy Scranton, the
award-winning author of five books, including Learning to Die in the
Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, the
monograph Total Mobilization: World War II and American Literature,
and the novel War Porn. Roy, who is also an associate professor of
English at Notre Dame, has published in more magazines and
newspapers than I can count. In the interview below, we discuss one
of his most recent projects, the “climate crisis” issue of the
Massachusetts Review, which he co-edited with Noy Holland. <br>
- -<br>
<b>Let’s turn from grief to pessimism. In a recent talk on “the
virtues of pessimism,” you write that “focusing on a future that
could be rather than on the actual history that got us where we
are” fosters “a dangerous complacency.” Would you elaborate on
what you mean here?</b><br>
<br>
In one respect, this goes back to my previous point about apophatic
futurism, or the idea that we are committed existentially to a
future we not only don’t know, but we cannot know. We act
necessarily with incomplete knowledge of our situation, and in total
ignorance of the consequences of our actions – and yet we act on the
world, and indeed cannot escape acting this side of death –
withdrawal, silence, and forgetting are not the opposite of actions
but actions themselves, which cannot help but affect reality – even
suicide, as anyone who’s had a friend or family member do it can
tell you, is an action with consequences.<br>
<br>
The question then is what, in our obscurity, should inform our
decisions? Is the mere possibility of an event sufficient to make it
worthy of attention, and if so, what kind of possibility, under what
conditions, and what kind of attention? Take for instance the idea
of rapid and systemic decarbonization of the global economy, which
is certainly imaginable and could even conceivably be planned, but
which is so unlikely in the framework of contemporary national and
international politics that it should be grouped with the kinds of
dreams we categorize as utopian, like the end of war, poverty, or
hunger. If mere possibility is insufficient for convincing us to
take such a desideratum seriously as a factor in our decision
making, as I believe is the case here, then we need some kind of
evaluative mechanism for considering the likely probability of
different possible future events, which in the old days they called
judgment, or wisdom. This is, I take it, the core value of
historical, cultural, and philosophical reflection, or what we call
“the humanities”: abstracting general principles of action and
ethics from the accumulated salvage of the past. So my point is more
or less the banal one that we should be making our decisions based
on likely outcomes, arrived at by careful consideration of
historical evidence, rather than by clinging desperately to the
outcomes we’d prefer without regard for their actual likelihood.<br>
<br>
On the other hand, sometimes mere possibility is enough to warrant
significant attention: the possibility of nuclear war, for instance,
or the chance that rapid permafrost melt could trigger catastrophic
methane release. While the latter event is currently considered
unlikely by many leading scientists, and indeed often denounced with
an insistence bordering on the pathological, there is enough
evidence to suggest that it cannot be ranked as wholly impossible.
Since the possible consequences of such an event, however unlikely,
include the extinction of the human species, any responsible
consideration demands we take it into account. This point is made
very well by the philosopher Hans Jonas, who called for a
“heuristics of fear.” As Jonas writes in his opus The Ethic of
Responsibility:<br>
<br>
Even at its best… an extrapolation from presently available data
will always, in certainty and completeness of prediction, fall short
of the causal pregnancy of our technological deeds. Consequently, an
imaginative “heuristics of fear,” replacing the former projections
of hope, must tell us what is possibly at stake and what we must
beware of. The magnitude of those stakes, taken together with the
insufficiency of our predictive knowledge, leads to the pragmatic
rule to give the prophecy of doom priority over the prophecy of
bliss.<br>
<br>
In your talk, you bring this up in a wider context of philosophy and
the fact that climate change “is hard to talk about.” Would you
expand on this as well? How would “the virtues of pessimism” change
climate discourse?<br>
<br>
Pessimism is a form of heresy in a country which insists with
childish stubbornness that it deserves a happy ending. Even more
than the market, even more than the flag, even more than their own
eternal innocence, middle- and upper-class white Americans believe
in optimism: the faith that things can get better, indeed that they
will get better, and that the right combination of hard work,
reason, and moral outrage can solve any problem – whether its Making
America Great Again or Building Back Better, it’s the same fatuous
bullshit. As W.E.B. DuBois wrote in his 1940 “autobiography of a
race concept,” Dusk of Dawn, “The greatest and most immediate danger
of white culture, perhaps least sensed, is its fear of the Truth,
its childish belief in the efficacy of lies as a method of human
uplift.” And since the United States has been a white supremacist
culture for so long, this fear and belief – this cruel optimism – is
baked into the ideological framework of major cultural institutions,
largely through narratives of progress, the notion that we live in a
meritocracy, and a mawkish tendency toward salvific moral fables
(which I’ve critiqued elsewhere). As a consequence, pessimism tends
to be derided and confused with nihilism, a “counsel of despair,”
hopelessness, and fatalism.<br>
<br>
But when we look closely at the histories of these conceptual
schema, which we tend to naturalize as “dispositions” but which in
fact are fairly modern phenomena, emerging only in the 18th century,
we find that they are distinct and contrasting philosophical
approaches to modern ideas of time, suffering, and progress. In the
words of political philosopher Joshua Foa Dienstag,<br>
<br>
The optimistic account of the human condition is both linear and
progressive. Liberalism, socialism, and pragmatism may all be termed
optimistic in the sense that they are all premised on the idea that
the application of reason to human social and political conditions
will ultimately result in the melioration of these conditions.
Pessimism… denies this premise, or (more cautiously) finds no
evidence for it and asks us to philosophize in its absence.<br>
<br>
Progressivist optimism is deeply entwined with the histories of
racialized expropriation, instrumentalized rationality, and imperial
expansion that I talked about before, and indeed cannot be
extricated from them: it is the moral and teleological axis that
sustains the transformation of European Christian universalist
metaphysics into secularized liberalism: a faith in the power of
rational human free will to overcome “brute” matter. Pessimism,
which emerges first out of the rigorous skepticism of Pierre Bayle
and Voltaire, then develops through the anti-progressivist ethics of
Thomas Malthus, Schopenhauer’s encounter with Buddhism, and
Nietzsche’s attempts to synthesize the philosophical implications of
Darwinian evolutionary theory – and can be seen more recently in the
work of Sylvia Wynter, Saidiya Hartman, Frank Wilderson, Jared
Sexton, and Achille Mbembe, to name just a few examples – is a
fundamentally empirical rejection of such self-serving narratives.<br>
<br>
When it comes to climate change, there are good empirical reasons
for being pessimistic about our prospects: on top of the science,
which seems to be consistently warning us that things are moving
faster than predicted, we can point to more than forty years of
total failure from climate change politics and communication; fossil
fuel industry capture of ruling elites (indeed, the idea of capture
may be redundant here); complacency among voters; genuine structural
difficulties in narrating climate change as a salient threat;
moralizing and divisive tone policing from overzealous activists;
competition between states; a refusal to reckon with the real costs
of decarbonizing the global economy; and the probability that as the
planet’s transition to a warmer climate system speeds up, it will
only exacerbate existing political challenges, increase political
pressure to deal with short-term crises rather than long-term
transformation, and motivate elites to shore up their fortresses of
wealth and privilege, leading to what Daniel Aldana Cohen and others
have called “eco-apartheid.”<br>
<br>
Recognizing these challenges may lead some to despair. Fine. That’s
better than a false or complacent optimism. And maybe despair is
where some of us need to go in order to realize how profound the
problem is, how deep we’re in it, and how immense are the stakes.
But more importantly, I believe pessimism can, through its very
negativity, open up new ways forward, new ways to think into our
future, new possibilities for imagining what it means to live in the
new world that fossil capitalism has unleashed.<br>
<br>
Moreover, consciously choosing to consider the worst case helps us
prepare for it, and if the worst doesn’t happen, so much the better.
As Jonas put it, “The prophecy of doom is made to avert its coming,
and it would be the height of injustice later to deride the
‘alarmists’ because ‘it did not turn out so bad after all.’ To have
been wrong may be their merit.”<br>
<br>
But if the worst does happen and we’re prepared, then we’ll be ready
to act, rather than being paralyzed by our shock and disbelief, as
so many liberal optimists were for so long after Trump’s election in
2016, for instance. Indeed, as I talked about earlier with Fanon, a
pessimistic approach demands that one conceive of the future as a
realm of action, even if that action must necessarily be taken in
ignorance and obscurity, since one can in no sense depend on hope, a
complacent optimism, or the arc of history to create a just world
for us. <br>
<br>
What action is next for you, then, either as a writer or teacher?<br>
<br>
I’ve got a cli-fi novel with my agent. It’s about a young woman
who’s displaced by a hurricane, and how she survives and copes with
her trauma. The manuscript is titled Pilgrim, and it’s more
narrative than my other novels – it’s kind of an adventure story,
but I also tried to squeeze in what philosophy I could. I think of
it in the tradition of Camus, maybe, though I tried pitching it as
Jane Eyre meets The Road Warrior. I’m also working on a book about
eco-pessimism, climate change, and narrative, which goes more deeply
into a lot of the things we’ve talked about here.<br>
<br>
The writing is going slowly, though, because much of my time is
taken up with trying to build institutional structures at Notre
Dame, where I teach, to help address the climate crisis. I’ve
started an Environmental Humanities Initiative, and am working with
other folks at the Environmental Change Initiative, the Kroc
Institute for International Peace Studies, and the Keough School of
Global Affairs to establish some kind of center on campus in the
spirit of Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’. Despite being one of the
leading Catholic universities in the country, if not the leading
Catholic university, Notre Dame has been slow to respond to the
ethical and intellectual mandate in Laudato Si’, and has so far
rather shamefully shirked its responsibilities on the issue.<br>
<br>
Institutional inertia is paralyzing, but there are motivated people
across campus working to roll that boulder up the hill, and I’m glad
to be working with them. Part of my effort, related to that, is
developing a new, large, writing-intensive course on “Witnessing
Climate Change,” which I hope will inculcate wave after wave of
Notre Dame undergrads in heretical strains of ecological thought,
ethical adaptation, action-oriented pessimism, and the techniques of
creative nonfiction.<br>
<br>
I’m not hopeful that any institution is going to save us, but I do
believe we can carve out spaces and build structures that might
actually help people, and I’m not without hope that we can embed
ideas within institutions in ways that may turn out to offer
ethically transformative possibilities. I realize that’s not as sexy
as blowing up pipelines, but frankly I’ve seen enough dudes saying
we need to blow shit up – and have seen enough real explosions – to
last me a lifetime. In any case, the real work isn’t tearing the
system down. Any teenager can start a fire, and the system is going
to collapse on its own soon enough. The real work we need to do is
to prepare for that collapse, work to mitigate human suffering, and
plant seeds that might grow in the ruins.<br>
<br>
This article is part of the Climate Art Interviews series. It was
originally published in Amy Brady’s “Burning Worlds” newsletter.
Subscribe to get Amy’s newsletter delivered straight to your inbox.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://artistsandclimatechange.com/2022/03/07/an-interview-with-roy-scranton/">https://artistsandclimatechange.com/2022/03/07/an-interview-with-roy-scranton/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<i>[The news archive - looking back]</i><br>
<font size="5"><b>March 10, 2014</b></font><br>
On MSNBC's "Ronan Farrow Daily," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
discusses the all-night climate-change symposium Democratic and
independent Senators will hold that evening.<br>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://on.msnbc.com/1fkoDvA">http://on.msnbc.com/1fkoDvA</a>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p>/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/</p>
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