Earth Day

John Horning notes today's milestone:

Fifty years ago this week, a group of visionaries created an event to honor, celebrate and protect the earth. The original founders of Earth Day were inspired by an understanding that Earth and its life support systems were increasingly vulnerable. They also understood a profound and simple truth—if the Earth suffers, then humanity suffers too.

We face some difficult years. The pandemic may just be the first of widespread environmental disasters coming our way. That makes a positive vision even more urgent.

As we commemorate this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we do so with a somber reckoning that we have not heeded planetary health warnings early or well enough. Therefore these times require ever more bold actions to realign our commitment to Earth and its natural systems and our mutual well-being. We also must deepen our commitment to greater equity and inclusion in our human communities to ensure that people are treated with compassion and afforded the dignity that all people deserve.

Just the past year has seen increasing commitment to the climate justice issue--including my own. I hope I can continue to learn and find ways to contribute. I'm reading Margaret Klein Salamon's new book, Facing the Climate Emergency, which aims to "give people the tools to confront the climate emergency, face their negative emotions, and channel them into protecting humanity and the natural world".

Update (April 23):  Salamon acknowledges that it's painful to face reality.

However, I’m here to remind you that groups of concerned citizens have changed the world many times before — and they have done it through the power of truth. Telling the truth, and spreading it rapidly and completely, has been a central strategy in successful social movements.

And a friend passed along Laura Klivans' article about handling the "fear that more disruptive events are on the horizon due to climate change".

For some, feelings of sadness about the state of the planet aren't new — they're constant and at times debilitating. This experience goes by many names, among them eco-anxiety, climate grief and climate despair.

A movement has begun to help people face these feelings — and build resilience so they can stay engaged with the work of fighting the climate crisis.

Update (April 25):  Robert Hunziker highlights the documentary Planet of the Humans by Jeff Gibbs and Michael Moore. Clearly there is an issue with "greenwashing" or the influence of fossil fuel interests in the environmental movement, but I found the movie to be profoundly depressing. Right wing press seems all too enthusiastic about the criticism of renewable energy and Brian Kahn notes that population control as the only suggested solution is problematic at best.

It’s got a bit more than a whiff of eugenics and ecofascism, which is a completely bonkers takeaway from everything presented. If renewables are so bad, then what does a few million less people on the planet going to do? Oh, and who are we going to knock off or control for? Who decides? How does population control even solve the problem of corporate influence on nonprofits and politics?

Kahn says the documentary appeals to the right because "it ignores the solution of holding power to account and sounds like a racist dog whistle".

What’s most frustrating about Gibbs’ film is he walks right up to some serious issues and ignores clear solutions. The critique of the compromised corporate philanthropy model is legit. We should absolutely hold nonprofits to account when they don’t live up to their missions. But the solution isn’t to take the leap to population control. It’s to tax the rich so they can’t use philanthropic funding as cover for their misdeeds while simultaneously filling government coffers to implement democratic solutions.

Update (May 1):  Sophia McClennen defends the myth-busting shown in Planet of the Humans.

At the heart of the film is the notion that the real "inconvenient truth" that Al Gore once referred to in his iconic environmentalist film is actually more like Moore's "awful truth": Maybe we didn't focus on reducing consumption because we didn't want to. Maybe it was easier to believe that renewables would give us all the energy we wanted without asking us to change. Or, maybe we didn't know that renewables weren't the energy saviors we thought they were. After watching this film, you won't be able to think about the human toll on the planet in the same way again.

Update (May 8):  Louis Proyect also defends Planet of the Humans as taking more of an anti-growth stand rather than promoting population control.

To even suggest that there are ecological limits, you risk being labeled a Malthusian. Is the Green New Deal supposed to be some sort of inextinguishable guarantee of a bounteous life no matter the size of the global population? Only if you ignore the economic/ecological data.

Update (May 21):  Dave Borlace presents a very systematic criticism of Planet of the Humans.

Update (June 9):  Josh Schlossberg defends POTH for taking on the problem of our modern lifestyles.

For hundreds of thousands of years, we humans didn’t distinguish ourselves from the natural world. Eventually, we evolved self-awareness and, with that, the concept of our own mortality. To cope with this crushing insight, we became obsessed with clinging to pleasures while chasing away anything that reminds us of our inevitable demise.

This is why we crave stimulation and distraction, why we’re addicted to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, shopping, travel, our smartphones, etc. Back in the day, with only a few million of us using simple tools, our ecological footprint was minimal. But, today, with billions of us exploiting modern technology, it’s a disaster.

My favorite quote from Planet of the Humans is, "If we get ourselves under control, all things are possible." So, how do we do that and move forward in a way that makes sense?

The Greater Disaster

In the midst of the pandemic, Andrew Glikson reminds us of another catastrophe in progress.

Carbon dioxide is now pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of two to three parts per million each year.

My research has demonstrated that annual carbon dioxide emissions are now faster than after both the asteroid impact that eradicated the dinosaurs (about 0.18 parts per million CO2 per year), and the thermal maximum 55 million years ago (about 0.11 parts per million CO2 per year).

[T]he massive influx of carbon dioxide means the climate is changing faster than many plant and animal species can adapt.

[O]n the current trajectory, human activity threatens to make large parts of the Earth uninhabitable - a planetary tragedy of our own making.

Andrea Marks and Hannah Murphy document some of the species now facing extinction.

Global warming has set off a cascade of disruptions to the web of life, changing animals' breeding habits, food supply, and their very DNA. They are in distress not only from climate instability but also from the loss of habitat and pollution produced by unchecked human consumption. In the past century, species have been wiped out at a pace 100 times greater than the natural rate of extinction, and as many as 1 million species are at risk of going extinct in the coming decades, according to a United Nations report released last spring. There is perhaps no better bellwether of the peril we face than this dwindling biodiversity. "The evidence is crystal clear," said Sandra Díaz, one of the co-chairs of the U.N. report. "Nature is in trouble. Therefore, we are in trouble."

Update (April 15):  Robert Hunziker points to a study published in Nature that anticipates "a potentially catastrophic loss of global biodiversity". Lead author Christopher Trisos:

The main finding that surprised us was how much biodiversity is at risk in the first half of this century. The risk doesn’t accumulate gradually, but can go from low risk to high risk within a decade. This abruptness of risk was really a shocking finding for us.

Update (May 23):  Hunziker quotes John Doyle (and we only hope he is way off track):

We’re actually heading for 10 degrees warming that could happen within 20 to 30 years. And, on the way to 10 degrees, we pass 4 degrees. Now, four degrees is interesting because that’s extinction for our species.

Update (June 2):  A study published by PNAS points to COVID-19 as an example of growing human pressure on the biosphere.

The ongoing sixth mass extinction may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible. Thousands of populations of critically endangered vertebrate animal species have been lost in a century, indicating that the sixth mass extinction is human caused and accelerating. ... Our results reemphasize the extreme urgency of taking massive global actions to save humanity's crucial life-support systems.

Lead author Gerardo Ceballos:

The vaccine for Covid-19 was natural habitat. The pandemic is a great example of how badly we’ve treated nature.

Update (June 8):  With the warmest February on record, the Great Barrier Reef saw the most extensive bleaching event in March.

Update (July 11):  A report from the World Meteorological Organization gives a 70 percent probability that some month within the next five years will exceed a 1.5 degree Celsius increase over pre-industrial temperatures and a 20 percent probability that a given year in that period exceeds that threshold.

Update (October 13):  A study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B finds that half the corals in the Great Barrier Reef have died since the 1990s.

The loss of so many corals along nearly every section of the 1,600-mile reef is shocking. Larger corals can take years or decades to grow, and effectively act as both the parents and home for a new generation of coral polyps that replace them. The researchers analyzed the number of corals along sections of 30 reefs up and down the Great Barrier 20 years apart, in 1996 and in 2016, and found populations of elder, adolescent and baby corals had all fallen by more than 50% in just 20 years.

Update (October 7, 2021):  A report from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network finds that 14 percent of coral reefs were lost between 2009 and 2018.

All In This Together

In a review of Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O'Connell, Robert Jensen finds honest, solid reporting on the state of the world. But Jensen faults O'Connell for not considering "the question of how we are going to struggle collectively with the problem of excessive wants".

Jensen says we must turn to an expanded notion of politics if there is to be any hope of maintaining a "remnant" of humanity.

O’Connell observes, accurately I think, that "everything is falling apart, coming to an end, precisely because we are unable to believe in the possibility of change." The comforts that come with dense energy (such as fossil fuels) and high technology (from the industrial and digital revolutions) are hard for most of us who have them to give up. For many of those who labor without those comforts, the goal is to acquire them.

That fear of change is evident even in most of the environmental movement, which in its campaigns often suggests that renewable energy and increased efficiency can support First World living standards indefinitely, rather than push for dramatic reductions in consumption that are necessary.

[A]nyone living in the First World should be aware of the suffering required for our lifestyles, and that’s bound to produce some anxiety in a morally conscious person—which should be the beginning of the story, not the end.

What’s missing from O’Connell’s book is any discussion of collective action, beyond one’s home and family, any thoughts about political activity. It’s no surprise that someone who includes no mention of that possibility sees only dead-ends and counsels that the only thing we can do is accept that.

If we reject the revanchist desires of preppers and resist the reactionary tendencies of those with the libertarian escape fantasies, is there not much that can be done in trying to imagine a saving remnant? What will be required of people in an uncertain future—life on the down-slope of our high-energy/high-technology world? Coming together to wrestle with those questions is politics.

It does no good to harbor illusions over our modern predicament. But a certain kind of hope seems essential--there are positive actions to be taken, if only for the sake of making our lives worth living now.

Update (April 3):  Emma Gray reflects on how the pandemic exacerbates existing inequalities.

[I]t becomes increasingly clear that things aren’t great for anyone, but those most vulnerable among us certainly are not OK. The coronavirus has laid bare the economic inequalities and systemic inadequacies that have always existed.

There is hope that some good will come out of this tragedy. Perhaps people will finally understand why fighting climate change right now is so imperative. Perhaps more employers will extend paid sick leave to their contract employees. Perhaps there will be greater support for policies that decouple health insurance from employment altogether. Perhaps many of us will take a beat and learn to be a little kinder, a little more grateful, a little more thoughtful about the way we move about the world and interact with the people in it.

Update (April 5):  Katie Halper and Matt Taibbi interview Johann Hari author of Lost Connections. Hari explains that depression and anxiety are not malfunctions of individuals, they are signals of unmet social needs. Studies have shown that doing things simply for yourself does not increase happiness, while doing things for others (more typical outside the United States) does increase happiness. Hari mentions that Russians tend to think the "pursuit of happiness" is nonsense--happiness comes and goes; we don't have much control over it. Rather, it is the collective pursuit of meaning that will carry us through pain.

Update (April 6):  As Richard Wolff shows how the pandemic highlights the failures of capitalism, Graham Peeples argues that the crisis calls a movement toward unity.

Fragmentation constitutes the normal, if totally unnatural, way of things; it characterizes virtually every aspect of life and describes the state of mind of most, if not all of us.

Generations have been systematically conditioned into believing that this is the way to live, that we are separate and must compete with one another to survive; that greed, selfishness, social division and tribalism are part of who and what we are as human beings, and that there is no alternative.

If we are to move out of the crumbling chaos of the old and create a new and just civilization in which humanity can live peacefully together for the first time in our long and painful history, we must, first of all, recognize that we are one; that all of life is interconnected ... . The new forms and ways of living that must emerge need to be based on and encourage expressions of brotherhood and compassion.

The creation of a fertile ground in which harmony can come into being is a great deal easier than might be imagined. As humanity collectively demonstrates (excluding the minority) in times of need, underneath the outward shows of cruelty and selfishness, mankind is good; remove the obstacles (fear, desire, competition etc.) to compassion and that unifying force – love, which is our very nature, will naturally and spontaneously express itself.

Update (April 16):  As protests emerge over stay-at-home orders, Amanda Marcotte notices how some people manage to "fall apart completely at the first sign of even the slightest hardship".

Right-wing Americans have little sympathy for millions of their fellow citizens who face real hardship, but an endless amount of self-pity because they have to skip a fishing trip. No wonder they love [Dear Leader], a man who can't be bothered to care about Americans dying, but is in full-blown panic mode because he might not get re-elected.

In reality, this pandemic has exposed how we're all in this together and none of us are "rugged individuals." We need those health care workers and grocery store employees and teachers. We are all dependent on each other, not just for the basic necessities of life, but the luxuries like boating and gardening. Right wingers have spent decades denying this fact, clinging to their Ayn Rand fantasies that they're not dependent on the rest of us and are under no obligation to pay their taxes or by treating others with decency and compassion.

But it turns out that conservatives are more dependent on the system than all the people they deplore as weak, so much so that a minor interruption in their daily life causes a full-blown temper tantrum like the one we witnessed in Michigan this week. More are coming, we can be sure of that.

Update (May 7):  Paul Rosenberg sees opportunity in the crisis.

When push comes to shove — as it has with the pandemic — the majority of Americans reject the neoliberal worldview that has led us to this state, where our nation is vastly under-resourced to deal with catastrophes. They reject its contradictory definition of freedom, which tells us we can only do what the market allows — especially when the market says you can't invest in basic life protection. Most Americans believe that we're all in this together, because that's what they see every day with their own eyes. Strengthening our democracy to meet the challenges we face is the most sensible pathway before us.

Update (May 18):  Jonathan Cohn examines the dismal U.S. response to the Covid-19 crisis.

[T]here’s only so much that even the most determined policymakers can do right now. What the U.S. really needs to do is reimagine what the government does and how it operates ― to build a new state edifice, starting with its foundation, in a way that it has done only a few times in its history. And it’s not clear the political system is capable of that.

Update (June 8):  Matthew Rozsa argues that the pandemic and climate change illustrate two points: we ignore science at our peril; capitalism is "inherently unsustainable". Rozsa quotes Michael Mann:

[W]hat COVID-19 has laid bare is the fragility of this massive infrastructure which we've created to artificially maintain consumption far beyond the natural carrying capacity of the planet. And continued exploitation of fossil fuels, obviously, is inconsistent with a sustainable human society.

Update (June 24):  Amanda Marcotte details how the Republican-led quick reopening experiments have failed as the U.S. heads back toward an even greater peak in new Covid-19 cases.

The economic theory behind reopening was that because the lockdown had shuttered so many businesses and caused a huge recession, then surely ending the lockdown would mean those businesses and all the economic activity they generate would come roaring back to life.

The problem is that restaurants and stores don't magically make money by opening their doors. They need actual customers to come in and spend money. Getting back to work is an empty promise if people show up and find there's little or no work to be done.  

But then they had their reasons for rushing things.

[T]his catastrophe cannot be laid solely at the feet of [Dear Leader] and his delusions. A huge part of the problem was that Republicans, for all their chatter about "the economy," have always been far more invested in gutting the social safety net and slashing taxes than in the genuine economic well-being of Americans. Reopening fast was largely a dodge used to justify the Republican refusal to pass more bills to protect workers and businesses from economic catastrophe, since those bills would require increased government spending and, most likely, raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for it.

There can be no economic recovery until we contain and control the pandemic. Reopening was a feint, an excuse to kick people off unemployment but never an actual plan to get the economy functioning again. Republicans sacrificed people's health — in fact, they literally killed people — for an economic recovery that was never going to happen.

Update (July 21):  In the face of disaster, has Fuckface actually come around to reality?

It will get worse before it gets better.

Or, as Amanda Marcotte explains, will he revert to his go-to strategy of gaslighting that he learned from his father?

This strategy works not by actually convincing people to believe [Dear Leader's] lies, which now average about 12 a day. Rather, it works the same way [his father's] gaslighting about the heating worked — by inducing a sense of helplessness in the victim, and by making clear there's nothing the victim can say or do to persuade the gaslighter to recognize reality. [Manbaby] yelled "no collusion" like a parrot for months until the public essentially gave in to the lie, in a "Have it your way, just stop screaming at me" reaction.

[Agent Orange] clearly hopes he can pull the same trick off one more time with the coronavirus, insisting that everything is fine — in the face of all evidence to the contrary — at such length and with such stubbornness that his opponents eventually just give up.

Update (December 17):  Megha Bahree reports on countries looking beyond Gross Domestic Product when they plan for the economic well-being of their citizens.

[This example] shows what can be achieved when an economy is set up around the idea of improving people’s lives rather than the pursuit of endless growth. It pokes huge holes in the conventional wisdom that GDP ― a broad, crude measure of economic success ― is the only metric that counts.

It’s a lesson some economists are hoping the world heeds as countries embark upon the monumental challenge of rebounding from our current pandemic-related economic meltdown. It’s a chance to rethink who economies are for and how to rebuild them; to give people meaningful lives and take us off the path of climate destruction.