Monday, September 5, 2016

AGW awareness, but is it too little, too few, and too late?

Over at Hotwhopper there was a story: Dissenting view on Climate Change Action - No longer silent, but is it too little, too few, and too late?

Basically it was the story of two members of Australia's Climate Change Authority who have published a minority dissenting report to their Authority’s, Special Report from the CCA: Special Review of Australia’s climate goals and policies. It’s interesting and worth reading.  

Though as I was finishing the article I was thinking, okay that was all about the “no longer silent” but nothing about the “too little, too few, and too late?”  I was curious because being a long time witness to the profound changes that have been occurring on this Earth and in particular the increasing tempo of eco-system breakdowns and extremely destructive weather events these past few years and the awareness that we have only worse to expect, I find myself confronting the specter of despair and hopelessness more often.

A commenter to Sou’s article stepped up to fill the breach with a sobering answer to the title’s question: “too little, too few, and too late?”  It's a painful well written assessment I feel compelled to share it because it contains many thoughts I've been trying to corral myself.   

The following isn't for general consumption, this comment is restricted for the serious student of our planet. The ones who appreciate our Earth and her systems and who understand what this AGW is about.  If you are one of those, you know the horror of realizing what we are doing to ourselves and our younger generations, not to mention this fantastical planet we inherited.  Dealing with that awareness is going to become an increasing personal spiritual challenge.  This essay gives voice to that horror.  I found it somehow comforting (or was that refreshing?) in it's brutal honestly.
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Anonymous | September 6, 2016 at 4:16 AM | commented at Hotwhopper.com

It's going to become very obvious that the posturing everyone is doing on both side of the fence is irrelevant in the end. If the goal was to waste time and money, both sides have accomplished this. But there are no "sides" in reality, it's just us ignorant humans and the millions of other life forms trying to live on this planet.
Government, business and industry are often thought of as the problem to climate change inaction, but it goes much deeper then this. Our civilization is the problem, right down to the individual (you and me). It is intractable and immutable as long as it exists.
Everything will be done to protect civilization and our so-called "way of life". Nothing will be done to change any of this. Every individual is responsible. Every scientist, every doctor, every mother, every father, every sister, every brother. Both by virtue of our very existence, and by our silence and by our individual obligation to a habitable future.

Silencing dissent is just one of a million tactics that will be tried to protect civilization; and so will keeping silent to preserve one's "job". It's always, ALWAYS about self-preservation in the end.
I've come to expect nothing at all from anyone because self-preservation is always the driving reason for human stupidity and indifference. To the guy who wants to keep his job while he helps destroy the planet, you're just as guilty as I am, who seeks to simply stay alive by participating in this civilization.
Walking away is an almost an impossible option. I tried and failed. Can't do it alone. Can't extract myself far enough. So I tried the exact opposite, as many others have. I tried to change perceptions, beliefs, attitudes, awareness. I failed here too. Civilization has a terrifying hold upon us all, its death-grip is unshakable. 
We're going to all go down with the ship, there really isn't any arguing that. And I've come to believe that we should. We are major screw-ups as a species, natures rejects and mistakes. It's not unusual, it's happened before. We use consciousness and awareness and invented what should not be. Civilization. And now we are discovering that this direction was a disaster but we can't go back either because our consciousness won't let us.
We're nowhere near as smart as we perceive ourselves to be. We imagine that we can change, but we can't. We find ourselves in hypocrisy in every proposal, every effort because we insist on ever more civilization. We're very good a self-deception and hiding from reality, but we're incredibly unsuited for anything else. See, it all comes down to self-preservation in the end. That's why we go silent or "join the crowd". We want to survive, but ultimately know that we won't. Nobody is asking the obvious. Should we? 
We are a horror show to everything else, even each other. We offer nothing but destruction and death to everything else. Our consciousness deceives us. Imagining ourselves important and valuable, we continue in this nothingness. For as long as we can, which we are certain to do right to the very end.


It's all about self-preservation. It always has been. But our survival isn't what matters anymore. Not when an entire biosphere is dying. We're too arrogant to admit that if this dies, we die too, so we continue in our nothingness, ensuring that death follows us in everything that we do. That's our self-deception, our consciousness again deceiving us, insisting how important and necessary we are, and how our civilization must be preserved. It's pathetic how feeble our minds can really be.
This is why we will fail. We cannot see any of this, the futility of it all or the source of that futility. We can't even talk about it or admit to its clear existence. So we will continue to do what we have always done. Ensure the death of every other living thing. It is our "act of self-preservation" that convinces our minds of this essential necessity until we can't do this anymore and then we will be gone, as it should be. 

By then, there will also be nothing else left alive except some few lower lifeforms who will meekly inherit a newly created hellish Earth, picking their way through the rubble of our “once-great” civilization. We will all be forgotten and with good riddance if such a thought ever becomes possible again. The ruins of our self-destruction and the near-total absence of biological diversity will be the mute testimony for millennia of what we were. And the judgement will be the same then as as it is now, the horror will be finally gone.
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For me, there's spiritual and existential comfort to be found in our planet's evolutionary story:


Appreciating Earth's Climate

Who says understanding Earth’s Evolution is irrelevant?



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