Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumActivism - what is it really good for?
Here is a rather different suggestion for why activism - especially climate change and social justice activism - is still helpful.
First off, for those who don't know me well, I’ll cop to being a completely confirmed fatalist about what’s happening and is about to happen in the world. I've been looking at all aspects of our current predicament very hard for the last eight years or so. Every avenue I've explored, from resource use and pollution (especially around fossil fuels and climate change) through to human history, culture and psychology, has convinced me that we are locked into a death march.
As far as I've been able to determine, there is no "realistic" way out of the box we have so cunningly fashioned for ourselves. Although we have just recently pulled the trip-wire on the twin booby traps of methane clathrates and melting permafrost, the box we're in was in fact sealed up long ago. It’s just that its plush appointments kept us from seeing the truth about our situation.
We have perhaps two or three decades left to devour the fruits of our planetary rape. Between now and then we are dead men walking. Quantum metaphors about being Schrödinger’s cat and hearing the click of the particle detector firing also spring to mind. Our wave function is about to collapse.
However, hope springs eternal, as they say, and I used the word “realistic” above quite deliberately. As my beloved is fond of reminding me, there is always room in the cartoon of life for the box labelled “Here a miracle occurs.” It may sound fatuous, but I think she’s right. There is no guarantee that a miracle will occur of course, but unless we leave space in our thoughts and actions for the possibility, there is a pretty iron-clad guarantee that one WILL NOT – and even if it did we wouldn't recognize it for what it is.
And so I leave that tiny, improbable sliver of hope uncrushed. Along with a big helping of Buddhist “equanimity of non-attachment”, it guards my spirit from an otherwise certain dissolution. I don’t count on it, and I rarely act on it directly. But it’s what keeps me posting on the Web like this, keeps me talking to people about What’s Really Happening™, keeps me thinking, writing, speaking. Because the more of us there are who Know, the greater that infinitesimal possibility of a miracle becomes. And even if it doesn't come (as I am so sure in my darker moments) keeping that tiny space set for it in my own soul still makes my life an easier place to be.
Bill McKibben of 350.org is probably aware that what he’s doing is a forlorn hope. Ditto for Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute and all the rest of our merry band of Doomer™ rogues. But life and death is just too damned fascinating not to watch in awe and wonder as it unfolds – and to help others clearly see that same majesty, warts and all.
Waking people up to the awful grandeur of life and death is what activism is Really™ all about. In my not so humble opinion.
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phantom power
(25,966 posts)that part of the benefit of activism is influencing the menu of memes/solutions in circulation. When a problem crops up, how people attempt to solve it is influenced by what ideas are in popular circulation. The original point had to do with how the conservatives have played this game better over the last 40 years than liberals.
But putting partisan political strategies aside, it's a useful insight that activist factions frequently don't get the action they want, but there comes a time when politicians or societies are "ready" to change, and what ideas they've heard in the past suddenly come into play.
In the case of climate change, I think what this will have to mean is influencing ideas on how to adapt, or provide hospice. Prevention is unlikely to be on the table by the time the world comes to grips with what is going on.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)tama
(9,137 posts)But I've never been very worried about climate change - Sandy did good job of bringing Occupy activists and other people together to rebuild sense of communities of mutual aid. And my main complaint about peak fossil fuels is that they should happen much faster... and overall complaint is that why o why can't the financial pyramid fraud just fully collapse and go away as of yesterday. Just my petty impatient thoughts, not important.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I was way more worried about PO and system-level collapse. What finally got my attention was the realization that the climate isn't the medium-term, "slow squeeze" problem I thought it was. The loss of Arctic ice this year finally woke me up to the fact that climate change is probably going to be soon, rapid and life-threatening.
Originally I thought civilization would decline because of complexity failures - supply chain and financial system disruptions perhaps - and that climate change would just come along later and cook the leftovers. Now I think the collapse is actually going to be triggered by climate change well before we run out of fuel to burn. Whether climate change becomes serious before or after we experience some kind of major complexity failure seems a bit moot at this point.
tama
(9,137 posts)that CC means planetary metamorphosis of some sort or other. I just don't see the point of worrying about the metamorphosis, anymore than caterpillar worrying about it's metamorphosis into butterfly.
phantom power
(25,966 posts)
tama
(9,137 posts)than ordinary human intellect that can be and are directly experienced by many humans. And art of comics do a lot of good to face and process our collective fears. 
daleanime
(17,796 posts)We changed the world by accident, what could we do on purpose?
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Just in case there's any confusion about where I'm coming from, when I use the word "miracle" I'm using it in the colloquial rather than any strict theological sense. To me it means something like "An unexpected event of such vanishingly low probability that its roots in our daily reality cannot be discerned." I don't think miracles like that are things one can ask for, but every once in a while they happen anyway.
Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)NoOneMan
(4,795 posts)I don't disagree with anything you say and understand your philosophy; but I also think it may be easier for you to reach peace after a life of experience. That is time you cannot get back--time that, whether spent well or remorsed, is gone (something we all understand). Its been like this for thousands of years, with maybe a new twist this time; instead of facing that final existential crisis alone, you are joined by the world all at once. But the rest of us have not had these moments or experiences that we humans seek--or even the ones we don't--before absolutely knowing the futility of those moments. Hindsight brings peace, but foresight of the unavoidable is hell.
The young are trapped in a rat cage, running in a wheel, until we die. We do not have pointless time that is lost and gone, that we only realize is pointless later. We have pointless time in front of us, each day, each hour, at work, and the time in between. We must wake up and face a day that is entirely irrelevant, doing things that we have no interest or love in just to put food on our tables. We have no way forward except to be a cog and walk toward the final moments, children in hand.
I firmly believe that there is another way to live, but by the time civilization lets go of its hold on the land and resources it will be too late to entirely enjoy its splendor. All I have is what I can grasp in my fleeting moments between my workdays. That is frustrating, and I'm not sure there can be absolute peace to consider this. I will for the peace that experience and rest can bring, but perpetual pointlessness is what I face.
People hope for many things these days, realistic or not. I feel that perhaps its even more realistic that some solution is geo-engineered than my generation being able to break free and live our final moments in joy and happiness.
From one day to the next, my thoughts and emotion on this change; its one thing to have knowledge and another to have wisdom I supposed
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)I finally regained my balance when I was almost 60. I don't expect the young to be so sanguine about these things. I remember the resentment I felt when I was 20, about the way all my parents' generation had fucked things up, and promising myself I wouldn't do the same. I hope the young today are making that same outraged promise to themselves.
CRH
(1,553 posts)you have an understanding and vision beyond your years, and that, is a recipe to suffer. It is sad your future is confined, by realities newly divine. Divine not to a god, but rather the limits of your mother. Maybe it is your lot, to be a leader into the dusk. Good luck, with my respect. hrh
joshcryer
(62,270 posts)GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)
Iterate
(3,020 posts)In all fairness though, I dared not even whisper such a thing in public before this election. It was best discussed in private, where my already green-biased listeners could judge if I had gone full-out John Brown, or was merely trying to goad a more serious reaction.
This does go directly to the point of your last sentence, but waking to the awful grandeur was too much to ask. I had to settle for a split-second recognition that it might be worse than they think, or that consumerist thinking would never bring a solution. Then came the inevitable retreat to a comfortable position, at least for the moment. I think being a hero to your grandchildren has some merit. Others just don't see it.
I don't much faith in the slope of the learning curve. People have to see the system fail and hear an alternative narrative of how it's possible to live afterward. I'll call that the "visualization curve". Right now I'd say that about 390ppm see it.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)What a great meme! 
