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Page added on September 30, 2018
U.S. government embraces climate catastrophe, but is it a ‘crisis’?
The United States government has now officially embraced climate change as a catastrophe in the making. Only it contends that the catastrophe is now inevitable no matter what humans do…and so, we should do nothing at all since whatever we do won’t matter much.
That, at least, was the justification offered for freezing fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles after 2020. For the National Transportation Safety Board which issued a report containing the justification, the phrase “Every little bit helps” has morph into “Every little bit won’t matter.”
The problem, of course, is that if this becomes the attitude of everyone trying to mitigate climate change, almost nothing will get done.
But the report does highlight one very important problem for those who desperately want to address climate change: Climate change is no longer a “crisis.” As French thinker Bruno Latour reminds us in his book Facing Gaia, climate change is not really a “crisis,” at least not anymore. A crisis comes and goes. Climate change isn’t going anywhere except toward a place which is much worse. It isn’t going to pass. It is going to endure.
That is the hard part about it. Addressing climate change does not mean taking temporary emergency measures which can be relaxed after the crisis has passed. Addressing climate change means making profound and permanent changes in the way we live. That is, of course, why doing much of anything is opposed vehemently by interests dependent on fossil fuels for their livelihoods such as the auto industry and, of course, the oil industry. There’s no going back to the way things were after the crisis passes because it’s not going to pass.
Latour styles climate change as the third world war of the 20th century, one that most of those who lived through it didn’t even notice. We didn’t even notice that the climate was waging a successful campaign destined to make much of the Earth uninhabitable for humans and untenable for modern civilization. That was the moment of crisis if there ever was one in this fight. That we could have won that war if we as a global society had noticed it was happening is now lost on most. With multiple tipping points probably already passed, we are now left with “a profound mutation in our relation to the world,” he writes.
Our response is manifold. Some choose despair. Some choose denial. Some suggest that we double down with additional modern attempts to dominate nature through something called geoengineering. According to those advocating this approach, the problem is not that we have assaulted the planet and its climate; it’s that we have not dominated their workings enough!
We are told we face crises in education, in leadership, in morals, and in politics. We have health crises and food crises and toxic chemical crises. The soil, the water, the forests and the fisheries are all in crisis. It never occurs to the bulk of the population nor to its leadership that these crises are all related to systemic changes in the landscape, the sea and the atmosphere linked to our profligate use of energy and resources.
Because half measures do not seem enough in the face of this great ecological storm of change, the U.S. government now says that no measures at all need to be taken. This is not the voice of despair. Nor is it the voice of denial in the brute sense of the word. This is the voice of a child who simply does not want to change even though he or she now understands that change must come.
Yet children most often adapt and that’s how they grow up and mature. But great masses of people can remain dangerously immature. Swiss psychologist Carl Jung wrote that the reason that collective guilt is so lightly worn—he was referring the Germans in World War II—is that when, say, 70 million share the guilt, they only seem to feel one seventy-millionth of it.
This is part of the collective drama we live in. Some feel the results of our ultimately ruinous way of life first. And, some feel it more brutally because they haven’t the means to shield themselves. While the rest may feel some sense of blame, this does not weigh heavily enough to slow down their daily lives, not yet, at least.
But slowing down is really the first step. The availability of cheap and growing energy supplies in the industrial age has beckoned us to go faster and faster and never slower. And yet, slowing down is a first step in noticing. And, noticing is a next step toward understanding. After that comes imagining how we might live in ways that mitigate the onrushing catastrophe of climate change and resource depletion. That’s what the mature mind does in the face of unalterable change.
Resource Insights by Kurt Cobb
15 Comments on "U.S. government embraces climate catastrophe, but is it a ‘crisis’?"
Duncan Idaho on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 11:34 am
Europe regain Ryder Cup with 17½-10½ victory over USA
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2018/sep/30/ryder-cup-2018-sunday-singles-golf-europe-usa-live
Golf? The US can’t even dominate in golf?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4w7H48tBS8
Cloggie on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 11:46 am
Eventually the US will initiate the best climate change combat program imaginable: WW3
No economy, no emissions.
Antius on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 12:26 pm
The political left appear to have a bit of a, how do I put it, pervert problem:
In the US:
https://wethepeoplesnews.com/2018/05/26/does-the-democratic-party-have-a-pervert-problem/
http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/the-many-disturbing-sex-scandals-of-the-democratic-party_09142017
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1980959/posts
http://liberalpervertreportweeblycom.weebly.com/crime.html
In the UK:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/politics/48992/lib-dems-give-pervert-free-run-at-council-seat/
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/former-liverpool-councillor-uncovered-sick-12225272
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2603904/Cyril-Smith-victims-sue-LibDems-revealed-paedophile-politicians-crimes-covered-time-protected-allies-bullied-police.html
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ex-lib-dem-councillor-who-behaved-5365975
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BIODjCPnOHk
Seems to be an international problem. The left do tend to be a soft touch on sexual deviance don’t they? Is it really such a surprise that they attract the wrong sort of people?
Estamos Jodidos on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 12:55 pm
82 years for 7 degrees F., I don’t think so. Try 15 years at most. Feedbacks are kicking in big time. It’s not going to take long. Estamos Jodidos
Cloggie on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 12:58 pm
Home from Summer holiday:
https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/koudste-septembernacht-in-47-jaar~ab91e5f1/
Coldest Septembernight in 47 years in my home town.
Uncle Bill on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 1:22 pm
Believe me.. NO one is embracing Global Warming….no one….until there is a world wide crop failure, followed by starvation, followed by the plague and war..
Than we will pay attention, when it is too late
GetAVasectomyAndLetTheHumanSpecieDie on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 1:36 pm
India – Farmers suffer massive destruction due to heavy snowfall
https://www.iceagenow.info/india-farmers-suffer-massive-destruction-due-to-heavy-snowfall/
Frost and freezing temperatures cause damages Wheatbelt grain crop
https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/agriculture/frost-and-freezing-temperatures-cause-damages-wheatbelt-grain-crop-ng-b88961698z
Only stupid people believe in global warming. The world is starting to lose food crop. GOD has now begun the cleaning of the human race trough global cooling and mini ice age.
Fucking libtard like Trudeau need to be killed. This fucktrad still wants to be a carbon tax on everything.
Energy investor on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 2:31 pm
Who cares about the facts?
By 2008 the Arctic was meant to be ice free. Yet this year the residual ice at the end of the summer melt was much larger and thicker.
Same goes for Greenland. The ice load is 500 billion tonnes greater.
What about Antarctica? Still freezing down.
A full census of polar bears shows their numbers are double the 1950s population and they are in good condition.
If the stories don’t fit the facts, do you never ask why?
Why don’t people talk about the Grand Solar Minimum?
Winter is coming John Snow.
In many places it has arrived early.
tahoe1780 on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 2:38 pm
Warm and humid Northwest
https://kobi5.com/news/fire-of-a-different-kind-affects-rogue-valley-pear-industry-86843/
Sissyfuss on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 3:47 pm
We are entering a time of dark evolution, a time when Nature shows us the results of our ignorance even if it lags by 20 years. The simple-minded and the cleverless will keep overshooting on consumption and population and will continue to elect shills and grifters as the quality of their life craters. What transpires on this website has as much intrinsic value as an energy source with only a fraction of the energy density of the preceding source. All value is relative and the value of a smoothly operating environment will increase massively as it begins to break down. Lincoln said ” As the time is new, we must think anew and act anew.” Something I have tried to do my entire life.
Cybersleauth on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 4:23 pm
Simply eliminate cars and move to a comprehensive rail system.
Antius on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 4:37 pm
“Simply eliminate cars and move to a comprehensive rail system.”
Not a bad idea, but anything but simple. A rail based transportation system is inherently nodal, whereas for the past 80 years our living arrangements have grown up around an anywhere-to-anywhere transport system.
makati1 on Sun, 30th Sep 2018 7:54 pm
Energy, and your point is? It is above normal temps here in the Ps. 96F yesterday and has been over 92F for several weeks. Even the typhoons seem to be forming farther north than usual because the oceans are warmer in the north. Ditto for hurricanes in the Atlantic.
Ask Japan if the climate is changing. They are experiencing the third, or is it the forth, typhoon in about as many weeks. The Ps has not had any direct hits as they all go north. Okinawa is getting pounded.
A few cherry picked locations are NOT the world average. The world average temp is the number that counts. That number is getting higher and higher. At some point it will go ballistic and we are gone.
Dredd on Mon, 1st Oct 2018 7:35 am
The die that formed our cultural mind was cast before we were born.
We found out that it had been hidden from us most of our lives.
The “It Can’t Happen Here” trance went viral.
And we have no antidote for that cultural virus (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change).
Chrome Mags on Mon, 1st Oct 2018 9:11 pm
“Believe me.. NO one is embracing Global Warming….no one….until there is a world wide crop failure, followed by starvation, followed by the plague and war..
Than we will pay attention, when it is too late”
That’s the truth of it uncle bill. Our species is so focused on accelerating where possible to build more, burn more, buy more, sell more, collect more, grow the economy bigger it cannot begin to even consider slowing down or changing our ways.
As an example, I was driving in the East Bay of SF bay area this morning doing 75 mph in a 65, with cars ripping past me on both sides, easily doing 90+. Have things really sped up so much that people have to go that fast to get things done? Or is it psychological as each eggs on the other? Either people are completely losing it in a mad dash to stay ahead or something’s going on, because that is some wild, reckless driving. But it’s not just on the road. I went in a store and got some items, and the cashier must have been on 10 cups of coffee or something because her movements were at a heightened rate of speed, and when I said have a nice day, she said, “yup” so fast it sounded like a bird chirping and hurriedly started stocking shelves. Uh, hello!
Maybe we’ll hit that maximum speed humans can potentially hit just as all hell breaks loose. I can hardly wait.