As COP21 approaches, more reasons why "we are doomed, doomed" as the Climapocalypse approaches in the next 30 generations of man

 

 

Note to readers: As COP21 approaches in late November and early December, here are some more reasons why "we are doomed, doomed" as the Climapocalypse approaches in the next 30 generations of man. By "we" I mean humakind, all of us, the human species. I have started work on a cli-fi novel with the working title of "THE LAST GENERATION OF MAN" and set in the far distant future -- pick a date! -- and many people have asked me why I am so down on hope, down on optimism, down on the future. Here is part of my response, much more of which I will try to explain via the story I plan to tell in the novel, which has a 2020 publication date.


Clive Hamilton, in a recent oped in The Conversation in Australia, noted that geophysicist Brad Werner in 2012 argued the case that we are in this Approaching Climapocalypse (A.C.) mess not because the market system is not working well enough but because it is working too well. Werner’s startling presentation to the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union that year was titled ‘Is the Earth Fucked?’ and he posed in public the question climate scientists and others who follow their work had been asking in private. His answer was bleak, or just possibly inspirational, according to Hamilton, one of Australia's most brilliant climate change observers. (I've spoken to him on the phone about this, too.)

Werner’s conclusion is that the Earth is indeed fucked, unless somehow the market system can be prevented from working so well. So Hamilton is arguing that what we urgently need is friction; sand must be thrown into the machine to slow it down. Only resistance to the dominant culture will give some hope of avoiding collapse with the next 30 generations of man.


''Only activism that disrupts the dominant culture — including ‘protests, blockades and sabotage’ — provides an avenue for a negative answer to his rude question," Hamilton said. "It is a kind of geophysical model of Naomi Klein’s recent call to arms.

This brings me to an important new book, co-written by a friend of mine in Australia named Christopher Wright, who I have known for a while via our cli-fi Twitter exchanges and links. The book is title ''Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations,'' and Wright wrote it with Daniel Nyberg, both academics with the University of Sydney. The duo gives readers a detailed and fascinating analysis of what global corporations do to keep the wheels of the system spinning; a phenomenon they term ‘creative self-destruction’.


''When Bill McKibben calculated that limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels requires that 80 per cent of proven reserves of coal, oil and natural gas be left in the ground untouched, but that doing so would destroy the balance sheets of several of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, he showed us in the starkest possible way the fundamental incompatibility of the current structure of economic power and the survival of the world as we know it," Hamilton underlined in his essay, which has been well-received Down Under and in North American and European capitals, too.

Hamilton says it with tough love here:

 "The hard truth is that these corporations would sooner see the world destroyed than relinquish their power. As Wright and Nyberg show in fascinating detail, it is not that the executives who run them are evil; they simply function the way the system dictates and the system, as we find over and over, is structured to keep the global capitalist system growing."

''In other words: The executives have no choice: if they cannot stomach it then they must leave and be replaced by people with fewer scruples or an enhanced ability to deceive themselves, to believe the stories their own PR people make up.''

[It is astonishing how gullible we all can be. In the history of greenwash rarely has there been a more cynical corporation that the oil company BP, which in July 2000 rebranded itself ‘Beyond Petroleum’, announcing it would over time transition out of fossil fuels and into renewable energy.]

Today it has sold out of its small investments in wind power and solar energy and is investing heavily in the development of shale gas, oil sands in Alberta (the worst kind of fossil energy), and, we must not forget, new oil fields under the melting Arctic, Hamilton warns.

Read ''Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations'' as an important wake up call and a very welcome corrective to the beguiling world of mistaken ideas we carry around, ideas that have us sleepwalking into disaster as the Climapocalypse approaches in the next 500 to 1000 years (some 30 to 50 generations of man).

Because of the economic system that we humans have created and live under, many of us an unthinking slaves of fashion, pop music, pop culture, cartoons, Hollywood gossip and hundreds of other parts of modern life that are a total waste of time and in fact bringing us closer and close to the End Times 30 generations from now, that is why I say "we are doomed, doomed."

That is why I am writing ''THE LAST GENERATION OF MAN'' as a cli-fi novel. I am writing as fast as I can. The shit won't hit the fan for a long long time, so those of you reading this essay today do not have to worry. And our childrend and grandchildren will be fine. Life in the luxurious fast lane of modern life will go as crazily as ever, distracted as we are as ever, and nothing will change, not even with the Bill McKibbens and Naomi Kleins and Andy Revkins and Clive Hamiltons and Margaret Atwoods among us. We are doomed, doomed.

So what's my purpose in writing THE LAST GENERATION OF MAN and keeping these blog posts online? I am trying to send a message to the future generations in 2121 and 2222 and 2323 and 2424 ane 2525 to help them help their descendants to prepare to die with grace and dignity as the END comes after the Climapopaclypse impact events turn the human species into a thing a thing of the past. The Earth will go on, without us, thank you.

Is tehre a God? If you think so, pray. If you know there is no such thing, prepare, prepare, prepare and stop feeing yourself like a glutton at the fountain of distraction and time-wasting entertainment shit on TV and from Hollywood. The human species is at risk. And all you want to do is play video games and see the next anime from Japan?

Peace on Earth. We don't have much time. Five hundred years will come and go ... in a cosmic second!