[P2P-F] Fwd: Climate crisis

Sun Jun 9 17:58:48 CEST 2019

thanks for reading Slater's loss of faith apocalyptic warning letter below,

Michel

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Mathijs de Bruin <mathijs at mathijsfietst.nl>
Date: Sun, Jun 9, 2019 at 12:04 PM
Subject: Climate crisis
To:

Dear friends,

Not much of an update of my part. Tears are in my eyes as I’ve read Matthew
Slater’s post (forwarded below). Knowing him as one of the strongest
‘possibilitists’/optimists who has been working on realistic options for a
livable future.

I don’t know what to make of this, how to interpret this, how to deal with
this. I do know, that his words are not lightly spoken. I do think we
should worry. I feel that our solution(s) are not in maintaining wellbeing,
as much as in sticking together. I want to hold your hands as the tsunami
is coming, feel your embrace. See what is the best we can do, as *our*
world is failing.

To me, in this context, even knowing (and: doing!) what should be done. To
choose survival, together, is worthwhile challenge. Even though the fruits
of our labour might not be the utopic reality we long and strive for. It
might be a different one: parting with grace, embracing what is to come,
overcoming despair and: building on what is (or might be) left.

“Alles van waarde is weerloos.”
— Lucebert

With love,
Mathijs

*Van: *"Matslats - Community currency engineer" <matslats at fastmail.com>
*Onderwerp: **matslats.net <http://matslats.net>: Climate crisis*
*Datum: *9 juni 2019 om 10:27:07 WEST
*Aan: *mathijs at mathijsfietst.nl

<https://cdn.blog.ucsusa.org/wp-content/uploads/polar-vortex-2019-Jan-29.jpg>

I suspected for a long time that our civilisation wasn't viable. When the
banks crashed in 2008 I paid attention to a lot of apocalyptic reporting
that said we came *this* close to economic Armageddon - whatever that
meant. As I better understood how capitalism is a stupid dogma preached
increasingly only by self-serving, vain sociopaths
<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/give-and-take/201310/does-studying-economics-breed-greed>,
how it requires exponential consumption of resources
<http://www.missingtheforest.com/capitalisms-problem-exponential-growth-in-a-finite-system>,
and how it has failed to respond to increasingly shrill science-based
warnings, I came to expect an ugly financial and/or climate collapse as
inevitable in my lifetime.

I was alarmed in early April 2018 when the polar vortex broke
<https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/27/north-pole-temperatures-soar-past-freezing-beast-east-blasts/>
 and Europe froze, but Jem Bendell's paper, Deep Adaptation: A map for
navigating the climate tragedy <http://www.lifeworth.com/deepadaptation.pdf>
 didn't alarm me too much. His favoured theory was a multi-breadbasket
failure (MBBF) within 5-10 years; the melting of sea ice at the north pole
would disrupt the weather so much that that grain harvests in Russia, USA
and Canada would all fail, and that this would probably lead to societal
collapse. Fair enough, I said.

Jem's instincts can be uncanny. Last week I heard the news that the polar
vortex has shifted over from the less cold north polar ocean to greenland,
where more ice remains, and this has meant near incessant rain for grain
farmers in USA. By the end of the planting season, only 60% of the fields
had been planted, and much of what was planted had drowned.  This plus
drought in Australia
<https://www.world-grain.com/articles/11664-australian-wheat-output-falls-to-11-year-low>
and
a long Russian winter
<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-25/russia-s-wheat-crop-under-threat-from-miserable-start-to-spring>
means
that we are facing MBBF this year.
Suddenly I'm not so sanguine. My last ten years work on complementary
currencies has been an expression of optimism I didn't feel, that it was
possible for people to self organise and run society differently. I felt
even if there was the smallest chance of it being meaningful, in the face
of such suffering, working to change the system was meaningful. Now without
time to change the system, its hard to find purpose. We've been sunning
ourselves on the beach until the tide went out waaaay to far, and now we
see the froth of the tsunami on the horizon. Its too late to install the
early warning system, too late to reinforce our houses, now we've only got
time to run and to hope. Its time for me to admit that the system I was
working to change for the better will be destroyed and all my work will be
dashed on the rocks. Its too late to build a decentralised energy grid; too
late to redesign finance; too late to build a better food system, too late
to restore our national manufacturing base; too late to restore our soils,
agriculture; too late for carbon capture technologies too late to dismantle
the fossil fuel leviathan; too late for every hope I clung to; from last
week to this, I don't know who I am any more.

Climate science is far from exact, but when it starts playing out we'd be
foolish to say it was wrong. But there's a leap from "crops will fail" to
"society will collapse" which is another field entirely. A sensible society
could still take steps (that's what Deep Adaptation is about) not so much
to reduce carbon emissions but to ensure that resources are shared. But our
society is very far from sensible, or even aware of what is coming. A real
but manageable hunger crisis, perhaps comparable to the special period in
Cuba <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vs6xoKmnYq8>, will be compounded by
shock, blame, #ClimateGrief
<https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/gy48d4/environmental-grief-climate-change-anxiety>,
and opportunist elites profiting from pain.

So this winter the global grain reserves will be eaten and as in 2011, the
poorer countries will probably experience political unrest fueled by high
food prices. Since the north pole is past its tipping point, next year will
almost certainly be worse than this, so about 18 months from now, a LOT of
people will be freaking out. More than ever before, the food we eat will be
taken directly out of the mouths of the starving.

Some people are predicting human extinction
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqIt93dDG1M>, but that seems a rather
abstract loss to me. My chest is heavy and my gaze constantly drifts
because I'm grieving the failure of our wondrous civilisation,
contemplating the expansion of needless suffering, and turning to face a
difficult future.

----------------------

Please share this link on social media if you like it!

http://matslats.net/climate-crisis

-- 
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20190609/824c3ab0/attachment.html>