for perspective and realism

Catastrophism does our movement no good. When catastrophes don’t manifest all so fast the movement gets discredited.

It’s a little sorry (as well as counterproductive) to see movement advocates conflate weather with climate change or happenstance with consequence.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2023-06-28/were-having-a-violent-meltdown/

This paragraph smacks of catastrophism:

“Several times in recent weeks I’ve heard people suggest that Mother Nature has been speaking to us through that smoke endlessly drifting south from the still-raging Canadian wildfires. She’s saying that she wants the coal, oil, and gas left in the ground, but I fear her message will have little more influence on climate policy than her previous ones did. After all, we essentially hit the “snooze” button on the wakeup call from Hurricane Katrina 18 years ago; ditto the disastrous Hurricane Sandy seven years later, as well as the East Coast heat waves and West Coast wildfires of more recent years; or the startling overheating of global waters and the sea level rise that goes with it.”

re: “that smoke endlessly drifting south from the still-raging Canadian wildfires” and “East Coast heat waves and West Coast wildfires”

Heat waves and atmospheric dryness in regions happen. Resulting wildfires happen. Is there evidence that there have been more lately due to climate change?

re: “Hurricane Katrina 18 years ago; the disastrous Hurricane Sandy seven years later”

Hurricanes happen. There does seem to be some evidence that warming waters are resulting in more and/or more intense hurricanes. But that’s not yet fully clear; if it is, in fact, a consequential phenomenon it’s not yet anywhere nearly of catastrophic extent. There might be a small difference in the number of hurricanes and intensity of hurricanes relative to longstanding past normality.

“the startling overheating of global waters and the sea level rise that goes with it.”

It’s really tiny to-date. We’re not close to losing Miami due to its being flooded over by rising sea levels.

Changes of that kind happen naturally on a geologic scale of centuries, millennia, and epochs. It does seem that the planet will be facing relatively fast changes of that kind due to anthropogenic folly. The seas may rise so “quickly” (relatively speaking) that Miami will be underwater a thousand years from now. People might start moving inland en masse 300 years from now. For now, what’s rising are real estate values in Miami Beach. No one but catastrophists thinks those properties will be underwater within a hundred years.

What we’re doing in terms of overdevelopment, pollution, depletion, habitat destruction, etc. is disastrous. The way we’re living is ecologically and socially unsustainable. Unsustainability leads to disaster. If the disaster played out within the timescale of a human lifetime or a couple of generations, people, governments, and institutions might make more of an effort to change their ways. There is some effort already. But it’s tepid … because the changes (that will be ultimately disastrous) are right now far from catastrophic.

In any particular year much weather happens and many wildfires happen. We should avoid saying things like: “Mother Nature has been speaking to us through that smoke endlessly drifting south from the still-raging Canadian wildfires.” or: “By 2050, two to three billion people are likely to either be living in or fleeing regions that have become increasingly hostile to human existence and, by 2090, it could be three to six billion of us, or a quarter to a third of humanity.” Kirk Sale made a mistake with a prediction of that kind back in 1995 and he was forced to disavow it recently. Those kinds of predictions discredit us.

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Relatedly:

“ … imagine the ferocity of the backlash if we could somehow manage to enact the policies that are undoubtedly most urgently needed to rein in greenhouse gases and other environmental threats: a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels and cuts in the extraction and use of material resources. The eruption would undoubtedly be far more aggressive and violent than the resistance to Covid-19 regulations.”

So be realistic and accept the truth that social change just can’t happen all so fast. If it’s too fast it will feel threatening to some … and they will resist. History makes that clear.

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“In short, industrial civilization has by now painted the world into a perilous corner. The only way out of this mess would be for affluent societies to deeply reduce their consumption of energy and extraction of material resources, but don’t hold your breath on that one.”

I totally agree with the sentiment. But it just does us no particular good to be unrealistic about the timeframes of what we’ll be facing, what can be done when, etc. We’ll want to be avoiding despair, frustration, and discouragement.