The Bleak View of the World’s Problems (Or: They’re All Going to Have to Die)

“Those who replaced them, having never survived a real crisis by pulling together”

I generally agree with this post, but I think that it is somewhat US-centric. It seems to me to assume that the New Deal generation is the last generation everywhere to have had to come together in this manner. But Chinese society, for instance, had to come together around the end of the Cultural Revolution (which seems to me to have set a good deal of their current politics) and they are actually doing more about global climate change than anyone else.

Well said Ian;

And thanks for mentioning the importance of the FDRists in handling a climate/economic/military crisis, which occurred almost simultaneously in time. FDRists [of both parties] made a great human leap forward by not by shirking their duty, but by embracing the task at hand. The FDR years 1932-1978 were years of great progress across humanity.

Yes..yes..it wasn’t perfect. And we all know those who have nothing but criticism, most of whom offer up false utopian fantasies. One such fellow, Milton Friedman, whose abject failure in ALL matters haunts every aspect of his “dream”…Friedman’s “dream”, now reality, it is our daily nightmare. That Friedman’s utopian dream became a malignant hallucination should stand as stark reminder of where alternates to FDR’s policies have lead us…not just the USA, but almost all countries have suffered.

While their were failures post JFK, FDRism ended when the CIA, working with the Gulf States, created the oil price spikes to “shock” the western economies into an artificially high inflation, leading to social instability…and into that breach marched the minion of darkness.

“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” ― Milton Friedman

That’s a fancy way of saying, nobody in their right minds would consider my ideas but, in a panic, a man will grab hold of anything.

“When we think only of ourselves and a few people we care about, rather than thinking about everyone and everyone’s grandchildren, we don’t manage society’s real wealth: people, knowledge and the environment, properly.”

How do you get empathy/sympathy to spread and carry into the future without something akin to religion?

“They are not separate, they are a symptom of our pathologies.”
I tend to think it is the other way around. That the populace are a symptom of our leadership. The people in Maybery can lead their semi-idealic lives because there are basically competent decent people in charge and Mayberryians have had a chance to become who they are. But whether its the chicken or the egg at fault doesn’t matter. We are essentially powerless with the only chance of any positive change to come from working together in large numbers and the number of people willing to be rational as well as decent may never be sufficient. The coming crisis’s will either make us or break us, that’s for sure.

Doesn’t the appeal at the end, “we must be different people, different humans” exemplify the core paradox here, namely that We Humans are quite good at taking responsibility but failures at collectively being responsible? The masters of learning from mistakes but incapable as a species of not repeating them? As this piece astutely observes, we’ve never succeeded as a species in marshaling our reason and sense of self-determination into collective action for the common good or future society, at least in a sustained way. Why would that be different now? If we were capable, would we be where we are?

Why, always, the call to change, the stir to agency? Maybe one thing we humans don’t do so well (or surely modern humans don’t do so well) is believe the truth applies to us too–even when we know it–quick as we are to pivot to the elixir of our own sense of agency. So we humans will always keep “doing something,” whatever we can or believe we must.

There will be mass death. We aren’t going to stop it. Don’t we know that? Doesn’t the notion that we might just mitigate “the worst of it” serve to block out the mourning-in-real-time, or mourning in advance, of what is happening now and certain to get worse, what is almost certain to accelerate in magnitudes of tragedy and agony?

Certainly doing something is better than doing nothing. How can we not at least try? Fair enough. But not much “different” about that.

A whole lot of death. It’s from here to dead that is cause for shuddering. What suffering and loss will come — and what will it be to live through it (if we do) and to bear witness; what agonizing decisions or actions or sacrifices (or non-sacrifices) will shred the mind and psyche. I don’t know that we in the west today can comprehend, and how could we. The question isn’t if — it’s where and how and exactly how fast and how big and how personal. As it draws closer, the questions of “what then does one do” become narrower and more immediate and at some, possibly, unbearable. They say it’s an invisible God that makes you tremble, when you know in your bones what you cannot possibly know by reason or experience. God or no God, we wait, and tremble, for what will come.

I really don’t know what all the fuss is about.
All everyone has to do is rationally pursue their own selfish interests and a nebulous appendage will provide for the common good. Now, and forever.

It is known …

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” – Prof. Albert Allen Bartlett

Expect overpopulation to get exponentially worse in the years to come.

Climate change, overpopulation, pollution aren’t the problems. They are symptoms of one problem. The one problem that we can do nothing to solve.

The Seventh Generation view of the Iroquois nation is an example of humans coming up with a sustainable view. Of course the view didn’t help much to stop the Eurorape of pre Columbian Americas. And I don’t think it was a widely held view among the various old American cultures. Thinning the herd is just nature’s way of finding balance. Gonna be a rough ride.

Individuals may die but civilisation can continue to grow. Are we not much better informed and better off than all previous generations? Perhaps we should just be less preoccupied with mortality.

“We claim, at times, to be creatures of reason, but not only are we driven by short-sighted selfish desires, when we use reason we use it as a slave to those selfish desires.”
And unequivocal if ironic truth bears repetition.

Also, there are two types of climate change denialist: The first, familiar to most, is the one who denies it exists, even if only the existence of the Anthropocene. The second, more tragic type is the one who’s in such denial that they think there exists an agreement or accord which, even if its recommended approach were implemented to its fullest, would do anything at all to mitigate the coming result of that which they readily admit exists.

Or maybe by deciding how we value an individual human life, for another obvious example.

In this country it will not surprise me if escalating deaths in flyover country reach epic scale while the cyber wealthy cluster in the cities aggressively refusing to notice any of it.

Also, I think Adam Smith’s meaning of Invisible Hand was actually the opposite of the misuse that the execrable toad Milton Friedman made of it. Smith thought that the invisible hand of conscience would prevent landowners from starving tenants or merchants from shipping working class jobs offshore.

@someofparts:
Yeah, I get that. Which is why I included the “Now, and forever” part. Don’t question … just believe. Religion if there ever was one …

The coming problems — climate change and environmental degradation removing our ability to get adequate food and shelter from the earth — require social organization to address and so are difficult for individuals to make major improvements. We’ve gotten used to just accepting the problem that our leaders prioritize — the endless war. As several commenters have noted, it’s the decision after WWII to maintain a permanent military Keynsianism to address the problem of pumping up adequate demand for perpetual economic growth.

Ending the wars and closing down the military maw opens the possibility of a saner economy, with the room and resources for a better life for us all. And wars aren’t something that appeal to our selfish desires. It takes pretty relentless fear flogging to get support for war.

I think “Let’s shut down foreign bases” and “Let’s get our troops out of the Middle East” is more concrete and actionable for most people than “Let’s all buy electric cars”.

lots of food for thought and consideration in both your post, ian, and the comment stream. but briefly, i wonder if folks folks consider that while amerika is home to roughly 4.5% of the world’s population, the usa gobbles up about 20% of the planet’s resources. in india, it’s been estimated that it would take 14 indians born to use a much as one usian child.

given that 50% of the amerikan carbon footprint (not methane, that’s a whole ‘nother dark climate chaos ballgame) is the military, is it any wonder that the rockefeller-funded saints of climate crisis mckibben and klein have never, ever said anything akin to that major culprit, or intoned even the simplest anti-consumer-society mantra: ‘live simply so that others might…simply live’?

which ‘notables’ in this society have blamed capitalism and factory ag and ‘green capitalism’ techno non-solutions gmo crops for killing soil microbes, polluting and decreasing aquifers across the nation? and of course it’s long been western corporations and bill gates and his ilk who’ve been bio-wrecking sustainable, small organic farming in africa, india, and in ‘our backyard’.

even in 2012 at the rio sustainability conferences, the side meetings of the indigenous who’d caravanned to rio pegged it all correctly. (they weren’t allowed into the ‘real meetings’, of course.) see the cochabamba accords, for instance. whoooosh x 2.

but yeah, by now i’m reconciled by now to the malthusian onion plan: ‘Scientists: ‘Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?’

http://bit.ly/2HKL8zX

I was trained as an economist and worked for a time in that profession (though not in the academy), so I tend to see things thru that prism. Economics is arguably the dominant theoretical doctrine of our politics; it explains (or “explains”) our political economy, it is a core part of most people’s education and certainly a core element in the education of the managerial classes — economics faculties and curriculum dominate business schools; economics is the foundation for our dominant political ideology, neoliberalism and economics and economists dominate many of the major national and international institutions that tie global systems of governance as well as commerce and industry together.

You can certainly talk about the military-industrial complex and its vested interest in perpetual global war as a structural organizer of global politics, as some commenters have. That’s a major feature of the global system as it has evolved. But, it is embedded in the economics. Marxism went aground on its insistence that capitalist market hunger drove imperialism and failed to consider that 19th century imperialism might be a vestige of feudalism and its hereditary aristocracy cum warrior/thief caste. I would hesitate to embrace too facile an economic explanation of what drives the penchant for global war, but it does seem to be that, as the General said, war is a racket, and the new class of global capitalists have found it convenient to have handy a tool of violence to disable socialism and populism when they get out of hand, as well, of course, the profiteering opportunities afforded by advanced weapons development and marketing.

I want to acknowledge violence and war and military power and organization, but the primary intent of my comment is to draw attention to the manifest and glaring shortcomings of economics as a framework for thinking collectively about policy and politics.

Several commenters have mentioned religion as an organizing ideology. I put it to you that economics functions as a civic religion for the Western world. We think of religion in the West as preaching about sex, but that is not the primary social and political function of religion: rather religion is about legitimating authority in the hierarchies of power that characterize the status quo. (Or, in the case of heretical religions, as Marxism once was, attacking the legitimacy of those hierarchies of power and authority.) Orthodox religion tells us that things are basically OK. Oh, it channels discontent and dissent into harmless proposals for reform and restoration sure enough, but its main deal is reassurance that the Republic is Just, just as it is, in this the best of all possible worlds. Economics is tailor-made to fulfill this function.

There’s a lot of ritual involved in religion. I won’t get into the functions of ritual in the organizing of political morality. In ancient societies, this was often tied to astronomy and prophecy, reading entrails or the omens appearing in the starry night sky. Just so, economists are endlessly telling us the opinion of the financial markets and “predicting” this or that consequence of policy, in sensational or lurid terms. It often verges on the ridiculous: Dow 36,000 or the predictions of Brexit catastrophes that read like the script of a Hollywood disaster flick.

The priests of ancient Rome or Babylon took control of the calendar. Modern economists take charge of the Central Bank and economic regulatory institutions. Little bit scarier, especially since that makes the economists the gatekeepers on economic predation, letting the sheep into the corral for slaughter at whatever rate seems to them sustainable without revolution from below.

Climate change and its consequences — the consequences certainly and indeed the driving force behind climate change, massive reintroduction of mined fossil carbon into the carbon cycle — are economic phenomenon manifest from and in economic processes.

I think human beings — some few at least assuming the role of scientists on behalf of the whole mass of humanity — have done a remarkably good job of developing and deepening scientific understanding of the physical processes of climate, atmospheric chemistry, meteorology, and so on. The geologic and paleontologic record has been explored with remarkable swiftness and we are monitoring in real time sea ice cover and the ranges of habitat for many creatures, plants and whole ecologies. It is breathtaking to me to read and understand even a small fraction of what is being done, and the sophistication and care with which it is being done.

But, it is not enough to prompt political action, I think because the core element — the economics — is total rubbish and progresses not at all. The economic analysis that accompanies the scientific analysis and mediates the science into policy proposals and approaches is just crap.

I don’t know how many insulting hyperbolic insults I can heap on the “serious” economists to convey just how bad it is, but the point is that it is really, really bad and obviously so. At least it is obvious to my eyes and I don’t think that is due to any special genius on my part.

It is 1600 and we have astrologers at court advising the ruling class about the portent of celestial omens while an asteroid is hurtling toward a collision with the earth, and we need the priests to build telescopes and rocket ships and a whole lot more — to organize an effort to deflect the danger in time. We are very close to the level of bad in the economics we can muster. And, I don’t see us doing anything much to get better at it. We build increasingly sophisticated climate models, but not so much is done to build even a minimally sophisticated economic model of the processes driving climate change or threatening the natural foundations of the human political economy. Most mainstream economics barely acknowledges that there are natural foundations.

The economists would have us organize “markets” in externalities, a scheme that never gets very far off the ground and would not answer the need for fairly drastic* constraints on all energy use. There’s some prattling on about the insurance analogy, although I can tell you confidently that no one is going to sell the earth an insurance policy who isn’t a complete fraud. Economists project economic growth as a continuing linear process independent of anything except a magic “technology” with no apparent awareness of how congestion, depletion, ecological collapse and so on are likely to undermine the productivity of nature as a factor of production. Normal people, smart people have pointed out that it is not possible to have continuing linear economic growth on a finite planet, but such insights are met by dismissal by true believers among the economists.

It all kind of merges with the standard doctrines cum bunk of mainstream economics, which refers everywhere to our “market economy” which is in fact an economy organized primarily by bureaucratic hierarchy.

Some commenters have allowed that climate change is the predictable outcome of capitalism run amok. “No shit, Sherlock” is what I am tempted to say. But, reifying our present “system” with a label does not jump start the kind of study and shared understanding of how the social and political systems of the actual political economy work in detail. We need to know — our leaders need to know to enough to task appropriate experts with something like actual not the pretend expertise of astrologers (and my apologies to the astrologers, some of whom I have met personally who appear to me to do much good in the world motivating and manifesting important intuitions) and the rest of us need to know enough to hold leaders responsible and accountable — a great deal more than we appear to about the economic process of climate change. We need our understanding of the economics to come much closer to matching the impressive sophistication of the scientific models and shared understanding of the physical and biological and ecological processes.

It’s such a small thing, but we probably don’t have the capacity to wipe out everything. Maybe ourselves, but not everything.

And the kids, through ignorance, won’t know that anything is missing. Comparisons to effects of enclosure have helped me somewhat.

The coming problems — climate change and environmental degradation removing our ability to get adequate food and shelter from the earth — require social organization to address and so are difficult for individuals to make major improvements

I think this is precisely backwards. Climate change and environmental degradation have come about as a *result of* social organization, and both are best mitigated by removing social organization from the equation. Back in 2003, there was a major shutdown of the power grid across the Northeast US, and as a result unprecedented recoveries took place in the atmosphere:

The power blackout that hit eastern North America last summer may have made it darker at night, but during the day it increased visibility by up to 40 kilometres. US researchers have found that air pollution plummeted far more than they would have expected as the power plants shut down.

The concentration of ozone was halved while sulphur dioxide levels fell by 90%, clearing the haze that usually sits over Pennsylvania. “We expected to see some decreases,” says Russell Dickerson of the University of Maryland in College Park, “but the reduction was bigger than we expected.”

Of course, the power eventually came back online, and as a result the air pollution started up again. What would have happened had the power never come back on? Well, there wouldn’t have been 15 more years of pollution being pumped into the atmosphere in that location for a start. And sure, there have probably been some improvements made which have resulted in *less* pollution being produced per year than back in the 80’s and 90’s. But if you want to compare environmental effects, which situation is ecologically better, one in which less pollutants are being pumped out, or one in which *no* pollutants are being pumped out? That answer is obvious.

Almost no one is suggesting reducing the pollution output to zero though, because the culture we live in sees it as a necessity. It’s not a necessity, either for any of the ecosystems on the planet (which did fine before such technologies existed) nor for humans (which also did fine and even evolved to current levels of magnificence before such technologies existed), but it’s all people know. The power from such plants both supports the social organization we follow now, and is produced by that social organization.

Thing is, this is generalizable to virtually every human effect on the environment. What effect are you most concerned by? Carbon in the atmosphere? It’s a result of the social organization we have, and of work which supports the continuance of that organization. There will be improvements that reduce the amount of carbon being put into the atmosphere, but the best amount of carbon to be pumping into the atmosphere is none, and that case comes with less support for social organization and less social organization making it happen. Overfishing? Same deal. Destruction of wetlands? Same. Deforestation? River pollution? Species loss? Same, same, same.

Truth is, when you remove civilized humans from the ecosystem – *any* ecosystem – the ecosystem improves in its health. The management of the environment is already taken care of, and not by people. It’s part of the source code, you don’t have to do anything to make it happen, it just happens. Of course, people *do* do things to control the management of the environment, because the source code as given does not favor humans over every other lifeform, and does not provide for excessive human wealth beyond and at the expense of every other lifeform. So if *those* are your end goals, then yes you have to step in and start managing things yourself. And in every case where you do that, you’re working *against* the ecosystem to meet your goals, which inevitably results in ecological problems. Why then do people always think that the solution to those problems is *more management*?

‘Scientists: ‘Look, One-Third Of The Human Race Has To Die For Civilization To Be Sustainable, So How Do We Want To Do This?’

An optimistic estimate. I believe less than 500 million can survive, and those will come from people who are already “primitive.”

If you are not living as a Hunter/Gatherer you and you descendants will die. Why?

You and your descendants do not have the skills to survive.

It’s too bad there is no way to represent more than one or two generations out. Even if you could have representation for future generations in our government and provided some way to make them accountable for their performance it would still end in class war between the haves and have nots. Is there, after all, any way to get really rich that doesn’t involve selling out future generations?

If there is a middle ground, or a path forward that would involve the interests of the largest number of people I think it is “accountability”. When we speak about “good” or “bad” governance from any point of view the truth that seems hardest to twist is accountability and actions. Is a government representative (forget the government as a whole, the bureaucracy is too large to confront) acting according to their stated goals, are they acting in the interests of the people. That’s easy to twist. I don’t have to expend any effort to tell whether Trump, Clinton, or Obama have taken a set of actions that they said they would. When Obama went against his word and supported FISA changes for compromised technology companies that was easy to recognize no matter which side of the aisle you sit on. When George Bush says there are weapons of mass destruction, but there aren’t any, again it doesn’t take an effort of impartiality. How to hold them accountable I don’t have an answer for. It baffles me that so many allow partisianship to substitute. Until we find a way, besides meaningless elections, there’s little hope for change.

@scruff

Yes.

And, in the meantime, a great many tote bag liberals think all they need to do is install LED lighting and drive a Prius, while waiting for Elon Musk to start revenue service to Mars. And, isn’t Russiagate shocking?!!

Nations that are big enough to muster a self-defense, but small enough to be tight-knit are looking good. I’ll bet Hungary survives — they are already getting a head start with a leader that knows the score.
https://twitter.com/DefendEvropa/status/975461897393844226

We need our understanding of the economics to come much closer to matching the impressive sophistication of the scientific models and shared understanding of the physical and biological and ecological processes.

Is the reason for this not being so, because “the science” of economics can be quite close to “the science” of politics, where the winners get to write history? IMHO, there seems to be more chess players amongst the astrophysicists, and more poker players amongst the economists, so to speak. Most PTB couldn’t care less about Hawking radiation. But the PTB care so deeply about economics that they’d want to ‘‘influence’ it away from the scientific realm.

@scruff,

Any ecosystem without humans will be better? Not necessarily. The ecosystem the EuroSettlers found in AmeriCanada was created by broadscale land management on the part of the Indian Nations. Indian fire management for huge gameland maintainance for huge game animal and game bird populations . . . massive terraforming throughout the Amazon River system, etc.

I have read that Australia was a biologically nice place until the EuroAustralians took over from the AboAustralians and put a stop to Aboriginal land management and maintainance.
Gary Paul Nabhan writes on one of his books about how two close-together ponds surrounded by Washington Palms show the difference in management by Tohono O’Odham nationals as against no such management. The unmanaged pond in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument has some species of birds living around it. The traditionally managed pond just over the border in Mexico still under traditional Tohono O’Odham management has many more species of birds living around it.

Ian concludes, in part:
“It is nature’s solution, ‘you have exceeded carrying capacity, now you will die.’ It is too late to stop a lot of it. But mitigation requires different leadership than we have now.”

Ian, I don’t doubt you’re correct in the long run. But, I think we’re going to keep kicking the crazy can down the road for quite a while longer. Yes, our planet is overpopulated. Yes, we can predict that with increasing population pressure comes increasing political, economic, and cultural strife. Yes, our climate is going hell in hand basket in a hurry.

But.
I’m surprised I’m not hearing any discussion (not just on this thread, but anywhere, really) about nuclear fusion. And this is coming from one who has long been want to criticize those propounding the technological myth as humanities salvation. However, for those you like me on this thread (and I know you exist) just do a quick “nuclear fusion” news web search. Shit is moving light speed. Honestly, the cynic in me just wants to say it’s all bullshit. “Bah! Aintgonnahappen” a little voice in me says. But a stronger voice is telling me it is gonna happen. Humanity could free itself from all historic energy constraints in our lifetime.
That’s a game changer.

And yet, I’m hearing very little social analysis on the topic. As with most revolutionary concepts, I think it’s like trying to imagine a new color for most people, and so, they don’t. But the idea is revolutionary that we must imagine it. We must get in front of it from a class perspective. That different leadership we met have at any cost Ian is talking about? Yeah, it needs to support nationalized nuclear fusion.

Nuclear fusion has been just around the corner for the last 30 years. First, you need proof of concept, then optimize it, then build it out. Each of these steps take years and fusion research is still stuck in its first phase.

Apropos to your comment on Mesopotamia – China also was a competitor, and arguably the Cradle of Civilization.

@Web

After seeing all the deathwishes displayed in the last posts I’m glad to see someone can have hope for a less deadly future even if fusion power may not be available for a century or more. I studied Pulse Power machines almost 30 years ago and the fusion systems then had the same problems as those of today, containment and repeatability.

Z: “The more we congregate, the more we procreate.”

Plausible, but empirically disproven. By the mid 20th century it was known that the most highly urbanized populations had the lowest birth rates. In the 21st century we know that those populations are not having enough children to maintain themselves.

S Brennan —

And I too am in rare agreement with your jab at the conventional wisdom naysayers.
I’m in my mid-forties and have maintained a layman’s interest in the subject for, oh, something like the last 30 years. And like many above thread had gotten yawnie about it. But that layman interest over the years has also kept me acquainted with the different advances and backtracking.
Over about the past two years or so, though, the reporting has changed. There are multiple teams and massive lines of funding fueling a race to lay claim to the first full scale net energy production facility. They’re moving with Manhattan Project speed, determination, and lack of funding constraints.
It’s going to happen in the lifetime of probably 90% of the people on this thread. And I think Willy is right too. A fucking novel (or multiple novels with different outcomes) could be written about how every non-tech consequence that humanity relies on will play out: legal, economic, political, ecologic, etc. But I’m hearing crickets on these fronts. All I’m hearing is how the tech is advancing.

I worry that too many of us today simply accept that the evolution of tech is something beyond ordinary human’s power to control. Thoreau was wrong. We haven’t become the tools of our tools, so much as we’ve become the tools of our toolmakers.

I would say that while we have a great deal of knowledge, we lack the wisdom to use that knowledge properly. We call ourselves “rational”, but are much more likely to act based on emotions than reason. The part of our mind that has ‘executive control’ is not necessarily connected to the rational part.

“Of all that I hold probable,
only this I know:
My wisdom only takes me
where my folly wants to go.”

@WD

The geoengineering at your link could be very dangerous and not repairable if it goes wrong. It’s good that the UN is discouraging it.

The fact that higher CO2 levels help produce more plant growth is well known and used by greenhouses to improve their output. The NASA planet scans just showed a larger visible increase in plant growth than might have been expected after 40 years. Our military may be known for killing green plants with Agent Orange but at the same time their CO2 emissions were helping them grow back and spread.