In the March episode of Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM co-hosts McPherson and Hester interview the legendary, Professor Paul Ehrlich. The episode is embedded here Dr Ehrlich is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the Department of Biology of Stanford University and president of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology . He is a renowned biologist and ecologist best known for his warnings about the consequences of human population growth.
Wediscussed Paul Ehrlich and Sandra Kahn’s recent book JAWS, you can find more information on this important book here:
Further information and a brilliant documentary on the ‘Aerosol Masking Effect’ or Global Dimming is embedded here
Dahr Jamail, staff reporter at Truthout.org and renowned Martha Geldhorn award winning journalist published his latest book “The End of Ice” on January the 15th 2019.
There are a few audio glitches on Dahr’s microphone but they don’t persist. We joked after that they were reflective of industrial civilisation teetering on the brink of collapse;
Mentioned in the interview was a new project of collaboration between Dahr Jamail and Barbara Cecil
We further discussed the recent work of Jem Bendell and his paper on “Deep Adaption” and Rupert Read’s recent presentation filmed at Churchill College, 7 November 2018.
“A research paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by anonymous reviewers of an academic journal.”
“It has been released directly by the Professor who wrote it, to promote discussion of the necessary deep adaptation to climate chaos.”
Dahr will be touring Australia in June and Aotearoa N.Z. in July, details will be posted on this blog as presentations are organised, subscribe to the blog for updates on the tour and the great unraveling generally. Contact me should you wish to be involved in anyway in both the Aotearoa NZ tour or the June tour in Australia
Good luck everyone, we are so going to need it. This photo was taken by Kevin Hester when he and Dahr dived “The Poor Knights marine reserve” doing research for “The End of Ice”.
In the interview below clinical psychologist Peter Miller interviews Professor Guy McPherson and Kevin Hester about the psychological ramifications of reporting on and living through the unraveling of the biosphere as the sixth great extinction gains momentum in a non-linear fashion.
Below is the Joanna Macy quote I read out and the embedded link to her excellent essay “The Greatest Danger”.
“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.” The Greatest Danger; Joanna Macy
Additionally I mentioned the seminal work recently released by both Jem Bendell and Rupert Read which I have covered previously on this blog here;
Jem Bendell on Deep Adaptation, Climate Change and Societal Collapse;
The BBC “Global Dimming” documentary we mentioned is embedded in a previous blog post on this website here;
Professor McPherson and I will be interviewing Truthout.org staff reporter Dahr Jamail on his latest book “The End of Ice” in this months episode of Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network at 3pm EST on the 5th of April, 9.00 am on the 6th Kiwi time, the episode will be up loaded to the Nature Bats Last archive a few hours after the show has been broadcast.
Good luck everybody, we sure are going to need it.
In most Western cultures there is a tradition of saying “Happy New Year” as one year draws to a close and another beckons. As we stumble relentlessly into another anthropogenically warmed January, in a time of abrupt climate change, there will never be another “Happy New Year” for the biosphere or any of the awake sapiens or other earthlings.
“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds.” Aldo Leopold.
“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.” The Greatest Danger; Joanna Macy
Anyone paying attention can see that both the biosphere and the global economy are teetering on the brink as the early stages of collapse are unfolding. Many of us nursing our ecological wounds wouldn’t normally lament the collapse of industrial civilisation but understanding the implications of the loss of “Global Dimming” and the attendant 1 to 1.5C temperature spike from masked warming and then the melt down of the worlds 450 nuclear power stations and their 1300 spent fuel pool fires makes the prospect of the collapse of the capitalist cancer that is killing the living planet a terminal sentence for the biosphere. We’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Soon the living will envy the dead.
On December 28th on this blog I published an article titled “This Civilisation is Finished. Rupert Reid, Paul Ehrlich and Jem Bendell.
Embedded are You Tube presentations from Rupert Reid and Paul Ehrlich and Jem Bendell’s seminal paper all predicting that relatively soon we will see the collapse of industrial civilisation. Paul Ehrlich’s interview in The Guardian begins “A shattering collapse of civilisation is a “near certainty” in the next few decades due to humanity’s continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich.”
I believe Paul Ehrlich, who I interviewed previously on my and Professor Guy McPhersons radio show Nature Bats Last is being overly cautious after being heavily attacked over some of his predictions in his 1968 book “The Population Bomb”not coming to pass.
What Paul and Anne Ehrlich couldn’t have known in 1968 was the ‘Green Revolution’ fueled by our crack like addiction to fossil fuels would allow the already balooning of the human population to escalate dramatically. This aspect of overshoot has compromised the natural world enormously.
In his seminal book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” Joseph Tainter points out that the more complex a society becomes the more vulnerable to collapse it is. There has never been a civilisation in history remotely as complex as this one. There in lies the mortal danger we face as the lunatics juggling the global economy create ever more debt out of no where and continue to juggle ‘Chickens and Chainsaws’
In 2008 the global economy teetered on the brink of collapse due to unsupportable mountains of debt, Lehman Brothers bank collapsed and threatened to bring down the entire global economic system and the ‘solution’ the gangsters came up with was more debt. The global economy has all the hall marks of a classic ponzi scheme.
Desperate times call for desperate people to literally try anything to avoid the worst scenarios unfolding. When faced with the economic collapse of an empire one of the ‘go to’ options is war.
António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, told global leaders this week that “The world has less than two years to avoid “runaway climate change.” WTF does anyone think can or will be done in 2019 to avoid runaway climate change when we are already in it? I note that the UN said in 1989 that we had 10 years to avoid dangerous climate change. How can we have 1 year left 30 years after having only 10?
We are being lied to at the edge of extinction, why would we be surprised?
Right on Christmas 2018 the US “Plunge Protection Team” was mobilised to discuss financial markets amid a rout on Wall Street. What can we expect them to come up with between canapes, champagne, cocaine and hookers and in Donald Trumps case cheeseburgers?
All we can be certain about is that we teeter on the brink of a collapse that can and will mark the extinction of most if not all complex life on this fragile planet.
I was in Berlin one week before the Berlin Wall came down which triggered the collapse of the East German state and shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. There was not one hint of the coming collapse on the streets of East or West Berlin yet a week later the game was effectively over for the Eastern Block of nations. This collapse being much wider spread will be infinitely faster and terminal, not just for nation states but for the entire biosphere.
Wishing you all the best for the coming new year with some gallows humour from the brilliant Katie Goodman and her sisters;
“A research paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by anonymous reviewers of an academic journal.”
“It has been released directly by the Professor who wrote it, to promote discussion of the necessary deep adaptation to climate chaos.”
“I am releasing this paper immediately, directly, because I can’t wait any longer in exploring how to learn the implications of the social collapse we now face,” explained the author Dr Bendell, a full Professor of Sustainability Leadership.
“One piece of feedback from the 2nd reviewer is worth quoting verbatim:”
“The authors stress repeatedly that “climate-induced societal collapse is now inevitable” as if that was a factual statement… I was left wondering about the social implications of presenting a scenario for the future as inevitable reality, and about the responsibility of research in communicating climate change scenarios and strategies for adaptation. As the authors pointed out, denial is a common emotional response to situations that are perceived as threatening and inescapable, leading to a sense of helplessness, inadequacy, and hopelessness and ultimately disengagement from the issue…” The full article is embedded below; The Study on Collapse they thought you should not read;
In the presentation below Rupert Read talks about the meltdown of the worlds nuclear power plants and their attendant spent fuel pool fires after industrial civilisation has collapsed;
“A shattering collapse of civilisation is a “near certainty” in the next few decades due to humanity’s continuing destruction of the natural world that sustains all life on Earth, according to biologist Prof Paul Ehrlich.” I believe that Paul Ehrlich is being over cautious with his timeline due to his being proven wrong on some of his predictions in his and Anne Ehrlich’s seminal book “The Population Bomb”. Paul was a former guest on Nature Bats Last, the show is embedded here; Paul Ehrlich: ‘Collapse of civilisation is a near certainty within decades’
The 7.6 billion sapien question is how quickly can industrial civilisation collapse and the answer is almost over night.
Check out Joseph Tainter’s work on the Collapse of Complex Societies.
A little discussed aspect of the collapse of industrial civilisation is the loss of ‘Global Dimming’ or ‘The Aerosol Masking Effect’ as it is referred to in the referee journal literature. When Ind.Civ collapses we loose the masking effect of our pollution and within about 6 weeks of collapse we will see the particulates fall from the sky and the 1.2C to 1.4C of masked warming manifest in the climate system.
We covered this terminal reality previously on this blog here; Global Dimming Keeping the Planet Habitable
Professor Guy McPherson and I will continue chronicling the unraveling of the biosphere and collapse on our radio show Nature Bats Last on PRN.FM
“How do we live with the fact that we are destroying our world? What do we make of the loss of glaciers, the melting Arctic, island nations swamped by the sea, widening deserts, and drying farmlands?”
“Because of social taboos, despair at the state of our world and fear for our future are rarely acknowledged. The suppression of despair, like that of any deep recurring response, contributes to the numbing of the psyche. Expressions of anguish or outrage are muted, deadened as if a nerve had been cut. This refusal to feel impoverishes our emotional and sensory life. Flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic. We create diversions for ourselves as individuals and as nations, in the fights we pick, the aims we pursue, and the stuff we buy.” From the essay “The Greatest Danger” by Joanna Macey
Wonders will never cease. Today Professor Guy McPherson and I were asked by Gary Null the owner and host of his own show on The Progressive Radio Network to fill the shoes of Ralph Nader who was scheduled to be his guest on Gary’s show but had to cancel.
Gary brought up the issue of China charging ahead at full speed and I quoted details from my blog post Buckle Up and Cut the Crap, we’re on the ‘Belt Road’ to Armageddon.
“The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) simply blows out of the water anything else that’s been attempted in human history.”
“As currently planned, it will involve some 7,000 separate infrastructure or extractive industry projects scattered across 70-odd nations, with a total price-tag of $8 trillion. It’ll span half the planet — from Asia to Africa, Europe and the South Pacific. It’ll affect every facet of human endeavor, in one way or another.”
A speculative essay on how the collapse of the global economy and banking system could and probably will trigger the extinction of most if not all complex life on our planet.
All previous advanced civilisations on this planet have collapsed and disappeared leaving behind religous relics, art, weaponry, advanced engineering ruins and ecological armageddon. Common themes were financial, population and resource overshoot, regional climate change, debauchery and societal neglect from the ruling classes, the debasement of the currency of the day and complexity. Ring any bells yet?
Capitalism has created a mountain of global debt that can not and will not be repaid. “Global debt mountain officially climbs to record $237 trillion in 2017”. It will no doubt be much more considering the regulatory capture and inherent dishonesty. Ask yourself, will they be understating or overstating their levels of debt?
All ponzi schemes eventually implode and when this one does it will be like no other.
The ‘Bail out’ options of the capitalist banksters in 2008 was to cut interest rates to either close to or at zero and in some cases they were even in negative territory, money was effectively free to the banksters. Instead of injecting the money into infrastructure and structural reforms as was planned, the banksters bought their own shares and reinflated the bubble. Slowly interest rates are now creeping up as are the repayments on the spiraling debt. When the Global Financial Crisis struck we were hours away from a systemic collapse of the global financial system. Not only were the structural flaws and debts not addressed in 2008 and subsequent years the ‘solution’ was more debt. Subsequently the situation is infinitely worse today than it was in 2008.
I want to canvass in this essay just a few of the potential repercussions, as always the situation must be worse than we know. Your informed contributions to the debate are welcomed in the comments section.
When systemic collapse of the financial system unfolds the vast majority of workers will stay home from their usual toil until they know what is planned by their capitalist slave owners. With no salaries paid on the first, second, third and subsequent days people world wide will be initally thrown into fear for where their next meal will come from and panic will quickly over take societies world wide. You can’t buy groceries without a functioning banking and electricial system.
Of immediate concern will be the abrupt cessation of the flow of water from the municipal taps, electricity from the grid and the halting of trucks driving into cities loaded with food, fuel and medicines. With no ability to invoice and process sales there will be no deliveries. How long before nuclear plant workers, firestation staff, doctors, nurses and police don’t show up at work? Days at most.
Suddenly we will have mega cities, many in desert or tropical zones with the water, power and gas no longer flowing and temperatures, both atmospheric and societal rising rapidly.
Airports and Sea ports world wide will close for a multitude of reasons including those above as will most industry and we will immediately lose the ‘Global Dimming’ or Aerosol Masking effect covered previously on this blog ; Global Dimming Keeping the Planet Habitable
The loss of the aerosol masking effect will double the total of anthropogenic warming in as little as 6 weeks. 300 years of anthropogenic global warming doubling in weeks, imagine how the flora, jet streams and Arctic and Antarctic ice caps will react to that.
“A research paper concluding that climate-induced collapse is now inevitable, was recently rejected by anonymous reviewers of an academic journal.It has been released directly by the Professor who wrote it, to promote discussion of the necessary deep adaptation to climate chaos.”
“I am releasing this paper immediately, directly, because I can’t wait any longer in exploring how to learn the implications of the social collapse we now face,” explained the author Dr Bendell, a full Professor of Sustainability Leadership. The study on collapse they thought you should not read – yet
“The excavation of more than 600 billion tons of toxic carbon and hydrocarbon geological remains of previous biospheres and their transfer to the atmosphere as carbon gases constitutes nothing less than insanity leading to global suicide.” Crimes Against the Earth by Dr Andrew Glikson, a previous guest on Nature Bats Last.
The collapse of industrial civilisation is now an extinction event for most if not all complex life on the planet and collapse is imminent. Connecting the dots on these issues is imperative to understand how tenuous our position has become and how quickly it can and will unravel.
No doubt readers of this blog have been watching the IPCC talkathon in Poland where the puppets of empire have been twittering and tweeting about holding global warming to a 1.5C temperature rise. I’ll draw your attention to this blog post from Sam Carana of the Arctic News Blog;
“In other words, merely changing the baseline to preindustrial, as agreed to at the Paris Agreement, can show that we’re already above the 1.5°C guardrail that the Paris Agreement had pledged we should not cross.” More details at “How Much Warmer Is It Now”.
My blog post on Baseline Temperature Dishonesty at the Edge of Extinction
I will continue connecting the dots as I see them at this blog and on my and Professor Guy McPherson‘s radio show Nature Bats Last on the Progressive Radio Network.
Good luck everyone, we are going to need it. Soon the living will envy the dead
Kevin Hester is currently living on Rakino Island, a small island in the Hauraki Gulf near Auckland, New Zealand, monitoring the unravelling of the biosphere and volunteering at the Rakino Island Nursery is currently developing a proposal to create a marine reserve near by. The Island has no grid tied electricity or reticulated water. I catch my own water from the roof and generate my electricity from the ample solar radiation on the island.
My Submission to the Ministry of the Environment
Kevin Hester, Dropping Anchor in an Exponential World
This photo was taken by Kevin Hester when he and Dahr dived “The Poor Knights marine reserve” doing research for “The End of Ice”.
