Reading Grist today, ‘I withdraw’: A talk with climate defeatist Paul Kingsnorth particularly resonated with me. The author Wen Stephenson dissects Kingsnorth’s attitude towards environmentalism and climate change mitigation in less than glowing terms.
Stephenson writes that Kingsnorth is “done with “hope.” He’s moved beyond it. He’s not out to “save the planet.” He’s had it with the dream of “sustainability.” He’s looked into the abyss of planetary collapse, and he’s more or less fine with it: Collapse? Sure. Bring it on.”
But reading Kingsnorth’s manifesto struck a deep, bougie chord in me. “We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called ‘sustainability.’ What does this curious, plastic word mean? … It means sustaining human civilization at the comfort level that the world’s rich people — us — feel is their right, without destroying the ‘natural capital’ or the ‘resource base’ that is needed to do so.”
Um, duh! If I can’t run my washing machine on solar power, how am I supposed to have time to take my electric car to the all local organic food coop, in my awesomely utopic post-carbon future?
Apparently, Kingsworth is here to burst my post-apocalypse consumer bubble. He argues “these are precarious and unprecedented times … Little that we have taken for granted is likely to come through this century intact. We don’t believe that anyone — not politicians, not economists, not environmentalists, not writers — is really facing up to the scale of this … Somehow, technology or political agreements or ethical shopping or mass protest are meant to save our civilization from self-destruction.”
Ack! My gut wrenched out of despairing acknowledgement. If I see one more eco fashion show or green tie celeb event I may start hemorrhaging grey matter. I know that fair trade shade grown coffee and chocolate aren’t going to morph into fairy dust and save us all, but I keep hoping! Because I love coffee and chocolate – and what kind of a world will it be when these monkeys can’t feed our habits?
It reminds me of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, when the protagonists finds some whiskey and cigarettes in a (post-apocalyptic, of course) abandoned guard station and realizes that all his addictions were just lying latent below the surface. We are the monkeys on our own backs – addicted to oil, amphetamines, neural stimulants, depressants, psychedelics, consumption, competition.
For better or worse, human nature has been naturally selected over the millennia to behave thus. It’s not our fault we managed to out-compete our natural predators, and are now eating our own tail. In the same vein, hoping the nepotistic kleptocrats in Washington to do something for the common good seems impossibly naive. When will they find the time to save our a$$es while they’re so laboriously committed to covering theirs?
What is hope anyway, except humanity’s wish list to Santa Claus?
Please Santa,
all I want for Christmas is a second shot at saving civilization. I want to rewrite history and create a more palatable, commercial-holiday version of reality. Please don’t let our avarice have condemned our children and grandchildren to an ever more unstable inhospitable earth… also, I would really love a jet-ski.
Love, the alleged grownups
Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure it was my dad dressed up as Santa that weird Christmas when I was seven, and even Bob can’t save humanity from ourselves. So why do we as a species refuse to recognize that Santa (and the Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy, and that bearded dude in the sky) can’t save us – and maybe wouldn’t even if they could? Is it our evolutionary inability to comprehend these grand yet invisible catastrophes? Or, as Christopher Mims wrote in Grist today (I can’t help the fact that everything they do is fabulously interconnected), that 80% of people are “delusionally optimistic”? We few, we happy few, we band of brothers… prophesying impending doom to unheeding masses, climate Cassandras portrayed as Chicken Littles.
Why keep tilting at the windmill? Why fight a dead fight? Seriously. Admitting the truth is scary, but so’s ignoring it. And, as Grist headlines, for those of us who are a bit more dense, Climate Scientists: It’s basically too late to stop warming. Mims writes (do I detect a hint of apocalyptic glee?) “If you like cool weather and not having to club your neighbors as you battle for scarce resources, now’s the time to move to Canada, because the story of the 21st century is almost written.” Charmed, I’m sure.
Is that relief I’m feeling? It’s sort of like when you don’t study for a test at all, and you’ve got that sick feeling in the pit of your stomach all day until you walk in to the test and sit down and it’s like – time to wing this thing, balls to the wall! Because at this point, you’ve basically failed the test already, might as well make it count. Like okay, I can finally stop worrying about the fate of humanity, cause it’s inexorably screwed – now I can move ahead with my shipping container bunker zombie weekend hideaway plan with a clear conscience!
I’m even willing to give up my cute two car garage eco home for a more practical panic room situation – I realize that having things in a future of have-nots is going to be difficult to maintain. As my econ professor Jason Scorse would say, Life displaces life. But how much life do we legitimately need to displace to exist on this finite planet?
(Speaking of stockpiling and nuclear fallout bunkers, good to see that this is the nation’s zeitgeist – anyone want to go in a doomsday condo with me? Talk about time-shares…)
Kingsworth’s core argument is an attack on society’s definition of legitimate. “I do think that climate change campaigners like yourself should be more upfront about what you’re trying to ‘save.’ It’s not the world. It’s not humanity either, which I’d bet will survive whatever comes in some form or another, though perhaps with drastically reduced numbers and no broadband connection. No, what you’re trying to save, it seems to me, is the world you have grown used to. “Sustainability” is, as far as I can see, a project designed to keep this culture — this lifestyle — afloat. The modern human economy is an engine of mass destruction. Of course, I am conflicted about this. I live at the heart of this machine; like you, I am a beneficiary of it. If it falls apart, I will probably suffer, and I don’t want to.”
Ack, I don’t want to suffer either, but as Scientific American wrote last month, “the world’s temperature looks set to rise by six degrees Celsius by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are allowed to rise uncontrollably.”
So, cheers! Guess I’ll start stockpiling coffee and chocolate…
