Responding to Rebecca Solnit’s article in The Guardian on Doomers
Writer Rebecca Solnit was recently published in The Guardian and stated that:
Some days I think that if we lose the climate battle, it’ll be due in no small part to this defeatism among the comfortable in the global north, while people in frontline communities continue to fight like hell for survival. Which is why fighting defeatism is also climate work.
We have already lost the climate battle and it is stories or opinions like the one above, that are preventing others from grasping this, and stopping us from taking the kinds of collective adaptive responses appropriate on a local and global scale.
The not-too-late framing is a dangerous one. It means people are prepared to wait for global elites to roll out the energy transition, to deploy such ‘solutions’ as carbon capture technologies, or other flawed techno fixes, aimed at making those elites wealthy, while not stopping the baked in warming that is already here and accelerating. It is only when we finally break through the not-too-late taboo that we will begin the work in earnest of adaptation to reduce suffering as much as we can.
It is not only people in the global south who are on the front lines of climate change. Extreme heat waves and wildfires are happening in Greece, Canada, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the USA. There are currently floods in India, Japan, China, Italy, Spain, Peru, Vermont and others besides. Coupled with record high Earth surface temperatures, record high North Atlantic sea temperatures and record low Antarctic sea ice level, the nature of abrupt and runaway climate change is becoming obvious to everyone.
Here in Australia, my friend Margi from Kangaroo Island survived the Black Summer bushfires back in 2019/2020 before the Pandemic, but her life was turned upside down and she no longer believes we can avoid catastrophic outcomes in the future. Instead all her focus is on a radically local approach: rebuilding and preparing for the next bushfire with her community, a fire they know will come again. Communities are realising that governments are not equipped to respond as effectively as they once were, and that mostly now we are on our own.
Around the world people are trying to pick up their lives after natural disasters of all kinds, all the while knowing that the same event could happen again at any time.
Hope is no longer the appropriate response, instead a steadfast courage is needed to face a grim future, and a determination to do the next right thing, come what may. What else is there? All we can do is get up each day and adapt to the changing circumstances as best we can, attempting to stay healthy, well adjusted, mentally stable and able to contribute to disaster risk reduction in whatever ways are available to us.
This is the Doomster Way, the Way of Acceptance. We are in #collapse and if we refuse to accept this we risk making a bad situation much worse.
The massive new infrastructure projects of the so-called green energy transition will be underwater, burnt or lack the resources or labour to even complete.
Instead, if we accept the reality of climate breakdown, we have a chance to make amends and save as much of the natural world as possible while we still have a relatively intact society with the social order to get things done. Think orderly descent — powering down the global enterprise.
If we had made a start on the energy transition back in the 1970s, when we were being warned about the Limits to Growth, then we might have had a chance, but that ship sailed long ago.
The obsession with Net Zero is, ironically, also wasting huge amounts of precious remaining fossil fuels that we will need for climate adaptation; to respond to natural disasters, to save crops, to move entire communities, to accommodate refugees.
The energy intensive mining to procure precious earth metals for renewable technologies is destroying remaining habitat for wildlife and Indigenous Peoples in many places around the globe. It is the last desperate grasp for wealth and power by global elites that don’t care about our survival or the Earth and its creatures, they just want to retain their wealth and power above all else for as long as possible — this is their ticket to do it, greenwashing is the norm.
What possibilities open up if we accept defeat? If we say we have failed and that the breakdown of our civilization will continue to unfold in our lifetime?
Imagine the creative energy, mourning, cooperation and humility that would abound. Imagine setting the younger generation free. Free from the obsession with career, money, working, superannuation and other irrelevant concerns in a collapsing world. The massive mental health crisis affecting youth today may be alleviated if they heard some truth telling or plain speaking from adults — a deep, heartfelt apology from our generation to theirs.
There could be a flourishing of our civilization as we face our demise, loving family and friends, enjoying the arts and community in new ways as we simplify our lives, a celebration of all our achievements as well as forgiving ourselves for the error of our ways. We can make amends to wild creatures and First Peoples everywhere, love the damaged and degraded places of the Earth, as well as protecting the remaining precious wilderness from the force of global capital.
With the energy we will save from abandoning the energy transition, we could deploy the Mirrors for Earth Energy Rebalancing project that will provide heat relief or local cooling so some communities can survive a bit longer and grow crops before having to move. This is a small scale, grassroots and accessible technology that Corporates have no interest in currently, as it wont make them money.
Other projects could include a Universal Basic Income to replace the many ‘bullshit jobs’ that people are enslaved to, that produce no real value, and a massive commitment to housing access and affordability as a basic human right for all.
Solnit builds a strawman argument about ‘Doomers’ as she puts it, claiming that
“They’re surrendering in advance and inspiring others to do the same. If you announce that the outcome has already been decided and we’ve already lost, you strip away the motivation to participate — and of course if we do nothing we settle for the worst outcome.”
This is simply not the case; while we are surrendering, we are not doing nothing. And by the way, we prefer the term Doomster now to Doomer :-)
The Doomsters that I know, myself included, have worked through our grief and pain for the world, we have banded together, and are now in a place of Collapse Acceptance. From this place of clear seeing, our energy is freed up to look around and ask — how can I help, how can I assist in lessening the suffering as the collapse process intensifies, how can I be here to comfort others and remain calm in my acceptance, steadfast as things get ever more grim.
We need to normalise talk about collapse and have a broad, society-wide, honest discussion about how we can respond. These discussions are already happening behind closed doors by the Militaries of the world, by Insurance Agencies, and the Financial Sector elites. So we don’t need more writers like Solnit advising the masses to effectively keep calm and carry on. Rather we need a clear-eyed look at the reality of our situation — as a failing global industrial civilisation.
Then together, as ordinary people, we can adjust, grieve and determine how best to navigate the great unravelling as it continues to play out in our lives.
