It’s Time to Face the Dystopian Music
Withstanding Climate Change
Instead of trying to stop Climate Change, let’s start talking about how to withstand it. For the writing is on the ice wall —
“What we thought were compromises between short-term interests and the long-term needs of the planet had no impact at all. Zero. I suddenly realized, with more clarity than ever, that all the international negotiations to reach agreements are not having any significant impact. I was speechless. Even a scientist like me, with no doubts about the consequences of global warming, was in shock.
— Enric Sala, World Economic Forum
“That’s all, folks.”
It’s time to face the music, or potential coming lack thereof...
The longest running situation comedy/drama of all time, Life As We Know It, is coming to a close. We had a good run (mostly). We won some awards. We had some sick parties. We made friends, enemies memories to last a lifetime.
But it’s all over now:
Things have changed.
Please pick up your programs and any waste in your row and file out toward the exits in an orderly fashion. There is no more money to pay for ushers. Oh, and the theatre is being demolished tomorrow. Have a nice night.
Anyway, it seems like we no one wants to be the one to say it, but we’ve got to at least lay it on the table as a strong possibility:
There is nothing we can do to reverse the effects of Climate Change.
Politicians and Important Types can jet around making as many global accords as they’d like. Wannabe “green” start-ups and disruptive food “innovators” can peddle their phony soil-less/soulless utopias of CRISPR-lettuce vertically farmed by robots in urban centers…
But none of it reverses the existing changes.
The changes that are already happening. The waters that are already rising. The wildfires. The freak storms. The insane pollution and poison. The slums that have already been inundated. The People are pouring into the cities from roving droughts in a far away country.
It’s not going to happen in 2050 —
— it’s happening now.
Read. the. news.
It’s not just Climate Change either…
We’re addicted to the Myth of Progress, and its bastard Innovation Culture. The cult the Shiny New Object. The cult of Newer is Better. Climate Change is the planetary consequence of a species afflicted by this condition.
Other side effects may include Soylent, Fracking, Agribusiness Mergers, Corporate Energy Production, and the Gig Economy — just to name a few. This disease has a complex etiology, caused by everything from Capitalism run Amok to Failure to Adhere to the Precautionary Principle.
— Please contact a licensed planet-care professional for treatment.
Really it’s a Climate Blight.
We at Invironment set out weeks ago as an editorial team to commence a grand dystopian near-future “cli-fi” environmental story-telling experiment posed as warnings from a possible dark future we imagined would one day befall us.
We were calling it Climate Blight around the office because it’s almost like a sickness has settled into everything — a blight affecting every kind of “climate” humans inhabit, from science, to medicine, to culture, to the environment.
Our original idea was for a crazy, dystopian Paolo Bacigalupi-an sci-fi (a la The Wind-Up Girl or The Water Knife) series written from the viewpoints of different characters experiencing a *hard climate crash*, something like this chilling tale of Venture Capital gone awry:
Or this alt-reality piece from #gardening-x-files:
But as we started compiling references and inspiration pieces for these ventures into parallel near-future realities, we began to realize no inventive imaginings of ours could really top what is actually happening.
I mean, never mind that we’re now officially planning to become an interplanetary species (oh look, Shiny New Planet!), or, you know, the news that we’ve passed the 400 ppm carbon “tipping point.” Just look at some of this other insanity:
- Thousands of radioactive boars are overrunning farmland in Fukushima
- First three parent baby born
- Trees are dying at an alarming rate and nobody knows why
- 2/3 of Americans are exposed to toxic drinking water
This isn’t just clickbait. None of these stories are coming from questionable sources like NaturalNews, RT or /r/conspiracy. This is what’s happening.
In. Reality.
We could go on and on... Forest fires, drought, flooding, climate refugees, water grabs, gas pipeline wars. If reality is truth, then welcome to reality.
It’s enough to make you think that maybe those Mayans were onto something after all. Maybe their timing was just a little off…
The New World
In the New World, the house is on fire. —
And the solutions for Climate Blight proposed by Innovators and the political class are almost entirely economic. Some experts have the unmitigated gall to suggest that individuals can “fight Climate Change” by simply buying new cars and expensive appliances. Right !— as though 97% of the planet’s population can afford more indebtedness to the banks and industries who got us here in the first place! jfc
Folks, there is no economic solution to the situation we’re in. (Wait, isn’t that a Police lyric?)
— Instead of worrying about what caused the fire that’s burning down the house, it’s time to get out of the house.
Since Mars isn’t really going to be a habitable alternative for another, we don’t know — several decades, best case — we guess there is only figuring out how to withstand what’s happening here on Earth.
💩
Changing our root assumptions
Instead of crying out in vain protest to the Powers That Be, “Stop poisoning the water and soil!” it’s time to start experimenting — but with a changed set of assumptions:
Now that the water and soil are poisoned, how are we gonna drink?
Withstanding the Blight
So what can we do? We can certainly hope things get better, but wasn’t “Hope” one of the ingredients in Pandora’s box of evils? Maybe that was for a reason…
Let’s stop talking about how to “fight” Climate Change:
Fighting never solved anything for anyone.
We may as well dig a bunch of holes in the yard and scream into them, or stand on the beach with a bucket, tossing sand into the waves to hold back the rising tide.
Instead, why not go with the flow and learn to withstand whatever is coming?
Instead of spending enormous sums of money to save places that will inevitably be under water or on fire, let’s make it easier for people to get out of these areas if need be. Proactively build them new places to live. Why is that so crazy?
Instead of depending on industry-insiders and start-ups beholden to investors to save us, let’s start questioning any thought process that doesn’t include:
“Am I pretty goddamned positive this isn’t going to cause serious fucking damage over the short or long run?”
Instead of figuring out ways to grow food without soil, or in boxes in the living room while watching Netflix while a robot rocks your kid to sleep with Prozac, let’s start recognizing the inherent personhood of plants, animals, rivers, forests, mountains, stones, deserts, clouds, and everything else that shares our biosphere so we can all thrive together. You know, a basic assumption if we’d adopted sooner just might have “moved the needle” on the causal factors in the first place.
Earth is an animist system.
Instead of wringing our hands about how “Climate Change is Going to Make Autumn Feel Different”…
…let’s come up with a new understanding of seasonality, of place, of planting and harvesting — the cycles that have sustained us for millenia — and envision a new Wheel of the Year.
Instead of “disrupting” gardening…
… let’s learn to garden in new and interesting ways, with a wider — and wilder — palette of plants and soil conditions better suited to the changed world.
And for goodness’s sake, let’s stop talking about “sustainability” as though the symptoms of our Blight ought to be sustained.
Because there ain’t no going back, folks. But through the fire…
Through the drought.
Through the flooding.
Through the escaped gene drives.
Through the oceans of plastic.
Through the Climate Refugees.
The Other Side…
Where the music is in a different key, played with different instruments…
The New World.
What will remain?
There will be no prevailing.
There will be —
Only withstanding.
