Most days this week, I woke before a cold dawn and walked my dogs in the dark, thinking of the hippos that once grazed as far north as the banks of the Rhine and the Thames rivers. The last time they wandered up from Africa, about a hundred and twenty-thousand years ago, the planet was much hotter, the ice caps smaller, and the oceans higher. This last week, average temperatures along those rivers and all across the northern hemisphere were as hot as they have been for a hundred and twenty-thousand years. If the hippos can hang on a bit longer, they may yet have their revenge on us.
I watch the excavated depths of the Hunter Valley travel past on trains and sail out the heads every day. It kills me.
I wish I had the guts to join the activists that put up tripods and stop them, but I’m an economic slave with a family to support.
So I donate to the people who can make a difference, pick up rubbish along the creek, and avoid too many bad news stories just to protect my mental health.
There is not a day passes for me that at sometime a thought rises unbidden whispering
"I fear that this will not end well".
As regarding "described by Coleridge as the secret ministry of frost which suits the musing mind" I believe Coleridge was frequently binged out on drugs so perhaps take his stuff with a grain of salt, or horse doses of laudanum and opium whatever - you do you.
The reason that we have dope in AUS is that in 1770-ish they didn't know about the difference between 'Indus" and 'Cetiva' varieties. The crown had asked Cook to find somewhere to grow "hemp" for the navy, and Banks went to his good friend Coleridge for a sample to cultivate...
If only they'd known the more beneficial properties of Sativa! Instead of using hemp to make rope for their growing number of sailing ships to 'explore' - invade/conquer/murder ppl - in any accessible corner of the globe, they might have just chilled out and continued sipping tea. Imagine how different the future of the planet and all the lifeforms it supports would be.
No industrial revolution; fencing of the commons, denuding villages & farmers of their land & livelihoods, forcing them to move to ever-growing polluted cities to live in deathly slums, and be reduced to factory fodder.
So many ancient cultures destroyed around the world, conquered to steal whatever resources they had; entire populations enslaved; the creation of an industrial-scale global market for cheap forced labour; etc
All the culture, local governance structures, and knowledge of people who had lived sustainably for millennia in some places, lost.
The Romans, Vikings, Alexander the Great, Attlila the Hun, the Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese etc combined didn't wreak this level of destruction. All the wars perpetuate by the West can be traced back to these roots. The English planted their flag everywhere they could reach, and created the most successful military/industrial complex at that time, fostering toxic capitalism and huge profits for the antecedents of the dominant 1%. The English aristocracy's relentless pursuit of Empire created the current crisis.
If only the English citizens had followed the gallic example of bloody revolution, and the machine they invented to wrest back control of their society! The French maintain this tradition of rebellious action to protect their rights, except for the guillotine bit.
Just my opinion of course, but as a descendant of Celtic rebels, & a relative of resisters still fighting for autonomy, I feel my bias is justified.
The English ppl are just as unenlightened today, they voted for Brexit because they yearn for the return of their Empirical status. Those 'good old days' created a fucked up world order and set us on this path of global dysfunction and destruction. Thick as bricks and as lacking in imagine as when they invented murderous machines of all sorts instead of the simple bong.
Genghis Khan's activities apparently led to the death of around 70 million people, or so I've been told. Not that negates anything you've written. Of course, the English in India were via the East India Company, complete with its own private forces. I'd tie the ruthlessness of that big capitalist enterprise with that of the British aristocracy which rode rough trod over those who failed to suitably bend to its wishes - and taxation.
I knew I was forgetting someone who also had a big impact! Probably more than one 😂 Thanks for reminding me of Genghis Khan!
I counted East India Co as British. I thought it was a govt backed private entity and English soldiers helped them maintain their brutal control.
Side note:
Growing up I often heard ppl refer to poorly lit old houses, specifically kitchens in my experience, as " it's like the Black Hole of Calcutta in there". I used to say this, until I got curious one day. I no longer do.
I feel you deeply, Birmo. I started my journey into climate science in 1996 as a uni student studying science, but also a skeptic, having fallen for the lazy thought "humans couldn't dramatically affect something as large as the Earth". Within months of reading the science I realised just how wrong I was.
I spent the next 20 years or so freaking the fuck out and trying to convey to everyone I came across that: 1) humans are changing the climate dramatically, and once we breach certain tipping points there is no going back (I can't believe how many people out there STILL deny this fucking reality); and 2) just how big a catastrophe we are sleepwalking into.
Eventually I had to calm down to save my own sanity and protect my relationships with fellow humans, so I moved to Tassie to enjoy the years before things really get tough and watch the catastrophe unfold. I deeply, truly feel your lack of lulz. Get through the day the best you can is all I can say, but you are not alone.
I take comfort in my mortality when, like you, I ponder those issues. I have a short life expectancy. In fact, people with Hermansky Pudlak Syndrome have an average life expectancy of 45-55. I’m 55. So the clock is ticking.
At first that was a real shock. And the things I thought I’d do periodically slap me in the face, like when someone I’m friends with on facebook walked Hadrian’s Wall. I put off travel until after the kids grew up and my career was bringing in the moula. Well, that didn’t happen. Hubby earns enough, now, and the kids have left home. But travelling internationally with a seeing eye dog is fraught at best and “not happening” is most likely, for most countries. (I’m still going to investigate NZ. And a short junket there might be possible without her but she’ll pine. My heart hurts for her when she’s sad… you know the feeling.)
Since the initial shock wore off I see things like climate change and political antics that, once, would have been extremely satirical but are now normal… When I was in primary school my classrooms had posters about global warming and overpopulation. I couldn’t understand how, since the 70s, they became “debatable” issues. Governments sanction scientists who mention the words, academics who mention “climate change” are less likely to be published… so much $$$$$ in the cover up, concealment, for short term profit….
And my reaction? Well, I’m going to die sometime soon. Maybe years, unlikely to be a decade and less likely to be “in decades”. I can’t change that. But I can take comfort in knowing that I’ll miss what is yet to come.
Some may interpret my next comment as super dark but… the planet has the capacity to heal. Once we’ve killed ourselves off, or at least significantly diminished the presence of the human race on the planet thereby diminishing our destructive footprint, like during the early days of the pandemic when lockdowns were the norm, the planet started healing. Wild animals were spotted on city streets. The toxic soup in which Venice sits cleared. People were stunned to discover that the water was cleaner and didn’t stink. I think once we’re gone or once Mother Earth has a good parasite treatment, I think the planet will start to heal.
I’m saddened. Don’t get me wrong. When I was in primary school we learnt about ancient Greece and Rome. Our teacher said all civilisations fall. I asked about ours. I think I shocked her, knocked her back a step or two literally. I may have asked the same questions the following year, with a different teacher.
Now I have my answers. Our civilisation, like the Roman Empire, is in decline. And for pretty much the same reasons. But it’s not the end of the world.
According to Samantha Bee, the Koch brothers poured millions in to countering climate change action and started in the 80s at the latest to do so. Now we have orgs like the IPA, which is outraged that we’re not listening to them AND their funding has pretty much dried up. When they started, in the mid-20th, they got $$$$ from all sorts of businesses. Now most respectable businesses don’t want to be associated with them. That’s why the likes of Gina Rhinehart are more significant now, she’s one of the remaining dinosaurs who wants us to meditate on the benefits of mining 15 minutes a day and to spread the message of mining. Like, WTH? Has she had covid too often?
The denial machine goes back a lot further actually. S Fred Singer, a chief denier, used the same tactics for asbestos and tobacco in the 50s and 60s as he did for fossil fuels from the 80s onward.
Oh that’s true although I didn’t know the name. Also, they’ve known that “non stick” cookware is bloody toxic for decades and yet that was super secret until really recently. I’m now stainless steel pans & utensils plus wood utensils. And they know composite wood (eg mdf) disintegrates over time and the binding agents are toxic. I’m in the process of buying a town house, trying not to think about the upstairs floor and planning to replace it with hardwood as soon as we can afford it. It’s not just covid that is bringing life expectancies down but covid is another excellent example. “Oh the pandemic is over, we’ve just had more people dying lately”. Total deaths are up by about 12% but it’s not covid, noooooo. And another classic “It’s just the elderly and disabled dying so it’s relieving society of a burden” although the second part of that isn’t usually said out loud. They’re NOT acknowledging the previously healthy covid victims (or they die “with covid” not “of covid”) and they’re not acknowledging the hefty toll on people’s bodies, from brain damage to long covid. Idiocracy, here we come. (I thought that movie was excellent although not my usual style of comedy, but excellent because of the social comment and the extrapolation.)
Indeed, although I'd say Idiocracy has been our planetary state of affairs for quite some time, and we clearly entered the Biff timeline in 2013. That's when the election of the cascade of idiots began - from Drumpf to Bolsonaro, Bojo to Duterte - and it all started with our own special moron, Wrecker Abbott.
If you want to fully understand the denial machine, which is the same machine that covered up for tobacco, asbestos and others, Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt is worthwhile.
Took the youngung's youngun to the museum last Friday night for the night at the musuem with the dinosaurs. Sensational display, and most intensely interesting for me were the temporal maps showing dinosaurs, temperature and sea level over the last 250m odd years. It was clear that the last 3m years have been a goldilocks period that allowed the emergence of humanity. But the 15 degree, 200m sea level rise that has occurred several times in the past would wash us all away. And some people seem to be happy to drive headlong into that.
I worry about a return to (I think? no expert) Triassic like conditions, about the time when the southern plates formed Gondgwana. Was hot and humid: heavily forrested, no wind and perpetual cloud. Not great for solar or wind power. It may yet get away from us, no matter how hard we try. But we must try.
This quote from a book sums us up for me, it is two aliens describing humans as a species.
'You don't think we'd spoil the place? You seriously think they're ready for us? For what we'd do to them even with the best of intentions?'
'Ready for it? What does that matter? What does it even mean? Of course they aren't ready for it, of course we'll spoil the place. Are they any more ready for World War Three? You seriously think we could mess the place up more than they're doing at the moment? When they're not actually out slaughtering each other they're inventing ingenious new ways to massacre each other more efficiently in the future, and when they're not doing that they're committing speciescide, from the Amazon to Borneo… or filling the seas with shit, or the air, or the land. They could hardly make a better job of vandalising their own planet if we gave them lessons.'
That reminds me of the "Killer Robots" doco I watched on Netflix the other day, which reminded me of John's prevous article about AI and its attendant evils. (Good doco: the military contractor types are so earnestly keen, so convinced that they must rush forward, despite all of the ethical qualms...)
Which reminds me of the 80's comic seris "Grey", in which the AI god pits the eco-apocalypse remnant human towns against eachother, because what else are they going to do? That has a particularly grim description of the eco-apocalypse, by the way: brown acid oceans devoid of fish, and globe-spanning deserts...
It can get a lot worse. Don't forget that we now live in an age where "unstoppable Siberian bushfire" is/was a real thing.
I've just been to see Oppenheimer - this afternoon - and this morning to read Edward Curtin's essay July 20, 2023 - Trinity's Shadow - both relevant to JB's essay and the catastrophe (politically and climate-wide) into which the warmongers are leading us...
My sympathies these days are with the innocent animals, I’m over human beings ( present company excluded) the greed, the insanity, fuck it all…I’m going for a surf..
Well this article was a joy. I always thought it we would wipe ourselves out in something completely unreversable like a nuclear war, turns out we'll probably wipe ourselves out slowly in a very avoidable way. I wonder what sort of world my 6 year old will have to live in. I often wonder if I should be bringing her up Sarah Conner parenting style ready for the apocalypse, but that never seems to turn out good. At the moment smart, resourceful, sensitive and kind seem to be the way to go, hopefully the future world will still need those types of people.
Rik: I was prepared for the imminent end of the world as a lad over 60 years ago by the weird fundamentalist Protestant sect within which i was brought up. Any day (back then) the Lord was going to return and whisk all of us who believed the story to Heaven. Why was I even in school studying for my Intermediate Certificate - then my Leaving Certificate - then accepting a scholarship to university - during which time I finally woke up! But this present reality I know from all the years I have lived is not something to grow out of - it's happening. Glaciers receding, ice caps retreating, heat records broken over and over...wineries moving their vineyards to high country or south to Tasmania - they know!
JB: You are reminding me of my own early morning walks begun before sunrise (around 5.00am) usually for a couple of hours around central Brisbane - and upstream and downstream along the walking paths and boardwalks of the beautiful Brisbane River - during the week my wife and I had in your city in January - when surprisingly it was not especially hot - I think the hottest was a 29 degree C. day! And it's true that walking alone (even with a dog or dogs - the mind ranges widely - topical, global and personal reflections. Rhinos - in the northern hemisphere - maybe here with some special genetic engineering we might see the rise of giant wombats again? Currently we are into a regime in household Kable getting into our walking stride for a North American visit - Canada and the US - west and east and south-east and up across to the central northwest. Lots of walking. And you reference to a period of depression - walking is a brilliant head-space clearer! Your dogs would understand that!
I learned an appreciation for the pre-dawn glow during a visit to the realms of the polar night, where that's as bright as it gets. But so beautiful. I now walk my dogs in the perfect half hour before dawn, whenever that might be. Just enough light to clean up after them without a torch...
There is great beauty in the stillness before dawn. (Unless you stray too close to the major arterials of Sydney, which are already well awake by then, sadly.)
I'm reminded of JG Ballard and his great novel The Drowned World by your talk of hippos on the Rhine and, in particular, the Thames. Except he was being allegorical rather than predictive. Must read it again.
The thing is as you said last week is for the last few centuries we have had gatekeepers deciding what was news and what is not. On or more of these gatekeepers has been extremely conservative. The papers that they published parroted their owners drivel and now they own a pay TV station that pushes their drivel onto the masses who just got the set top box to watch the footy or have something better than the free to air TV stations to watch.
The other gatekeepers are under the pump too given google and Facebook have sucked up all the advertising revenue. So they keep silent or join in when the ABC is under attack. The climate issue has gone on for so long there are people who are worn out with it. Not to mention it has been politicised with the LNP being only marginally behind the ALP on climate (those two being the parties likely to form government). Still we will keep voting for either of the major political parties that are virtually owned by the coal, gas and oil interests that fund them through donations.
I keep on waiting to see what would happen if the Greens got into government but that keeps on getting kicked further down the road.
I feel you.
I live in Newcastle.
I watch the excavated depths of the Hunter Valley travel past on trains and sail out the heads every day. It kills me.
I wish I had the guts to join the activists that put up tripods and stop them, but I’m an economic slave with a family to support.
So I donate to the people who can make a difference, pick up rubbish along the creek, and avoid too many bad news stories just to protect my mental health.
Beer helps too!!
There is not a day passes for me that at sometime a thought rises unbidden whispering
"I fear that this will not end well".
As regarding "described by Coleridge as the secret ministry of frost which suits the musing mind" I believe Coleridge was frequently binged out on drugs so perhaps take his stuff with a grain of salt, or horse doses of laudanum and opium whatever - you do you.
The reason that we have dope in AUS is that in 1770-ish they didn't know about the difference between 'Indus" and 'Cetiva' varieties. The crown had asked Cook to find somewhere to grow "hemp" for the navy, and Banks went to his good friend Coleridge for a sample to cultivate...
Hahaha
If only they'd known the more beneficial properties of Sativa! Instead of using hemp to make rope for their growing number of sailing ships to 'explore' - invade/conquer/murder ppl - in any accessible corner of the globe, they might have just chilled out and continued sipping tea. Imagine how different the future of the planet and all the lifeforms it supports would be.
No industrial revolution; fencing of the commons, denuding villages & farmers of their land & livelihoods, forcing them to move to ever-growing polluted cities to live in deathly slums, and be reduced to factory fodder.
So many ancient cultures destroyed around the world, conquered to steal whatever resources they had; entire populations enslaved; the creation of an industrial-scale global market for cheap forced labour; etc
All the culture, local governance structures, and knowledge of people who had lived sustainably for millennia in some places, lost.
The Romans, Vikings, Alexander the Great, Attlila the Hun, the Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese etc combined didn't wreak this level of destruction. All the wars perpetuate by the West can be traced back to these roots. The English planted their flag everywhere they could reach, and created the most successful military/industrial complex at that time, fostering toxic capitalism and huge profits for the antecedents of the dominant 1%. The English aristocracy's relentless pursuit of Empire created the current crisis.
If only the English citizens had followed the gallic example of bloody revolution, and the machine they invented to wrest back control of their society! The French maintain this tradition of rebellious action to protect their rights, except for the guillotine bit.
Just my opinion of course, but as a descendant of Celtic rebels, & a relative of resisters still fighting for autonomy, I feel my bias is justified.
The English ppl are just as unenlightened today, they voted for Brexit because they yearn for the return of their Empirical status. Those 'good old days' created a fucked up world order and set us on this path of global dysfunction and destruction. Thick as bricks and as lacking in imagine as when they invented murderous machines of all sorts instead of the simple bong.
Thanks for coming to my Ted talk...
Genghis Khan's activities apparently led to the death of around 70 million people, or so I've been told. Not that negates anything you've written. Of course, the English in India were via the East India Company, complete with its own private forces. I'd tie the ruthlessness of that big capitalist enterprise with that of the British aristocracy which rode rough trod over those who failed to suitably bend to its wishes - and taxation.
Hahaha
I knew I was forgetting someone who also had a big impact! Probably more than one 😂 Thanks for reminding me of Genghis Khan!
I counted East India Co as British. I thought it was a govt backed private entity and English soldiers helped them maintain their brutal control.
Side note:
Growing up I often heard ppl refer to poorly lit old houses, specifically kitchens in my experience, as " it's like the Black Hole of Calcutta in there". I used to say this, until I got curious one day. I no longer do.
True?
I read it on the internet, so it must be? Seems plausible, and the dates and connections tie in. Who's to say, at this remove?
I feel you deeply, Birmo. I started my journey into climate science in 1996 as a uni student studying science, but also a skeptic, having fallen for the lazy thought "humans couldn't dramatically affect something as large as the Earth". Within months of reading the science I realised just how wrong I was.
I spent the next 20 years or so freaking the fuck out and trying to convey to everyone I came across that: 1) humans are changing the climate dramatically, and once we breach certain tipping points there is no going back (I can't believe how many people out there STILL deny this fucking reality); and 2) just how big a catastrophe we are sleepwalking into.
Eventually I had to calm down to save my own sanity and protect my relationships with fellow humans, so I moved to Tassie to enjoy the years before things really get tough and watch the catastrophe unfold. I deeply, truly feel your lack of lulz. Get through the day the best you can is all I can say, but you are not alone.
As a related aside, here is a fascinating piece of science and history with pretty dire implications, but well worth the read: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-07-21/greenland-ice-core-secret-us-army-base-reveals-dramatic-melting/102609654
Read this today. Did not enjoy.
Thanks JB. That touched me. It made me feel I'm not alone in these thoughts, just incapable of expressing them in such poetic terms.
I take comfort in my mortality when, like you, I ponder those issues. I have a short life expectancy. In fact, people with Hermansky Pudlak Syndrome have an average life expectancy of 45-55. I’m 55. So the clock is ticking.
At first that was a real shock. And the things I thought I’d do periodically slap me in the face, like when someone I’m friends with on facebook walked Hadrian’s Wall. I put off travel until after the kids grew up and my career was bringing in the moula. Well, that didn’t happen. Hubby earns enough, now, and the kids have left home. But travelling internationally with a seeing eye dog is fraught at best and “not happening” is most likely, for most countries. (I’m still going to investigate NZ. And a short junket there might be possible without her but she’ll pine. My heart hurts for her when she’s sad… you know the feeling.)
Since the initial shock wore off I see things like climate change and political antics that, once, would have been extremely satirical but are now normal… When I was in primary school my classrooms had posters about global warming and overpopulation. I couldn’t understand how, since the 70s, they became “debatable” issues. Governments sanction scientists who mention the words, academics who mention “climate change” are less likely to be published… so much $$$$$ in the cover up, concealment, for short term profit….
And my reaction? Well, I’m going to die sometime soon. Maybe years, unlikely to be a decade and less likely to be “in decades”. I can’t change that. But I can take comfort in knowing that I’ll miss what is yet to come.
Some may interpret my next comment as super dark but… the planet has the capacity to heal. Once we’ve killed ourselves off, or at least significantly diminished the presence of the human race on the planet thereby diminishing our destructive footprint, like during the early days of the pandemic when lockdowns were the norm, the planet started healing. Wild animals were spotted on city streets. The toxic soup in which Venice sits cleared. People were stunned to discover that the water was cleaner and didn’t stink. I think once we’re gone or once Mother Earth has a good parasite treatment, I think the planet will start to heal.
I’m saddened. Don’t get me wrong. When I was in primary school we learnt about ancient Greece and Rome. Our teacher said all civilisations fall. I asked about ours. I think I shocked her, knocked her back a step or two literally. I may have asked the same questions the following year, with a different teacher.
Now I have my answers. Our civilisation, like the Roman Empire, is in decline. And for pretty much the same reasons. But it’s not the end of the world.
They became debatable because a trillion dollar fossil fuel lobby paid for them to be 'debated'.
According to Samantha Bee, the Koch brothers poured millions in to countering climate change action and started in the 80s at the latest to do so. Now we have orgs like the IPA, which is outraged that we’re not listening to them AND their funding has pretty much dried up. When they started, in the mid-20th, they got $$$$ from all sorts of businesses. Now most respectable businesses don’t want to be associated with them. That’s why the likes of Gina Rhinehart are more significant now, she’s one of the remaining dinosaurs who wants us to meditate on the benefits of mining 15 minutes a day and to spread the message of mining. Like, WTH? Has she had covid too often?
The denial machine goes back a lot further actually. S Fred Singer, a chief denier, used the same tactics for asbestos and tobacco in the 50s and 60s as he did for fossil fuels from the 80s onward.
Oh that’s true although I didn’t know the name. Also, they’ve known that “non stick” cookware is bloody toxic for decades and yet that was super secret until really recently. I’m now stainless steel pans & utensils plus wood utensils. And they know composite wood (eg mdf) disintegrates over time and the binding agents are toxic. I’m in the process of buying a town house, trying not to think about the upstairs floor and planning to replace it with hardwood as soon as we can afford it. It’s not just covid that is bringing life expectancies down but covid is another excellent example. “Oh the pandemic is over, we’ve just had more people dying lately”. Total deaths are up by about 12% but it’s not covid, noooooo. And another classic “It’s just the elderly and disabled dying so it’s relieving society of a burden” although the second part of that isn’t usually said out loud. They’re NOT acknowledging the previously healthy covid victims (or they die “with covid” not “of covid”) and they’re not acknowledging the hefty toll on people’s bodies, from brain damage to long covid. Idiocracy, here we come. (I thought that movie was excellent although not my usual style of comedy, but excellent because of the social comment and the extrapolation.)
Indeed, although I'd say Idiocracy has been our planetary state of affairs for quite some time, and we clearly entered the Biff timeline in 2013. That's when the election of the cascade of idiots began - from Drumpf to Bolsonaro, Bojo to Duterte - and it all started with our own special moron, Wrecker Abbott.
Eloquently phrased.
If you want to fully understand the denial machine, which is the same machine that covered up for tobacco, asbestos and others, Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt is worthwhile.
PS In hindsight I think I pity my teachers.
Took the youngung's youngun to the museum last Friday night for the night at the musuem with the dinosaurs. Sensational display, and most intensely interesting for me were the temporal maps showing dinosaurs, temperature and sea level over the last 250m odd years. It was clear that the last 3m years have been a goldilocks period that allowed the emergence of humanity. But the 15 degree, 200m sea level rise that has occurred several times in the past would wash us all away. And some people seem to be happy to drive headlong into that.
I worry about a return to (I think? no expert) Triassic like conditions, about the time when the southern plates formed Gondgwana. Was hot and humid: heavily forrested, no wind and perpetual cloud. Not great for solar or wind power. It may yet get away from us, no matter how hard we try. But we must try.
I really liked how you referenced Coleridge in there. Thanks for that.
We really are the frogs in boing water. I feel so sad for all the people in poor countries which will be the first to go.
Read this as 'bong water'. Agreed maximally.
not to be 'that guy' but whilst an app metaphor its not true of real life frogs.
True. Frogs are smarter and solve their dilemma before they get cooked. Humans? Not so much.
John, melancholy moment.
This quote from a book sums us up for me, it is two aliens describing humans as a species.
'You don't think we'd spoil the place? You seriously think they're ready for us? For what we'd do to them even with the best of intentions?'
'Ready for it? What does that matter? What does it even mean? Of course they aren't ready for it, of course we'll spoil the place. Are they any more ready for World War Three? You seriously think we could mess the place up more than they're doing at the moment? When they're not actually out slaughtering each other they're inventing ingenious new ways to massacre each other more efficiently in the future, and when they're not doing that they're committing speciescide, from the Amazon to Borneo… or filling the seas with shit, or the air, or the land. They could hardly make a better job of vandalising their own planet if we gave them lessons.'
As Tex, John & Charlie said "Sad but true"
That reminds me of the "Killer Robots" doco I watched on Netflix the other day, which reminded me of John's prevous article about AI and its attendant evils. (Good doco: the military contractor types are so earnestly keen, so convinced that they must rush forward, despite all of the ethical qualms...)
Which reminds me of the 80's comic seris "Grey", in which the AI god pits the eco-apocalypse remnant human towns against eachother, because what else are they going to do? That has a particularly grim description of the eco-apocalypse, by the way: brown acid oceans devoid of fish, and globe-spanning deserts...
It can get a lot worse. Don't forget that we now live in an age where "unstoppable Siberian bushfire" is/was a real thing.
I've just been to see Oppenheimer - this afternoon - and this morning to read Edward Curtin's essay July 20, 2023 - Trinity's Shadow - both relevant to JB's essay and the catastrophe (politically and climate-wide) into which the warmongers are leading us...
Or cane toads nodding off in the freezer, but that’s not quite as appropriate in the circs.
My sympathies these days are with the innocent animals, I’m over human beings ( present company excluded) the greed, the insanity, fuck it all…I’m going for a surf..
Well written JB..
"with the innocent animals" agreed, except for ducks. They know what they did.
Well this article was a joy. I always thought it we would wipe ourselves out in something completely unreversable like a nuclear war, turns out we'll probably wipe ourselves out slowly in a very avoidable way. I wonder what sort of world my 6 year old will have to live in. I often wonder if I should be bringing her up Sarah Conner parenting style ready for the apocalypse, but that never seems to turn out good. At the moment smart, resourceful, sensitive and kind seem to be the way to go, hopefully the future world will still need those types of people.
Rik: I was prepared for the imminent end of the world as a lad over 60 years ago by the weird fundamentalist Protestant sect within which i was brought up. Any day (back then) the Lord was going to return and whisk all of us who believed the story to Heaven. Why was I even in school studying for my Intermediate Certificate - then my Leaving Certificate - then accepting a scholarship to university - during which time I finally woke up! But this present reality I know from all the years I have lived is not something to grow out of - it's happening. Glaciers receding, ice caps retreating, heat records broken over and over...wineries moving their vineyards to high country or south to Tasmania - they know!
The doomsday seed vault in Svalbard's "permafrost" has melting foundations...
<sigh>
JB: You are reminding me of my own early morning walks begun before sunrise (around 5.00am) usually for a couple of hours around central Brisbane - and upstream and downstream along the walking paths and boardwalks of the beautiful Brisbane River - during the week my wife and I had in your city in January - when surprisingly it was not especially hot - I think the hottest was a 29 degree C. day! And it's true that walking alone (even with a dog or dogs - the mind ranges widely - topical, global and personal reflections. Rhinos - in the northern hemisphere - maybe here with some special genetic engineering we might see the rise of giant wombats again? Currently we are into a regime in household Kable getting into our walking stride for a North American visit - Canada and the US - west and east and south-east and up across to the central northwest. Lots of walking. And you reference to a period of depression - walking is a brilliant head-space clearer! Your dogs would understand that!
I learned an appreciation for the pre-dawn glow during a visit to the realms of the polar night, where that's as bright as it gets. But so beautiful. I now walk my dogs in the perfect half hour before dawn, whenever that might be. Just enough light to clean up after them without a torch...
There is great beauty in the stillness before dawn. (Unless you stray too close to the major arterials of Sydney, which are already well awake by then, sadly.)
I'm reminded of JG Ballard and his great novel The Drowned World by your talk of hippos on the Rhine and, in particular, the Thames. Except he was being allegorical rather than predictive. Must read it again.
Some of us railed (not the in the Urban dictionary way!) against this future futilely.
But instead we've been railed ((in the Urban dictionary way) by the system, and those it ultimately serves.
Gotye released "Eyes Wide Open" in 2011. It's like a eulogy for humankind.
It is depressing.
The thing is as you said last week is for the last few centuries we have had gatekeepers deciding what was news and what is not. On or more of these gatekeepers has been extremely conservative. The papers that they published parroted their owners drivel and now they own a pay TV station that pushes their drivel onto the masses who just got the set top box to watch the footy or have something better than the free to air TV stations to watch.
The other gatekeepers are under the pump too given google and Facebook have sucked up all the advertising revenue. So they keep silent or join in when the ABC is under attack. The climate issue has gone on for so long there are people who are worn out with it. Not to mention it has been politicised with the LNP being only marginally behind the ALP on climate (those two being the parties likely to form government). Still we will keep voting for either of the major political parties that are virtually owned by the coal, gas and oil interests that fund them through donations.
I keep on waiting to see what would happen if the Greens got into government but that keeps on getting kicked further down the road.