The Coronation
For years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them?
Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous. Likewise for the radical changes we are making in our social behavior, economy, and the role of government in our lives. Covid demonstrates the power of our collective will when we agree on what is important. What else might we achieve, in coherency? What do we want to achieve, and what world shall we create? That is always the next question when anyone awakens to their power.
Covid-19 is like a rehab intervention that breaks the addictive hold of normality. To interrupt a habit is to make it visible; it is to turn it from a compulsion to a choice. When the crisis subsides, we might have occasion to ask whether we want to return to normal, or whether there might be something we’ve seen during this break in the routines that we want to bring into the future. We might ask, after so many have lost their jobs, whether all of them are the jobs the world most needs, and whether our labor and creativity would be better applied elsewhere. We might ask, having done without it for a while, whether we really need so much air travel, Disneyworld vacations, or trade shows. What parts of the economy will we want to restore, and what parts might we choose to let go of? And on a darker note, what among the things that are being taken away right now – civil liberties, freedom of assembly, sovereignty over our bodies, in-person gatherings, hugs, handshakes, and public life – might we need to exert intentional political and personal will to restore?
For most of my life, I have had the feeling that humanity was nearing a crossroads. Always, the crisis, the collapse, the break was imminent, just around the bend, but it didn’t come and it didn’t come. Imagine walking a road, and up ahead you see it, you see the crossroads. It’s just over the hill, around the bend, past the woods. Cresting the hill, you see you were mistaken, it was a mirage, it was farther away than you thought. You keep walking. Sometimes it comes into view, sometimes it disappears from sight and it seems like this road goes on forever. Maybe there isn’t a crossroads. No, there it is again! Always it is almost here. Never is it here.
Now, all of a sudden, we go around a bend and here it is. We stop, hardly able to believe that now it is happening, hardly able to believe, after years of confinement to the road of our predecessors, that now we finally have a choice. We are right to stop, stunned at the newness of our situation. Because of the hundred paths that radiate out in front of us, some lead in the same direction we’ve already been headed. Some lead to hell on earth. And some lead to a world more healed and more beautiful than we ever dared believe to be possible.
I write these words with the aim of standing here with you – bewildered, scared maybe, yet also with a sense of new possibility – at this point of diverging paths. Let us gaze down some of them and see where they lead.
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I heard this story last week from a friend. She was in a grocery store and saw a woman sobbing in the aisle. Flouting social distancing rules, she went to the woman and gave her a hug. “Thank you,” the woman said, “that is the first time anyone has hugged me for ten days.”
Going without hugs for a few weeks seems a small price to pay if it will stem an epidemic that could take millions of lives. There is a strong argument for social distancing in the near term: to prevent a sudden surge of Covid cases from overwhelming the medical system. I would like to put that argument in a larger context, especially as we look to the long term. Lest we institutionalize distancing and reengineer society around it, let us be aware of what choice we are making and why.
The same goes for the other changes happening around the coronavirus epidemic. Some commentators have observed how it plays neatly into an agenda of totalitarian control. A frightened public accepts abridgments of civil liberties that are otherwise hard to justify, such as the tracking of everyone’s movements at all times, forcible medical treatment, involuntary quarantine, restrictions on travel and the freedom of assembly, censorship of what the authorities deem to be disinformation, suspension of habeas corpus, and military policing of civilians. Many of these were underway before Covid-19; since its advent, they have been irresistible. The same goes for the automation of commerce; the transition from participation in sports and entertainment to remote viewing; the migration of life from public to private spaces; the transition away from place-based schools toward online education, the decline of brick-and-mortar stores, and the movement of human work and leisure onto screens. Covid-19 is accelerating preexisting trends, political, economic, and social.
While all the above are, in the short term, justified on the grounds of flattening the curve (the epidemiological growth curve), we are also hearing a lot about a “new normal”; that is to say, the changes may not be temporary at all. Since the threat of infectious disease, like the threat of terrorism, never goes away, control measures can easily become permanent. If we were going in this direction anyway, the current justification must be part of a deeper impulse. I will analyze this impulse in two parts: the reflex of control, and the war on death. Thus understood, an initiatory opportunity emerges, one that we are seeing already in the form of the solidarity, compassion, and care that Covid-19 has inspired.
The Reflex of Control
At the current writing, official statistics say that about 25,000 people have died from Covid-19. By the time it runs its course, the death toll could be ten times or a hundred times bigger, or even, if the most alarming guesses are right, a thousand times bigger. Each one of these people has loved ones, family and friends. Compassion and conscience call us to do what we can to avert unnecessary tragedy. This is personal for me: my own infinitely dear but frail mother is among the most vulnerable to a disease that kills mostly the aged and the infirm.
What will the final numbers be? That question is impossible to answer at the time of this writing. Early reports were alarming; for weeks the official number from Wuhan, circulated endlessly in the media, was a shocking 3.4%. That, coupled with its highly contagious nature, pointed to tens of millions of deaths worldwide, or even as many as 100 million. More recently, estimates have plunged as it has become apparent that most cases are mild or asymptomatic. Since testing has been skewed towards the seriously ill, the death rate has looked artificially high. In South Korea, where hundreds of thousands of people with mild symptoms have been tested, the reported case fatality rate is around 1%. In Germany, whose testing also extends to many with mild symptoms, the fatality rate is 0.4%. A recent paper in the journal Science argues that 86% of infections have been undocumented, which points to a much lower mortality rate than the current case fatality rate would indicate.
The story of the Diamond Princess cruise ship bolsters this view. Of the 3,711 people on board, about 20% have tested positive for the virus; less than half of those had symptoms, and eight have died. A cruise ship is a perfect setting for contagion, and there was plenty of time for the virus to spread on board before anyone did anything about it, yet only a fifth were infected. Furthermore, the cruise ship’s population was heavily skewed (as are most cruise ships) toward the elderly: nearly a third of the passengers were over age 70, and more than half were over age 60. A research team concluded from the large number of asymptomatic cases that the true fatality rate in China is around 0.5%. That is still five times higher than flu. Based on the above (and adjusting for much younger demographics in Africa and South and Southeast Asia) my guess is about 200,000-300,000 deaths in the US – more if the medical system is overwhelmed, less if infections are spread out over time – and 3 million globally. Those are serious numbers. Not since the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968/9 has the world experienced anything like it.
My guesses could easily be off by an order of magnitude. Every day the media reports the total number of Covid-19 cases, but no one has any idea what the true number is, because only a tiny proportion of the population has been tested. If tens of millions have the virus, asymptomatically, we would not know it. Further complicating the matter is the high rate of false positives for existing testing, possibly as high as 80%. (And see here for even more alarming uncertainties about test accuracy.) Let me repeat: no one knows what is really happening, including me. Let us be aware of two contradictory tendencies in human affairs. The first is the tendency for hysteria to feed on itself, to exclude data points that don’t play into the fear, and to create the world in its image. The second is denial, the irrational rejection of information that might disrupt normalcy and comfort. As Daniel Schmactenberger asks, How do you know what you believe is true?
In the face of the uncertainty, I’d like to make a prediction: The crisis will play out so that we never will know. If the final death tally, which will itself be the subject of dispute, is lower than feared, some will say that is because the controls worked. Others will say it is because the disease wasn’t as dangerous as we were told.
To me, the most baffling puzzle is why at the present writing there seem to be no new cases in China. The government didn’t initiate its lockdown until well after the virus was established. It should have spread widely during Chinese New Year, when every plane, train, and bus is packed with people traveling all over the country. What is going on here? Again, I don’t know, and neither do you.
Whether the final global death toll is 50,000 or 500,000 or 5 million, let’s look at some other numbers to get some perspective. My point is NOT that Covid isn’t so bad and we shouldn’t do anything. Bear with me. Last year, according to the FAO, five million children worldwide died of hunger (among 162 million who are stunted and 51 million who are wasted). That is 200 times more people than have died so far from Covid-19, yet no government has declared a state of emergency or asked that we radically alter our way of life to save them. Nor do we see a comparable level of alarm and action around suicide – the mere tip of an iceberg of despair and depression – which kills over a million people a year globally and 50,000 in the USA. Or drug overdoses, which kill 70,000 in the USA, the autoimmunity epidemic, which affects 23.5 million (NIH figure) to 50 million (AARDA), or obesity, which afflicts well over 100 million. Why, for that matter, are we not in a frenzy about averting nuclear armageddon or ecological collapse, but, to the contrary, pursue choices that magnify those very dangers?
Please, the point here is not that we haven’t changed our ways to stop children from starving, so we shouldn’t change them for Covid either. It is the contrary: If we can change so radically for Covid-19, we can do it for these other conditions too. Let us ask why are we able to unify our collective will to stem this virus, but not to address other grave threats to humanity. Why, until now, has society been so frozen in its existing trajectory?
The answer is revealing. Simply, in the face of world hunger, addiction, autoimmunity, suicide, or ecological collapse, we as a society do not know what to do. Our go-to crisis responses, all of which are some version of control, aren’t very effective in addressing these conditions. Now along comes a contagious epidemic, and finally we can spring into action. It is a crisis for which control works: quarantines, lockdowns, isolation, hand-washing; control of movement, control of information, control of our bodies. That makes Covid a convenient receptacle for our inchoate fears, a place to channel our growing sense of helplessness in the face of the changes overtaking the world. Covid-19 is a threat that we know how to meet. Unlike so many of our other fears, Covid-19 offers a plan.
Our civilization’s established institutions are increasingly helpless to meet the challenges of our time. How they welcome a challenge that they finally can meet. How eager they are to embrace it as a paramount crisis. How naturally their systems of information management select for the most alarming portrayals of it. How easily the public joins the panic, embracing a threat that the authorities can handle as a proxy for the various unspeakable threats that they cannot.
Today, most of our challenges no longer succumb to force. Our antibiotics and surgery fail to meet the surging health crises of autoimmunity, addiction, and obesity. Our guns and bombs, built to conquer armies, are useless to erase hatred abroad or keep domestic violence out of our homes. Our police and prisons cannot heal the breeding conditions of crime. Our pesticides cannot restore ruined soil. Covid-19 recalls the good old days when the challenges of infectious diseases succumbed to modern medicine and hygiene, at the same time as the Nazis succumbed to the war machine, and nature itself succumbed, or so it seemed, to technological conquest and improvement. It recalls the days when our weapons worked and the world seemed indeed to be improving with each technology of control.
What kind of problem succumbs to domination and control? The kind caused by something from the outside, something Other. When the cause of the problem is something intimate to ourselves, like homelessness or inequality, addiction or obesity, there is nothing to war against. We may try to install an enemy, blaming, for example, the billionaires, Vladimir Putin, or the Devil, but then we miss key information, such as the ground conditions that allow billionaires (or viruses) to replicate in the first place.
If there is one thing our civilization is good at, it is fighting an enemy. We welcome opportunities to do what we are good at, which prove the validity of our technologies, systems, and worldview. And so, we manufacture enemies, cast problems like crime, terrorism, and disease into us-versus-them terms, and mobilize our collective energies toward those endeavors that can be seen that way. Thus, we single out Covid-19 as a call to arms, reorganizing society as if for a war effort, while treating as normal the possibility of nuclear armageddon, ecological collapse, and five million children starving.
The Conspiracy Narrative
Because Covid-19 seems to justify so many items on the totalitarian wish list, there are those who believe it to be a deliberate power play. It is not my purpose to advance that theory nor to debunk it, although I will offer some meta-level comments. First a brief overview.
The theories (there are many variants) talk about Event 201 (sponsored by the Gates Foundation, CIA, etc. last September), and a 2010 Rockefeller Foundation white paper detailing a scenario called “Lockstep,” both of which lay out the authoritarian response to a hypothetical pandemic. They observe that the infrastructure, technology, and legislative framework for martial law has been in preparation for many years. All that was needed, they say, was a way to make the public embrace it, and now that has come. Whether or not current controls are permanent, a precedent is being set for:
- • The tracking of people’s movements at all times (because coronavirus)
- • The suspension of freedom of assembly (because coronavirus)
- • The military policing of civilians (because coronavirus)
- • Extrajudicial, indefinite detention (quarantine, because coronavirus)
- • The banning of cash (because coronavirus)
- • Censorship of the Internet (to combat disinformation, because coronavirus)
- • Compulsory vaccination and other medical treatment, establishing the state’s sovereignty over our bodies (because coronavirus)
- • The classification of all activities and destinations into the expressly permitted and the expressly forbidden (you can leave your house for this, but not that), eliminating the un-policed, non-juridical gray zone. That totality is the very essence of totalitarianism. Necessary now though, because, well, coronavirus.
This is juicy material for conspiracy theories. For all I know, one of those theories could be true; however, the same progression of events could unfold from an unconscious systemic tilt toward ever-increasing control. Where does this tilt come from? It is woven into civilization’s DNA. For millennia, civilization (as opposed to small-scale traditional cultures) has understood progress as a matter of extending control onto the world: domesticating the wild, conquering the barbarians, mastering the forces of nature, and ordering society according to law and reason. The ascent of control accelerated with the Scientific Revolution, which launched “progress” to new heights: the ordering of reality into objective categories and quantities, and the mastering of materiality with technology. Finally, the social sciences promised to use the same means and methods to fulfill the ambition (which goes back to Plato and Confucius) to engineer a perfect society.
Those who administer civilization will therefore welcome any opportunity to strengthen their control, for after all, it is in service to a grand vision of human destiny: the perfectly ordered world, in which disease, crime, poverty, and perhaps suffering itself can be engineered out of existence. No nefarious motives are necessary. Of course they would like to keep track of everyone – all the better to ensure the common good. For them, Covid-19 shows how necessary that is. “Can we afford democratic freedoms in light of the coronavirus?” they ask. “Must we now, out of necessity, sacrifice those for our own safety?” It is a familiar refrain, for it has accompanied other crises in the past, like 9/11.
To rework a common metaphor, imagine a man with a hammer, stalking around looking for a reason to use it. Suddenly he sees a nail sticking out. He’s been looking for a nail for a long time, pounding on screws and bolts and not accomplishing much. He inhabits a worldview in which hammers are the best tools, and the world can be made better by pounding in the nails. And here is a nail! We might suspect that in his eagerness he has placed the nail there himself, but it hardly matters. Maybe it isn’t even a nail that’s sticking out, but it resembles one enough to start pounding. When the tool is at the ready, an opportunity will arise to use it.
And I will add, for those inclined to doubt the authorities, maybe this time it really is a nail. In that case, the hammer is the right tool – and the principle of the hammer will emerge the stronger, ready for the screw, the button, the clip, and the tear.
Either way, the problem we deal with here is much deeper than that of overthrowing an evil coterie of Illuminati. Even if they do exist, given the tilt of civilization, the same trend would persist without them, or a new Illuminati would arise to assume the functions of the old.
True or false, the idea that the epidemic is some monstrous plot perpetrated by evildoers upon the public is not so far from the mindset of find-the-pathogen. It is a crusading mentality, a war mentality. It locates the source of a sociopolitical illness in a pathogen against which we may then fight, a victimizer separate from ourselves. It risks ignoring the conditions that make society fertile ground for the plot to take hold. Whether that ground was sown deliberately or by the wind is, for me, a secondary question.
What I will say next is relevant whether or not SARS-CoV2 is a genetically engineered bioweapon, is related to 5G rollout, is being used to prevent “disclosure,” is a Trojan horse for totalitarian world government, is more deadly than we’ve been told, is less deadly than we’ve been told, originated in a Wuhan biolab, originated at Fort Detrick, or is exactly as the CDC and WHO have been telling us. It applies even if everyone is totally wrong about the role of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the current epidemic. I have my opinions, but if there is one thing I have learned through the course of this emergency is that I don’t really know what is happening. I don’t see how anyone can, amidst the seething farrago of news, fake news, rumors, suppressed information, conspiracy theories, propaganda, and politicized narratives that fill the Internet. I wish a lot more people would embrace not knowing. I say that both to those who embrace the dominant narrative, as well as to those who hew to dissenting ones. What information might we be blocking out, in order to maintain the integrity of our viewpoints? Let’s be humble in our beliefs: it is a matter of life and death.
The War on Death
My 7-year-old son hasn’t seen or played with another child for two weeks. Millions of others are in the same boat. Most would agree that a month without social interaction for all those children a reasonable sacrifice to save a million lives. But how about to save 100,000 lives? And what if the sacrifice is not for a month but for a year? Five years? Different people will have different opinions on that, according to their underlying values.
Let’s replace the foregoing questions with something more personal, that pierces the inhuman utilitarian thinking that turns people into statistics and sacrifices some of them for something else. The relevant question for me is, Would I ask all the nation’s children to forego play for a season, if it would reduce my mother’s risk of dying, or for that matter, my own risk? Or I might ask, Would I decree the end of human hugging and handshakes, if it would save my own life? This is not to devalue Mom’s life or my own, both of which are precious. I am grateful for every day she is still with us. But these questions bring up deep issues. What is the right way to live? What is the right way to die?
The answer to such questions, whether asked on behalf of oneself or on behalf of society at large, depends on how we hold death and how much we value play, touch, and togetherness, along with civil liberties and personal freedom. There is no easy formula to balance these values.
Over my lifetime I’ve seen society place more and more emphasis on safety, security, and risk reduction. It has especially impacted childhood: as a young boy it was normal for us to roam a mile from home unsupervised – behavior that would earn parents a visit from Child Protective Services today. It also manifests in the form of latex gloves for more and more professions; hand sanitizer everywhere; locked, guarded, and surveilled school buildings; intensified airport and border security; heightened awareness of legal liability and liability insurance; metal detectors and searches before entering many sports arenas and public buildings, and so on. Writ large, it takes the form of the security state.
The mantra “safety first” comes from a value system that makes survival top priority, and that depreciates other values like fun, adventure, play, and the challenging of limits. Other cultures had different priorities. For instance, many traditional and indigenous cultures are much less protective of children, as documented in Jean Liedloff’s classic, The Continuum Concept. They allow them risks and responsibilities that would seem insane to most modern people, believing that this is necessary for children to develop self-reliance and good judgement. I think most modern people, especially younger people, retain some of this inherent willingness to sacrifice safety in order to live life fully. The surrounding culture, however, lobbies us relentlessly to live in fear, and has constructed systems that embody fear. In them, staying safe is over-ridingly important. Thus we have a medical system in which most decisions are based on calculations of risk, and in which the worst possible outcome, marking the physician’s ultimate failure, is death. Yet all the while, we know that death awaits us regardless. A life saved actually means a death postponed.
The ultimate fulfillment of civilization’s program of control would be to triumph over death itself. Failing that, modern society settles for a facsimile of that triumph: denial rather than conquest. Ours is a society of death denial, from its hiding away of corpses, to its fetish for youthfulness, to its warehousing of old people in nursing homes. Even its obsession with money and property – extensions of the self, as the word “mine” indicates – expresses the delusion that the impermanent self can be made permanent through its attachments. All this is inevitable given the story-of-self that modernity offers: the separate individual in a world of Other. Surrounded by genetic, social, and economic competitors, that self must protect and dominate in order to thrive. It must do everything it can to forestall death, which (in the story of separation) is total annihilation. Biological science has even taught us that our very nature is to maximize our chances of surviving and reproducing.
I asked a friend, a medical doctor who has spent time with the Q’ero on Peru, whether the Q’ero would (if they could) intubate someone to prolong their life. “Of course not,” she said. “They would summon the shaman to help him die well.” Dying well (which isn’t necessarily the same as dying painlessly) is not much in today’s medical vocabulary. No hospital records are kept on whether patients die well. That would not be counted as a positive outcome. In the world of the separate self, death is the ultimate catastrophe.
But is it? Consider this perspective from Dr. Lissa Rankin: “Not all of us would want to be in an ICU, isolated from loved ones with a machine breathing for us, at risk of dying alone- even if it means they might increase their chance of survival. Some of us might rather be held in the arms of loved ones at home, even if that means our time has come…. Remember, death is no ending. Death is going home.”
When the self is understood as relational, interdependent, even inter-existent, then it bleeds over into the other, and the other bleeds over into the self. Understanding the self as a locus of consciousness in a matrix of relationship, one no longer searches for an enemy as the key to understanding every problem, but looks instead for imbalances in relationships. The War on Death gives way to the quest to live well and fully, and we see that fear of death is actually fear of life. How much of life will we forego to stay safe?
Totalitarianism – the perfection of control – is the inevitable end product of the mythology of the separate self. What else but a threat to life, like a war, would merit total control? Thus Orwell identified perpetual war as a crucial component of the Party’s rule.
Against the backdrop of the program of control, death denial, and the separate self, the assumption that public policy should seek to minimize the number of deaths is nearly beyond question, a goal to which other values like play, freedom, etc. are subordinate. Covid-19 offers occasion to broaden that view. Yes, let us hold life sacred, more sacred than ever. Death teaches us that. Let us hold each person, young or old, sick or well, as the sacred, precious, beloved being that they are. And in the circle of our hearts, let us make room for other sacred values too. To hold life sacred is not just to live long, it is to live well and right and fully.
Like all fear, the fear around the coronavirus hints at what might lie beyond it. Anyone who has experienced the passing of someone close knows that death is a portal to love. Covid-19 has elevated death to prominence in the consciousness of a society that denies it. On the other side of the fear, we can see the love that death liberates. Let it pour forth. Let it saturate the soil of our culture and fill its aquifers so that it seeps up through the cracks of our crusted institutions, our systems, and our habits. Some of these may die too.
What world shall we live in?
How much of life do we want to sacrifice at the altar of security? If it keeps us safer, do we want to live in a world where human beings never congregate? Do we want to wear masks in public all the time? Do we want to be medically examined every time we travel, if that will save some number of lives a year? Are we willing to accept the medicalization of life in general, handing over final sovereignty over our bodies to medical authorities (as selected by political ones)? Do we want every event to be a virtual event? How much are we willing to live in fear?
Covid-19 will eventually subside, but the threat of infectious disease is permanent. Our response to it sets a course for the future. Public life, communal life, the life of shared physicality has been dwindling over several generations. Instead of shopping at stores, we get things delivered to our homes. Instead of packs of kids playing outside, we have play dates and digital adventures. Instead of the public square, we have the online forum. Do we want to continue to insulate ourselves still further from each other and the world?
It is not hard to imagine, especially if social distancing is successful, that Covid-19 persists beyond the 18 months we are being told to expect for it to run its course. It is not hard to imagine that new viruses will emerge during that time. It is not hard to imagine that emergency measures will become normal (so as to forestall the possibility of another outbreak), just as the state of emergency declared after 9/11 is still in effect today. It is not hard to imagine that (as we are being told), reinfection is possible, so that the disease will never run its course. That means that the temporary changes in our way of life may become permanent.
To reduce the risk of another pandemic, shall we choose to live in a society without hugs, handshakes, and high-fives, forever more? Shall we choose to live in a society where we no longer gather en masse? Shall the concert, the sports competition, and the festival be a thing of the past? Shall children no longer play with other children? Shall all human contact be mediated by computers and masks? No more dance classes, no more karate classes, no more conferences, no more churches? Is death reduction to be the standard by which to measure progress? Does human advancement mean separation? Is this the future?
The same question applies to the administrative tools required to control the movement of people and the flow of information. At the present writing, the entire country is moving toward lockdown. In some countries, one must print out a form from a government website in order to leave the house. It reminds me of school, where one’s location must be authorized at all times. Or of prison. Do we envision a future of electronic hall passes, a system where freedom of movement is governed by state administrators and their software at all times, permanently? Where every movement is tracked, either permitted or prohibited? And, for our protection, where information that threatens our health (as decided, again, by various authorities) is censored for our own good? In the face of an emergency, like unto a state of war, we accept such restrictions and temporarily surrender our freedoms. Similar to 9/11, Covid-19 trumps all objections.
For the first time in history, the technological means exist to realize such a vision, at least in the developed world (for example, using cellphone location data to enforce social distancing; see also here). After a bumpy transition, we could live in a society where nearly all of life happens online: shopping, meeting, entertainment, socializing, working, even dating. Is that what we want? How many lives saved is that worth?
I am sure that many of the controls in effect today will be partially relaxed in a few months. Partially relaxed, but at the ready. As long as infectious disease remains with us, they are likely to be reimposed, again and again, in the future, or be self-imposed in the form of habits. As Deborah Tannen says, contributing to a Politico article on how coronavirus will change the world permanently, ‘We know now that touching things, being with other people and breathing the air in an enclosed space can be risky…. It could become second nature to recoil from shaking hands or touching our faces—and we may all fall heir to society-wide OCD, as none of us can stop washing our hands.” After thousands of years, millions of years, of touch, contact, and togetherness, is the pinnacle of human progress to be that we cease such activities because they are too risky?
Life is Community
The paradox of the program of control is that its progress rarely advances us any closer to its goal. Despite security systems in almost every upper middle-class home, people are no less anxious or insecure than they were a generation ago. Despite elaborate security measures, the schools are not seeing fewer mass shootings. Despite phenomenal progress in medical technology, people have if anything become less healthy over the past thirty years, as chronic disease has proliferated and life expectancy stagnated and, in the USA and Britain, started to decline.
The measures being instituted to control Covid-19, likewise, may end up causing more suffering and death than they prevent. Minimizing deaths means minimizing the deaths that we know how to predict and measure. It is impossible to measure the added deaths that might come from isolation-induced depression, for instance, or the despair caused by unemployment, or the lowered immunity and deterioration in health that chronic fear can cause. Loneliness and lack of social contact has been shown to increase inflammation, depression, and dementia. According to Lissa Rankin, M.D., air pollution increases risk of dying by 6%, obesity by 23%, alcohol abuse by 37%, and loneliness by 45%.
Another danger that is off the ledger is the deterioration in immunity caused by excessive hygiene and distancing. It is not only social contact that is necessary for health, it is also contact with the microbial world. Generally speaking, microbes are not our enemies, they are our allies in health. A diverse gut biome, comprising bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and other organisms, is essential for a well-functioning immune system, and its diversity is maintained through contact with other people and with the world of life. Excessive hand-washing, overuse of antibiotics, aseptic cleanliness, and lack of human contact might do more harm than good. The resulting allergies and autoimmune disorders might be worse than the infectious disease they replace. Socially and biologically, health comes from community. Life does not thrive in isolation.
Seeing the world in us-versus-them terms blinds us to the reality that life and health happen in community. To take the example of infectious diseases, we fail to look beyond the evil pathogen and ask, What is the role of viruses in the microbiome? (See also here.) What are the body conditions under which harmful viruses proliferate? Why do some people have mild symptoms and others severe ones (besides the catch-all non-explanation of “low resistance”)? What positive role might flus, colds, and other non-lethal diseases play in the maintenance of health?
War-on-germs thinking brings results akin to those of the War on Terror, War on Crime, War on Weeds, and the endless wars we fight politically and interpersonally. First, it generates endless war; second, it diverts attention from the ground conditions that breed illness, terrorism, crime, weeds, and the rest.
Despite politicians’ perennial claim that they pursue war for the sake of peace, war inevitably breeds more war. Bombing countries to kill terrorists not only ignores the ground conditions of terrorism, it exacerbates those conditions. Locking up criminals not only ignores the conditions that breed crime, it creates those conditions when it breaks up families and communities and acculturates the incarcerated to criminality. And regimes of antibiotics, vaccines, antivirals, and other medicines wreak havoc on body ecology, which is the foundation of strong immunity. Outside the body, the massive spraying campaigns sparked by Zika, Dengue Fever, and now Covid-19 will visit untold damage upon nature’s ecology. Has anyone considered what the effects on the ecosystem will be when we douse it with antiviral compounds? Such a policy (which has been implemented in various places in China and India) is only thinkable from the mindset of separation, which does not understand that viruses are integral to the web of life.
To understand the point about ground conditions, consider some mortality statistics from Italy (from its National Health Institute), based on an analysis of hundreds of Covid-19 fatalities. Of those analyzed, less than 1% were free of serious chronic health conditions. Some 75% suffered from hypertension, 35% from diabetes, 33% from cardiac ischemia, 24% from atrial fibrillation, 18% from low renal function, along with other conditions that I couldn’t decipher from the Italian report. Nearly half the deceased had three or more of these serious pathologies. Americans, beset by obesity, diabetes, and other chronic ailments, are at least as vulnerable as Italians. Should we blame the virus then (which killed few otherwise healthy people), or shall we blame underlying poor health? Here again the analogy of the taut rope applies. Millions of people in the modern world are in a precarious state of health, just waiting for something that would normally be trivial to send them over the edge. Of course, in the short term we want to save their lives; the danger is that we lose ourselves in an endless succession of short terms, fighting one infectious disease after another, and never engage the ground conditions that make people so vulnerable. That is a much harder problem, because these ground conditions will not change via fighting. There is no pathogen that causes diabetes or obesity, addiction, depression, or PTSD. Their causes are not an Other, not some virus separate from ourselves, and we its victims.
Even in diseases like Covid-19, in which we can name a pathogenic virus, matters are not so simple as a war between virus and victim. There is an alternative to the germ theory of disease that holds germs to be part of a larger process. When conditions are right, they multiply in the body, sometimes killing the host, but also, potentially, improving the conditions that accommodated them to begin with, for example by cleaning out accumulated toxic debris via mucus discharge, or (metaphorically speaking) burning them up with fever. Sometimes called “terrain theory,” it says that germs are more symptom than cause of disease. As one meme explains it: “Your fish is sick. Germ theory: isolate the fish. Terrain theory: clean the tank.”
A certain schizophrenia afflicts the modern culture of health. On the one hand, there is a burgeoning wellness movement that embraces alternative and holistic medicine. It advocates herbs, meditation, and yoga to boost immunity. It validates the emotional and spiritual dimensions of health, such as the power of attitudes and beliefs to sicken or to heal. All of this seems to have disappeared under the Covid tsunami, as society defaults to the old orthodoxy.
Case in point: California acupuncturists have been forced to shut down, having been deemed “non-essential.” This is perfectly understandable from the perspective of conventional virology. But as one acupuncturist on Facebook observed, “What about my patient who I’m working with to get off opioids for his back pain? He’s going to have to start using them again.” From the worldview of medical authority, alternative modalities, social interaction, yoga classes, supplements, and so on are frivolous when it comes to real diseases caused by real viruses. They are relegated to an etheric realm of “wellness” in the face of a crisis. The resurgence of orthodoxy under Covid-19 is so intense that anything remotely unconventional, such as intravenous vitamin C, was completely off the table in the United States until two days ago (articles still abound “debunking” the “myth” that vitamin C can help fight Covid-19). Nor have I heard the CDC evangelize the benefits of elderberry extract, medicinal mushrooms, cutting sugar intake, NAC (N-acetyl L-cysteine), astragalus, or vitamin D. These are not just mushy speculation about “wellness,” but are supported by extensive research and physiological explanations. For example, NAC (general info, double-blind placebo-controlled study) has been shown to radically reduce incidence and severity of symptoms in flu-like illnesses.
As the statistics I offered earlier on autoimmunity, obesity, etc. indicate, America and the modern world in general are facing a health crisis. Is the answer to do what we’ve been doing, only more thoroughly? The response so far to Covid has been to double down on the orthodoxy and sweep unconventional practices and dissenting viewpoints aside. Another response would be to widen our lens and examine the entire system, including who pays for it, how access is granted, and how research is funded, but also expanding out to include marginal fields like herbal medicine, functional medicine, and energy medicine. Perhaps we can take this opportunity to reevaluate prevailing theories of illness, health, and the body. Yes, let’s protect the sickened fish as best we can right now, but maybe next time we won’t have to isolate and drug so many fish, if we can clean the tank.
I’m not telling you to run out right now and buy NAC or any other supplement, nor that we as a society should abruptly shift our response, cease social distancing immediately, and start taking supplements instead. But we can use the break in normal, this pause at a crossroads, to consciously choose what path we shall follow moving forward: what kind of healthcare system, what paradigm of health, what kind of society. This reevaluation is already happening, as ideas like universal free healthcare in the USA gain new momentum. And that path leads to forks as well. What kind of healthcare will be universalized? Will it be merely available to all, or mandatory for all – each citizen a patient, perhaps with an invisible ink barcode tattoo certifying one is up to date on all compulsory vaccines and check-ups. Then you can go to school, board a plane, or enter a restaurant. This is one path to the future that is available to us.
Another option is available now too. Instead of doubling down on control, we could finally embrace the holistic paradigms and practices that have been waiting on the margins, waiting for the center to dissolve so that, in our humbled state, we can bring them into the center and build a new system around them.
The Coronation
There is an alternative to the paradise of perfect control that our civilization has so long pursued, and that recedes as fast as our progress, like a mirage on the horizon. Yes, we can proceed as before down the path toward greater insulation, isolation, domination, and separation. We can normalize heightened levels of separation and control, believe that they are necessary to keep us safe, and accept a world in which we are afraid to be near each other. Or we can take advantage of this pause, this break in normal, to turn onto a path of reunion, of holism, of the restoring of lost connections, of the repair of community and the rejoining of the web of life.
Do we double down on protecting the separate self, or do we accept the invitation into a world where all of us are in this together? It isn’t just in medicine we encounter this question: it visits us politically, economically, and in our personal lives as well. Take for example the issue of hoarding, which embodies the idea, “There won’t be enough for everyone, so I am going to make sure there is enough for me.” Another response might be, “Some don’t have enough, so I will share what I have with them.” Are we to be survivalists or helpers? What is life for?
On a larger scale, people are asking questions that have until now lurked on activist margins. What should we do about the homeless? What should we do about the people in prisons? In Third World slums? What should we do about the unemployed? What about all the hotel maids, the Uber drivers, the plumbers and janitors and bus drivers and cashiers who cannot work from home? And so now, finally, ideas like student debt relief and universal basic income are blossoming. “How do we protect those susceptible to Covid?” invites us into “How do we care for vulnerable people in general?”
That is the impulse that stirs in us, regardless of the superficialities of our opinions about Covid’s severity, origin, or best policy to address it. It is saying, let’s get serious about taking care of each other. Let’s remember how precious we all are and how precious life is. Let’s take inventory of our civilization, strip it down to its studs, and see if we can build one more beautiful.
As Covid stirs our compassion, more and more of us realize that we don’t want to go back to a normal so sorely lacking it. We have the opportunity now to forge a new, more compassionate normal.
Hopeful signs abound that this is happening. The United States government, which has long seemed the captive of heartless corporate interests, has unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars in direct payments to families. Donald Trump, not known as a paragon of compassion, has put a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions. Certainly one can take a cynical view of both these developments; nonetheless, they embody the principle of caring for the vulnerable.
From all over the world we hear stories of solidarity and healing. One friend described sending $100 each to ten strangers who were in dire need. My son, who until a few days ago worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, said people were tipping at five times the normal rate – and these are working class people, many of them Hispanic truck drivers, who are economically insecure themselves. Doctors, nurses, and “essential workers” in other professions risk their lives to serve the public. Here are some more examples of the love and kindness eruption, courtesy of ServiceSpace:
Perhaps we’re in the middle of living into that new story. Imagine Italian airforce using Pavoratti, Spanish military doing acts of service, and street police playing guitars — to *inspire*. Corporations giving unexpected wage hikes. Canadians starting “Kindness Mongering.” Six year old in Australia adorably gifting her tooth fairy money, an 8th grader in Japan making 612 masks, and college kids everywhere buying groceries for elders. Cuba sending an army in “white robes” (doctors) to help Italy. A landlord allowing tenants to stay without rent, an Irish priest’s poem going viral, disabled activitists producing hand sanitizer. Imagine. Sometimes a crisis mirrors our deepest impulse — that we can always respond with compassion.
As Rebecca Solnit describes in her marvelous book, A Paradise Built in Hell, disaster often liberates solidarity. A more beautiful world shimmers just beneath the surface, bobbing up whenever the systems that hold it underwater loosen their grip.
For a long time we, as a collective, have stood helpless in the face of an ever-sickening society. Whether it is declining health, decaying infrastructure, depression, suicide, addiction, ecological degradation, or concentration of wealth, the symptoms of civilizational malaise in the developed world are plain to see, but we have been stuck in the systems and patterns that cause them. Now, Covid has gifted us a reset.
A million forking paths lie before us. Universal basic income could mean an end to economic insecurity and the flowering of creativity as millions are freed from the work that Covid has shown us is less necessary than we thought. Or it could mean, with the decimation of small businesses, dependency on the state for a stipend that comes with strict conditions. The crisis could usher in totalitarianism or solidarity; medical martial law or a holistic renaissance; greater fear of the microbial world, or greater resiliency in participation in it; permanent norms of social distancing, or a renewed desire to come together.
What can guide us, as individuals and as a society, as we walk the garden of forking paths? At each junction, we can be aware of what we follow: fear or love, self-preservation or generosity. Shall we live in fear and build a society based on it? Shall we live to preserve our separate selves? Shall we use the crisis as a weapon against our political enemies? These are not all-or-nothing questions, all fear or all love. It is that a next step into love lies before us. It feels daring, but not reckless. It treasures life, while accepting death. And it trusts that with each step, the next will become visible.
Please don’t think that choosing love over fear can be accomplished solely through an act of will, and that fear too can be conquered like a virus. The virus we face here is fear, whether it is fear of Covid-19, or fear of the totalitarian response to it, and this virus too has its terrain. Fear, along with addiction, depression, and a host of physical ills, flourishes in a terrain of separation and trauma: inherited trauma, childhood trauma, violence, war, abuse, neglect, shame, punishment, poverty, and the muted, normalized trauma that affects nearly everyone who lives in a monetized economy, undergoes modern schooling, or lives without community or connection to place. This terrain can be changed, by trauma healing on a personal level, by systemic change toward a more compassionate society, and by transforming the basic narrative of separation: the separate self in a world of other, me separate from you, humanity separate from nature. To be alone is a primal fear, and modern society has rendered us more and more alone. But the time of Reunion is here. Every act of compassion, kindness, courage, or generosity heals us from the story of separation, because it assures both actor and witness that we are in this together.
I will conclude by invoking one more dimension of the relationship between humans and viruses. Viruses are integral to evolution, not just of humans but of all eukaryotes. Viruses can transfer DNA from organism to organism, sometimes inserting it into the germline (where it becomes heritable). Known as horizontal gene transfer, this is a primary mechanism of evolution, allowing life to evolve together much faster than is possible through random mutation. As Lynn Margulis once put it, we are our viruses.
And now let me venture into speculative territory. Perhaps the great diseases of civilization have quickened our biological and cultural evolution, bestowing key genetic information and offering both individual and collective initiation. Could the current pandemic be just that? Novel RNA codes are spreading from human to human, imbuing us with new genetic information; at the same time, we are receiving other, esoteric, “codes” that ride the back of the biological ones, disrupting our narratives and systems in the same way that an illness disrupts bodily physiology. The phenomenon follows the template of initiation: separation from normality, followed by a dilemma, breakdown, or ordeal, followed (if it is to be complete) by reintegration and celebration.
Now the question arises: Initiation into what? What is the specific nature and purpose of this initiation?The popular name for the pandemic offers a clue: coronavirus. A corona is a crown. “Novel coronavirus pandemic” means “a new coronation for all.”
Already we can feel the power of who we might become. A true sovereign does not run in fear from life or from death. A true sovereign does not dominate and conquer (that is a shadow archetype, the Tyrant). The true sovereign serves the people, serves life, and respects the sovereignty of all people. The coronation marks the emergence of the unconscious into consciousness, the crystallization of chaos into order, the transcendence of compulsion into choice. We become the rulers of that which had ruled us. The New World Order that the conspiracy theorists fear is a shadow of the glorious possibility available to sovereign beings. No longer the vassals of fear, we can bring order to the kingdom and build an intentional society on the love already shining through the cracks of the world of separation.
Beautiful … thank you.
Perhaps for the earth to flourish we should think about the trillions of fish and animals we are killing to fill our stomachs. Methane is denser and more poisonous than CO2 and yet we continue to farm animals unnecessarily. No matter how much we cut back on using cars, aeroplanes, fossil fuels it won’t make as much difference as stopping methane in the atmosphere! If we are to celebrate life, which is not measured by saving humans as the most important being on this earth, then we have to view all life, all inanimate ‘things’ such as rocks, mountains and rivers as part of us. Saving the Earth is not about saving humans. Surely it’s about preserving this island in space for everything that exists here whether the human strain continues or not. How willing are we to take the steps needed to stop using the yardstick of humanness to measure the worth of something, to show true compassion to all. What are we really willing to do or give up?
No children huh ?
Lia – I personally want my children to live in a world of peace and harmony. Isn’t that what every mother wants? The torture and murder of captive and raped animals is horrifying. I agree with Cameron, “if WE can catch it ourselves” then eat it. If you truly feel called to hunt and sacrifice an animals for your family, then so be it. But there is no necessity in that effort. I’d rather invest time in watering my garden. Thank you Carole and Cameron for your comments – I thought both of you were on the same page (i can’t tell the intent of Carmeron’s capitalization).
Exactly until the world population is no more than one thousand million.
RESPONSE TO CAROLE WILDING: It’s the METHOD of farming. DEATH is required for LIFE. WE are HERE because of DEATH. BUT. THE LIFE DEATH CYCLE HAS TO BE MANAGED VIA NATURE. CURRENTLY, IT IS MANAGED BY HUMANS WHO ARE NOT PART OF NATURE…this has been illustrated with Yellowstone…the only thing you are right about is FARMED animals is the problem. Look to the Hadza. Meat-eaters but very rarely. That’s what our diet should be. Meat if WE can catch it ourselves….unfortunately, the chances of humans returning to nature are like 0%. People do not want to give up what they have now (a lot of things of necessary for today’s society). They would rather live with it and put a band-aid on everything…I could go on and on, but basically we are stuck in a cycle, an unnatural cycle…and it’s gonna take, what feels like divine intervention to save us (us being ALL life)…the best we can do individually is to keep learning, as Charles says, look at all sides (global warming vs global cooling) … there isn’t even a side here to choose. It’s in the MIDDLE.
There will be a massive human die off soon due to famine and disease. Every Grand Solar Minimum this has happened. Our industrial society and machine operated farms are not a modern remedy for the inevitable, but rather a further liability. In our lifetimes we will see a significant population reduction.
How can you say, “humans are not part of nature”?
Spot on Carole.
By and large, we are generally only thinking of the future of humankind when we talk about saving the world. Don’t worry; the earth will take care of us before we can totally destroy it.
Need more thinking and reflection like this. Touched my soul.
Mine too
WhT a brilliant and seemingly well researched article. At some time however the elephant in the room called polulation must be exposed and debated. Rampant increases in third world countries spilling out into western culture cannot be allowed to go on unchecked . Surely we all including conservatives and greenies alike must unite to help these nations dramatically cut their populations and assist them materially raise their living standards whilst this is being achieved. Population generally must be reduced and whilst we are doing that a concentrated effort must get underway to clean up the planet with emphasis on the worlds oceans. Surely population of more than sixty million in a country the size of the UK is unsustainable pointing out not just third world countries need to do something now. China, India etc etc are just more examples and there are doubtless more..
Sadly human nature being what is is I sincerely doubt anyone is listening. If they were and population was reduced by half over time by natural means then in a couple of hundred years people of the planet could live in harmony with all earths creatures with blue skies and clear plentiful running water.
Unfortunately the corporate society of 100 or so corporations who do all the polluting will not stop as the governments we elect sponsor them to do it. What we are witnessing is the weakness of the democratic system we have created
You are right on, Charles.
I am just now writing for the umpteenth time about the fallacies of thinking that incremental changes and “offsets” can stem the ecological degradation of continue expansion of human consumption footprints. The thinking that drives the current economic system can’t see what it does to ecology, much less do anything about it.
Are its proponents intentionally evil? No. Deluded? Yes.
We want to keep the goodies provided by industrial overkill while preserving ecology too, and human minds will exercise every psychological trick to convince us that somehow this is possible, and that we are sane. There’s little grasp of ecologies as total systems , of which we are a part. So if we just fix one or two problems, the system of growth can keep going. We don’t know what to do without it.
Once a month I host a teleconference group of people deeply interested in this problem. Interested in joining? I’m at doc@compression.org.
Yes
Charles, I think you have a great idea, but are you aware of how many dozens of others, in one way or another, have tried the same thing, with complete failure as a result?
I’ve made this case to dozens of folks attacking “climate change” – “let’s assume what you say about climate change is correct; not just the scientific view you present, but the motivations of those “promoting’ climate change, that they want to establish a totalitarian, socialist government. Wouldn’t it still be a good thing to have clean air, drinkable water, to avoid killing off millions of species, etc.
Virtually every time I’ve written this, initially, there is total agreement, and within a few sentences, it veers back into the same kind of vitriol and refusal to listen.
I believe that somewhere implicit in your assumptions is lurking a false equivalence. There are different views, but there are also motivated, delusional views. Good liberals/progressives/newly awakened spiritual folks have a hard time speaking of the latter.
With Life’s experiencce of addiction in/as me, I can testify to the extent that the illusion of “management” presents. To experience a aseemingly hopeless (understatement) situation reverse itself, turned out to be quite a privledge for me. Because of it, I can extrapolate from my recovery the lessons of “management” actually causing the problem. Even recovery from addictions is just a metaphor, because in applying this idea to an individual addiction, it can seem like management is workin for the “defined” problem of that addiction. Yet the parrallels are endless. The feeling of addicts that they have tried SO much SO long IS the seemingly hopeless situation, and there is a long hell where that is a self fullfilling prophecy.. It is the same for trying to fix the world, and “others”. Coming from the presumption that there are “others” who are like “this” or like “that”, some are realizing that it is just Life maintaining its addiction to being “separate” people. To see another as “them” and what they’re “like”, is going to reinforce it for them and “you” (for Life, actually). It may seem counter intuitive to not try to change others and their motivations, but that’s where the addiction metaphor has been a saving grace. It’s a miracle to have a “personal” experience of it, and see Life beginnng to use it for all (transcending the separateness of even “diagnosed” addicts). Charles does it eloquently. It doesn’t mean management doesn’t seem to continue to happen, but “doing” step 1 first eventually shows it’s truth even in the “story” of management. Step 1 would be admitting that Life is in denial about being One, and that the game of playing as separate selves managing themsellves and each other has come to show the inherent unmanageabilty underneath it. Let’s look for the motivation to be with another as ourSelf, before we look to changing their motivation. The separate self will testify to the immpossibilities. As a recovered drug addict, I can testify to the falseness of the “reality” of impossibilities..
Thank you for speaking to the real problem: the idea we cling to that we are NOT One and therefore, our separate and competing interests are the issue. True healing requires a shift from the material world to this essential truth. That’s a huge shift in awareness that often seems impossible given the way we normally think. But that’s just it, isn’t it? We think we can think our way through our egoic trance whereas we need to see our investment in the trance and realize what it is costing us. Then, and only then can we consider the alternative of acknowledging our shared interests both for selfishness and selflessness and the power to make a better choice in this moment.
Absolutely right on! All of it. And I quote, “We need to explore forms of development and economy in which humans thrive without extracting more and more from the world.”
Big Thank You Charles!
Love & Blessings to us all.
Charles, this essay comes, for me, at the precise time I needed to ‘hear’ it. Again, for me, it is easily the most important writing I have been exposed to on the macriscopic earth issues facing us today,.
To say “Thank you” for sharing your wisdom and your insights is so inadequate in the context of the critical nature of your subject matter but thank you, nonetheless!
Your words so accurately and eloquently communicate what many in the movement for life are trying to describe. May many people far and wide read this essay.
When you’re back in Asheville come see us at the UNCA market and try our nourishing bread.
“This commitment should not depend on the trend in global temperature.” Nor should it depend on an extinction timetable. Whether our species has a week, a year, a decade, or a century remaining, let us act in the service of Life and Truth.
Yes. Thank you for saying it so well.
Thank you Charles – may I offer you the representations I have been asked to put into print, which might be regarded as being in parallel or complementary to your work. http://www.natures-sway.co.uk/pages/the-limits-of-thinking-and-the-vision-beyond/ Michael Brookman michael@natures-sway.co.uk
Hello Charles. Certainly appreciate you speaking up about issues. As one whose mission is to bridge Oneness & the Commons like you, knowing whoever owns the governments, the money making machine, the destructive agenda of Nature & Humanity, we can still start gathering in our communities; building self-sufficiency. We can create shared resource distribution, ecological housing, scaled organic food production, shared transport & well-being….and without money as The Venus Project in FLA has blueprinted. Agreed climate change story has pulled humans together, yet it is a story conjured by those making millions off of it, when in truth, our Planet, with us following, is evolving within the cosmos soon enough, as the Indigenous & history foretells, so we don’t know what our future brings except history & research agrees with higher consciousness for the better. I say, listen to your heart, hear the compassionate call for your service here on the Planet right now, discern,discern,discern what doesn’t sound right, & start collaborating for the good of all. We’ve been lied to, programmed, for so long by those who want power over, that the heart within is our only true wisdom, yes? Thank you again Charles for speaking from you heart, & your courage from one of your Elders.
Well said, as always. Thank you. I have some success with asking people what they are doing to insure theirs and their community/bioregion survival. What is needed for survival? A staggering number of people haven’t a clue. We take way too much for granted. On a lighter note, I’ve always been a huge fan of barefoot!
No mention of the growth of human population?
I can’t meet every issue in one essay. I go into the topic in depth in the upcoming book however.
One question and one comment:
1). What is an “evolutionary truth”? You use this term at the start of the essay but I’m not certain what it means. How is an evolutionary truth distinct from any other truth or fact?
2). Perhaps the rising tide of depression and suicide is sign of the biosystem’s self-correcting capability. If humans are not nourishing the system, but are instead degrading it for all beings, then maybe culling the human population is not a bad thing from the system’s point of view. Maybe we need to de-stigmatize suicide and make it easier to access methods for assisted suicide, even for the non-terminally ill. That may conflict with your assertion that the depletion of life is the biggest threat to the climate and the biosphere. (By the way, this is not a sarcastic comment. I truly wonder if more volition about continuing or ceasing our own destructive lives needs to be part of repairing the system).
Charles –
I’m a very big fan of your writings (and speaking) so far. I see your voice as crucially important for our times, generally. And I agree with the basics of your Living Planet View. But I think you are also dangerously wrong in your overview assessment of the best available climate science. There are no real “cracks” forming in the global warming / climate change consensus. Anthropogenic climate change (global warming), resulting primarily from increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations, is undoubtedly at least as great a risk and ongoing catastrophe as all of the other items you listed as violations to biospheric health. That these risks and catastrophes are intertwined and mutually self-reinforcing is also true. And it’s crucial to say so! And thanks for doing that!
That said, the counter-consensus links/sources you pointed the reader to in this piece certainly do not pass the sniff test. As you are well aware, there has been a decades long, well-funded (by the fossil fuel industry) effort to raise doubts about the scientific consensus in climate science. The counter-consensus links you provided above are either directly or indirectly implicated in this fossil-funded effort to misinform and disinform the public, so as to perpetuate the notion that the consensus is on shaky ground.
Unfortunately, the corporate-funded climate disinformation campaign, often funded covertly with “dark money,” remains vast and powerful — and active. They employ sneaky people and methods to appear to cause “cracks” in the very consensus we’re discussing here. Scientific results and studies are deliberately misrepresented by these people in order to dissuade us from taking the consensus as seriously as it should be. I recommend checking various counter-disinformation websites, such as https://www.desmogblog.com , to explore how we may be being deliberately mislead. It’s also worth a moment to use your favorite internet search engine to explore under the search terms “climate disinformation”.
That said, you are completely right to encourage us to take care of Earth everywhere, in every detail, and not to neglect all other environmental and ecological concerns. All things are intertwined and interconnected. (Those words are synonyms, I know, but for emphasis I will use both!) To address the very real climate crisis, we must nurture life everywhere, just as you say.
Warmly,
James
Charles,
James speaks my mind exactly. I believe that your voice about the need to see our interbeing and act with reverance for the precious life and life-support systems of our Living Planet (regardless of climate change) is very important. Indeed our failure to do so is what has led to the climate crisis in the first place.
On the other hand, I’m deeply troubled that a thought leader like you would be swayed by false equivalencies between climate deniers and climate scientists.
For you to say, “Will the planet warm or cool? I have no idea” is to capitulate to the fossil-fuel industry proganda machine.
I urge you to read climate historian Naomi Oreskes’ “Merchants of Doubt” or watch the film by the same name to understand that the “polarization” and “debate” about climate science are deliberately cultivated by some of the same lobbyists who promulgated doubt about the dangers of cigarattes.
If someone asked you, “Do you believe smoking cigarettes cause cancer?”, would you say “I have no idea, some scientists say it does and some say it doesn’t”? Or would you defer to non-tabacco industry scientists who have studied the evidence in depth?
The point isn’t whether the earth is warming or cooling. The point is that its life support systems are under severe threat. Please don’t fall into the trap of throwing up your hands in the face of deliberately sown doubt. By doing so you undermine the crediblity of others in the movement to preserve the life-support systems of our one and only Planet Earth.
Thank you for listening to my concern. I’m wondering if you are moved in any way by it?
I must agree with Linda and James, and I’d also chime in with don solomon above – OF COURSE it would be great if western industrial civilization could be persuaded to care about groundwater contamination, air and water quality, etc. etc as well as theoretically reachable ideals like a gift economy. But you see how far those arguments have moved the needle to date. No, the only argument that might wake up a few more souls is the one that’s right in front of us, fully documented by sound science: as a result of greenhouse gasses caused by fossil fuel exploitation, the earth is warming – unequivocally, rapidly, and irreversibly, with very grave and increasingly obvious consequences for the future continuance of our near and dear, deaf, dumb, and blind industrial civilization.
Thanks James, I fully agree with your point. One just has to google the name of the climate denier that Charles cites at the beginning of his post to see that he has not hesitated to lie and cheat, almost certainly, as you write, paid to do so… (e.g. . https://davidappell.blogspot.com/…/another-sleazy-photoshop…; https://andthentheresphysics.wordpress.com/…/dangerously-l…/; https://blog.hotwhopper.com/…/denier-weirdness-crank-blog-p… , https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-bet-for-charity-20… etc). I find it highly frustrating to still have to argue that climate change is taking place when the genuine evidence is so overwhelming!…. And yes of course all things are interconnected and we must nurture life everywhere. But when our house is on fire we don’t spend too long deciding whether the flames are real or not, or who started the fire, or anything else ! Now the planet is on fire. I’ve responded to another comment here, mentioning a climate expert who refuses to fly, despite participating to many conferences all over the world (but remained far more hesitant about the need to shift our diets in an interview 4 years ago, thus showing how we each have our blind spots as to what actions are most crucial (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5XoLUtig2c) !
Amen
I will copy this reply into other comments along these lines.
I thank you all for your frank comments about false equivalencies and having “forfeited my right to be taken seriously.” I am glad people are speaking their minds.
I think these criticisms might be missing the deeper strategy here. Essentially what I am trying to do is unlock a stuck debate. In doing my book research, I was struck by an observation by Per Espen Stoknes: ““Long-term surveys show that people were more concerned with climate change in wealthy democracies 25 years ago than they are today. So the more science, the more IPCC assessments we have, the more the evidence accumulates, the less concerned the public is. To the rational mind this is a complete mystery.”
Obviously something is not working for the environmental movement. The carnage over the last 25 years has accelerated. So one thing I am doing by citing skeptical websites (without the customary scathing disclaimer) is to signal to that camp, “I have read your material. I am not ignoring you.”
I am trying to evade the polarizing lens that, if applied, would mean instant dismissal from climate-doubting readers. I think I can engage environmental interest in people who doubt climate change. And perhaps more importantly, engage people who avoid the issue because it just seems so hopeless and they’ve heard it all before. This is something I realized when a friend, a prominent environmental crusader, with huge publicity convened a climate meeting in his city and almost no one came except for a few Unitarians from his church. And soon after I published an article with “climate change” in the title and someone wrote me saying, “I almost didn’t read this article because it was about climate change and I’m sick of hearing about it…”
So I thought, we need a different approach.
However, I do think we have a difference of opinion that goes beyond strategy and rhetoric. I believe that while greenhouse gases add further stress to an already severely challenged system, the fundamental problem is direct ecosystem degradation (e.g. deforestation, wetland draining, soil erosion, industrial fishing…) Often, this view leads to the same things that the greenhouse-first view wants (such as banning fracking, stopping pipelines, ending mountaintop removal, etc.). However, there are other things that the greenhouse view supports that I think will worsen the problem. Such as geoengineering via sulfur aerosols. Such as massive biofuels plantations. Such as big hydro. Of course, ecosystem degradation and climatic change are mutually reinforcing. Nonetheless, a lot of things that we blame reflexively on climate change are actually attributable to other forms of ecocide.
I don’t think we are going to change anything by ratcheting up current tactics of ridicule and alarm even more. It hasn’t worked. It isn’t going to work. If there were no other way, then I suppose we’d have to try, but there is another way. It is to engage another narrative frame for the environmental crisis.
Climate change or no, there are good reasons to conserve forests, soil, wetlands, etc. From the Living Planet viewpoint, we don’t need greenhouse arguments at stop drilling, fracking, cutting, and so on. Why exclude and alienate those who question the consensus, when we don’t need to?
Finally, I also hold to the other point of the essay. We could be wrong about warming. Or if we are right, a long-term warming trend could be temporarily overridden by solar fluctuations or other natural factors, making it appear we are wrong. Warming is a dangerous horse to hitch the environmental wagon to. Anyway, I do go much more deeply into these issues in the book.
Charles
Ouch, ouch, ouch. You have alas, drunk the climate denial Kool-aid.
Solar fluctuations? Straight out of the climate denial text-books. I’m afraid that from now on I must assume that you have become a climate denier.
All of your other points about need to love our living planet, and our local ecosystems, are spot on. But you have created a total straw man, in your supposition that people who care about climate issues do not care equally as much about ecological issues. I’ve been a climate activist for 20+ years, and I don’t know a single fellow activist who does not share all of your ecological concerns, and your vision of a future in which we find a way to live in harmony with nature.
When you say in your video that “We have put way too much emphasis on fossil fuels and emissions”, the people at Exxon, Shell, and other oil companies clap with pride. You are really not helping the discussion going forward by suggesting that the climate denial arguments have equal weight with the climate science. You are simply siding with them, against the overwhelming majority of the world’s climate scientists. Yuk. It’s a real shame.
Well said.
Thank you very much. I pray your wisdom spreads far and wide. Actions following, also far and wide!
I jumped into the Climate Change aspect a little over a year ago. Little did I know how much it would twine with reclaiming my soul.
My phrasing now is that we are all looking for a Sense of Belonging and a Sense of Place.
Once again: brilliant! Thanks for your work and much love,
Martin
If reality is an agreed upon construct, then as people, like myself, no longer focus attention on the issue, it ceases to exist.
The bigger tacit agreement is that human life should continue. If one comes to the conclusion that humans are a virus to the loving planet then their eradication is a good thing. And if reality is an agreed upon construct, then as more people participate in this world view, the more it becomes a reality.
I have found peace in not thinking about anything beyond the here and now. Wishing for each days continued existence.
But there was a time when I focused on humans finding purposed in evolving into something like the nervous system of the living planet (at a different facile scale). But reality is an agreed upon construct, and too many visualize death and destruction. So it must be. But, I don’t focus any attention on it.
I have faith that the living earth will do what is good and right.
…and an ice age, an artic hurricane, that quickly blankets the northern hemisphere in hundreds of feet of snow – would be poetic.
Really welcome this, Charles. I have been suffering from confusion about what is really happening on global warning etc. but I KNOW we are hurting ourselves when we damage our world. We are it. Many thanks.
Thank you Charles. I so enjoy, or should I say appreciate, your thoughts and insights. Of course you are correct. The destruction of all life systems, by “a thousand cuts” , is so insane and filled with so much delusion wherein we pretend to address core issues while ignoring the heart of the matter – our spiritual decay, decadence and despondency. We are connected and linked to all life systems, and it is our separation, alienation and false notions of self-sufficiency that must me upended, transformed and regenerated if we are to love our way into a new epoch.
I doubt that you are the same Kevin Anderson that I admire so much for taking personally much action against climate change? Kevin is a UK top climate expert who has for a long time now refused to fly – so attends conferences by train, boat – or skype – only? He very much agrees with you and Charles that we need a systemic approach but he also believes that each one of us should urgently walk our talk, as he does…
Here is one example of Kevin’s blog: https://kevinanderson.info/blog/a-precis-of-my-take-on-our-collective-stupidity/. He is also on Twitter etc…
I trust your UK top climate scientist has also changed his eating. If one really believed that global warming is threatening humanity and the entire ecosystem (as I do, while also believing that Charles grasps the far bigger picture), then the first thing one would do would be to eat at least vegetarian, if not vegan. PERIOD. If one is not changing one’s eating in this relatively easy fashion, then one’s “concern” about global warming (and concern for nonhuman animals, as well, IMO), no matter how passionately expressed, is transparent BS. The same goes for cutting down one’s use of fossil fuels (like your climate scientist is doing), although stopping all use of them is too much of a challenge right now to justify being overly-judgmental. I’m going to check out the blog you reference, and thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Thank you Newton!! Eating vegan is easy, delicious, good for you, and good for the evironment. I wish I knew sooner!!
Excellent! A beautiful and unifying article. We all need to come together to recognize ourselves as just one piece of the puzzle, not separate from or above everything else in the earth’s delicate and perfectly designed balance. I am certain I am no happier than any of my ancestors because of what we call “modern conveniences” and I minimize them as much as I can.
Thank you, Charles ! For your eloquence, your insightfulness and your spirit of collaboration with all things of this world.
“We need to explore forms of development and economy in which humans thrive without extracting more and more from the world.” – ues exactly. Thank you, Charles, for lending your voice to truths that have been buried in the chaos of our “modern” world … I bow to you <3
You describe it so well. The fullness of how we can make real changes, if life forms and a living planet are important to us.
My fear is that life ecology, is no concern to those who drive their big cars, wear fancy shoes and talk about things, rather than
walk barefoot collecting their breakfast from their family farm and share life with birds and bees, brothers and daughters, in laws and
a few outcasts.
Thank you for your bold and brave conviction to changing our minds and planting seeds for a new model.
“The only wealth is life.” – John Ruskin
Thank you for articulating so very well the conclusions that I reached some time ago.
If only we can abandon this death cult and embrace the living world around us will all be well.
It really is easy to say no to all that cultural baggage. Trying to convince others is the difficult part.
I resonate 100% to all that you have so elegantly articulated here, Charles. How I wish I knew how to induce EVERYONE to read it–or even 1% of people, for that matter. very sadly, however, those who are most in need of this powerful antidote to their ignorance are precisely the ones who are least likely to pay it heed.
Just as is true of allopathic medicine, the strongly prevailing emphasis in our current cultural paradigm is on treating symptoms, rather than addressing their multiple root causes, most of which are lifestyle- related. It seems to me that the ultimate root cause of of ALL of the tragic trends toward ecocide is–exactly as you point out so cogently–namely the over-arching “story” (or, perhaps, even more accurately) the outright DELUSION that we humans are somehow separate from our entire biosphere.
May this exceedingly wise and compassionate essay be a powerful wake-up call to all who abide in ignorance. I will do all I can to share it with others.
Yes, and, complexifying the issue in regard to climate change, at this very moment, may be the final straw in overwhelming the masses ability to understand the simplest principles of climate science and ecology. The difference between the celebrated guru and the hung man is that the guru knew who to share his ideas with and the hung man tried to share it with everyone (thank you Stan Grof).
Thank you Charles for your bigger picture. I feel saner now.
So eloquent! Thank you Charles. I so appreciate you.
What can one person do?? Here’s what: Quit wasting time, energy, and attention on polarized science/anti-science, liberal/conservative, corporatist/green arguments. Just (1) make compost — (2) plant something — (3) pee on the ground.
Right on.
I thank you for this, Charles. You are digging underneath the climate change issue to reveal the essence of the breakdown: the loss of our sacred connection to the whole of life. We are using and abusing like an addict with no awareness of our relationships or the consequences. There are so many tragic reasons to reorient ourselves to this larger web of “all our relations.”
Sharing it
I love the way you express through the written word. So easy to interpret, thank you for your efforts…
Your treatises regrading climate change and preserving the ecology of a healthy earth is the best I have read. I think many others will agree with your POV.
IN these pieces most of the time I a missing the: so what shall we do? What is to be done? Stop everything? Stop something? What? And what not? And why?
Another aspect I am missing is that of healing ourselves. Without healing ourselves, “The key words are conservation, protection, regeneration, and repair”, I am not sure we are capable of helaing the planet. We are the planet too. We have been wounded and exploited and driven half insane by some of our fellow human beings. We, many of us, still go to work most days and by working for those entities who do harm, we do harm too. To ourselves and the planet – for we are the planet too; But what are we to do? Walk out and live in the forests? Back to the land? If not that, then what? We have been on the land once upon a time, and from there we got to here. Who says that going back to that point is going to be different this time?
“The motivation is to serve the flourishing of life – biological and human.” Human is biological, so there is not such thing as “biological AND human” there is only Life.
I thinkone of the reasons why not much is being done by large numbers of peopoe and entitites, or not nearly enough, is because nobody knows what to do. What do you think? If we don’t want to be here, where do we want to be? And how to get there?
And actually, is it true that ew don’t want to be here at all? I mean, life in the industrialised world is pretty cushy, I would say. Save for the insanity of jobs, commuting, traffic, pollution… there are restaurants and cinemas, there is fashion and sport, books and blogs, marriage and divorce, IVfFand surrogacy, machines that do almost everything for us (never mind us having to then go to the gym and walk on threadmills because we don’t walk to work or school), there are gays, and transpeople and blacks and whites and religious and secular, and efforts are being made to accept it all. There is fashion even for pets, accessories, consumer choice. Holidays and trips, high tech bicycles, self driving cars, electrical trucks, planes to fly anywhere we want. Ready made food, desserts and icecreams, burgers and salads, chocolate and coffee, biscuits and sugar, cigarettes and joints. Tens of thousands of items in supermarkets, everything seemingly available most of the time. So… life is… excuse my saying so, pretty good for a lot of people.
So… in order to serve lif (with which I agree completely)e, what do we do with all of that? Remember, it is not just that we can buy it all, it is also that we work to produce it all, sell it, serve it, provide it. It pays for our electricity bills (whether green or not), it pays for our houses and clothes, our bills, our education and even our blogs. So… how do we get out of here, or do we want to get out of here at all? And where do we go to next?
It is easy to say… oh, we just need love… Sure. It may be the case. But … what do we do actually in practical day to day life? What to abandon, and what to embrace. Why?
I have thought about it a lot. The only place I arrived at that remained stable no matter how much I questioned it is: traceless economy. Produce whatever you want, go whereever you want, do what you must, but leave no trace behind. No trace at all. Every industry, every effort, every activity needs to go in that direction. No trace when mining for minerals, or producing the solar panels, or making ‘green’ whatever, no trace when producing food, not in air, water or soil. No trace when eating, or sleeping, or brushing your teeth. 50% of all research on this planet needs to go in this direction for the next century or so. The other 50% of research needs to go into working out how to clean the current mess up – all the chemicals, hormones and pills and paints and heavy metals, plastics and microplastics, and air pollution, the entire lot. This applies espeially to research within rich entities (for example Amazon) – I can see a lot of imaginative thinking there, so they have the brain power. They have the money. They need to lead the way.
And all media outlets, thnkers, artists, film makers, photographers, scientists need to dedicate themselves to these subjects.
I think that is the only way… what do you think?
Lots of discussion of all these things in the book. But I think that the living planet view naturally suggests a lot of on-the-ground actions. It is healing on every level, from the inner to the social to the land-based….
Right on Charles. Insightful as usual.
the debate around climate change is driven by the very same agenda that exploits and rapes our earth – yes the earth the human and all beings are facing great cracks in the systems of sustenance of us all – there is not a one capitalist world view answer – there is no answer except to tinker around the edges with ‘solar alternatives ‘ etc and kid us all that something is happening. the change the real transformation is within us and how we perceive our role here on the earth – as part of it or as separate.
as part of the whole we treat the whole differently – we hold respect and loving intentions towards the earth that feeds us and then the ‘answers’ required come from our own capacity to take responsibility and make changes within our lives . when we are in debate we know we are still in separation – the rest of us are having a sacred conversation ..
with gratitude to you charles for your deep inquiry clarity and love
Thank you for this wonderful essay. I am writing my next book about the connection between physical health, emotional health and a healthy ecosystem. Whether by accident or design, humanity has created a system that is failing to meet our authentic needs or the needs of Mother Earth. Every one of us has to decide whether we are consumers or stewards. Are we here to destroy Nature to satisfy our conditioned cravings, or are we here to care for ourselves, each other and our beautiful planet. Earth may be the only source of life in our universe, and we have been given the gift of life to experience its wonder. So what are we going to do with this precious gift?
I appreciate and agree to a point that the fundamental problem of contemporary life is our deep disconnect and blatant disregard for all of nature — the birds and bees, the whales and flowers, the oceans and trees, all that lives and breathes and sustains us. Global warming is merely a symptom. But I would argue that an even more fundamental problem is our deep disconnect and blatant disregard for our dear selves, the heart and soul of us, and , so, our disconnect from our beloved brothers and sisters here on Mother Earth. May we all be called to do what it takes to wake up to our innate perfection, one or more of us at a time. As we do, we will come to understand that what we do for the earth and for each other we do for ourselves.
Great essay. Everything connects. Or, as Richard Rohr likes to say…”Everything Belongs”.
“In most polarized debates, evolutionary truths are revealed by questioning the tacit agreements that both sides share. ”
I can see how this strategy or way of addressing various polarized issues can be very threatening and paradoxically yet frightfully enlightening to either side. Think abortion.
What seems to happen, and, embarrassingly, it’s often happened to me, is that a genuine concern or a waking up to an issue somehow slowly or even suddenly devolves into an unannounced ideology that one feels the need to defend. The real concern or the genuine awakening process gets hijacked. I’ve noticed in myself and others the tendency to then come to the knee-jerk defense of the ideology (which of course isn’t considered an ideology by its defenders) which has somehow super-imposed itself over the original concern or the awakening thought process, suffocating it.
This seems to have happened, to some extent, to both of the polarized sides of the so-called climate debate. An actual dialogue which includes openness to additional facts, new experience, and alternative viewpoints turns into a debate of dueling ideologies. And ideologies tend to dig their heels into their rigid points of view, to the point that defending the ideology becomes the main goal, replacing any real discussion of the initial concern or awakening thought process with endless attempts to make the other side look bad (and anybody not on your side of the ideological fence is considered to be someone from the other side) while trying to make your ideological side look good. Any attempts at growing or at an expansion of awareness comes to a halt. Whereas the original concerning issue often stimulated by the heart or the awakening thought process of the spirit seems to die a slow or sudden death, and almost becomes a forgotten memory consumed by the dominance and firming up of the ideology. And the result is stuckness of thought and the diminishing of empathy. Which can often lead to violence of language and action. Which tends to have a powerful and fear-inducing pull to one side or the other. To hang out somewhere in the vast middle where you can have a wider and freer view, movement, and experience is a tough place to be without coming under some type of assault from the extremes. You don’t make too many friends with either side of that bridge.
But I’m convinced that it’s the intellectual and spiritual boundariless area where the best chance to get a more enlightened view and experience of reality resides.
A bridge has no allegiance to either side.”
― Les Coleman
Easier said than done.
So, Charles, I congratulate you on your bravery. And thank you for your inspiration.
I agree with these insights. Our culture is under the influence of a dualistic meta-program that has us quickly take sides and believe that the problem will be solved by defeating the other side. It is war mentality. Sometimes, that mentality is useful and true, but rarely. We apply it to nearly everything. In a war, anything that doesn’t serve your narrative must be rejected, whether or not it is true. In the climate debate, each side says that the other is not even worth listening too. “They are paid liars shilling for the fossil fuel industry,” says one side, “Part of a coordinated disinformation campaign.” On the other side, it is, “Corrupt climate scientists competing for funding dollars and serving a secret agenda of Socialist World Government” or something like that. Now I think there is a shred of truth, or more than a shred, in both critiques. Yes, there are powerful financial interests who have a vested interest in denying the dangers of greenhouse gases. And as for Climate Science, while I don’t buy into theories about global conspiracies, I do see a lot of institutionalized confirmation bias operating in climate science (and in other sciences too). But my point is not that the two sides are equivalent. My point is that we need to change the conversation, disarm th polarization, and unearth the hidden assumptions that both sides share.
Wise words., yours. I agree 100%. In adition, lately I have been wondering about the interaction of cosmos cooling due to the expansion of the universe and the latest, inane ecological developments in “our neck of the woods” – we think we know so much when we know so little… What is self-evident for me is our responsibility for our actions of blind agression towards the oneness and symbiosis of all living and non-living mater on planet earth (as well as our disregard for our Space debris). I concur that we must change the narrative, get out of the idiotic polalization warming/cooling (of which ultimately we know very little while we are faced with other, more pressing and immediate problems). Ms. Julia-Miguel R. Bernardes
I’ve been thinking this for a long time. Thank you for putting it so beautifully into words!
Exactly! My Australian Aboriginal partner, Jamie Marloo Thomas, has created an Earth Connection Practice, Wayapa Wuurrk (which means Connect to Earth) based on the Indigenous knowledge & wisdom that kept his people & country Well for 80,000+ years because they lived in harmony with their environment. They had a relationship with everything in their environment, they didn’t see themselves above or below nature but as interdependent on it. We need to sit & listen to the Indigenous Elders of the world to learn from their wisdom to reconnect to our environment for Earth Mind Body Spirit Well-being. We hope that by sharing Wayapa with the world, we can help reconnect the disconnection.
Thank you
If this is a taste of what I can expect to read in your new book then I’m really excited.
Thank you, Charles.
I greatly appreciate your work and you sharing your gift with the world.
I look forward to your upcoming book and can’t wait to read it.
Global warming or not, we have been doing horrible things to this planet and it must stop!
In my story, I believe that you should not be afraid of global cooling because I think it is coming and it will be the crisis that you talk about bringing the more beautiful world we all know is possible.
You believe in non-separation and that we are all connected, I ask you to take it several steps further than earth and look at some of the electric universe theories that may put an end to dark matter.
These theories also provide explanations about the role the sun plays, and specifically sun spots in our climate change and weather. I have spent a good bit of time researching the sun and it’s cycles.
Some say we are entering a grand solar minimum. Historically this is followed by increased cosmic rays reaching earths surface, an increase in volcanic activity and a decrease in earth’s temperature.
And if you look at the cycle of the sun and the rise and fall of empires, some believe there is a correlation. So global cooling may force us to stop what we are doing and reconnect, strengthening our communities and giving us the opportunity to create the more beautiful world.
Perhaps this is how it has always worked and how the universe keeps things in balance?
And your are right that our commitment should not depend on the trend in global temperature… it should be love.
I’m definitely aware of electric universe theories.I’m not 100% convinced by them but I do pay attention. I don’t believe in dark matter.
Charles: Whilst anyone who cares about the life and beauty of the Earth would agree with your plea to nurture and protect it, in my view your article is irreparably marred by your attempt to give credence to the false suggestion that the Earth is already, or is about to start, cooling. Such suggestions are denialist nonsense.
Frankly, anyone who headlines his article “Why I am Afraid of Global Cooling” and then goes on to link approvingly to the misinformation and global warming denial produced by the NoTricksZone website, has already forfeited his right to be taken seriously. That is a shame, because, had you omitted the nonsense you write about global cooling (and also what you repeat about the motivation of those concerned about global warming), then the rest of your message would be all the stronger.
As it is, by lending credence to misinformers and deniers, you have demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of what is happening to the Earth.
From Charles:
I thank you all for your frank comments about false equivalencies and having “forfeited my right to be taken seriously.” I am glad people are speaking their minds.
I think these criticisms might be missing the deeper strategy here. Essentially what I am trying to do is unlock a stuck debate. In doing my book research, I was struck by an observation by Per Espen Stoknes: ““Long-term surveys show that people were more concerned with climate change in wealthy democracies 25 years ago than they are today. So the more science, the more IPCC assessments we have, the more the evidence accumulates, the less concerned the public is. To the rational mind this is a complete mystery.”
Obviously something is not working for the environmental movement. The carnage over the last 25 years has accelerated. So one thing I am doing by citing skeptical websites (without the customary scathing disclaimer) is to signal to that camp, “I have read your material. I am not ignoring you.”
I am trying to evade the polarizing lens that, if applied, would mean instant dismissal from climate-doubting readers. I think I can engage environmental interest in people who doubt climate change. And perhaps more importantly, engage people who avoid the issue because it just seems so hopeless and they’ve heard it all before. This is something I realized when a friend, a prominent environmental crusader, with huge publicity convened a climate meeting in his city and almost no one came except for a few Unitarians from his church. And soon after I published an article with “climate change” in the title and someone wrote me saying, “I almost didn’t read this article because it was about climate change and I’m sick of hearing about it…”
So I thought, we need a different approach.
However, I do think we have a difference of opinion that goes beyond strategy and rhetoric. I believe that while greenhouse gases add further stress to an already severely challenged system, the fundamental problem is direct ecosystem degradation (e.g. deforestation, wetland draining, soil erosion, industrial fishing…) Often, this view leads to the same things that the greenhouse-first view wants (such as banning fracking, stopping pipelines, ending mountaintop removal, etc.). However, there are other things that the greenhouse view supports that I think will worsen the problem. Such as geoengineering via sulfur aerosols. Such as massive biofuels plantations. Such as big hydro. Of course, ecosystem degradation and climatic change are mutually reinforcing. Nonetheless, a lot of things that we blame reflexively on climate change are actually attributable to other forms of ecocide.
I don’t think we are going to change anything by ratcheting up current tactics of ridicule and alarm even more. It hasn’t worked. It isn’t going to work. If there were no other way, then I suppose we’d have to try, but there is another way. It is to engage another narrative frame for the environmental crisis.
Climate change or no, there are good reasons to conserve forests, soil, wetlands, etc. From the Living Planet viewpoint, we don’t need greenhouse arguments at stop drilling, fracking, cutting, and so on. Why exclude and alienate those who question the consensus, when we don’t need to?
Finally, I also hold to the other point of the essay. We could be wrong about warming. Or if we are right, a long-term warming trend could be temporarily overridden by solar fluctuations or other natural factors, making it appear we are wrong. Warming is a dangerous horse to hitch the environmental wagon to. Anyway, I do go much more deeply into these issues in the book.
Charles:
Whilst anyone who cares about the life and beauty of the Earth would agree with your plea to nurture and protect it, in my view your article is irreparably marred by your attempt to give credence to the false suggestion that the Earth is already, or is about to start, cooling. Such suggestions are denialist nonsense.
Frankly, anyone who headlines his article “Why I am Afraid of Global Cooling” and then goes on to link approvingly to the misinformation and global warming denial produced by the NoTricksZone website, has already forfeited his right to be taken seriously. That is a shame, because, had you omitted the nonsense you write about global cooling (and also what you repeat about the motivation of those concerned about global warming), then the rest of your message would be all the stronger.
As it is, by lending credence to misinformers and deniers, you have demonstrated a serious lack of understanding of what is happening to the Earth.
I will copy this reply into other comments along these lines.
I thank you all for your frank comments about false equivalencies and having “forfeited my right to be taken seriously.” I am glad people are speaking their minds.
I think these criticisms might be missing the deeper strategy here. Essentially what I am trying to do is unlock a stuck debate. In doing my book research, I was struck by an observation by Per Espen Stoknes: ““Long-term surveys show that people were more concerned with climate change in wealthy democracies 25 years ago than they are today. So the more science, the more IPCC assessments we have, the more the evidence accumulates, the less concerned the public is. To the rational mind this is a complete mystery.”
Obviously something is not working for the environmental movement. The carnage over the last 25 years has accelerated. So one thing I am doing by citing skeptical websites (without the customary scathing disclaimer) is to signal to that camp, “I have read your material. I am not ignoring you.”
I am trying to evade the polarizing lens that, if applied, would mean instant dismissal from climate-doubting readers. I think I can engage environmental interest in people who doubt climate change. And perhaps more importantly, engage people who avoid the issue because it just seems so hopeless and they’ve heard it all before. This is something I realized when a friend, a prominent environmental crusader, with huge publicity convened a climate meeting in his city and almost no one came except for a few Unitarians from his church. And soon after I published an article with “climate change” in the title and someone wrote me saying, “I almost didn’t read this article because it was about climate change and I’m sick of hearing about it…”
So I thought, we need a different approach.
However, I do think we have a difference of opinion that goes beyond strategy and rhetoric. I believe that while greenhouse gases add further stress to an already severely challenged system, the fundamental problem is direct ecosystem degradation (e.g. deforestation, wetland draining, soil erosion, industrial fishing…) Often, this view leads to the same things that the greenhouse-first view wants (such as banning fracking, stopping pipelines, ending mountaintop removal, etc.). However, there are other things that the greenhouse view supports that I think will worsen the problem. Such as geoengineering via sulfur aerosols. Such as massive biofuels plantations. Such as big hydro. Of course, ecosystem degradation and climatic change are mutually reinforcing. Nonetheless, a lot of things that we blame reflexively on climate change are actually attributable to other forms of ecocide.
I don’t think we are going to change anything by ratcheting up current tactics of ridicule and alarm even more. It hasn’t worked. It isn’t going to work. If there were no other way, then I suppose we’d have to try, but there is another way. It is to engage another narrative frame for the environmental crisis.
Climate change or no, there are good reasons to conserve forests, soil, wetlands, etc. From the Living Planet viewpoint, we don’t need greenhouse arguments at stop drilling, fracking, cutting, and so on. Why exclude and alienate those who question the consensus, when we don’t need to?
Finally, I also hold to the other point of the essay. We could be wrong about warming. Or if we are right, a long-term warming trend could be temporarily overridden by solar fluctuations or other natural factors, making it appear we are wrong. Warming is a dangerous horse to hitch the environmental wagon to. Anyway, I do go much more deeply into these issues in the book.
Charles
Charles: You point to the observation of Per Espen Stoknes concerning changes in public attitudes to climate change over the years. Irrespective of whether that observation correctly or adequately represents what has really happens with respect to public opinion, his conclusion that “the more science, the more IPCC assessments we have, the more the evidence accumulates, the less concerned the public is” is a wholly inadequate and misleading assessment of the cause of any such changes. That conclusion completely ignores the huge expenditure by fossil fuel companies and associated industries to produce misinformation and doubt about climate science (Naomi Oreskes’ “Merchants of Doubt”). See, for example: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-018-2241-z
or
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change-fossil-fuels-lobbying-usa-transport-renewable-energy-environment-a8452941.html
To conclude that a purported drop in public concern about climate change has resulted from the publication of scientific assessments from reputable bodies, rather than as a result of vastly greater funding for campaigns creating misinformation, confusion and denial, is absurd. Yet that is the absurdity upon which you base your rationale – your “deeper strategy” – for citing what you (inaccurately) refer to as “skeptical websites”.
By appeasing such sources of misinformation you are not helping the causes about which you clearly, and rightly, feel so strongly, concerning general environmental degradation. Indeed, I’m afraid it appears to me that you have partly succumbed to the misinformation of the “skeptical websites”. How else can your proclamations, “Why I am Afraid of Global Cooling” or “long-term warming trend could be temporarily overridden by solar fluctuations or other natural factors”, be explained? There is NO support from scientific evidence and theory for any prospect of global cooling or for solar fluctuations overwhelming the warming trend caused by increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere: suggestions that there are are themselves misinformation. Those claiming that there is scientific reason to believe that we are due to experience global cooling are either lying, or are misinformed.
There is perhaps some justification for the concern that attention given to climate change issues diverts attention from other pressing environmental issues, but surely that has to be balanced with the realisation that many of the measures to combat and mitigate global warming – re-afforestation, soil enhancement, protection of coastal wetlands and mangroves, reduction in meat consumption, energy conservation, reduction in coal mining, oil exploitation, fracking and oil tar extraction, more efficient use of resources etc. are all measures that have other beneficial environmental impacts as well as reducing carbon emissions. Concern about climate change is, or should be, a major source of added impetus to combat environmental decline.
When it all comes down to dust, the question has to be asked, “is it right, whatever the motivation, to give credence to lies and misinformation?” I believe it is not. But is that not what you are doing?
Slioch, as another reading person here I cannot answer the questions directed to Charles, but a few thoughts still come up from this “outside” perspective.
As someone who has, for a long time, thought that climate change was just another vehicle to pull money from our pockets, via gadget sales (a/c anyone?) & commodification of air (yays, carbon tax 😛 ), and as someone who later became of the opinion that McPherson is right, as far as the science is concerned, and as someone who understands that the missing element that turns climate information into climate action is love/care, I have been attacked and shrugged off and ridiculed many times over; first as a denier, later as a doomer, now as an unscientific esotericist. So during each stage of development I felt misunderstood, not taken into account and altogether alienated from being part of the solution.
Until recently, I have to say. Charles makes a very good case that the faultlines which seem to separate us are basically irrelevant for the task in front of us. For that purpose the basic points need to get mentioned along with their origin. We also need to take people’s concerns seriously if we want them to hear our message, no matter which “side” we are on. “Giving credence to misinformation”, less cynically expressed, is deep listening to what moves a person underneath, and connecting to that. Only then can we hope to reach common ground.
What do we gain from insisting on “I am right and you are wrong”, on the other hand? Does it help the climate? Is it convincing to the “biased” person? Will anybody change their mind by getting ignored, ridiculed, or alienated? Do we, after decades of heated discussions and an ever expanding body of scientific data, see significantly more climate action happening?
The separation into right vs wrong, true & informed vs lying & misinformed etc creates the same kind of conflict that drives the age old war of culture vs nature which resulted in rampaging ecocide.
Even from a utilitarian point of view this strategy does not work out.
So let’s not insist on who got the facts better. Let’s connect on a level where we are more similar to each other: as humans, as living beings, who are equipped with a sense of love for and connectedness to our neighbours.
Sorry, but anyone who gives credence to Guy McPherson has lost me. It’s gonna take way more in this case than “love and connectedness”–ever heard of the term “spiritual bypassing”? Look it up.
Hi Charles – confusion registering. Please delete Slioch account and use Roy Turnbull instead. Thanks.
I also ”subscribe to a story which says the contrary: that self and other, human and nature, inner and outer, are not really separate. That everything that happens to the world happens, in some manner, to ourselves as well. That with every extinction, something dies in us. That with loss of biodiversity comes cultural and spiritual poverty. That environmental pollution inevitably coincides with the spread of moral, mental, physical, social, and spiritual poisons.” And: ”we could very well see cooling, or warming, or even both – worsening gyrations like a top spinning out, like an animal with organ failure that can no longer regulate its body temperature. Wild fluctuations in temperature and precipitation are inevitable as the living systems that maintain homeostasis lose their vitality.” I specifically talk to my friends about the health of the human economy as part of life in terms of a patient on Intensive Care, being given extra strong medicine in the hope it will give a shock of revitalization. The Earth is running a fever because of this species out of control voraciously abusing its natural wealth while increasing rapidly in number and leaving toxic waste behind, comparable to a metastasized cancer. Climate change, including wild gyrations of weather due to global warming is just one of the many crises (though the most dangerous one to current life forms) life on Earth and human society now faces. The fresh water crisis and habitat destruction till now have a far more detrimental effect on hundreds of millions of people than climate change, again, till now. The financial crisis of 2008 (the first one, the next one is just a matter of time, in fact overdue imho) was comparable to a seizure that was temporarily stabilized by a large injection of quantitative easing, which paved the way to new side effects as different as even larger inequality, huge ebbs and flows of capital in and out of developing countries with gyrating currencies and low interest rates that allowed for an insolvent fracking industry in the USA to get finance. In that sense we have already entered collapse as larger parts of nature and human societies gyrate out of homeostasis. I hold Charles Eisenstein very high, but I doubt the title of this essay, however, is very effective.
I have come to the same conclusion.
In 2004 or 2005 (don’t remember while writing) I was editing a documentary about global warming. The year after I went to a symposium for scientists from all over the world on Greenland and did interviews with them, the local population and filmed the melting glaciers. I felt shaken for many years to come about this development. And struggled with how to convey this in a way that could actually affect people to make changes in their life that would help the planet – not just from warming but from all other kinds of anthropological devastation as well.
I have also read opposing theories and reports, disturbing as they may be. It is really hard to be sure about what is true, especially if you are not a scientist and if you don’t have time to study and compare reports carefully.
For the last decades I have only felt sure about one thing: the fact, or theory, or belief that earth is warming and that it is caused by humanity has a beneficial effect on our behavior. The endeavor to stop global warming has side effects that are paramount for life on our planet.
Thank you Charles for writing this so clear. It’s very helpful.
Hey everyone, I want to add one more thing before I move on. It seems that a lot of people were upset about my linking to “climate disinformation” websites without the customary scathing preamble. I tried to explain why I engage these views in another comment. Here I want to add, in case there is any confusion, that I am NOT saying that greenhouse gases are benign. I believe we face an urgent ecological criss and that greenhouse emissions are part of it.
Where I differ from the climate mainstream is that I think the threat greenhouse gases pose is that they increase the thermodynamic flux through a complex system that is already stressed to its breaking point. That means that the danger they pose is independent of whether we can measure global warming. Climate sensitivity in the scientific sense of the term could be very low, and we still would face a crisis because that extra heat drives fluctuations in wind and ocean currents and therefore in precipitation patterns. The system would not be so fragile if the forests, wetlands, etc. were intact, but they are not, they have been degraded and destroyed over centuries. To some extent, millennia. Slo we have a perfect storm — the governing and regulating mechanisms, such as the forest biotic pump, are degraded at the same time as the challenge has intensified.
All right, I’m going to write another piece laying out this argument more carefully. Again, to reemphasize the point of this essay, if we do see obvious warming, then it is easy to raise alarm over the environment from within the standard narrative. But we could just as easily see wild gyrations in temperature and precipitation accompanied by (possibly) little change in global average temperature. If we make the whole conversation about temperature, we are in a vulnerable position. Yes, we should cut emissions, but even more important is ecosystems. That is true even if the warming skeptics are right. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter if they are right (about warming). We still have reason for urgent action. Let’s not cede the ground of the debate to questions of temperature. Typically the skeptics argue, “Warming isn’t happening, so we don’t have an ecological crisis after all.” That is an utterly false conclusion and we have no need to cede its warming-centric premise. Plus, by doing so we open the door to disastrous geoengineering schemes. Warming could happen and probably will, but as I will continue arguing, we should not make it the centerpiece of the debate.
Charles
So contrary to one of the commenters, this is not about “appeasing” the deniers. It is about approaching the ecological crisis from a whole-systems perspective.
“All right, I’m going to write another piece laying out this argument more carefully.”
I’m looking forward to reading this.
Yes, I am also looking forward to this new piece!
I also wish that you were joining our Emergence 2018 event in SLC UT in October and presenting it there.
When the elephants are gone, there will be no “elephant in the room” and humans will be left to fend for themselves, staving off triage that, among the species, we are the least worthy of life.
Yes, the main goal is having the integration of humankind into the biosphere be positive and life building instead of negative as it is now. I believe the presence of humanity with love and wisdom can become a source of greater life in the biosphere. Indeed humanity with that love and wisdom working with nature could bring the biosphere to a place of beauty and life that the biosphere without human input couldn’t attain!
The singular focus on ‘climate change’ – the catch-all for the countless ways we’re destroying the planet, is the corporate-captured environmental movement submitting to the terms of neoliberalism. It’s a strategic and negotiated position and an acknowledgement that societally we’re incapable of assigning value to the abstractions of humanity and the natural world in terms other than those which we can quantify monetarily. And because gov’t oversight has been all but removed from the equation, the only way to achieve action is to ensure profit motive. Thus the carbon tax. If an environmental response isn’t also a business opportunity, it’s not going to happen.
What’s even more idiotic about this strategy is that it’s 100% partisan. Mention climate change to any republican or Canadian Con and you’ll be met with jeers and derision. This is because the tactic is a bit like a parent lying to their kids, using scare tactics to get them to do something. It’s such a stupid, selfish approach.
Brian says, “… societally we’re incapable of assigning value to the abstractions of humanity and the natural world in terms other than those which we can quantify monetarily.”
And that’s just one among several claims made in his post. But is it true? And if it is true, in what context is it true? Is that context present throughout all of humanity, or limited to the people of so-called “advanced” nations? Are all people within the society in which this seems to be collectively true equally participant in this “truth”? Or is it just found among the folks who “run” things?
These and myriad other questions of their kind leap from the spaces between Brian’s words, for me. You see, I have seen the operations of self-fulfilling prophesy … nearly everywhere. We (a broad generalization, indeed!) make grand, generalizing statements about who and what we (humans) are and what we are apt to do, what we are and are not capable of…, and then we live out the implications of this story as if it were factual. As if we understood ourselves. And the ‘results’ fit with our grand, collective predictions about ourselves. But we rarely have more than half of a clue what we’re even talking about — because all of the fine grained questions and observations get lost under the tidal wave of our grand generalizations. It is as though we were sleep walking.
Dear Charles,
I am agreeing with James and Linda and want to comment on your comment that you are trying to fix a stuck debate. I think the time is long past when we debate climate science. And, it does scare me that someone as influential you would start to muddy the waters on this. Enough of us know global warming is real; the dysfunction is in the power holders of our society.
Many have written about some of the deeper, root problems of our humanity –western capitalist development-that have led us to this place and I agree that it is key that we cultivate in our culture, economy and body politic, a systems view of life that expresses scientifically and in spirit that we are all inter connected, that all life here is interconnected. This perspective will lead to different actions and solutions. Linking our philosophical views to the ground: to ways we act and enact collective cultural and policy change is a dialogue we need.
We need to push for solutions from this perspective.
As someone with a serious interest in ecology since the age of 14 (now 52) – and as someone who has met Charles – I can testify that Charles is BANG ON IT! THANKYOU for speaking the truth to the power of humanity. The subject of Global cooling is as complex as it is controversial. The facts are, however… that if one runs a bath and leaves it overnight – the morning will see it cold. Simple physics. Complex systems such as planets are different – however physics still applies – and it is the elucidation of the complexities that the ‘art’ of “SCIENCE” actually lie. The real art of science is to speak only of what one has studied in detail – and to refrain from making ‘belief statements’. Peter Taylor – who pub;lished this book… is a friend and colleague. “Chill..” – the book on Global cooling is the science behind what is DEFINATELY about to happen here on Earth – and that is “Maunder Minimum Mark 2”. Mark 1 was about 1650 to 1728 – and that period saaw the Thames river freeze solid for months of the year – every year – for 80 years straight… brrrrrr! This is defo going to happen again. Governments know this. they also know that pronouncements of Goverment have impact. So… it would be grossley irresponsible for the Government – any Government to tell the truth on this one… as a shut down in the food supply for our species will be the inevitable result of a collapse in the ability of the US’s to feed the world with it’s intensive agricultural grain basket (ten times the size of China’s) and it’s highly oil intensive ‘modern’ agriculture. For every unit of energy in food on the table ready to eat – modern man/woman will have had 20 times that energy expended in fertiliser, transport, packaging etc. WHEN the warmth goes – that is it… O V E R ! Civilisation WILL collapse… and we are talking less than 20 years… really…..with that the big question is… will the 50 nukes that China is simultaneously constructing right now ever get finished… or… will they (4,500 nukes world wide) bring us ALL down into hell…. cheery thoughts! What is clear is that ‘business as usual’ will most likely result in a full necrosphere – unless and until our species re-organises the way it does business… Read the book!
C H I L L !
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chill-Reassessment-Global-Warming-Theory/dp/1905570198/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1535454571&sr=8-2&keywords=chill+taylor
Dear Lou
Global cooling is not going to happen. The reason is simple physics – our warming impact from greenhouse gas emissions is much, much larger than any natural cooling influence, e.g. a grand solar minimum. In a natural climate, warming and cooling can be driven by changes in the delicate balance between absorption of solar radiation and reflection by the Earth’s surface and atmosphere, but we don’t live in that climate any more. We have utterly overwhelmed that balance with the pollution caused by the 7+ billion human population. Literally the only reason that there is a prominent discussion about global cooling is that cynical people want to cast unwarranted doubt on science, so that the public won’t know what the truth is, and will be more easily manipulated in the interests of rich industrialists.
There is little prospect of us willingly moving away from ‘business as usual’ as you say (the systemic problems we have are not the kind of thing that human beings are very good at responding to), but if we have accurate scientific understanding of what is happening, then at least the people who understand may be able to improve their own chances. Expect continuing warming, sea level rise, ice melt, permafrost thaw, associated changes in the hydrological cycle etc., and plan your life accordingly, if you can.
Thanks for posting this. I’m happy to encounter (and see more in the comments) people who deeply love the earth and are concerned about her well-being, while not necessarily belonging to any particular climate camp, or at least being curious enough to get past the frequently present partisanship to try to hear what is being said. That said, I straddle both camps (lovingly) though I think we’re more likely cooling. Standing in the middle, you see how the confirmation bias works, so I’m as uncertain as the next person, but either way, preparing for a more challenging future that requires more human collaboration and resilience seems to be the prescription, so at least that’s a safe bet.
Anyway, I like a series of videos by Jim Steele, where he describes his environmental work, and how he learned to be a more effective conservationist by dropping the need to define all change through the lens of AGW/climate change, while rather looking at local changes caused by humans. He also has a book on the same topic called Landscapes and Cycles. It doesn’t read apolitically, but the videos and book provide much food for thought if our goal is conservation and restoration, rather than political theater. Thanks for listening!
https://www.amazon.com/Landscapes-Cycles-Environmentalists-Journey-Skepticism/dp/1490390189/
I am perplexed by this statement in Charles’s essay: “Will the planet warm or cool? I have no idea. Over my years of book research, I became less confident, not more, of the inevitability of greenhouse-gas-induced warming. Slowly, cracks are spreading in the dominant narrative. We could very well see cooling, or warming…”
So, is Charles saying that he is becoming a global warming denier? What reputable studies out there is he basing this statement on? Does he not think the IPCC and other major projections are correct about warming trends into the next century? Why not?
After reading the replies here, I see why Charles justifies his essay. Given his explanation, it says to me that he didn’t take the time to clarify his essay as to why he thinks we might have global cooling. As is, the essay is misleading and ultimately fails because he doesn’t explain his anti-science position in the end. This is up there in terms of cringeworthiness with Charles announcing during a podcast that he felt “glee” when he heard that Trump was elected.
Really great article. I like these approaches coming from seeing the planet as an interlocked biosphere and further for example of seeing the forests as an extension of our own lungs. Our current path forward, if there is to be any future for us, relies on seeing the connections at this level.
However, I would like to ask about how to think about the catch 22 GMP discusses widely among others that explains the aerosol masking effect, global dimming and/or brightening. Basically this “predicament” as GMP calls it, means that if we keep emitting we destroy planetary temperature self regulation and if we stop emitting, we destroy planetary temperature regulation caused by this pollution to which the natural system has now become heavily addicted and reliant on.
I’d love to hear more from Charles Eisenstein on this topic because unlike the boomers of GMP doom and gloom, I think Eisenstein speaks from a generation that still has solutions to introduce, not hopeum, but very pinpoint ways of looking at forward thinking from a different perspective and level than the mind that created this predicament in the first place (remembering that we cannot solve a problem from the same thinking that created it).
Really great article. I like these approaches coming from seeing the planet as an interlocked biosphere and further for example of seeing the forests as an extension of our own lungs. Our current path forward, if there is to be any future for us, relies on seeing connections at this level. It’s clear to me that this article in no way makes Eisenstein a denier, but rather a true student of the theatre of the absurd we are now experiencing in the madhouse battle (Mann) over climate issues now so perversely unraveling before our eyes as the great ice melts and we cannot but argue amongst ourselves…rather Eisenstein offers a refreshing perspective that could not only serve to unite those across these multiple misunderstood chasms such as deniers and tree huggers by showing where they not only share a common ground, but also essentially he points to a path ahead that might preserve our own ability to keep breathing as a species on this planet – because if we don’t come together on this now we will destroy it all in short order. We are on the cusp. And this should make us all want to get on the same page, instead of constantly finding ways to disagree over banal, superficial differences that we should be able to evolve past by now as a species. This article whispers, evolve in perspective at least or go the way of the dinosaurs! In this Eisenstein offers a pinnacle viewpoint for resolving the current predicaments shared by one and all.
Additionally, I would like to ask Eisenstein to speak about how to think about the real catch 22’s we are facing. For example, GMP among others, widely discusses that explains the aerosol masking effect, global dimming and/or brightening. Basically this “predicament” as GMP calls it, means that if we keep emitting we destroy planetary temperature self regulation and if we stop emitting, we destroy planetary temperature regulation caused by this pollution to which the natural system has now become heavily addicted and reliant on.
I’d love to hear more from Charles Eisenstein on this topic because unlike the boomers of GMP doom and gloom, I think Eisenstein speaks from a generation that still has solutions to introduce, not hopeum, but very pinpoint ways of looking at forward thinking from a different perspective and level than the mind that created this predicament in the first place (remembering that we cannot solve a problem from the same thinking that created it).
Charles: Your writing reflects the truth of our situation on this planet however: This is obvious. We (human race) may be closer to that miracle that will save all life on the planet then anyone realizes. The reasons why:
1. Everyone already knows all this, the problem is, people are in denial, and yes they think of it as me and them. It is always “their” fault this has happened, and “they” will find a solution. Fact is that people do care on an individual level, the problem is with leadership. Since we are not all individuals and part of the same fabric, the leadership is really the problem.
2. There actually is no leadership at all in the world, just illusions of leadership. There are lots of great ideas of how to manage ourselves politically, but they all rely on the problem: Competition.
3. As long as people continue to compete for survival, there will be chaos. Anyone who looks over the fence and sees the people next door with a nicer car will feel some kind of jealousy. This jealousy leads to competition. This is the source of the problem and what practically runs the whole world including the natural world. What makes people different from the natural world is our unmanageable success. Just because we can be successful does not mean we should do it, but thats what makes us more natural than the long standing idea that we are unnatural. People are not part of a human race in reality, people are part of the race of life, and we won. All creatures are trying to win the race of life, and normally if they get too close nature balances itself and so forth protects other creatures from destruction. This is coming forsure, and all people deep inside their hearts knows this.
4. To continue “winning” and to win bigger, people will need to have better leadership and put new ideas into play faster to adapt. I am not suggesting a 1 world government, everyone should somehow have a stake in leadership, much the way things are now, but just better. The way the internet made communication better, there should be a tool to allow for a better way to have leadership, and avoid war. I dont have the answer for that, but the problem is easy to see in my eyes. The reason for better leadership is so more sophisticated ways of management can be used to allow life to thrive, and therefore people.
5. The problems and solutions are all there, or can be easily identified, with better management people can continue to thrive (make money and multiply). The biggest issue in preventing this to happen is jealousy and mistrust, resulting in contempt to one another. This is the very root of all peoples problems. Where does this jealousy come from, what does it serve?
I like what you have to say and fully agree with your view. One of my influences from the past was a man that hoped for a better future in writing a book titled “Small is Beautiful”. That man was Ernst Schumacher a German born British ecnomist. He advocated “Production by the masses not mass production”. He, like me, was a follower of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus who advocated Self-Sufficiency and practiced what he preached. The future for our children can only be assured if we move away from the Matrix (the grid) and localise our production of all things needed for a community to survive. This is what I and my associates are foccused on through our site ecoc3. We are dedicated to localising all our needs so that mountains of waste and Islands of plastic cannot, once we have rid oourselves, overwhelm us ever again. Recycling waste is our mission and detoxifying our air and soil for the benefit of future genertations, among all the various things , food, energy, potable water etc. that need to addressed to get our world back to how it is meant to be. We have just begun our mission and hope others join us on the way, people like you Charles. A liitle philosophy can go a long way.
Too many people
Thank you SO MUCH for writing this. I have been figuratively screaming this until I’m blue in the face to the sustainability industry and environmentalists in general and typically get blank or puzzled looks in return. But you have stated it so much more effectively and eloquently here, hopefully you have given me new words to describe the issue and maybe I stand a better chance of convincing some people
Excellent piece, thank you for tying many seemingly disparate threads into a coherent narrative. I will use this article to share with others if and when my own words fall short.
I believe we still technically reside in the The Pleistocene Epoch which is somewhat defined as the Great age of Ice Ages. The 10,000 year Holocene era has been pretty geologically abnormal surrounded as it has been by Ice Ages lasting 40,000 150,000 years. This little warm spell may not be an Epoch changer. It’s been the exact stable warm period human civilization has needed to thrive–but no-one ever said the Earth’s Climate was actually going to go into a stasis holding pattern for our benefit. |
The Geologic record forecasts another Ice more than a long lived Global Warming. Many Geologist think a warm period might actually jump start the next cold period. Anyway, I don’t debate with AGW cultists. It is like a religion with religious roots–primarily the notion that God created the world/the Universe Just for US, and then left us as landlords in charge of it all. We are actually in charge of little. Genuflecting in mea culpas over the climate is a luxury we actually can’t afford–especially if it distracts are energy from the much LESS theoretical damage that we KNOW we are perpetrating.
One of the most sobering realities to come out of Chernobyl is that Wildlife Thrives in the depopulated area as no where else in the entire former Soviet Union. Not saying there are 2 headed wolfs running around–there may be, but there are regenerated animal populations that were almost given up as GONE. The sobering reality is that t BY FAR the biggest threat to Animal life on this planet is close proximity to human populations. Even Radiation at very high levels pales in comparison.
Thee is a definite emerging belief that we are indeed in the Earths Sixth known Major Extinction-with realization that it started with the extinction of the Mega Mammals and the trend continues to be the extinction of all “large animals” ultimately including ourselves. When peole talk of Lif e on Planet Earth being at grave risk, they display very little Geologic perspective. This Earth has faced and survived Natural Extinctions greater than anything we are capable of in our wildest fantasies. Life on Earth Will go on. Even if it takes 2 billion years for the plastics to degrade in the Ocean—2 billion years is just a light slumber Geologically. NO the danger we pose is to ourselves. WE, more than any other species will mourn their departure from the fauna WE have to live with–and then go our own way into extinction.
I read this article with great sadness… To write so clearly and be so well studied, and yet be so completely unmoored from the reality of life, is overwhelming.
We do not live in a fantasy, where everyone gets a pony and there’s no struggle for starvation, shelter, disease, education or even peace. Everything comes through constant struggle.
Food gets depleted just from normal consumption or even decomposition if not eaten. Disease come back just because viruses continue to mutate. Shelters rot over time. Even the internet goes down and electricity lines fails. Children gets born and then need education, which doesn’t come from nature. And on the other hand educated and wise populace, essentially knowledge stores, age and dies. It takes organised effort and creation of education materials,v educational environment, to even maintain a constant Civilization intelligence.
Nothing stays constant without struggle. Absolutely nothing. Time, or thermodynamics, is the enemy.
So conservation without recognizing these realities just make the proposals sounds like fantasy. This is why the messages aren’t reaching the main street. Because we’re not proposing solutions that work. We hear bits of things that will becomes brutally anti human, inhumane, if implemented. The tragically funny thing about these solutions is that they’re usually the product of someone who have a full stomach, cozy position in life and for want of little.
You want solutions, inhumane or not be damned? We already have them in corners of the world….
China’s one child policy. Implemented brutally, totalitarian. Abort fully gestated babies and let them cry to death… This saved the entirely of animals and Forest clearing that this child could’ve influenced should he lived. Ditto to of so much carbon saved.
Or mandatory sterilization. Or license to have kids.
Or Kill half of population. There are many permutations of this…..
We can do it Thanos style to reduce half.
Or we can try war, simple way is to prevent our Navy from doing research while the other side can do all the sonar trials without concern for whales. Or all the genetic research without worrying about scientific ethical debates (and produce super bio weapons)
Or just let the less developed 70 percent of the world — let them figure out how to eat or build shelter without diesel… Which in truth is a death sentence to the bottom half of people already struggling to stay alive. Farms that are already struggling season to season… Not your brother’s farm that have access to first world grain trading, irrigation, police and transportation platform. No he won’t struggle.
Overfishing is the first world person’s term and the Indonesian fisherman family only meal. The fish doesn’t care either way. It’s dead.
(In fact if we’re to really talk about halving the population, removing the top heavy half would be far more effective. But no solution would ever entertain that. Not even the most insane one.)
The point is. There are obvious way to save the Earth. We all know how to do it. Babies or euthanasia, or both. Or even just first world country completely giving all their wealth and land away so population densities equalize according to geographical fertility. Any of those ideas would do a lot…
But how to save Earth without plunging the world into famine, war, disease, homelessness, riot or governmental collapse… That’s the real trick. Those are what I call Big Answers, answers that lead to betterment. And unfortunately these solutions are hard. They don’t have beautiful catch phrases like just stop cutting trees, or just leave the mangroves be or just stop drilling and let price of gas be double, triple, or more (French yellow jackets started with a gas tax hike, their government nearly didn’t survive and still may not) These “small answers” are distracting at best, impractical if analyzed and disastrous if implemented. They’re a result of incomplete analysis of consequences, or worse, a wolf in sheep’s clothing idea that is really, trying to implement the cutting of population in some form (usually excluding the idea originator himself)
Charles, I have been mov ed by your thinking and writing for a long time now, as I´ve followed you over the years.
I do understand that getting the “climate change” discussion unstuck, as you intend, is a noble undertaking, as the present polarization, IMHO, does more harm than good.
Of that harm, precisely, however, we must be very clear and precise when we giv e out information publically and in this article, your statements sound more like demagogy than fact simply because of the way they are expressed.
An example: You write, “Here are some of the changes that have happened just in my lifetime: Fish biomass has decreased by more than half. The number of monarch butterflies has dropped by 90 percent. Deserts have expanded on every continent. Coral reef extent has declined by half. Mangroves in Asia have declined 80 percent. The Borneo rainforest is nearly gone, and rainforests globally cover less than half their former area. And all over the world, flying insect biomass has plummeted, by as much as 80% in some places. ” These statements really don´t say much really. The percentages of decline you cite are meaningless if they are not given in the context of a time span. If you say “From 2000 to 2018” or some other time span before each statement, the information is in the context of a reality of before and after. I, personally, know that all you are saying is true, but anyone who doesn´t and has reason to deny what you are saying will have an easy time proclaiming that the information is vague and for that very reason tendentious. If there is data that is helpful to back up you arguments, then give us the data and consider adding a reference. Vagueness wins nobody over and, in my case, can irritate those of us who are trying to be rigorous about defending and acting on the earth repair and regeneration that needs to be done NOW!
I will continue reading and listening to you. As a systems thinker, you are putting out excellent ideas and I applaud that wholeheartedly! I hope my comment hits a chord within you and hasn´t missed the point.
I like bacon cheese burgers. Sorry guys, I’m not giving them up for global warming or global cooling.
“why should I be afraid of cooling?” well as history show us that between 1310 and 1400 starvation was normal, death widespread due to the destruction of crops by cold and rain. And again in the 1600,s, the maunder minimum. When she said “let them eat cake” it was because there was no bread because there was no grain because the crops were destroyed by cold and precipitation. Now the population stands at 7.7 billion, fields produce 7 times the crops of those earlier times and the potential for catastrophe is unmeasurable.
In the times of the dinosaurs it is estimated that the temperature was 6C higher than today and CO2 commensurately so. The animals were massive as were the plants that sustained them. If you put a tomato plant in a greenhouse, drive the temp up to 35C+ using a stove that produces co2 your crop yield will increase around 400%. Now reduce the temperature to 10C, remove the co2 and watch the plants die. Atmospheric carbon at around 265 ppm will begin to see the death of plant life on earth and at 150ppm all plants will be dead. And so will we.
Believe me hot is good, cold is bad.
If you are going to survive what was predicted by many scientist (and completely ignores by your media and scientific warmists) I would recommend that you open your mind to the possible outcome of what has already begun.
It could save your life.
I welcome your fresh viewpoint, I have some Questions:
1. When there are two opposing views…who are we supposed to call the skeptic?
2. When alternate evidence is offered concerning global warming does the text actually explain that this is the reason we can continue with business as usual?
3. Are we really listening or just trying to prop up our assumptions?
Follow the money
The blind leading the blind.
Charles wrote: “The other day I happened upon this piece, which describes recent measurements of ice mass and ice extent gains in the Arctic, Antarctic, and Greenland, along with cool surface and tropospheric temperatures. This is what I’ve been worried about for several years now as I’ve seen cracks spread in the global warming consensus.
“Before I explain why I am worried about cooling, let me offer an opposing article, from Nature, stating that Antarctica is losing ice mass faster than ever…”
Utter rubbish. There is no comparison between unscientific nonsense on NoTricksZone and science articles published in Nature.
Why would any rational person suppose that these sources are of equal authority and stature?
Charles wrote: “None of the above can be directly attributed to climate change.”
Climate change is all-pervasive. Nothing under the sun escapes its effects.
“If it becomes apparent that global warming isn’t happening – or even if one can plausibly argue it isn’t happening – then these issues lose their grounding.”
One cannot plausibly argue it isn’t happening. End of argument.
Charles wrote: “reasons that do not require adherence to a highly politicized and hard-to-prove scientific theory”
Scientists haven’t politicized it. Blame deniers.
AGW is not “hard-to-prove scientific theory”. Multiple lines of converging evidence support and confirm AGW theory. Unlike in mathematics, scientific theories are never “proven”.
This whole piece is a straw-man. No scientist or climate activist has ever denied the many other reasons to stop using fossil fuels and degrading our environment. No climate scientist of any stature dismisses or downplays other environmental problems.
Charles wrote: “My point here – actually, my plea – is that whether or not it is happening, still, let us rethink the direction of civilization.”
In 2019 there is no valid reason to doubt AGW or cede ground on climate action.
Charles wrote: “My fear is that a cooling trend will abort that inquiry.”
The science rejects this proposition utterly.
Charles wrote: “Will the planet warm or cool? I have no idea. Over my years of book research, I became less confident, not more, of the inevitability of greenhouse-gas-induced warming. Slowly, cracks are spreading in the dominant narrative.”
Then you’re reading the wrong books.
Please stop propagating untruths and misleading your readers. Your grandchildren will thank you.