Reply #16: People are inching closer to the truth [View All]

[GliderGuider]

I have to say, though - every time I see a column that contains some variant of the following comment, I want to scream: "Do you really want to stop climate chaos, or do you just want to feel better about yourself?"

The implicit assumption in this question is that it is in fact possible to "stop climate chaos". And this is from a writer who has just spent the whole article laying out the implication that it is not possible in the current social/economic/industrial/political environment to do a damn thing about it. If Monbiot wants people to get realistic about their efforts to combat climate change, the least he can do is have the intellectual integrity to get realistic himself. Of course, saying "We're screwed" isn't acceptable in the current culture. That would demonstrate an unacceptable defeatism, even if it is true.

I don't yet know what the answer is. People will not simply lie down and roll over, it's not our buddha nature. We need to keep working for solutions, even if the situation appears hopeless. What we do need to be careful about, though, is working on solutions that actually make matters worse. Examples of that, IMO, include developing alternative automobile fuels rather than working to eliminate the automobile, moving to nuclear power rather than reducing our civilization's requirement for electricity, and above all trying to fix the problems within the growth-centric paradigm that caused them in the first place. In other words, Business As Usual is the problem, not some ideal baseline to be maintained by hook or by crook.

The solution to humanity's problems will not be technical. If there is a solution at all, it lies in the realm of de-linking our definitions of "progress" and "success" from indicators of economic and industrial growth. If that cannot be accomplished (and I am very skeptical, to put it mildly) we're just about done as a civilization and possibly as a species.