Robert MacNeil Christie, Author

Humans are an odd lot. We fret over the future, we lionize the past, and we are in denial about the present. Or, it might not really be about human nature, but rather about the present spot in the devolution of the dominant culture of our time. I think it is the latter. It seems clear that we have mentally separated ourselves from Nature, including our own nature, and that we have now fully exploited both.

At the same time, we have ruthlessly exploited Nature on the material level, presuming that we can extract an endless supply of energy and materials from a finite planet. Now we have reached a dead end, a turning point, a point of no return. We will have severely destabilized the Earth System that supports us, well before extracting all the resources our growth economy demands. The global industrial consumer culture is faltering on many dimensions, both internal and in relation to our habitat. Yet, we look forward as if really nothing should be different. Some very hard choices confront us and we ignore them at extreme peril.

Our fundamental predicament arises from the reductive dualistic linear thinking of the industrial modernist worldview—that is, the way most of us think. As with western medicine, international politics, law enforcement, pervasive racism, declining education, etc., etc., conventional climate action suffers from obsessing over targets and linear methods of seeking a narrow ‘bullseye.’ Setting 1.5 degrees F above preindustrial global temperatures, with a fall-backed of 2.0—that would be devastating for most of the human race—is just an empty promise without a method or a schedule for action to achieve any real goal. How meaningless is that?

Setting goals, targets, and interim ‘milestones’ is a common practice. Yet, it fundamentally dodges the question of how and at what pace we must decarbonize the global economy in order to salvage a livable habitat for humans on an increasingly unstable planet.

The very idea that we should be debating whether or not we may be ‘too late’ for 1.5 and that the assumption of that failure should somehow influence how or whether to keep pursuing the goal of stopping global temperature rise, seems patently absurd. This is in part the result of the binary thinking of optimism and pessimism. When it comes to human survival, giving up is not an option—except for the self-indulgent narcissists who would party to the end.

The ‘targeting’ approach reflects an underlying fatalism that plagues the dominant culture, which believes that if someone invents a new technology then its proliferation is inevitable, without a thought as to its consequences. Think AI. It also carries an implicit assumption that all new technology is good and/or inevitable and therefore we should ‘embrace it.’ Have we no collective choice at all? Well, not if we give it up. In contrast, today our task is to create a new societal technology, that is, new social formations that operates in harmony with the entire Earth System. That, of course, requires a very new way of thinking.  Sometimes, the greatest challenge is also the only viable solution.

The ‘debate’ over 1.5 or 2.0 might be characterized as an inadvertent ‘false flag,’ the consequence of which, whether intended or not, is to shift attention away from the fundamental predicament of humanity at this ‘historical moment.’ We are propagandistically propelled toward illusory goals of achieving imaginaries such as ‘green growth,’ industrialized carbon capture and storage, or ‘decoupling’ economic growth from the ecological/climate damage that economic growth cannot avoid causing.

The underlying flaw in this worldview is its tenacious holding to the faltering trajectory of industrial consumerism, which itself portends the end of the industrial age. The denial of reality is palpable, even among many of many environmentalists who take climate chaos and ecological destabilization seriously. Denying reality because it is harsh, is, well, unrealistic and far too common. Being ‘politically realistic’ is in effect to allow politics to deny the very real facts of life on planet Earth.

Maybe the concept of ‘paradigm shift’ has become a cliché, but that is exactly what we need, in the biggest way I can imagine. There is no way industrial-consumer nations can reduce the carbon emissions and ecological damage they cause while retaining the worldview, social structure, and behaviors that produced and continue to drive economic growth, political and racial oppression, wars, and societal chaos in ever increasing extent. The more overloaded a system, any system, the more likely it is to collapse into chaos. We are already at the edge.

The fundamental facts of physics and chemistry, which are the foundation of climate science findings, as well as the research findings of evolutionary biology and ecology are now quite clear. They predict accelerated Earth System destabilization if we remain on our present course, and we have no basis for equivocating about that if we accept the well-documented extant trends. Yet, how many scientists, policy makers, or even public intellectuals are talking about how to fundamentally transform society in order to operate on a basis that harmonizes with Nature itself, while striving to repair, restore, and regenerate the many ecosystems that we have put in mortal danger? Nearly none.

The path to Earth System stabilization and potential avoidance of near or complete extinction for humanity and many other species, if we as a united people can find and follow it, is as difficult a societal change as I can imagine. Its accomplishment would make the industrial revolution look as simple as a stroll in the park. Yet, we must choose that path to life affirmation and system transformation, by exercising a kind of ‘creative destruction’ that Schumpeter could have never imagined. If we do not, we will suffer the consequences of mass starvation, vastly more widespread migration, escalated armed conflicts, global depopulation, and possible extinction.

The latter ‘option’ is certainly a ‘doom loop,’ but not because of an emotional reaction to the difficulty of achieving a 1.5 goal vs. a 2.0 or higher ‘goal.’ That scenario is absurd in itself. It is an objective doom loop, simply because it is a self-amplifying downward cycle of failure to respond to objectively deteriorating conditions. It forces the realization of the ultimate human failure, at least for those who are willing to consider facts.

A contrasting ‘hope spiral’ would arise in the recognition that, as Greta put it, ‘hope is an action,’ and that, as Vaclav Havel asserted, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” Chris Hedges expressed the same principle well in his statement of principle: “I fight Fascism not because I will win; I fight fascism because it is fascism.” Doing the right thing is the end in itself; we can never know for sure that we will win, and that is no excuse for giving up. Under present trends in global conditions, doing the right thing is the same as taking extremely strong action on climate chaos, ecological disintegration, and justice, to salvage what we can of a livable world. They all go together.

Ultimately, the ability to forge a viable approach to climate action will arise in the realization that it is industrial civilization ‘as we have known it’ that is doomed—whether we try to save it or to overcome it—and that it is up to us to create a new ecological civilization to replace it.

All the while, we must recognize that the process will entail great difficulty and dread and that it is a challenge like no other in human history. One thing I know for sure is that the path to success is the same as that of ‘right livelihood’; abandon insular thinking; abandon racism and hatred of the other (who is a victim in some way too), and recognize that ‘victory’—to survive and flourish—is what it was throughout human evolution. Compassion, mutual aid, and the open minds that allow both have produced the very best in humanity. To succeed will be to reunite with the Tao, to become ourselves again, a viable element in the whole of Nature, no longer out of sync with the universe and ourselves.

Any progress along that path would make for a very Happy New Year!