Anyone who thinks our new and growing climate chaos is the ‘new normal’ (and assumes that we merely have to adapt), anyone who thinks that the “Trump transition” merciless administrative actions are the new normal, anyone who thinks that what they imagine is the ‘new normal’ has any relation to ordinary (normal) social change or stability as we have experienced them for thousands of year, is just not paying attention to the data, nor does s/he recognize its dire implications for our near future.
If you expect that ‘normal’ technological innovation is capable of addressing, no less solving any of the currently converging catastrophic crises in multiple systems, both human and in diverse ecosystems, you are tragically wrong. Cultural hubris is at play; it still dominates our culture.
When complex adaptive systems, which under ‘normal’ conditions in their evolutionary trajectory can compensate and adjust for diverse forms of incursions and disruptions, are pushed to a so called ‘tipping point,’ the result can be a catastrophic collapse. Numerous systems today, from formerly stable atmospheric, oceanic, and land ecosystems, have already begun to tip out of self-control. The scientific evidence just keeps getting worse.
Trumpery’s Trajectory
If you read the long list of initial ‘executive orders,’ so well planned by the Project 2025 group at the infamously extreme right-wing Heritage Institute think tank—many of whose members were Trump minions during his first term—you may find yourself in shock at the extent of the attempts to in effect shut the government down. The only exceptions are for the operations that continue to hire incompetent sycophants and competent barbarians, capture power, and insulate Trump from accountability.
One major tactic to bring government agencies to their knees is the order to “pause” all sorts of programs and outside communications, tying up normal operations, such as scientific panels evaluating cancer drugs, the halting State Department aid programs and even FEMA’s disaster response efforts. These provocateurs are more organized in their ruthlessness than I expected. For them, consequences be damned.
The Right Rev Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon at the National Cathedral on Tuesday last week urging Trump, who was present, to show compassion and mercy to those in fear of his intentions, drew nothing but anger in the social media attack on her by the man who has shown himself to be world’s greatest narcissistic sociopath. Sociopaths have no understanding or capacity for compassion or mercy. That is one of the reasons they are so dangerous as presidents.
The problem this time is that almost all those institutionalist ‘guardrail’ officials are gone. And while the nominees being put before the Senate are mostly deranged and/or incompetent in the field of the departments they are nominated to ‘lead,’ they are fanatical quasi- or neo-fascists in their personal ideologies and commitments. Sometimes lack of skill or knowledge can be overcome by extreme motivation to destroy. And, that after all, is what the new Trump ‘administration’ is all about. The primary operations they ‘administer’ consist of institutional demolition.
The new president signed a slurry of executive orders immediately upon taking office. Then, he ordered a “pause” in all agency actions, communications, foreign aid, etc., and (unconstitutionally) fired a lot of independent inspector generals, who were approved by Congress (30-day notice and written explanation to the Senate of such firings is required by law). The inspector generals independently oversee compliance with ethical and legal standards in numerous departments and agencies. Now, why, one might wonder, would he need to arbitrarily fire them all? Kind of obvious… Take away as many sources of oversight, accountability, and constraint on power and corruption as possible.
Why Climate Chaos Cannot be Normal
After 11,000+ years of climate stability—the Holocene Geological Epoch—we might have learned something about the importance of climate ‘normalcy.’ Well, I suppose it is not surprising that we have taken that for granted for so long, as it enabled exceptional human development all that time.
But from the first inklings of the agricultural revolution we began to mess with ecosystems and the climate. At first, with vast swaths of open land and mere “savages” occupying the ‘open’ lands awaiting (racist) colonialism for their extractive destruction, along with dehumanization and oppression, the industrial revolution was sure to follow, financed by the colonial ravaging of the non-European world. Mainstream climate models continue the ruse of assuming that the past represents a viable model for the future. They incorporate variables that assume unbounded technological adaptation, usually of a highly implausible kind, which would theoretically offset much of the exponential downward spiral of death, if they were only real. Because most are imaginary, they generate climate complacency.
Genevieve Gunther, no slouch when it comes to climate communication, has pointed out that “mainstream economic ideas about the relationship between the biosphere and the economy are founded on assumptions, conjectures, and stipulations that have contradictory evidence, or no evidence, to back them up.” Neither mainstream climate models nor mainstream economic theory are based on evidence; both reflect blind faith and ideologically convenient speculation. As Gunther also reminds us, actuaries assess risk based on hard data—Insurance companies don’t like to gamble and they are worried.
A key finding of the recent study by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and the University of Exeter, UK, was that, “Global risk management practices for policymakers are inadequate, we have accepted much higher levels of risk than is broadly understood.” It concludes that we may lose 50 percent of GDP this century. Given the nature of complex-system collapse under exponentially disruptive change, and the relentless institutional resistance to necessary climate-ecological policy change, I think that is an extremely optimistic assessment based on linear thinking.
The dominator culture that drove the militaristic development of the industrial revolution, would have been far more difficult to pull off without the vast wealth stolen from the rest of the world in the age of ‘exploration’ and conquest. And now, as that has begun to hit the wall of planetary incapacity to tolerate more plunder and growth, the culture of denial, imagined separation from Nature, and delusion of superiority remain strong, just as in the cases of smaller societal collapses throughout history. But this time it is different. Now, the system at the precipice of collapse is the entire global political economy of perpetual growth. The center cannot hold.
The ‘new normal’ is so far from any normal ever known, that it is cannot be normal at all, unless you consider collapse into chaos, and chaos itself, as ‘normal.’ The Anthropocene cannot be normal…
Political-Economic Chaos vs. Human Normality
We might at this juncture quickly ask (we have so little time) what exactly is human normality. We industrial-consumer moderns tend to think of a well-stocked supermarket or a big box store loaded with junk, or fast cars, smooth freeways, and cheap airline tickets and affluent salaries with stock investments for retirement as ‘normal.’
None of these things are normal; they are a blip on the evolutionary path. In fact, they are a rather extreme deviation from what from a broader perspective might be called the ‘right path of evolution’–that is, the path that works. That would have led to an ecological civilization, which would have operated in harmony with nature, not as a pretender to domination.
While we think of what we have been comfortable with as ‘normal,’ by historical standards and physical facts of evolution and Nature, it is clearly not. Life is struggle, and any comforts are temporary. But, that of course depends on the timeframe you use. Modern vistas are very shortsighted.
The current surge of trumpery, its MAGA cult of domination, fear, hatred, racism, and violence, is an evolutionary aberration. We have let the political economy and the culture of greed and fear run humanity off the rails of evolutionary development. All the autocratic attempts of the past have ultimately failed after a surge of power and destruction. Everywhere fascism in one form or another arose and took control, it ultimately failed, simply because it was founded in theories and beliefs about power that cannot be the basis for an effectively functioning society.
Authentic political regimes reflect the social relations and human needs of the societies they manage. Hate, fear, and corruption—the foundations of fascism and racist nationalism—are debilitating and eventually lead to a breakdown of their dehumanizing artificial form of authority. That is why they fail. So will this one.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 