Popular Narratives That Do Not Hold Up Under Scrutiny

 

Pilot Mountain in North Carolina

The centerpiece of this article is based on the picture below which points out that we lack agency to control nature; we lack agency to "save" species; we lack agency to replace what we destroy. The web of life depends on an intact biosphere and we will never achieve that by continuing advanced technology use. Technology use causes ecological overshoot. Ecological overshoot causes many, many symptom predicaments like climate change, pollution loading, energy and resource decline, emissions, biodiversity loss, and extinction. None of the symptoms of overshoot can be reduced absent a reduction of overshoot. Many people have bought into false narratives such as "fighting climate change" that if we just buy EVs, use "renewable" electricity, plant trees, and quit eating meat (among other actions) that we can reduce, stop, or reverse climate change. I've got some bad news for those folks - stopping and/or reversing climate change isn't even a possibility. Anyone believing that nonsense needs to study oceanic thermal inertia and the lag effect. Nobody alive today will see a reduction of climate change. While I understand the narratives and "feel good" messaging, I'm not here to make people feel good. I'm here to point out facts. It's true that those facts may not necessarily make one feel good. But feeling good won't change the facts; and we must deal with the facts and not false beliefs.

Just so everyone knows, the tone of my articles isn't to make anyone feel good OR bad. I do not control anyone else's feelings as I lack that agency. So, I take no responsibility for anyone's feelings but my own. I don't like to feel bad any more than anyone else. Still, I'm not interested in popular narratives or "feel good" stories that either aren't true or don't lead to any real benefits. Yes, someone criticized me for what they perceived as a condescending tone in my articles. I'm not trying to be condescending; I'm trying to point out facts. I can't really help it if people buy into the wrong strategies or popular narratives and I'm doing my best to dissuade people from both, when neither helps to reduce overshoot. Some ideas are a toss-up, such as tree-planting or regenerative agriculture. The ideas themselves would be great IF we only had 100 million people on the planet and today was 30 or 40 years in the past, before such large-scale damage had already occurred. Unfortunately, we do not have a time machine, and we now must face the facts that civilization itself was, is, and always will be unsustainable. The reason for this is simple, really, although that link will take you to the expanded version of why civilization is unsustainable. In a simplified explanation, technology use requires far more energy and resource use than we could ever muster on our own. Technology use reduces or removes negative feedbacks which once kept our numbers in balance with the rest of nature, so population growth occurs, acting as a positive feedback loop on yet more technology use. Other factors come into play, such as the separation of us from nature, convincing us that we are invincible when in reality we are not really separated from nature and never can be, since we utterly depend upon nature for our own survival. 

I have a litany of articles about false beliefs and denial. How we arrived at this point in time has everything to do with our behavior today and this is absolutely necessary to understand if (and that's a BIG if) society wants to reduce overshoot. Most people will be similar to the cartoon at the top of this article. It's frustrating that generally speaking, the loudest people in the room are those with the least (or not enough) knowledge about the predicaments we face. 

Frequently, although not always, the loudest people are shouting hype about the typical technological devices or popular narratives that they think can "solve" what they believe to be problems (not realizing that they are actually predicaments). I've also written extensively about such things as the electrification craze, the myth of the energy transition, how enlightenment eradicates false beliefs, the most popular forms of hopium, why solutions are bargaining, and of course, the constant stream of fantasies, myths, and fairy tales. Unfortunately, most of this has to do with ignorance, hubris, and stupidity, and very little can be done about that.

What's worse about the loudest people in the room is that many of them are reductionists; where their ideas are to reduce each predicament into small parts and try to "fix" the predicament by focusing on small parts here and there. Here's a prime example, where someone has come up with the idea of trying to "save" the Thwaites Glacier (the "Doomsday Glacier") in Antarctica by placing a curtain around it. Not just any curtain...a 50-mile long, 80 billion dollar curtain! Geoengineering (such as this lousy idea) is yet another failed plan because it doesn't reduce overshoot. The failure of logic here is engineering itself. The thought that we can somehow control nature with technology or rope off certain parts of the planet to "protect" them is sheer hubris. Basically, all these attempts are nothing more than popular narratives designed to make people think that we are actually doing something when in reality, all these projects are actually taking us the wrong way because they don't reduce overshoot, the only predicament that truly matters. Very few people seem to understand common sense that the first thing one does when one finds themselves in a hole is to STOP DIGGING. The bottom line is that we are not going to build our way or engineer our way out of this predicament. Reducing ecological overshoot by changing our behavior of technology use through reducing it is the only way for us to voluntarily reduce the harm, and as one can clearly see through all the various metrics, this is actually going in the wrong direction (simply Google "Great Acceleration" or look at recent temperature records being broken all over the world or look at recent global emissions measurements). 

The correct way to handle the situation is to re-localize and re-orient daily life around less technologically-intense ways of living. Rejecting AI, cryptocurrencies, and data centers, for instance, are positive actions to take. However, we must also realize that more often than not, most people are not going to be interested in reducing overshoot and this makes reducing it voluntarily an impossible task. This is the reason for our lack of agency - an inability to curtail the biological imperative of the Maximum Power Principle through many different means but especially wetiko. Those who claim that these facts are Malthusian, fatalistic, negative, nihilistic, defeatist, pessimistic, depressing, bleak, and misanthropic are choosing to use their own personal opinions to berate these facts, obviously missing the fact that opinions don't change facts and nature really doesn't care about their opinions. Only other humans who share the same worldview care about those opinions, which are just another weak attempt to deny reality. As for using those words to describe me, I've heard those all before and I can only laugh at them. Call me any name you want and it won't reduce overshoot one bit! I'll just lose respect for you rather quickly. The other thing that people often accuse me of is "giving up" which I replied to a considerably long time ago in the very first paragraph of this article, quote:

"How often do you see people accuse those of us who actually fully comprehend the predicaments society faces of "giving up"? Why do people think we have "given up" just because we understand these predicaments? NONE of us has given up on anything that is worth pursuing - it is the false "solutions" which actually take society in the wrong direction that we have given up on. Those of us who understand the situation with trees, for instance, haven't given up on planting trees. (Also see this article here about trees.) We've simply given up on the IDEA that planting trees will have much effect on climate change. We still enjoy planting trees, we just no longer do it for the wrong reasons or think that by planting them that doing so justifies society's continued destruction of the environment. Likewise, we also know that purchasing "green" or "clean" or " renewable" devices such as solar panels or EVs will have little to no effect on climate change. If anything, their manufacture and transport only allows the continued destruction of the environment and one look at Indigenous cultures proves that they are completely unnecessary for human survival and happiness."

This website reminds me of Drawdown, which I have previously ridiculed since none of the so-called "solutions" are actually solutions. This obsession with solutions is precisely where denial of reality is providing popular narratives and optimism bias to people who are ignorant to the above facts. Basically, both Climate Steps and Drawdown are nothing more and nothing less than bargaining to maintain civilization, which cannot be maintained. I'm sorry if I'm not impressed with either, but just because people have labeled different ideas as solutions and then created books, websites, groups, etc. doesn't mean that those ideas actually constitute REAL solutions, and of course they can't because overshoot isn't a problem to be solved, but a predicament with an outcome. Acceptance of that simple fact must be acquired before any real ideas that might actually help can be considered - everything else is nothing more than bargaining, desperation, and/or pure hopium. Once again, any book selling any type of technology as some sort of "solution" for the predicaments caused by technology use is flat out garbage. Don't waste your time reading tripe like that. There may be some good ideas in there, but in order for those ideas to actually work, global cooperation and consensus and adoption would have to be achieved first (not forthcoming anytime soon). Go instead to the iconic book list for quality books to read.

The sad truth isn't pretty, but the ideas in those types of publications generally fail for three reasons - they assume that civilization will continue, which, being unsustainable, is impossible. The second way they fail is that the ideas are just more examples of trying to engineer and/or control nature, something we already discussed in the first paragraph above. The third way they fail is that they are attempting to fight symptoms, not the actual cause. A much better plan which is superior in almost every way is to lay flat - opt out of the system to the extent possible. Abandon civilization. Too many people don't understand that the system is collapsing right now and collapse of industrial civilization will be complete within the next 25 years and probably actually much sooner than that. Here is what's happening already. Needless to say, most people will very soon have bigger fish to fry than worrying about fighting climate change. Fighting it is a noble idea, but one rooted in false beliefs. It very much reminds me of the war on drugs. Did drugs go away? Nope, not only are they still with us, but drug abuse is even worse than before and the drugs have gotten much stronger and even deadly. Much stronger and even deadly is what can be expected from climate change, and fighting it won't help one bit because overshoot is what is causing it. If you're going to fight, fight overshoot, not the symptoms. I might add that understanding overshoot thoroughly and completely is step number one. 

For something a little different and refreshing, check out Moncove Lake and enjoy the beautiful pictures!