2015 Annual Temperature Local Recordings (Public Domain)
There is no alternative. –Margaret Thatcher
Earlier this week (October 8, 2018) the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released an urgent report on global warming. The report warns humanity that just a bit over a decade remains (until 2030) for us to take drastic measures to keep global warming from exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial revolution levels. These drastic measures entail doing more than those negotiated in The Paris Agreement. Not only will an aggressive transition away from fossil fuel use be necessary, but we’ll also need to deploy various Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) strategies (reforestation, land restoration, soil carbon sequestration. etc.). This is a crucial thing to do, apparently, on the grounds that the 2°C modelling (a mere half a degree more) promised a doubled helping of moral horror and a dramatically increased likelihood that we’ll never manage to unfuck ourselves. This really got me to thinking.
If you’re anything like me, at this point you’re probably growing increasingly skeptical that Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand is going to save us all from climate change-induced mass extinction. It would be nice (great, in fact) if someone could do something about it, but who’s going to pay for that? Money doesn’t grow on trees. In fact, soon nothing will grow on trees. Besides, saving everyone and everything you’ve ever loved looks like a real jobs killer. And human beings working together towards a common goal not only doesn’t work, it doesn’t even make sense. Someone established this, I think. FA von Hayek or Ayn Rand. Someone like that. Someone smart. We need to be reasonable here and do the right thing, which is to do nothing.
Extinction isn’t the only thing Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand won’t save us from. I only picked extinction because it’s the biggest (soon-to-be-extinct) elephant in the room that no one much talks about. No one, that is, save for the tiny portion of the world’s population that is running around with its hair on fire over it (e.g., IPCC, various scientists, Naomi Klein). For these folks (who apparently aren’t adequately plugged into the Matrix) the end of the world is kind of a big deal. And yet when they express their alarm they mostly get the side-eye. I don’t just mean side eye from conservative, think tank-funded climate change deniers and apocalyptic evangelicals. I also mean from people who don’t have time for this depressing shit because they’re launching a startup.
I invite you to find this all very strange. The denialism. The fatalism. The nihilism. The fact that when this topic of the greatest moral gravitas occasionally is discussed it so often gets framed in the language of the market.
Global Warming is Best Left to the Individual
Kudos to the writers at the satirical publication The Onion for fully appreciating the strangeness of this phenomenon. They’ve illustrated it a number of times using, as a substitute for climate change, the metaphor of a giant asteroid slamming into the earth.
In June of 2014, for instance, there was the headline Astronomers Discover Massive Asteroid That Could Wipe Out Life On Earth, Force Nordstrom Out Of Business. The faux article has President Obama saying, “This asteroid represents an existential threat to our nation, to Nordstrom, and to life as we know it. I have ordered officials at all levels of government to do everything within our power to defend our people and our interests at home and abroad, which includes ensuring the survival of this leading fashion specialty retailer and its popular lines of clothing, footwear, and accessories.”
A September 2011 headline read Asteroid to Destroy Earth. Here the Onion News Network expresses its excitement at covering “the annihilation of Earth.” “You can count on us to be your number one end-of-humanity news source,” the piece exclaims. “We are expecting our ratings to go through the roof.”
My favorite by far is a February 2011 headline that reads Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth. “The voters sent us to Washington to stand up for individual liberty, not big government,” a Republican congressman reasons. “We believe that the decisions of how to deal with the massive asteroid are best left to the individual.” Best left to the individual! Ha! Take that nanny state!
As a hyper-atomized, self-interested individual focused primarily on consumption I feel as though these satires are poking fun at me in some hilarious but accusatory way that my newly developed inability to reflect bars me from grasping. My suspicion is that they’re speaking to something very dark and cynical about our political culture.
Global Warming is All My Fault (it’s All Your Fault Too).
On August 1 of this year Nathaniel Rich published a piece in the New York Times called Losing the Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change. It was very popular. Maybe you saw it? It was long, but the graphics were awesome. There’s lots of good stuff in there about the IPCC too.
Long story short, between 1979 and 1989 everyone all over the world got very serious about global warming, including some Republican and Democrat politicians in the US even. Viable plans were concocted to stop it. Al Gore was there. Unfortunately, however, I screwed it up. It was my fault. If you were alive between 1979 and 1989 it was your fault too. We couldn’t help it. Sorry, I didn’t mean to say “we”. I meant to say each of us individually. It was human nature. “[H]uman beings,” Rich opined, “whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations.” There you go. Nothing could be done. Human nature is fixed and there is no freedom. Sorry future generations.
This is why I was really counting on Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand.
I don’t mind taking the blame. As a thoroughly responsibilized human capital, I’m well trained to take personal responsibility for everything that happens to me, whether they be good things or bad. And per my training I won’t try to enlist the solidarity of others to avoid a mutually harmful consequence.
Responsibilization is a fancy sociology word. It means when governments and other institutions shirk responsibility for some function or service they used to provide by transferring that responsibility to the individuals who used to be the recipients of that function or service. It’s an important part of governance in the neoliberal era.
There used to be public education, but now my education is my responsibility. And if I don’t get educated, that’s my fault. See how that works?
Some countries have publicly provided health care, but in America I know that my healthcare is my responsibility. And if I die because I can’t pay, that’s my fault.
There used to be retirement pensions, but now saving for retirement is my responsibility. And if I starve to death in old age because I have no money, that’s my fault.
This is why the decision as to what to do about the giant asteroid hurtling towards earth must be left up to the individual. And when the giant asteroid slams into the earth and destroys all human life, it’ll be my fault. See how that works?
Imagine my surprise in reading Naomi Klein’s response to Nathaniel Rich’s piece entitled Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature”. She reminded me that the period where everyone got very serious about global warming (1979-1989) was the same period that the world first began experimenting with neoliberal capitalism. After that nothing further happened to stop global warming. See how that works?
There Is No Alternative
Margaret Thatcher used to love to say, TINA (There is no alternative)! She also used to say “there is no such thing as society.” As a responsibilized human capital who is going to be annihilated by a giant asteroid slamming into the earth, these claims resonate with me. The economic fatalism that convinced us all to sacrifice ourselves to the market for the enrichment of a tiny cabal of billionaire oligarchs now demands a similar sacrifice in the face of the threat of climate induced mass extinction. TINA!
It has to be this way because the alternative would be to work together collectively to preserve a common good (i.e., the continued existence of human life). Unfortunately, however, working together collectively is communism. The blasphemy that goods can be common is also communism. For that matter, democracy is communism. People get sensitive about that last one, so don’t say it out loud. Tell them you hate “the Gubmint”. We in America would rather be dead than red, and now we have a chance to make this commitment a thing in the world.
Why are Dummies so Dumb?
Donald Trump once tweeted that global warming was a concept invented by the Chinese to make US manufacturing uncompetitive. He also tweeted that global warming was a very expensive hoax because he was in Los Angeles this one December and it was freezing! What a big dummy! Donald Trump is clearly not a smart person.
Remember Senator James Inhofe (R-OK)? He refuted global warming by holding up a snowball on the floor of the senate. If there’s global warming, he wanted to know, then how do you explain the fact that in Washington DC, in January, “It’s very, very cold out”? Cold enough that water sometimes falls from the sky in the form of snow. Ha! What a moron! How does a person that dumb become a United States Senator in the first place?
In the summer of 2015 Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, and Scott Walker vied for political campaign funding at the Freedom Partners Forum, a retreat sponsored by Kansas-based fossil fuel oligarchs Charles and David Koch. Can you believe that all five of them ended up either denying that global warming is happening or claiming that if it is occuring it’s certainly not caused by burning the very fossil fuels that made the Koch Brothers billionaires? How likely is that? Is it a coincidence? Hardly. There is really only one possible conclusion to be drawn here. These politicians are apparently incredibly unintelligent. What other explanation is there?
It’s interesting how quickly people–especially liberal people–leap to the conclusion that the Republican party’s lockstep climate change denial is a result of ignorance and stupidity. Republicans are so dumb! Presuming stupidity sometimes affords us the ability to maintain a presumption of good will. In this way, people spare themselves from having to draw the terrible alternative presumptions. If these Republican politicians aren’t dumb-but-decent people then they must be intelligent-but… No, no, no! Don’t even think it! Only Noam Chomsky is brave enough to articulate such thoughts. Better to live (and die, apparently) with the cognitive dissonance. It’s the same sort of cognitive dissonance that parents experience as they struggle to continue to envision a future for their children that entails clean clothing and a successful career rather than envisioning a scene from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. If you’re not disciplined, flashes of Sarah Connor from The Terminator creep into your mind. Next thing you know, you’re asking yourself whether teaching your kids how to desalinate sea water and start a fire with a bow drill might not better prepare them for the future than an algebra tutor and piano lessons.
Global Warming is Only Real if it’s Too Late
A few weeks ago (September 28, 2018) the Trump administration released a 500-page environmental impact statement called the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Draft Environmental impact Statement. The report claims that global warming will rise to 7°F (about 4°C) by 2100. That’s a far more pessimistic prognosis than the IPCC’s October 8th report. A 4°C temperature increase above pre-industrial revolution temperatures puts the island of Manhattan under water, and that’s only one example of the horror. Imagine how Bangladesh would fare.
Unlike the IPCC, the Trump-controlled NHTSA doesn’t offer alternative scenarios in the case that we adopt radical climate change intervention measures. The statement isn’t offered as a wake up call to get serious about combating global warming. Instead, the statement assumes that the devastating 4°C rise in temperature is a fait accompli. TINA! And since it’s a done deal, the Trump administration reasons, we may as well roll back automotive fuel efficiency standards, fire up old coal plants, and lower restrictions on new oil and gas exploration.
A month ago we couldn’t do anything about global warming because it was fake science. Now we can’t do anything about global warming because it’s too late. The first position kept us from putting the brakes on the fossil fuel economy. The second, for the most nihilistic reason imaginable, allows us to press the pedal to the metal. Of course it doesn’t incentivize us to do so. If there is an incentive in accelerating the collapse of human civilization, I guess it’s one only an oligarch can see. Funny how that works.
I’m growing increasingly skeptical that Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand is going to save us all from climate change-induced mass extinction. And Donald Trump is behaving like a cynical nihilist, and the Republican Party is behaving like a death cult. Perhaps it’s time for us, terrible as it is, to take Dr. Chomsky’s position seriously and act accordingly. We’ve only got ten years. And when I say ‘we’, I don’t mean each of us individually. I mean “we” collectively and in solidarity.
