tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52891687141303128972024-03-15T21:10:05.983-04:00MetadelusionDelusion about delusion.Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-43369444476339583862024-01-15T16:37:00.004-05:002024-01-15T16:50:35.210-05:00The Wild Party<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oambtDSOkr2IABlzjMEjf-L0w7lhc0GrMGnutvzi-V-b7jNqtwDXM-pib8Z5HQGMND3cBCZuZnYrc8TY-UrwPucLD-KL5lC8BUdmrewiv8hKJN3uyyc0jum9ZONTbFmNnZUjlg8LC0zuJm_bcfjZpEQYRIbK_qUbamY9PPwSxRXp9gmh4A_vLIa-Wb0/s1080/25-overshoot-does-not-compute.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oambtDSOkr2IABlzjMEjf-L0w7lhc0GrMGnutvzi-V-b7jNqtwDXM-pib8Z5HQGMND3cBCZuZnYrc8TY-UrwPucLD-KL5lC8BUdmrewiv8hKJN3uyyc0jum9ZONTbFmNnZUjlg8LC0zuJm_bcfjZpEQYRIbK_qUbamY9PPwSxRXp9gmh4A_vLIa-Wb0/s320/25-overshoot-does-not-compute.png"/></a></div>
<p>Humanity isn’t failing because we’re dishonorable, we’re failing because we based our entire energy system on combustion, the exhaust of which turns out to trap heat. A few people in the 19th century understood this but they weren’t able to persuade enough people nor propose a suitable alternative.
<p>That exponential graph I showed you up above doesn’t only apply to population, it applies to everything, including literacy, and intelligence. You and your [possibly rhetorical] children exist at the end stages of a knowledge explosion. That explosion may ultimately have horrible consequences, but it’s certainly the only truly interesting thing that’s ever happened on Earth. For the simple reason that only the beneficiaries of that knowledge explosion could even become aware of the history of Earth. For most of human existence, humans were similar to animals, in that they had no coherent concept of the past or the future.
<p>Bonobos are probably happy but that doesn’t make them interesting. People who expect civilization to make them happy are going to be disappointed, as that’s not its function. Its function is to concentrate knowledge and power, so that we can have a clearer understanding of reality.
<p>The scientific enterprise starts from the assumptions that reality is counterintuitive, commonsense is almost always wrong, and your senses are lying to you. In order to gain an accurate understanding of the universe, your senses have to be enhanced with artificial tools, and that is exactly why science coevolved with technology.
<p>All life increases the entropy of its environment, but intelligence does so dramatically. Any intelligent species would tend to feel omnipotent and omniscient, because in comparison to every other organism on the planet, it is. Any intelligent species would tend to become intoxicated by its own power, experience irrational exuberance, and throw itself a wild party, burning all of its resources in the process.
<p>An intelligent species would have a hard time reconciling itself to limits, because in the early stages of its expansion it would encounter no meaningful limits that couldn’t be overcome by ingenuity. There would be a delay (hysteresis) between the “wild party” and the intractable long-term consequences for the biosphere. By the time the species becomes aware that serious limits exist and are existential threats, much of the damage is already done and irreversible except on very long time scales.
<p>More precisely: it was always a choice between either surviving somewhat longer on Earth, or escaping Earth. Earth only has about a billion years left, before it’s destroyed by the sun, and towards the end of that period it will be uninhabitable except possibly by bacteria. So there was always an upper limit to how long we were going to survive. But we were likely to be undone much sooner than that by the consequences of our intelligence explosion. Paradoxically it’s that same intelligence explosion that could allow us to escape from Earth. Which means we’re playing a very high stakes game. The odds of us escaping from Earth and spreading throughout the universe are extremely low, but it’s also the only path that’s likely to lead to us being a truly long-lived species (surviving for millions or billions of years).
<p>In science, the word “never” has a very special meaning. I would put it differently and say that the probability of us escaping Earth is very low, and conversely, the probability of collapse of civilization is exceedingly high.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-14144508914524816882024-01-15T16:27:00.001-05:002024-01-16T07:33:00.250-05:001.5 Is Jive<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnrlaltK6weqM6fT0iDXShDhXfYH9SRCJ2BbgTJvbWTH1jfsWI9aGKn8xU4jSU4inSkQWzp63UWo4JtjPsw2QCURj9zqtwO0Hqw5TY_hH9JU5tMqpNo5U_ceN5fGn9f04FLkYp7k_OFMFkK5ojbyQYTyhkix8tmYXQJ8wytPX2pjH-BpOShP3_blwaoqQ/s1219/1%20point%205%20is%20jive.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="320" data-original-height="1219" data-original-width="1219" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnrlaltK6weqM6fT0iDXShDhXfYH9SRCJ2BbgTJvbWTH1jfsWI9aGKn8xU4jSU4inSkQWzp63UWo4JtjPsw2QCURj9zqtwO0Hqw5TY_hH9JU5tMqpNo5U_ceN5fGn9f04FLkYp7k_OFMFkK5ojbyQYTyhkix8tmYXQJ8wytPX2pjH-BpOShP3_blwaoqQ/s320/1%20point%205%20is%20jive.png"/></a></div>
<p>I am of the minority opinion that the hype around 1.5° C was and is a type of greenwash. There never was any hope of holding the average global temperature increase to 1.5° C, as Kevin Anderson pointed out almost a decade ago. The plan was always to let it slide to 2 at least. But 1.5 had good propaganda value, as long as governments and corporations could claim to be working towards it, even though it was actually impossible.
<p>People are simply not going to accept reductions in their standard of living, except possibly at gunpoint. Politicians who try to persuade people to reduce their standard of living get voted out of office fast, and that places a severe limit on how rapidly the world’s economies can decarbonize.
<p>The whole program is so transparently lethal that it’s almost laughable, like a B dystopian sci-fi film. Since the default plan amounts to collective suicide, maybe I should start counting the entire human population as Church of Euthanasia members. That would certainly improve our numbers!
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-5138007883724869182023-10-07T11:31:00.011-04:002023-10-07T14:18:05.609-04:00Destigmatizing Distinction<p>It’s long overdue to seriously address the decline of nearly everything, excepting processor power and societal incoherence. Near the core of the issue is postmodernism, a huge subject to be sure. Though undeniably fashionable, obscurantism and flippancy play into the hands of the postmodern worldview, and to some extent I’ve been guilty of them myself, though I’m trying to atone.
<p>Beyond the pompousness and deliberate obfuscation of ideas and methods, and despite all its Marxist posturing, the postmodern worldview is fundamentally antisocial, because it engenders solipsism and fragmentation rather than coherence and solidarity. To claim the end of truth is deeply antisocial because it forecloses the possibility of rational responses to climate change and other pressing catastrophes. I accuse postmodernists of playing directly into the hands of neoliberal capitalists. The reflexive individualism and relentless disruption are right out of Baudrillard.
<p>But perhaps it’s worse than that. The early postmodernists may arguably have been idealists—though even then I question their motives—but postmodernism has become a crass race to the bottom, much like the object of its critique. The goal has become to show how little sense and effort you can make and still be taken seriously. The less sense you make, and the less work you do, the more laudable you are. But this is not only a recipe for ghastly, superficial and pointless art, it’s also the ideal condition for further incoherence and dehumanization.
<p>The essential lie of postmodernism is that nothing is truer or more relevant than anything else; that all views are fundamentally and radically equal, except for the view that everything is equal, which is implicitly elevated to religious dogma. In its most extreme formulation, the dogma of postmodern equality reduces all hierarchies to slavery, so that claiming or citing authority brands you as a colonialist, regardless of the merits of your argument. The indispensable condiment of postmodern discourse is <em>blur</em>, because the mash-up of unsupported and contradictory assertions can only be made remotely plausible by encrypting its content.
<p>The way out of the postmodern quagmire is by resorting to meaningful, evidence-based distinctions. Such distinctions will inevitably be accused of bias, inequality, inequity, and many related ills, but this is part of the lie that needs challenging. Above all it’s the notion that "everything is everything"—a willfully ill-informed misapplication of quantum theory—that needs refutation. “Everything is mostly nothing” would more accurately describe the quantum scale, but it’s still a fatally misleading and nihilistic view of the human predicament. For anti-postmodern rebels, I propose a more constructive slogan: “Reality is real enough to kill us all.”
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-19973260088598892842022-09-25T08:05:00.001-04:002022-09-25T08:05:39.156-04:00Pronouns<p>People often ask me what pronouns I prefer. When I first started crossdressing in public in 1991, passing could be a matter of life and death, and gender-appropriate pronouns were essential for safety reasons alone. Today there’s somewhat more tolerance for gender diversity, at least in relatively cosmopolitan places, so I frame the issue differently.
<p>I don’t always present as female, but if I am presenting as female, it’s polite to use female pronouns, even if safety isn’t an issue. Think of it this way: Subcultures normally have codes of conduct. Suppose you visited a motorcycle club and opined loudly that riding motorcycles is stupid. At best you would not make friends. Similarly, addressing a visibly transgendered person with inappropriate pronouns constitutes refusal to abide by a code of conduct, and it will rightly be perceived as rudeness. It’s not a felony, it’s just boorish. Doing it once by accident is forgivable. Doing it persistently or intentionally is no better than addressing people with slurs.
<p>If I’m presenting as male and someone addresses me with female pronouns I take it as a compliment. I’ve crossdressed for much of my life, long before it was fashionable or even remotely acceptable. I made sacrifices, faced rejection and hatred, and narrowly escaped many dangerous predicaments. I crossdress primarily because I like the way it makes me feel, but it has a revolutionary element. I joined the larger societal struggle against strict gender roles. It took guts, and still does. Calling me “she” even if I happen to be unshaven or wearing pants is a gesture of respect and solidarity, and I appreciate it.
<p>I have never claimed to be biologically female, and never would, because I consider it disrespectful to women, given the hideous discrimination and violence they’ve suffered and continue to suffer due to their lack of a Y chromosome. I have a lot of sympathy for women who feel threatened by men. I’ve been threatened by men, and it’s scary as hell. To be fair, I’ve been threatened by women too, but rarely, and I’ve only faced the threat of sexual violence from men. I can easily understand why some women might not feel comfortable allowing men in their space, even if they make an effort to blend in.
<p>Which brings us to bathrooms. On more than one occasion I have literally had my life saved by the ability to use a women’s bathroom. Transgendered people are targets of male violence with nauseating frequency. The reality of being transgendered is that using the wrong bathroom isn’t just humiliating, it’s potentially suicidal. So cut transgendered people some slack on this point. But it’s a two-way street. If you’re a transgendered person in the other gender’s bathroom, think of yourself as a temporary ambassador for all transgendered people. We’re counting on you to make a favorable impression, so be on your best behavior. Keep to yourself, do your business and then leave. That’s part of our code of conduct too.
<p>No doubt we have way more serious problems to worry about than pronouns, but little things matter and sometimes add up. Significant victories over racism, sexism and homophobia have occurred during my lifetime. I’m honored to have lived through that progress, and language changes are part of the deal. For what it’s worth, my friends call me Chrissy.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-48546158757913883322022-02-13T07:11:00.010-05:002022-02-13T10:06:03.408-05:00He who talks loud, saying nothing<p>I got about a third of the way through “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” before I had to abort. It reminded me of all the reasons why I’ve always found Žižek’s spiel maddening. It’s just too cute, cryptic, and postmodern. According to Wikipedia, “British political philosopher John Gray attacked Žižek for his celebrations of violence, his failure to ground his theories in historical facts, and his 'formless radicalism' which, according to Gray, professes to be communist yet lacks the conviction that communism could ever be successfully realized.” What he said!
<p>I do love “They Live” though, and I totally get why Žižek remains popular. He has moments of brilliance and can be hilariously funny. He’s underrated as a comedian. Perhaps this could have been an alternative career path for him. I guess there wasn’t a lot of demand for comedians in ex-Yugoslavia. But I don’t take him seriously as a thinker, he’s too incoherent for that.
<p>Žižek isn’t a scientist in any meaningful sense, so he doesn’t have scientific peers. He’s a philosopher, and a fan of Derrida which tells us a lot. He’s an offshoot of that gnomic movement that considers incomprehensibility to be proof of authority. But in scientific endeavors it’s the opposite: the goal is to communicate as clearly as possible, avoid superlatives, and back up claims with evidence. “What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence" (Hitchens) and “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (Sagan).
<p>What Žižek does have is Marxist / Post-Structuralist peers, and they’re very snarky and competitive. They’re constantly obliged to prove that they’re not selling out, which is quite a challenge in a capitalist economy, hence their focus on provocation.
<p>Metadelusion is fundamentally an attempt to dispel confusion over what science is, and isn’t. The original antagonist of Metadelusion was also a fan of post-structuralism, and it showed in her refusal to admit the realness of reality that scientific pragmatism takes as axiomatic. Žižek is no expert on reality, despite his references to quantum physics (the last refuge of scoundrels).
<p>Philosophy can be cryptic, and in some of its schools, encryption is apparently a design goal. But philosophy isn’t science, because unlike philosophers, scientists are obliged to make testable predictions about phenomena. Though there is a philosophy of science, which often confuses people.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-11543040438750335412021-09-19T03:57:00.003-04:002021-10-07T04:13:22.760-04:00Stairway to NothingHumanity is severely afflicted by delusion. We yearn to be princes and princesses, riding glittery ponies in a fairy tale, unique and immortal and magically exempt from all rules and authority, but in reality we’re hairless apes clinging to a planet that will soon be made uninhabitable by our stubborn refusal to face facts. There will be no happy ending for any of us as individuals. We will age, weaken, succumb to illness, and certainly die. The tales of power that were sold to us by charlatans like Carlos Castaneda were only useful fictions. Even the fragmentary record of MK-Ultra shows that the popularization of recreational drug use was deliberate social engineering, intended to pacify and neutralize us. The consciousness revolution’s mystical fatalism transformed us into alienated and disempowered consumers, easily disembodied and reduced to fleeting avatars that pose no threat to global capital. Psychedelic culture is predatory by design, a soothing distraction sustained by our wish to escape from the omnipotence of markets and corporations. There are no witches or sorcerers, only deluded people on a stairway to nothing. Retreating into fantasies of individual glory only strengthens the grip of our sociopathic masters. Hell was always here, in the present, made manifest by cruelty and indifference. The path that leads to our survival is collective, and we will walk it soberly, squinting in the harsh glare of evidence, or not at all.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-630893286597650912021-05-21T13:41:00.004-04:002021-05-21T13:48:23.472-04:00Stopping PowerInterviewed by The Guardian, Bulgarian performance artist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2020/oct/07/marina-abramovic-im-an-artist-not-a-satanist">Marina Abramovic</a> quoted Ayn Rand, saying “The question is not who is going to let me, it’s who is going to stop me.” The quote is pure sociopathy, revealing deviant selfishness and utter contempt for the common good. Increasingly the ultra-wealthy are kings. They do whatever they like because no one can stop them. If they want to give away their money, they do so, and we praise them as though they were the paragon of virtue. If they prefer to build bases on Mars, we act as though that were a laudable goal. It’s not due to lese majeste laws; no one goes to prison for criticizing billionaires. It’s that the structure of our society rewards antisocial behavior. Neoliberal capitalism extols the mythical heroism of the risk-taking entrepreneur. The neoliberal narrative empowers rugged individualists, and in this sense Ayn Rand already won. We've already got the society she evangelized, dominated by self-obsessed megalomaniacs slugging it out to win the influence wars, while the rest of us—the little people—cower in the shit, aping them. Capitalism is perfectly designed to overinflate the egos of our new monarchs. Its ultimate values—the prizes to be won—are fame and luxury. Browsing through Architectural Digest makes the goal obvious. The dream is to be famous just for being rich and be rich just for being famous. Superficiality is the order of the day. The word ‘fashion’ implies conformity to arbitrary, ever-changing norms, so last year‘s thing simply won’t do. Fashion is the epitome of capitalism, because we must keep making more and more things and throwing them away to remain fashionable. But what has real value? What has real value is truth. Truth is not fashionable. Our explanations of phenomena may change, but not because we tire of them; they change because we’re confronted by new evidence. Our accumulated wisdom is valuable because it endures and isn’t arbitrary. Like fashion, capitalism is myopically fixated on individual glory in the fickle present. Unable to visualize collective success, we stagger blindly into a future that doesn’t need us.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-41433281626334578852020-08-09T15:20:00.004-04:002020-08-09T20:04:46.499-04:00Physicists predict 'irreversible collapse'<p>I have lived my entire adult life in the looming shadow of ecological and societal collapse. By the age of thirteen I already clearly visualized the primary drivers of collapse, overpopulation and over-consumption. I began writing and speaking about the danger of collapse in 1992, when this was still considered an extremely far-fetched hypothesis. Three decades later, collapse is now discussed openly in the mainstream media. I’m not motivated by schadenfreude and take no pleasure in being right.
<p>It’s possible that I’ll be taken more seriously now, but this is cold comfort since collapse is by now almost certainly unavoidable, as two physicists recently demonstrated in an excruciating peer-reviewed paper for Nature, the gist of which was summarized for the lay person in the Vice article “<a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akzn5a/theoretical-physicists-say-90-chance-of-societal-collapse-within-several-decades">Theoretical Physicists Say 90% Chance of Societal Collapse Within Several Decades</a>.”
<p>The first half of the <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-63657-6">paper</a> is tough sledding for non-mathematicians, but the second half is math-free and relatively comprehensible. The section titled “Fermi’s paradox” confirms what I’ve been saying for years: that the reason we appear to be alone in the cosmos is because intelligence tends to snuff itself out, after an all-too-brief burst of irrational exuberance. As the paper puts it, “only civilizations capable of … [switching] from an economical society to a sort of ‘cultural’ society in a timely manner, may survive.” In other words, the only civilizations that make it through the bottleneck are those rare ones that prioritize collective long-term survival over individual short-term profit. Or as my video “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pKggi_-MJw">Overshoot</a>” puts it more succinctly, “intelligent life is a cruel joke.”
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-5689162714048745872020-06-25T19:50:00.000-04:002020-06-25T20:28:19.353-04:00On Consent<p>When Mahatma Gandhi was asked “What do you think of Western civilization?” he supposedly replied “I think it would be a good idea.” It’s a great line, but it misses a crucial point about civilization. Civilization is not primarily an ethical achievement, though in practice our ethics have improved remarkably, even just since the 18th century, when the breaking wheel was still a common method of execution and slavery was still a routine fact of life. But any ethical progress we've made is a side-effect of our technical progress, not the other way around. Ethical rules are useless without the power to apply them, and that power comes from technical progress.
<p>It all boils down to consent. Can sex with an animal be acceptable if it causes the animal no suffering? Many vegans would say no, because the animal can't give consent. The deeper problem is that consent doesn't actually exist for animals; it's a legal conception that you need an education to appreciate. On the other hand if you say yes, now you're on a slippery slope. What about raping someone who is completely anesthetized so that they don't even realize it happened? Obviously most people wouldn’t accept this, and here the issue is clearly consent.
<p>This is relevant because in order to succeed, civilization has to do many things without obtaining or even considering consent. For example, you didn't consent to be made literate. If author William Golding ("Lord of the Flies") was even half right, you would have preferred to be a savage, and would have remained one if civilization hadn't intervened. Civilization obliges people to do “unnatural” things, in fact that’s its mission in a nutshell. Freud explored this fundamental tension in his classic “Civilization and Its Discontents.”
<p>Science starts from the premise that our senses are unreliable, which they in fact are. As recently as the 16th century, it was still reasonable to believe that the sun orbits the earth, because that’s how it appeared to the naked eye. The heliocentric model ultimately prevailed because technical progress (in the design and manufacture of lenses) made it impossible to deny that it was a better explanation of observed phenomena. This leads to the essential point, which is that science has necessarily co-evolved with technology. You simply can't have one without the other.
<p>Of course this spoils the utopian daydream that science can somehow exist without power plants and copper mines and chemical refineries and microchip factories. Nope! We need all that stuff to do science, and science of course made all that stuff possible. So it's a vicious circle, a positive feedback, and that co-evolution is what brought us social progress. Monarchy gradually replaced aristocracy because monarchy was less hostile to progress. But eventually monarchy also became a limiting factor. The notion that all individuals have inalienable rights only dates back to the American and French revolutions. These revolutions (or something like them) were inevitable, because the resulting ethical and legal advances were prerequisites for further progress.
<p>Social progress is both a result of, and a necessary condition for civilization, and also co-evolved with science and technology. The institution of slavery ultimately failed not only because it was unethical but also because it was too inefficient to be compatible with progress. Soviet communism failed for similar reasons. To function properly, technological society requires well-educated and reasonably independent citizens capable of assimilating information, thinking critically, and disseminating new information in response. That's why you were taught to read and do arithmetic even if you hated it, and why this absence of consent isn’t considered a crime. On the contrary, inhibiting a child’s education is illegal in civilized countries.
<p>Similarly, you’re not asked to consent to laws against drunk driving, because society’s desire to prevent you from murdering random strangers on the highway outweighs your personal desire to drive drunk. The more antisocial a behavior is, the less likely that consent will apply to it. In an ideal world, consent would always be required, but we don’t live in an ideal world, and never will. Progress is nothing if not pragmatic.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-58943880924298827572018-06-20T16:12:00.003-04:002018-09-10T00:09:33.048-04:00A Thin Layer of Oily Rock<p>It's easy to see that we've made a mess of earth, but harder to grasp that being apex predators this is primarily a problem for US, and particularly for our fascinating but exceedingly fragile technological civilization. Sure human extinction would suck for species that depend on us, e.g cows, dogs, cats, corn, pigeons, roaches, etc. but for most species it would be a HUGE WIN. Within a few thousand years (an eye-blink on the geologic time scale) earth would be replenished with new lifeforms. If it's anything like the Permian-Triassic extinction, initially earth would be populated by slime, bacteria, dinoflagellates, etc. but in the long term, giant apex predators would almost certainly reappear. They might evolve back into humans, but they might not too, and either way it wouldn't be our concern.
<p>ALL life changes its environment, it's only a question of degree. At the time when plants evolved the dominant lifeforms were anaerobic bacteria, to which oxygen is deadly poison. Plants nearly exterminated the dominant lifeforms by drastically changing earth's atmosphere, in what could be considered the greatest crime of earth's entire history. Anaerobes didn't go totally extinct, they hung on deep in earth's crust, in your gut and gums, etc. but still it was a disaster from their point of view. Yet without this epic interspecies violence animals wouldn't be here, including us.
<p>The history of life is chaotic and full of errors that turn out to have monumental consequences. In fact error is the very essence of the system, the engine of evolutionary adaptation. This is what Richard Dawkins means by his catchy phrase "the blind watchmaker": there's no designer, no top or bottom, no good or bad organisms. There's just stuff trying to survive, by mutating in an environment of differential survival. It's a horrible blind force from our human perspective, but it's how we got here; it's our creation story whether we like it or not. Cancer is just another family of successful patterns of GTCA code. It's bad news for us, but from the perspective of evolutionary success, cancer persists and therefore has as much right to be here as we do.
<p>God, the Buddha, etc. are fairy tales. You might as well worry about the Easter bunny. The universe is vast, mostly empty and hostile to life, and totally indifferent to our fate. People will either stop behaving like children and start planning rationally for long-term survival, or the future won't include us.Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-86685463620140209932015-12-12T15:54:00.002-05:002015-12-12T15:54:58.905-05:00COP21: pass the soap<p>COP21 was adopted today, and it's an interesting document. Each paragraph begins with an italicized verb, and they are: acknowledges, affirms, agrees, calls upon, decides, emphasizes, encourages, invites, notes, recognizes, recommends, reiterates, requests, resolves, takes note, urges, welcomes. Maybe next time we'll see beseeches, implores, and pleads.
<p>Notably absent are the following verbs: authorizes, decrees, directs, imposes, mandates, obliges, orders, ratifies, requires, stipulates. This list is by no means exhaustive. Neither damages nor sanctions are mentioned, and the only mention of punishment is a renouncement of it, in Article 13: "The transparency framework shall ... be implemented in a facilitative, non-intrusive, non-punitive manner, respectful of national sovereignty, and avoid placing undue burden on Parties." This bright green(wash) bubble bath of deference applies as much to the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia as it does to Kiribati.
<p>It does appear that James Hansen has a point: “It’s a fraud really, a fake,” [Hansen] says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-45728644656509650182015-11-06T21:09:00.003-05:002015-11-07T16:40:54.284-05:00Ditch the Pharaohs: Transhumanism as escapism<p>Iara Lee's "Synthetic Pleasures" focuses on transhumanists and their terrifying delusions and hubris. It only considers our assault on our environment from a human point of view, just as American media about the Vietnam War only considered the war's effect on Americans. Nonetheless it's full of memorable quotes, for example:
<p><ul>"... the thing that sets human beings apart from other creatures is a built-in dissatisfaction. There's an itch that we have that can't be scratched. Our efforts to scratch it have created civilization, which is essentially the practice of trying to adapt the environment to us rather than adapting ourselves to the environment." -John Perry Barlow</ul>
<p>It seems obvious that "taking the machine inside us and uniting with it" has very real costs and dangers, including the danger of isolating ourselves from the impacts of industrialism until it's too late to mitigate them: "the electricity goes off and you discover you're not living in paradise, you're living in hell." Of course most of the human population already lives in hell*, and that goes double for non-humans.
<p>I agree with Robert Gurland that "problems of ecology, are essentially problems of transformation ... we might in the end transform the world in such a way that we won't be able to adapt to it ... that is, we literally won't be able to live in the world that we create." I just don't agree that the ethics of mass extinction are limited to its impact on humans. The view that Earth is a blank canvas, and that the nonhuman world is merely a backdrop for the human drama, is suspiciously similar to the views colonists had of the New World and its native population, and it's achieving a similar result: extermination.
<p>Stephen Hawking proves himself as delusional as any other transhumanist, by refusing to accept that our survival depends critically on cooperation with nonhumans. Merely asserting that "our only chance of long-term survival is ... to spread out into space" like Daleks doesn't make it a viable plan, and the reflexive repetitiveness of this theme is just more evidence that transhumanism is faith-based. Like any religion, transhumanism is fundamentally escapist, requiring adherents to believe that humanity's destiny lies elsewhere--anywhere but here--when in fact "like Prometheus we are bound, chained to this rock of a brave new world." We will either cooperate and show altruism towards future humans and nonhumans, or we won't be around. Science can't decide this question because it's pure ethics.
<p>The deeper question is, what are humanity's shared goals if any, and this is obviously connected to our perception of the meaning of life, but again science can't help us since meaning is culturally relative and highly mutable. If our goal is for a tiny percentage of the population to party like Egyptian Pharaohs while everyone else suffers horrifically until Earth is unfit for mammals, we don't need to change anything. Neoliberalism dovetails neatly with new age spirituality in the sense that they're both built on victim-blaming--whatever happens to you, it's because you deserve it--and together they constitute the perfect ideology for neo-feudal militant theocracy and ecocide along the lines of "The Handmaid's Tale."
<p>However if our goal is to keep earth habitable for humans indefinitely, then maximizing the self-interest of a few sperm lottery winners won't work; instead we need to turn the Titanic around 180 degrees fast, and that means seizing power from the Pharaohs, drastically reducing our population (voluntarily or otherwise) and reorganizing our whole way of life around the fecundity of ecosystems. But make no mistake, either way the long-term future doesn't include us. Bacteria were here first and they will be here last. On this point at least science is abundantly clear.
<p>The script of "Synthetic Pleasures" is <a href="http://culturesofresistance.org/files/SPScript.pdf">here</a>.
<p>*"Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day." Source: Global Issues, <a href="http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats">Poverty Facts and Stats</a>, Jan. 7, 2013.Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-41849093062997754792015-01-20T10:36:00.002-05:002015-01-20T10:44:39.597-05:00Mainstream metadelusions<p>Re [<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/?comments_popup=18011">RealClimate comment</a>] #69 “The poster is deluding himself”: Delusion is an important part of our evolutionary toolkit. We tell ourselves what we want to hear because doing so worked for us on the savannah. Nate Hagen (The Monkey Trap) talks about this in an interesting lecture he gives called <a href="http://www.themonkeytrap.us/the-converging-energy-and-environmental-crises-a-pep-talk-for-those-paying-attention">The Converging Energy and Environmental Crises – A Pep Talk for those Paying Attention</a>. Science helps us correct for our delusional biases, but it doesn’t make them disappear. Science also makes our delusional biases more dangerous, by empowering us to cause trouble. Pretending that we aren’t deluded (i.e. delusion about delusion) gets us into serious trouble.
<p>But regarding the allegation that the message needs to be more mainstream, let’s explore that a bit. How about a message that everyone should keep right on doing what they’re already doing, but shop for slightly different products? That sounds pretty good right? Corporations and their shareholders will like it too. It also sounds suspiciously similar to what we've been doing all along. I live in the United States, so let’s see how that's worked out for us. Some <a href="http://public.wsu.edu/~mreed/380American%20Consumption.htm">fun facts</a>, here in the USA:
<p>
<ul>
<li>Forty percent of births are unintended [actually it's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_pregnancy#United_States_of_America">49%</a> but hey, who's counting?].
<li>Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people.
<li>Americans throw out 200,000 tons of edible food daily.
<li>The average American generates 52 tons of garbage by age 75.
<li>The average individual daily consumption of water is 159 gallons, while more than half the world's population lives on 25 gallons.
<li>Fifty-six percent of available farmland is used for beef production.
<li>There are more shopping malls than high schools.
</ul>
<p>And so forth. Looks to me like selling the most wasteful people on Earth lots of electric cars and solar panels is unhelpful, because it sends the wrong message, which is that the affluent classes of developing countries can emulate our example, and feel good about themselves too.
<p>It might be useful to consider how Americans fared the last (and only) time there was anything resembling top-down egalitarianism here (run-up to and aftermath of WWII). Let’s see, private automobiles weren’t <a href="http://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/automobile-factories-switched-to-war-production-as-america-entered-world-war-ii/">manufactured</a>, food and gasoline were <a href="http://www.ameshistory.org/exhibits/events/rationing.htm">rationed</a>, women made do without nylons, etc. And of course the top marginal income tax rate was over 90%, <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Historical_Mariginal_Tax_Rate_for_Highest_and_Lowest_Income_Earners.jpg">incredible but true</a>.
<p>So even rapacious Americans are in fact capable of making altruistic sacrifices on a mass scale, given sufficient motivation. Which suggests that climate change possibly fails to constitute a sufficient motivation, the subject of George Marshall’s fascinating book “Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change”. He quotes <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman">Daniel Kahneman</a> (Nobel-winning author of “Thinking Fast and Thinking Slow") as saying “No amount of psychological awareness will overcome people’s reluctance to lower their standard of living.” That goes double for the ultra-rich, and they own the fossil carbon.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-8720078998039443432015-01-12T15:24:00.000-05:002015-01-12T18:45:57.901-05:00Confronting growth-ismI’m primarily focused on climate change, economic stratification, and
unchecked development, and in my view these share a common cause, which I call
growth-ism or growth-mania (after William R. Catton). Naomi Klein calls it
extractivism, but I consider this deceptive, because it leaves unchallenged an
escapist fantasy of non-extractive growth. Either humans are going to moderate
their demands, and learn to live within their means, or we simply won’t be
around.<br />
<br />
99.9 percent of all the species that have ever existed are now <a href="http://www.endangeredspeciesinternational.org/overview.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">extinct</a>, and ultimately, (probably anaerobic) bacteria will
re-inherit Earth. There was never going to be a happy ending for us as a
species, any more than there is for us as individuals. We have no chance of
escaping, because there’s nowhere to escape to. Humans have always faced a tough
choice here, between surviving a while longer, and surviving less long. For my
entire adult life the trend has been moving inexorably towards <a href="http://metadelusion.blogspot.com/2012_04_01_archive.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">less</a> and I see no sign of a reversal; on the contrary we’re
accelerating rapidly in the wrong direction. The United Nations charter commits
us to keeping Earth habitable for humans indefinitely, but like so many of our
noble declarations this increasingly seems like a cruel joke.<br />
<br />
I have less skin in the game than some of you, having long ago taken a
lifetime vow of non-procreation. In the not-so-distant future (paraphrasing
Nobody in “Dead Man”) this world will no longer concern me. I continue to work
to try and change the world for the better in small ways, but I have no
illusions about the larger trajectory. I won’t live to see the worst impacts of
climate change, because they will unfold over hundreds if not thousands of
years. Limiting global surface temperature increase to 2° C is a pipe dream;
that train already left the station. Yes it could theoretically be achieved with
sustained de-growth of <a href="http://kevinanderson.info/blog/avoiding-dangerous-climate-change-demands-de-growth-strategies-from-wealthier-nations/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">10% per annum</a>, but that won’t happen barring
collapse of civilization. Some are rooting for collapse, but I’m committed to
preserving civilization for better or worse.<br />
<br />
Albert Bartlett famously complained that “The greatest shortcoming of the
human race is our inability to understand the exponential function” and while I
sympathize, I see that the hard problems are all ethical, not scientific. Why
should people embrace disturbing truths instead of convenient fictions? Why
shouldn’t the rich live soft lives and be waited on hand and foot if they can
get away with it? Why shouldn’t the ruling class use force to take whatever it
wants? Why should people make sacrifices for the benefit of future generations?
Why should individual humans care what happens after they’re dead?<br />
<br />
Humans could turn out to be great at science but lousy at ethics. Ultimately
our problems boil down to a tragic mismatch between our original evolutionary
environment and the environment we’ve created for ourselves through cultural
evolution. This is no fault of our own, and while I didn’t in the past,
increasingly I feel empathy for people. In our best moments we create inspiring
works of exquisite beauty. But psychologically we seem poorly equipped to handle
the hard truths of our existence, revealed in such vivid detail by science. I
don’t blame people for magical thinking–it’s built into our <a href="http://www.livescience.com/19665-belief-magic.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">hardware</a>–but the only way forward is for us to put childish
things aside, and reorganize our entire way of life around the seemingly
impossible challenges of long-term survival.<br />
<br />
Many of the attributes that made us fit on the savannah have monstrous
consequences in the present. For example, we tend to focus on immediate threats
to the exclusion of all else, and I’m no exception. I will continue to direct my
energies towards preventing or limiting injustice in my local community, because
it immediately impacts my quality of life. I will also continue to take every
opportunity to shame public officials for their perversion of so many lofty
stated goals, an admittedly quixotic quest.<br />
<br />
The harsh reality is that the super-rich are invading urban cores, in a
stunning reversal that few saw coming. One the few who did see it was Paul
Theroux. In his obscure dystopian novel “O-Zone” (1987) he predicted that the
“owners” would concentrate their power in gated citadels patrolled by
militarized private police, while simultaneously abandoning vast areas and
leaving the majority of the population to fend for themselves. This neo-feudal
vision has already been realized in <a href="http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-detroit-splitting-two-cities-rich-and-poor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Detroit</a> and many other places, and it emerges
from a stage beyond gentrification, described by Simon Kuper as <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/a096d1d0-d2ec-11e2-aac2-00144feab7de.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">plutocratization</a> in his seminal article “Priced
Out of Paris.”<br />
<br />
Plutocratization has already occurred in Paris and London and San Francisco
and Brooklyn, it’s underway here in Boston, and the signs of it are everywhere.
The model is a live-in outdoor mall, disguised to look like a vibrant, quaint
community, with faux-Belle Epoch street lamps and continuous surveillance. This
is where the super-rich will make their stand, at least until things get really
rough and the more foresighted of them retreat to their <a href="http://www.survivalcondo.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">luxury survival
condos</a>. If Thomas Piketty is even half right, the 1% of humanity who <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/01/20/davos-2014-oxfam-85-richest-people-half-world/4655337/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">own half the world’s wealth</a> will continue to
maximize their profits until the bitter end.Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-10384441196860416932013-09-10T02:32:00.002-04:002013-09-11T01:22:25.970-04:00Geoengineering is the ultimate business as usual<p>You may have read Naomi Klein’s recent <a href="http://www.salon.com/2013/09/05/naomi_klein_big_green_groups_are_crippling_the_environmental_movement_partner/">Salon interview</a> in which she posits that "Green groups may be more damaging than climate change deniers", and Joe Romm’s noticeably shrill <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/09/09/2577331/naomi-klein-denialism/">response</a> on ClimateProgress. In my view Romm was honor-bound to give the critique he gave. The one thing he can’t allow Klein or anyone else to say is that the fix is in, i.e. that fossil fuel corporations have captured government, because that would make his chirpy "better living through green technology" spiel irrelevant, if not duplicitous. Yet the latest IEA numbers clearly show that the global plan is to extract and burn <b>more</b> fossil fuel, not less, while simultaneously testing and deploying a mixed bag of geoengineering methods ("all of the above"). Research into both CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) and SRM (Solar Radiation Management) is already well underway in many countries, thanks to major funding from the usual suspects.
<p>The remaining fossil fuels and their corresponding infrastructure are the most valuable assets ever to exist in human history, by far, but they’re also the largest <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs">sunk costs</a> ever to exist. In economic theory, sunk costs aren’t supposed to influence decisions, but observed behavior is frequently less than ideal. To suppose that fossil fuel corporations and their equivalent state actors would willingly abandon such monumental investments, by writing them off as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranded_asset">stranded assets</a>, is naive. On the contrary, their business model assumes that the remaining fossil fuels will not only be sold, but sold at ever-increasing prices, i.e. their plan is to profit from scarcity. Geoengineering is seen as just another cost of doing business, its risks quantifiable and subject to standard depreciation.
<p>Between now and 2040, humanity will emit <a href="http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/">another teraton</a> of CO2, because the alternative is collapse of the ultimate scam, AKA the global economy, which operates by looting posterity. China is already the world’s largest consumer of automobiles, and is busily constructing an interstate highway system three times the size of America’s. We’re reduced to helping them: the Alberta tar sands are destined for them, not us. This is not only because the fossil fuel dynasties seek to preserve their advantages, but more deeply because geoengineering epitomizes humanity’s exceptionalist narrative, which claims that our success flows directly from our specialness, heroism, and ingenuity. The possibility that our success was merely a predictable consequence of the fossil fuel windfall, and therefore temporary and doomed from the start, is as unthinkable as comparing humanity to yeast in a bottle (cf. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_R._Catton,_Jr.">William R. Catton</a> and many others).
<p>Klein might argue that a sufficiently militant and widespread popular revolution could delay or even prevent this grim development, but I wouldn’t count on it. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a religious person, but if I were, I would pray that geoengineering <em>works</em>.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-86158416891356060812013-08-10T18:30:00.002-04:002013-08-10T18:32:10.849-04:00The go-go years: wallowing in solvents<p>Boston is encircled by a ring road called Route 128, along which you can occasionally see signs that say "America's Technology Highway." The road earned its title during the rapid development of the post-WWII boom, which particularly affected the emerging electronics industry. Old-timers nostalgically refer to this period as the "go-go years" because everything seemed possible. Job-creators rolled off brand-new exit ramps into towns like Burlington, Massachusetts, carrying briefcases full of money, and town officials cut red tape and issued permits without asking too many questions.
<p>Northwest Park is a woodsy office park in the town of Burlington, perched on a hill near the highway, and packed with low concrete buildings. During the go-go years, most of the tenants were fabricating semiconductors, and in the process routinely using highly toxic solvents. Thousands of barrels of spent solvents--frequently contaminated with other hazardous materials--were casually emptied into unlined gravel pits near the buildings, or in one case literally poured into a hole in the floor. The solvents gradually flowed downhill, under a nearby road and into the town's well field. When the storm sewers along Middlesex Turnpike failed, a Public Works employee was sent down a manhole to take a look, and reported back that the sewer pipes were gone, dissolved away. That's how Burlington officials learned--years too late--that they had a problem.
<p>Thousands of monitoring wells were drilled to map the solvent plumes and track their inexorable spread. Some of the drinking water wells had to be permanently retired, and a huge industrial facility was built next to the well field, designed to pump groundwater up, through filters, and back into the ground. Smaller filtration stations were installed in the office park, carefully concealed in rustic wooden sheds. After the filters failed to achieve the desired result, vast quantities of potassium permanganate were injected into the ground, in an attempt to neutralize the solvents, which tend to pool beneath rocks. Arsenic and PCB were also found in some locations, and new surprises turn up regularly. It's not unusual to see contractors pressure-washing rocks, or trucking away a whole hillside, at state expense of course. There are hundreds of documents on Northwest Park in the state environmental department's database, spanning forty years, and totaling tens of thousands of pages.
<p>And that's just one office park in one small suburb of Boston. And that's a success story, in the sense that some of the perpetrators ("responsible parties" in the jargon) could be identified, were still in business, and were eventually forced via interminable litigation to cough up some money. But such happy endings are rare. Many Massachusetts sites were so severely contaminated that remediation would bankrupt the state, and since in most of those cases the responsible parties are unknown or long defunct, the federal government ends up holding the bag. Those cases are Superfund sites, and they also form a ring around Boston, roughly following America's Technology Highway.
<p>Multiply Boston's example times hundreds of other American cities--some facing much worse contamination--and you can begin to reckon the true costs of the go-go years, not just in terms of monumental waste of public funds, but in terms of illness, deformity, and untimely death. It would have been far cheaper to avoid dumping hazardous waste in the first place. Nonetheless job-creators consistently chose to maximize short-term profits, gambling that future costs would be borne by faceless others. Economists call such costs externalities, and steeply discount them. Externalities are for victims.
<p><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=214848096823155672993.0004977e6f6fcdb7db0f1&t=h&z=15">Northwest Park hazardous waste - Google Maps</a>
<p><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=214848096823155672993.0004976a8887d42764c7d&z=10">Superfund sites in Middlesex County, Massachusetts - Google Maps</a>
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-10376737746346106412013-05-21T04:21:00.004-04:002013-05-21T04:22:32.811-04:00Time to wake up indeed<p>To the Honorable Michael Capuano:
<p>Dear Sir,
<p>The Honorable Sheldon Whitehouse's "Time to Wake Up" speech exemplifies the bold leadership that must prevail to give future generations a fighting chance of survival. He showed tremendous courage today, and your constituents expect nothing less from you. Why haven't you used your time on the floor to denounce the GOP's sociopathic climate science denial, as he claims to have done thirty-three times? His speech should have been front-page news, and still could be with support from his fellow Democrats. The world's richest and most powerful people have declared war on the future, and they're winning. Will you be remembered for standing by helplessly while we surrendered to our most pathologically self-destructive impulses? Or will you be remembered for rising to the occasion, and fighting to the bitter end, not merely for our biological survival, but for a humane, civilized future worthy of our extraordinary accomplishments and potential?
<p>Sincerely yours,
<p>Chris Korda
<p>PS I enclose a link to the speech for your convenience:
<br><a href="http://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/time-to-wake-up-gop-opposition-to-climate-science-">Time to Wake Up: GOP Opposition to Climate Science</a>Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-50444747889735736962013-01-09T21:06:00.002-05:002013-01-09T21:07:55.614-05:00Heroic drinking<p><a href="http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2013/01/08/oregon-man-spends-27000-on-a-single-bottle-of-scotch/?hp">Oregon man spends $27,000 on a single bottle of Scotch</a>
<p>I find it fascinating that criticism of selfishness is consistently interpreted as envy. Why should we envy selfishness? It's nothing to be proud of. If anything it's proof of social failure. A society that values accumulation of wealth above all else isn't a society at all, it's a corporation.
<p>Inequality of wealth hasn't been this extreme in the United States since before the Gilded Age (the "Robber Baron" period gives the best fit) and yet everyone's busy defending it. It's as though CNN's forums were populated entirely by the 1%, but of course that's impossible: the 1% are busy quaffing their overpriced liquor.
<p>Are we supposed to worship the most conspicuous consumers, as if selfishness was heroic? Is that what civilization has been reduced to? I would expect to hear this type of rhetoric at a John Birch society meeting circa 1950. That I'm hearing it in the 21st century, on the forum of one the world's most powerful corporations, as climate change barrels down on us all like a geological-scale freight train, does not bode well for the longevity of homo sapiens.
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-51416855107152661192012-12-25T18:06:00.000-05:002012-12-25T18:06:00.379-05:00Civilization is fragileThe neurotic obsession with weapons is an expression of selfishness, and reflects a splintered, delusional society teetering on the brink of collapse, increasingly unable to provide even the most basic precondition of civilized life: freedom from maiming and murder. Without this elementary right, it's impossible to secure others, such as civil rights, collective bargaining, or a hospitable climate for future generations. Civilization is fragile, and depends critically on cooperation, altruism, and goodwill. Without them, civilization evaporates rapidly, leaving behind only mob rule and banditry, as history has repeatedly shown. The forty-six percent of Americans who believe "that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" (Gallup) are largely the same Americans who prepare for armed conflict with their own government, and childishly fantasize that they could survive its demise. The triumph of the irrational is rooted in a tragic failure of education.Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-75779173275825180162012-10-07T00:12:00.005-04:002012-10-14T19:07:52.872-04:00Climate Change Stress Disorder<p>I wasn't kidding about Climate Change Stress Disorder. Climate change is ruining my life. Just look at my <a href="http://whorld.org/ck/metadelusion/reading-list.htm">reading list</a> from the last couple of years. Add to that the parade of climate science papers, government reports, and blogs, and it's a wonder I get out of bed in the morning. Every day, I try to engage everyone I meet about climate change. Here's what I tell them, if I get the chance:
<p>Climate change is going to be much worse, much sooner than they think. Believe it or not, there's going to be serious psychological and physical impact on them personally, and especially on their <i>children</i>. My short list of topics includes:
<p>Climate migration: The forecast calls for latitudes close to the equator to become increasingly uninhabitable. People are already pouring out of North Africa and Mexico, testing the limits of rich northern countries. Fortifying borders may buy a little time, but it doesn't solve internal migration. Fast-growing desert cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas won't be sustainable in the long run. Try telling that to the people who live there.
<p>Coastal property values: It's some of the most valuable real estate, but its future value is zero. Families with vacation homes in Florida love to hear this. Try explaining to people that it was a mistake to rebuild New Orleans. North Carolina's new law that eliminates climate science from real estate assessment is classic avoidance behavior. And then there's Peter Ward's point: we don't have to worry about escaping to exoplanets, because we'll be busy moving our airports.
<p>Suburban life: Instead of developing mass transit, America decided to build a suburban society organized around cars and highways. I work in the suburbs, and the people I meet there drive <i>everywhere</i>, often in SUVs and trucks. For fun they drive to the mall. For vacations they take a plane somewhere. Try explaining to them that the party's over. They don't want to hear it. That's why Obama doesn't talk about it.
<p>China, India and other non-OECD countries plan to <i>increase</i> (NOT decrease) their fossil fuel consumption in order to achieve an OECD standard of living (see <a href="http://metadelusion.blogspot.com/2012/10/regarding-alleged-majority-of-voters.html">previous post</a>), and we're in no position to dissuade them. We are not going to embargo or invade China to enforce carbon rules, and persuasion isn't likely to work either, particularly since 1) a significant portion of their emissions actually belong to us, 2) we owe them vast sums of money, and 3) it's hard to preach austerity convincingly while we're dying of diseases of affluence.
<p>Even climate scientists are frightened and increasingly they're saying so publicly. If they're upset why shouldn't I be? Why isn't it okay to be upset and frightened? It should be obvious to anyone who keeps up with even a modest percentage of climate science that civilization is about to suffer a <i>major setback</i>, far more serious than WWII. States are going to fail, and not only in Africa. I'm traumatized, just by <i>knowing</i> this, and I don't even have children. I was born in Manhattan, and my whole life has revolved around the soft intellectualism of First World civilization, in all of its imperial glory. Mama didn't raise me to be an agriculturalist, or for Mad Max or the zombie apocalypse or whatever is coming. I apologize if my prose lacks the scholarly tone of cautious understatement, but I'm upset from trying to digest vast quantities of terrifying and rapidly changing information.Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-44571832305103513392012-10-07T00:07:00.000-04:002012-10-17T12:11:41.380-04:00The future looks impossible<p>Regarding the alleged majority of voters who care about climate change: even if that's so and Obama is reelected, judging by Obama's performance so far it seems wildly unrealistic to expect him to do a fossil fuel about-face any time soon. But more importantly, I submit that the elusive presidential climate policy is mere distraction, because America is already a <b>sideshow</b>. To wit:
<p>"China's economic growth is projected to continue and to drive increasing energy consumption for several decades (Figure 1). By 2035, China is likely to see a large increase in demand for primary energy, perhaps up by nearly 70% from the present levels (IEA, 2011a). This demand is likely to be met by <b>increasing use of fossil fuels</b> along with other sources, such as nuclear and renewable." [my emphasis]
<p>IEA 2012 - Facing China's Coal Future: Prospects and Challenges for Carbon Capture and Storage, p. 7 <a href="http://www.iea.org/publications/insights/chinas_coal_future-1.pdf">PDF here</a>
<p>See also <a href="http://whorld.org/ck/metadelusion/IEA-2012-primary-energy-demand.jpg">Figure 1</a> from the same page.
<p>"The IEO2011 Reference case projects about 1 trillion metric tons of additional cumulative energy-related carbon dioxide emissions between 2009 and 2035 ... In the period from 2021 to 2035, cumulative emissions are 22 percent higher than those in the period from 2006 to 2020 ... <b>Non-OECD Asia is the dominant source of cumulative emissions growth</b> in the 30 years preceding 2035." [my emphasis]
<p>US EIA International Energy Outlook 2011, p. 143 <a href="http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/ieo/pdf/0484(2011).pdf">PDF here</a>
<p>See also <a href="http://whorld.org/ck/metadelusion/US-EIA-2011-cumulative-CO2-by-region.jpg">Figures 115 & 116</a> from the same page.
<p>There's further corroboration in UNEP's GEO5, and in BP's June 2012 "Statistical Review of World Energy".
<p>Hence my claim to the relevance of Peter Calthorpe's <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/13/weapons_of_mass_urban_destruction">Weapons of Mass Urban Destruction</a> article (@68 & 71). Did anyone read it? His main source seems to be the 2009 McKinsey report "Preparing for China's urban billion" but I can supply plenty more. "China's urban population is projected to grow by 350 million people by 2020, effectively adding today's entire U.S. population to its cities in less than a decade ... the country's vehicle fleet could grow from more than 200 million today to as many as 600 million by 2030."
<p>Since Americans own the largest share of historical emissions, we're in no position to tell the Chinese what to do, as they keep pointedly reminding us. I agree with Prof. Kevin Anderson (Tyndall Climate Center): the future looks impossible. We haven't even finished melting the Arctic and I'm already suffering from CCSD (<a href="http://metadelusion.blogspot.com/2012/10/climate-change-stress-disorder.html">Climate Change Stress Disorder</a>). Help!
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-68586434334735496642012-09-21T21:21:00.001-04:002012-09-21T21:21:21.806-04:00A world without Quality@435 SecularAnimist:
<p><blockquote>I think it is arguable that empiricism - which is the heart of science - is responsible for essentially <em>all</em> of humanity's advancements throughout all of human history and pre-history.</blockquote>
<p>This is almost a dictionary definition of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism">scientism</a>. Please try to imagine the emotional impact this statement has on artists. Have they contributed nothing to humanity's advancement? Are the contents of museums useless rubbish? Should we empty them out and repurpose the buildings as laboratories or factories? What is advancement? Is it inherently good, or does its goodness depend on what we're advancing <em>towards</em>?
<p>I'm not being rhetorical or provocative. I'm trying to understand how we got into this mess in the first place, so I can more effectively inspire myself and others to deal with it. Robert Pirsig raised similar questions in his 1974 inquiry into values, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." He described pervasive technological ugliness, and hypothesized that its source was a split between art and science, or between what he called the "classic" and "romantic" world-views. He then attempted to save reason from its own self-devouring logic, by positing pre-intellectual awareness (which he called "Quality") as the source of both subjects and objects. In my view his solution was naive and retreated into mysticism, but regardless it apparently didn't work, because forty years later we're no closer to a resolution, and the ugliness Pirsig was describing has blossomed into the greatest threat in human history.
<p>In a famous passage Pirsig used <i>realism</i> to prove the existence of his central term, <a href="http://www.wattpad.com/95405-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-an?p=90">"by subtracting Quality from a description of the world as we know it"</a>. His description could just as easily describe a world in which "empiricism ... is responsible for essentially all of humanity's advancements."
<p>We <i>have</i> been listening to scientists, maybe not about climate change, but about nearly everything else, for hundreds of years, and the results are increasingly ghastly. Even scientists are scared. If scientists are now going to tell us that there's no hope without even more drastic technological change, they would be wise to adopt some humility, and acknowledge that <i>mistakes were made</i>, instead of preaching science as a glorious march to advancement.
<p>I know it seems like I'm attacking science but it's more subtle than that. I'm an engineer. I work with scientists and use math and logic all day long, and I don't doubt for a second that science "works", in the pragmatic sense that our explanations of phenomena can improve with time and effort. What I'm questioning is the notion that science is <i>neutral</i>, or as Pirsig would say, Quality-free. Art isn't <em>just</em> <a href="http://www.wattpad.com/95405-zen-and-the-art-of-motorcycle-maintenance-an?p=97">"whatever you like"</a> and there's more to life than being right.
<p>"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."
<br>-Kurt Vonnegut, <i>Breakfast of Champions</i>
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-43192716972142461422012-09-06T22:03:00.000-04:002012-09-06T22:19:13.505-04:00Winning the war on the futureJames Hansen is sometimes accused of overstating his case, but I find
him controversial for an entirely different reason: he consistently
portrays climate change as an <i>intergenerational injustice</i>. His
argument is that climate change violates the civil rights of future
generations, including the right to a livable world. To my knowledge no
one else with comparable scientific reputation is making this argument
so forcefully and publicly. It’s clever and plays well because 1) civil
society avows egalitarianism, 2) people are justifiably proud of the
significant progress that’s been made towards that goal, and 3) climate
change threatens to wipe out that progress in short order (along with
much else).<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, extending civil rights to future generations isn’t
new: pro-lifers have been using this gambit for decades, with
considerable success. Hansen hasn’t made any public statements on
abortion to my knowledge, nor does it seem likely that he would,
whatever his private views are, but his otherwise laudable meme is
nonetheless potentially entangled with religious oppression of women.
The right of future generations to a livable world needs to be
distinguished from the right of women to make their own reproductive
choices. I don’t find this difficult, but I suspect many Americans will
have trouble getting their heads around it. It’s a PR problem that
Hansen may not have considered.<br />
<br />
A more serious criticism of Hansen’s intergenerational justice meme
is that it doesn’t go far enough. I propose a more strident alternative:
war on the future. The idea is that we’ve declared war against future
generations, and we’re winning. Victory means no future, for our species
and countless others. This may seem absurd, but in my experience
paradoxes are very useful in PR, because they expose hidden assumptions.
Here the assumption is that climate change is merely an <i>injustice</i> to future generations, when in fact it’s an <i>existential threat</i>,
the type of threat that wars are usually fought over. Injustice implies
the possibility of compensation, but in the worst-case scenario, future
generations won’t even get the opportunity to bitterly resent us,
because they won’t exist. War on the future is also totally asymmetric:
future generations can’t defend themselves, because they’re not here
yet.<br />
<br />
WWII and the Manhattan project are commonly used as analogies for the
global effort that will be needed to mitigate climate change, and this
is part of my inspiration, but “winning the war on the future” is
primarily inspired by Jeremy Jackson’s work. Daniel Pauly’s shifting
baselines feel mild-mannered compared to Jackson’s incendiary “How we
wrecked the ocean” presentation, which he starts by telling the audience
that everything he ever studied disappeared during his lifetime.
Jackson very effectively communicates devastation and irrevocable loss,
not only with his emotional intensity and relentless examples, but also
by using vivid metaphors such as “silent ocean” and “the rise of
slime.” Similarly visceral memes are desperately needed in the struggle
to wake people up to the reality and consequences of climate change.<br />
<br />
There are many versions of Jackson’s presentation, but my favorite is here: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX9uvyF58U0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Silent Ocean – Perspectives on Ocean Science</a><br />
<br />
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Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-7026991527818929082012-09-03T17:17:00.000-04:002012-09-03T22:50:23.888-04:00A World Without Oil<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://vimeo.com/10467029" target="_blank">Bruce Mau</a> </span>doesn't want to imagine a world without oil since it would be boring and
bad for his business model, so you shouldn't try to imagine it either.
Instead you should just keep saying "yes" to unlimited profits for
corporations like General Electric and Coca-Cola (his customers),
because that's personally thrilling (and profitable) for him. Despite
overwhelming consensus among climate scientists that we either stop burning
fossil fuels or stop existing, 1) we should keep on burning them
anyway, because it's smart and sexy, and 2) the resulting global
ecological collapse will be magically avoided by better product design. There's no shortage of self-serving collaborators, but even by postmodern standards this is a monstrously irresponsible proposal.</div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span>It wasn't enough to wreck the ocean, exterminate countless species, and
plunge Earth's climate into chaos. Now we should declare total war on
future generations by slurping up every last drop of oil, so that ingenious designers can fly to conferences and ride around in cool-looking
cars. Obama-style grass-roots pretensions aside, this is just regurgitated technological utopianism and boosterism for limitless growth.
Cornucopian fantasies are perennially popular,
especially with robber barons. As our situation deteriorates, escapism is increasingly
indistinguishable from schizophrenia. Humans may be an intelligent species. We'll soon
see. If we're intelligent, we'll stop burning fossil fuels. If we listen
to greenwash from corporate toadies and roast ourselves, bacteria will
inherit Earth a little ahead of schedule is all. If you find naivete and
narcissism abhorrent, you're not entirely alone. <span style="font-size: small;">Check out Dan Miller's <a href="http://fora.tv/2009/08/18/A_REALLY_Inconvenient_Truth_Dan_Miller" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A REALLY Inconvenient Truth</a> instead. </span>
</div>
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5289168714130312897.post-89425080107982348062012-08-15T22:06:00.001-04:002012-08-16T02:49:39.661-04:00Bull in the china shop<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
“The very idea that human beings,
who are demonstrably unable to control our own most destructive behaviors, are
going to be “stewards of the ecology”, or “manage ecosystems”, is absurd. It’s
proposing that the bull should become the “steward” of the china shop.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Believe it or not I'm actually sympathetic to your views,
and shared them 100% until fairly recently. You'd be hard-pressed to find an
artist whose work has criticized humanity more stridently than mine, but my
views are evolving.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We're at a juncture in human history when more than ever
before, it actually matters what people <i>think</i>. This wasn't nearly as
true in centuries or even decades past, because information traveled much more
slowly and was less crucial to people's daily lives. Today decisions frequently
have global ramifications, and the discussions that influence them are
increasingly volatile and public. Some of those discussions may be occurring
right here, and not all of them are purely scientific or technical. Ideas
spread like wildfire at the moment, whether they're constructive or not.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mitigating climate change means rapidly transforming the
entire physical basis of our existence: energy infrastructure, agriculture,
transportation, architecture, urban planning, population size and distribution,
and on and on, like a kind of green Manhattan project. In order for people to
actually get up every morning and deal with the enormous amount of work
involved, they need to be <i>inspired</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
E.O.Wilson tries hard to inspire people by comparing them to
ants, with the best of intentions, but it won't work. Reminding people that
they're insignificant on a cosmic scale won't work either: they already feel
helpless. One idea that possibly could inspire people quickly enough is
betterment of the human condition, via active participation in <i>civil
society.</i> This implies a widespread invigoration of existing civil
traditions and values, including literacy, tolerance, egalitarianism,
association, and cooperation. There's already momentum in this direction, in the
Occupy movement and elsewhere, building on the civil rights and anti-war
struggles.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The problems civilization faces won't be solved by flash
mobs alone, any more than by the invisible hand of the market. Only governments
have the power to effect change at the needed scale and pace, and governments
are comprised of people, all the way up to the top; people who like the rest of
us need to be convinced of the urgency and scale of the problems, persuaded
that solutions exist, and inspired to fight for a livable future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People need to believe that what they're doing can and will
make a difference, no matter how uncertain things seem. They also need
education, and health care, and countless other things, but above all they need
<i>hope</i>. The problem with antihumanism, whether scientific or artistic, is
that it deprives people of hope, at exactly the moment when they most need it.</div>
Chris Kordahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01929043998111578392noreply@blogger.com0