Fucked yes, doomed maybe not. The most practical solution is also the most impractical, given our current situation. Call it communism or call it a blue donkey if you want, but centrally planned carbon rationing based on projections of emissions is about the only genuine hope future generations have. We know how much we can emit. We have known for a long time. Now, comes the tricky part. How do we maintain a functional civilization while also drastically reducing emissions to meet the goal of carbon zero?
Computer models can help us keep track of carbon production in real time and even be converted to manage specific sectors. This is where the central planning aspect comes in. The average person should not be a victim of these changes. Folks still need to go to work, pay rent and all the basic requirements of life. Instead of a carbon tax, we need a carbon ration which starts at the bottom of society then goes upward to the highest producers. As we go up the ladder, the amount of carbon allowed to be produced on a single hypothetical day shrinks. Eventually reaching those industries and individuals doing the most damage, then putting the burden of reduction on them. The rich/Corporations can find those solutions easily. There will be some instability and no doubt chaos, but they have the resources needed. Amazon, for example, already uses tons of metadata to plan the most efficient routes.
The We may only be fucked short term but we’re doomed long term if we stay in charge of ourselves instead of building something more benevolent than ourselves to protect ourselves from our own baked in inner darkness: greed, arrogance, apathy, selfishness, narcissism, schadenfreude, gluttony, etc.
Human beings are the worst at far off threats and warnings. Climate change will have to kill a significant, at minimum double digit percentage of the species before we even begin to consider changing our lifestyles. Even then, we don’t retain lessons. It only took a single human lifespan for the Israelis to go from being the most sympathetic of victims to the unrepentant victimizers, for repentant Germany’s far right to re-emerge, and even for the former saviors like the US and UK to literally court fascism. As a species, we can barely learn and we absolutely cannot generationally retain hard lessons. That used to be fine, until science provided us with tools that make our significant shortcomings destructive on a truly global scale.
We’re aggressive monkeys with nuclear/biological/chemical weapons, and evolution is far too slow to compensate for that recipe for disaster.
Not saying I disagree, but I see a hopeless situation as a liberating reason to not give into doomerism. In history, we see that every major environmental change changes human society in radical ways. Agriculture developed out of the end of an Ice Age. Feudalism in Europe came from a period of global cooling and likewise, capitalism followed the end of said cooling. Fascism itself is a vicious form of capitalism. People get too caught up in scientifically diluting a core point of what makes it worse than the current liberal order. When all that matters is that it is in fact capitulation because Fascism’s strength of reorganizing a state is also its weakness as it clamps down on mechanisms for reform then ultimately reduces productive relations to a primitive state.
What you’ve listed are not recent developments. Zionists were already committing terrorist acts in British occupied Palestine before there was ever a modern Isreal. The major corporate powers of Germany: Krupp, IG Faben etc were all but forgiven at Nuremberg for their role in the holocaust then reintegrated into West Germany before a United Germany even existed. The United States, like pre-world war 2 Japan, transitioned seamlessly into a system which shares all the trappings of a fascist economy and never left.
Capitalism as a system has been on life-support for a long time. With each new iteration being an attempt to keep the sick old man breathing another few years. Now we face the inhuman core of humanity at its most ruthless. The tools to address the problem are there, ready to be used, produced by said old man. Whether or not we will use them is not something I can predict. However, what I wanted to make clear with my original comment is the infrastructure is already in place and the first major step is buying time.
Fucked yes, doomed maybe not. The most practical solution is also the most impractical, given our current situation. Call it communism or call it a blue donkey if you want, but centrally planned carbon rationing based on projections of emissions is about the only genuine hope future generations have. We know how much we can emit. We have known for a long time. Now, comes the tricky part. How do we maintain a functional civilization while also drastically reducing emissions to meet the goal of carbon zero?
Computer models can help us keep track of carbon production in real time and even be converted to manage specific sectors. This is where the central planning aspect comes in. The average person should not be a victim of these changes. Folks still need to go to work, pay rent and all the basic requirements of life. Instead of a carbon tax, we need a carbon ration which starts at the bottom of society then goes upward to the highest producers. As we go up the ladder, the amount of carbon allowed to be produced on a single hypothetical day shrinks. Eventually reaching those industries and individuals doing the most damage, then putting the burden of reduction on them. The rich/Corporations can find those solutions easily. There will be some instability and no doubt chaos, but they have the resources needed. Amazon, for example, already uses tons of metadata to plan the most efficient routes.
The We may only be fucked short term but we’re doomed long term if we stay in charge of ourselves instead of building something more benevolent than ourselves to protect ourselves from our own baked in inner darkness: greed, arrogance, apathy, selfishness, narcissism, schadenfreude, gluttony, etc.
Human beings are the worst at far off threats and warnings. Climate change will have to kill a significant, at minimum double digit percentage of the species before we even begin to consider changing our lifestyles. Even then, we don’t retain lessons. It only took a single human lifespan for the Israelis to go from being the most sympathetic of victims to the unrepentant victimizers, for repentant Germany’s far right to re-emerge, and even for the former saviors like the US and UK to literally court fascism. As a species, we can barely learn and we absolutely cannot generationally retain hard lessons. That used to be fine, until science provided us with tools that make our significant shortcomings destructive on a truly global scale.
We’re aggressive monkeys with nuclear/biological/chemical weapons, and evolution is far too slow to compensate for that recipe for disaster.
Not saying I disagree, but I see a hopeless situation as a liberating reason to not give into doomerism. In history, we see that every major environmental change changes human society in radical ways. Agriculture developed out of the end of an Ice Age. Feudalism in Europe came from a period of global cooling and likewise, capitalism followed the end of said cooling. Fascism itself is a vicious form of capitalism. People get too caught up in scientifically diluting a core point of what makes it worse than the current liberal order. When all that matters is that it is in fact capitulation because Fascism’s strength of reorganizing a state is also its weakness as it clamps down on mechanisms for reform then ultimately reduces productive relations to a primitive state.
What you’ve listed are not recent developments. Zionists were already committing terrorist acts in British occupied Palestine before there was ever a modern Isreal. The major corporate powers of Germany: Krupp, IG Faben etc were all but forgiven at Nuremberg for their role in the holocaust then reintegrated into West Germany before a United Germany even existed. The United States, like pre-world war 2 Japan, transitioned seamlessly into a system which shares all the trappings of a fascist economy and never left.
Capitalism as a system has been on life-support for a long time. With each new iteration being an attempt to keep the sick old man breathing another few years. Now we face the inhuman core of humanity at its most ruthless. The tools to address the problem are there, ready to be used, produced by said old man. Whether or not we will use them is not something I can predict. However, what I wanted to make clear with my original comment is the infrastructure is already in place and the first major step is buying time.