I'd like to apologise

[hmpf]

to the readers of this LJ (though, really, I have no duty to provide content that people like; everyone's free to stop reading me, after all) for having turned into a gloom-and-doom person over the last six months. Actually, of course, this is not an entirely new development; I've been extremely 'concerned' for a while. But in May 2008 Mark Lynas's book Six Degrees galvanised me, not quite into radical action yet, but definitely into reading more widely and more deeply on the topic of climate change (and environmental destruction in general), and some of that reading ended up here, as a link or as a gloomy post. It's hard to avoid that, as nearly all of my reading made me more and more alarmed.

I actually do not mean to sound as demotivating as I probably sound to most of you. I am not demotivated. My mother frequently takes issue with me and my views, arguing that one needs, essentially, an approach that will make people feel good if one wants to bring about social change. She responds well to ideas that we can shop our way out of this, by just adjusting our shopping habits a bit towards more ethical, greener products etc. (although she does not really shop very ethically or green. She just likes the idea.) She thinks we should aim to change society without changing society.

The thing is, I don't believe we can shop our way out of this, and I don't believe there is any 'feel good', incremental way of changing the world. If we had decades to effect the necessary changes, maybe. But we don't have decades, we have years, at best. Which means that we need truly radical approaches - and while I do think that a truly radically different society would actually allow many people a much happier life than the current one, and so ultimately result in a situation that *will* 'make people feel good', I don't think that we will get there with baby steps that don't discomfort or frighten anyone.

I think the situation is desperate. I think we need something very much like a revolution. I don't see how I can talk about these two facts without sounding a bit 'extreme', and depressing to anyone whose usual news diet is based on the conventional media, where the shocking, world-shaking news that come in nearly every week now are buried as tiny, ten-line articles on page three of the weekly science supplement. I've been on a 'conventional media news diet' for two months now, thanks to being cut off from the internet, and I'm feeling its deleterious effect keenly when I go back online, check a random environmental news site, and feel a great shock at basically every other news item there. These sites are full of news that should be on the front pages of newspapers worldwide - news from, I should emphasise, reliable sources - press releases from big national and international science organisations, departments of reknowned universities, even government agencies. Yet these news barely reach a public that doesn't seek them out on specialised sites.

It's like the conventional news media and the environmental news sites report from two entirely different planets. Unfortunately I can find no serious reason to believe that it is the conventional media, and not the environmental sites, that are reporting from the real world. (I'll need to do another post, sometime soon, about the reasons why I believe the 'doomsayers' here. They're actually very rational reasons, although I am aware that believing anyone who proclaims existential threats is frequently seen as irrational per se. But more on that in some other post, later.)

So. Basically, what I'm trying to say, in my rambling way (I'm writing this on the fly, at work, very much in a hurry), is that I've been living in something like a parallel universe for the past six months, a universe where we live under an imminent existential threat, but unfortunately there are lots of signs to indicate that that 'parallel universe' is the real world. And, having come to that kind of conclusion, it's hard - no, impossible - not to talk about this stuff here occasionally. I haven't figured out how to do this in a motivating and constructive way yet; I hope I will, eventually. I don't think things are completely hopeless, but I do think we - all of us, not just the professionally concerned etc. - need to recognise clearly how dire the situation is, because only that will enable us to act adequately to the situation.

Arrgh. Damn. I have to sign off. Sorry, this is a bit crap. Probably I shouldn't post it. But then, this is LJ, which means rambling is par for the course...

Comments

[nick-101.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel. It's a reality that I'm dealing with as well, thanks to a recent drought and warmer than usual months. It is pretty hard to stop climate change, but if everyone gets involved, we can take on the problem together.

Auch ich...

[(Anonymous)]

...bin Deiner Meinung - voll und ganz. Irgendwie werde ich das Gefühl nicht los, daß irgendjemand ("die da oben"???) uns alle mit vollem Bewußtsein an die Wand fahren lassen. Seit einigen Wochen vererbt mir ein Kollege seine alten "Spiegel" und ganz vereinzelt finden sich da drin die Sachen, die man z.B. auch in "Six Degrees" findet (ja, ich hab es jetzt auch gelesen). Aber nicht als Hauptartikel, sondern weiter hinten, unter "Wissenschaft" oder ähnlichen Rubriken. Damit es nicht auffällt. Aber einen Plan, was man tun kann, hab ich auch nicht, nicht mal einen schlechten.
LG aus der Uni,
Kiki