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What Optimism and Pessimism Are in the 21st Century, a Reflection on “Are We Doomed?,” And Two Narratives of the Human Journey

April 16, 2024

What Optimism and Pessimism Are in the 21st Century, a Reflection on “Are We Doomed?,” And Two Narratives of the Human Journey

  1. ‘Things I’m ashamed to admit’: TikTok trend driving new level of oversharing (The Guardian)
  2. How the Ray-Ban Wayfarer became the accessory of choice for the men-children of the world (El Pais)
  3. Why We’re All Still Waiting for the EV Future (Inc)
  4. US will push China to change a policy threatening American jobs, Treasury Secretary Yellen says (AP News)
  5. Assessing the health burden from air pollution (Science)

Hi! How’s everyone? Thank you for joining me, and welcome new readers.

Today we’re going to discuss… “are we doomed?!” That’s the kind of dismal, reductive framing that’s emerged around an issue that deserves better—decline, degeneration, the rise of a number of troubling trends, all at once.

Let’s reflect on this sort of question together, beginning with…

Exhibit One In: “Are We Doomed?”

Did that make you shudder a little bit? If you don’t quite get the point, let me spell it out.

Right about now, climate scientists are a little horrified, bewildered, and perplexed. We’re in “uncharted territory,” and warming’s outpacing models, sometimes by a very long way. It was recently 40 degrees Centigrade in…Antarctica.

Meanwhile, the average person is less and less likely to believe that this is real, aka, there’s such a thing as human-made climate change. In the last few years alone, the number’s grown significantly, and over a quarter now believe that climate change is due to “natural causes, up from just 14%. That’s not an absolutely high number in itself, but the trend is striking, disturbing, and sort of mega-troubling: increasing numbers of people are climate deniers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What is Post-Doom? – Another End of the World is Possible #ClimateCrisis #Ecocide #Overshoot #auspol #Energy #Consumption #Population Listen to the scientists.

December 15, 2021

What is Post-Doom? – Another End of the World is Possible #ClimateCrisis #Ecocide #Overshoot #auspol #Energy #Consumption #Population Listen to the scientists.

“Post-doom has a gorgeous sunrise.”

— Connie Barlow

Why I am not a “Doomer”

After several years of mobilizing with 350.org and other environmental groups, I came to realize that the whole movement had been addressing a surface level problem–where we get our energy from–instead of the underlying problem–how much energy we are using. In other words, the movement was focused on fossil fuels when it should be focusing on capitalism and the growth economy. There are several reasons for this misplaced focus, which include psychology and marketing (it’s easier to imagine a transition to fossil fuels than powering down our economy), as well as complicity (there’s a lot of money invested in renewables).

I also realized that it was very unlikely that our society would ever voluntarily power down, and so a collapse–economic, social, and environmental–is probably unavoidable. Following Jem Bendell, author of the now (in)famous “Deep Adaptation paper”, I anticipate “inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe, and possible extinction”. It’s impossible to say how long it will take, but I would guess that it will take generations. I would guess that it will be a prolonged and staggered collapse, a series of mini-collapses followed by partial recoveries. I believe that this collapse has already begun, that it has been going on for a while, and that climate change is only one aspect of it.[FN1]

Now, this realization might lead a person to throw up their hands and say “F@#k it!” And, in fact, there is a whole community of people called “Doomers” who seem to revel in the thought of collapse and make a pastime of nihilism.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A Prayer for Nonbelievers

September 3, 2021

A Prayer for Nonbelievers

I was ten years old when The Limits to Growth first saw print.  I have a dim memory of seeing a  newspaper article or two about it, but I had other things on my mind in 1972—my parents got divorced that year, and an already difficult childhood promptly got much worse—and several years passed before I found time to read it.  Its portrayal of a future of hard limits made immediate sense to me.  Somehow I never managed to absorb the widespread American conviction that there will always be more so long as you whine for it loudly enough, and so the book became one of the volumes that shaped my youthful sense of where the future was headed.

In the 1970s you could talk about such things. The public library in Burien, Washington where I got most of my reading fodder then was well stocked with books on energy and the environment. If I couldn’t find what I wanted there I could catch the Route 130 bus to the downtown branch of the Seattle Public Library, not yet replaced by the monument to architectural incompetence that now squats on its site, and bring home a double armload of volumes on similar topics. By that time, too, I had read enough to follow the logic of The Limits to Growth in detail.

It was not, as the corporate media insisted it was, a prophecy of doom.  That’s one of the details that got swept under the rug by the mainstream back in the 1970s and still gets swept under the rug by the project’s critics today.  The point of The Limits to Growth was that we as a species, and as a community of nations, had a choice…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tao of Degrowth

September 1, 2021

Tao of Degrowth

I am a degrowther and a doomer but this is not what your first reaction indicates.  We are taught to be optimistic and so forth.  People loath pessimist and doomers.  People tire of people who cry wolf constantly.  This is what the doom movement has done for decades now.  There is some truth to this but there is also the reality of the slow boil.  A frog will slowly boil without realizing its fate.  Humans because of our short-termism and immediate gratification tendencies slow boil with periods of change.  Some of this is beneficial because it is the degree of shock and the duration that is the key variable of survivability so adapting slowly allows survivable change.

My doom approach is different.  I am a visionary of sorts in regards to the tipping over of an age.  This is academic and I have been studying this for decades now.  I have been living the response for over a decade.  I have digested the available science not as a specialist but as a generalist with some specialization.  I study all fields in general picking through them in relation to decline.  I specialize in energy and systems for my theoretical approach.  It is my assessment that a multifaceted tipping over is now at or near the peak point.  The tipping over is at or near where diminishing returns to technological efforts go non-liner into problem creation.  I see an extinction event for life systems with localized failure and general decline.  The planetary systems that support life is in abrupt change with climate but also the nutrient, carbon, and hydrologic cycles.  Finally, systematically, civilization is in a phase of degrading.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Portrayals of Degrowth in the Press: ‘Free market magic’ vs ‘Radical doomsayers’

June 12, 2021

Portrayals of Degrowth in the Press: ‘Free market magic’ vs ‘Radical doomsayers’

In October 2020, I analysed press coverage of degrowth in Western European (English language) newspapers and magazines between January 2015 and October 2020.  Using media theory concepts such as agenda setting and framing, my research explored how degrowth is being considered in the press, particularly as a potential response to climate change.

*    *     *

Are you a fanatic, a fetishist or a member of a cult?  If you are a supporter of degrowth, then you are likely to be portrayed that way in the press.  My research found that degrowth is not yet on the media agenda, except in a very limited and mostly dismissive way.  The English-language press is not informing the public thoughtfully of alternatives to our current political-economic system or the impact of unfettered growth on the planet.

Greta Thunberg gave a stirring speech to the United Nations in 2019, challenging the leaders of the world to think differently about their approach to climate change.  In her direct style, she delivered a stinging rebuke of governments’ emphasis on continuous economic growth, telling the gathering:  “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.”

Thunberg echoes the degrowth movement – an increasing body of academics and activists, who argue that economic growth cannot be decoupled from increased greenhouse gas emissions.  Instead, they advocate for degrowth as a potential solution to climate change.  An open letter proposing putting degrowth principles at the root of a new economy attracted over 2,000 signatories and has been translated into 18 languages.  Academic interest in degrowth appears to have increased significantly in recent years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Three Ds of Doom: Debt, Default, Depression

July 18, 2019

The Three Ds of Doom: Debt, Default, Depression

“Borrowing our way out of debt” generates the three Ds of Doom: debt leads to default which ushers in Depression.

Let’s start by defining Economic Depression: a Depression is a Recession that isn’t fixed by conventional fiscal and monetary stimulus. In other words, when a recession drags on despite massive fiscal and monetary stimulus being thrown into the economy, then the stimulus-resistant stagnation is called a Depression.

Here’s why we’re heading into a Depression: debt exhaustion. As the charts below illustrate, the U.S. (and global) economy has only “grown” in the 21st century by expanding debt roughly four times faster than GDP or earned income.

Costs for big-ticket essentials such as housing, healthcare and government services are soaring while wages stagnate or decline in purchasing power.

What’s purchasing power? Rather than get caught in the endless thicket of defining inflation, ask yourself this: how much of X does one hour of labor buy now compared to 20 years ago? For example, how much healthcare does an hour of labor buy now? How many days of rent does an hour of labor buy now compared to 1999? How many hours of labor are required to pay a parking ticket now compared to 1999?

Our earnings are buying less of every big-ticket expense that’s essential, and we’ve covered the gigantic hole in our budget with debt. The only way the status quo could continue conjuring an illusion of “prosperity” is by borrowing fantastic sums of money, all to be paid with future earnings and taxes.

At some point, the borrower is unable to borrow more. Even at 0.1% rate of interest, borrowers can’t borrow more because they can’t even manage the principal payment, never mind the interest. That’s debt exhaustion: borrowers can’t borrow more without ramping up the risk of default.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

From “Doom Loop” To Just “Doom”: Italian Debt Faces A “Huge Structural Shift”

August 16, 2018

From “Doom Loop” To Just “Doom”: Italian Debt Faces A “Huge Structural Shift”

At the start of July, we revealed that a familiar force had returned to Europe.

According to ECB data, during May when the market saw unprecedented Italian government bond turmoil, Italian bank holdings of domestic government bonds showed record buying over the month at €28.4bn, higher inflows than those seen during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2012. Visually, this is what the single biggest month of Italian bank purchases of BTPs in history looked like.

This vicious circle of Country X banks (in this case Italy) buying Country X bonds during times of stress – with the backstop of the ECB –has for years been Europe’s dreaded sovereign bank doom loop. And, as Italy clearly demonstrated, repeated and aggressive attempts by European regulators and policymakers to finally break the doom loop, most recently with the introduction of the 2014 BRRD directive, which sought which sought to remove the need for and possibility of bank bailouts, and instead ushered in bail ins, have been an abject failure.

It is also a major problem.

In a note published by Goldman on Wednesday, the bank’s Italy analyst Matteo Crimella writes that “regulatory and supervisory changes, together with the risk of a deterioration in banks’ capital ratios/ratings owing to weaknesses in the sovereign market could, all together, raise the bar for domestic banks to step in as buyers.”

In other words, Italian lenders may no longer be as willing to snap up domestic government bonds during market stresses, something which Bloomberg calls “a potentially huge structural shift in demand in the euro area’s second-most indebted nation.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Societal Death or Transfiguration? Cinema Visions of Humanity Facing Extinction

April 30, 2018

Societal Death or Transfiguration? Cinema Visions of Humanity Facing Extinction

Still from “Downsizing.”

How should world society respond to the approach of human extinction compelled by implacable external forces, such as: radioactive fallout after a global nuclear war (as in Nevil Shute’s novel On the Beach), or an alien invasion by a species of technologically superior beings from outer space, or an impending collision between Earth and a massive planetoid, or (as seems most likely today) by runaway and irreversible Climate Change?

The general question has long been the seed for spinning out entertaining speculations in fantasy novels and science-fiction movies, but now it has become a serious matter of immediate concern for an increasing number of geo- and social- scientists and social planners. Mayer Hillman, an 86-year-old social scientist, urban planner and senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute in England, says (in an article published by The Guardian on 26 April 2018:

“We’re doomed. — The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so. — I’m not going to write anymore [about the projected consequences of runaway Climate Change] because there’s nothing more that can be said. — With doom ahead, making a case for cycling as the primary mode of transport [instead of automobiles] is almost irrelevant. — We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels. So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Collapse of Society – Are the Doom & Gloomers Even on the Right Page?

March 20, 2018

The Collapse of Society – Are the Doom & Gloomers Even on the Right Page?

QUESTION: Hey Marty,
Thanks for the incredible information you are sharing. I subscribe to your service and read your blog every day.
Do preppers have any justification in planning for a complete collapse, be it economic, political or otherwise? I keep a 30 day supply of freeze dried food but I have friends that are much more serious in their stockpile.

Thanks!

DL

ANSWER: The end of the world scenarios that the doomsday people forecast are over the top. If things unfolded as they proclaim, there would be no point in preparing for there would be nothing left. Movies like the Planet of the Apes were based upon this theory. The likelihood that there will be an economic and political upheaval is 100% on point.

I have recommended keeping a stash of food, but notfor the reasons they put out there by the doom & gloom people. The winters are going to keep getting colder. As they do, this will also disrupt the food supply. I have warned that historically, it is Global Cooling that kills off people – not Global Warming.  Additionally, as political unrest rises, there will also be a disruption in the food supply. The majority of people are incapable of growing food for themselves, so society as a whole has this great vulnerability as was the case in in the eternal city of Rome. I simply look at history and there is no agenda in what I publish. We are entitled to just the facts.

Historically, as taxes kept rising, and public safety became a growing concern in the urban life, more and more people began to migrate leaving Rome walking away from their property. There is simply a cycle where we all come together to form great societies, the ruling class becomes greedy, and then the cycle turns we migrate back to suburbia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to deal with doom burnout

December 16, 2017

How to deal with doom burnout

In the intro to a recent post on TBP, admin said the following:

I love Denninger’s ability to be outraged day after day and his continuous rage against the machine. I’ve lost that fire. After nine years of this, I’m burnt out. I no longer have that passion driving me. What will be will be.

I think that burnout is something a lot of us feel – we find out what’s going on in the world, get outraged, and then gradually realize that we’re like old men yelling at clouds – all of our indignant anger isn’t worth shit and it isn’t going to change shit. We slowly burn out, realizing that the world is simply unjust and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it.

That sentiment is echoed in the comments of many posts on TBP, ZeroHedge and other similar sites – “We KNOW everything is fucked up, what do we DO about it!”

So let’s have that discussion – what DO we do about it? Because the reality is that people can change things, it happens all the time. But it’s not going to happen commiserating with like minds on an internet forum. So how do we cause change?

Here are my thoughts:

  • Develop a vision. Anyone can bitch about how things are. But unless you know what they should look like instead, there’s no way to incite change. People need a target – they need to know what they’re working towards. Just saying that things are bad now doesn’t give anyone any actionable information.
  • Get out of the echo chamber. There’s great comfort in commiserating with fellow red-pills, but hiding away in our doom fortress isn’t going to change anything. If there’s going to be change we need a much larger movement, which means going out and preaching to the unconverted.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Confessions of a Doomer

January 10, 2016

Confessions of a Doomer

I need to tell you of a very special talent I have. I have the very unusual and rare ability to find, to ferret out if you will, the blatantly obvious. I mean if it is as plain as the nose on your face, I am going to figure it out. What shocks me is that this ability is so rare. What is happening to our earth and our species is so obvious it is mind blowing.

I could give you thousands of forest disappearing, deserts expanding, rivers drying up, water tables dropping, top soil disappearing, species going extinct, ocean fish disappearing, pollution and plastic waste killing sea birds, and on and on and on. But I will start with one example that exemplifies what is happening to the entire world, the Aral Sea.

What has been happening to the world can be exemplified by this short 3 minute video on the Aral Sea: The Aral Sea story.

Aral Sea 1

The Aral Sea was once the fifth largest inland sea in the world. It supported a huge fishing industry. But that was before they dammed its tributaries to irrigate cotton fields.

Aral Sea 2

Aral Sea 7

By 2000 it was mostly gone. The 1960 shoreline is shown on this photograph.

Aral Sea 10

And today it is almost completely gone.

Aral Sea 13

Of course the fishing fleet is still there.

Lake Chad

Of course almost the exact same story can be told about Lake Chad. This once vast inland body of water once supported tens of thousands with its bountiful fish supply is now not much more than a small mud hole.

What is happening to the Aral Sea and Lake Chad is happening to the entire world. Rivers are drying up. Water tables all over the world are dropping, some by meters per year. Land in India and China, as well as in other Asian nations, irrigated from underground water, that once fed billions, now feed far less and will soon feed none.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

You Will Soon Lose Everything You Own Unless You Act Now!

September 27, 2015

Have you ever sat in a room and couldn’t figure out why people were laughing? They laughed and laughed and laughed as your curiosity grew and grew. And then, suddenly, you realized they were laughing at you! This is what is happening to all Americans. We have been robbed blind and we have scarcely noticed. Now, our very existence is being threatened and people laugh at you for talking about it as they call you a “conspiracy theorist”, “fear-monger” and “the purveyor of doom and gloom”.

I was roundly criticized when I said the Cyprus bail-in scenario was coming to the United States. I was told there would be a revolution if this happened and the government would be too afraid to try such a thing and that we would have 100 million Americans in the street who would be heavily armed.

Listening to these sheep is like listening to a country song played backwards. You know  the song where the wife does not leave, the truck still runs and the cowboy stops drinking. Maybe it is all the fluoride in the water that is causing such widespread ignorance and apathy.

The globalists are preparing to steal everything you own, they have rehearsed for this day, they are on a timetable to carry this plot out and they are laughing at our collective stupidity!

The Beta Tests for the “Grand Theft of the American People” Are Complete

The American people have been through several beta tests related to our private wealth being confiscated and no resistance was offered by the sheep of this country.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

The Dismal and Hopeful Future

July 22, 2015

The Dismal and Hopeful Future

One doesn’t have to be a brilliant social analyst to see that the contemporary world order is doomed, destined to start visibly crumbling within the next decade or two at the latest. The neoliberal system, in fact the corporate capitalist system, is radically unsustainable. It is too unstable, too universally rapacious, too humanly exploitative and environmentally destructive, too demoniacally self-consuming–for capitalism can profit from its self-immolation!–to last much longer.

Is it even necessary anymore to argue for these claims?

Capitalism means self-sabotage. Its profit-making interest lies in paying wage-earners as little as possible, and ideally in mechanizing and automating them out of existence, for they’re expensive and troublesome with their demands for “rights” and other such nonsense. On the other hand, capitalism needs markets; it needs entities to sell things to, for that’s how it makes profit. Any sort of entity would serve its purposes–alien creatures, super-advanced machines, genetically enhanced chimpanzees, whatever–but, tragically, capitalism has so far been forced to do business with the very beings it exploits and wants to deny income to: humans!

Cruel irony! The mass of mankind, against which capitalism wars in the sphere of production, it has to make nice to in the sphere of consumption, to blandish and cajole into buying commodities. This fusion of consumer and producer in the same being is the tragic contradiction that torments capitalism and drives it to manic-depression–exuberance followed by depression followed by exuberance. The capitalist elite revels in Romanesque orgies as it squeezes money out of the sweat and blood of the workers, but the party ends once markets have, as a result, so shrunk–or the worm of doubt has so grown in the minds of investors–that investment is cut back to the point of ending growth.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Archive: Forget Doom and Gloom: Preparedness is the Ultimate Act of Optimism |

October 22, 2014

Archive: Forget Doom and Gloom: Preparedness is the Ultimate Act of Optimism |.

optimism keller

Note from Daisy:  With all of the hullabaloo about Ebola lately, it seems like a good time to remind ourselves of why we prepare. We don’t do it out of fear. We do it because we like the peace of mind it brings.  When we are ready for anything from a job loss to a power outage to an outright apocalypse, we know that we can handle whatever life sends our way. A preparedness lifestyle is a constant affirmation that we will persevere.

Does this sound familiar?

You’re talking to a friend or family member who isn’t on board with preparedness.  (And it’s even worse when they think they know what’s going on in the world but garner their so-called “information” from network news sources.)  You try for the millionth time to get them to consider stocking up on a few things and they say this:

Life’s too short for all of this doom and gloom.  Live a little! You’re such a pessimist!

My response to this is that preparedness is the ultimate form of optimism.

– See more at: http://www.theorganicprepper.ca/archive-forget-doom-and-gloom-preparedness-is-the-ultimate-act-of-optimism-10212014#sthash.SyN2VASM.dpuf

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