You make a very good point here that there are already people in the world who live with almost nothing in certain countries.
This I also realised early on and found valuable answers to the sort of questioners that westerners might not usually think about, one example:
What do you do about infant hygiene? Answer – elimination communication.
I am not a typical westerner myself, though I cannot claim to have had a life as hard as those in some countries.
I’d also favour those sorts of people you mention over typical westerners (who frankly I have a rather low opinion of).
So what would I add to the experience and skills of such people as a plan for moving forwards?
Mobility. The ability to move to somewhere that will remain suitable for human inhabitation later*. As the decades unfold the face of the planet we knew is going to be massively changed. By the end of the century onwards it is uncertain how much of the surface will remain within limits for human survival. Settled communities as you describe may in many cases be destroyed by climatic processes despite surviving the initial breakdown of technologically advanced civilisation. As the seas rise, the deserts expand and the earth system throws various other things at us (some known about today, some surprises) and many areas that today cradle civilisation may become uninhabitable wasteland.
Marginal wastelands (today) may ultimately become areas capable of supporting a flourishing civilisation.
That is my thinking anyway – I am not just trying to think about the initial demands of survival – but about the future far beyond my lifetime (and I wish more people would do this).
Regards,
Douglas
*not to mention movement beyond conflict that is still likely to encompass these regions – excepting any poorly known about remote communities in regions that remain climatically viable and impossible for others to get to
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Torsten Mark Kowal
Sent: 25 March 2013 16:45
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
Hi Kevin,
I apologize if I come across at all critical, I was taken aback by your message, and tried to see how you view the options. I would encourage you to think outside the UK framework....
At 19:29 25/03/2013 +0000, Kevin Coleman wrote:
A very interesting alternative method of survival. One which I had not considered. As I said to another CF member the only way we could survive is a sufficiently large number of like minded individuals gathered together to form some sort of community. There would have to be people with the basic skills for food growing, shelter building, the making of clothing, tools and also for defence of the community. Medical skills revolving around the herbal and alternative medicine as well as dental and optical skills would be essential in some form. Modern medical procedures would be limited by the very technical nature of the processes. The list goes on and on but a community that would be considered self sustaining in is form (subject to more fine detail) would comprise of well over one hundred to begin with. When was the last time anyone came across such a group?
It would seem to me that wherever the human race cultivates, depends on natural systems and engages in low-carbon living in developing countries, then you will find communities with such attributes.
I have visited in-depth in southern Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, Cambodia and Vietnam, where in many locations, communities cooperate extensively in the activities you have listed.
Over there in scores of settings, what I noted was the resilience of human livelihoods in the face of oncoming impacts. People are begining to face towards frightening scenarios, and are trying to unravel complex intelligence about local resources and provisioning systems for water, food and energy.
Stakeholders need to quickly overcome chronic non climate related bottlenecks and impediments to sectoral progress. In each sector, key respurces and systems will need to be better managed to ensure human security, as this defines real wealth (and happiness) and is key to reducing the vulnerabilities of poor and marginal communities and help them face climate impacts despite their limited sets of livelihoods assets.
In the UK and developed world, you will find a close correlation between power, energy use, finance, extractive industry, advertisers, the media, security apparatus, and corporate infestation, that have conspired to warped and twisted whatever instincts to self-reliance we once had, as we blindly consume ad-nauseum. These high carbon lifestyles have effectively "abstracted us" frpm physical realities, as we engage willy-nilly in techy-dominated lives, where it is our connection to a series of screens and gadgets that is now a major part of what defines us.
As a climate change adaptation professional, I work in favour of new thinking and the joint exploration of opportunities, across landscapes at increased risk. These are operating theatres where unfolding events, complex impacts, shifting trends and altered seasons are coming into greater play, implying increased risks for people, communities, ecosystems and businesses in the face of closer approaches towards or over damage thresholds.
In developing and developed countries under the imperative to rapidly evolve their institutions and systems, decisions need to be made about reconfigurations that better cope with weather/climate-related events. There is a clear need for intelligent actions along the continuum of adaptation, out towards disaster risk reduction. This needs a lot of work by local agents that need to account for complex factors in decisions, for example making better use of key climate-environment and sector knowledge.
As a consultant, I am interested in upcoming professional projects, programmes and collaborations that allow me to earn a living, while advocating for enhanced resilience planning. My role in the big picture is to deliver my local iota of effort towards buffering the effects of climate chaos on "vulnerable livelihoods" and systems. I will do what I can to build risk management systems, and to bring down the exposure of assets.
I will try to do this by working with vulnerable groups and decision-makers to examine ways forward through new and evolving financial, institutional and policy landscapes, via activation of key stakeholders within networks of collaborative actors.
Climate change adaptation needs to be rapidly and effectively addressed by organizations and initiatives that have to chart ways to mainstream climate into planning at all scales and levels. One key opportunity is to facilitate better environmental management within local government such as in spatial planning, in ways that factor in climate risks.
These are my thoughts: Link with me on http://www.linkedin.com/in/tmkowal or Skype ID tmkowal
Anyway I like the boat project and especially if it was combined with a permanent/semi-permanent base somewhere reasonably remote, self sufficient and secure.
One of those coastal castles with a farm next to it would be good. :-)
Kev C
CCG <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I view the issue you identify as just another problem to solve (enslavement by government, slaughter and theft by neighbours). In my opinion the best solution to it is to opt out (as much as possible) from that stage of the process and not be there. A sufficiently large, aggressive and well organised transition group might be able to try toughing it out in situ.
I’m still curious what people are doing about it – these linkks would give a flavour of what I’m doing about it (for anyone interested) – and show how I intend to address ssome of the obvious problems one faces:
http://www.helpsurviveclimatechange.com/Content/Mission/DeusJuvat.aspx
http://deusjuvat.wordpress.com/about/
... though I’d like to emphasise that they’re surrounded by a wider context of trying to encourage people to think about and work towards the continuity of civilisation in a general sense – so I’m not just pushing this one specific sstrategy.
I actually bought my first boat saving up as a minimum wage worker living with my mother (paying her only the costs of my presence). I needed somewhere to live and couldn’t afford rent or get a mortgage and a little secondhand boat proved an extremely useful solution to this problem (a few thousand to buy, mooring costs comparable to what most people pay in council tax). The freedom from enslavement to a landlord or bank enabled me to set aside (over several years of aggressive saving) the resources to get the current (much larger) vessel. While I grant the project runs at or beyond my limits – this is a more affordable venture than most might think – any British home owner is by definition likely to be wealthier than I am or ever have been (I also took a couple of years to find the right boat at the right price ie very cheap).
Regards,
Douglas
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kevin Coleman
Sent: 25 March 2013 09:01
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
Either way we're screwed. Let's face it there are simply too many nutters in governments around the Western nations. They are all so hell bent on being all powerful that they forget that the consequences of their gross lunacy will come back at them. Or will they try to tough it out in a nuclear bunker? HG Wells The Time Machine springs readily to mind here. The Middle East is a powder keg waiting to explode because one of the non signatories to the non proliferation treaty' Israel' are hell bent on maintaining a total grip on all things nuclear. I bet they launch first out of all the possessors of nuclear weapons.
As for the comment from Douglas I heartily agree. Its something I have said to a lot of people before only to be told it would never happen. Well it will and it is getting closer and I still believe we're screwed and we will spend more time fighting off the idiots and the lunatics (if we have avoided the powers that be who would have us enslaved to their whims) who want what little we would be left with and with no care for the day after. Once we're dead then it will not be long before they die too. 'What goes around comes around' Old Pagan saying.
Kev C
Jim McCluskey <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
I have been following with interest the ‘Zombie’ discussion. I do not disagree with the views put forward and hesitate to add to an already desperate scenario.
However I campaign against nuclear weapons. Unlike the Global Warming issue which is a relatively ‘slow burn’ the existence of nuclear arsenals in 9 states can result in Armageddon at any time from accident, misjudgement or malicious intent. There are 17,000 nuclear weapons in existence many of them 30 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb. About 2000 are on hair-trigger alert. After launch the missiles travel at over 1000 miles in 4 minutes and the only way of knowing they are coming is via an electronic ‘early’ warning system which like all electronic system is subject to malfunction.
And apart from the constant and immediate danger, as Global Warming progresses there will be more incentive for the nuclear states to use these weapons in a mad attempt to protect their ‘vital interests’.
Regards,
Jim.
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of CCG
Sent: 25 March 2013 07:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
My mother’s parents idolised Thatcher. I vaguely remember being aware as a younger child that we had no milk at school as a result of her (which for me meant not a lot of milk anywhere, as it was expensive, which applied to just about anything except potatoes in my family) but it was only on becoming much older (and actually being able to learn things about the UK– having almost entirely escaped infectiion with British culture as a child) that I realised what really happened back then.
To me the most interesting thing you say is about preparing for “come what mayâ€.
This raises the opportunity to bounce a number of questions out there:
1. Do we prepare for the worst case, or what we think is probable –“ in the face of limited information and a very severe worst case? (plan for the worst, hope for the best?)
2. Do we really believe that massive scale conflict within and between societies can really be avoided?
3. Is it not rational to prepare and plan for a conflict environment?
4. Do people perceive yet that there may be a critical and imminent threat to modern civilisation (and by extent global civilisation) sufficient to reduce us to stone age conditions (but without the widespread natural resources available at that time, and without the relatively benign and stable climate that mostly prevailed)?
5. Can anyone here say that they are personally preparing for “come what may†for anything even approaching the worst case scenario? (I know I’m certainly trying to but from what I’ve seen almost nobody is)
I suppose a realistic assessment of “worst case†is necessary to put those questions in context. So here is mine:
Now: Arctic sea ice extent likely to set significant new record low (implied by volume trends). Weather increasingly unpredictable and extreme, major agricultural regions under increasing pressure, world food prices pushing levels sufficient to trigger significant civil unrest in some regions, governments building police state apparatus through legislation and logistics. Low level fear and stress detectable within knowledgeable parties.
Soon: Arctic sea ice sets new record minimum (or becomes totally ice free, still <50% chance this year), weather significantly worsens, another round of problems with crops, economic issues continue to deteriorate. Civil unrest breaks out in an increasing number of regions. Some nations fail and migration starts to destabilise surrounding regions. Fear starts to take root in the general population as the true nature of the situation becomes impossible to conceal. Governments activate police state apparatus to try to control their populations for the socioeconomic elites.
A bit later: Governments try to maintain control by any means necessary. Failing nations complicate global logistics (eg Somali pirates but much worse). Increasing number of regions disintegrate into civil war/anarchy. Nations go to war over resources and to try to externalise the enemy (war rallies populations).
A little bit later still: Wars become nuclear and biological (using genetically enhanced weaponry). War and conflict massively undermine the logistics of agricultural production and distribution above and beyond that implied by the abrupt climate change continuing in the Arctic (with other positive feedbacks potentially joining in). Global logistics fail (and modern civilisation depends utterly on these).
A couple of years: Starving and desperate people consume all natural and farmed resources available for food/fuel – animals, treess, etc. Nation states gone and people form into increasingly smaller and short-lived groups fighting each other for meagre resources. Population continues to decline until below the new carrying capacity, when conflict starts to diminish and the changing climate becomes the main threat to survivors.
More than a few years: Anyone left standing gets to try to do whatever they can in the wasteland that is left – challenge of a channging climate hangs over humanity for decades, if not centuries (with additional episodes of abrupt change likely). Most people dead.
Regards,
Douglas
PS In 1938 Chamberlain returned to Britain to declare “peace in our timeâ€. One year later WW2 started. Rate of change in the human world should not be underestimated.
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alastair McIntosh
Sent: 25 March 2013 03:09
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
My Dearly Beloved Fellow Zombies
Over the weekend I had my 84 year old mother to stay, whose personal hero in life has been Margaret Thatcher (note I say hero and not heroine). This meant that I had to fill our house with newspapers never normally seen here like the Mail, Express and Sunday Crimes. Today I shall have to make enquires as to whether these will be acceptable in the recycling bin, but that is another matter. I should say all the usual nice things about my mother, but the point of this column on Crisis Forum is not to adulate the family but to refer to one segment of its reading habits.
My point is that to read such papers, especially their w/end financial supplements, is a reminder of just how profoundly materialistic are the swathe of people represented by this, the greenest govt we’ve ever seen, with articles in these papers urging that it should repeal the climate change act that is holding back economic recovery, and that fracking is going to make us all rich because there’s just so much of the frigging stuff waiting to bubble up from under British farmland, and it’s only the policies of the wacko greenies that have put us in a situation where we’re down to just a day’s supply of gas because we’ve not tapped in to our own carbon potential. Honestly – you read this stuff, and they don’t just deny the views of people like us. They hate us. And that’s the politicians we’ve got running things.
I’m not going to re-enter the geoengineering debate. You all know how I think that’s tunnel vision for a multifactored issue and would only, even if it works, stay off the evil day to allow Nero to fiddle a few more tunes. I think something much greater is required of us in these times. We need to prepare for come what may in the come-to-pass, and that means preparing in human qualities. I also read in these newspapers that the rich are quite happy with last week’s budget. Corporation tax is being cut by 1% which is presented as a stimulus to industry, but really, it is a boost to shareholder dividends, and remember, 1% on a 20% base is a 5% cut. Meanwhile, the poor are being screwed. Even the rich papers are saying that the poor will feel their pips squeaking, and that’s a very good thing because it will send them all off to get jobs, and perhaps “one†will once again be able to get decent domestic servants, except they won’t be decent anymore because all they know how to do is fiddle on their gizmo machines, so boot camps are what’s really needed (I’m sorry, I’m exaggerating what was in those papers – they should offer me a column – but yt you get the idea cos that’s how they think).
So …I’m just saying – keep the big picpicture of the crisis in mind, and remember, that for some in our country it has already arrived.
ToTiDo.
A.
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of CCG
Sent: 25 March 2013 01:26
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
But at least then scientists could say they tried to deliver the message? As Hansen does every time he goes out to protest and gets arrested?
Every person will have their excuse ready to absolve themselves of any responsibility, from what I’ve noticed to date (even myself).
Regards,
Douglas
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of david McKay
Sent: 24 March 2013 19:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
Not sure banging up scientists for being conservative with their interpretations (as scientists tend to do in all fields) will help very much - at the very least it doesn't make it any more likely that governments or people would act any more quickly anyway! Even if we stood and shouted from the rooftops and went on strike to deliver the worst-case message, I suspect scientists would still not get very much more attention or headway...
Dave
From: John Nissen <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, 24 March 2013, 22:06
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
Hi Chris,
You say, correctly that "we all tell ourselves stories to make sense of our lives and to convince ourselves that our existence hasn’t been a complete waste of time"
This is why it is so difficult to contemplate that there may not be a future in which there are people who can look back at us. Becker [1] had the theory that our society deals with death by making each person think they are a hero, or at least working towards that end. Thus the contemplation of an end of civilisation conflicts very much with this worldview, and we just can't contemplate it. We all have a hang-up. Our subconscious edits out the extremely uncomfortable in order to free-up our conscious minds for daily living. It's the same as living under a dam - if you were concerning yourself about the dam all the time, you'd be incapable of functioning. It's an adaptation of the human psyche through evolution and survival of the tribe.
Unfortunately this particular hang-up inflicts the very scientists who advise the government over what should be done in a crisis. These scientists are indeed deluded - culpably deluded - perhaps even certifiably deluded [2]. Thus our western governments apparently have no idea of the severity of the crisis that will beset us as a result of the rapid demise of the Arctic sea ice unless drastic action is taken to cool the Arctic.
I have experienced this denial of reality first-hand, and it is very extraordinary - especially because you see it in people of high intelligence at the top of their field. They either refuse to talk to you on a topic or they come out with the most insane arguments to justify their position.
What can we do about this? Their behaviour is threatening the survival of themselves as well as the rest of us. Their behaviour is both suicidal (the ultimate self-harm) and genocidal, yet they are blissfully unaware because of their delusion. Could we file for the protection of these people in a psychiatric ward [3]?
Cheers,
John
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Becker
[2] http://www.mdguidelines.com/delusional-disorder
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_psychiatry
--
On 24/03/2013 19:36, Christopher Shaw wrote:
Hi Brian
Thanks for taking the time to engage with the ideas I was trying to put forward. I agree with a lot of what you say. I guess for me, and many people who have studied these things, we all tell ourselves stories to make sense of our lives and to convince ourselves that our existence hasn’t been a complete waste of time. These are not explicitly stories about climate change but implicitly they are. Just one example – the story I might telll myself, that I am successful because I have 3 cars, a holiday home and 5 foreign holidays a year is about climate change, at an implicit level.
Or I am a social scientists on £70 k a year and I fly to conferences and I do not want radical change to the social order because I have done well out of it, but I research climate change issues. I tell myself I can be excused because I am making a difference through my research. I tell myself go slow policy prescriptions which avoid any change to the social order are the best response to climate change.
Those are the stories. They are all conditioned by capitalist culture and constrain what counts as rational stories within very tight bounds which leave the comfort of the rich untouched.
Chris
From: Brian Orr [mailto:[log in to unmask] ]
Sent: 24 March 2013 19:23
To: Christopher Shaw
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
Christopher,
I do think you're right about the 2ËšC limit being a major hazard in the way of getting 'the people' to take climate change 'as seriously' as required. But I am not convinced that your 'people have their story' theory has that much traction.
I think the billions of people around the world who rely on stories to make broad sense of their lives are very small players in the 'mega-saga' that is now being played out. For the West, and China, 'stories' have nothing like so great a hold. Yes, in the West we have the Christian story, but this has been largely side-lined with very few believers signing up to "It is harder for a rich man…….), while the ChiChinese, although still steeped in the story of Chairman Mao, would also seemed to have strayed from 'the straight and narrow' as much as the West in terms of how they are continuing with his 'revolution'.
The scientific evidence is that we are, for all practical purposes, in the process of toppling over the cliff. All the climate mitigation that we could bring to bear within the extreme limits of what is politically and physically possible, will not prevent the inevitable 'toppling of successive dominoes' that will lead to a world-wide 'mega-calamity' exceeding anything the Black Death inflicted on us, and probably involving the Black Death as well as part of the 'descent into the pit'.
Very few ordinary people talk much about climate change: probably the majority hardly talk about it ever. A fair explanation is that they just haven't got the tools with which to discuss it, but alongside this is the cultural block against discussing such things. (As an example, most people will not spend much time analysing the pros and cons of the austerity strategy of the present government and the EU. They might look at it superficially through the lens of running a household budget and the desirability of a rising job market, but there's not much they can do about it personally - so why, they probably think, should I bother my untrained mind about it?).
So, let's put ourselves under the microscope. Why don't we 'talk more' about the 'fact'???? that the game is up? Do we have the tools to do it? Well there's a mountain of material out there on the internet and no shortage of talented bloggers who have addressed this issue (with no shortage of deniers alongside whose basic premise is global warming is a hoax.)
Does the thought that the game is up leave us so depressed and dispirited that we shy away from thinking about it, either consciously or sub-consciously? Are we inhibited by the possibility of aggressive reactions to admitting that the position is looking extremely daunting?
Isn't there a fundamental dilemma for crisis-forum here in that, on the one hand, we cannot give up hope, or get close to that by admitting that things do look pretty hopeless, and on the other, 'inspecting our souls' with absolute honesty as a means of grappling with this strangest of puzzles: why are most people extremely reluctant to discuss possibly the greatest threat mankind has ever had to face in appropriately graphic terms?
Brian
On 22 Mar 2013, at 10:33, Christopher Shaw < [log in to unmask]> wrote:
That right, that article offered two scenarios, 1 degree as low risk and 2 degrees as high risk. Not certain that even the 1 degree limit is low risk.
C
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [mailto:CRISIS -[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of CCG
Sent: 22 March 2013 10:22
Subject: Re: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
The 2C limit is an overwhelming popular meme (and as you observe in your link without proper justification).
I assume people are aware of this (from 1990... over two decades ago)?
With particular reference to the bottom of page viii:
“Temperature increases beyond 1.0 C may elicit rapid, unpredictable, and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage.â€
That would seem to describe what we’re starting to see today at ~0.8C – not bad going for something as olld as that – makes me wonder what the last two decades aand change were spent doing... except guaranteeing we made it happen.
Regards,
Douglas
From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum [ mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Christopher Shaw
Sent: 22 March 2013 06:07
Subject: What zombie films can teach us about climate change
Dear all
Shameless self-promotion time but I think this short piece I wrote for New Left Project speaks to many of the themes that engage members of the forum.
Thanks
Chris
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