I Want a Better Catastrophe

[Brenda]

[link:https://dark-mountain.net/i-want-a-better-catastrophe/|

This February two key commentators on the climate crisis, Andrew Boyd and Dougald Hine, have published books on radically different approaches to the planetary predicaments that confront us. We invited both authors to introduce an extract from their work and to take part in on our new online Conversations at the End of the World in March. Today Andrew Boyd takes us into the troubled territory of his new book I Want a Better Catastrophe, released this week.

In my long history of causes, I’ve had my moments of hopelessness, but I’d always power through, often to victory. But the hopelessness I feel in the face of our climate circumstances is different. ‘Hope,’ says theologian Jim Wallis, ‘is believing in spite of the evidence, then watching the evidence change.’ But this time the evidence is already in. Yes, I could bring all the defy-the-odds exuberance I’d brought to previous fights, but how was that going to change the fundamental science of our climate situation? The earth chemistry is clear: decades of greed and negligence have already hard-wired a catastrophe into our climate future. If our task is to prevent catastrophe, it isn’t just impossible to the cynical and faint of heart, it is in fact impossible. We’ve simply run out of time. So what to do?

--snip--

Once you’ve looked squarely at the climate science, it’s hard not to feel like Sarah Connor in the dream sequence from Terminator 2. It’s a beautiful day, kids and parents (as well as the younger Sarah) are in a park playing on the swings. With her fingers curled around the wire mesh backstop, she’s shouting, trying to warn everyone (including herself) of imminent doom. But everything is just so lovely and normal, and who is this madwoman shouting her crazy thoughts? Then the flash and the fireball, and all is lost.

Many of us are living a quiet, less dramatic, slower-motion version of that dream. Today, for example, it’s glorious in New York. I’m biking around the edge of Manhattan. I pause to lie on the grass by the water. Hudson River Park, built on landfill reclaimed from the river, is the picture of tranquility: runners, toddlers, kids playing Frisbee, all framed by blue sky and handsome buildings. I try to imagine the sea wall the city elders will try to build here, before they abandon lower Manhattan—and maybe much of the city—to the chaos of Frankenstorms and rising tides.

--snip--

Millions of us are caught in this place. Who wants to dwell on such terrible news? Who wants to be the radioactive person at the party? Who wants to open themselves to all the grief waiting for us? So we don’t. And this elaborate act of self-misdirection has many an accomplice:

Governments that can’t bring themselves to announce the news like the existential emergency it actually is.

The niceties of everyday life which shun the grief-struck herald.

The paid agents of Big Oil and Gas who have spent millions to cast shade on news we already wish weren’t true, and are hellbent on convincing us that we consumers are the main problem.

The mystifications of late capitalism, that train us to act as if we weren’t aware of our own contradictions even though we acutely are.

(More at Link)