Time for Planetary Crisis Management
We need to jump to the future in order to survive
by Mike Meyer
The new Australian research paper building on the widely read sustainability study have pulled the covers off the traumatic reality of the climate crisis. Despite scientists and academician’s muffled cries of futility, the problem is that the reality is too brutal to face by many scientists who understand it in detail. That is a very clear indication of how afraid we should be.
This shock of reality will, almost certainly, be ignored or denounced as nonsense by people with no understanding at all but who have control of the media and governments. What is this silliness about civilization collapsing? We’re making a fortune and everything is beautiful!
Action will be taken but not the action needed. The two papers mentioned above are already having an impact. A full court press will shortly be implemented in response to these studies in order to deny, confuse, and repress so that the ignorant majority can remain properly submissive. After all the looting needs to continue and this scientific nonsense will slow down production. My god, what if people stopped making us richer and started to work for survival of our planet? That cannot be allowed!
Based on current understanding and all current data, there is a very strong possibility that human civilization will begin seriously coming apart in thirty years. There are difficult to counter arguments that the range of climate related disasters will have reached a point by 2050 that our still new planetary civilization will begin its death spiral.
Only people in complete or nearly complete ignorance of the scientific knowledge on the climate crisis will question this. In the US and other countries that have allowed ignorance and oppression to be the criteria for government administration, none of this information will escape crude mockery or be, if possible, simply ignored. It has worked so far.
But this is reality on a networked planet and has already gone viral. Our children are looking at this and have been demanding action for months already. It is their lives that will face a brutal conclusion.
Realization of what will happen is riveting. As was once said, a death sentence definitely focuses the mind. Most everything quickly declines into irrelevance except what can be done and how fast we can begin doing it. That is where we are right now. Thirty years is not long. We listen to music that was popular thirty years ago. A very high percentage of the population can remember 1990. Was that thirty years ago?
The attempts to confuse will be based on the complexity of this disaster. This is not the kind of problem that our species can instinctively grasp and attempt to solve. It is massive and complex. It is also nonlinear.
That means that it does not follow a clear and progressive development. All of the earlier models used linear development to project the damage and the timing. This was the basis for the Paris Accords and the goal of limiting average warming to 2 degrees Celsius. That is gone and we will now hit 5 degrees at least but that may not be a steady increase with time to adjust.
We are already seeing people beginning to understand what this means as it happens. Massive storms, tornadoes, floods, a shifting polar vortex causing heat and extreme cold, drought, and disease. Food production is in decline due to changing climate conditions and this will get worse as these factors interact with each other. That’s a bit of what nonlinearity is about.
Here is information and the reports that are the basis of everything we do from now:
A summary of the 2050 beginning of collapse.
Facing the age of environmental breakdown.
The viral paper on Deep Adaption: A Map to Survive Environmental Tragedy
The fight to publish the research on Deep Adaption.
The Fourth Annual Climate Assessment, where we thought we were in 2016/17
IPCC: Global Warming of 1.5 ºC (We are very close to this now and on our way to 5 ºC.
But the other very difficult aspect of this is that it will be continuous and random. There won’t be a neat massive storm that gets everyone’s attention and marks the time to pay attention. We are in it now and have been for some years.
These events and their cumulative affects will grow, at times, exponentially. We are at the bottom edge of being able to track billions of variables and consistently access data to model the changes. At some point, far too soon, we will begin to lose what data sensors we have and won’t have the resources to replace them. People will be struggling to defend their homes and find food for their children.
That is how it will end. Not in a bang or a whimper but in a slow struggle to survive with no time or energy left to do anything else.
But we do have something like thirty years before we are overwhelmed. There are fully developed alternative strategies to reduce atmospheric carbon by planting sea grasses, trees in massive quantities, and eliminate problem sources of carbon. Read the studies, demand action to be taken now, repeat and increase the demands for action..
The very hard part is that we must eliminate fossil fuel use. Yes, that is the source of immense wealth for the existing oligarchy who are refusing to face reality. We should be planning regional phase out of all fossil fuels now with immediate implementation. This is not a choice. Being able to ‘afford it’ is not a question. Even with that and a full, planetary commitment it will take twenty years.
There are no magic bullets for this. Our carbon budget is going the wrong way as the result of corrupt national governments. There a a range of actions that can be taken and will slow the increase but it will take decades. Engineering the atmosphere is, at best, a desperation move if all else fails. A large portion of the population has been fed lies or simply kept ignorant of what is happening in order to keep the capitalist corrupt profiteering going. We need to end that immediately.
This is a planetary disaster, not national, and not regional. Nation states are a massive problem and need to be reduced to the level of local government. Just as we have a percentage of the population attempting to dive into the cesspool of the past to build on hate and ignorance, we need to move to fully implemented planetary crisis management at the United Nations.
There is really no other choice. Let’s figure out how to do it.
The existing governmental people standing in the way need to be removed quickly and with as little violence as possible. We don’t have time or resources to waste on wars of stupidity. Traditional politicians running for national office are no help at all. They want everything to remain the same but with them in charge.
The people supporting this type of government are a minority. We need to start coming to terms with what must be done to survive. This will be the hardest thing we have ever done.
We actually have the technology to make this planet’s assets available to all. At this point we still have the resources and can make the tools to get everyone to a basic level of existence. But not if organizations creating fake shortages to increase profits are allowed to continue. That is obvious.
Once minimum standards are guaranteed for all we will have reduced the early causes of collapse. This will allow us to use all remaining resources to begin bringing our climate back from the edge of disaster. The odds are that this won’t work and we will be overwhelmed but we can certainly try. And allowing a tiny percentage to live in incredible luxury while anyone does without the necessities of life, medical care, or education is clearly suicidal.
If we survive we will be a different species and are capabilities will be at a very different level than we can even imagine now. We have choices and can make a difference but we are already out of time to play with those who refuse to understand.
