Dear Extinction Rebels. Geoffrey Chia. June 29, 2019.
First of all, let me salute your fortitude to speak (what you think is) the truth, no matter how frightening.
Let me salute your resolve to do (what you think is) right, no matter how difficult.
Let me salute your courage to risk life, limb and liberty to oppose the omnicidal juggernaut of Industrial Capitalism, no matter how hopeless.
I understand your deep frustrations regarding the abject failure of our so-called leaders to do anything meaningful to address the obscene planetary devastation now spiralling out of control.
I understand you feel that your only remaining option now is mass civil disobedience.
I understand you believe that if only you can reach certain critical numbers within each population, you can drive urgent social change around the world to enact emergency measures to prevent global collapse of our life support systems.
In a world steeped in deceit, mendacity and narcissism, you strive for honesty, integrity and selflessness.
In a world steeped in vulgarity, materialism and avarice you stand for nobility, humanism and generosity
In a world steeped in viciousness, tribalism and brutality you practice kindness, inclusiveness and non-violence.
I have written open letters to various parties in the past, with little to no results.
I wrote to the Public Health department of the University of Queensland whose stated goal was to minimise morbidity and mortality in populations, pointing out they had paid scant attention to climate change and completely ignored Peak Oil. 1 George Monbiot is wrong if he thinks Peak Oil is no longer an issue, it remains an ever worsening threat but has been skilfully hidden by fraud and market distortion. 2 Nafeez Ahmed understands this well.
I wrote to Doctors for the Environment Australia whose focus on climate change was too limited in scope (they also ignored Peak Oil) and whose lobbying was too weak. 3
I wrote to The Zeitgeist Movement who claimed to promote science and sustainability but were more about science fiction and technocornucopian fantasy. 4
In contrast to the above groups however, you folks of the extinction rebellion are the ones I admire most. You are willing to risk imprisonment to try to save the lives of others too stupid and too venal to deserve being saved. That is noble and altruistic. But it is also misguided. I believe you are well meaning, morally righteous people with good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you continue on this time and energy wasting path, you and your families will experience hell on earth. You deserve better. Others don't.
One of your demands is that official bodies tell the Truth and declare a climate emergency. You were told by the IPCC last year that humanity had 12 years before it would be too late to do anything. That was a LIE. The fact is that it was and is already far too late to prevent global catastrophe. There is NO carbon budget left. These realities were apparent even back in 2013 following the IPCC fifth assessment report, when the only scenarios the IPCC could imagine where disaster could be avoided required time travel into the past or technologies which did not exist and certainly could not be scaled up even if they did exist (as expressed by climate scientists Dr Kevin Anderson and Dr Hugh Hunt) 5. The science based facts behind these assertions are summarised here: 6.
Truth is determined by careful and comprehensive collection of accurate data, by hard objective scientific scrutiny using the principles of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, including mathematical analyses, which must not be polluted by political or economic vested interests. The IPCC processes had long been watered down by political interference, which seriously underestimated the magnitude and speed of global warming, in order to justify foot dragging by national so-called "leaders". 7
The reason we have not yet experienced the full horrific consequences of 415ppm CO2 (in reality, there is a much higher CO2 equivalent, around 500ppm) is because of time lag due to thermal inertia 8. Atmospheric temperature rises have been buffered by the cool oceans and the melting ice masses. Those buffers are being exceeded, they are being overwhelmed, as every second passes. If you think the unprecedented shocking weather extremes over the past 15 years were disastrous at barely 1 degree Celsius atmospheric global average temperature rise, there is far more and far worse to come. More than 4 degrees rise is irreversibly baked into the cake based on EXISTING greenhouse gas concentrations. That is as certain as the law of gravity. Hell is coming no matter what. The best thing you can do is get ready for it. But time is short and you must act NOW before the imminent global economic collapse steals away all your options.
Let us consider the absolute best imaginable outcomes for your group. What will happen if you are immediately 100% effective today in achieving all your social and policy goals?
Even if all carbon emissions cease today, the world is still committed to more than 4 degrees Celsius eventual global average temperature rise which will render large scale agriculture impossible. This means civilisation, the hallmark of which is the existence of cities, will no longer be possible. Small scale agriculture in a few selected climate resilient pockets may still be possible.
Large scale carbon sequestration is a fantasy and will never be undertaken because our bogus economic system will not allow for it and even if we can develop those technologies, we will not have the energy resources to do it. Geoengineering insanity will cause more problems than they address.
Immediate cessation of emissions will also mean immediate curtailment of global food production which is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels. This will cause billions to starve. In the medical management of patients, knowingly inflicting harm is not an option. However allowing nature to take its course (in some cases – such as untreatable terminal cancer) is acceptable, indeed unavoidable. As a matter of course, billions will die this century due to oil/resource depletion, ecosystem collapse and climate catastrophe and the consequences thereof (warfare, epidemics etc). Inevitable near term economic collapse is also absolutely certain due to institutional fraud and impending energy collapse. 9 It is those events which will most effectively and drastically curtail carbon emissions, not your activism.
There is absolutely nothing you can do about the looming general die-off. You can however take steps to reduce the likelihood that you and your family and friends will die horribly in the next few decades. Please note that nobody's survival is guaranteed. All anyone can do is increase the probability of their survival.
There are certain toxic nihilists, the Extinction Promoters, who insist that near term climate extinction by 2030 or 2026 or some other arbitrary ridiculously short timeline is certain and that everyone should just give up and die. They are wrong. I have conclusively disproven their meme using basic Physics. NO credible climate scientist agrees with them. They are a vicious, nasty, misanthropic Death Cult. Their bogus ideology, inflicted upon psychologically vulnerable people, could contribute to premature deaths 10. Their false prophet, a former scientist, may have been a qualified ecologist (NOT a climate scientist) once upon a time, but somewhere along the way his fevered mind convulsed, contorted and congealed into lobotomised mush, catalysed by the self reinforcing feedback loops driven by his malignant echo chamber of ventriloquist dummy disciples 11 (who also ventured forth as rabid trolls to spread dismay and misery everywhere on the Net).
Dr Paul Beckwith, a true climate scientist and prolific educator who had the misfortune of associating with them in the early days has denounced them, as have I. You must ignore those toxic nihilists.
What then should you believe and what should you do?
Here is what you should NOT believe: Do NOT believe in the misleading pronouncements spouted by Politicians, Corporations, the mainstream Media (especially the Murdoch media), Economists and even the IPCC (which is more a political than scientific body). Be extremely critical of information coming from even Academia as they too may be subject to delivering corrupt, distorted messages.
What should you believe?
You must believe in reality. REALITY BEATS ANY RUBBISH IPCC DOCUMENTS ANY TIME, ALWAYS. The IPCC seriously underestimated true global warming be it Arctic ice melt, albedo loss, permafrost melt, Greenland ice loss etc. throughout its entire history. The arbiters of reality are climate science researchers who conducted real world measurements and observations and found all IPCC documents to be hopelessly out of date even before they were published. It is a standing joke among hundreds, even thousands of climate scientists (whose papers may have been shut out by the “low ball” IPCC selection procedures) that median IPCC projections have consistently grossly underestimated true observed warming in the world. Interested lay people should listen to the interviews conducted by Alex Smith (radioecoshock.org) and Stuart Scott (ScientistsWarning.TV) who have spoken directly to those multitudes of scientists over the years.
You must listen to those scientists with a track record of getting things right. The Limits to Growth Scientists got it right. Interestingly, insurance companies and military agencies such as the Pentagon and German Military have conducted a great deal of research into these matters and their documents may be worth perusing. This much is certain: Resource Depletion (especially that of vanishing high EROEI oil), Climate catastrophe and Ecological Collapse (especially the loss of living topsoil, death of the insects and of the oceans) each on their own guarantee the die-off of billions of people this century. Taken together, they ensure that massive human die-off will occur this century with certainty beyond any reasonable doubt. Die-off will be multiplied by epidemics and warfare.
What are uncertain and unknowable are the time scales with which die-off will proceed and the locations which will be affected hardest and earliest. However we can make educated guesses about those.
No part of the world will be completely spared but some places will be significantly less bad than others.
What should you do? That depends on your personal situation. Look around at the folks within your group, look to each other.
If you have no assets and no dependants and no intention or ability to change your lifestyle which is currently reliant on the fossil fool industrial paradigm, by all means continue your non-violent protests against the acceleration of carbon pollution, especially against unconventional oil/gas and new coal projects, which could be the nail in the coffin for our extinction. You may make a personal choice to go down with the Titanic and nobody can criticise you for that. However telling others to "abandon hopium", exhorting them not to board the lifeboats, so that they too will be dragged down and die alongside you, is completely unacceptable. Only a malicious turd, a "Kool Aid" Jim Jones type homicidal psychopath, would do such a thing.
If you have assets, liquidate them to purchase remote land in a climate resilient location with sufficient fresh water to grow food. Some location considerations can be found here: 12. Set up several tiny dwellings on your land, each powered by standalone off-grid solar electricity systems. You will need help establishing your permaculture homestead from young energetic Sapients who may be found among existing Extinction Rebellion and School Strike for Climate members. They can reside in the tiny dwellings and engage in an exchange economy without involving money.
If you are forced to continue working in a city to fund your remote homestead, ensure you have the means to bug out at short notice to travel to your “bolt hole”. Travelling by road post collapse may be difficult due to blockades, fuel constraints and rampaging zombie hordes. If your remote homestead is coastal, a sailboat may be the best way out, a literal lifeboat for you. Technocornucopians imagine cities to be the Elysian fields of the future, they picture driverless flying cars buzzing around skyscrapers covered with vertical gardens. They are wrong. Cities will be the killing fields of the future.
If you have no assets but are able to trade your "sweat equity", and especially if you have young dependants, make yourselves known to those setting up homesteads and develop skills so you can help grow food or provide useful services for your prospective off-grid community. You will be welcomed by landowners looking for help. After the collapse, successful homesteads will be largely egalitarian, any hierarchy will be determined by who contributes most in terms of water, food and energy provision to the community, not by anyone's (long evaporated) bank balance.
You will need to use fossil fuels to set up your homesteads. Do not agonise over that, just do it.
You must gather together like minded people and find the least bad place you can move to NOW.
If you are a pre-disaster migrant you can do many things. A post-disaster refugee will have no more agency than a piece of flotsam tossed around by storm blown waves.
This much is also certain: unless the survivors of the upcoming population cull are people who operate on the basis of truth and honesty and cooperation and learn how to live within the limits of Nature, human extinction will be guaranteed. It is important, nay essential, that the principal perpetrators of this global clusterfuck, the fossil fool fraudsters, the climate change deniers, the endless growth ideologues and their followers all die off. It is crucial for the survival of our species that all the clueless sheeple and their psychopathic sheeple herders perish. It is vital that Trump type Fascists and their demon spawn be wiped out and their germ line be extinguished forever, so they can no longer defraud, parasitise and threaten humanity. All those “players” will kill each other or die from disasters, famine or disease in the decades ahead, you just need to keep out of the way.
Only if the survivors of this cull are true Sapients, defined as being amenable to the ways of wisdom, will humanity and our ecosphere stand any chance.
But who are the Sapients?
YOU ARE. As members of the Extinction Rebellion you have identified yourselves to be Sapient. It is therefore your duty to save yourselves if you wish to save humanity, because folks like YOU represent the only hope that humanity will not go extinct.
Let me now propose an alternative name for you and an alternative and far more worthwhile path to take. You can transform yourselves into the "Extinction Resistance" and your task must be to get together as small communities, to set up off-grid homesteads in remote climate resilient locations, to wean yourselves off fossil fuels and to grow as much food for yourselves as you can. Not all will succeed. Trying will not guarantee success, but not trying will guarantee failure. Even if just a small minority succeed in the long term, that will be enough to form the best seed for humanity version 2.0
Do not try to save everyone. That is an impossible task and a fool's errand. But try to save as many as you can.
Bill Mollison, the co-founder of Permaculture, decried the "futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter". You must be the revolutionaries who produce food and shelter, then your words will carry more weight.
CONCLUSIONS:
I have no reason to alter any of my recommendations written in this old post: 13 (see the lower heading "Advice for sustainability activists in 2015")
It is possible, perhaps even highly probable, that humanity may go extinct by the end of this century but it is by no means a certainty. Massive population die-off however is an absolute certainty, there is no credible scenario in which it can be avoided. Nevertheless our species has faced population collapse in the past (around 75,000 years ago), perhaps down to as few as a couple of thousand breeding pairs, and emerged past that population bottleneck. Can this happen again? Nobody knows for sure but I encourage you to resist extinction.
Ultimately, I think it is inevitable that humanity will try to emigrate to a thawing Antarctica which may be the last liveable location on the planet, should global average temperature reach 8 or 10 degrees Celsius above the Holocene. That will be the next great challenge.
G. Chia June 2019
Some Definitions:
I define an outcome as “certain beyond any reasonable doubt” if every single objective analysis shows no feasible possibility of that outcome being avoided. Of course it is possible that benevolent aliens from outer space or angels from heaven may intervene at the last minute to magically solve all our planetary problems, however such nonsensical thinking is best left to fantasy novelists – it is neither feasible nor realistic. Large scale “negative emissions” technologies belong in the same realm.
Even if an outcome is highly probable, but we are able to demonstrate just one single feasible scenario where that outcome can be avoided, then that outcome is NOT certain. This is the crux of the argument against the “ultra near term climate extinction” cocksure nihilists. In fact there are numerous scenarios, in multiple climate resilient locations, where ultra near term climate extinction can be avoided.
Footnotes:
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2017/12/an-open-letter-by-geoff-chia-to-school.html
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2019/01/02/how-business-as-usual-has-been-pursued-since-2006-by-escalating-fraud-and-environmental-vandalism/#comment-10695
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2016/04/21/open-letter-to-doctors-for-the-environment-australia/
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2016/08/25/open-letter-to-the-zeitgeist-movement/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8akSfOIsU2Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfVphmxPOXo
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2017/02/14/climate-slides-for-diners/
And to a lesser extent, global dimming due to sulphate and particulate emissions. There is a good BBC Horizon documentary about this https://vimeo.com/138779240
The astute reader will realise that every one of those components interacts with every other one via bidirectional feedbacks which I have graphically modelled in 3 dimensions: https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-seneca-cliff-explained-as-network.htmland you can find a real world model “doom explained by confectionery abuse” on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hedXaMb42pk Probably the best commentators to tie together energy and economic matters are the brilliant polymath Nicole Foss and the venerable Richard Heinberg and Chris Martenson who have an abundance of podcasts, interviews and articles on the web. Probably the best authority on the military and geopolitical aspects of petroleum is Professor Michael Klare.
Michael Ruppert, already suffering from depression, swallowed this entire “imminent climate extinction” meme uncritically because it came from a “respected scientist”. Michael repeated this flawed meme almost verbatim in his commentaries and writing before his suicide, reflecting the influence he was under.
I acknowledge to have borrowed from certain commentators for the use of such colourful descriptors
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2016/01/14/location-location-location/ unfortunately the graphics are not in sequential order in this article due to formatting issues
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2015/01/20/doctors-scientists-for-sustainability-social-justice/
First of all, let me salute your fortitude to speak (what you think is) the truth, no matter how frightening.
Let me salute your resolve to do (what you think is) right, no matter how difficult.
Let me salute your courage to risk life, limb and liberty to oppose the omnicidal juggernaut of Industrial Capitalism, no matter how hopeless.
I understand your deep frustrations regarding the abject failure of our so-called leaders to do anything meaningful to address the obscene planetary devastation now spiralling out of control.
I understand you feel that your only remaining option now is mass civil disobedience.
I understand you believe that if only you can reach certain critical numbers within each population, you can drive urgent social change around the world to enact emergency measures to prevent global collapse of our life support systems.
In a world steeped in deceit, mendacity and narcissism, you strive for honesty, integrity and selflessness.
In a world steeped in vulgarity, materialism and avarice you stand for nobility, humanism and generosity
In a world steeped in viciousness, tribalism and brutality you practice kindness, inclusiveness and non-violence.
I have written open letters to various parties in the past, with little to no results.
I wrote to the Public Health department of the University of Queensland whose stated goal was to minimise morbidity and mortality in populations, pointing out they had paid scant attention to climate change and completely ignored Peak Oil. 1 George Monbiot is wrong if he thinks Peak Oil is no longer an issue, it remains an ever worsening threat but has been skilfully hidden by fraud and market distortion. 2 Nafeez Ahmed understands this well.
I wrote to Doctors for the Environment Australia whose focus on climate change was too limited in scope (they also ignored Peak Oil) and whose lobbying was too weak. 3
I wrote to The Zeitgeist Movement who claimed to promote science and sustainability but were more about science fiction and technocornucopian fantasy. 4
In contrast to the above groups however, you folks of the extinction rebellion are the ones I admire most. You are willing to risk imprisonment to try to save the lives of others too stupid and too venal to deserve being saved. That is noble and altruistic. But it is also misguided. I believe you are well meaning, morally righteous people with good intentions. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions. If you continue on this time and energy wasting path, you and your families will experience hell on earth. You deserve better. Others don't.
One of your demands is that official bodies tell the Truth and declare a climate emergency. You were told by the IPCC last year that humanity had 12 years before it would be too late to do anything. That was a LIE. The fact is that it was and is already far too late to prevent global catastrophe. There is NO carbon budget left. These realities were apparent even back in 2013 following the IPCC fifth assessment report, when the only scenarios the IPCC could imagine where disaster could be avoided required time travel into the past or technologies which did not exist and certainly could not be scaled up even if they did exist (as expressed by climate scientists Dr Kevin Anderson and Dr Hugh Hunt) 5. The science based facts behind these assertions are summarised here: 6.
Truth is determined by careful and comprehensive collection of accurate data, by hard objective scientific scrutiny using the principles of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, including mathematical analyses, which must not be polluted by political or economic vested interests. The IPCC processes had long been watered down by political interference, which seriously underestimated the magnitude and speed of global warming, in order to justify foot dragging by national so-called "leaders". 7
The reason we have not yet experienced the full horrific consequences of 415ppm CO2 (in reality, there is a much higher CO2 equivalent, around 500ppm) is because of time lag due to thermal inertia 8. Atmospheric temperature rises have been buffered by the cool oceans and the melting ice masses. Those buffers are being exceeded, they are being overwhelmed, as every second passes. If you think the unprecedented shocking weather extremes over the past 15 years were disastrous at barely 1 degree Celsius atmospheric global average temperature rise, there is far more and far worse to come. More than 4 degrees rise is irreversibly baked into the cake based on EXISTING greenhouse gas concentrations. That is as certain as the law of gravity. Hell is coming no matter what. The best thing you can do is get ready for it. But time is short and you must act NOW before the imminent global economic collapse steals away all your options.
Let us consider the absolute best imaginable outcomes for your group. What will happen if you are immediately 100% effective today in achieving all your social and policy goals?
Even if all carbon emissions cease today, the world is still committed to more than 4 degrees Celsius eventual global average temperature rise which will render large scale agriculture impossible. This means civilisation, the hallmark of which is the existence of cities, will no longer be possible. Small scale agriculture in a few selected climate resilient pockets may still be possible.
Large scale carbon sequestration is a fantasy and will never be undertaken because our bogus economic system will not allow for it and even if we can develop those technologies, we will not have the energy resources to do it. Geoengineering insanity will cause more problems than they address.
Immediate cessation of emissions will also mean immediate curtailment of global food production which is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuels. This will cause billions to starve. In the medical management of patients, knowingly inflicting harm is not an option. However allowing nature to take its course (in some cases – such as untreatable terminal cancer) is acceptable, indeed unavoidable. As a matter of course, billions will die this century due to oil/resource depletion, ecosystem collapse and climate catastrophe and the consequences thereof (warfare, epidemics etc). Inevitable near term economic collapse is also absolutely certain due to institutional fraud and impending energy collapse. 9 It is those events which will most effectively and drastically curtail carbon emissions, not your activism.
There is absolutely nothing you can do about the looming general die-off. You can however take steps to reduce the likelihood that you and your family and friends will die horribly in the next few decades. Please note that nobody's survival is guaranteed. All anyone can do is increase the probability of their survival.
There are certain toxic nihilists, the Extinction Promoters, who insist that near term climate extinction by 2030 or 2026 or some other arbitrary ridiculously short timeline is certain and that everyone should just give up and die. They are wrong. I have conclusively disproven their meme using basic Physics. NO credible climate scientist agrees with them. They are a vicious, nasty, misanthropic Death Cult. Their bogus ideology, inflicted upon psychologically vulnerable people, could contribute to premature deaths 10. Their false prophet, a former scientist, may have been a qualified ecologist (NOT a climate scientist) once upon a time, but somewhere along the way his fevered mind convulsed, contorted and congealed into lobotomised mush, catalysed by the self reinforcing feedback loops driven by his malignant echo chamber of ventriloquist dummy disciples 11 (who also ventured forth as rabid trolls to spread dismay and misery everywhere on the Net).
Dr Paul Beckwith, a true climate scientist and prolific educator who had the misfortune of associating with them in the early days has denounced them, as have I. You must ignore those toxic nihilists.
What then should you believe and what should you do?
Here is what you should NOT believe: Do NOT believe in the misleading pronouncements spouted by Politicians, Corporations, the mainstream Media (especially the Murdoch media), Economists and even the IPCC (which is more a political than scientific body). Be extremely critical of information coming from even Academia as they too may be subject to delivering corrupt, distorted messages.
What should you believe?
You must believe in reality. REALITY BEATS ANY RUBBISH IPCC DOCUMENTS ANY TIME, ALWAYS. The IPCC seriously underestimated true global warming be it Arctic ice melt, albedo loss, permafrost melt, Greenland ice loss etc. throughout its entire history. The arbiters of reality are climate science researchers who conducted real world measurements and observations and found all IPCC documents to be hopelessly out of date even before they were published. It is a standing joke among hundreds, even thousands of climate scientists (whose papers may have been shut out by the “low ball” IPCC selection procedures) that median IPCC projections have consistently grossly underestimated true observed warming in the world. Interested lay people should listen to the interviews conducted by Alex Smith (radioecoshock.org) and Stuart Scott (ScientistsWarning.TV) who have spoken directly to those multitudes of scientists over the years.
You must listen to those scientists with a track record of getting things right. The Limits to Growth Scientists got it right. Interestingly, insurance companies and military agencies such as the Pentagon and German Military have conducted a great deal of research into these matters and their documents may be worth perusing. This much is certain: Resource Depletion (especially that of vanishing high EROEI oil), Climate catastrophe and Ecological Collapse (especially the loss of living topsoil, death of the insects and of the oceans) each on their own guarantee the die-off of billions of people this century. Taken together, they ensure that massive human die-off will occur this century with certainty beyond any reasonable doubt. Die-off will be multiplied by epidemics and warfare.
What are uncertain and unknowable are the time scales with which die-off will proceed and the locations which will be affected hardest and earliest. However we can make educated guesses about those.
No part of the world will be completely spared but some places will be significantly less bad than others.
What should you do? That depends on your personal situation. Look around at the folks within your group, look to each other.
If you have no assets and no dependants and no intention or ability to change your lifestyle which is currently reliant on the fossil fool industrial paradigm, by all means continue your non-violent protests against the acceleration of carbon pollution, especially against unconventional oil/gas and new coal projects, which could be the nail in the coffin for our extinction. You may make a personal choice to go down with the Titanic and nobody can criticise you for that. However telling others to "abandon hopium", exhorting them not to board the lifeboats, so that they too will be dragged down and die alongside you, is completely unacceptable. Only a malicious turd, a "Kool Aid" Jim Jones type homicidal psychopath, would do such a thing.
If you have assets, liquidate them to purchase remote land in a climate resilient location with sufficient fresh water to grow food. Some location considerations can be found here: 12. Set up several tiny dwellings on your land, each powered by standalone off-grid solar electricity systems. You will need help establishing your permaculture homestead from young energetic Sapients who may be found among existing Extinction Rebellion and School Strike for Climate members. They can reside in the tiny dwellings and engage in an exchange economy without involving money.
If you are forced to continue working in a city to fund your remote homestead, ensure you have the means to bug out at short notice to travel to your “bolt hole”. Travelling by road post collapse may be difficult due to blockades, fuel constraints and rampaging zombie hordes. If your remote homestead is coastal, a sailboat may be the best way out, a literal lifeboat for you. Technocornucopians imagine cities to be the Elysian fields of the future, they picture driverless flying cars buzzing around skyscrapers covered with vertical gardens. They are wrong. Cities will be the killing fields of the future.
If you have no assets but are able to trade your "sweat equity", and especially if you have young dependants, make yourselves known to those setting up homesteads and develop skills so you can help grow food or provide useful services for your prospective off-grid community. You will be welcomed by landowners looking for help. After the collapse, successful homesteads will be largely egalitarian, any hierarchy will be determined by who contributes most in terms of water, food and energy provision to the community, not by anyone's (long evaporated) bank balance.
You will need to use fossil fuels to set up your homesteads. Do not agonise over that, just do it.
You must gather together like minded people and find the least bad place you can move to NOW.
If you are a pre-disaster migrant you can do many things. A post-disaster refugee will have no more agency than a piece of flotsam tossed around by storm blown waves.
This much is also certain: unless the survivors of the upcoming population cull are people who operate on the basis of truth and honesty and cooperation and learn how to live within the limits of Nature, human extinction will be guaranteed. It is important, nay essential, that the principal perpetrators of this global clusterfuck, the fossil fool fraudsters, the climate change deniers, the endless growth ideologues and their followers all die off. It is crucial for the survival of our species that all the clueless sheeple and their psychopathic sheeple herders perish. It is vital that Trump type Fascists and their demon spawn be wiped out and their germ line be extinguished forever, so they can no longer defraud, parasitise and threaten humanity. All those “players” will kill each other or die from disasters, famine or disease in the decades ahead, you just need to keep out of the way.
Only if the survivors of this cull are true Sapients, defined as being amenable to the ways of wisdom, will humanity and our ecosphere stand any chance.
But who are the Sapients?
YOU ARE. As members of the Extinction Rebellion you have identified yourselves to be Sapient. It is therefore your duty to save yourselves if you wish to save humanity, because folks like YOU represent the only hope that humanity will not go extinct.
Let me now propose an alternative name for you and an alternative and far more worthwhile path to take. You can transform yourselves into the "Extinction Resistance" and your task must be to get together as small communities, to set up off-grid homesteads in remote climate resilient locations, to wean yourselves off fossil fuels and to grow as much food for yourselves as you can. Not all will succeed. Trying will not guarantee success, but not trying will guarantee failure. Even if just a small minority succeed in the long term, that will be enough to form the best seed for humanity version 2.0
Do not try to save everyone. That is an impossible task and a fool's errand. But try to save as many as you can.
Bill Mollison, the co-founder of Permaculture, decried the "futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on the very system they attack and who produce words and bullets, not food and shelter". You must be the revolutionaries who produce food and shelter, then your words will carry more weight.
CONCLUSIONS:
I have no reason to alter any of my recommendations written in this old post: 13 (see the lower heading "Advice for sustainability activists in 2015")
It is possible, perhaps even highly probable, that humanity may go extinct by the end of this century but it is by no means a certainty. Massive population die-off however is an absolute certainty, there is no credible scenario in which it can be avoided. Nevertheless our species has faced population collapse in the past (around 75,000 years ago), perhaps down to as few as a couple of thousand breeding pairs, and emerged past that population bottleneck. Can this happen again? Nobody knows for sure but I encourage you to resist extinction.
Ultimately, I think it is inevitable that humanity will try to emigrate to a thawing Antarctica which may be the last liveable location on the planet, should global average temperature reach 8 or 10 degrees Celsius above the Holocene. That will be the next great challenge.
G. Chia June 2019
Some Definitions:
I define an outcome as “certain beyond any reasonable doubt” if every single objective analysis shows no feasible possibility of that outcome being avoided. Of course it is possible that benevolent aliens from outer space or angels from heaven may intervene at the last minute to magically solve all our planetary problems, however such nonsensical thinking is best left to fantasy novelists – it is neither feasible nor realistic. Large scale “negative emissions” technologies belong in the same realm.
Even if an outcome is highly probable, but we are able to demonstrate just one single feasible scenario where that outcome can be avoided, then that outcome is NOT certain. This is the crux of the argument against the “ultra near term climate extinction” cocksure nihilists. In fact there are numerous scenarios, in multiple climate resilient locations, where ultra near term climate extinction can be avoided.
Footnotes:
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2017/12/an-open-letter-by-geoff-chia-to-school.html
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2019/01/02/how-business-as-usual-has-been-pursued-since-2006-by-escalating-fraud-and-environmental-vandalism/#comment-10695
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2016/04/21/open-letter-to-doctors-for-the-environment-australia/
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2016/08/25/open-letter-to-the-zeitgeist-movement/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8akSfOIsU2Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfVphmxPOXo
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2017/02/14/climate-slides-for-diners/
And to a lesser extent, global dimming due to sulphate and particulate emissions. There is a good BBC Horizon documentary about this https://vimeo.com/138779240
The astute reader will realise that every one of those components interacts with every other one via bidirectional feedbacks which I have graphically modelled in 3 dimensions: https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-seneca-cliff-explained-as-network.htmland you can find a real world model “doom explained by confectionery abuse” on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hedXaMb42pk Probably the best commentators to tie together energy and economic matters are the brilliant polymath Nicole Foss and the venerable Richard Heinberg and Chris Martenson who have an abundance of podcasts, interviews and articles on the web. Probably the best authority on the military and geopolitical aspects of petroleum is Professor Michael Klare.
Michael Ruppert, already suffering from depression, swallowed this entire “imminent climate extinction” meme uncritically because it came from a “respected scientist”. Michael repeated this flawed meme almost verbatim in his commentaries and writing before his suicide, reflecting the influence he was under.
I acknowledge to have borrowed from certain commentators for the use of such colourful descriptors
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2016/01/14/location-location-location/ unfortunately the graphics are not in sequential order in this article due to formatting issues
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2015/01/20/doctors-scientists-for-sustainability-social-justice/
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