Irrationality, Artificial Intelligence, and the Climate Crisis

Irrationality, Artificial Intelligence, and the Climate Crisis. Fabio Tollon, 3QD. Aug. 30, 2021.

Human beings are rather silly creatures. Some of us cheer billionaires into space while our planet burns. Some of us think vaccines cause autism, that the earth is flat, that anthropogenic climate change is not real, that COVID-19 is a hoax, and that diamonds have intrinsic value. Many of us believe things that are not fully justified, and we continue to believe these things even in the face of new evidence that goes against our position. This is to say, many people are woefully irrational. However, what makes this state of affairs perhaps even more depressing is that even if you think you are a reasonably well-informed person, you are still far from being fully rational. Decades of research in social psychology and behavioural economics has shown that not only are we horrific decision makers, we are also consistently horrific. This makes sense: we all have fairly similar ‘hardware’ (in the form of brains, guts, and butts) and thus it follows that there would be widely shared inconsistencies in our reasoning abilities.

This is all to say, in a very roundabout way, we get things wrong. We elect the wrong leaders, we believe the wrong theories, and we act in the wrong ways. All of this becomes especially disastrous in the case of climate change. 

But what if there was a way to escape this tragic epistemic situation? What if, with the use of an AI-powered surveillance state, we could simply make it impossible for us to do the ‘wrong’ things? As Ivan Karamazov notes in the tale of The Grand Inquisitor (in The Brothers Karamzov by Dostoevsky), the Catholic Church should be praised because it has “vanquished freedom… to make men happy”. By doing so it has “satisfied the universal and everlasting craving of humanity – to find someone to worship”. Human beings are incapable of managing their own freedom. We crave someone else to tell us what to do, and, so the argument goes, it would be in our best interest to have an authority (such as the Catholic Church, as in the original story) with absolute power ruling over us. This, however, contrasts sharply with liberal-democratic norms. My goal is to show that we can address the issues raised by climate change without reinventing the liberal-democratic wheel. That is, we can avoid the kind of authoritarianism dreamed up by Ivan Karamazov.

It is widely accepted in the scientific and political communities that we are on the precipice of a climate catastrophe. Through our own actions (and increasingly, inactions) we have plundered our planet and entered what some have called the ‘Anthropocene’: an age in which we have the agential powers equivalent to geological forces. This has given us the capacity to dominate the earth and spread the environmental disaster that is human civilization all over the planet. One good feature of civilization, however, has been the establishment (and defence) of liberal democracy. Such participatory democracies (at least in theory) encourage robust debate, diversity, and inclusivity. They also preserve individual liberty: freedom is an important political value (although of course not the only one that matters), and manipulation and coercion would be seen as unjustifiable in the pursuit of some or other political objective (even if this objective is climate change mitigation).

This brings us to the problem I introduced at the beginning of this piece: our liberal-democratic framework, by giving us the ‘freedom to choose’, has resulted in human stupidity being the guiding logic in many attempts to ameliorate the climate crisis. Might we be better off giving up our freedom and establishing an authoritarian state that could force compliance with global climate goals? The dilemma is as follows: Is there a way to deal with an existential threat such as climate change whilst also preserving liberal democracy? My own view (and that of Mark Coeckelbergh in his recent book on the topic) is that liberal democracy is worth fighting for, and it might just be possible for us to preserve it and not go extinct. To do so, however, we have to take seriously the authoritarian threat posed by AI powered systems as ‘solutions’ to the climate crisis.

Advanced AI systems are ubiquitous. From social media timelines, video recommendations on YouTube, and the kinds of adverts we see online, AI, in a very real sense, filters the world we see. Whether that world is rose tinted or stained red ultimately depends on what the algorithm thinks will maximise revenue for its owner in the best possible way. These systems also play on our emotions: we are fed information that confirms our biases, exposes us to a very narrow range of interests, and promotes extreme views. This content is often inflammatory, divisive, and polarizing. Combine this with work done on nudging in social psychology and behavioural economics, and what you get is the potential for an AI-driven authoritarian monster. Proponents of nudge theory argue that due to how easily ‘hackable’ the human mind is, we ought to design our world in such a way that makes it easier for us to ‘do the right thing’. For example, we might stop placing sugary treats at children’s eye level in stores in the hope that they might not see this form of legal poison, thus making it easier to lower their refined sugar intake. Termed ‘libertarian paternalism’ by its defenders, it is claimed that this approach does not necessarily infringe on the freedom of individuals.

However, it is difficult to see how having ‘nudgers’ decide on our behalf what they think is good for us ‘nudgees’ is not an infringement on our freedom. Nudgers decide for us. Why? Because we are not to be trusted. And here, I think, is where we see the guiding presupposition that has been operative in my discussion thus far: that we cannot trust human beings. If left to our own devices, we will inevitably muck things up (evidence for this can be found by either looking around or reading a book). Thus, our freedom can be curtailed justifiably because when given freedom we do Very Bad Things with it. And if data-driven AI systems operated by surveillance states are the way to implement such restrictions, and they mitigate the climate crisis, then so be it (call this the Hobbesian solution, named after Thomas Hobbes and his view of human nature).

Nonetheless, this view operates with an impoverished understanding of freedom. More precisely, we can see freedom or liberty in both positive and negative terms. On the mistrustful view of human nature outlined above, freedom is framed as purely negative. Negative freedom is our freedom ‘from’ things: freedom from interference by the state or other persons. Positive freedom, on the other hand, is about our freedom ‘to’. What we can do with our freedom, what its limits and possibilities are. On the Hobbesian solution, regulations and restrictions are justified, but are nonetheless framed as infringing on our negative liberties. What such an approach is silent on, however, is positive liberty. What if we are not inherently awful, what about those times when we are rational, and what about the potential we have to do Very Good Things? What if we can be trusted?

From a democratic perspective this would be preferable. Trust in human nature means that we can trust our leaders to get it right when it matters, and that we can trust citizens to vote for virtuous leaders. Of course, in practice, this is very difficult to achieve. However, when we see our political options through the lens of positive freedom, we begin to see how it might be possible. For example, one approach could be to enhance certain capabilities.  In this way we can increase our positive freedom by creating conditions and policies that enhance individual and collective well-being. Moreover, the means by which we achieve this should be democratic. Following Dewey, we can see such democratic processes as ‘organized intelligence’, where we can bring conflicts to the table, air them out, potentially solve them, and make progress. The goal of our liberal-democratic political institutions should therefore be to create the conditions under which human beings have their capability to increase overall welfare enhanced.

In this way it is possible to move beyond the Hobbesian solution and to place trust in our democratic institutions. Additionally, we can see how constraints and regulations to mitigate the climate crisis are not simply infringements on our negative liberties. Rather, they can be viewed as enhancing positive liberty by safeguarding our biosphere for both currently existing humans and future generations. This is not to say that we should limit our political discussions to anthropocentric perspectives. Human caused climate change is of course also devastating to animal and plant life, and it is essential that we include these in our political discussions. An important part of dealing with the problems posed by climate change will involve establishing non-anthropocentric political discourse. This would involve protecting the rights of nature, and the interests of animals. With this in mind, it is no use to blindly defend negative liberty when such a defense results in the destruction of our environment. Dealing with the climate crisis will require us to go beyond such narrow framings of our freedom.

What does any of this have to do with AI? To enhance positive liberty with respect to climate change we need regulation and oversight, and the same is true of AI. While many tout the wonderful things that will be made possible by new technologies, we must also remain cognizant of how such technologies can reinforce existing social inequalities. Not just that, but overreliance on algorithmic systems can blind us to (social) problems that might not have technical solutions. The climate crisis is not a problem that we can solve with science alone: it is also a deeply political issue, a kind of ‘hybrid’, and so if we want to use AI as a means to ameliorate it, we cannot ignore such political questions. The notion of positive liberty provides us with a framework which we can use to both evaluate attempts to align AI with human values and interventions in the service of our biosphere. Instead of a focus negative liberty, we should also be cognizant of the ways that restrictions, regulations, etc. might also enhance positive liberty.

What unites both the climate crisis and emerging technologies like AI is that they call into question various liberal-democratic norms. In both cases, the tug of authoritarianism on the one side, and unfettered libertarianism on the other, put strain on our political institutions. What I have hoped to do here is to show that we can escape this binary way of framing things, while still preserving that which is good about democratic participation.

Bardi: What is the Worst that can Happen?

Climate Change: What is the Worst that can Happen? Ugo Bardi. Aug. 22, 2021.

As it should have been predictable, the IPCC 6th assessment report, sank like a stone to the bottom of the memesphere just a few days after that it was presented. Put simply, nobody is interested in sacrificing anything to reverse the warming trend and, most likely, nothing will be done. Renewable energy offers hope to mitigate the pressure on climate and we should try to do our best to move in the right direction, but it may well be too late. We may have passed the point of non-return and be in free fall toward an unknown world. 

A disclaimer: I am not saying that nothing can be done anymore. I think we should keep doing what we can, as long as we can. But, at this stage, we can ask the question of "what is the worst thing that can happen?" Models can't help us too much to answer it. Complex systems -- and Earth's climate is one -- tend to be stable, but when they pass tipping points, they change rapidly and unpredictably. So, the best we can do is to imagine scenarios based on what we know, using the past as a guide.

Let's assume that humans keep burning fossil fuels for a few more decades, maybe slowing down a little, but still bent at burning everything burnable, deforest what is deforestable, and exterminate what is exterminable. As a result, the atmosphere keeps warming, the ocean does that, too. Then, at some point -- bang! -- the concentrations of greenhouse gases shoot up, the system goes kinetic and undergoes a rapid transition to a much hotter world.

The new state could be similar to what the Earth was some 50 million years ago, during the Eocene. At that time, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was of the order of one thousand parts per million (today it is ca. 400) and average surface temperature was about 10-12 degrees C higher than the current one. It was hot, but life thrived and Earth was a luxuriant, forested planet. In principle, humans could live in an Eocene-like climate. The problem is that getting there could be a rough ride, to say the least.

Nobody can say how fast we could get to a new Eocene, but tipping points are fast, so we don't need millions of years. We are thinking, more likely, of thousands of years and significant changes could occur in centuries or even in decades. So, let's try an exercise in looking at the worst-case hypothesis: assuming a warming of 6-10 degrees occurring over a time span of the order of 100-1000 years, what would we expect? It depends not just on temperatures, but on the interplay of several other factors, including mineral depletion, economic and social collapse, and the like. Let me propose a series of scenarios arranged from not so bad to very bad. Remember, these are possibilities, not predictions.

1. Extreme weather events: hurricanes, and the like. These events are spectacular and often described as the main manifestation of climate change. Nevertheless, it is not obvious that a warmer world will show violent atmospheric phenomena. A hurricane is a thermal engine, it transfers heat from a hot area to a cold area. It is more efficient, and hence more powerful, the higher the temperature difference. From what we know, in a warmer world these differences should be lower than they are now, so the power of hurricanes would be reduced, not enhanced. We may have a lot more rain because a hot atmosphere can contain more water, and this is an already detectable trend. Extreme weather events would be mainly local and hardly an existential threat to human civilization. 

2. Fires. Higher temperatures mean higher chances of fire, but the temperature is not the only parameter that enters into play. The trends over the past decades indicate a weak increase in the number of fires in the temperate zone and, of course, fires wreak havoc for those who didn't think too much before building a wooden house in a forest of eucalypti. Nevertheless, as far as we know, fires were less common in the Eocene than they are now, which is what we would expect for a world of tropical forests. Fires should not be a threat for the future, although we may see a temporary rise in their frequency and intensity during the transition period.

3. Heat Waves. There is no doubt that heat waves kill, and that they are becoming more and more frequent. An Eocene-like climate would mean that the people living in what is today the temperate zone would experience summers in the form of a continuous series of extreme heat waves. Paris, for instance, would have a climate similar to the current one in Dubai. It would not be pleasant, but it is also true that people survive in Dubai in Summer using air conditioning and taking other precautions. As long as we maintain a good supply of electricity and water, heat waves don't represent a major threat. Without electricity, instead, disaster looms. Heat waves could force a large fraction of the population in the equatorial and temperate zones to move northward or relocate on higher grounds, or, simply, die where they are. The toll of future heat waves is impossible to estimate, but it could mean the death of millions or tens of millions of people. It may not destroy civilization, but humans would have to move away from the tropical regions of the planet

4. Sea level rise. Here, we face a potential threat that goes from the easily manageable to the existential, depending on how fast the ice sheets melt. The current 3.6 mm/year rate means 3-4 meters of rise in a thousand years. Over such a time span, it would be reasonably possible to adapt the harbor structures and to move them inland with the sea level rise. But the rate increases, as it is expected to, things get tough. Having to rebuild the whole maritime commercial infrastructure in a few decades would be impossible, to say nothing about the possibility of catastrophic events involving large masses of ice crashing into the sea. If we lose the harbors, we lose the maritime commercial system. Without it, billions of people would starve to death. In the long run, the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica will have to melt completely, causing the sea level to rise by about 70 meters, but nobody can say how long that would take. Sea level rise has the potential for substantial disruption of the human civilization, even for its total collapse, but not to cause the extinction of humankind.

5. Agricultural collapse. In principle, climate change, may have disruptive effects on agriculture. Nevertheless, so far warming has not affected agricultural productivity too much. Assuming no major changes in the weather patterns, agriculture can continue producing at the current rates as long it is supplied with 1) fertilizers, 2) pesticides 3) mechanization, 4) irrigation. Take out any one of these 4 factors and the grain fields turn into a desert (genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may not need pesticides, but they have other problems). Keeping this supply needs a lot of energy and that may be a big problem in the future. Photovoltaic-powered artificial food production could come to the rescue, but it is still an experimental technology and it may arrive too late. Then, of course, technology can do little against the disruption of the weather patterns. Imagine that the Indian yearly monsoon were to disappear: most likely, it would be impossible to replace the monsoon rain with artificial irrigation and the result would be hundreds of millions of people starving to death. The lack of food is one of the main genocidal killers in history, directly or indirectly as the result of the epidemics that take advantage of weakened populations. As recently as a century and a half ago, famine directly killed about 30% of the population of Ireland and the toll would have been larger hadn't some been able to emigrate. If we extrapolate these numbers to the world today, where there is no possibility to migrate anywhere (despite Elon Musk's efforts), we are talking about billions of deaths. Famines are among the greatest threats to humankind in the near future, although climate change would be only a co-factor in generating them. Famines may wreck sufficient damage to cause an economic, social, and cultural collapse. 

6. Ecosystem collapse. The history of Earth has seen several cases of ecosystemic collapses involving mass extinctions: the main ones are referred to as "the big five." The largest one took place at the end of the Permian, about 250 million years ago. In that case, the ecosystem recovered from the catastrophe, but it went close to losing all the vertebrates. Most large extinctions are correlated to volcanic emissions of the type called "large igneous provinces" that generate large amounts of greenhouse gases. The result is a warming sufficient to disrupt the ecosystem. The current human-caused emission rate is larger than anything ever experienced by the ecosystem before, but it is unlikely to arrive to levels that could cause a Permian-like disaster. Unlike volcanoes, which don't care about the biosphere, humans would be wiped out much before they could pump enough CO2 in the atmosphere to cause the death of the biosphere. Nevertheless, a substantial ecosystemic collapse could be caused by factors as the elimination of keystone species (say, bees), erosion, heavy metal pollution, arrest of the thermohaline oceanic currents, and others. The problem is that we have no idea of the time scale involved. Some people are proposing the "near term human extinction" (NTE) taking place in a few decades at most. It is not possible to prove that they are wrong, although most of the people studying the issue tend to think that the time involved should be much longer. The collapse of the ecosystem is a real threat: if it has happened in the past, it could happen again in the future. It may not be definitive and the ecosystem would probably recover as it has done in the past. But, if it happens, it will be the end of humans as a species (and of many other species). 

7. The unexpected. Many things could cause an abrupt and unexpected change of the state of the system. As an example, concentrations of CO2 of the order of 1,000 ppm could turn out to be poisonous for a biosphere that evolved for much lower concentrations. That would lead to a rapid ecosystem collapse. Then, heavy metal pollution could reduce human fertility so much that humans would go extinct in a couple of generations (we are especially sensitive to pollution because we are top predators). In this case, the human perturbation on climate would quickly disappear, although the past effects would still be felt for a long time. Or, we may think of a large scale nuclear war. It would cause a temporary "nuclear winter" generated by the injection of light-reflecting dust into the atmosphere. The cooling would disrupt agriculture and kill off a large fraction of the human population. After a few years, though, warming would return with a vengeance. How about developing an artificial intelligence so smart that it decides we are a nuisance and it exterminates humankind? Maybe it would keep some specimens in a zoo. Or, a silicon-based life would find that the whole biosphere is a nuisance, and proceed to sterilize the planet. In that case, we might be transferred as virtual creatures in a virtual universe created by the AI itself. And that may be exactly what we are! These extreme scenarios are unlikely, but who knows?

So, this is the view from where we stand: the peak of the Seneca Cliff, the curve that describes the rapid phase transitions of complex systems on the basis of the principle that "growth is sluggish, but ruin is rapid." We see a green valley in the distance, but the road down the cliff is so steep and rough that it is hard to say whether we will survive the descent. 

The most worrisome thing is not so much the steep descent in itself, but that most humans not only can't understand it, but they can't even perceive it. Even after the descent has started (and it may well have started already), humans are likely to misunderstand the situation, attribute the change to evil agents (the Greens, the Communists, the Trumpists, or whatever) and react in way that will worsen the situation -- at best with extensive greenwashing, at worst with large scale extermination programs.

So, we may well disappear as a species in a non remote future. But we may also survive the disaster and re-emerge on the other side of the climate transition. For those who make it, the new Eocene might be a good world to live in, warm and luxuriant, with plenty of life. Maybe some of our descendants will use stone-tipped lances to hunt a future equivalent of the ancient Eocene's brontotheria. And, who knows, they might be wiser than we have been. 

Whether humans survive or not, the planetary ecosystem -- Gaia -- will recover nicely from the human perturbation, even though it may take a few million years for it to regain the exquisite complexity of the ecosystem as it was before humans nearly destroyed it. But Gaia is not in a hurry. The Goddess is benevolent and merciful (although sometimes ruthless) and she will live for several hundred million years after that even the existence of humans will have been forgotten.

IPCC report AR6 released

Major climate changes inevitable and irreversible – IPCC’s starkest warning yet. The Guardian. Aug. 9, 2021.

Report warns temperatures likely to rise by more than 1.5C bringing widespread extreme weather

• IPCC’s verdict on climate crimes of humanity: guilty as hell
• ‘Not too late’: Australian scientists call for urgent action to avoid worst of climate crisis
• Climate crisis ‘unequivocally’ caused by humans, says IPCC

UN sounds alarm on 'irreversible' climate impacts, but offers hope. CBC. Aug. 9, 2021.

"This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet." ~ UN Secretary General António Guterres.

The era of 'rapid' climate change has begun. Eric Holthaus. Aug. 9, 2021.

Here's what the new IPCC report says, and what it doesn't, about the most important moment of our lives.

...

What the report says

• It’s warming ‘almost everywhere’.
• It’s warming ‘rapidly’.
• It’s been a long time since our planet has been this warm.
• It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
• Fixing it ‘requires’ net zero carbon globally as soon as possible.

Here’s the links to read the new IPCC report yourself:

The report’s press release.

A video recording of today’s press conference, with Q&A.

The report itself.

For the first time, the IPCC has also published an Interactive Atlas.

"Code Red For Humanity" - UN Warns Climate Change Likely Can't Be Stopped, And China Is Biggest Contributor. zerohedge. Aug. 9, 2021.

Here are some of the key findings and details from the 3,949-page report, which was released alongside a 42-page "summary for policymakers". The report was signed by 234 scientists from 60 countries. Temperatures will continue to rise until "at least" 2050, causing "further extreme weather events." And without “immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions" reductions, stopping global warming will be impossible, as the global temperature will likely rise 2C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.

• The world has already risen 1.1ºC from pre-industrial levels, and is likely to temporarily reach 1.5C of warming within 20 years even in a "best-case scenario" where greenhouse gas emissions see "deep" reductions.
• The past decade was most likely hotter than any period in the last 125,000 years, when sea levels were as much as 10 meters higher. Combustion and deforestation have also raised carbon dioxide in the atmosphere higher than they’ve been in two million years, according to the report, and agriculture and fossil fuels have contributed to methane and nitrous oxide concentration higher than any point in at least 800,000 years.
• The document is “a code red for humanity,” said Antonio Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, in prepared remarks tied to the release. “This report must sound a death knell for coal and fossil fuels before they destroy our planet.”
• The pledges from Paris Climate Accord signatories is "“insufficient to reduce greenhouse gas emission enough” to keep global warming well below 2°C.
• The more temperatures rise beyond 2°C, the worse the impact will be. Like with anything, climate change risks triggering feedback loops, as rising temperatures cause more Arctic ice to melt, unlocking carbon buried deep in the permafrost, which could make its way into the atmosphere.
• US special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry said the findings underscored “the overwhelming urgency of this moment”.
• Saudi Arabia allegedly tried tampering with the report, per the FT: In virtual negotiations KSA objected to some of the wording of the summary as representatives of the oil-exporting powerhouse sought to replace references to "carbon emissions" with "greenhouse gas emissions". But "the science prevailed". Funny, we thought those phrases were synonymous.
• For the first time, the report apparently ties climate change to incidents of "extreme weather". The deadly heat wave that killed hundreds this summer in the North American Pacific Northwest would have been "virtually impossible" without the climate crisis. The IPCC says heavy rainfall that used to occur once every 10 years now occurs 30% more frequently, with droughts occurring more than 70% more often.
• Ocean levels have climbed by 8 inches (on average) over the past century, and the rate of increase has doubled since 2006.
• The AP called this next detail the "Big Catch" from the report: Meeting the most ambitious goal of the Paris accord, which involves keeping temperature increases to 1.5°C by the end of the century, is believed to only be possible via what is known as "negative emissions": That means sucking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than is added. In other words, being "emissions neutral" or "zero emissions" or whatever American Tech giants like Microsoft are calling it these days, is no longer enough.
• Just 25 big cities - almost all of them in China - accounted for more than half of the climate-warming gases pumped out by a sample of 167 urban hubs around the world.

A Hot, Fiery, Flooding Present and Future - the Latest Warning from the U.N. Climate Panel. Andrew Revkin. Aug. 9, 2021.

You may have heard there's a climate science report out.

It will generate a thousand stories and messages, in every language on the planet.

Most will center on interpretations and agendas because the findings are not new. This U.N.-chartered Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its sixth comprehensive assessment of global warming science since it was created in 1988, is charged only with reviewing published research.

The core conclusions are plenty stark enough and need no embellishment. Go to the I.P.C.C.'s list of headline statements for key takeaways but here are three distilled points:

• From "fire weather" to hurricane strength, heat waves to deluges, melting ice to searing drought, much of what has been unfolding around the planet is already, to a growing extent, intensified by the climate-altering power of hundreds of billions of tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other pollutants emitted so far as a consequence of humanity's "great acceleration" of industrial development.
• Because of the long life of CO₂ and heat already banked in the oceans and other factors, centuries lie ahead with rising temperatures, rising seas and a dangerous melange of extreme events, but the pace and the odds of deeply disruptive worst-case outcomes are still a function of humanity's decisions, or continuing indecision, around stopping the growth of our heat-trapping carbon footprint in the atmosphere.
• In theory, there's still time to stop dangerous warming altogether, and to forestall the worst impacts on people and the world's ecosystems if emissions can be brought down from today's 40-billion-tons-plus a year (and rising) to a net of zero.

That last point remains key. Every step toward emissions reduction is a step toward a safer relationship with climate in the decades ahead, including holding at bay potential deeply destabilizing abrupt or compounded changes - the "monsters behind the door," to use an apt old phrase from Princeton scientist Steve Pacala.

But that's where this report, “Climate Change 2021 - The Physical Science Basis,” leaves off. Unfortunately, the antiquated architecture of the panel, established decades ago, means two crucial additional parts of this assessment - on warming impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation options and ways to mitigate warming - won't be out until next February and March, and a final synthesis report comes in September 2022...

And that's what's most urgently needed.

Click back to two other periodic United Nations products - the latest reports on the glaring global "Emissions Gap" and "Adaptation Gap" - and you'll see the deep hollowness behind many of the pledges by the nations that have spent the last century thriving on a fossil fueled energy diet. (Keep in mind there are no teeth in the 2015 Paris Agreement and the foundational 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change that it builds on.)

Here are 5 things to watch for in the latest climate science IPCC report. Alex Crawford, The Narwhal. Aug. 5, 2021.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will provide guidance for policy-makers urgently facing down the current and long-term effects of the climate crisis

Discontinuity is the Job. Alex Steffen. Aug. 9, 2021.

How climate change and the planetary crisis are changing what works

THE PLANETARY CRISIS IS NOT AN ISSUE, BUT A CHANGE IN ERA

When we smashed an unsustainable economy into an immovable planetary reality, we broke our continuity with the past.

The material fundamentals of the systems that surround us are in cataclysmic conflict with the biological fundamentals of our planet (and the practical realities of societal needs). The planetary crisis is not an issue, or set of issues, but a change in era, one that’s already happened.

As I wrote at the start of this series:

“To unlock insight into the world we’re living in, it helps to remember that we’re in a new era, surrounded by systems designed and built in the old.”

To be alive right now is to find ourselves flattened against the fact that the entire human world—our cities and infrastructure, our economy and education system, our farms and factories, our laws and politics—was built for a different planet.

Our understandings of how things work—the assumptions we’ve taken for granted, the experiences we’ve acquired, the skills we’ve learned—no longer offer good guidance for the chaos unfolding around us. Discontinuity surrounds us. While this is certainly true for physical systems, it’s actually even more true for our societies as a whole. Nothing is as it was.

We must learn to remake our world, even as our planet convulses with change. Thinking about this problem is basically what I do for a living. I'm increasingly convinced that almost no one has yet totally engaged this reality. Perhaps literally no one.

A 10-Point Platform (and Anti-Platform) on Climate Change. Stephen Eisenman, Anthropocene Alliance; via Counterpunch. Aug. 6, 2021.

The IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report and implications for #Manchester (aka “Eleven Theses on futility, backed up with footnotes (1)”). Marc Hudson. Aug. 9, 2021

Today the latest “we are all doomed” climate report comes out. It is the latest in a long long (see below) line of such reports.  Climate activists will want to believe that this, at last will “wake up” everyone, from the sheeple to the world leaders who are supposed to be meeting in Glasgow in November.  “Surely,” they think to themselves, “THIS time, the message will get through.”

Yeah, sure.

Below are eleven theses on these sorts of reports, the state of the climate “movement” and a quarter-hearted attempt at addressing the ‘what is to be done’ question (perhaps best framed as ‘what was to be done?’ or ‘what could have been done?’.)

This rant stared out as a blog for Climate Emergency Manchester, but it gets a little ripe, a little beyond the “cynical but not TOO cynical” boundaries of what that small organisation is about,  so even the usual disclaimer of “Marc Hudson, writing in a personal capacity” would probably not render it publishable there. 

First Warning: contains hackneyed references to Groundhog Day, The Bourne Ultimatum and forced references to song lyrics, only some of which are linked. ...

CON26. Automatic Earth. Aug. 9, 2021.

The IPCC came out with another report today, which is a lead-in to another climate conference, this time in Glasgow in Oct-Nov 2021. All the headlines and reactions are exactly the same as they always are: There is no time to lose!, We have to act now!, but also: There is still hope! Since it’s all the same, I thought I’d repost an article from December 2015, ahead of the Paris conference named COP21. All I had to do was change the number and call this one not CON21 but CON26.

No, we’re not going to act in time, and no, there is no hope to halt the degradation of our planet. It’s all long baked into the cake, and if it wasn’t we’d still not stop it. We can do things as individuals but not as a group, let alone as a species. We cannot change our approach to the problems because we cannot change who we are.

Related Tweets

Doctors for Planetary Health - West Coast:

Newsfeed says it all. Although we don't buy the whole, "it's all China's fault". Canada is one of the highest per-capita emitters. 

We need a drastic change in  how we move, live, eat, and tread on this land.

Ben See: 

icymi:

1. we're at 417 ppm of atmospheric CO2 for the first time in 23 million years

2. carbon-sucking technologies stronger than all Earth’s oceans & plants combined likely won't exist by 2045 so we're in deep shit and need degrowth, climate justice action

3. media are silent

1. The global economy has caused a mass extinction event. Earth's major ecosystems are collapsing. Habitat destruction, toxic pollution, abrupt climate change.. they will wreck everything without us moving very rapidly towards a postgrowth future.

2. Net-zero by 2050? A grim fantasy.. we'd somehow need to start matching the vast and mighty Oceans of planet Earth by sucking billions of tonnes of CO2 out of the atmosphere every single year, and this process would have to begin by *checks IPCC* 2020.

3. 'The abrupt increase of greenhouse gas distribution today is unprecedented in Earth's 23-million-year history, indicating that ecosystems and global temperatures may be more sensitive to smaller changes in CO2 levels than previously thought.' 

4. "The obvious acceleration of the breakdown of our stable climate simply confirms that—when it comes to the climate emergency—we are in deep, deep shit," Bill McGuire, a professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London

Good luck swerving the absolute avalanche of horse shit disguised as serious analysis today.

Christopher Cartwright:

As they tell you it's now IRREVERSIBLE ...they don't want you to feel bad

And talk about "hope" and "make a difference"

As #centralbanks print trillions to bury mankind in more emissions

The intensity of denial is simply surreal

Zach Labe:

Alex Steffen:

“Every approach that promises both bold action and the continuation of current practices and systems leads us inexorably into magical thinking.”

Jem Bendell:

Is there any mea culpa in the report? That would allow a reflection on the limits of the ideology of the scientific establishment & thus some more holistic, integrated, transdisciplinary, radical & #postnormal science as we work out what to do within this new era of disasters.

Ishi Nobu:

The new IPCC report highlights the silliness of men: worrying over a hangnail (covid) while the house is burning down (self-extinction). Plutocracy rules and only ineffectual response will be made - just like the covid pandemic.

James Dyke:

'We cannot say we were not warned. Even worse, we cannot say to our children that we even tried. We are knowingly condemning young people to a world of fires, storms, and floods.'

Alex Radtke:

Ben Ehrenreich:

One bit of the IPCC report that should be taken with a grain of salt the size of the Earth itself: the call for “limiting” emissions and striving for net-zero goals rather than absolute decarbonization is entirely political and represents an extraordinary moral failure. 1/

Anyone paying attention, and certainly most climate scientists, knows that most net-zero pledges are nearly meaningless, allow for decades of deferral, and rely on technology that does not currently exist. 2/

This is a nod to political consensus, and as such a disastrous act of cowardice. Likewise the report, as @EricHolthaus mentions, does not mention fossil fuels at all, much less the corporations who profit off of their (and our) exploitation 3/

GoGreen:

Dangerous climate change has arrived 

We humans, wildlife trees and all life on Earth are now just beginning to struggle for our survival 

To continue with fossil fuels is the greatest criminal act in the history of human kind

TheLastUprising - Real Climate Action Now.

1. Biden won't even ban fracking.

2. Ending the fossil fuel era in 2050 is so late as to guarantee the end of humanity.

3. Congress & Biden are doing nothing but giving EVEN MORE corporate welfare to oil companies.

4. #RiseUp, & do it now. Or be ready to explain to your kids.

Robert Rohde:

Chris Smith:

Topic: Obama

first published 2014; updated 2018; updated Aug. 2021.

Why I Burning my last bridge with Obama. Carey Wedler. Mar. 13, 2014.

Why I Burned My Obama Shirt. interview with Carey Wedler, via youtube. May 12, 2014.

Michelle Obama.. do me a favor, please! Nov. 7, 2013.

Obama Did NOT Kill Osama bin Laden. Paul Craig Roberts. Aug. 7, 2021.

The American People Live In a World of False Narratives

The Vanishing Legacy of Barack Obama. Matt Taibbi. Aug. 13, 2021.

On the road from stirring symbol of hope and change to the Fat Elvis of neoliberalism, birthday-partying Barack Obama sold us all out

...

There’s a glorious moment in the life of a certain kind of politician, when either because their careers are over, or because they’re so untouchable politically that it doesn’t matter anymore, that they finally get to remove the public mask, no pun intended. This Covid bash was Barack Obama’s “Fuck it!” moment.

He extended middle fingers in all directions: to his Vineyard neighbors, the rest of America, Biden, the hanger-on ex-staffers who’d stacked years of hundred-hour work weeks to build his ballyhooed career, the not quite A-listers bounced at the last minute for being not famous enough (sorry, Larry David and Conan O’Brien!), and so on. It’d be hard not to laugh imagining Axelrod reading that even “Real Housewife of Atlanta” Kim Fields got on the party list over him, except that Obama giving the shove-off to his most devoted (if also scummy and greedy) aides is also such a perfect metaphor for the way he slammed the door in the faces of the millions of ordinary voters who once so desperately believed in him.

Obviously, getting rich and not giving a shit anymore is the birthright of every American. But this wasn’t supposed to be in the script for Obama, whose remarkable heel turn has been obscured by the Trump years, which incidentally were at least partly his fault. The history books and the still-starstruck press will let him skate on this, but they shouldn’t.

Obama was set up to be the greatest of American heroes, but proved to be a common swindler and one of the great political liars of all time — he fooled us all. Moreover, his remarkably vacuous post-presidency is proving true everything Trump said in 2016 about the grasping Washington politicians whose only motives are personal enrichment, and who’d do anything, even attend his wedding, for a buck. Trump’s point was that he, Trump, was already swinishly rich, while politicians have only one thing to sell to get the upper class status they crave: us.

Obama did that. He sold us out, and it’s time to start talking about the role he played in bringing about the hopeless cynical mess that is modern America.

Why “Incremental Change” Is Worse Than No Change At All. CaitOz. July 15, 2019.

President Obama was elected on the platform of hope and change. He promised big, sweeping changes, and, at the end of eight years, had continued and expanded all the most depraved foreign and domestic policies of his predecessor while killing the push for universal healthcare and creating a climate initiative which was the equivalent of a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. He now defends his near-complete lack of progress by claiming that compromising with the plutocrats and achieving a small amount of change is better than not compromising and achieving no change at all.

The World According to Ben Rhodes: Hypocrisy in Obama’s Foreign Policy. As`ad AbuKhalil, Consortium News. July 23, 2018.

Ben Rhodes’ interesting new book, The World as It is: A Memoir of the Obama White House (Random House), should be widely read not because of the wisdom or moral message it contains but because it is an unintended, damning account of liberal imperialism.

The book suffers from an acute case of self-congratulation, sanctimoniousness and hubris. The author situates himself (along with Samantha Power and the young Foreign Service officers who worked in the Obama White House) among the liberal advocates of foreign policy. He does not include Obama in this group, and the latter comes across—despite perfunctory praise—as he really is: an unprincipled politician who unfailingly subordinates moral arguments to political calculations.

Obama Goes Full Clinton Foundation With Series Of $400,000 Wall Street Speeches. zero hedge. Sep. 18, 2017.

For a man who once criticized the Clinton Foundation for taking millions of dollars in 'donations' from Wall Street "Fat Cats," Obama seems to be in a rush to replicate the lucrative Clinton scam via his very own Obama Foundation. ... since leaving office in January, Obama has already collected millions in speaking fees from the same Wall Street banks that may have cost Hillary her shot at the White House. 

... 

Now all he needs to do is use his foundation to raise money for Hurricane Irma victims in Barbuda, use that money to hire his buddies to rebuild the island and then sit back and wait for the kickbacks to roll in... then the transition to the Clinton Foundation will be complete.

Obama’s Just the Enemy And Always Was. Ian Welsh. Sep 18, 2017.

Obama’s just an evil man. He has always been an evil man. He has spent his time since office hobknobbing with billionaires and getting rich off the very people he helped bail out as president, and whom he refused to prosecute despite their clear crimes. 

He’s just a bad man. He was never left wing in any sense, and he’d rather see vast amounts of cruelty than see any sort of socialist anywhere near power.

Ilhan Omar: Obama's just a prety face who got away with murder. NYPost. Mar. 8, 2019.

If Progressives Don’t Wake Up to How Awful Obama Was, Their Movement Will Fail. Caitlin Johnstone, Observer. May 2, 2017.

... the answer, of course, is America. That’s what America is now. The man who continued and expanded all of Bush’s most evil policies, created a failed state in Libya, exponentially expanded the civilian-slaughtering US drone program which Chomsky calls “the most extreme terrorist campaign of modern times” to unprecedented levels, facilitated the Orwellian expansion of the US surveillance state while prosecuting more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined, and used charm and public sympathy to evade the drastic environmental policy changes we’ll need to avert climate disaster and lull the progressive movement into a dead sleep for eight years now gets paid nearly half a million dollars an hour to continue bolstering the exploitative corporatist nightmare he’s dedicated his life to. 

... 

I can understand why pro-establishment liberals are defending this man; he stands for everything they stand for. If all you stand for is vapid tribalism and vanity politics and you are willing to sacrifice integrity along with economic and social justice and the lives of other people’s kids in corporatist wars overseas in order to feel like you’re on the right team, Obama is your man. But if you’re an actual, real progressive and not just a latte-sipping NPR listener with a sense of self-righteousness and a pro-choice bumper sticker, you’ve got no business regarding Obama with anything but disgust.

... 

When you’re dealing with a government that in 2013 gave itself the legal right to use media psy-ops on its own citizens, you can’t afford to have any stray strands of sympathy laying around out there. The war we’re fighting against the oligarchy is first and foremost a media war, and we may be certain that any sympathies progressives maintain toward their establishment oppressors will be exploited. By letting ourselves really see Obama for the vicious ecocidal warmongering corporatist that he is and letting the resulting disgust wash through us, we are inoculating ourselves against sympathy for him and everyone like him. That disgust will serve as a kind of psychological gag reflex that rescues us from swallowing any more of their bullshit.

Obama Starts to Cash In. Ian Welsh. Mar. 1, 2017.

This is why I don’t get very worked up about Trump’s conflicts of interest. They are real, but the only difference is that he’s getting paid now as opposed to later. Politicians exist to do what rich people want, Trump is only cutting out the middle man and the partial delay. 

This is an important point, and I want to encourage you to read this longer article on how politicians are paid by rich people to fuck over ordinary people. It’s not about donations for elections. 

Obama continued the trend, which has gotten worse for decades, of the rich getting more and more of all the gains of the economy. He did not try, in any way, to reverse it. And that’s because he knew he was being paid to funnel money to the rich. That was his job, he did it, and now he is getting his reward.

Obama’s Department of Justice’s Prime Job Is to Immunize Rich Wrongdoers. Ian Welsh. Oct. 8, 2016.

This is deliberate government policy and, yes, it comes from the top, from Obama. 

Obama and his DOJ engage in what should be considered routine criminal behavior, as far as I’m concerned: Helping criminals get away with their actions is itself criminal and that’s even before we talk about his actions in Libya, and so on. 

Scum. Absolute scum. People die when lifesaving drugs are raised to high prices. This is is immunizing negligent homicide. 

I want to be real clear, corporate criminals generally do more actual harm than the worst serial killer. 

Meanwhile, “liberals” act like Obama’s the greatest president ever, even though he left the US economy far worse for most Americans, was a warmonger, and engaged in the largest immunization of corporate crime in at least 90 years. 

He talks pretty but the man is scum. Scum to the bone. He took Bush’s America and regularized most of it and made some parts worse: kicking out more Hispanics, being far worse on whistleblowers, continuing to sign continuations of the AUMF and so on. 

That Obama is scum does not mean, for the less bright, or more partisan, that he is not better than certain alternatives. Beelzebub being the lesser evil to Satan doesn’t mean you want to sup with him. 

Scum.

I Am So Happy About Gay Marriage Being Legal in the US. Ian Welsh. Jun 26, 2015.

Obama, as a rule, is happy to give you things that the oligarchy doesn’t mind. They don’t, overall, mind gay rights. A large chunk of the oligarchy wanted Obamacare (it was and is a huge subsidy to insurance and pharma companies, among others). There is a reason the public option was never seriously considered by Obama; it was a potential threat to insurance companies. 

None of this is to say Obama is all bad, he certainly isn’t. But he is not your friend if you want widespread economic prosperity, and he never has been. Nor will he ever be. Nor, to point out what should be obvious, is Hilary Clinton (also not always for marriage equality). 

You set yourself up for immense hurt when you trust the wrong people with political power and it is important not to engage in revisionism about what is, after all, very recent history.

The Obamacare Fiasco. Ian Welsh. Nov 14, 2013.

When you are dealing with bad people, you must assume bad faith; bad behavior. You must plan for it. The best option was always Medicare-for-all (and I was told by at least one House staffer that they could pass it if they really wanted to and were willing to go nuclear.) The problem with Obama has always been this sickening need to be one of the boys. He appears to genuinely like and genuinely admire the people who have “made it” in this society—people like Jamie Dimon and the people who run insurance and drug companies. He thinks you can make deals with these people, and make sure everyone wins. 

You can’t. These people are the most successful parasites ever produced by our nasty form of sociopathic capitalism. You can only give them what they want or you can rip them from the body politic, so they stop sucking the blood from the host they’re killing. 

So the insurance companies have bitten the hand that fed them. Obama gave them everything they wanted and made sure nothing of importance they didn’t want (like a public option) was in the bill. Now they’re chomping and chewing, destroying what remains of his presidency. 

He has reaped as he sowed.

If you’re pro-Obama you’re an idiot, on the payroll, or evil. Ian Welsh. Aug. 4, 2011.

Look folks, at this point, Obama has made possible what a Republican president like McCain couldn’t do. What a Republican president like Bush failed to do: he is gutting social security and Medicare. 

Americans would have been better off with McCain because the Democratic party would not have allowed what just happened, and the GOP would have just passed McCain’s debt limit increase. 

This doesn’t mean the next Republican president won’t be worse than Obama, he probably will. But he will be worse in large part because of Obama, because Obama has institutionalized Bush’s constitutional order and taken it even further, in creating the so-called Super Congress to end run the democratic process. He will be worse because Obama, by legitimizing “deficits are evil” and delegitimizing civilian Keynesian stimulus (by screwing it up, which I predicted the day he announced his botched stimulus bill) he has made the only possible Keynesian stimulus a military one. At some point President Teabag will realize that the only thing which will provide enough help to the economy to get him reelected is a new, even bigger war.

Obama isn’t about compromise. Ian Welsh. Dec. 3, 2010.

People, Obama is not and never has been a left winger. Nor is he a Nixonian or Eisenhower Republican, that would put him massively to the left of where he is and to the left of the majority of the Democratic party. Instead his a Reaganite, something he told people repeatedly. 

Until folks get it through their skulls that Obama is not and never was a liberal, a progressive or left wing in any way, shape or form they are going to continue misdiagnosing the problem. That isn’t to say Obama may or may not be a wimp, but he always compromises right, never left and his compromises are minor. He always wanted tax cuts. He gave away the public option in private negotiations near the beginning of the HCR fight, not the end. He never even proposed an adequate stimulus bill. He bent arms, hard, to get TARP through. 

He’s a Reaganite. It’s what he believes in, genuinely. 

... 

Let me put it even more baldly. Obama is, actually, a bad man. He didn’t do the right thing when he had a majority, and now that he has the excuse of a Republican House he’s going to let them do bad thing after bad thing. This isn’t about “compromise”, this is about doing what he wants to do anyway, like slashing social security.

Obama's Whitewash. Arthur Silber, Power of Narrative. March 19, 2008.

Obama states: "I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy." What Obama has "condemned, in unequivocal terms" is the truth -- the truth that is forbidden by the fictions that feed the myth of American exceptionalism. Obama has fully embraced the lies at the heart of mythologized America -- an embrace that is underscored by his inclusion of this phrase: "a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam." In this manner, Obama confirms that he will continue our policy of global interventionism including our endless interventions in the Middle East, which have been unceasing ever since World War I. Obama embraces all the lies that support that policy, and he will challenge none of them. (See "Songs of Death" for many more details concerning Obama's embrace of this murderous policy.) 

Almost every politician lies, and most politicians lie repeatedly. Yet in one sense, Obama's speech is exceptional, rare and unique -- but not for any of the reasons offered by Obama's uncritical, mindless adulators. It is exceptional for this reason: it is rare that a candidate will announce in such stark, comprehensive terms that he will lie about every fact of moment, about every aspect of our history that affects the crises of today and that has led to them, about everything that might challenge the mythological view of America. But that is what Obama achieved with this speech. It may be a remarkable achievement -- a remarkable and detestable one, and one that promises endless destruction in the future, both here and abroad. 

Is that what many Americans want? Tragically, the answer appears to be yes. Truth must be destroyed, no matter how many lives and how much suffering are required. Americans will accept anything else -- war, genocide, economic collapse, further terrorist attacks in the U.S. -- but the truth must be denied.

8 ways Obama sucks on climate. Ben Adler, grist. Feb 17, 2015.

The new conventional wisdom among the political class is that President Obama is doing everything he can without the cooperation of Congress to fight climate change. His administration set higher fuel-economy standards for cars and trucks. It has proposed the first-ever regulations on carbon emissions from power plants, and on methane leakage from oil and gas wells and pipelines. He got China on board with a plan to limit emissions, potentially paving the way for an international climate agreement later this year in Paris. Obama feeds this perception with his public statements, such as emphasizing the importance of climate change in his State of the Union address and musing to Vox.com about how the media fails to cover climate change with the urgency of other national security threats. But many of the administration’s moves, including a string of recent actions by federal agencies under Obama’s control, show this conventional wisdom to be false.

Why “Incremental Change” Is Worse Than No Change At All. CaitOz. July 15, 2019.

Another reason why the so-called “centrists” pose such a grave threat to our world is because their platform of slow, moderate, incremental change is actually worse than no change at all.

President Obama was elected on the platform of hope and change. He promised big, sweeping changes, and, at the end of eight years, had continued and expanded all the most depraved foreign and domestic policies of his predecessor while killing the push for universal healthcare and creating a climate initiative which was the equivalent of a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. He now defends his near-complete lack of progress by claiming that compromising with the plutocrats and achieving a small amount of change is better than not compromising and achieving no change at all.

...

In both the Obama and the Trump administrations, voters ordered a box of hope and change, received a package labeled “slow, incremental change”, then opened it up and found no meaningful change whatsoever.

This pattern has been repeating for years.