Doomerism

Doomerism as Lifestyle. Bates, The Great Change. Feb. 18, 2024.

"Some tipping points are worse than others. Human ones are the scariest."

Apocalyptic scenarios are what fuel Eliot Jacobson’s jaundiced outlook for most efforts to do something about climate change. Jacobson is a Professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara. Here he is on Dan Miller’s Climate Chat on February 4, 2024:

Jacobson: I am an environmentalist and so I am in favor of the collapse of global industrial civilization, right? I am in favor of the human footprint on this planet becoming smaller just as quickly as it possibly can…. The problem is that these technologies are more likely to prolong civilization than to aid in its descent. All of the other things that humans are doing, whether it's destroying the biosphere through plastic pollution or what we're doing to our food production and how we treat animals, all of these other harms we are doing to the planet are only going to grow in scale. You're not going to put lithium in place of beef, right? As we create products that will allow civilization to maintain itself and grow even more, we're talking about destruction of our soils and that all boils down to even more suffering for a greater number of humans, even more suffering for a greater number of animals and species on the planet, even a larger ultimate extinction event, right?

You know we're going to hit the Seneca Cliff and the question is, how high up that cliff do we want to compel ourselves to go through these Al, alternative technologies before we go over it? So I'm not going to tell you that they don't work, right? … I think that's outweighed by the long-term impacts it has on allowing population to continue to grow and allowing the destruction of yet other ecosystems.

Miller: Not only would I describe you as a Doomer but I would describe you as a Promoter of Doom.

Jacobson: Yeah very much.

Miller: You're for doom because you think it will be better for the entire Earth or it'll be better for the environment.

Jacobson: Yeah, again, I am an environmentalist. And the best thing that could happen to this planet is to get rid of people.

Miller: Okay well that's very interesting. I didn't expect the conversation to go there, but uh I yeah I guess I don't agree. I mean, first of all, I don't disagree with sort of the premise and a lot of what you say….

Jacobson: We were using the example of [climate science writer and blogger] Michael Mann. Michael Mann is not an environmentalist. He is the opposite of an environmentalist. He is for the destruction of ecosystems. He is for new technologies that are going be placed on locations that are pristine, whether they're mines or fields of solar panels… wind turbines and ocean ecologies, right? He is for them with the idea that that would allow human civilization to continue to grow, which because of all the other impacts of humans will even further degrade various systems, right? So to call me the one who is pro-collapse actually… Michael Mann is setting the stage for a much larger collapse than I am. He said his idea is not just that 8 billion humans should collapse but that 10 or 12 billion humans should collapse. And on our way out we should create even more devastation to the planet, right? So, I absolutely disagree that Michael Mann is in favor of preserving the planet.

You get the point. If you favor green technology, you are just making it worse for the next generation, who will fall off a higher cliff when ecosystems implode. As alluring as I find this view, I am also chastened by the guest editorial that Tyler Austin Harper, assistant professor of environmental studies at Bates College, wrote for The New York Times on January 26, 2024 entitled, “The 100-Year Extinction Panic Is Back, Right on Schedule”:

Our panics are often puffed up, our predictions simply wrong. Human life and labor were not superseded by machines, as some in the 1920s predicted. Or in the 1960s or in the 1980s, two other flash-in-the-pan periods of A.I. hype. The takeaway is not that we shouldn’t be worried but that we shouldn’t panic. Foretelling doom is an ancient human hobby, but we don’t appear to be very good at it.

My own take is that I read the same tea leaves Jacobson does. I get the points Hansen and Simons have raised about the curve of acceleration that global climate catastrophe has entered. And yet, I also recognize there is a lot of inertia in Earth’s systems and Gaia is trying to mend as best she can, all the time.

Harper wrote, “Transformation or extinction have been nature’s invariable alternatives.” Maybe we will get lucky. Maybe an errant genes similar to that of the autistic wolf from whom all modern dogs are descended (sociability genes WBSCR17, GTF2I and GTF2IRD1) will suddenly appear and transform the next generation of homo. Maybe we will all start singing Aquarius.

I’m not in favor of gene manipulation. I think we already have an altruistic gene and a heroic action gene. My efforts now are to muster those genes into service—to help Gaia mend. That may mean having fewer children and grandchildren. It may mean shutting down fossil mining and drilling and those damned nuclear whack-a-moles. I don’t think it means putting an end to Brian von Herzen’s re-greening of the marine food web or John D. Liu’s ecosystem regeneration camps. I don’t think it should stop us from creating more ecovillages, eco-districts, and eco-regions and showing the way to live in harmony with Earth and each other, practically, and with heart.

There is plenty of work to do, and all of it is rewarding, for however long we have.

There is a growing recognition that a viable path forward is towards a new carbon economy, one that goes beyond zero emissions and runs the industrial carbon cycle backwards — taking CO2 from the atmosphere and ocean and burying it in the ground. The triple bottom line of this new economy is antifragility, regeneration, and resilience.

Doomers

On Being a “Doomer”. Eliot Jacobson, Ph.D. Watching the World Go Bye. Sept. 1, 2021.


Let’s start with the obvious. The word “doomer” is a word with horribly dark connotations. The obvious interpretation is that a doomer believes life is hopeless, they might as well give up trying; there is no value in being alive. But that is emphatically not the doomer’s perspective. Doomers understand that life is a terminal disease for all of us, that any objective examination of one’s life should include the inevitability of death. Yet, even with this universal existential dilemma, doomers still enjoy sunsets and friends, they work towards goals, they have families, they celebrate births and mourn deaths, and they struggle on. Most of all, doomers recognize that humanity has a collective terminal illness here and now, not at some unimagined future time.

Doomers do not believe climate change is going to end well for the natural world or for humanity. Doomers are saddened by the innumerable losses that are taking place in the natural world, including plants, animals, oceans, ice and ancient physical processes. Doomers are saddened by losing all the achievements of humanity, including art, literature, science and philosophy – the totality of humanity’s legacy. Doomers are saddened by the human suffering already taking place and the massive suffering of all species, plant and animal, that lies ahead. Doomers are saddened by the prospect of losing friends and family, what’s going to happen to those they work with, those they play with and those they love. And doomers are saddened by the shortening of their own lives, the fear that comes with having an unexpected terminal illness. In short, doomers are saddened by their profound understanding that it’s the near-term loss of everything.

Most doomers are not invested in finding the causes of the planet’s demise. Those who want to argue if our collective crisis is due to greenhouse gas emissions, overpopulation, peak oil, or something else are still playing the game. Engaging in blame and finger pointing creates anger and anxiety. Doomers are not looking for a fight and will deescalate when confronted.

On the other hand, doomers are curious about what the future will bring and the full scope of events to come. They want to know the consequences of climate change, what could happen, what is likely to happen, what is on the speculative bubble and they want to know an approximate time scale. The doomer is invested in education and scientific discovery and wants to follow the best road map for what will be possible and what will be necessary as the planet dies.

Doomers support environmental activism. They encourage positive and progressive action and understand that such action has positive benefits. As has been said, if environmental activism allows one butterfly to live one more day, then it is worth it. Doomers are conscious of their own actions and their impact on ecosystems and the planet.

There is another perspective that the doomer’s awareness brings. It means doomers don’t have to compete anymore. They don’t have to win. They don’t have to be right in every argument they make. The world becomes non-political. Religious beliefs lose their importance. They realize they are part of the human family on a dying planet and that everyone is experiencing a singular and tragic death together – the sixth great extinction – in their own way.

Doomer’s grieve. There is no linear roadmap for processing this grief, nor is there a catalog of the emotions the doomer might experience in the context of their grief. The doomer accepts the cycle and range of emotions that are theirs to bear. In my case these include denial, anxiety, sleepless nights, anger and depression. My grief has also led me to learn more about climate science, to listen to and read what the experts have to say and to engage with online communities. The doomer does their best to not judge their experience or the experience of others, but also understands that judgement is its own type of coping and relief.

And doomers believe that in this particular crisis there is an opportunity. They can use this common moment of suffering to find ways to be kind to others. They can use whatever personal abundance they might have to be generous as much as they are able. And while they still have the energy and mobility for action, they can look for ways to be of service. Volunteering is the greatest honor they can gift themselves in the limited time they have left.

Having no hope for the long-term future of human civilization smacks of cults, fringe religious beliefs and mass suicides. But this lack of hope is now mainstream. We hear and read about the reality climate change brings every day. From fires to floods to droughts to heat waves; from the Arctic ice melting to the weakening of the gulf stream to rain falling on the highest peak in Greenland to the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef; from failing crops to the scalding alive of salmon as they attempt to swim upstream to the decimation of rainforests; from Madagascar to Lytton to Paradise, disaster is the reality on planet earth today. “Doomer” is not the right word for someone who is simply paying attention. “Doomer” is not the right word for someone who looks at the jigsaw puzzle pieces laying on the table and understands the final and inevitable picture they will become.

In these remarks I have used the word “doomer” freely to express my own philosophy about end-times in a way that many people who consider themselves to be doomers may not subscribe. I do not pretend to speak for all doomers, nor wish to constrain the beliefs and methods of other doomers to the scope of what I’ve written here. The word “doomer” may not be the right word to describe my own perspective on life during the planet’s transition. Maybe there is no right word. Maybe there are no universals. I don’t know. But this is really hard and I am profoundly sad. We have never been here before. No one individually, no society and no other generation of humans on earth has ever had to process events of this magnitude or attempt to express thoughts like these in the context of overwhelming scientific evidence backing this view.

I am not going to propose another word to replace “doomer” in the way I’ve used it here. I don’t know a word that is more suitable. But the other way to look at this is that the word “doomer” captures all the positive perspectives that come with understanding the inevitability of death. Life is short, sadly much shorter for many than we expected it to be when we were younger. But that’s where we are. Doomer or not, whatever word makes you most comfortable, what we all can do going forward from here is to act with kindness, be as generous as we are able and find ways to be of service.