societies exploit people and nature is a common concern. Only if policy makers begin to discuss this threat of societal collapse might we begin to reduce its likelihood, speed, severity, harm to the most vulnerable – and to nature.
Some armed services already see collapse as an important scenario. Surveys show many people now anticipate societal collapse. Sadly, that is the experience of many communities in the global South. However, it is not well reported in the media and mostly absent from civil society and politics. People who care about environmental and humanitarian issues should not be discouraged from discussing the risks of societal disruption or collapse. Ill-informed speculations about impacts on mental health and motivation will not support serious discussion. That risks betraying thousands of activists whose anticipation of collapse is part of their motivation to push for change on climate, ecology and social justice.
Some of us believe that a transition to a new society may be possible. That will involve bold action to reduce damage to the climate, nature and society, including preparations for disruptions to everyday life. We are united in regarding efforts to suppress discussion of collapse as hindering the possibility of that transition. We have experienced how emotionally challenging it is to recognize the damage being done, along with the growing threat to our own way of life. We also know the great sense of fellowship that can arise. It is time to have these difficult conversations so we can reduce our complicity in the harm and make the best of a turbulent future.
Signed by over 450 scientists and scholars from 30 countries, by the end of 2020, including more than 60 climatologists. Full letter and signatory list is at www.scholarswarning.net
Wider public awareness that climate scientists have been complicit with or victims of a system that has got the better of them would indeed produce some vertigo. But that truly does create a space. For citizens, suddenly realizing that they can’t rely on scientists and the system to save them. Climate scientists confessing their great sorrow at the situation of the world and of their children, confessing their regret at having stayed inside the system for so long, expressing their actual emotions, confessing their impotence – would create a vertiginous void into which many citizens could and would step. Stepping into their power. Realizing that no one is riding to the rescue, and so instead realizing their agency. The game-changing narrative shift we are envisaging could unleash a scale of radical citizen activism so far only dreamed of. Extinction Rebellion has found thousands of people willing to be arrested for the cause of averting eco-driven civilizational collapse and mass extinction. Imagine hundreds of thousands, or even a million, or even more, ready to act in that way, if scientists come clean that only something like that is actually going to change the status quo in any serious way, and that science and policy-wonkery is not. And imagine how much more serious the new movements demanding and enacting adaptation would be if they were fuelled by a far more widespread realization that it’s not five to midnight, but five past midnight.
Academia as we have known it is fine for facilitating gradual change. But when you are faced with an emergency, with built-in time lags, then normal science is no longer appropriate. And that demands a new courage, in words and actions.
Many will quail at this call for courage – and disguise their quailing with literate scepticism (or name calling). One thing they will say is: ‘But if we do as you say, and discard our “neutrality”, then the Fox Newses of this world will come for us even worse than they already do.’ True. But, we would say to scientists, they already come for you pretty badly as it is. They act as if you are systematically biased even when you are bending over backwards – much too far – not to be. It won’t actually get much worse if you are simply truthful and congruent. But you will then also have a superpower, the superpower discovered by Greta Thunberg and XR in the public sphere: the superpower of authentic presence. Of what happens if you let your voice crack as you think of your nephews and nieces or of your beloved wilderness or whatever it is, when they ask you what is going to happen in the world . . .
We have been somewhat critical in this chapter of science as is. But we want to stress that, as we signalled above by speaking of scientists as victims of the situation, there is no desire whatsoever on our part to castigate individuals. In the spirit of XR, and in the spirit of deep adaptation, we come more from a place of love (another word which is very hard to mention without being warned that one is making a potentially career-destroying move . . . and this too is something that is wrong with science as it is). We should and do seek to not blame. Not shame. Rather, let’s imagine a kind of truth and reconciliation process for the systemic failure which has resulted in generations now of climate science doing very little to bend the emissions curve, let alone crush it.
Given the grave human-induced precarity now of complex civilization and possibly of complex life on earth, the project of deep adaptation seems wonderfully and sadly timely. For the implication of what we have ventured to say in this chapter, with the sometimes quiet and sometimes public help of some still rather renegade climate scientists, is that the prospects for this society preventing itself from collapse are rather less rosy than virtually everyone still assumes. For there’s a hegemonic story about how academic research and policy relevance is supposed to work: that climate scientists slowly establish the facts, and policy makers then act on them. The story isn’t true. It isn’t working. And: we’re out of time.
There’s an alternative possible story, or stories, that we’ve been sketching in the latter portion of this chapter. If such a new approach were embraced, then we would have a chance, at least of avoiding the direst impacts that otherwise we may be heading toward, such as Hothouse Earth. Whether scientist or citizen, we hope you will have the courage and goodwill to at least consider a new story.
References
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