r/collapse • u/gberliner • 3h ago
Coping They want you feeling scared and helpless. Don't give them what they want!
Can we just get this whole collapse thing over with finally? The suspense is driving me crazy! /s
Estimates of "equilibrium climate sensitivity", ie, the eventual global average surface temperature change expected to be produced by a sudden pulse of CO2 resulting in the doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels over the historic pre-industrial average that prevailed during the Holocene Epoch (ie, rising from approximately 250ppm to 500pm) have mostly been in the range of 1.5-4.5C. But our most current estimates for this range have increased the lower limit, but lowered the upper one. Hausfather et al estimate a lower limit of 2.6C, an upper limit slightly above 4C, and a most likely average around 3C. (See: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-low-end-climate-sensitivity-can-now-be-ruled-out)
The new ECS estimates also coincide with the IPCC withdrawing the previous "worst case scenario" of RCP8.5 ("Representative Climate Pathway 8.5"$, corresponding to an average increase of solar flux at Earth's surface of 8.5W/mˆ2), in favor of lower estimates for increased solar flux of around 4.5 - 6W/mˆ2 (RCP4.5 to RCP6).
Importantly, note that contrary to common, popularly held misconceptions about the matter, ECS specifically attempts to take into account ALL reasonably foreseeable climate FEEDBACKS, both positive and negative.
These are all technical details, and inferring deeper meanings to them is an exercise in human judgement and psychology, which are far harder if not impossible to objectively state.
At the very least, though, the withdrawal of the "worst case scenario" makes it less likely that we are contemplating the complete extinction of humanity or the complete collapse of human civilization, and more likely something that, while still possibly agonizing and catastrophic for most of humanity, does not exactly let most of us off the hook for figuring out what to do with the rest of our lives. And ironically, while that could be interpreted as a relief, as Substack writer Suzanne O'Brien points out, it also takes away a certain other form of "relief" that can be derived from a feeling of futility. Because futility has a consolation prize: if there's nothing we can do about our fate, then there's nothing we are obligated to do! So the removal of some of the "worst case scenarios" off the table could be interpreted by some of us as a new and more burdensome challenge! And by others, it will be interpreted as an even more acute challenge to the business-as-usual that they might prefer. See: https://substack.com/home/post/p-216535471
Postmodern philosopher and writer Marc Fisher famously declared that "it is easier to conceive of the end of world than the end of capitalism". And if (a certain scenario for) "the end of the world" has now suddenly been taken off the table, might that not have implications for how we conceive of the possibility of the latter? Even if only because we have routinely gotten into the habit of conceiving these two outcomes as the poles of some kind of dyad, we should ask more questions about the matter.
This "reprieve from doomsday" is surely relevant to any struggle for social change. Because to the extent that any definitive "doomsday" is seen as less plausible, it makes it a lot more plausible to contemplate generational change. For those of us inclined to such ideological commitments, this is surely good news! And yet, presumably, for those committed to the status quo, it may well come as a quite unwelcome challenge.* (But, actually, whether it does in fact or not is largely up to the actions of the former group! Put another way: "They want you feeling scared and helpless. Don't give them what they want!")
*Interestingly, the legal briefs submitted by the Trump (1.0) administration against high profile challenges to its climate policy by grassroots groups like "Our Children's Trust" have dispensed with crude "climate denialism" in favor a much more sophisticated line of argument, claiming that "it's too late", and that any of the mitigation suggested by plaintiffs would be futile, since the situation is already too far gone, and that the only hope is to keep marching forward "waist deep through the Big Muddy" of business-as-usual, in hopes of finding refuge in the dubious safety of supposed drier shoals built on the future prospects offered by "carbon capture and storage", "geoengineering", and other miraculous technofixes.
The very adoption of a language emphasizing words like "collapse" may say more about the speaker him or herself than the world whose future they are attempting to describe when they speak about it. And perhaps, ironically, the latest news also implies an even more important kernel of truth in the rhetoric of "denialists" who employ tropes like "climate's always changing!", etc. They are right in a certain sense. Change at different rates is ever present. It's only the rates of change that really should interest though. And the removal of certain completely "unmanageable" rates of change off the table could have potentially deep philosophical and psychological implications for us.
