I think that eschatological catastrophizing is in our DNA.
from the Great Flood to the Second Coming to the Kali Yuga, mankind is always obsessed with his own eventual demise. an end of world belief system appears in almost every human culture.
so the Climate Doomers are the secular version of apocalyptic millenarianism, like the Bolsheviks before them. since technology and ‘Progress’ have uprooted most people from any sort of meaning and purpose, they can feel something is wrong but can’t really articulate it. Doomerism gives them a framework on which to attach their anxieties.
I can relate to this unfortunately. around 2008 I became obsessed with the Peak Oil movement. in my mind, we wouldn’t need to worry about climate change because we were about to run out of oil.
since our economy rests on a foundation of cheap energy, I could see we were doomed.
but then nothing happened. at all. all the predictions I was reading by James Kuntsler, John Michael Greer and Michael Ruppert never came true. I eventually had to do some serious reflection about my personal life and could see that I was projecting my own unconscious fears on to my worldview.
every catastrophic environmental prediction of the last 70 years has been WAAAY off.
who knows though, the end might be near…but probably not.
The challenges are the speed of change and disbelief that change is happening. Here is a hypothetical story.
In prior eras climate change occurred over tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to millions of years. Living species had sufficient time for genetic drift to allow gradual genetic adaptations by surviving through the incremental climate differences. Those species that could not adapt went extinct either because of speed (say a meteor impact or massive volcanism) or long term severity in local conditions where migration to another less severe location was not feasible (say widespread drought), or for many other reasons.
The current era, the Anthropocene, global climate change, in this case very rapid heating, is occurring faster than has been found in any prior timeframe in earth history discovered thus far. This relatively short timeframe is only tens to hundreds of years. Such a short time frame is insufficient to allow genetic adaptation to a hotter world by all the current earth species, including humans.
At the same time, this round of climate change will not be evenly spread across the face of the earth. Some areas will be far worse than others, and weather will be more variable and severe, again, unevenly, and everywhere.
Thus, those species, including humans, in the more favorable “Goldilocks” zones will fare better than those who are not, except when mass migration occurs. Then, competition for scarce resources will become endemic until the population levels settle into a new stable phase, likely in the Goldilocks zones.
Or, global heating is so rapid that only the hardiest of species survives and a few million years later another massively intelligent life form emerges from the mists of time.
Or, Musk’s and Bezos’ goals of moving a hundreds or thousands of humans off planet earth comes to fruition and the process starts anew elsewhere.
In any event, in this story the earth doesn’t care one way or the other, except that it is ultimately responsible for creating the conditions that make all of this life stuff possible.
Maarten, cool article. I jumped over from Quillette to read the whole thing so I wouldn't have to wait for the pieces to come out here.
I think this is a great example of what we were discussing in comments to your previous piece on Substack. It's easy to consider the problem of the moral dilemma of someone who has false beliefs that are happy and whether they'd want to be disabused of those beliefs so they could know The Truth. The weirder, but imo worse and more common one is the person who has false beliefs that are very dire, and yet refuses to be red-pilled into being a bit less doomy.
While I think some climate doomers can fairly be accused of being disingenuous, I suspect the more common explanation for the disconnect between behaviors and espoused beliefs is simple hypocrisy. To paraphrase St. Augustine, "God make me carbon-neutral, but not yet!" It's not that they don't believe that they're contributing to the End of Days; it's that what climate puritanism is asking is too much, just like any other puritanism. As La Rochefoucauld said, "Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue"--the belief in the virtue of living green is real, even if the practice is impossible.
And like any other apocalyptic religious belief, saying that Maybe The End is Not, In Fact, Near in response is heresy at best, blasphemy at worst. You can't show a solution to a looming climate catastrophe using facts to a climate doomer in the same way you can't show me a fact that would convince me that we are not all beloved of God. They're using scientific language, but I don't think most climate doomers are arguing on a scientific axis. The beliefs can't be falsified because they are non-falsifiable.
When you express belief in climate doom stories, you are expressing loyalty to politicians doing patronage shakedowns. This is a good career move for anyone whose job involves patronage, which is every large corporation. Also the party courts back party youth groups, and joining a party youth group is a good career move.
I think that eschatological catastrophizing is in our DNA.
from the Great Flood to the Second Coming to the Kali Yuga, mankind is always obsessed with his own eventual demise. an end of world belief system appears in almost every human culture.
so the Climate Doomers are the secular version of apocalyptic millenarianism, like the Bolsheviks before them. since technology and ‘Progress’ have uprooted most people from any sort of meaning and purpose, they can feel something is wrong but can’t really articulate it. Doomerism gives them a framework on which to attach their anxieties.
I can relate to this unfortunately. around 2008 I became obsessed with the Peak Oil movement. in my mind, we wouldn’t need to worry about climate change because we were about to run out of oil.
since our economy rests on a foundation of cheap energy, I could see we were doomed.
but then nothing happened. at all. all the predictions I was reading by James Kuntsler, John Michael Greer and Michael Ruppert never came true. I eventually had to do some serious reflection about my personal life and could see that I was projecting my own unconscious fears on to my worldview.
every catastrophic environmental prediction of the last 70 years has been WAAAY off.
who knows though, the end might be near…but probably not.
This raises an interesting question: What is the difference between:
1) the delusions of a person with a mental disorder, and
2) an ideological vision?
It is hard for me to come up with an answer better than “the number of people who endorse it”
The challenges are the speed of change and disbelief that change is happening. Here is a hypothetical story.
In prior eras climate change occurred over tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands, to millions of years. Living species had sufficient time for genetic drift to allow gradual genetic adaptations by surviving through the incremental climate differences. Those species that could not adapt went extinct either because of speed (say a meteor impact or massive volcanism) or long term severity in local conditions where migration to another less severe location was not feasible (say widespread drought), or for many other reasons.
The current era, the Anthropocene, global climate change, in this case very rapid heating, is occurring faster than has been found in any prior timeframe in earth history discovered thus far. This relatively short timeframe is only tens to hundreds of years. Such a short time frame is insufficient to allow genetic adaptation to a hotter world by all the current earth species, including humans.
At the same time, this round of climate change will not be evenly spread across the face of the earth. Some areas will be far worse than others, and weather will be more variable and severe, again, unevenly, and everywhere.
Thus, those species, including humans, in the more favorable “Goldilocks” zones will fare better than those who are not, except when mass migration occurs. Then, competition for scarce resources will become endemic until the population levels settle into a new stable phase, likely in the Goldilocks zones.
Or, global heating is so rapid that only the hardiest of species survives and a few million years later another massively intelligent life form emerges from the mists of time.
Or, Musk’s and Bezos’ goals of moving a hundreds or thousands of humans off planet earth comes to fruition and the process starts anew elsewhere.
In any event, in this story the earth doesn’t care one way or the other, except that it is ultimately responsible for creating the conditions that make all of this life stuff possible.
End of the story.
Maarten, cool article. I jumped over from Quillette to read the whole thing so I wouldn't have to wait for the pieces to come out here.
I think this is a great example of what we were discussing in comments to your previous piece on Substack. It's easy to consider the problem of the moral dilemma of someone who has false beliefs that are happy and whether they'd want to be disabused of those beliefs so they could know The Truth. The weirder, but imo worse and more common one is the person who has false beliefs that are very dire, and yet refuses to be red-pilled into being a bit less doomy.
While I think some climate doomers can fairly be accused of being disingenuous, I suspect the more common explanation for the disconnect between behaviors and espoused beliefs is simple hypocrisy. To paraphrase St. Augustine, "God make me carbon-neutral, but not yet!" It's not that they don't believe that they're contributing to the End of Days; it's that what climate puritanism is asking is too much, just like any other puritanism. As La Rochefoucauld said, "Hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue"--the belief in the virtue of living green is real, even if the practice is impossible.
And like any other apocalyptic religious belief, saying that Maybe The End is Not, In Fact, Near in response is heresy at best, blasphemy at worst. You can't show a solution to a looming climate catastrophe using facts to a climate doomer in the same way you can't show me a fact that would convince me that we are not all beloved of God. They're using scientific language, but I don't think most climate doomers are arguing on a scientific axis. The beliefs can't be falsified because they are non-falsifiable.
When you express belief in climate doom stories, you are expressing loyalty to politicians doing patronage shakedowns. This is a good career move for anyone whose job involves patronage, which is every large corporation. Also the party courts back party youth groups, and joining a party youth group is a good career move.
Earth = petri dish ..... 🤔🫣😬