Writing about the Copenhagen summit – indeed, writing about climate change in general – is starting to make me feel like the Grinch who stole Christmas. Or, if I wanted to be more of a cultural nationalist (even one who finds Dickens annoying), like Scrooge. I’ve been watching the buildup to the summit with a kind of cranky, disinterested fascination.
Watching the endless plugging of the Guardian’s earnest ‘10:10′ campaign, for example, whose launch at Tate Modern told you everything you needed to know about the class makeup of its worthy and doomed attempt to push the nation out of its collective rut, made me feel that ‘bah humbug’ is the only appropriate response. Similarly, when tens of thousands of nice people took to the streets of London on Saturday dressed like Smurfs (or whatever) in order to – you guessed it – ’send a message to our leaders’, ‘humbug’ seemed inappropriate only because it was far too mild a response.
Now we’re going to have to read, and watch, and listen to, acres of drivel as Copenhagen builds up (’liveblog from the summit venue!’ etc) to a conclusion which will sell itself as a great leap forward in order to make the various world leaders who have turned up look like they’re doing something, and will then quickly unravel. It’s the season of goodwill, and maybe I should really be making more of an effort to connect with that all-important ‘hope’ we are all supposed to be feeling. But I can’t. Humbug, I say, to it all.
Why do I say this? I’ve spelled it out before, and we spelled it out in more detail in the Dark Mountain manifesto – but for now, the world ‘hope’ is worth focusing on. Since beginning the Dark Mountain Project I have been regularly accused by some green friends of ‘giving up’, or of not having adequate reservoirs of ‘hope’, and the use of this word has been, I think, telling. Forty years or more of green politics has come down to – what? Hope. Desire. Belief. Faith. And not a faith in anything likely or even realistically possible. A faith like any other: blind, desperate, resting ultimately on despair.
‘Hope’ on its own is a meaningless driver of any kind of change. Worse than that – it is pernicious. It is blind faith in the impossible. It is a lie. Remember the crazy ‘hope’ encouraged by Obama and his followers prior to his election? It wasn’t long ago. They’re a bit quiet now, those excitable young hopers. As quiet as those New Labour voters were from about 1998 onwards, I seem to remember. And I remember because I was one of them. I remember that hope we placed in young, fresh-faced Tony and his team. I remember its audacity turning very quickly into inadequacy. I remember the comedown.
Therefore we should all despair, right? After all, despair is the opposite of hope, and if we don’t feel one, we must feel the other. This is the accusation thrown at those of us who can’t abide this Diana-like fervour, but it’s nonsense. Hope itself is not a bad thing; but it has to be a hope built on a firm foundation.
I might plant some beans in my garden, for example, and hope they come up. If I plant them at the right time of year, if the seed is good quality, and if I water and feed them at the right times, they will probably germinate. They might not, of course; something could go wrong – blight, an unusually rainy spring, wily rats or pigeons – but the chances are that I’ll get lucky with at least some of them. That’s a pretty sound thing, in other words, to be hoping for. It’s good hope.
On the other hand, I might go into the newsagent and buy a scratchcard and hope to win a million pounds. Strictly speaking, I might do; it’s a faint possibility. But it’s so faint – the odds are stacked so high against me – that it’s effectively a false hope. It might be worth doing for fun, but it’s not something I’d want to stake my future on, unless I was very dumb indeed. It’s bad hope.
Hoping for world leaders to sort out climate change is bad hope. It’s foolish and naive and hugely unlikely. When we look at what we ‘hope’ for from a summit like Copenhagen, we can start to see why.
We hope that vast and deeply entrenched vested interests – fossil-fuel conglomerates; loggers; automobile corporations; the ‘military-industrial complex’; political parties; unions; all the wide and winding alleys of a global economy built on cheap fossil energy – can be somehow overcome in a very short time. We hope that an economy built on the need for constant growth can somehow be reattuned, also in a very short time, into some kind of fluffy, harmless, ’steady state’ system. We hope that this is possible in a world with a rapidly-expanding human population with rapidly-expanding appetites; appetites which need to keep expanding in order to keep that economy on the rails.
We hope that the ‘consumers’ of the rich world – that’s us – will be prepared to make radical changes to their lifestyles; either through personal choice (see 10:10 and a billion other such attempts) or because their governments will force them to. This requires us also to hope that democracies, which are predicated on giving their voters what they want, and promising more of it, will suddenly be able to turn around and tell them they must have less of everything without democracy itself shuddering into serious trouble.
Failing all of this, we turn to the ’supply side’: we hope, in the best tradition of post-Enlightenment Rational Man, that our technology will save us. We hope we can build enough windfarms quickly enough and that they will work. We hope we can invent a ‘carbon capture’ system to allow us to keep burning coal. We hope we can cover the Sahara with mirrors and get a ’supergrid’ up and running. We hope that electric cars will work, or hydrogen fuel cells or decentralised energy systems. We hope we can stop the Canadians digging up and selling their tar sands and persuade the Saudis to keep the rest of their oil in the ground. We hope that we can get all of this done against the interests of those who run the fossil-fuel economy and the inert and inadequate political systems that supposedly govern it, and against the competitive nature of people and nations. Failing that, we hope we can work out some way to start pumping carbon out of the atmosphere and under the sea, or to send it into space or to create cloud cover that blocks the sun’s rays, or to whack space mirrors up into the blackness to reflect the light back again.
Hope hope hope. It could be you. You might get lucky. It’s worth a flutter. After all, the alternative is global apocalypse, right? So let’s paint ourselves blue and get hoping.
We are set up to fail at this, and hoping otherwise will not lead to joy; it will lead to despair. Better, surely, to get real. Better to be honest with ‘the public’ instead of lying to them (they know you’re lying anyway). Better to look the future in the face and understand what it is likely to bring. This is not, please note, the same as ‘giving up’. Stopping the burning of fossil fuels, for example, is hugely important: however far we’ve gone, we could go further, so we should row back as quickly as we can. Living lightly is good too. All such things are good; but they are not going to keep our show on the road and if that’s why you’re doing them, you are going to end up feeling very let down. To say this is not to give up: it is to face up.
We have overshot, and like any civilisation that overshoots, we are starting to pay the price. We need to be honest about this. We also need to be honest about our own role in it as individuals. I like the laptop on which I am writing this. It’s a great machine. It is also part of the problem, and so am I. We are all part of the problem, and there is not going to be a ’solution’ of the kind presented at Copenhagen: simple, top-down, focused, technological, everything-will-be-OK, nothing-to-do-with-us.
Dealing with the fallout of this comes down to us and our kids and theirs too. I strongly believe that the first stage in coping with that reality is accepting that it is a reality. The first stage of kicking the bottle, for an alcoholic, is admitting that he has a problem. We have a problem, it is not going away, and Mr Obama is not going to solve it for us. We are going to have to live with it for a long, long time. We could get something good out of it, at least, by asking ourselves how it came about, and what lies we told ourselves to make to possible. Telling ourselves more of them instead will not make us feel better, at least when the morning comes.
…The Grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
I’m holding on to those 3 things…it’s good to be happy.
I once asked a friend, a Quaker and probabtion officer, what kept him going in his work. ‘I have learned to hope for everything and expect nothing. Hope because the world keeps surprising, no expectation because it closes down wonder and there is no obligation on the world to surprise’
I agree with much of what you say, yet there are many people going to Copenhagen who have known this for a long time. They recognise that the outcome is probably futile, that those leaders and corporations can’t possibly save us, but they are there as part of a movement which wants to challenge everything that has been built, and to expose the madness that has brought us here (though acknowledging their part in it) . There are many contradictions, as you point out – we know we are part of the problem and we like many of the things that the unsustainable way of life has brought us. But humans are contradictory, and it is part of our journey to examine these facets and learn from them. I think it is unfair and too broad a statement to refer to the green movement has being wholly assimilated by capitalism (as you do in your manifesto). There are many within the ‘green’ movement’ – poets, storytellers, artists and diggers, heroes and heroines who have shouted and sang and written and drawn of the need for total change of the so called civilisation we live in, and continue to do so. There are many who believe that the game is up, and yet will still go there to represent themselves and the race, partly because even in the face of what may be to come, that is what it means to be human.
I’m off there tomorrow….
Cheers, Damien
Damien – you are right about the generalisation, of course. Many broadly ‘green’ people have not been assimilated. Dark Mountain is a broadly ‘green’ project in that sense, but what we are challenging there is mainstream environmentalism: the managerial variety so prevalent today, for which carbon emissions are everything. I don’t think there’s any doubt that greenery has been assimilated very smoothly into the machine.
I don’t understand your take as a whole though. You know the game’s up, you know the ‘leaders’ can’t save us, you know the summit is a sham … but you’re going anyway? I could understand this if people were going there to do a Seattle or a Genoa (those were the days): to tear down the barricades and expose the lie of it all. But most are going for a polite bit of ‘urging’ and to see their mates and to feel good about doing something, even if it gets nowhere.
Wouldn’t we be better off staying at home, cutting out the polluting journey and working on other approaches? And by refusing to play their game, exposing it for what it is? By turning up, you validate this approach and the dishonesty it is built on, and prop up the machine for longer.
Environmentalists, in my view, ought to give up on this nonsense and start telling it like it is, rather than trying to turn the oil tanker around.
I for one will carry on, in a very similar fashion, by trying to build computer models to demonstrate just how screwed we are. That’ll be useful then. I could, of course, pick any one of these -
http://www.ukqaa.org.uk/PowerStation.html
– and start organising to get them closed down. Others have taken direct action, and coal remains the biggest, fattest garden-of-eden-like black apple God has put there to tempt us with (and then, presumably laugh at us when – as is our God-given nature – we are tempted.) You and I could put our laptops down, and do something out there in the real world to help stop coal being burned. Nothing is stopping us.
But we won’t, will we? Despite often feeling sick to the stomach at the prospect of the world my future children will face, it seems I won’t. For the same reasons, few others will; despite intellectually accepting the case for human-caused global warming, we’re essentially too comfortable. And I reckon I can probably bear the middle class guilt as long as no-one turns off the gas for the power shower and the Sainsbury’s Local remains well-stocked.
“But we won’t, will we?”
You touch on something really interesting here Dan, which I’m not sure I quite know the answer to.
Last year a group of Greenpeace activists, some of whom I vaguely knew, shut down the Kingsnorth (oh the irony) coal-fired power station for a while. If you watch Nick Broomfield’s film of the action you’ll see it required real strength and bravery to do it. It probably made something of a political impact too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EGCFr2jLpU
Now, in the past I’ve done a bit of this sort of thing myself. Nothing this impressive, for sure, but I locked myself to road bridges, sat up in tree houses, hung onto bulldozers, invaded RAF bases, got tear-gassed at global summit actions, got pushed around by uniformed thugs, got arrested and the like. I think that I and – more importantly – the mass of people I was with, made some changes in doing at least some of those things. I think that when I was involved in the road protests, for example, I was part of a movement that did have a genuine impact in changing government policy. And I wrote in my first book of movements all over the world who I think have made, and continue to make, a real difference in various ways.
Action of this kind, in other words, can work well, if it’s directed well. So would I occupy a coal-fired power station now? I wonder. I think I might do, if there was a real chance of things happening as a result. Or rather, I think that if I chose not to, the reason would not simply be that I am too old and settled and blase. I’d still be quite up for direct action. But it would have to be realistic, politically and strategically.
The trouble is that when we campaign against climate change, we are not really campaigning against governments, corporations, acts of parliament or specific injustices. We are campaigning against ourselves. We are campaigning against our lifestyles, and the lifestyles of billions of others. We are campaigning against our way of seeing the world, our values and our idea of progress. Most greens I know can’t forswear flying or laptops or central heating, so no-one else is going to. And yet these things are the problem. When we fight to close down a power station we fight for inconvenience. We fight for simpler lives, more basic ones. Any analysis of climate change has to accept that any workable ’solution’ would require squeezing us in the rich world hard and quickly. Sharon Astyk takes this up well in her latest blog, for example:
http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/
Now, I wouldn’t mind enforced austerity at all. Actually, I think I would enjoy it. I would like to be forced to make economies. I try to make them even without being squeezed; I grow food, buy a little as I can, support the local economy, haven’t flown for years and the like. I would like to live in a society in which consumerism is junked, the brakes are put on and we are forced to rely on our wits and each other rather than the gods of the market and the state.
But I don’t think many other people would, in the rich or the poor worlds. So if I’m not out on the barricades in Copenhagen, it’s not because I am cynical or lazy; it’s because I think it’s a lost cause. I don’t see how it is supposed to succeed; what the strategy is or the final destination. I don’t, in the final analysis, think humans are up to the challenge. I don’t think they even want to be.
All of which makes it all the more important that as individuals we try and live as well as we can, even knowing that it will not ’save the world’. In that sense, there is still plenty to do, but it’s probably the kind of work that succeeds for its own sake.
I’m also sick to the stomach at the prospect of the world my actual children will face. There has to be dramatic, more than likely uncomfortable, unpleasant change. Business as usual is just not an option. There may even be some unexpected good to come of this too, even if we can’t stop the tanker. To slow it down would be something, surely? I can’t give up though. The sacrifices, lifestyle changes, political lobbying and blue smurf outfits have got to be worth giving a go. We need to use all the tools in the box. It’s not over yet.
Dina – I would say that whether or not it’s worth it has to depend on what you’re trying to do. If we want to spread awareness of climate change, for example, or get stuff into the media, or enjoy ourselves, or build alliances, then yes, going to Copenhagen or joining the Wave might well be worth doing. It might be worth doing just to get out of the house and meet people and have fun. But I don;t think it’s worth doing as part of an effort to persuade political leaders to do what needs to be done. I don’t think there is any chance in hell they will ever do it. I don’t think they could even if they wanted to. And they know that, too.
I don’t meant to suggest that everyone’s actions are futile. Arguably action for its own sake can be empowering. But I am feeling very disempowered by the suggestion that I should join in with this kind of global Charge of the Light Brigade.
Certainly it’s not over. It will never be over. The Earth will go on and we will go on; but in what state? And with what myths underlying our direction of travel?
Thank you, Paul, for your post.
Without realizing it, people extend their belief systems far beyond the realm of their religious lives. You touched on the common public assumption that our technology will save us. Jeremy Rifkin spoke here last week (in Madison, Wisconsin), and though he outlined our environmental problems with aplomb, his solutions were still in the realm of magical thinking: distributed energy grid (as you mentioned in your post), every building is a power plant with solar panels on top, wind farms. During Q&A, a young physics student stood up and told him how extractive, toxic, and impermanent (since they wear out) these technologies are, Rifkin’s response:
“Well, coming up with the technology that solves these problems will be up to your generation.”
The young man was pretty agitated by that response.
I just had to laugh. People assume Star Trek is going to happen, when the only sustainable technology is Stone Age technology. Unless we all decide that it is fine to dismantle all the technologies we believe we must have, unless we are ready to rediscover all the old life skills we have lost, discard our machines, and live sustainably like all other living creatures on the planet, our silly civilization will crash, and of course, that means it will.
I suspect that even most environmentalists are unaware of the severity and momentum of climate change (plus all of the other forcrs of environmental destruction). There is no way collapse can be stopped; it’s just accelerating too fast. No doubt business or government will come up with some gigantic techno-solutions which may slow or limiit the destruction, but that will only increase the masses’ complacency and greed, and the process of collapse will continue.
“When you think about it, the solutions are very simple really. Let’s just suppose we have a problem. Let’s call it a drinking problem – nothing too serious because lots of other people have the same problem and it’s nothing we can’t handle. Okay, so we know it’s not doing us any good and it’s starting to damage our health and our careers and our families, but we enjoy it anyway. The first problem, of course, is in accepting that it is a problem in the first place. That’s usually a bigger difficulty than you might think, but let’s suppose we’ve at least agreed on that. So they offer us a range of solutions to choose from. They say we could just give up and put ourselves through cold turkey and it won’t be very pleasant, but in the end we’ll feel much better for it. It’s not a solution that appeals to us much but we know deep down that it’s true. Or they say we could try to cut down a bit and only have an occasional one at meal-times and it won’t be such a problem anymore. Can we really trust ourselves to stay with it or do we think we might go back to our old habits? Who knows? We could give it a try. Or else they tell us that we could wait a while because they’re working on this new miracle cure that will solve the problem completely and it won’t be painful at all and the best thing is we won’t even have to give up drinking because it won’t affect us anymore! Now that sounds good, doesn’t it? So which one should we choose? It can’t be that difficult. There are only three options to choose from. Well, I expect you’re right, so we’ll go for number three. That’s going to suit us best, isn’t it? The best of all possible solutions – we can keep on enjoying ourselves and make ourselves better at the same time. But how long do we have to wait for the new cure and what if it doesn’t work and what if they were only kidding us because they are partial to a tipple now and again themselves? Can our livers and our livelihoods and our loved ones afford to wait? Because it’s not just about us, is it? There are other people involved and some of them are already being damaged by our behaviour. They’re quite vulnerable, you know, and they’re not exactly in the best position to do anything about our problem for us. Maybe we should try to cut down a bit. So we’ll give it our best shot with the best of intentions but sometimes we have to meet with our friends after work and, after one or two, it never seems like so much of a problem anyway and they’re much better company than you are and so what if we keep it hidden in the garage? What the fuck’s it got to do with you anyway? It was you that drove us to it in the first place with your nagging and your whining, so fuck off and leave us alone! And maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll find out in time that that solution isn’t working either. And maybe we won’t.
So what are we left with? Just cold turkey, eh? Giving up completely all at once. We know its going to be tough and we’ll have to say goodbye to all our old familiar habits. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still enjoy some other pleasures in life. There are plenty of people who are willing to support us and we’ve got a twelve-step programme. We might find that we quite like the relationships we can build up again with our families and all our new friends. We might find it’s not so bad to have a clear head for a change. At least we’ll have a chance to find out. Still, it’s not just up to me, so I’ll leave it with you….”
That’s something I wrote from my childhood experience when I still had some faith in the possibilities of the Transitions movement. Its probably still the best hope we’ve got but I’ve been involved with (and researched) it for long enough now to recognise that for many participants it is just another displacement activity.
You will know of course Derrick Jensen’s definition of ‘hope’ something like this – ‘a desire for a good outcome whilst lacking the agency to achieve it’. http://www.illahee.org/lectures/archive/derrickjensenlecture
Speaking personally, by force of circumstance I’ve been without agency (or home or job or income)for months now and the reserves that I’m living on are rapidly depleting. This also seems to me a good metaphor for the rock and a hard place that we are all heading for if the future we anticipate is borne out. So what should I do? I know I’m far from the only one in this position but that doesn’t help me to solve it? Do I get depressed or get angry. Do I go with the momentum of social norms, use up all my funds and then depend on the state? Or do I choose to be an outlaw? I’m close to the point where the decision will be forced on me and I won’t have any choices left. Though it’s the same situation many more will be in as social and political impacts worsen in the next decade; I’m just feeling the impacts a little earlier.
My decision is to avoid dependence and be an ‘outlaw’. The situation does not make me despair – it clarifies my priorities and strengthens my resolve. In a perverse way it’s a privilege not to be cushioned by the safety net of an income that would still allow me to avoid reality. But what does depress me is that I’ve not yet managed to connect with anyone else who has actually understood our future prospects and doesn’t want just to talk about it. You are absolutely right to cite the bold Greenpeace action by Greenpeace at Kingsnorth power station. But where are the new Gandhis and Mandelas who are prepared to turn their lives upside down and commit to leading a sustained resistance in the face of this unprecedented human crisis of ours? It is significant that 50,000 turned out on the Wave last Saturday, but protest marching has become just another measured conventional response that cahnges nothing. And if I remember rightly five times that number marched with uncontrived anger and passion with the Countryside Alliance.
We understand that people only ever stir themselves when they have to so we needn’t be surprised or made despondent by this. Just as alcoholics only recover after they have hit rock bottom -unyielding impacts – and their choice is despair and die – most common – or accept and confront the addiction – much less common and with frequent relapses. Alcholism is a widespread and mostly invisible societal problem. The reason many alcoholics don’t face up to their addiction is because they are propped up and colluded with by their victims, the families and friends who recognise the problem but keep it hidden and avoid confronting it, even at the cost of personal harm and suffering, because this is somehow easier than public disclosure.
This still holds up for me as a good metaphor for the way we all avoid climate change, even those of us who are already in real mental discomfort with our awareness. Someone posted on Grist about this recently – “I have met the true deniers and they are us”.
Paul, the Manifesto that you and Dougald have written is strong and shocking and uncompromising in facing up to the uncertainties of the future. It is also vigorous and inspiring and a call to the colours. If it lacks anything at all it is perhaps only at the end, where having sounded such a ringing clarion call, it seems that you may yet be listening out for the echoes from the mountain without having clarified or committed to meaningful action. Forgive me if I’m wrong and I’m rambling on too long…this is way too much for a posted comment anyway.
If we accept what is happening, accept the truth, accept that the most dreadful consequences are very likely to return to us, will this help us?
I fear that the more people understand what the future holds for us, the less will be done to mitigate or adapt. People will panic; they will be paralysed with fear. Many will use the coming reality as an excuse to throw off any moral shackles they have imposed on themselves.
So we need to keep up the doublethink. We need to keep working to change things and rebuild resilience, even in the face of the coming storm. The more action that happens now, the better the future is likely to be. Surely the best way of inspiring action is to give people hope of saving themselves?
As for changing the myths of our civilisation, in the event of a collapse, we are highly unlikely to be the people to do that. The people who fill the power vacuum, who will undoubtedly be as aggressive and acquisitive as us, will probably dictate our history, culture and mythology.
Jon – thanks for this. I like the writing about alcoholism, and the comparison is certainly apt. As for the manifesto – in a way you have a point. Bear in mind that we wrote that to try and stir a movement into being (I think it’s working.) In that sense it wasn’t intended to have a list of bullet point ’solutions’. This is firstly because it’s more of a cultural than a political manifesto; but it was also because I don’t think there really are any. I don’t really know what to do. I’ve been a campaigner and an environmentalist for fifteen years, and frankly I think I’ve tried everything, from direct action to working with the system. For forty years, many have tried too, and yet all the problems people fight against continue to get worse.
For me, this suggests that fighting to turn around the oil tanker, etc, is a waste of time, and likely to lead to wasted energy and failure. It also suggests that maybe working at a smaller scale, more locally, for resilience and at the same time trying to explain how we got here, might somehow be useful. It might not, of course. But what’s the alternative? Neither Jonathon Porritt nor Derrick Jensen – to name two proponents of very different approaches – have gone any real way to convincing me that their alternatives (as opposed to their analysis) would work.
Tom N – I can see where you’re coming from, and maybe that would be a fair argument if the doublethink were working. But it isn’t. Personally I think that being honest about where we are can only ever be a good thing. How can we really think about what to do if we haven’t got the guts to own up to what the actual problems are? In any case, people aren’t stupid. They know that marching and changing their lightbulbs is not going to work. If we take that approach, we’re no better than any dissembling politician.
Interesting blog Paul. My compliments, you’ve made clear many of the nagging worries I’ve had in the back of my mind lately about the future. I look forward to reading the rest of the website.
BTW, I recently came across a paper on “Psychological Adaptation to the Threats and Stresses of a Four Degree World” by Clive Hamilton, Charles Sturt and Tim Kasser, that talk a lot about the what people go through when faced with difficult choices. You might find it interesting in relation to what you talk about here.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/ppt/poster-hamilton.pdf
“Let us suppose that certain individuals resolve that they will consistently oppose to power the force of example; to authority, exhortation; to insult, friendly reasoning; to trickery, simple honour. Let us suppose they refuse all the advantages of present-day society and accept only the duties and obligations which bind them to other men. Let us suppose they devote themselves to orienting education, the press and public opinion toward the principles outlined here. Then I say that such men would be acting not as Utopians but as honest realists. They would be preparing the future and at the same time knocking down a few of the walls which imprison us today. If realism be the art of taking into account both the present and the future, of gaining the most while sacrificing the least, then who can fail to see the positively dazzling realism of such behaviour?”
Camus, from ‘neither victims nor executioners’. Thought I wouldn’t stick [sic] in for each ‘men’, apologies. More of that quote here:
http://www.coveredinbees.org/v1/node/34
Good to see a bit more Hope-Bashing, Paul. Nothing more to add that I haven’t already said, added to what Derrick Jensen kicked off – we need more of this.
Fancy a collaboration?
K.
Paul
I totally agree with the need for honesty about the problem and I’m not advocating for a second that we should be encouraging the massive, mainstream so called ‘responses’ that we are seeing at copenhagen or hoping that they succeed, as what they would define as success would ultimately be pointless and damaging.
What I am saying is that those of us outside the mainstream, who are trying to reskill, reeducate and physically change the way our small patch of the world works need some hope. Why would I plant an orchard if I have no hope of seeing fruit? Why should I learn to feed myself from the land if I have no hope for the future? Every step that I take to bring myself closer to natural rhythms and cycles feels saner and makes me more hopeful. Not for the doomed civilisation we are still attached to but for the future beyond the fall. We can still make that future better by changing things now.
You say that stopping emissions and living lightly are hugely important targets, but how can we even begin to move towards these without hope that we might be making our future less bleak?
I am new to your website and project although read a debate with Paul and George Monbiot in the Guardian a few months ago which I posted on my FB page. I feel at home here and a sense of relief that your thoughts mirror mine, but I also marched on Saturday and am trying to reduce emissions by 10% as part of the 10:10 campaign. On one level I know this is futile, we have almost certainly passed some key tipping points in the climate and yet we are still hearing about the third runway being rushed through etc and no-one seems to talk about the other ecological crises any more, climate change is the only game in town right now. My fear is that carbon trading just becomes another market literally trading hot air, more derivatives, more city boys cashing in and the in the meantime the world fries. On another level there has to be some form of engagement and education and The Wave and 10:10 do at least reach out to people – small steps can lead to big realisations. I only really came to understand the scale of the problem in the last four or five years. I marched with a friend on Saturday who knew next to nothing about this – she came along to keep me company because she was staying over the weekend. She knows far more now and so a small ripple in a very big pond has been created. In some ways I feel bad for her, because I was happier when I didn’t know – I feel a burden of knowledge because apart from 10:10 etc I really don’t know what to do. I gave up flying three years ago but my lifestyle is still very carbon intensive (and I have insulation, double glazing, GSHP etc), I act where I can but I work in government and the machine doesn’t seem to understand this at all. Alternatively maybe it does and the Spooks (last episode series 5) scenario is for real and the public are being duped whilst the neo-cons wait for the collapse and then move in to clean up financially. I can’t bring myself to believe that is true but it seems like the only plausible explanation. I don’t know if a society which is driven by the markets and rewards behaviour at corporate level which would be considered psychopathic at individual level can ever create a strong enough narrative. Some great leaders have achieved much but the legacies of Gandhi and Mandela don’t bear close scrutiny, nor does a liberated Russia. If Naomi Klein is right in her Shock Doctrine analysis then maybe the climate chaos is just going to be another shock that can be capitalised on. More wars, more private security – brilliant for shareholder value and GDP is it not?
I will join your project but I will keep doing the other stuff as well, maybe like water on rock, these small actions will one day create a breakthrough. I think the new narrative will arise but I think the birth of a new and different society will be bloody and painful and what we give birth to could be a beautiful new life or a monstrous savage.
Hi Charlotte
I could suggest you have a look at http://earth-blog.bravejournal.com/entry/42068 for some ideas of what you can do, but that would terribly reckless of me.
Best
Keith
Charlotte and Tom – yes, we should all keep on doing other things. No-one is advocating doing nothing; and I agree, hope is important and despair is just unpleasant. But we have to hope for realistic things,and be quite clear about what is false hope and projection. What we want to hear and what we need to hear are not the same thing. John Michael Greer has an excellent blog taking up this thread today:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2009/12/human-ecology-of-collapse.html
I’ve given a number of talks on Peak Oil and two things that came up in later talks were a) I didn’t see how ‘Democracy’ as it’s currently understood in the West can survive PO which is predicated on selling people an endlessly better off future and b) that PO is not really about oil in a way, but that what this is about is a spiritual question for humanity “How do we relate to each other, other species and this planet which is our home?” Unless these questions are addressed all of this is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
I want to believe (shades of the X-Files) that I am involving myself in things that will help – Transition, the Green Party, marches through London and changes to my own way of living, but so many times I feel that it’s all going down and ‘resistance is futile’. Or that it needs to go down because we need to learn to grow up and realise that we are not Gods that can do whatever we wish with our planet and hang every other species if required.
When I read your manifesto and many of these comments I remember again the clarity of directly and instinctively knowing certain things at various times in my life. As though a veil had been removed and I saw the truth directly. But the comfort of home, my computer, the town in which I live seems to wash it away, to dilute it so that they have less urgency to me now. Once they seemed the most blindingly obvious things that I had to address, and for a time I did but it feels as though our civilised world can only exist by removing that experience and soothing me with all the trinkets I’ve come to know and love. I feel as though I’ve fooled myself yet seem unable to break out. It’s not good for my sense of self. This is all big stuff.
Paul, The question of hope is central. The first step is defining what hope means. As with so much of our present vocabulary hope has been debased and is enmeshed in modernist, linear thinking. Your mention of the rush to its opposite is an example, “If it ain’t this, it must be… (fill in the blank with a polar opposite.)
I’ve spent the last too many years meditating on this point, my novel, Shoal Hope, (in ms) has this as its theme. I’ve posted an introduction to it on my blog, at http://antoniodiasri.blogspot.com/2009/11/introduction-to-shoal-hope.html.
What I am, not proposing but nosing around, is a way past such polarization. A shoal hope as something to guard while we face our realities and their implications. That at rock bottom there is more to be gained by simple witness than by any flight into delusion. The delusions are many, from denial, to hope in the sense you decry, optimism or pessimism, or despair. That unless we can look into the horror, – isn’t that what the twentieth century was for? A school of horror? – Unless we can look into it and maintain our sanity and our autonomy, our ability to think and act for ourselves; we will not be able to face our calamities, predicaments, the mystery of the human condition within the mysteries of the broader conditions of Earth and its life.
We protest the emptiness of mainstream western life and decry what it has done to us, to the planet. Underneath that criticism there needs to be the force of an alternative ethos. If that way of life is empty and life negating and destructive, then what is an alternative? How can we develop and establish an ethos that provides a ballast of meaning, reasons for living, and touchstones for how to make ongoing decisions that build on that foundation?
This is precisely what I see as my task, and what I find as such a happy convergence with the Dark Mountain Project’s goals and aims. To anyone who thinks it’s silly, in face of all that is ahead, to take precious time fiddling with stories and fine points of thought and expression, remember that throughout human existence, in times when life was much more dire and close to the bone than it is today, people have always put precious and limited resources into creating, developing and caring for their sense of meaning and purpose, rather than running off half-cocked at chasing “solutions.”
Myth is another debased term today, in the present meaning a myth is some hair-brained unbelievable story told to gull the unwary. I agree that our knee-jerk assumption: that we simply face problems; always, nothing more than problems; is a silly myth. But unless we are able to replace this myth; but also re-establish Myth itself as a vibrant repository of meaning and lesson, then “What is the point?”
I am most heartened by your response to the distractions of Copenhagen and the rest of the political circus. Also by the gentleness of your expression. There is a fine distinction that must be maintained between an openness to the yearnings to do good versus the difficulties of finding adequate expressions of its practice. Climbing the Dark Mountain is difficult work, people require havens and rest as they strive to reach its summit. There are, who knows what paths to reach it? No one should proscribe anyone’s attempts, or push anyone beyond what they can endure. To do these is to become what we are opposed to.
Still, guidance is necessary, gentle reminders of the urgency and of the dangers, of perils that lead to chasms yawning over the abyss.
If we are to attempt this as people, we need to do it in communities of some sort, not alone. Remember that some will be point guides, some will make up the main body, others will form an after-guard. Some will feed our spirits, some will feed our bodies and some will provide the strength we need; while others will carry the tenderness that we cannot survive without. All of this is needed for the journey and for whatever lies beyond.
[...] an interesting article about hope and Copenhagen (it was written at the start of the conference, so doesn’t cover [...]
I’m sorry but you sound like the epitome of a bleating liberal. Yes it’s bad, we know. Yes the smurfs and polar bears look like wankers. Yes we need to analyse the poltics and economics of the situation way before we start any nebulous campaign for individuals to reduce their footprint, or to promote the abstract concept of climate justice.
BUT, I am a fan of constructive thought. It’s what feeds my mind and what makes me feel human. I want engineering projects on a grand scale, and I relish the prospect of a concert of intelligent individuals planning and executing such a feat, even if it is in the vain hope that it will impact upon the catastrophic reality that is 350+ ppm of CO2 currently in the atmosphere.
And I want constructive political commentary as well. If the movement is failing, tell me how to make it succeed. If people are misguided, show them the way.
Plonking a massive great dark mountain in the middle of the dead-end street we’re heading down might make you feel better, and assuage the intellectual responsibility for coming up with some of the answers, but I can’t see much value in it beyond that.
[...] so’ here at the Dark Mountain Project, because it’s not really our style, even though we did. The more you point out the obvious fact that this turkey will not fly, the more hate mail you [...]