Museum Fremen

What the funk are we doing? This article is important because it punches some serious holes in our ideas about using technology (like space mirrors and sulfur in the stratosphere) to solve our climate change problems (which it should be remembered we caused). The Arctic Ocean is turning acid, and will be unable to support its vital foodchain by 2100 according to one scientific study. More good news it seems.

So I've decided that instead of just telling you about this dismal news I'm going to offer some suggestions as to what we should do about it. The planet is going to die if we keep going business as usual--or at least humans are going to die and take a lot of other beings with us. If we had any sense we would do something about it. It's like a bullet is flying at you from a great distance and you know that it's coming but you also know that you have some time so you won't move out of the way.

And that's what we have to do: move out of the way.

1) Abandon cities which are the cause of climate change. Too many people, too much stuff, too many twisted dreams. There are lots of opportunities and possibilities for starting communities that are actually self-sufficient, not the greenwashing we are used to. Try working on organic farms as a start and then when you know what to do, get some land with some friends and build a community focusing on permaculture. You can do this and really it's the only way you're going to actually reduce your footprint in a meaningful way; a hybrid is a disaster as is a low-flow toilet which you should never shit in anyway.

2) Accept that you must live with less. You'll never fly on another plane, you'll never eat another kangaroo steak, you'll never eat another mango, you'll never taste a sweet drop of coffee, you'll never eat a green salad in winter. Don't consume these things. This kind of requires pursuing the first point as your constructive poverty will facilitate it. This is not sad, this is real, we live in fucking Canada.

3) Tell stories that reject the concept that humans are exceptional beings and celebrate the wonderful complexity and specialness of earth's ecosystems. We are most definitely not exceptional beings. We are just more cunning than other beings. If we were exceptional then we wouldn't destroy the landbase on which we all depend; this behaviour is psychotic. And stories matter, they make the world, especially for young people.

4) If you can't do these things or want more action, then you have to take strategic action against the state (government and corporations) that facilitate the destruction of the earth (and ourselves). How could you do anything less when your future is at stake? These bodies are irredeemable from my perspective since they take as their foundation the concept of endless growth. You can have human organization in some form of course and some resource extraction but these should be local and reflect local realities. One's action should focus on places that these systems are their weakest (transportation and energy would seem to be good targets).

5) At the very least think about overpopulation and make it a subject in your daily conversations. There are far too many humans on this earth and that's wrong. Wrong. Choose not to have children or adopt or parent with a group of adults. These arrangements are possible.

If, like me, you accept that we are on a collision course with extinction then you can't do anything less than walk away or fight. There's a great story called the Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. LeGuin that you might want to read too. We can stay behind and work in amongst the crumbling cities and broken people and that's admirable but it doesn't mean that the seas aren't still going to turn acidic. This shit is serious. No more time to mess around.

Another thing we have to do is say we made a mistake. Take some responsibility. I guess that's what I'm getting at here. The past two hundred years and possibly the past ten thousand years have been a great mistake, since the first person placed the first seed in the ground. My ancestors made a mistake, your ancestors made a mistake. Let's go back 200 years; let's choose to go back 200 years and not regret all the imagined things we are missing.

We'll have the earth and each other and that's enough.