Who's A Doomer Now, HUH?
We never wanted to be right.
Doom reigns.
Over a decade ago I started following the subreddit r/collapse. I came across it, I think, while doing some research on climate change for my job at the time. The term doomers had yet to be absorbed into the online discourse.
The links on r/collapse— research and news about climate change, disease, politics, finance, war —weren’t sending me to the outer reaches of the internet or to conspiracy sites. This was a surprise. They were sending me to mainstream news sites, academic and scientific journals.
I was shocked by this alternative view of how everything was going.
I was even more shocked that the sources were reputable and that I’d missed most of this.
I was informed. I could hold court on our incremental but steady PROGRESS.
How had I missed this?
Probably it wasn’t true. Not true true. Not if I’d missed it. Clever me.
Ok, I was working on climate change at the time so I obviously knew a thing was happening which wasn’t ideal and needed to be (in the technocratic terminology I’d become so used to uttering) mitigated. But this was probably 2010, 2011, I was in my twenties, working a good job in a fun city, Obama was striding around confidently in his tan suits, the liberal order was humming along and things were looking up.
Reader, THE ARC OF HISTORY WAS BENDING.
We just needed to let the First Black President and his oozing confidence and his empathy, oh the empathy, get on with the job of saving the world.
Barack, deliver us from evil.
On climate change, he was going to make sure policy ambition was strengthened.
He was going to get that global climate deal that saved the world. Forget about the failure at Copenhagen. Just a blip!
On Iraq? Well he hated war. It’s why he was elected. He was going to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and probably all wars I guessed, because he was the First Black President and he had oozing confidence and empathy.
Oh the empathy!
He was a black man, of course he got it. How could he not? He knew the white man, the history, the struggle, justice, etc.
On capitalism and poverty and that stuff well the banks had to be bailed out because, you know, that’s just sensible, fiscal, monetary, whatever policy.
Mainly it was Obama.
There was a plan.
He knew the white man, the history, the struggle, justice, etc.
Anyway, it was all going pretty much okay.
It was. It was.
It was going ok.
It was going ok.
The summit in Copenhagen failed but whatever, renewable energy was growing and would kill fossil fuels soon, very soon! It was the future. The only future.
The market the market the market the market forces market forces market forces market forces market forces market forces the market.
The graphs I inserted into PowerPoint presentations confirmed it.
The market forces were forcing.
Moreover the key messages I wrote for the CEO to convince the stakeholders of this rosy future were really convincing! They were convincing because I was convinced. I was convinced because I had convinced myself then written the bullet points and the speeches that could convince everyone else. I was good at it, all the convincing. So much convincing.
(In hindsight there may have been a cost to doing cognitive dissonance as a career but we live and we learn reader, we live and learn.)
What else? Things weren’t super fucking expensive then. Housing wasn’t horribly expensive. Rent still felt like too much, couldn’t afford to buy anywhere to live, but with a white collar city salary, it was fine, renting was fine, all very doable, Friday and Saturday nights on the piss, girlfriend, holiday a couple of times a year.
The progress was happening. The market forces were forcing.
After stumbling across r/collapse, I forgot about it for a while. Kind of, sort of, in the way you forget about something but actually don’t? The way a thing creeps and crawls at the back of your head tap tap tapping like ‘I know you know I’m here!’
Intrusive reality kept threatening to intrude but I had fun to have, speeches to write, shirts to iron, hands to shake, wine to drink, slides to prepare, breakfasts to attend, calls to conference, conferences to attend, markets to force.
Then: Obama second term, world keeps getting hotter, wars not ending, surge in Afghanistan, American war crimes, Obama drone strikes, record deportations, Tories win in Britain, Sandy wipes out the East Coast, austerity, Snowden, Assange. Our governments they….really do seem to be spying on us?
Huh, how about that?
How about all this….progress?
Empathy man has assured me that’s what this is, all this stuff that you could really convince yourself might not be progress? That on first, emotional glance, doesn’t look like progress?
It’s progress buddy.
It’s ok. Going to be ok.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHA.
Irrational, emotional being.
It’s fine, gonna be A-OK soldier.
The tap tap tapping. Can I come back in yet?
No.
Paris.
2015.
The big climate conference to save the world.
I’m fucking neck deep in it reader, like you wouldn’t believe. Just shitting out key messages and drafting op-eds for the CEO like the world depends on it because maybe it does.
Tap.
I’ve been to the 2014 UN climate leaders summit. I’ve seen Leonardo DiCaprio, sat a few seats from UN head honcho Ban Ki-Moon. Then up steps Barack, his deep, serious tones lulling me away from the crawling things deep inside, away from thoughts of war crimes and storms and towards PROGRESS.
Tap.
Stop.
Definitely progress.
Tap.
Stop.
I go to a preparatory conference in Paris a few months before. I see Francois Hollande, the Frenchest man that ever existed, all brie and wine plump. I see the inflated post-face-op John Kerry beam in from Washington and assure us in just a few months Barack is going to save the world.
Tap.
Stop.
There’s another climate conference, in Venice. VENICE. The place already under water and choked by tourism. Is this joke? Anyway, joke or not, push it away, I’m there. I do a presentation. I’m on the stage, next to this guy I don’t like at all, arrogant, spikey little guy, all energy, all renewable energy. Big on Twitter back then. Big head. Metaphorically. I’m telling you too much. Real ones might know.
Tap.
Stop.
Paris is coming. A couple of months. I’m meant to go. Shepherd the boss around. She has some speeches. My speeches. Her speeches. Key messages. Top-line messages. Q&As. Place some op-eds, set the agenda.
THOT LEADER.
At some point I go back to r/collapse.
They’re still saying the same things over there. But it’s worse now. Because things haven’t got better. A tautology but I hope you get my point. The longer we wait the harder it is because the trends are trending. Maybe the markets aren’t forcing? It’s not just climate, is it. A pandemic is becoming more likely, they say here. Some polls show Donald Trump could be the Republican candidate, could be the actual president. Huh? Donald Trump? Lol. Never. Britain might leave the EU if there really is a referendum, they say here.
Huh?
Lol.
Never.
Tap.
Stop.
Reader at this point I do something. I quit. Don’t worry about me, I was ok, but I tell my boss, I tell her I’m not going to Paris. There’s a world out there. My partner and I. We want to travel. She can’t stop me, the boss, but she’s confused, wants me to stay on, remotely, wherever I am, contract work, the key messages, the speeches, the op-eds, Paris is in a few months. I am convincing, she says. She convinces me. There is Skype now, after all. (Zoom remains a twinkle in a virus’s eye).
I’ll shepherd her remotely.
I quit because I couldn’t do it, the bullshit, the handshakes and the breakfasts and the MAKE BELIEVE OF PROGRESS.
I could by now see what Paris was, would be.
Stuffed with fossil fuel execs and technocrats triangulating. I could see the headlines, the pretend and the make believe and the hype and the hope and the fakery that would doom it.
I needed to be removed, remote from the action.
I’ll write the press releases, just don’t make me be there.
I don’t tell her this. I need the money. She needs me. I make something up.
Somehow I’ve wangled it, a good set up. Sit in Asia for a few months, draft the key messages.
Paris comes, Paris goes. Historic deal, yada yada yada yada.
I have grown cynical.
Within, what, 13 months? and Trump has pulled the US out of the globally historic Paris climate deal.
America is once again the leading producer of oil and gas.
Not because of Trump, but because of the Obama-Biden shale gas fracking boom.
That was him, folks.
How could a man not grow cynical? Tell me. I really really want to know. Comments below please.
Emissions keep rising. Floods, fires, storms. The ecology is collapsing. All the animals are in cages. Extinction is now.
My partner and I return home, I have fully quit that job by now. Stayed on a few months after Paris then bye bye, you have all the key messages now. All levels unlocked.
Just can’t do it in the era of Trump.
Call me whatever. Coward.
I slump around for a while, I get a second wind! My thinking rounded, I see climate is a symptom, the system is the disease. I see what needs to be done. Outside NGO structures, time to move civil society! No more New Yorks or Venices or Paris. So I start organising in communities.
I am convincing. I do good talking points, PowerPoints. I know this much at least. Play to your strengths, dear boy.
People get arrested. I get arrested. We are global news. We are a tribe.
There is critique, there are death threats, there is DISCOURSE. My god there is discourse, maximum amounts of discourse. From the left to the far right.
Real ones will know.
Things, they might actually be happening?
Well, reader, they weren’t.
Emissions keep rising. Floods, fires, storms. The ecology is collapsing. More animals are in the cages. Extinction is still now.
Ok, fine. One final push on the electoral system. It’s 2019. Doors are knocked, leaflets printed, posts written.
The failure or the whatever of all this, is for another day. Maybe another lifetime.
Then 2020-2025.
Plagues, genocides, locusts, floods, fires, chaos.
It is no longer necessary to visit subreddits.
Days follow days follow months follow days follow years follow lifetimes.
Time has collapsed in on itself or has been stretched out beyond its limits. We are in the black hole or being spirited away.
It depends on the day, day, month, year, day.
The centre couldn’t hold because it was never really there.
Tap.
The body snatching years.
Who can say what happened? Who can say what’s happening?
We live permanently suspended in myth.
The myth of a civilisation.
It has become far more obvious that our rulers have no intention of taking any action that will stop climate catastrophe. Just like with the pandemic, their preferred option is the pretence of action but the actuality of continued production for profit.
The only way that we will save the planet and our health is through our own self-activity.
We live in a class society and the ruling class is driving us full speed over a cliff. Instead of putting their foot on the brakes, they have their foot firmly on the accelerator!
The old choice of a hundred years ago, posed by Rosa Luxembourg, is "Socialism or barbarism".
Nate, great piece where you hold yourself accountable. But you were late to the party. And boy do I know how we get steeped in bullshit about our great leaders with the greatest intentions.
In the US there was a president who recognized that climate change and resource depletion where real problems that needed more than a hand wave: Jimmy Carter. (Yes, I am aware that Carter was a neoliberal which would create conflict and contradictions with addressing climate and resource issues in his never to come second term.) Carter in 1977 gave a speech in a cardigan advocating reducing energy use which was nail one in the losing the next election coffin. Not overturning Nixon's imposition of a 55 mph (88 kph) interstate highway speed limit was another apostasy. (Another nail!) The lid on that coffin was firmly sealed with the malaise speech and the Iranian takeover of the US embassy in Tehran.
The night of Reagan's victory, I was talking on a pay phone long distance to my future wife about how this was the end for our nation. I was too limited in my lament. Reagan was the detonator cap for the end of any possibility of salvaging a happy ending to our climate dilemma.
Reagan received a lot of support from people now long dead. But there are ardent supporters still alive who give wholesale allegiance to burning most mammals off the planet.
It still stuns me that people lack the imagination to see that living with less is in the long term the only way for living to continue in some familiar form.
So Nate, you did not fail me, I failed you.