Too Hot in L.A.
September 16, 2024
Lately I've been thinking and reading about climate change. We've just lived through the hottest summer on record. Currently, Poland is flooding. Parts of Africa are flooding. It's 77 degrees in Brooklyn today in mid-September; I'm still running my AC. Things are changing but not fast enough, not dramatically enough.
The problem is so vast, it is easy to get lost in anxiety trying to grapple with it. We must dramatically curtail carbon and methane emissions; this means an end to industrial animal agriculture, car dependent societies, fast international shipping, coal burning, fossil fuel burning, natural gas AKA methane burning. We must build solar, wind, hydro, and nuclear power. We must build convenient rail connections between towns and cities. We must redesign cities to prioritize public transit, biking, and walking. How are we supposed to do all of this?
I don't have the answer. Some people claim to. The free market is only able to do so much; short term profit is still king, and the true risk and cost of climate collapse is not priced into the market. Shouldn't oil extraction companies be much less valuable, seeing as their continued existence ensures the ruin of society as we know it? I do not understand it. These companies also have been using carbon credits which have been proven to be bogus. Even when the project is something real, it is something like a monoculture forest; these projects are for lumber and will be cut down in a few years, and monocultures are prone to wildfires, as we've been seeing in Canada. Most scholars I respect conclude that to prevent climate collapse we must end capitalism. As Marc Fisher said after Frederic Jameson, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. We are soaring headfirst into that reality.
It amazes me how common sense climate collapse prevention is, and all the knock on benefits it will bring. Burn less pollutants, have cleaner air and water. Reduce car dependence, have safer, quieter, cleaner cities. The more people walk and bike, the healthier they are. The more they interact with people in their community. The more they pay attention to their surroundings and their local environment. Shifting towards a more plant based diet, where food is grown locally, reduces both methane emmissions, inefficient land usage, and the suffering of conscious creatures who are exploited for their entire existence. We live our lives at an inhuman pace, and would be wise to return to a slower world.
Despite this, the world isn't moving fast enough. America, the seat of empire, has grown fossil fuel production more than ever in the last few years. Cities and towns across the country resist the tide of change, refusing to invest in their public transit systems and other human scale transportation alternatives to the car. People are still eating meat, flying, driving, and buying products they don't need, all while the richest of the rich continue to reap profits to grow their already incomprehensible fortunes. Are they betting on their New Zealand climate bunkers to save them? What world will there be to inhabit? The GOP has the support of nearly half the country, and they are doing everything in their power to refuse the reality of climate change, and tear apart the world's ability to adequately respond to the danger.
The window to save the world narrows every passing day. Save the world means limit warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. We are not anywhere close to that goal. What are we gonna do? Do people need to act like in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future, and perform extreme acts in the name of climate defense? So far the climate movement hasn't had that kind of edge to it. Actually, the so-called ecoterrorists of the 90s had an edge. They were often focused on saving forests. Today, the whole world is aware of the problem, and large swathes of the population, especially young people of my generation, see climate change to be the ultimate existential problem of our lifetime. PR campaigns like Just Stop Oil's infamous vandalism of famous cultural artifacts elicit a response, and have been able to get certain things done. However, it is still too little too slowly.
Now, am I a hypocrite? Guess so. I'm not vegan, but I like to remind people that I was for 11 months back in 2020. I haven't taken part in any Extinction Rebellion demonstrations. I just think and read and get upset and anxious and write on my little blog. What is there for someone like me to do?