The ecological and climate emergency is becoming a defining narrative of our times and like all narratives will represent some underlying scientific facts and possible futures but more so will provide the driving force for new power struggles, transfers of wealth and the potential for power grabs, new opportunities, new markets, new oppression, new freedoms and new social groups and social structures. Like a journalist said recently about COP27- nobody there cares much about climate change but they all care a lot about making money out of it. The actual unfolding of the ecological and climate breakdown may pose difficult challenges to e.g.the sustainability of agricultural systems, human societies in most vulnerable areas like flood plains and low lying areas and the sustainability of planetary life support systems but those threats will pale into insignificance compared to the damage that can be caused by bodged politics and the politicisation and financing of science by nefarious/ exploitative/profiteering interests.
Fundamentally I don't believe that the ecological and climate emergency can be 'solved' (that seems pretty obvious from the political and ideological division in society over the issues and the endless opportunities in the crisis to capitalise and scavenge from it). There are simply too many people on the way with predicted population growth and more significantly more and more people are expecting higher standards of living putting more demands on natural systems and there are constantly new people and groups rising and seeking power and wealth while whole continents and developing societies demand material and political equity and the pressure on nature that brings. Some of those rising will seek power in the green transition which could be a good thing or an absolutely awful thing (depressed standards of living, higher taxes, crippling price rises, lifestyle lockdowns and our green spaces covered in sterile biofuels, windfarms and solar farms is a green hell which we already seem to be sleep walking into). It's very likely attempts to solve the climate and ecological emergency will generate unimaginable hells in standard play seen in history where hijacking of science or ideology is used to drive oppression and seize power.
Fundamentally systems change when they start to eat themselves when they overshoot or overrun, 'divine intervention' comes as tipping points are passed and things start to collapse. That collapse is accelerated partly by 'solutions' to it (scavengers disguised as saviours). It is from that collapse that the new system emerges. Political systems tend to be cyclical, the end of the cycle being represented by crisis and the seeds for both positive growth and also the next crisis (its redundancy) will be embedded in the new system. It's a simple life-death cycle. A new system is in no way some kind of ethical ideal but it must be where positive forces out weigh negative ones so is overall positive but in no way perfect. It's simply a better algorithm/system for the new environment which has evolved as a result of societal evolution. We seem to be moving from a fundamental capitalist cycle to a more eco-socio-capitalist cycle and appear to be in the crisis stage now. In that crisis its more the conflict, the resulting power shuffle and the victims and the survivors of that crisis that give rise to the next cycle. It's chaos that leads to change, necessity and despair being the engines of reinvention and not primarily carefully written policy, white papers, grey papers, think tanks, activists, politicians or engineers (most of which is replication, spam and scams, particularly at late stage when most output in the system is junk/noise) . Indeed all of those things if they can provide solutions will be pushed forward in the chaos but chaos is the primary driving force that applies immense natural selection pressures on the drivers of change that emerge from the background 'noise' under the right conditions.
So basically in a crisis/ chaos the threats to individuals is coming from all directions- which is what chaos is. There are threats coming to individuals from all characters in the narrative- from the actual effects of natural breakdown caused by the so called villains in the story e.g. oil companies and fossil fuel hedge fund managers but equally from the supposed heroes in the 'story', the green transition players with green washing, green financial scams, inefficient nature conservation organisations, overpaid NGO CEOs, extremists but more than anything the overpowering stench of bullshit which can be crippling to individuals. As the narrative becomes a global narrative every power house is scrambling around to re-write themselves as the hero in their version of the story from the Global Financial Institutions at COP27, the World Economic Forum Billionaires, Political 'World Leaders' or Extinction Rebellion activists while re-writing each other as the villains. Individuals can easily get caught up in this 'war' whether its becoming a devotee to one of the warring factions or getting stuck on the M25 while some Guardian reading activist glues themselves to Junction 11, getting caught in a global green financial scam , being subjected to green tax rises and price rises and re-conditioning to accept lower standards of living and losing freedom through the power of big data systems and AI and eco-social credit systems.
So how can an individual not only survive but thrive through the ecological and climate emergency or more so survive the political impacts of the competing narratives of the ecological and climate emergency. Most importantly in the actual cluster fuck of all this how can an individual not only look after themselves and their network but also look after nature- which is likely to be the biggest victim in any global scale botched and bodged political circus of endless human dominance hierarchies and individuals all competing with each other to capitalise on the ecological and climate crisis.
I can't be bothered to write anymore now, I've bored myself too much so I'll do that in part 2 maybe sometime if I can be bothered.
Happy Xmas!
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