Are you arguing that this problem -- namely, global warming -- was inevitable, given the availability of the resources and the appropriate technology? — Xtrix

There was all this buried coal and petroleum left over from super abundant plant growth in an era of "too high/too warm" oxygen and temperature levels. Dinosaur conditions. Lovelock argued the planet does best at a cooler 15 degrees C global average with lower oxygen levels – the balance established after the asteroid did for the dinosaurs. A world with 70% ocean to make for a cold energy sink that balances out the atmospheric CO2 sink in a way that maximises productivity.

So you could see fossil fuels as biomass that got shoved under the carpet as the Earth was still finding its global biological balance and didn't have the means to recycle everything with maximum efficiency at the time.

Locked in the ground, it was out of sight, out of mind. But life continued to evolve above the ground. It developed increasing agency as it gained new energetic advantages like being warm-blooded and more sophisticated in its understanding of its environment.

Then along came Homo with big brains, language, social organisation and tool use. The keys to unlock the goldmine of fossil fuels.

So it is inevitable in the sense that if it could happen, it would happen. The probability was 1, especially once the semiotic means to "objectively stand outside biological nature as a sociocultural organism" came along.

In the fullness of time, fossil carbon may have got slowly degraded by being geological exposed to bacterial recycling. Either that, or recycled by the earth's hot geological core itself – the cycles of plate tectonics. So genetic level semiosis would have been the "brains" adapting itself to this entropic mop up chore. Other outcomes were possible there.

But the Gaian biofilm continued to exploit the "technology" of semiosis – life's code-based approach to constructing dissipative structure. Genes led to neurons. With humans, this led on to first language – sociosemiosis. A code based on words. That then led to technosemiosis – codes based on the complete abstractions that are numbers.

So above ground, the evolution of semiosis was continuing, helped by the ideal conditions being created by the Gaian biofilm.

First we had an era of "climate stress" – the glaciation age which acted as a filter on hominid intelligence and sociality with its rapid cycles of change and the abundant herds of horse, deer, elephants and other big game that roamed the open grass plains that resulted across much of Eurasia.

Again, we have a "energy bonanza" just asking to be over-exploited. Large herds of yuumy bison-berger. And this drove an arms-race among the varied hunter-gatherer hominids that evolved to be top predator during this ice age. Homo sapiens came out on top, having developed the best linguistic software. But also, the large herds were pretty much wiped out in the process. It looked like Homo sap was out of a job.

But then the climate clicked into a longer stable interglacial period. Agriculture could be invented as the Homo tribes being shove about the landscape by shifting glaciers could instead settle down to tend and defend their patch of soil. Grow their own bison-bergers, and the buns and spices to make them even more delicious.

Again, other outcomes were possible. Language-equipped Homo might not have been lucky with a shift in climate. They may have eaten the last mastodon and gone extinct soon after.

But agriculture became a new energetic bonanza – although one now demanding a very organised and measured approach to its exploitation. Homo had to build a culture around working with the daily solar flux and annual farming rhythms. We had to become experts at recycling even our own shit to keep the paddy fields going, or burning the cow dung to heat our huts. We had to really take care of the ecology of our environments. They became the gods, the ancestors, that we worshipped and revered.

Roll the clock forward and we have the rise of agricultural empires. Then this turns into the age of expansionary empires – Rome and European nation states – as societies are reorganised from being farmers to being soldiers. If you are 15th C Portugal with a fleet of ships, there is the whole world to start raping and colonising. Again, an entropic bonanza just begging to be exploited.

And now the military technology - in the form of the Greek hoplites that invented the Western notion of all out war based on self-actualising "democratic" control – had been refined to the point that ships, muskets and cannon could really project focused power. Again, gunpowder. An entropic bonanza that followed its own logic all the way up to nuclear warheads. The shit that actually worried us in the 1970s and so probably pushed climate change down the list of concerns at the time – especially at government response level.

Anyway, you can see the pattern. Entropic bonanza. Semiotic control. Put the two together and you get explosive growth, like a spore on a Petrie dish, until the system hopefully finds some kind of homeostatic long-run balance.

Humans - once equipped with the sociosemiosis and technosemiosis to take a view from outside "nature" – outside even the Gaian Earth as a biofilm regulated entropic enterprise - could start to look for all the new loopholes it might exploit. Our busy minds and hands were pushing and probing every crack for a seam of advantage – an ability to concentrate semiotic power in ways that topped whatever already existed.

Whether we kill ourselves with nuclear fission or a blanket of trapped CO2 is still perhaps a close-run thing. Overpopulation and ecosystem destruction are still also in the game. All the exponential curves still intersect circa 2050, just as we saw they did in the 1970s when the Club of Rome offered up its first still dodgy computer simulations of the trends.

So it is all one Hegelian historical arc. The relentless upward climb in an ability semiotically to project power. The bigger the entropy store, the more dazzling the semiotic structure that arises to exploit it.

If ecologists governed the world rather than the engineers who run the communist bloc and lawyers (or more lately, the derivative traders) who run the free west, then the burning need to establish a new Gaian planetary balance would be top of mind. But no one ever wanted to vote for hair-shirted greenies. They offer no fun at all.

I mean this soap opera world where absolutely everything teeters on the brink in mad self-destructive fashion. What more exciting and interesting time is there to be alive?

big brains, language, social organisation and tool use — apokrisis

There is so much metaphysics and epistemology wrapped up in that sentence segment.

You mean the thermodynamic imperative as the blind will to power, and humanity as the vessel of its ultimate expression?

Except here the twist is that the cosmos seeks its finality in dissipation rather than power - power being work in the thermodynamic context. Power is how the means of dissipation get constructed. Power is how nature smashes through the barriers that stand in the way of its desire for maximum entropy production.

So you can see why the Cosmos indeed dooms Humanity to the burden of “doing the work” that might achieve its concealed purpose.

Someone stuffed up about half a billion years ago and left this great pile of flammable organic chemistry - black gunk - buried under layers of earth crust. We are the poor buggers condemned to now get down there with shovels, dig it out, and find some creative way of burning it all as fast as possible.

As consolation for our labours, we then build a rosy fiction around it. A modern religion of Romantic self-actualisation. We have to make our unchosen fate bearable enough to continue to procreate and complete the given task. And so we distract ourselves with empty idolatry - like F1 racing. Worshiping at the fake altar of fast cars as symbols of the ideal human condition. Nought to 100 in a couple of seconds. The dopamine hit of sitting on top of an explosion of fuel.

Oh how meaningless this existence we are condemned to live!

Hey, there is definitely an antinatalist telling of this story for you to enjoy too. :starstruck:

plant — apokrisis

Except for angiosperms (flowering plants), the older plants (the gymnosperms) don't actually need animals (for pollination/seed dispersal via fruits). Furthermore, plants also respire i.e. they use O₂, completeing the CO₂-O₂ cycle. In short plants don't need us animals but we sure do need 'em! Fascinating!

In evolutionary terms, plants and animals are both just eukaryotes and so the Gaian atmospheric gas regulating package was evolved before either form of multicellular organisation arose.

Bacteria invented photosynthesis - but first it was sulphur rather than oxygen based. It was a low power reaction dependent on the acid oceans and dissolve rock.

The respiratory part of the equation was evolved by other bacteria - the ancestors or the mitochondria. Some ancestral eukaryote put the two bacterial innovations together to create a high powered respiring-photosynthesising Frankenstein organism. The terraforming of a new atmosphere commenced. Life created its own pool of gases mixed in the right proportions. The oceans were also part of this pool, becoming less acidic in the process.

This new arrangement was so powerful - such an entropy bonanza - that eukaryotes went ballistic, becoming megafauna like plants and plant eaters.

If one organism does both jobs, it risks being at war with itself. It has two sets of genes in competition. This is an everyday story when it come to keeping control over our own mitochondria with their little packets of mitochondrial DNA.

So evolution likes to divide and rule. Set up plants and animals as CO2 emission in competition with O2 emission. Encourage a Darwinian free for all in terms evolving better genetics for gas consumption and waste production. Competition between the two sides then will produce a self-correcting balance in terms of supply and demand from both points of view.

Nature believes in the capitalism of free markets! And it works as - until humans came along - there was no one to put a corrupt finger on the scales.

I see. I still feel plants have a card or two up their sleeve. Given the rising CO₂ levels, if it harms them too, they should be reacting/responding but all sensors show that they're, well, suspiciously ok with it all.

But most of the Earth’s animals are domestic - pigs, cows, chickens. Likewise the Earth’s vegetation is largely cultivated fields and managed forestry tracts.

So it’s all under human thumb. Vaclav Smil can provide you with the numbers. Plants are either dependent on us for their growing conditions or are shivering in the corner as rainforest is converted into beef pattie pasture.

It would be funny if it weren’t so literally true.

But most of the Earth’s animals are domestic - pigs, cows, chickens. Likewise the Earth’s vegetation is largely cultivated fields and managed forestry tracts.

So it’s all under human thumb. Vaclav Smil can provide you with the numbers. Plants are either dependent on us for their growing conditions or are shivering in the corner as rainforest is converted into beef pattie pasture.

It would be funny if it weren’t so literally true. — apokrisis

I dunno! I guess no one's done studies/conducted research on how plants have responded (genetically/physiologically) to increasing CO₂ level in the atmosphere. They should, right? Perhaps the timespan of the greenhouse effect is just too short for plants to mount an appropriate response evolutionarily speaking that is. It's happening too fast for 99% of living organisms except for certain microbes that have very high reproductive rates. Are we all doomed?

I guess no one's done studies/conducted research on how plants have responded (genetically/physiologically) to increasing CO2 level in the atmosphere. — Agent Smith

Of course this is researched. For example….

CO2 sensing and CO2 regulation of stomatal conductance: advances and open questions

Higher than ambient CO2 concentrations mediate a closure of stomatal pores in plants and conversely, low CO2 concentrations trigger opening of stomatal pores. Respiration in plant leaves in the night (dark) causes a rapid rise in the intercellular CO2 concentration (Ci) in leaves and measurements indicate that CO2 levels can exceed 600 ppm (Figure 1A) CO2 [1]. Moreover intercellular CO2 concentrations ([CO2]) can rapidly drop to below 200 ppm in the light [165±58 ppm] [1].

In parallel to the diurnal oscillation in Ci, global CO2 levels have risen exponentially [2, 3] since the advent of the industrial revolution (Figure 1B). April 2014 was the first month in recorded history to have consistently had CO2 levels above 400 ppm. This increase in atmospheric CO2 causes a rise in leaf Ci.

Stomatal pore apertures respond to these changes in Ci [4, 5]. A longer term effect of the continuing [CO2] rise is the down-regulation of stomatal development in the leaf epidermis [6]. This developmental response was first discovered almost 3 decades ago [6], and has been subsequently confirmed with evidence in the fossil record [7, 8]. While a preponderance of species exhibit this response, some species show either an opposite effect or are unresponsive to elevated CO2 concentrations

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4707055/

:blush: Not exactly the kinda research I was hopin' for.

Anyway, CO₂ is gonna hurt us animals more than plants?! Am I right?

I think rapid decarbonization is a pipe dream; Vaclav Smil is very convincing on this. We could cut down on greenhouse gas emissions if we were all prepared to drive tiny cars, use bicycles for local transport, take public transport, stop traveling overseas, use air-conditioners only when absolutely necessary, go to bed when it gets dark and rise when the sun does, stop buying a whole lot of useless crap and so on.

But, then what about the "third world"? Are they not entitled to enjoy the fossil fuel extravaganza, just as we have for the last 100 years or so?

Democratic governments will not promote energy frugality, because they know it will be unpopular. Who wants to be told they can't drive their massive SUV, run the air-conditioner whenever they want, or travel as much as they can afford overseas? Besides if we all stop consuming so much the plutocrats' profits will plummet! :roll:

No one wants to contemplate. let alone endure, a diminished lifestyle, eroded prosperity. We are creatures of habit, and once we are used to something we enjoy the last thing we want is to let it go. Modern civilization is like a juggernaut, and the idea that anyone is at the helm and in control of its trajectory is a mass delusion.

You mean the thermodynamic imperative as the blind will to power, and humanity as the vessel of its ultimate expression? — apokrisis

I meant more, big brains, language, social relations, and tool-use are vast areas of study as exactly how that happened, and ideas about the mind/body problem...Also, what makes humans cognition "human" etc. What caused the language to evolve in the first place (bigger brains? social relations, tool use, or vice versa, or both?).. What does it mean to be a brain that thinks in mainly language? How does that change the perception of the world? Free will/deliberation versus instinct... Preference-utilization, social organization, tool-use, etc.

Oh how meaningless this existence we are condemned to live!

Hey, there is definitely an antinatalist telling of this story for you to enjoy too. :starstruck: — apokrisis

I would of course, say suffering itself creates antinatalist ethics, but yes, the suffering of our own environmental making can certainly be part of that. And the ethics of not putting more carbon-creators onto the planet, though not central, is a nice byproduct of the philosophy.

Modern civilization is like a juggernaut, and the idea that anyone is at the helm and in control of its trajectory is a mass delusion. — Janus

But the trajectory isn’t inevitable. We got here, and are staying here, because of decisions made by human beings — human beings with power. Leaders in governments and businesses have made these decisions, and continue to.

There’s nothing inevitable about any of it. We could very quickly decarbonize if our leaders wanted to. If we can shut the world down for several months, as we did during COVID, or radically transform our manufacturing as we did during WWII, we can do this as well.

The future trajectory is also not something that’ll just happen. There are many paths we can take. So while no one person is in control, the choices still lie with human beings— particularly those in power.

If the influence of dogma— from market fundamentalism to Christian fundamentalism to the happy endings in movies — has got us here, then changing that can get us out. Not an easy task. But it does no good being defeatist or fatalistic.

@Xtrix I think society is too complex to single out one or two factors which we can use to explain our current situation. However, if we are forced into being simple, because otherwise we either factor in or factor out too much, then I'd say this is very much heavily related to the deregulations and massive power gains given to private corporations in the 80's, continuing to this day.

The problem with this is not so much the inequality per se (which is a problem, to be sure), but the extremely lopsided distribution of power. And given this imbalance in power, it is all too easy for the rest of the world, not belonging to .1%, to realize that they can change society if they make government actually do what they want.

To prevent this for happening, power will (and has) done everything to stay where it is. A tax on carbon? Mass transportation? A green transition? Are you crazy, if they get that, what else will they ask for? So, we get bombarded by distractions, disinformation and petty gossip instead of doing things that matter.

From this very broad picture, much can be derived. But, as I said, society is more complex than this, so there are too many factors to analyze to make this into a "theory" or explanation. The factors listed in the OP certainly are legitimate.

We could very quickly decarbonize if our leaders wanted to. — Xtrix

This is the very important point where we disagree; I just don't believe this is true.

The problem with this is not so much the inequality per se (which is a problem, to be sure), but the extremely lopsided distribution of power. — Manuel

However, if we are forced into being simple, because otherwise we either factor in or factor out too much, then I'd say this is very much heavily related to the deregulations and massive power gains given to private corporations in the 80's, continuing to this day. — Manuel

Well of course I agree with all of this...

I think society is too complex to single out one or two factors which we can use to explain our current situation. — Manuel

But, as I said, society is more complex than this, so there are too many factors to analyze to make this into a "theory" or explanation. — Manuel

That's obviously true, but I'm not really intending for it to be a theory or explanation of society. I'm highlighting two factors, the combination of which has influenced me personally (and perhaps many others) and -- from what I see -- have been generally overlooked when we talked about responses to the unprecedented threats we collectively face.

So it's a pretty specific, and personal, reflection -- but I think interesting nevertheless.



Well we can hash that out some time on the climate change thread perhaps.

Interestingly - and while agreeing with you mostly about Zizek, he actually discusses this. It's an idea in psychoanalysis called fetishist disavowal: "I know very well, but...", (insert topic here). "I know very well that, human beings and most complex life on Earth will burn, but, how could it, given what I am seeing with my eyes right now..."

Just pointing this out, one of the interesting things I got out of engaging with Zizek for way too long, not all was wasted.

I don’t hate Zizek, I just never feel I learn anything from him. If he’s discussed the topic here than that’s a credit to him. I haven’t seen it done often.

rapid decarbonization — Janus

:up: A quick solution, I like it; quite unfortunate that it doesn't appeal to you or to me.

But, then what about the "third world"? — Janus

The 3^rd world will have to be the bigger man so to speak.

Democratic governments will not promote energy frugality, because they know it will be unpopular. — Janus

There it is, the dark side of democracy.

Well we can hash that out some time on the climate change thread perhaps. — Xtrix

I'm following Smil and what seems plausible given the immense size and complexity of the fossil fueled energy infrastructure. I'm always open to counterarguments, of course, and in fact I would love to be wrong.

I'm following Smil and what seems plausible given the immense size and complexity of the fossil fueled energy infrastructure. — Janus

Yep. If we treat big oil in particular as an organism, just think how much resilience it has had to develop to sustain itself during a century of geopolitical turmoil. It understands the institutions of power intimately. It astounded everyone - in greenie circles - by chugging straight through peak oil by new tricks like fracking. It’s existential threat is instead the arrival of peak demand.

Blue hydrogen - a way to cling on to its investment in pipes and forecourts - is evidence of its deep resourcefulness and knowledge of how the world works.

And up against big oil is what? Hippies with their flimsy PV panels and wind turbines. No viable infrastructure to back up the generation.

Big hydro and big nuclear are also in the corporate game. But small and scattered compared to big oil in terms of being the social organism with the experience of perpetuating its way of life against all the odds.

:up: I think it's kind of an irony that people think the problem is merely political, when it seems that the only sense in which the problem is significantly political consists in the fact that politicians won't admit that it is far more than just a political problem. To admit that would be to admit that they cannot come up with viable solutions. Perhaps they dare not even admit that to themselves.

This means that politicians won't tell people that if we want to somewhat ameliorate (probably the best we can hope for) what seems likely to be the catastrophic effects of human induced global warming, then the best solution would be to use as little energy as possible, and in general consume as little as possible.

But then, it's also kind of like the "prisoner's dilemma" in that no one wants to be the bunny who sacrifices, when they think that hardly anyone else will, a fact which would also render the sacrifices of the willing impotent, almost useless, given the scope of the problem.

This means that politicians won't tell people that if we want to ameliorate what seems likely to be the catastrophic effects of human induced global warming, then the best solution would be to use as little energy as possible, and consumes as little as possible. — Janus

The problem is only really that the heat can’t escape if we wrap the planet in a carbon blanket. So official thinking is not anti-growth. It is about how to maximise growth rates given this physical constraint.

So even rational politics wants the freedom to use as much of this cheap and handy fossil fuel as possible. And in itself, that is a balanced social setting.

The irrationality lies in politics allowing big oil to kill off its future renewable competition with market manipulation.

As you know, renewables were going to be big with the Arab oil crisis of the 1970s. The US pumped real money into researching alternatives. A bit of geopolitical price fixing followed - the price of a barrel was stabilised with a deal that played the Saudis against the Iranians - and that wave of starts up was forgotten history. The conditions for a benign period of endless neoliberal “growth” was constructed.

Greenies were all fighting against the spoiling of natural ecosystems at the time anyway. And Smil tells us just how badly they lost that battle too.

Again you will know that most folk actually want a domesticated landscape not virgin forest and grassland. Nature too has to pay its way if it is to share this planet with our anthropomass. :grin:

The problem is only really that the heat can’t escape if we wrap the planet in a carbon blanket. So official thinking is not anti-growth. It is about how to maximise growth rates given this physical constraint. — apokrisis

Right, that is the specific greenhouse problem. But there are many others which have arisen due to the fossil-fuel given capacity for exponential growth: impoverished soils, destruction of habitat, extinction of species, depleted fisheries, general industrial chemical pollution of soil, water and air, diminishing water resources, the likelihood of pandemics, and of course, the likelihood of ongoing resource wars.

Even if we could instantly solve the global warming issue; there would remain a whole host of other problems. The basic problem is there are are just too many of us, all aspiring to the high life now.

The basic problem is there are are just too many of us, all aspiring to the high life now. — Janus

Of course. The greenie calculation was that the carrying capacity of an ecologically pristine Earth was a max of around half a billion - living on permaculture and PV panels.

But what is the politics of selling that equation to the masses?

Doesn’t it become rational to say instead what the fuck, let’s jam the foot to the floor and just blast the rig through this shit, honey, in best Hollywood style.

If you just looked at the tech, it was always possible to believe we could outrun fate.

Remember the green revolution after the discovery that petroleum was good for fertiliser as well as plastic consumer crap. History showed we could feed the world and so heading for a 15b population was really just a logistics issue. If you ran a nation, it was way down your list of existential concerns.

I’m looking for moments in history when politicians really had no excuse not to barrel on. Every problem seemed to have a tech solution given a “Manhattan project” scale social and political effort.

The delusion still persists. I mentioned Musk and geoengineering. That is only going to be a scaled up version of the private enterprise escapade where a fishing boat dumped iron sulphate in the cod fishing grounds off Canada - an ecological “win-win” in increasing plankton growth and carbon capture.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering

Of course. The greenie calculation was that the carrying capacity of an ecologically pristine Earth was a max of around half a billion - living on permaculture and PV panels.

But what is the politics of selling that equation to the masses?

Doesn’t it become rational to say instead what the fuck, let’s jam the foot to the floor and just blast the rig through this shit, honey, in best Hollywood style.

If you just looked at the tech, it was always possible to believe we could outrun fate. — apokrisis

It's a hard sell to be sure! I don't know about "rational" but the "jam the foot to the floor" attitude, although not the one consciously held, seems to be the unconscious underlying motivation.

Yes, the "tech", the "tech", the bleeding, fucking edge "tech"; we may still "outrun fate", but at what cost?

The delusion still persists. I mentioned Musk and geoengineering. That is only going to be a scaled up version of the private enterprise escapade where a fishing boat dumped iron sulphate in the cod fishing grounds off Canada - an ecological “win-win” in increasing plankton growth and carbon capture.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/15/pacific-iron-fertilisation-geoengineering — apokrisis

Yep, unthinking, uncaring, reckless profiteering. :roll:

A quick solution, I like it; quite unfortunate that it doesn't appeal to you or to me. — Agent Smith

It would appeal to me greatly if it was doable. And I'm not saying it shouldn't be attempted; and a slow transition made; any diminishment of energy derivation from fossil fuels should help to some degree.

The 3rd world will have to be the bigger man so to speak. — Agent Smith

Right, tell them that.

There it is, the dark side of democracy. — Agent Smith

In moments of crisis (which with humanity seems to be more or less most of the time) the best governance would seem to be enlightened autocracy, but where, o where is such a rare beast to be found?