Normalising The Unthinkable
NEW TO SOHO on Sky Television is the latest “Deep State” thriller, Condor. In brief, the plot revolves around a genocidal conspiracy involving a rapacious firm of military contractors* and rogue elements within the CIA. Their goal? To release a deadly virus with which they hope to wipe out vast swathes of the population of the Middle East. The second episode opens with the infamous quotation attributed to Joseph Stalin:
Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.
That more and more novelists and screen-writers are reaching for the deadly virus plot-line reveals an alarming shift in the zeitgeist. Slowly but unmistakably, the mood of the world’s artists is darkening. Few now are willing to embrace the heroic hopefulness of a Tolkien. Indeed, the twenty-first century fixation with extinction-level pandemics points to an artistic community tormented by murderous despair.
It is the privilege of artists to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. Which is exactly what so many of them are doing in response to the deepening crisis of anthropogenic global warming. Human nature being the raw material out of which they fashion their artworks, it is not difficult to understand their growing pessimism. With every passing year, and every disregarded warning from climate science experts, it becomes clearer and clearer to them that the human species is not going to make it. Unsurprisingly, their imaginative powers are being turned to the subject of how best to rescue the planet’s other life forms.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche long ago recognised the dangers of turning the human imagination towards extreme solutions. His forebodings are best expressed in two, oft-quoted aphorisms: “Have a care when fighting dragons, lest ye become a dragon yourself.” And: “Stare not too long into the abyss, lest the abyss stare back into you.”
The risk of so many artists concluding that the only solution to Climate Change is to rid the planet of its most dangerous species, is that the most talented among them possess the creative power to make it sound like a good idea. Life has a terrible habit of imitating art.
The other great hazard associated with releasing the terrifying idea of eliminationism into the intellectual bloodstream of the non-artistic community is that the idea of deliberately destroying billions of innocent human-beings will become normalised. In no time at all, the unthinkable will become thinkable. People in a position to make awful things happen will begin to ask themselves: “Why not?”
The writers behind Condor have yet to move beyond the genocidal notion of drying up the sea of the Middle-Eastern peoples in which the Jihadist fishes swim. A reprehensible enough idea in itself but falling well short of the historically unprecedented crime of eliminating 95 percent of the human species. Even so, the Condor series points to the awful probability of eliminationist thinking taking hold in the minds of Deep State actors already quite capable of ordering drone strikes on wedding feasts; deploying chemical weapons against designated enemies of the state; and hacking up the sovereign’s critics with a bone saw.
Would that the world’s artists were willing to latch on to the much more optimistic Fixing-Climate-Change scenario elaborated by Counterpunch contributor, Steve Hendricks. His eminently practical plan of simply paying the fossil fuel industry to keep their product safely in the ground; and then giving them the job of transitioning humankind to a sustainable green future; is proof of what we human-beings are capable of conceptualising when we shun the darkness and choose instead to keep our eyes firmly fixed upon the light.
*These private sector bad guys all work for “White Sands” – an insider joke aimed at those already familiar with the notorious exploits of the all-too-real military contractor, Blackwater, during the Iraq War. Black Water – White Sands. Geddit?
We have the compassion to do those things but others never do those things, because they’re always mean. They’re always mean little people. Simon Bridges says people are bored with news of leaks. I mean really? ‘Not bored with Bridges are they?’ Or bored with the polling. I would call Bridges the talking lip, you know those upside down chin puppets, but his mother loved him, I must say that.
Steve Hendrick’s proposal sounds plausible if you do not recognise that industrial humans use fossil fuels to generate money and to produce and distribute food: less fossil fuel consumption = less money and less food; no fossil fuel consumption = no money, and for most people no food.
On the other hand, if humanity continues to extract and burn fossil fuels then that leads to both ecological and financial catastrophe.
The collision with reality that scientists and activists have been warning about for decades is now almost upon us.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/10/tackle-climate-or-face-financial-crash-say-worlds-biggest-investors
They won’t listen, watch what goes on in France, wait for the civil unrest in post Brexit UK, one exit without a deal, it will be close to civil war, and governments will be forced to keep the people provided with the usual ‘necessities’, or face being thrown over.
Perhaps best advice is now to drink or drug yourself into stupor or oblivion and an early death, so not to go through the madness for years to come.
” Life has a terrible habit of imitating art.” I think it’s more that artists can often see a likely future.
Why would it not be just as good for governments to spend the money directly on developing renewables?
It isn’t the oil companies that use the stuff, they just make it available for us all to use it. It’s no use blaming them, but I don’t see the sense in going to them for the alternative either. They might well do some such developments if and when they see the writing on the wall for their industry though.
But are the raw materials available for a significant conversion to solar power, and storage? Has anyone done the calculation. There is an enormous amount of fossil fuel energy to replace.
D J S
One way or another there is going to be a huge lifestyle change.
One in which we face difficult challenges but accept them and work to them and put up with some duress
OR
carry on regardless for as long as possible then abruptly suffer the ravages of drought, floods, untimely weather ruining crops (all the preceding in evidence already just not widespread or coincidental enough yet to worry enough people), storms, tornadoes and sea-level rise (and fall in some places).
In other words, would you like your bandages taken off slowly now or ripped off in the future?
When I was 15 chainsaws and scrub bars started to replace slashers for land clearing. For a very short time a fit man could clear more land now in a day, and earn more. It was a very short time before he could no longer earn a living with a slasher, the toiler was no better off with the noisy chainsaw, he just had his hearing damaged.
That’s a change that is exemplary of what has happened throughout industry and agriculture. Then we had a population about half of now, and managed with about one tenth or less traffic.
Work is actually healthy for most people, Years ago logging was done with bullocks . It worked but you couldn’t survive economically in competition with diesel powered machinery now. How to get back to doing things more slowly, more manually and still earn a living? Enormous structural changes are needed. I don’t think either our system of democracy or our system of economics can cope.
D J S
“The other great hazard associated with releasing the terrifying idea of eliminationism into the intellectual bloodstream of the non-artistic community is that the idea of deliberately destroying billions of innocent human-beings will become normalised. In no time at all, the unthinkable will become thinkable. People in a position to make awful things happen will begin to ask themselves: “Why not?””
Indeed, humans are certainly capable of mass murder, all in the name of science (defending the master race by interpreting evolution). The Holocaust was one such example, Phol Phot in Cambodia was another, add Ruanda, add what ISIS did in some cases, and had they not been stopped, we would be living in another world now, whether bad or good, that is left for the survivors to judge over.
Horrific ideas.
You’ll hear about decoupling oil from the productive economy from business and military leaders but you won’t hear it from political leaders, they can hear it from the constituents.
Building competitive strategy business cases for the car, heavy truck, airplane, fuel, fertilisers and military sectors and other detailed road maps for getting New Zealand completely of oil by 2040-50 lead by business for profit and lead by a much stronger economy. Working with business then I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t work in New Zealand.
Headed towards the top right hand corner of the graph New Zealand’s oil use and oil imports as forecast by StatsNZ could be turned down by redoubling the efficiency of using oil. We’ve already doubled oil use since the 70’s we can double it again and that turns out to cost an average of about $20 per saved barrel as I’ll describe.
We could then turn oil use and imports down more steeply with the other third of a barrel of oil with a mixture of supply side substitutions with roughly 3/5 save natural gas and 2/5 bio-fuel mainly ethanol. These have an average cost of about $24 because to save gas is so cheap. Everything is cheaper on the margins with $26 dollars a barrel for oil or $100. So the average between those too would be about $12.50 a barrel for getting completely off oil is a hundred odd dollars than we are currently paying for oil now.
We know that this sort of curve in oil can happen because it happened once before during the oil crisis of the 70’s. The last time any one payed attention to oil from 1977 to 1985, in those 8 years the GDP grew about 20%-30% but oil use went down by about 17% or 28% (please don’t @me for my about numbers, haven’t looked at the correct figures for ages but the gaps are there). Oil imports fell by half and oil imports from the Persian Gulf fell by more and Persian oil would have been gone in one more year if we had of continued.
Thus the customer has more market power than OPEC because we can save more oil than OPEC can print. That was then, this is now, we’ve doubled oil use since then but we could actually rerun the experiment and let it play all over again. Let’s consider it just practise for what we really have now but we could do a heck of a lot better. Suppose that we invested $20 billion Green Energy fund money, working up to a billion a year and then a billion per year until 2040/50, half of which to retool the car/truck and plane industries for tripled efficiencies with a mix of electric and the other half for bio fuels.
Suppose that this was so successful both in New Zealand and abroad that the oil price crashed back down to $14 a barrel by about 2030 which is approx the official forecasts depending on when you start your research. So again at $12.50 per barrel of oil, against $14 per barrel of oil with an investment of $20 billion by 2040 would yield a gross return of about $25 billion a year and a net return of about $15 billion dollars a year. These numbers are rounded but if you check the margins are there. And it would cut carbon emissions as a free byproduct by about a quarter and give about 10,000 new jobs mainly rural and 10,000 saved jobs mainly in the auto sector.
This all assumes the same amount of travel, same sized vehicles but safer. Compared to official forecast we didn’t change the way people walk, but still could. We haven’t put any one on E-bikes, but could. But the economic logic of substituting people getting off oil at $12.50 per barrel vs what ever the cost is to buy the stuff should be so compelling that even with no new fuel tax and no new subsidies or mandates from New Zealand laws, it would preclude the need for any underhanded dirty tricks because we’d be giving the oil industry free ETS credits to wean them off oil.
The diagnosis is chronic industrial civilization. The prognosis is, terminal. We have overdosed on civilization itself, through our unceasing greed for stability, order, growth and prosperity. As this has resulted in the current pathology, I propose we reverse the progression by inverting. That is, to sacrifice civilization and society utterly, to erase all industry, all cities, with killing and perishing in great numbers, even willingly, for the goal of preserving the planet and it’s biosphere.
I find the thought of campfires in the ruins somewhat romantic, don’t you agree? Ruins are very scenic. Wry smiles at the crumbled edifices, hunting, sacking, burning, smashing. Spit roasted somethings. Can’t you just see it? So I say, why bother with viruses, when we can simply become the Army of the Horned Rat ourselves and fix things for good? I saw three different bells today, plus a green meteor, I think it’s a sign. To bring ruin in the Horned Rat’s name or face his wrath.
This is a logically rationalized plan to save the planet and it has to be better than paying a blackmail tax to oil tycoons, which won’t stop the perpetual growth concrete and steel ecocide anyway. I say we should run with the rats and die bringing ruin. If we don’t everything dies.
for your edification re above
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5fUxn1mQnI
Anything that is thinkable can be done.
Has been done, is done, will be done.
The ‘Unthinkable’ does only exist as a reflection of ethical norms and standards developed over time and generations. Such is the single most decisive determinant for human existence, versus nature and creation in general.
Gradually, quickly, comprehensively, ethos is replaced by financial terms. Through capitalization of each breath and crawl of life everything appears comparable, negotiable, neglectable.
Cost-benefit analysis.
Throw-away culture.
Chris Brown. Crawl.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRA1P9VTPvg