Preparing for Death… Of the Planet

Your mother sits across the kitchen table and, a tremor in her voice, tells of her terminal diagnosis. Your partner lies in a coma and you watch that still loved, now still, pallid and drawn face as you consider whether and when to turn off life support. Your child’s surgeon asks you to sit down before explaining there is nothing more she can do.

For those of us who have experienced such moments and those who only, for now, imagine them, the shock and pain, the overwhelming sorrow, are the ground being cut from beneath our feet, of being left hanging in a vacuum of wordless despair.

Before the bargaining and reassuring begins. The Googling for experimental procedures. The faith in homeopathic remedies or miracle diets. The prayers to Gods previously ignored. The moment when we gather our courage, compose our face, and say, “We’ll find a way…”

It’s not, according to most counsellors, what our loved ones need. They need to be held, supported, loved, comforted, accompanied on their journey, and their destination to be accepted. The imagined diversions and cures are really for us, the living. But death, in truth, is the destination for us all.

It is nearer and more pervasive than many of us think.

A Dying Planet

The Climate Catastrophe is real and ongoing. Most rational observers accept its existence and dangers. However, the past year has seen the emergence of a small but growing band of scientists and writers daring to say, “It is already too late; we have passed the tipping point; the sixth mass extinction is now inevitable and, with it, will come the destruction of civilization and the deaths of almost every person, animal and plant that populate the planet today.”

David Wallace-Wells points out in his book, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” that in each of the previous five mass extinctions, 75-96% of all species died out. Four of these die-offs began with rapid and enormous rises in atmospheric CO2, outgassed from volcanoes. The Permian “great dying” of 96% of all species, 250 million years ago, “began when carbon dioxide warmed the planet by five degrees Celsius, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane… and ended with all but a sliver of life on Earth dead. We are currently adding carbon to the atmosphere… by most estimates, at least ten times faster,” outgunning the volcanoes in the insanity of economic growth and mass consumerism.

Apex species were not well represented among the survivors. Their success arises from their ability to exploit the existing environment; destroy that and their success becomes their Achilles heel. As the current apex species, human success now sits atop an extremely complex and fragile network of physical and digital technology, all maximising our extractive project from every corner of today’s world. Despite our much-vaunted intelligence and adaptability, we cannot survive the destruction of the physical environment that has nurtured our civilization project for a mere 12,000 years.

The Dozen Horsemen of the Planetary Apocalypse

The following dozen statements—and there may be more—may not be accepted by everybody. They are my opinions, based on what I’ve read and judge reasonable or possible. I would be overjoyed to be proven wrong. However, if even half of them are true, there is no escaping the conclusion. Even Revelations conjured only four horsemen—pestilence, war, famine and death—as harbingers of the end of the world.

1.     Human population, at around 7.7 billion, probably exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet. Projected growth of the human population is unsustainable and with much of that growth occurring in regions likely to suffer most from climate heating and weather disruption, famine and mass migration are almost inevitable near-term outcomes.

2.     Human consumption of renewable resources—water, food, clothing, construction materials, etc.—is individually and collectively unsustainable. Shortages of resources are common precursors to war.

3.     A long list of currently non-renewable resources—from rock phosphate to helium, rare earths to lithium—are being depleted at increasing rates. Such materials are key components of many of today’s technologies, from agricultural fertilisers to electric cars. Some are slated to run out within decades, dooming technological solutions to the climate crisis. Earth Overshoot Day 2019 was July 29th, the earliest ever.

4.     Our production, distribution, consumption and recycling processes are extremely inefficient. Some 30% of all food produced is wasted. Electronic gadgets are manufactured in ways that they cannot be repaired, dismantled or recycled. Our detritus is overwhelming the planet’s ability to recycle it.

5.     Energy production from renewables still accounts for less than 20% of the total, according to most recent figures. We remain heavily dependent on burning fossil fuels with well-understood impacts on climate CO2 levels and widely agreed consequences for global heating.

6.     Weather patterns globally are becoming more unpredictable and increasingly detrimental to human life and economic stability. Storms increase in intensity. Cold spells and hot are more severe. The engineering limits of our structures are pummelled into obliteration.

7.     Positive feedback loops in environmental destruction are now emerging globally. Warming temperatures are causing increased forest fires and permafrost melts that add more greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere that drive more fires and melting. Positive feedback cycles run out of exponentially control and, once started, are near impossible to stop.

8.     The late summer 2019 melt rate of glaciers in Greenland was “equivalent to what the [most pessimistic] model projects for 2070,” said a climate researcher at the University of Liège, shortening projected timescales for extensive coastal inundations by decades.

9.     Ocean acidification and dead zones are on the rise worldwide. Coral reefs are dying off. The outlook for Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is now officially “very poor,” with the northern two-thirds of the dramatically bleached in the past few years.

10.  The insect population—vital in key biological processes from fertilisation of many food crops and other plants to the breakdown of waste and dead organic matter—has plummeted catastrophically in recent years wherever it has been measured. Climate heating and the runaway use of herbicides and pesticides are driving an Armageddon in the most fundamental cycles of the natural ecosystem. Extensive pesticide runoff also decimates aquatic insects, adding to the climate stress on fish life. We face an aquatic rerun of Rachel Carson’s  “Silent Spring” horror story from the 1960s.

11.  Soil fertility has been drastically reduced by intensive farming methods. In some areas, it is believed that the number of remaining harvests from these soils is measured in tens. Increasing use of chemical fertilisers only adds to the problem, further disrupting the delicate balances of nutrient, plant and animal ecosystems.

12.  Plastic pollution is pervasive throughout the entire environment with deadly impacts on many species and still unquantified effects on multiple biological pathways.

Many of these aspects are interrelated, so addressing one can help to alleviate the effect of others. Conversely, failing in one has knock-on effects elsewhere. Most alarmingly, our economic, financial and political systems are founded on unstated assumptions about the relative stability of an entire network of values and outcomes that are under threat on all fronts from these dozen horsemen. Adding these social aspects to the mix, observing our failure to even tackle CO2 emissions over three decades of scientists’ warnings, and noting the current near total dysfunction of many national and international bodies (which should be taking action), a stark conclusion is unavoidable.

The collapse is years, not decades, away. Projections for the end of the century are pointless. Achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 is decades too late. We need to be planning for catastrophe by 2025 or 2030.

It is too late to avoid it. The best we can hope for is to perhaps mitigate the worst modalities of the coming destruction, to perhaps delay for a few years the inevitable, and to support ourselves psychologically and sociologically on the path of grieving and ultimate acceptance.

2012 – the End-date of the Mayan Calendar

The premise of the movie, “2012,” is that rapidly escalating, worldwide instability in the Earth’s crust threatens civilisation and human existence within a timescale of a few years. The solution (spoiler alert) to this unfortunate challenge is that Earth’s governments and scientists collaborate closely(!) in a secret and speedy ark construction project(!!) to save a tiny, rich and powerful subset(!!!) of the world’s population and transport them to a safe haven(!!!!) in the Drakensberg Mountains of southern Africa, which have risen to become the highest mountains on the planet.

The implausibility of this Noah’s Ark plan leaves a movie that is worth watching mainly for the wonderfully symbolic cataclysm scenes—the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy crushing the White House before Donald Trump can occupy it, and the collapse of the Vatican as an enormous crack tears apart the fingers of God and man on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

I am reminded of this and other catastrophe movies of recent decades because almost all end with some surviving humans walking into the sunset to live another day. It’s a Hollywood thing.

Desperate Times Demand Desperate Measures

And even I, pessimist (or realist) that I am, cannot resist standing before the dozen horsemen and offering one deeply desperate and possibly despised measure that may slow their progress. We must urgently reduce the population of humans on the planet before the dozen horsemen begin this same task in earnest. Taking control of one’s destiny is a path recommended by many life coaches.

Yet this particular suggestion is dangerous beyond measure, harking back to a horrific human history of genocide, massacre and Holocaust. I thus offer the suggestion not without trepidation. But an analysis of how each of the twelve catastrophes above might be mitigated leads me always back to one, simple thought. There are too many of us on the planet.

The dreadful dilemma of who must die in order that others may live has been repeatedly faced throughout history and literature. The one morally acceptable answer is that we can sacrifice only ourselves. There is no ethical basis on which we can point to others. I offer two thoughts.

The only possibility to reduce the human population without death is to sacrifice our primal reproductive urge. A voluntary decade-long moratorium on reproduction would be an enormous sacrifice for those who wish for (more) children but would quickly lead to a steep reduction in the human population.

At the other end of life, we may ask ourselves a question about our urge to prolong life, even when it becomes a living death. If we offered people the possibility of an easy release (as we choose for our pets), how many would choose to exit for a variety of reasons, from avoidance of personal suffering to a philosophical decision to leave Earth’s limited resources to those more deserving?

Preparing for Death of All Your Loved (and Unloved) Ones

If the best we can hope for is to somewhat delay the planetary apocalypse, we must turn our thoughts to the process of adapting ourselves to a limited and deteriorating future. Not a physical adaptation—survivalism in the backwoods is not an option when the woods burn around you, escaping to Mars is the preserve of a very few billionaires and still completely unproven.

I mean the psychological societal reworking of living and dying described by Dr Jem Bendell, Professor of Sustainability Leadership at the University of Cumbria (UK), in a widely referenced 2018 scientific paper, “Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy.” His assessment of our current situation is dry, rational, scientific. And damning. His conclusion is that even the scientific community and environmentally aware society is in a state of denial, not of climate change but of its immense and immediate impacts. He thus provides “Emotional support in face of climate tragedy” as well as a lengthy and thoughtful blog-style home page of possibilities for adaptation to and acceptance of the apocalypse.

Look to Leonie Joubert’s excellent op-ed “End-of-life anxiety and finding meaning in a collapsing climate” for further thoughts on our dilemma. Her powerfully written and concise article was among those that inspired me to write this piece and she offers other useful resources beyond those mentioned here.

Read also Catherine Ingram’s longform, poetic but devastating essay, “Facing Extinction.” She explains that she has been expecting the extinction of humanity for much of her life but now believes it to be imminent.

I will finish with her words. “Because the subject is so tragic and because it can scare or anger people, this is not an essay I ever wanted to write; it is one I would have wanted to read along the way. But the words on these pages are meant only for those who are ready for them. I offer no hope or solutions for our continuation, only companionship and empathy to you, the reader, who either knows or suspects that there is no hope or solution to be found. What we now need to find is courage.”

A long-time friend of the late Leonard Cohen, she offers us love and his words from “Boogie Street”:

So come my friends, be not afraid

We are so lightly here

It is in love that we are made

In love, we disappear

“What else is there to do now?” Ingram asks. “Here we are, some of the last humans who will experience this beautiful planet since Homo Sapiens began their journey some 200,000 years ago.”