The world is slowly starting to talk collapse

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Below, the editorial from the previous review summarised how more top professionals are speaking out about collapse risk and readiness (although very few use such language).?

The world is slowly starting to talk collapse?[audio version here]

[Editorial for the Deep Adaptation Review, by Prof Jem Bendell]

The new head of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has publicly accepted the obvious – that the pace of climate heating is speeding up, and rapidly. The WMO has always been more able to declare what the science currently concludes than the cumbersome, cautious, and catastrophically misleading IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). One of the most famous environmentalists in the UK since the 1980s, Jonathan Porritt, wrote that the IPPC should be “put on notice”. That’s because, “forced to comply with the UN’s highly politicised, consensus-based decision-making process, its Assessment Reports (and occasional Special Reports) do not tell the truth. The IPCC has rarely managed to reflect the frontline science going on all around the world; its generic reassurances (that 1.5°C is still alive, for instance) are now a travesty of what good, responsible science is all about." Whereas I’m lampooned as a “one man IPCC” by journalists who think they are respectful of science, rather than having a poor understanding of scientific processes, hundreds of climatologists and research analysts have?critiqued the IPCC. For instance, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, explained over 5 years ago in a seminal report, that "experts tend to establish a peer world-view which becomes ever more rigid and focussed. Yet the crucial insights regarding the issue in question may lurk at the fringes... Therefore, it is all the more important to listen to non-mainstream voices who understand the issue and are less hesitant to cry wolf. Unfortunately for us, the wolf may already be in the house." Being the founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, he knew what he was talking about. But both he and that report were ignored. So were Dr Ye Tao and myself, when we went to the UNFCCC CoP Summit in Egypt in 2022 to call for rapid action against heating from the reduction of aerosols. This?reaction is because there are incentives for paid professionals in climatology to avoid concluding the obvious. For instance, in the Deep Adaptation?paper in 2018, I noted that there was already good evidence that the pace of global sea level rise was increasing, which would only be possible if the pace of heating was increasing. That’s a simple indicator, which could have shifted more of us onto an emergency footing (with disaster management and adaptation being key), perhaps?if careerist ‘climate users’ hadn’t blocked it?when prioritising their own emotions, income, and status.

Jonathan Porritt is a doyen of the corporate sustainability movement, which I was part of once. His article is therefore significant for how it invites the environmental profession to abandon stories and strategies for a managed transition. "My criticism here applies just as much to those NGOs as to all those government delegations and businesses enjoying the latest CoP tourism offer. They’re either totally na?ve or deeply dishonest,” he wrote. “And I hate to have to say this, but that particularly applies to many of those “stubborn optimists” or “resolute climate solutionists” who still cannot accept just how fast things are changing around the world." He is not alone. Another leader in that field since the 1990s is Simon Zadek. A new report he co-wrote recognised that the 1.5C target was part of “the fictional prospect of a ‘win-win’ transition to a future world much like today’s - just without the carbon. Through this lens, peddled by most of our political, business, and civil leaders, we remain constrained to act within the confines of conventional wisdoms embedded in today’s status quo." The report succinctly stated the dangers of wishful thinking: "To not prepare for a life beyond 1.5C is a reckless disregard for humanity."The importance of such a shift was recognised by a leading facilitator of multi-stakeholder dialogues and collaborations, Mille Bojer. “As a scenarios practitioner I find the glorification of virtuous hope and optimism (and the shaming of "doomsday prophets") that happens in places like Davos and elsewhere to be a dangerous part of the problem,” she wrote. “We need to surrender to reality and activate our imagination.” These are indicators that in professional circles, admissions of defeat for reformism and transition are no longer just muttered in the hotel bar but could begin shaping strategies and projects. After years of ignoring or vilifying people like me, it’s a relief to see more of the sustainability profession escape the ‘seven sins of denial’ that I wrote about last year. That means the conversation on collapse risk and readiness will expand within the sustainability profession, and that’s something I’ll explore in my speech in Brisbane next month. But the wider situation is still difficult for such conversations, as I want to recap on now.Unfortunately, in wider society, the managerial classes in charge of the world’s top institutions and media outlets are still ideologically policing our public conversation. They continue to suppress discussion of whether it’s too late to avert catastrophic damage, and instead promote elite-friendly stories of our techno-salvation. I experienced one instance of that when a senior manager within the National Public Radio network decided to withdraw a documentary on Deep Adaptation to climate chaos. It had been commissioned, cost them a bunch of money and staff time, and been edited and fact checked, before a last-minute sanction. Such suppression of discussion means that, empirically demonstrable, rising public anxiety about our planetary situation seeps out through the popularity of creative arts. This?is something we note in the culture section of this review.

As I have explained for years, suppression is counterproductive. This?is because without an open discussion in civil society, various unconscious patterns, or psychological games will be played out over time. For ease, we might describe them as the ‘blame game’ and the ‘safety game’. The first game is a natural way for people to try to shift the difficult emotions of grief and fear. It’s why we get angry at someone or a group. Some people will target those who are easier to blame and where support can be won for such blame. For instance, blame a nation, a corporation, an industrial sector, a generation, a gender, or a species (that’ll be us, the human race). Some people will tell grand stories of why this tragedy befell humanity, in ways that affirm their ideology and power, or avoid critiquing it. Which brings us to the ‘safety game’.

Concluding we are in a situation of the creeping collapse of modern societies can trigger a sense of existential threat to one’s worldview and identity, not just to one’s future, or the future of one’s children. That threat is therefore to the ‘ego’ and its deep-seated desire that we exist in a significant way that persists despite death. Therefore, as things fall apart, some people will decide their role is to try to grab as much as possible for themselves and their kind, whether they're?small-scale preppers, or large-scale military strategists. In order to feel like they are still in control and matter to the universe, other people will even try to accelerate the process of societal collapse. That includes the ‘accelerationists’ who flutter around those tech bros who appear irreconcilably alienated from the wildness of real life. Others will seek multi-year grants to fund nice lifestyles in advanced cities located on top of a pyramid of global exploitation. We will hear them talk?about polycrisis, metacrisis, multicrisis, or permacrisis rather than collapse.?They will warn about the rise of protectionist sentiments in the Majority World, or the general public’s alienation from the credentialed classes. Some members of the environmental profession who are listening to Porritt, Zadek, and Boyer?might be tempted by that limited response, which?avoids the worldview-shattering implications of societal collapse.

Turning away from such responses, other people may naively claim that safety comes from growing our own food. That is what some people think I am doing by co-founding an organic farm and farm school. But I know that Bekandze Farm is not likely to make me safer in isolation, as my neighbours will need food, along with their neighbours, and political changes after societal disruption could scupper any of my plans. This?doesn’t mean that collapse-ready organic farms aren’t a great idea, but that we shouldn’t make them our own ‘safety game’.To help more of us transcend the blame and safety games in an era of unfolding societal disruption and collapse, we need to talk more about collapse and offer alternative narratives for living meaningful lives in this new context. That includes narratives about how we got into this mess, how to be with this knowledge, what to do about it, and what not to do about it. We can celebrate the freedom that ‘doomsters’ are finding to live more courageously, kindly, and creatively since we woke up to the unfolding collapse of a society that we no longer assume is sane or legitimate.Without such discussion and alternative narratives, the general public will only experience those narratives that serve elites and factions of capital. In particular, I see one binary beginning to dominate. On the one hand, the clean tech, big tech, and nuclear sectors promote techno-salvation and therefore demonise alarmist readings of the science and current data. On the other hand, the fossil fuel and heavy industry sectors promote the idea that manmade climate change is uncertain, or a hoax, or just not that important. As we humans make sense of the world through stories, articulating narratives to counter those delusional ones is going to be as useful as anything else we could do at this time. So thank you for reading this review.I am grateful that this issue received voluntary input from Matthew Slater and Stella Nyambura Mbau, who supported myself and Associate Editor Jessica Groenendijk. We thank our individual sponsors at the end of the review. If you supported us, thank you. Please consider taking some?moments to forward this newsletter to a few people who you think might be suffering eco-anxiety but not yet know about a post-doom Deep Adaptation response. Perhaps bring them along to an event? I will be participating in various ones online and in Australia, Hungary, Belgium, Mexico, and USA this year (see the Courses and Events section). If you fancy trying out hearing from me more often on collapse risk, readiness, and response, then please subscribe to my blog.

Warmly, Jem Bendell

Publisher, Deep Adaptation Review

Author,?Breaking Together

Cofounder, Bekandze Farm