Comforting analysis of what Trump can or cannot do

I’m hoping most of you keep an eye on the Youtube channel Beau of the Fifth Column, but if you haven’t seen it, this video is worth a few minutes of your time. Over the next few years, I think we’re likely to get a trickle of revelations about the work the GOP did to dismantle the infrastructure of the US government, and of US democracy (such as it is), but fortunately, he wasn’t able to do enough damage to keep himself in power.

 

That said, It seems very likely to me that the GOP is going to continue its adherence to fascist ideology and tactics, and they will try this again. People sometimes like to play the “who was the worst president” game, and while cases can be made for various people, the reality is that no president exists in a vacuum. The actions of each are made possible by those that came before. Trump’s immigration policies built on what the Obama administration did. Trump and Obama both made use of the security apparatus that was developed under George W Bush, and so on. It’s possible that the institutions of the American government will be patched up enough that the next would-be dictator will have as much difficulty as Trump did – or more – but it is by no means guaranteed.

Regardless of what comes next, I hope it is becoming clear to everyone that the version of representative democracy with which we are familiar is a failure. We cannot delegate self-governance to “leaders” by voting every couple years, and trust them to act for the common good. We must learn how to take a more active role in how our country is governed, not just to get the changes we need with regard to climate change and economic justice, but also to hold on to the dream of democracy, and to work to bring it into reality.

Climate change, despair, and hope

I recently got a comment from a reader who was feeling pretty hopeless about our future under climate change. Whether you’re thinking about the ways that higher temperatures will hurt agriculture, the direct human impact of ever-worsening heat waves, mass migration from rising sea levels, or the oceanic collapse that seems to be the likely outcome of rising temperatures and acidity, it’s easy to feel like the future is just going to be endlessly escalating misery, leading to extinction. As this introduction may have indicated, I am not immune to those fears. I think there’s a degree to which despair is the most logical conclusion when faced with the scale of the problem; even more so when you consider the ways in which the global political and economic landscape seems almost designed to guide us to the worst of all possible futures. It’s the biggest problem ever faced by humanity, at a time when it feels like all the resources we need to respond to it are committed to stroking the egos of the ruling class.

I’ve mentioned before that the original purpose of this blog was to provide a bit of perspective on what the worst-case scenarios of climate change looked like. At the time, activists I interacted with were still mostly caught up in the idea that we could somehow prevent the climate from changing in any major way, and those not active on the issue seemed to think it was a problem that could be put off for a century or two. The problem with researching worst-case scenarios is that it’s easy to feel that it’s all hopeless. It also made it easy to see how, once denial became impossible, those who wanted to prevent a systemic response to the problem would switch from “it’s not happening” to “there’s nothing we can do about it”.

Denial and doubt are powerful demotivators, but I fear they’re downright harmless when compared to despair.

With all the focus on the myriad of ways in which our future was likely to be horrible, there were definitely times when it seemed like there was no way out. In trying to deal with that, I struck on a metaphor that still resonates with me. It’s not hard to spark fear, and cause people to run away from a threat. The problem is that the future is unfamiliar territory. If you start fleeing for your life, and you don’t know where you’re going, the odds of going the wrong way are pretty high. You might run into a dead end, or toward an even greater danger. If you have some prospect of safety, however, you can run with that in mind.

I don’t just want to tell people what they need to avoid, though we should never forget that aspect of the situation. I want people to have some notion that running away can lead to more than just surviving until we can’t run anymore. The future doesn’t have to be terror, misery and death, if we work now to build what we’ll need for safety, community, and joy.

We need to build something that has never been built before, and it’s hard to get people to join in an effort like that if they can’t see what that has to offer. As it stands, the choice is less between good or bad futures, and more between two unknowns. Even as more and more people become convinced that one path leads towards hell on earth, if the other path leads into darkness, it’s not hard to imagine that it could be worse.

And we have people whose full-time job is telling us about all the horrors that might lurk in that darkness. Now that a lot of folks have realized that the planet’s going to keep warming, probably for generations to come, it now seems like the dark path is not just unknown, it’s the unknown plus all the horrors of the path we can see more clearly.

So, if I want to help people take action on climate change, and work with me to build a better future, I can’t just tell them what we’re avoiding. Blind panic won’t do us any good – it’s just as likely to lead to people seeking out the “comfort” of totalitarianism. Maybe more likely. What we need is to convince people that a better future is within our reach – that something different is possible, and good. The future is, without question, going to be terrifying in a lot of ways. But there’s a very real possibility that it could be wonderful, if we’re able, as a species, to stop clinging to the past and commit ourselves to something better.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

  -Antoine de Saint Exupéry

It’s tempting to compare the emotional reaction to climate change with the challenges of coping with depression. When you’re suffering from depression, it’s a bit like being stuck in thick fog. Even if you know it’s not your fault that you’re there, and that there are other people there with you, you still can’t see anything but endless, formless gray. The difference is that because other people have found ways to treat depression, and overcome it, we can hear voices telling us that the fog isn’t endless. There’s a way out, and they can try to help us find it. It gives us something to work towards.

When a country faces a problem like America’s nightmarish healthcare system, we can look to other countries, and see how they’ve tackled similar problems. We can see that there are better ways to do it. We can talk to people who’ve experienced both systems, and hear about the differences. We have something concrete to work towards, and the knowledge that even if the general solution is the same – universal healthcare – we can do it in our own way, if that’s important. We can try to do what others have done, and to improve on it.

Climate change is global, and there’s nobody on the other side of it. We’re all in the fog together, some people have discovered that the water’s rising, and told us which way is likely to lead to higher ground, but nobody can really see it, or claim for certain that it’s there. Nobody’s been there, and some people seem convinced that the water’s not rising, the higher ground doesn’t exist, and if we go looking for it, we’ll fall off a cliff or get eaten by monsters hiding in the fog.

We need to organize all of humanity to do something that’s never been done before. While I think it’s important for me to write about climate science, it may be more important for me to take a more speculative approach. I have a vision – or a hundred visions – of what a better future could look like, and it’s my job to try to share that with other people, and work with them to sort through the myriad of possible futures, and to work towards those that seem best. It’s difficult to do, because I don’t know what the future will look like either, and it’s much easier to conjure an image that strikes the viewer as impossible than it is to conjure one that we can believe is within our reach.

I also want to do that without misleading anyone about the gravity of our situation, or the difficulty of the work ahead.

 “The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned … I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”

   -Antonio Gramsci

It’s common, in atheist circles, to point out that one cannot choose one’s beliefs. It’s not really possible to simply decide one day that you will begin to believe something. That said, I think it is possible for us to indoctrinate ourselves to some degree. That’s the truth behind the advice of “fake it till you make it” sometimes given to those who don’t believe but feel they should. If you’re surrounded by people who reinforce a certain belief, and you keep reinforcing it to yourself, you may come to actually believe it in time. This trait leaves us vulnerable to propaganda and malicious indoctrination campaigns, but it is also a tool that we should be able to make use of, not to mislead ourselves, but to convince ourselves of things that we may know to be true, without feeling to be true.

I’m not sure, but I think the version of this with which the most people are familiar is fear of the dark. For all the rational reasons behind it, there are times when that fear is, quite simply, not founded in reality. And so when forced to cope with darkness, many of us have resorted to reminding ourselves that there’s nothing to fear, or spinning narratives that cast the goblins of our imagination as incompetent, or having to follow strange, arbitrary rules that will provide us with safety if we step carefully.

Because darkness is something most people have to deal with from time to time, most of us learn to lose our fear of it, or to cope with that fear if it never goes away.

Similarly, I think there’s good evidence that we can not only survive climate change, but that we can build a world that allows us to thrive despite it. I do actually believe that, most of the time. The biggest obstacles are political, hence the frequency with which I write about politics. In this area, I think there’s also cause for both pessimism and optimism. Massive political changes have occurred throughout history, even against obstacles that seemed insurmountable.

“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”

As hopeful as that quote is, it’s also worth remembering that most of the changes that can be compared to what’s needed today were not peaceful changes. Those who make the accumulation of wealth and power their life’s work are rarely willing to just give that up, and would rather destroy everything than lose their power over other people. That is dangerous, particularly in a world with so many tools and weapons available to the powerful. That said, their power still relies on the general population. I think overcoming global capitalism is necessary for humanity’s survival, and while that is a profoundly dangerous project, it is also entirely within our power. The fact that the capitalist class spends so much money convincing people that change is impossible, is an indication that they really do need to have most of the population either opposed to change, or unwilling to commit themselves to it. They’re willing to let go of some of their hoards to keep us passive, because they know that without our consent, they will not be able to keep those hoards.

That means that just as a better future is technologically possible, it is also politically possible. The question is figuring out how to make it happen. There’s a degree to which studying things like the labor movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the socialist and communist movements of the same era can provide us with many useful ideas, but the world has changed radically in the last few decades, and both the obstacles to change, and the available tools were unthinkable during those movements. There is no perfect formula that will solve the problem. While we need global change, we also need to accept that the exact form of that change is going to look different in different parts of the world. Humanity is too contrary and diverse for a one-size-fits-all approach. That said, we’re also all the same species, and more similar than we often think.

One size won’t fit all, but a basic pattern can be adapted to suit a wide variety of needs. I don’t think any one person can design that pattern, so my approach has been an attempt to piece together an eternal work in progress from the efforts and expertise of others.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve moved from talking about the emotions surrounding climate change, to the kinds of work we need to be doing. There’s a reason for that. It’s a lot easier to feel like something is possible when you’re actively involved in working to make it happen. The problem is that for really big problems, we often don’t know where to even start, and it’s hard to see how the miniscule accomplishments of a single person, even working for an entire year, can make a difference. That’s the other aim of the direct action piece I just linked – while I believe that it can form at least part of the foundation for a global change, it’s also designed to provide the means for individual and community-level change. It helps me to know that if the grocery store runs out of food, I can feed my household for a while, as we figure out new sources. Even more, it helps me to know that I can help to feed my neighbors, so that we’re all able to work together toward solving that problem.

And I also know that I can convince others to accumulate a store of food for the same reasons, which further extends our ability to survive as a group. Focus on the things you can change personally, not because that’s enough, but because it puts you in a better position to tackle larger changes, and because it can connect you with others who are doing the same work. Do the work where you live, and I will do it where I live. Communicate with those around you. Communicate with those, like me, who live hundreds, or thousands of miles away. In the last few years I’ve helped people I will probably never meet, and been helped in turn. It gives me hope to see people contributing a little to the work I’m trying to do, not just because I like being able to make ends meet, but because it also means that they are doing well enough themselves that they’re able to do so. It gives me hope to know that there are people reading this blog in the US, and in Europe, and in Australia, and in other parts of the world, because that means that even with my tiny audience, there is a network of people who are at least thinking along similar lines, while they read these words. The problem is global in scale, but so is our ability to respond to it.

My direct action plan is not enough. Not nearly. But neither is it the only effort at dealing with the problem. My plan isn’t even “mine” – it is, itself, a collection of the efforts and thoughts of other people, in other parts of the world, who are almost certainly doing more than I am.

My “pessimism of the intellect” comes from a sober analysis of our circumstances. My “optimism of the will” comes from reminding myself, day after day, that there are people all over the world who are working on this problem, and who are helping others to do the same right now.

I would honestly be shocked if the planet didn’t continue warming for the rest of my life, but, self-indoctrination or no, I also believe that we can build lives worth living for an ever-expanding proportion of humanity as part of our effort to survive that warming.

This blog is currently my only source of income. If you’d like to support the work I do, feed my dog, or help offset the costs of our upcoming move, please head over to patreon.com/oceanoxia, and join the Oceanoxia collective. My patrons have kept my household fed and housed during this crazy year, and while I’ll continue looking for wage labor, I really like writing for you all, and would love to be able to continue dedicating most of my time to that endeavor. If you have the means and the desire to do so, please give according to your ability, that I might survive, according to my needs!

Some thoughts on the events of January 6th, 2021

This is a bit unstructured.

First off, I think this should be understood as an attempted coup. As with many other terms in history and politics, there’s not a single, universally accepted definition of what a “coup” is. Traditionally it’s a group of armed people taking power by killing, imprisoning, or exiling everyone who might contest their authority. Historically, things get a bit murkier. Coups tend to be illegitimate by definition, and so those involved in them generally try to find some way to claim that they are the legitimate rulers, and those who were ousted were illegitimate. This can play out a lot of ways. In the case of Bolsonaro’s rise to power in Brazil, it involved a bogus corruption charge against the most popular politician in the country that was used to imprison da Silva so he couldn’t even participate in the election. Over the 20th century, a lot of coups – almost entirely by right-wing groups – have had at least some support from the government of the United States. If you pay attention to global discourse on current events in the U.S., you’re likely to run into people pointing out that the U.S. seems to be in the process of doing to itself what it has done to so many other countries around the world.

I’ve seen some people saying this isn’t a coup attempt, because it wasn’t coordinated enough, or it wasn’t successful enough, or any of a number of other reasons. Obviously I don’t accept these lines of reasoning. Seemingly spontaneous “uprisings” have long been a part of power grabs, as the perception of having the support of the masses is generally a prime justification for any power grab. A recent example from U.S. history would be the “Brooks Brothers Riot” of 2000, that was instrumental in the efforts by the GOP to stop a recount from going ahead in Florida, thus circumventing the official procedures through a Supreme Court order, and putting George W. Bush in power. When it happened, the riot was cast as a spontaneous demonstration of outrage by Florida citizens. Later, it became clear that the participants were paid Republican operatives.

I think there were some things about Wednesday’s coup attempt that make it more difficult to categorize, especially given that the people who breached the capitol building didn’t seem to have any plan for what they should do if they did get inside. Once people got inside, it seemed to be mostly folks wandering aimlessly around the building, and stealing souvenirs.

That said, the whole event was planned ahead of time, and was kicked off by a rally held by Trump, and a speech in which he urged them to march on the capitol. It also took place in the context of a months-long effort to steal the 2020 election, in which Trump and the rest of the GOP seem to have tried everything they could think of, from interfering with the postal service, to calling up state officials and pushing them to “find” votes. Thus far, all those efforts seem to have failed, but the scatter-shot nature of the overall campaign means that Wednesday’s events fit very well indeed.

The other thing to keep in mind is how Trump went about instigating the assault. Throughout his time in office, Trump has shown himself to be an avid practitioner of what’s known as “stochastic terrorism“, sometimes also called “lone wolf” terrorism. For those who are unfamiliar, the basics of it are pretty simple – propaganda is used to encourage hate of the targeted group, and to escalate that hate as much as possible. “Stochastic” is a statistical term that describes the property of randomness. Stochastic terrorism is a tactic that relies on the probability that, within a given population, certain messages will drive one or more people to decide to take it upon themselves to commit violence.  The group in question is portrayed as not just bad, but actively dangerous, and each bit of propaganda comes with an added message: Somebody oughta do something.  Someone might just say that outright, or they might just imply it.

Like any tactic, it’s a tool that can be used by anyone, but it has long been a favorite of fascists and other right-wing extremists. The so-called “Pro-Life” movement has waged a decades-long campaign to either kill or drive into retirement abortion doctors and those that work with them. Calling them “baby-killers”, sharing graphic and shocking images that (generally falsely) claim to portray the results of abortions, and spreading rumors about how evil those involved are. This spurred on bombings and assassinations all across the United States. The white supremacist movement has used these tactics for far longer, relying on very old messaging about the evils and dangers of black people to make it easy to whip people into a frenzy. This results in very predictable violence that is always waved away as being “isolated incidents”.

Trump has leaned heavily on this tactic. It always comes with some level of plausible deniability, and it’s pretty easy for anyone with a platform and a knack for demagoguery to engage in. Bigoted, would-be mobster that he is, it’s an ideal tactic for Trump. His followers – especially the more violent among them – are pretty familiar with how this system works, and have paid close attention whenever he dragged his feet or outright refused to denounce the violence that his words seemed to call for.

It’s no surprise, then, that this tactic would come up in his efforts to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election. While I wasn’t sure what form it would take, I’ve been sure for a long time that there would be violence this January. Honestly, I think it’s likely there will be more to come. As with many things, I very much hope to be proven wrong about that.

All of that said, there may also have been some plans, if only half-formed, for what to do under cover of the chaos, should the opportunity arise. There may have been a hope that the danger to legislators would cause a delay in the Senate’s certification of Biden’s win. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Someone may have hoped for a chance to destroy the official electoral ballots, or to tamper with them in some other way. That didn’t happen either. Those who showed up with a large collection of zipties may have wanted to take hostages. That also didn’t happen:

Stochastic terrorism is a matter of playing the odds. It’s not guaranteed to cause violence, it’s just likely to. The violence that does occur isn’t guaranteed to have the desired effect on politics, but it’s likely to. In this case, the odds of this somehow keeping Trump in power were very, very low, but at this point I think anything above zero makes it worth trying, for Trump. His entire life seems to be made up of trying everything, and continuing what works. The vast wealth he inherited meant that this amoeba-like strategy never really cost him anything he couldn’t afford to lose.

All of that said, I think it’s also important to note that there may have been less obvious motives behind what happened, and there may have been objectives that were met.

I think these are worth considering, not just because of the concern over the activities of foreign agents, but also because of the damage various domestic entities could do with classified or confidential information, either in pursuit of profit, or in furthering any number of political goals.

And if nothing else, this breach is likely to hamper the activities of the Legislative Branch for months to come, just as Trump’s lame duck activities will interfere in the Biden Administration’s ability to get to work. At this point, Trump’s not playing chess or checkers, he’s playing 52-card pickup, and Biden is being left to clean up the mess.

While there’s a huge amount that Biden could and should do on day one (especially with the Democrats in control of the House and the Senate), there are numerous ways in which the events of January 6th could interfere in the affairs of the federal government, and could be used as an excuse for avoiding or delaying changes that the pro-corporate leadership of the Democratic Party simply don’t like. While it’s good that this latest effort to keep Trump in power was an abject failure, it has done real damage to the American government, and may have succeeded in ways we won’t know for a long time, if ever.

This blog is currently my only source of income. If you’d like to support the work I do, feed my dog, or help offset the costs of our upcoming move, please head over to patreon.com/oceanoxia, and join the Oceanoxia collective. My patrons have kept my household fed and housed during this crazy year, and while I’ll continue looking for wage labor, I really like writing for you all, and would love to be able to continue dedicating most of my time to that endeavor. If you have the means and the desire to do so, please give according to your ability, that I might survive, according to my needs!

Raksha gets a taste of winter to finish off 2020

One of the few downsides of moving to Glasgow has been that for all it’s farther north than I’ve ever lived before, there’s not much of a winter to speak of here. Last year I’m not sure we had more than two or three days in a row below freezing, and places that want that “white Christmas” feel generally have to rely on some kind of fake snow. The real stuff falls sometimes, but I’ve yet to see more than a centimeter or two, and it doesn’t stick. This winter has been a bit chillier, and a recent snowfall actually stuck around for a bit, at least where the weak winter sun had trouble reaching.

The thing is, Raksha The Perpetually Concerned is, among other things, part Husky. She suffers in hot weather, and absolutely loves the snow. In Boston, this meant she had a hard time during the summers, and in the winter, she would roll in the snow every chance she got. As spring approached, she’s start trying to roll in the gritty, gray piles left by the snowplows, after all the other snow had melted. It was a rather pathetic spectacle, but I was comforted, with the experience of many dog lifetimes, that the snow would return again in due course.

Scotland has been different. The summers are much cooler, and that has been wonderful, both for Raksha, and for myself. Tegan is… less happy with it, but she also appreciates not having the oppressive heat of a Boston summer. The lack of snow in the winter has been a little sad, for Raksha in particular, so it was nice to have the chance to get her out in a snowy field, even if the snow was a bit thin on the ground.

Image shows Raksha, a mid-sized black dog with tan legs, walking away from the camera. She's at the edge of a snow-covered path, about to step onto some slightly snowy grass. It's sunny, but it's clear that the sun is pretty low in the sky, as the dog's shadow is long going off to the side.

Powder snow under her feet! It’s been ages since she’s felt this!

The image shows Raksha, a mid-sized black dog with tan legs, and tan on her cheeks and eyebrows approaching the camera. She's walking on snowy grass, carefully placing one paw out in front of her before putting her weight on it. It's very sunny, and a bit cold looking. She seems unsure about things, but focused on walking over the unstable surface.

Tragedy! The grass and soil are frozen in a strange and crusty surface that crumbles underfoot. It LOOKS like snow, and it SMELLS like snow, but it feels strange and wrong. Romping is not an option, only nervous creeping over the unstable ground. It’s still very exciting though…

The image shows Raksha, a mid-sized black dog with tan legs and cheeks looking off to the right of the camera. Her tail is wagging low behind her, and her ears are flopped down in an ingratiating manner. She's looking as fuzzy and harmless as she can make herself, in the hopes that the approaching person will pet her.

Excitement! While investigating the shade on the other side of the path, she noticed a PERSON! A person walking TOWARDS her! The months of isolation have been a bit difficult for an old dog accustomed to fairly regular house guests and interacting with strangers out and about. Maybe this is some welcome social contact? Better increase the odds by looking as fuzzy as possible!

The image shows Raksha, a mid-sized black dog with tan legs and cheeks now facing to the left of the camera, watching the stranger leave. Her tail is slightly curled up, and not wagging anymore, and her ears are pointed toward the receding human, as if to catch any sound that might indicate an interest in her.

Disappointment! The stranger was not interested in petting the dog! He was on his way somewhere, and focused mostly on his prayer beads. Resigned, she watches him in case he changes his mind, but he does not.

The image shows Raksha, a mid-sized black dog with tan legs, cheeks, and eyebrows., lying on the ground, her nose pointed to the left of the camera, and her ears pointed to the right. She's taking in her surroundings all at once.

Resignation. The stranger is gone, taking her hopes with him. She laid down on the ground with a groan, and sat there, sniffing the breeze and pointing her ears at noises happening around her. One of the advantages of having ears that big is that they move mostly independently from the rest of her head, so she can multitask in this manner. At least the snow feels good on her fur.

The image shows Raksha, a mid-sized black dog with tan legs and cheeks, a bit of white on her throat, and a white belly, rolling and flailing on her back, all four paws up in the air, and nose pressed against the snowy grass.

Snow! Snow snow snow, snow? Snow. Snow snow. Snow…. Snow!

The lack of human interaction was sad, but in the end she remembered that she had snow to roll in, and attended to that duty with gusto. It’s been a long year, and I think she’s had a harder time with isolation than I have, but the snow was a treat, even if the ground under it was less solid than she’d like. I don’t know what 2021 will bring. My household is being forced to move, due to visa problems, which is excitement that we could do without. That said, moving from Scotland to Ireland will be easier than the move from the U.S. to Scotland, I hope we can return here. This ugly apartment complex has honestly been a wonderful place to live, and cheaper than anything in Dublin is likely to be. On the other hand, life is all about the experiences one can have while living, and I’ve never been to Ireland, outside of the limbo of an airport between flights. Hopefully 2021 will be better than 2020.

Happy new year!

This blog is currently my only source of income. If you’d like to support the work I do, feed my dog, or help offset the costs of our upcoming move, please head over to patreon.com/oceanoxia, and join the Oceanoxia collective. My patrons have kept my household fed and housed during this crazy year, and while I’ll continue looking for wage labor, I really like writing for you all, and would love to be able to continue dedicating most of my time to that endeavor. If you have the means and the desire to do so, please give according to your ability, that I might survive, according to my needs!

A Martian Odyssey: The thrilling conclusion!

A couple weeks back, I posted my installment of our winter fundraiser‘s story chain. I owe an apology, both to my colleagues here, and to my readers, who have no doubt been eagerly awaiting the rest of the story. William Brinkman brought us the conclusion to our epic tale on December 13th, and I neglected to share it at the time!

If you haven’t seen it yet, then your long, cold wait is over – head over to the Bolingbrook Babbler for the finale, and may it carry you through to the New Year!

Who are the war criminals Trump decided to pardon?

I’m working on some other stuff, but in the mean time, since it’s relevant, here’s some info on the Blackwater mercenaries Trump decided to pardon, and on the efforts by right-wing media to whitewash their crimes. This is another example of how Trump is not – in any way – meaningfully separate from the mainstream conservative movement of the United States. He is louder and less subtle, but none of the things he has done are really outside of the GOP norm. His absence will not make conservatives suddenly start caring about human life.

 

Unsurprising bad news: Plants are getting worse at absorbing carbon dioxide

Of the many arguments against treating climate change like the serious problem it is, one of the most foolish has been the attempt to claim that it’s actually a good thing that CO2 levels are rising. On some occasions, this argument is made by people who say it’s a good thing to have the temperature rise. Back in the late 1890s, Svante Arrhenius apparently felt this way, but that’s perhaps understandable given that he expected the warming to take a couple thousand years, and Sweden can be fairly cold. More often, what we get is the grade-school-science argument that “CO2 is plant food”:

In case it needs to be said, this has never been a valid argument. It’s on par with saying that because plants like water, it would be better for all of them if the entire planet was flooded, or because they like sunlight, it would be better for them if they sky was never, ever cloudy. Still, photosynthesis remains our best method for pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, and wild plants and algae are responsible for a large majority of the photosynthesis going on around the world.

Unfortunately, it has always been more likely than not that a warmer planet would actually reduce the degree to which plants pull carbon out of the air. The problem is that the pores through which plants take in and emit gases are the same ones through which they lose water. Lower rainfall and higher temperatures mean that plants must reduce their rate of photosynthesis, or they will dry out and die. Different plants have adaptations to deal with this, but with global weather patterns changing, and average temperatures rising, many of them are increasingly out of their comfort zones.

While some plants have been taking up more carbon as it has become more abundant, other factors have been pushing the other direction, and uptake as a proportion of atmospheric concentration is declining:

“In this study, by analyzing the best available long-term data from remote sensing and state-of-the-art land-surface models, we have found that since 1982, the global average CFE [CO2 fertilization effect] has decreased steadily from 21 percent to 12 percent per 100 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere,” said Ben Poulter, study co-author and scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “In other words, terrestrial ecosystems are becoming less reliable as a temporary climate change mitigator.”

What’s Causing It?

Without this feedback between photosynthesis and elevated atmospheric CO2, Poulter said we would have seen climate change occurring at a much more rapid rate. But scientists have been concerned about how long the CO2 Fertilization Effect could be sustained before other limitations on plant growth kick in.

For instance, while an abundance of CO2 won’t limit growth, a lack of water, nutrients, or sunlight – the other necessary components of photosynthesis — will. To determine why the CFE has been decreasing, the study team took the availability of these other elements into account.

“According to our data, what appears to be happening is that there’s both a moisture limitation as well as a nutrient limitation coming into play,” Poulter said. “In the tropics, there’s often just not enough nitrogen or phosphorus, to sustain photosynthesis, and in the high-latitude temperate and boreal regions, soil moisture is now more limiting than air temperature because of recent warming.”

In effect, climate change is weakening plants’ ability to mitigate further climate change over large areas of the planet.

In a lot of ways, this changes nothing. For those who’ve been paying attention, it has long been clear that saving ourselves and the species on which we rely will require immediate, drastic action from humanity. What this study does provide is confirmation of what we strongly suspected, and underscores the urgency of the situation. Earth’s natural rapid CO2 sinks – terrestrial plants, diffusion into the ocean, and algal photosynthesis – all have limits, both on how fast they can absorb carbon, and on how much they can absorb. They have been providing us with a “cushioning” effect for generations. They’ve been absorbing a lot of the carbon we’ve been digging up and burning. We know this because as the quoted article mentions, the CFE is a known phenomenon, and because the rising acidity of the world’s oceans has been caused by the absorption of a vast amount of CO2 as the relative atmospheric concentration has risen.

Our global climate is a massive system, and it takes a huge amount of energy to “move” it. For over a century now, the organic and inorganic parts of that system have been absorbing staggering amounts of CO2 and heat as we have extracted and burned hundreds of billions of tons of carbon that was buried over hundreds of millions of years. It is no exaggeration to say that what we face right now is the biggest problem in human history. Without the benefit of hindsight, it’s impossible to say if we’ve ever faced a greater risk of extinction, but the literal scale of the problem, and the sheer mass of matter we need to move are unlike anything our species or its immediate ancestors have ever dealt with. The only consolation is that we are also at a point where our technical ability to tackle such problems is at its peak. As I have said, and as I will keep saying, we have everything we need to deal with this problem. What we lack is the organization and structure required to do so.

Despite everything happening in the world right now, life goes on, and I’m still required to spend money in order to live. My work is supported by a group of wonderful people over at patreon.com/oceanoxia, and I would be immeasurably grateful if you would consider joining their ranks. How much you give, and for how long are entirely under your control, and every little bit helps a great deal, as my household is very short on money right now. Thank you for reading, and take care of yourselves.

Death for profit: Herd immunity and capitalist realism

When I’m discussing or reading about the political systems of countries other than the U.S., I start with the assumption that even where there are similarities, the context, dynamics, and groups involved aren’t going to be analogous to the situation of my home country. While I think American Exceptionalism is arrogant nonsense, there are ways in which every country is exceptional, because every country has its own unique circumstances. That said, we’re all the same species, and we tend to respond similarly in similar circumstances.

I don’t recall when exactly I started paying attention to British politics, but while it was clear that the label “liberal” meant something different outside of the U.S., it was also clear that the UK Conservative Party was pretty similar to the American Republican Party. During healthcare debates, some Americans who wanted universal healthcare pointed out that far from being an extremist position, even the conservatives in the UK supported the NHS. Since then, it’s become pretty clear to me that to whatever degree that’s true, it’s similar to the Republicans’ claims to value democracy. It’s a position they hold when they think it’s necessary to gain and keep power, and one that they abandon as soon as it no longer seems to be serving that purpose.

I think the frequent parallels drawn between Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher are useful, both in terms of ideology, and in terms of the position occupied by those leaders in the minds of the modern parties. I also think that the lessons of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine are essential to understanding not only the British and American conservative movements, but also a great deal of how capitalism operates on a global scale. If you haven’t read it yet, you should do so.

Since moving to Scotland, the similarities have been even more noticeable, and that came into grim focus with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. People sounded the alarm in both countries, saying that far from taking steps to deal with the outbreak, they were actively downplaying it, and planning to do nothing at all. Those people were attacked for daring to claim that conservatives could be so callous, but eventually it became indisputable that the ruling parties of both the U.S. and the U.K. planned to let the disease tear through their countries with little or no action from the government to help the populations.

This lethal disregard for both human life and scientific realities should not surprise anyone, but it absolutely should enrage everyone. This tallies with the version of capitalist dogma described in The Shock Doctrine, and that’s constantly used to undermine any policies that might improve – or save – countless lives. This is the same dogma behind the decades-long campaign of denial and misinformation around climate science, as well as tobacco smoke, lead, and many other issues.

This is not the first time that pro-capitalist politicians and policies have caused mass death through a deliberate disregard of facts that threaten the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful.

As long as these people keep their power, it will not be the last time. They have demonstrated repeatedly that they will not change how they do things, and that they have no remorse for the horrors they bring about. I’m not just talking about the politicians currently holding governmental positions, I’m talking about the whole “ruling class” of global capitalism. As the planet continues to get hotter, there is no limit to how many people our current rulers will allow to die, or directly kill to keep their hoards and their power.

To them, there seems to be no difference between the end of their reign, and the end of the world, and so they’re happy to cause the latter to prevent the former. A human society not ruled by them is a human society that’s not worth keeping alive.

Unless we take their power away.

Despite everything happening in the world right now, life goes on, and I’m still required to spend money in order to live. My work is supported by a group of wonderful people over at patreon.com/oceanoxia, and I would be immeasurably grateful if you would consider joining their ranks. How much you give, and for how long are entirely under your control, and every little bit helps a great deal, as my household is very short on money right now. Thank you for reading, and take care of yourselves.

Biden’s victory may have bought us some time, but we’d better make use of it.

We seem to have gotten some breathing room, but that wasn’t a foregone conclusion, and the people who were on board and helping in the effort to establish fascism in the United States are still around, and still hold power in the GOP, and in the American government. Hell, until January, they still control the U.S. government.

This can happen again. Given how American politics work, it probably will happen again, and if we don’t work hard, it’s likely to eventually succeed. The factors that led to Trump’s election have gone nowhere. It’s entirely likely that without the disastrous response to the pandemic, Trump would have won a second term.

Voting is not enough to maintain a democracy. People need to organize. People need to make a habit of working together with the people who live around them. Humanity’s greatest strength is our ability to communicate and work together. I think we’ve largely forgotten how to use that “muscle”, and we need to re-learn it, practice it, and help others to do the same.

Without a deliberate effort to build and exert collective power, those who already have concentrated power will continue to run the world for their own personal gain, and it’s becoming increasingly clear that that path leads to death and misery. 

 

Don’t travel for the holidays

This should not need to be said at this point. Hopefully none of my readers need to hear it, but it’s got to be said again. We are facing what may be the worst period in U.S. public health history.

⇒Do not travel for the holidays⇐

Seriously. The US is now losing more people than were killed on 9/11 on a daily basis to COVID-19 alone. A substantial chunk of those numbers come from holiday travel on the week of Thanksgiving. The December holiday season has more holidays, lasts longer, and for some people is more important. If people don’t stay home, January could see us passing 4,000 dead from COVID-19 every day. Just assume that you have the disease, you’re lucky enough to be asymptomatic, and you might give it to the people you love the most. Assume THEY have it, and will give it to you.

Don’t drive drunk, don’t shoot guns off at random in cities, and don’t travel for the holidays. Don’t kill people.

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