I am an idiosyncratic person. I support HBD, but oppose white (or any other) imperialism. My attitudes towards mainstream liberalism and conservatism is to wish a plague on both their houses. I think we’re in for a world of hurt with Limits to Growth but also buy into “cornucopian” ideas like technological singularity and transhumanism. In personal life, I like to have my guns and hit the bong too. Etc.
I recently drove to the beach with a hipster chick who majored in something involving the environment (nothing technical) and recently found a marketing job with a clean energy start-up in SF. She went on and on about how important it is to buy local, observe Earth Hour, the fucking works. Only problem? She drove a four wheel drive. In one of the very few places in the US where you can get by without a car. It reminds me of an old Guardian story about a Swedish feminist police chief (“Captain Skirt”) who ran prostitution rings on the side… But on second thought all this is entirely normal. After all hypocrisy is the grease that smooths society’s wheels.
The greenies at least don’t force people into these ritualistic observances of Earth Hour, as if there’s some deity that could wave a wand and restore CO2 levels back to 1800. The conservatives tend to simply deny reality, deny AGW, as doing otherwise would make them willing accomplices in an impending global catastrophe. Not only is it dishonest but what’s worse many of them savagely smear and attack AGW’ers for the sin of pointing out the stark truth. They would have felt at home within the ranks of the NKVD.
Only very drastic interventions now stand a chance of averting tipping points that will likely send the Earth into an extreme greenhouse state by the end of the century… interventions that can only be implemented at this late stage of the game by some kind of global dictatorship. Desirable or not, justified or not, is irrelevant… it’s not going to happen, the system isn’t going to change. Furthermore, even individual interventions and lifestyle changes are irrelevant, as the Parable of the Beer Yeast demonstrates.
In an article for Forbes, Roger Kay analogizes our global sustainability predicament to that of a beer yeast in a sugar solution. You gobble up the delicious sugars, giving you the energy to reproduce. The only downside is that in the process you shit out alcohol, and so do billions of your fellows. Eventually you will all perish in a booze-drenched bed of your own making… So being morally upright, you refrain from eating the sugars. You live a horrid life, become impotent, and shrivel away and die. Unfortunately, your fellows don’t get the memo, and things turn out just the same as they otherwise would have.
So while I respect genuine back to the earth, sustainable types, I realize that they are not going to make a difference. The oil, coal, metals, etc. that they don’t consume will just lower their price, and ironically make them even cheaper for the majority of beer yeast, who’d rather live life to the full than toil away on permaculture gardens. While greenie life does have its charms it’s simply too inconvenient for most…
In the past year, I took a class on the Economics of Climate Change. While I took many interesting things from it the foremost was that reversing human emissions is simply unfeasible for the next generation at the very least. China is becoming a consumer society and their factories and dwellings will be powered with coal, and they will be transported by automobile. This year I also experienced if for a very short time the lifestyle of the very rich, having been invited to a party in the mansion of the son of a mini-tycoon… While I didn’t consciously dwell on it at the time, in retrospect the energy gobbled up in that place in a single night was surely equivalent to even a legitimate greenie’s yearlong energy savings. Reading statistics on energy use or polemics about wastage is one thing, seeing it for oneself – the large swimming pool accidentally heated to Jacuzzi temperature (which would be a huge bill, but shrugged off as inconsequential), the gourmet food having traveled God knows how many air megamiles, casual talk about first-class flights to the East Coast or abroad seemingly every other week… was visceral – and enticing. After all jealousy and envy even of ostentatious wealth are – unless you’re a bona fide revolutionary like Lenin or Castro – self-defeating and ultimately for losers.
So is angry ideological rhetoric and moralistic posturing, be it of the conservative AGW denier or faux-environmentalist variety.
The end consequences of catastrophic AGW may well lead to the premature deaths of hundreds of millions or even billions of people by the end of the century. Some countries like Botswana and Bangladesh may vanish from the face of the earth, inundated by sand and water. That is not my problem. It is society’s and government’s and they don’t give a fuck so why should ordinary citizens? Besides, evil as it sounds, but AGW will have the hidden bonus of benefiting the country I’m originally from – not only in relative, but also quite possibly absolute terms. Why should I care more about faceless Third Worlders? There’s of course no logical reason to do that. At least by NOT denying AGW realities I am already far more compassionate towards them than at least half of Americans. (Not that the hypocrites liberal and conservative will see it that way…)
A line from a fantasy baddie comes to mind: “There is no path to victory. The only path to follow is the Great Lord and rule for a time before all things end. The others are fools. They look for grand rewards in the eternities, but there will be no eternities. Only the now, the last days.”
A good motto for the lifestyle artist, the reactionary jackass, the rootless cosmopolitan, the manly man and aspiring sociopath to live by. Put the pedal to the metal!!!
“…and hit the bong too.”
Doesn’t that screw up one’s memory after a while? You’re very smart, so you have more to lose here than most. Working memory is closely linked with IQ. Stereotypically, motivation suffers as well.
Regarding climate, if the series of graphs at the link below represents real data and was not taken out of context, then why shouldn’t we be skeptical of the A part of AGW?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
These graphs imply that the current warming trend is utterly unremarkable, that bigger swings in both directions have happened many times before. If you know of a reason why the impression created by these graphs is false, I’m all eyes.
“Only very drastic interventions now stand a chance of averting tipping points…”
I don’t really know if the world is moving towards greenhouse hell, I’m not an expert. I don’t even know if the experts really know. Given the last 2.5 million years of the Earth’s history, you’d think that they should be more worried about the coming of the next Ice Age, but who am I to tell them that? I AM sure, however, that the world is experiencing a powerful dysgenic trend. This is the easiest thing in the world to notice. As far as we know, there is no intelligence anywhere else in the Universe. If the light goes out here, there’s no good reason to suppose that it will ever reappear anywhere. Humanity could do great things – it could achieve immortality, reach the stars, figure out the laws of the Universe. It could do all the things that theists have traditionally ascribed to Gods. It could become God. Not if the dysgenic trend continues though.
If the powers that be were really concerned with the future of humanity, if they were THAT altruistic, wouldn’t they approach the clear dysgenic trend at least as seriously as the far less clear (to laymen, and in this all politicians are laymen) warming threat? You don’t have to be an expert to see and understand the dysgenic trend. Instead, all except Lee Kwan Yew and maybe a couple of rogue-staters demonize those concerned about dysgenics.
In most societies, the powers that be aren’t even altruistic about their own peoples, much less humanity as a whole. Some aren’t even altruistic about their own families. And yes, I see AGW as an elite concern. The media, the Davos people, most politicians are on board with this idea. This doesn’t automatically mean that it’s false, but neither does it recommend this idea to me. If they were truly concerned with the fate of humanity (as opposed to the usual stuff – careers, fame, status among peers, chicks, personal bank accounts, expensive toys), they’d be at least as worried about dysgenics.
“…but there will be no eternities.”
You don’t know that. You’re descended from a line that probably goes back 3 billion years, to the birth of life on Earth. If you procreate, how do you know that the chain will ever break? Even if you don’t procreate, humanity could still go on forever, and there’s meaning in that for current humans.
The graphs at the link which I posted above lack data for the 20th century. There is a graph for that period at the Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png
The instrumental history of temperature, which is shown in black, peaks in 2004 (latest value) about 0.4 degrees C above the peak of the Medieval Warm Period. If you mentally continue the lines from the graphs at wattsupwiththat.com to that level – slightly above the Medieval Warm Period’s peak – the line fails to start looking extraordinary. There was nothing unusual about the MWP. The peak around 1200 BC looks higher and there were others like it further back in the current interglacial. What’s more, many past rises and falls look very sudden. The line turns nearly vertical in many places.
Conclusion: based on these two sources of info, nothing unusual has happened so far. If you know of any sources that suggest otherwise, I’ll look at those. If this entire idea is based on projections alone, it’s probably worthless.
It’s not going to be stopped, agreed. Individual action is not going to change anything, agreed.
So what what we have left as the Cassandras of the Fall, as you point out is the question of personal morality, ethics, and justice and your sense of peace with the natural universe/one’s creator (both either or neither as you choose).
That and a severe disagreement about what constitutes ‘the good life’ versus a ‘horrid life’.
The utter vapidity and shallowness of the mindset and lifestyle of the minigarchs who hosted you is appalling. Do you really think, in the long run, beyond the most immediate, temporal, and superficial gratifications – that these people are happier and better off, for say, than the people in the suprising number of eco-communes in Russia that we have been looking into (or the West).
Can you really know what is coming and what the cause of it is, be happy living a life of materialist and consumerist excess?
Personally, I am betting that just a couple of weeks being forced to live and associate with these vapid and shallow capitalist ‘eloi’ on a regular basis would drive Anatoly Karlin to insanity, rage and frustration. Nor could he enjoy it long in utter isolation, I would venture. Face it, Anatoly was born to rage in and against the fin de siecle…
I would love to introduce the Anatoly Karlin thirty years from now to his present incarnation and see if he feels the same then as now.
Whatever else I may be in the ultimate scale of the universe, I am simply not a bread yeast.
“After all jealousy and envy even of ostentatious wealth are – unless you’re a bona fide revolutionary like Lenin or Castro – self-defeating and ultimately for losers.”
– Well, yes, ahem, count me among the ‘losers’ and ultimately, happier, for it.
I’m always a bit confused by reactionary acceptance of, let’s call it ‘alarmist’ global warming theory. When equations run away with themselves and start producing ludicrous outcomes (5C temperature rises, whole nations flooded, etc), common sense needs to step in and remind everyone that a model is not an experiment.
“Why should I care more about faceless Third Worlders?”
Because their numbers are growing intrepidly. Nigeria’s population, ridiculously enough, is supposed to hit 750 million by mid-century. There is no way in hell that all those people are going to fit in Nigeria, or even that the governments of the North will do much to stop a huge invasion of them. Look at Europe now: how will it look in 50 years, with European’s numbers dwindling, and them becoming even more defenseless and decadent, with close to 3 billion starving Africans waiting to get in?
America is likely to lose a chunk, at least culturally if most definitely not in fact, to Mexico, with an enormous detriment to its human capital coming soon. Global warming, if indeed the disaster predictions come true, will send an wave swarm of humanity north, like never seen before, and the white world will likely not have the will to contain it.
Nigeria has for Southern Africa a high population density and it would still have a lower density than Bangladesh now so they could clearly fit. Besides i don’t know were you get that number of 750 million in 2050. Wikipedia gives a prediction of only 400 million and if i look at the growth rate they use i would even argue that it is to high.
European numbers, outside of the Eastern Europeans but i’m way to PC to say something about that, are not dwindling but slowly decreasing. We defenseless/ We spend more on defence than the rest of the World* combined. *excluding the US.
Africa can produce enough food for 3 billion people so no need for starving Africans.
Emigrants that don’t become part of the upper class are rarely able keep their original culture so i don’t see that happening.
Is a swarm up northern bad? I don’t see a problem as long as they aren’t Paki’s, Arabs or Romanians
Africa maybe could produce enough food for itself, hypothetically, but even today it doesn’t, and it doesn’t look like things are getting any better. A swarm up north is doubtlessly bad. It already has been bad for France, England and Germany and the rest of Europe.
They don’t because they are used as dumping ground for first world farmers. Also Africa has been ruled by dictators and they care about keeping peace in the capital so they want cheap food but Africa is going democratic and farmers always have an oversized vote so expect protective measures to support the farmers and with it a growing foodsupply
The number of Africans* in Europe is really small. To small to say if it has been bad. If you talk to the brown shirt brigade they would sooner talk about sending Paki’s back to India than about Africans.
*Africans as in Sub Sahara Africans. People from the Magreb and Sicily are not Africans within this context