blog — vaihto·virta·be

🌍 on collapse

begun ✍️ by Frits on 2024-06-04

❬ The below is an estimated 8m read. I do tend to “repeat myself” though, for lack of better English for “in herhaling vallen”. Also there are six pictures, be adding thousands upon thousands of words. 🤦 But then, what's a wall of text in the face of eternity, or my, your – our demise? ❭

Collective action will not be considered until the impacts are obvious and likely past a point of no return.

..an internet denizen wrote, about a year ago, in the comment section of a news paper article. We know of the Mayans, and Easter Island. Also, over 3000 years ago, there was the Late Bronze Age collapse. Says history.com:

Ironically, the interconnectedness that had strengthened these Bronze Age kingdoms may have hastened their downfall.

Anno 2024, we sure are highly interconnected – compared to just ten, never mind thirty years ago. The internet has come a long way, as did we, didn't we! The future, though, is blim & greak – to start on a jolly note, before recalling our future looks grim & bleak indeed. Many bright scientists — for every James Hansen there is an Eliot Jacobson — and many mediocre minds alike can tell you all about it. How bleak could it really be? We'll sure find out, and it does keep the aforementioned bright scientists up at night, and they would know, wouldn't they. Note that climate disaster is only the most eye-catching consequence of our predicament, or the most glaring symptom of our condition, rooted in overshoot.

Take famine: we know of it, though mostly in Africa, or from history, and the bible, maybe. But indulge yourself in some mere Gedankenspielerei and imagine such very famine bluntly coming for you and your loved ones, here, in our lifetimes. Because supermarkets one day stop to be all that super, their logistics unraveled due to pesky Houthis or a flu more serious than COVID-19; and crops shriveled in the heat, and/or were flooded for good measure, in one too many places at once.

Or think of refugees nowadays: they die in sad numbers on tragic treks north, in the Mediterranean, and the Darién Gap. When they do make it to wherever they made it, they disrupt the societies in which they end up. No need even for religion or other bad habits, just their numbers will do. Even if everyone were willing to show all humanity the other cheek (I'm saving my *tumbleweed* gifs for later) wäre es bloß nicht schaffbar. It's about a lack, and not one of willingness. See how it works out today, with just a few million people on their ~~merry~~ way, from 🇸🇾 Syria here or 🇻🇪 Venezuela there. Imagine a billion or two people from 🇵🇰 Pakistan or 🇮🇳 India, 🇳🇬 Nigeria or 🇪🇸 Spain – compelled or forced to leave their home or scorched homeland. Where will they go? A cynic might mutter they're probably better off perishing just where they are.

Not like we didn't know. ❬ Who's this pesky “we”, though.. And what all didn't they know.. ❭ #ExxonKnew, for instance. Already in the early 1970's we knew about the limits we ought to have abided by. Again, no religion needed, the limits are numbers, and we relied on technology to ~~overcome and~~ ignore them, ~~gobbled~~ gobbling up fossil fuels like there ~~was~~ is no tomorrow; disfiguring all that is beautiful, quite simply destroying the very systems that support us. Utter insanity. While doing numbers, it's hard to fathom how probably just a few dozen, or hundred sleazy, willingly myopic scumbags can be singularly blamed for unleashing this, the ongoing sixth mass extinction, unfolding before our eyes.

This past July 22th was the planet's 🔥 warmest day in 100.000 years. Awful numbers keep blowing minds brighter than mine and presumably yours. Even high-profile mainstream media like CNN have stopped mincing words. That mere fact could be reason for pause, and then maybe cause for concern – of which, however, around me I discern absolutely NONE. So then, so many wise words to choose from.. ЧТО ДѢЛАТЬ for example, i.e. what is to be done? Perhaps I shall go spraypaint some landmark or glu myself to an unsuspecting work of art after all. One of few bucket list items was to go see The Hunters in the Snow in real life someday anyway.

On July 30th of this, the year of our Lord 2024, The Guardian reports on coral bleaching once more, it must have been a while. Coral reefs made for breathtaking pictures, and do so again as they succumb to marine heatwaves – life gone, death beyond repair. ❬ An April 2025 headline reads “84% of the world's coral reefs hit by worst bleaching event on record”. ❭

“We’re coming out of a couple of decades where we made predictions,” said Prof Tracy Ainsworth, the vice-president of the International Coral Reef Society. “Now we are at a point where we hoped we would not be. Now we’re asking, what do we do now?”

If there is one thing to internalize, it is that there is no fixing things anymore, no way out of our predicament. This cannot be stressed emphatically enough: this, our time, is a time of consequences. I shouldn't lose myself “in admiring the problem”, I was told by a loved one.. A wise take and sidestep I probably needed, but of little solace, and in any case of no use. Attitude is irrelevant, and obstinate resolve regrettable in the face of an unfolding polycrisis. It's not just conceited to declare all problems solvable (how even could that be), it is exceedingly ill-advised to assume they are and act upon the assumption, putting everything at stake.

Believing we can bend ~~nature~~ reality to our every whim & will for all time simply never made sense. It's ludicrous, as evidenced by the evidence time and time again. *gestures broadly at everything* Only today, being 21/5/25, did I notice that nowhere in this slab of text I verbatim mentioned the tragically misguided disposition toward 🦾 TECHNO OPTIMISM. One does not create something out of nothing – how hard is that to get? Nor! does one, say, pull CO₂ out of thick air; and surely! it is unwise to assume technology will exist? Just because we will it to. And even! if it would, when would it? Long overdue, in a bit of a hurry, one might wonder or worry. And, to wrap this up, should the magic technology ever come to be, would one store the CO₂ in plastic bottles, or rather wooden boxes? Cleverly in sandbags maybe, to stack up against the rising tide? Fixing just the CO₂ problem turns out to be impossible.

Let's, for good measure, drop yet another stunning holiday postcard frommm.. 🇨🇦 Manitoba this time. Good thing we have those seeds stashed in 🇳🇴 Svalbard! Where they will safely remain, so when Europe freezes, they will sav.. we will plant th.. Hunger won't b.. hmm. Such smart monkeys or so clever a squirrel we are, some with iPhones in their opposably thumbed paws.

“L'homme moderne, au lieu de chercher à s'élever à la vérité, prétend la faire descendre à son niveau.”

Our undisputable ingenuity has had plenty of time to prove its worth or use, but never managed to slow us down, never mind stop us from ever-growing. Our failure to recognise this has only exacerbated the kerfuffle — and keeps doing so, turning problems into a predicament. Truly embracing our predicament requires not just willingness (in severe shortage already), but also, amidst the incessant hustle and bustle foreground noise of an imposed lifestyle, the ability and time to try to get a proper picture, and adequately assess the state of affairs. I suppose it then takes a decent while to regain one's bearings, maybe surfing some unfamiliar Kübler-Ross vibes in no particular order.

This terrible mega- giga- 🙌 tera-kerfuffle obviously doesn't leave us with nothing left to do, quite the contrary: we'd do well to reconsider our efforts. Where are those bright minds if you need them. The sooner, the better, because in the meantime we have been, and are ever more running out of time, wasting precious resources of human, and other kinds. Green growth is such an obvious oxymoron. Resources are finite, planned degrowth a fantasy. Unplanned then, the degrowth will be forced upon us, and quite dramatically so, especially if you're inclined to literally just assume all will remain swell just because it always was.

Mitigating the misery ahead as best we can appears to be the only sane thing to focus on, in already unfavourable circumstances baked in to get unfavourabler still over time, for decades (upon decades) to come. It reminds me of that.. guy forced to roll a boulder up a hill for all eternity. As always, Wikipedia assists us with a think, because –

“The maddening nature of the punishment was reserved for Sisyphus due to his hubristic belief that his cleverness surpassed that of Zeus himself.”

Frits, 5/8/24,
with 424 CO₂ ppm

7/9/25 PS: This yet another Reddit post reminds of the 'x' in XR, another storyline too ludicrous for many to consider, in spite of its pertinence.

21/9/25 PPS: This yet another NYT article's headline caught my eye: “a responsible way to cool the planet”. I wasn't aware we had a choice of ways! Its URL gently gave the topic away: the noble art of geoengineering. In this case entailing the use of “a small fleet of high-altitude aircraft to increase the amount of sulfuric acid droplets in the upper atmosphere”.
🙌 Geoengineering is a great idea to some, for starters the shareholders of the high-altitude aircraft industry I suppose, and those of the sulfuric acid droplet manufacturers. Others consider it an unwise thing to do. Out of principle, or pragmatism, caution maybe? or wtf ever. It's something to think through, one would hope, and in any case would remain a band-aid non-solution, for lack of proper English for “een pleister op een houten been”.
The NYT article left no room for comment, a sad reminder of my general lack of a clue for one thing, and our collective tragic impudence for another. It's unlikely sulfuric acid would not be dumped into the sky at some point, merely because it can be done and would be presumed better than doing nothing at all, undoing anything unfortunately not an option. Not quite 🦾 techno optimism, 😞 techno desperation maybe is even more depressing, and certainly no less questionable. In any case I'm not holding me breath for it bringing us back 🪸 the coral, say, or the 🐧 Aptenodytes forsteri we had come to know and love as the emperor penguin.

In my youth I certainly often must have come across as antagonistic for the sake of it, but my weary worn soul has lonnng shed most (if not all) hubris. Only incomprehension remains, and this life a dreamy pointless punishment. “Sicker!”, quoth Cassandra. 😶‍🌫️

∎

VAIHTO · VIRTA · BE

🌍 on collapse

📖 ⤑ “mi Pater si possibile est..

🐦 ⤑ B-b-b-b!