❬ 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* gif
s 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. 😶🌫️
∎
..transeat a me calix iste” (Matthew 26:39)
Quotes are cool; and bible quotes among the coolest. Their weight is determined by their source, of course. What your drunken self deems weighty, for example, probably isn't. Not that it mightn't! Anyway, the Bible happens to be quite a weighty book after all, so there's a circle rounded.
Quotes convey wisdom, but some deceive by mere linguistic ostentation: not quite making sense upon closer examination. Much like many proverbs and other sayings. And some are deceptively wise, or unsuspectedly beautiful. So there shall be a quote for every day! never mind occasion.
Man oh my, birds.. 🐦 Merlin, blackcaps and thrushes; and music.. Oh my.