{"id":117142,"date":"2018-08-27T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=117142"},"modified":"2018-08-22T15:12:33","modified_gmt":"2018-08-22T14:12:33","slug":"saying-goodbye-to-planet-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/08\/saying-goodbye-to-planet-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Saying Goodbye to Planet Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Mr. Fish \/ Truthdig<\/p><\/div>\n

19 Aug 2018 – <\/em>The spectacular rise of human civilization\u2014its agrarian societies, cities, states, empires and industrial and technological advances ranging from irrigation and the use of metals to nuclear fusion\u2014took place during the last 10,000 years, after the last ice age. Much of North America was buried, before the ice retreated, under sheets eight times the height of the Empire State Building. This tiny span of time on a planet that is 4.5 billion years old is known as the Holocene Age. It now appears to be coming to an end with the refusal of our species to significantly curb the carbon emissions and pollutants that might cause human extinction. The human-induced change to the ecosystem, at least for many thousands of years, will probably make the biosphere inhospitable to most forms of life.<\/p>\n

The planet is transitioning under our onslaught to a new era called the Anthropocene. This era is the product of violent conquest, warfare, slavery, genocide and the Industrial Revolution, which began about 200 years ago, and saw humans start to burn a hundred million years of sunlight stored in the form of coal and petroleum. The numbers of humans climbed to over 7 billion. Air, water, ice and rock, which are interdependent, changed. Temperatures climbed. The Anthropocene, for humans and most other species, will most likely conclude with extinction or a massive die-off, as well as climate conditions that will preclude most known life forms. We engineered our march toward collective suicide although global warming was first identified in 1896<\/a> by the Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius.<\/p>\n

The failure to act to ameliorate global warming exposes the myth of human progress and the illusion that we are rational creatures. We ignore the wisdom of the past and the stark scientific facts before us. We are entranced by electronic hallucinations and burlesque acts, including those emanating from the centers of power, and this ensures our doom. Speak this unpleasant truth and you are condemned by much of society. The mania for hope and magical thinking is as seductive in the Industrial Age as it was in pre-modern societies.<\/p>\n

Ate and Nemesis were minor deities who were evoked in ancient Greek drama. Those infected with hubris, the Greeks warned, lost touch with the sacred, believed they could defy fate, or fortuna<\/em>, and abandoned humility and virtue. They thought of themselves as gods. Their hubris blinded them to human limits and led them to carry out acts of suicidal folly, embodied in the god Ate. This provoked the wrath of the gods. Divine retribution, in the form of Nemesis, led to tragedy and death and then restored balance and order, once those poisoned with hubris were eradicated. \u201cToo late, too late you see the path of wisdom,\u201d the Chorus in the play \u201cAntigone\u201d tells Creon, ruler of Thebes, whose family has died because of his hubris.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re probably not the first time there\u2019s been a civilization in the universe,\u201d Adam Frank<\/a>, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and the author of \u201cLight of the Stars<\/a>: Alien Worlds and the Fate of the Earth,\u201d told me when we met in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea that we\u2019re destroying the planet gives us way too much credit,\u201d he went on. \u201cCertainly, we\u2019re pushing the earth into a new era. If we look at the history of the biosphere, the history of life on earth, in the long run, the earth is just going to pick that up and do what is interesting for it. It will run new evolutionary experiments. We, on the other hand, may not be a part of that experiment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Civilizations probably have risen elsewhere in the universe, developed complex societies and then died because of their own technological advances. Every star in the night sky is believed to be circled by planets, some 10 billion trillion of which astronomers such as Frank Drake<\/a> estimate are hospitable to life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you develop an industrial civilization like ours, the route is going to be the same,\u201d Adam Frank said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have a hard time not triggering climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Astronomers call the inevitable death of advanced civilizations across the universe \u201cthe great filter.\u201d Robin Hanson in the essay<\/a>, \u201cThe Great Filter\u2014Are We Almost Past It?\u201d argues that advanced civilizations hit a wall or a barrier that makes continued existence impossible. The more that human societies evolve, according to Hanson, the more they become \u201cenergy intensive\u201d and ensure their own obliteration. This is why, many astronomers theorize, we have not encountered other advanced civilizations in the universe. They destroyed themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a civilization to destroy itself through nuclear war, it has to have certain emotional characteristics,\u201d Frank said. \u201cYou can imagine certain civilizations saying, \u2018I\u2019m not building those [nuclear weapons]. Those are crazy.\u2019 But climate change, you can\u2019t get away from. If you build a civilization, you\u2019re using huge amounts of energy. The energy feeds back on the planet, and you\u2019re going to push yourself into a kind of Anthropocene. It\u2019s probably universal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frank said that our inability to project ourselves into a future beyond our own life spans makes it hard for us to grasp the reality and consequences of severe climate change. Scenarios for dramatic climate change often center around the year 2100, when most adults living now will be dead. Although this projection may turn out to be overly optimistic given the accelerating rate of climate change, it allows societies to ignore\u2014because it is outside the life span of most living adults\u2014the slow-motion tsunami that is occurring.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think we\u2019re not a part of the biosphere\u2014that we\u2019re above it\u2014that we\u2019re special,\u201d Frank said. \u201cWe\u2019re not special.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re the experiment that the biosphere is running now,\u201d he said. \u201cA hundred million years ago, it was grassland. Grasslands were a new evolutionary innovation. They changed the planet, changed how the planet worked. Then the planet went on and did things with it. Industrial civilization is the latest experiment. We will keep being a part of that experiment or, with the way that we\u2019re pushing the biosphere, it will just move on without us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been sending probes to every other planet in the solar system for the last 60 years,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have rovers running around on Mars. We\u2019ve learned generically how planets work. From Venus, we\u2019ve learned about the runaway greenhouse effect. On Venus the temperature is 800 degrees. You can melt lead [there]. Mars is a totally dry, barren world now. But it used to have an ocean. It used to be a blue world. We have models that can predict the climate. I can predict the weather on Mars tomorrow via these climate models. People who think the only way we can understand climate is by studying the earth now, that\u2019s completely untrue. These other worlds\u2014Mars, Venus, Titan. Titan is a moon of Saturn that has an amazingly rich atmosphere. They all teach us how to think like a planet. They have taught us generically how planets behave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frank points out that much of the configurations of the ecosystem on which we depend have not always been part of the planet\u2019s biosphere. This includes the Gulf Stream, which carries warm water and warm air up from Florida to Boston and out across the Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cHundreds of millions of people in some of Earth\u2019s most technologically advanced cities rely on the mild climate delivered by the Gulf Stream,\u201d Frank writes in \u201cLight of the Stars.\u201d \u201cBut the Gulf Stream is nothing more than a particular circulation pattern formed during a particular climate state the Earth settled into after the last ice age ended. It is not a permanent fixture of the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything we think about the earth just happens to be this one moment we found it in,\u201d he told me. \u201cWe\u2019re pushing it [the planet] and we\u2019re pushing it hard. We don\u2019t have much time to make these transitions. What people have to understand is that climate change is our cosmic adolescence. We should have expected this. The question is not \u2018did we change the climate?\u2019 It\u2019s \u2018of course we changed the climate. What else did you expect to have happened?\u2019 We\u2019re like a teenager who has been given this power over ourselves. Just like how you give a teenager the keys to the car, there\u2019s this moment where you\u2019re like, \u2018Oh my God I hope you make it.\u2019 And that\u2019s what we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change is not a problem we have to make go away, in a sense that you don\u2019t make adolescence go away,\u201d Frank said. \u201cIt is a dangerous transition that you have to navigate. \u2026 The question is are we smart enough to deal with the effects of our own power? Climate change is not a pollution problem. It\u2019s not like any environmental problem we\u2019ve faced before. In some sense, it\u2019s not an environmental problem but a planetary transition. We\u2019ve already pushed the earth into it. We\u2019re going to have to evolve a new way of being a civilization, fundamentally.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will either evolve those group behaviors quickly or the earth will take what we\u2019ve given it, in terms of new climate states, and move on and create new species,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Frank said the mathematical models for the future of the planet have three trajectories. One is a massive die-off of perhaps 70 percent of the human population and then an uneasy stabilization. The second is complete collapse and extinction. The third is a dramatic reconfiguration of human society to protect the biosphere and make it more diverse and productive not for human beings but for the health of the planet. This would include halting our consumption of fossil fuels, converting to a plant-based diet and dismantling the animal agriculture industry as well as greening deserts and restoring rainforests.<\/p>\n

There is, Frank warned, a tipping point when the biosphere becomes so degraded no human activity will halt runaway climate change. He cites Venus again.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe water on Venus got lost slowly,\u201d he said. \u201cThe CO2<\/sub> built up. There was no way to take it out of the atmosphere. It gets hotter. The fact that it gets hotter makes it even hotter. Which makes it even hotter. That\u2019s what would happen in the collapse model. Planets have minds of their own. They are super-complex systems. Once you get the ball rolling down the hill. \u2026 This is the greatest fear. This is why we don\u2019t want to go past 2 degrees [Celsius] of climate change. We\u2019re scared that once you get past 2 degrees, the planet\u2019s own internal mechanisms kick in. The population comes down like a stone. A complete collapse. You lose the civilization entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Chris Hedges spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than 50 countries and has worked for <\/em>The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and<\/em> The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years. Hedges was part of the team of reporters at <\/em>The New York Times awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper\u2019s coverage of global terrorism. He also received the <\/em>Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. The <\/em>Los Angeles Press Club honored Hedges\u2019 original columns in <\/em>Truthdig by naming the author the Online Journalist of the Year in 2009 and again in 2011. The LAPC also granted him the Best Online Column award in 2010 for his <\/em>Truthdig essay \u201cOne Day We\u2019ll All Be Terrorists<\/a>.\u201d Hedges is a senior fellow at <\/em>The Nation Institute in New York City and has taught at Columbia University, New York University and Princeton University. He currently teaches inmates at a correctional facility in New Jersey.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 truthdig.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Aug 2018 – Climate change is not simply an environmental problem\u2014it is a planetary transition. We will survive only if we rapidly evolve to create new forms of civilization.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":81932,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}