[These 7 characters, as well as the original 12, are excerpts from I Want a Better Catastrophe (forthcoming 2019-ish). 12 Characters is now also a series of interactive conversations touring England and Wales.]
SEVEN (ADDITIONAL) CHARACTERS IN SEARCH OF AN APOCALYPSE
We can fix this.
We are facing the greatest challenge in the history of humanity. In a few short decades, we must move the global economy off of carbon or else face total ecosystem collapse. The task is daunting but we can do it. We have the technology. We have the UN. We have the scientists. We have the People. We even have the Pope. With the possible exception of Exxon’s lobbyists, we’re all on the same team: Team Earth. Failure is simply not an option.
While I wish we had more time, there is still time. The only thing lacking is concerted political will. And that is shifting. 400K in the streets of New York. Strong agreements coming out of Paris. Keystone XL pipeline stopped in its tracks. The tide is turning. We are starting to win. The great transformation is beginning. None of this should come as a surprise: After all, we all want to survive, and nothing mobilizes people better than a clear existential threat.
This is not just a pep-talk I give myself. This is not just a bullshit story I tell myself to give me a reason to keep on trying. I sincerely believe we can and will turn things around. I can see the path forward—it’s clear, doable, and necessary. Every day I wake up on fire, and I charge down that path. I keep my eyes on the prize and never look back.
The science is clear: we must fix this. The policy and technology is clear: we can. And in my heart I know we will.
Science will find a way.
“We are as gods and have to get good at it.”
—Stewart Brand
Science got us into this mess and science is going to get us out. The blitzkrieg started WWII, but the Bomb ended it. We put a man on the moon and a new heart in Dick Cheney. Science has pulled off miracles before, and now, with humanity’s greatest challenge before us, it’ll come through for us again. It has to.
It has to because it’s too late for anything else. Government policy? You’ve got to be kidding. Bureaucracy, corruption, politics, inertia. No way. A citizen’s revolution? Noble, but impractical. When was the last time one of those changed anything that wasn’t already ready to change? And how long did that take? Sure, the long arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, but nowhere near fast enough. And, anyway, with 28 trillion dollars at stake, the most powerful industry on earth isn’t going to kowtow to some rag-tag band of do-gooders. No, only science can save us now.
And I’m not talking about the everyday miracles that it’s already doing: bringing the cost of solar down 100 times lower than it was in 1977. Or Tesla’s new battery, which can power an entire home and help smooth out the electrical grid in the process. Not to mention electric cars, smart metering and all the rest. That’s all good, but we needed it at scale 30 years ago. Bringing it on now only gives us a few extra years of breathing room because we’re about to blow past all the safe carbon emission thresholds we’ve set. What I’m talking about has to happen at another level entirely. Manhattan Project-level breakthroughs, like pollution-free desktop fusion, or geoengineering at a scale never before seen. Science got us into this mess, and science will get us out, even if that means putting huge solar reflectors in space, or seeding the atmosphere with sulfur aerosols or turning half the Pacific into a carbon sequestration sink.
Like the 7th Cavalry riding in at the end of the movie — only this time in white lab coats and thick-rimmed spectacles — science will save the day. It’s the only card we’ve got left up our sleeves.
We can get through this together.
“If we wait for governments, it’ll be too little, too late. If we act as individuals, it’ll be too little. But if we act as communities, it just might be enough, just in time.”
—Rob Hopkins, co-founder of the Transition Movement
This is going to sound corny, but I like people. And I like being, “in community,” as the kids say. Which is lucky for me, because if anything’s going to save us from the ugliness headed our way, it’s community. I get why “preppers” are prepping. Minus the guns and booby-traps, I’m kind of one myself. But the way I see it: we’re way stronger if we work together. My slogan: “Preppers, unite! We have nothing to lose but our lonely, rugged-individualist, go-it-alone bunkers.”
You see, I’m a “hopeful and helpful” person. I just am. And, turns out, I’m far from the only one. Who knew, but when you put your truth out there, you find your tribe. At that first meeting — no more than a pot-luck, really — it was such a relief to come out of the closet about it all. To just say, I think “some kind of Collapse is coming.” And to have the other folks there nod, and go, Yeah, me too. There was a kind of silence in the room, then. Everyone was looking at each other, and our eyes were saying, So, what are we going to do? And that’s quite a question. Because the government is not going to protect us. The corporations are certainly not going to protect us. We’ve got to do it for ourselves. We have to be ready as the shit hits the fan, and it’s already starting to.
The good news: There’s a power in “just doing stuff.” And, here in Greenville, we’re doing lots of great stuff. After that first meeting, we got to work. We set up a tool-lending library, a solar cooperative, a community-supported agriculture association. We’re learning about permaculture, wilderness medicine, living systems. A lot of people talk about “resilient communities,” but we’re actually trying to build one.
And here’s the thing: it’s not just necessary, it’s been kind of an adventure. I’m learning new things, and I feel myself changing in good ways. We love our little town, and we’re trying to do right by it. And maybe the best part? I’ve found my tribe. These people are fun, resourceful and skillful; the kind of people you want to be around in tough times. There’s an engineer, a few farmers, a retired lawyer — pretty handy for sorting out arrangements for limited-equity coops and such — a guy on disability, even a poet. Yes, a poet, but she’s also a mean bicycle mechanic. Surprisingly, maybe, we’ve got both Dems and Repubs — not to mention two or three Greens, and even a Libertarian — in our circle. It seems that when you start doing stuff at the local level that really matters to folks, the politics fall away a bit. The local Unitarian church is pitching in, and two of the city managers are starting to take notice. We’ve jump-started a conversation about re-municipalizing our local utility, and we’re even lobbying the State Capitol to nix those ridiculous restrictions on solar.
I say: Enough with the isolation and despair. Enough with feeling overwhelmed. Enough with expecting someone else to take care of it. We need to push through all that, and get busy. Find your tribe, start a group. An affinity group, resilience circle, prayer group, gardening club — almost any group will do to start. Governments are moving too slow—too much politics, too much division there. And individuals can’t do much on their own. At the community level, however, we have room to move. And it feels really good to move.
If it gets too bad, God will intervene.
“39 percent of Americans believe God will intercede to stop humans from destroying the earth.”
—poll, Public Religion Research Institute; November, 2014
Sure the climate is changing. It’s always changed and always will. But that is the work of God and Nature. Man can’t change the climate. Hurricane Katrina. Snowpocalypse. The drought in California. Spiraling temperatures. People say these are signs of the End Times. Could be, I don’t know. In some mysterious fashion that we cannot understand, it’s all part of God’s plan for us. We can’t know His mind, of course, but I sincerely believe that if things get too bad, he will step in. He’s done it before — Genesis, The Flood, Parting the Red Sea — and if He needs to, if He chooses to, He will do it again.
I dated a girl in college. Briefly. A sorority girl. Nice enough, but — how can I say this? — she had no place to put her soul. She was groundless. To her it was all about numbers, and molecules, and “oh what a piece of work is man.” For her, the Bible was just another book. Not for me. I grew up with the Bible. It explains the whole world to me. It’s my Lord, my home, my everything; more true to me than life itself. But I’m no fool: I also believe in science. I ride in airplanes, and obviously trust that the science and engineering that built the plane will keep me up in the air. I had triple bypass surgery several years ago; I trusted the science my doctors were trained on. Likewise, I trust the scientific instruments that have been recording the rise in temperature over the last 30 years. But the Earth and everything in the Universe is God’s Creation. Unless it is His will, God will never let it come to ruin. If things get too bad, God will intervene. God will make it right.
Some things change in this world, and some things are Eternal, and I know on which side of that line my loyalties lie. So, I don’t fret about the fate of the earth in any ultimate sense. No need to despair. No need to futz up our whole economy with a carbon tax. God can take the acid out of the ocean. God can take the carbon out of the air. God can put the glaciers back together. He can. If He wants to. Does He?—I don’t know. Maybe these are the End Times. Maybe this is how it all ends. Either way, God’s got it covered. This is His green earth, and I am happy to be here for as long as He sees fit.
I have kids, hopelessness is simply not an option.
We are defined by the things that we can’t afford to lose hope in.
—Mayra Barraza
To borrow a familiar metaphor, it seems humanity is stuck on a train barreling forward into the unknown. The engine car is sealed off from the rest of us. The driver is either dead, his body slumped over the accelerator, pressing it towards maximum; or long ago lost comms with HQ and is dutifully following the last “forward at all costs” orders he received. Somewhere far far up ahead there’s a cliff, an unavoidable cliff.
When does the train head over the cliff? Before I had kids I had it pegged sometime around 2050 when the effects of runaway climate change were expected to kick in hard. My legs and lungs were due to give out before then, so I didn’t get too worked up about it. I was sad for humanity as a whole, but it was only a vague, world-weary kind of sadness. Then I had kids — a beautiful boy and a girl — Benson and Callie — they’re 15 and 17 now. Good kids. Sweet, smart, so much their own people. I can’t box the future off anymore. What happens late in the century matters to me now more than I ever thought it could.
The train — with my children aboard — will keep hurtling forward, and with it, a piece of me, a living, breathing, heartbreaking piece of me hurtles on into the future. I won’t physically face the horrors farther down the line, but my heart goes over the cliff every day. I feel the impossible vertigo, the impact, the dark waters rising.
Now, I have to believe that there’s a way to brake the train or miraculously switch tracks, or for some to jump clear before the end. I have to have hope. The alternative is a death sentence for my children. It doesn’t matter that the data hasn’t changed, my heart has. A few of us parents have been scheming up a plan to climb across the speeding train and smash our way into the engine car. It’s impossible, it’ll never succeed, but we’re going to try anyway. What choice do we have?
I want a better catastrophe.
An optimist is one who knows exactly how bad a place the world can be; a pessimist is one who finds out anew every morning.
—Peter Ustinov
Climate catastrophe is coming. We know this. The only question is: What kind of catastrophe and exactly how bad will it be?
In the best case scenario, an unprecedented worldwide Marshall Plan transitions the global economy off of carbon in 30 short years, holding global temperature rise to only 2-3°C. This causes near-total polar ice melt, a 5-10 foot sea level rise by 2070, ocean acidification and major habitat disruption. We lose New York, Shanghai and many of our greatest cities. Hundreds of thousands of species become extinct but not all. Coastal flooding, systemic crop failure, and mass starvation lead to a billion climate refugees, global resource wars and partial social breakdown, but some of us survive, and civilization — in some form — stumbles through. That’s the best case scenario. In the worst case scenario, run-away global warming of 6°C+ super-heats the planet, wiping out most complex life forms.
In the worst case scenario, there’s nothing we can do to change the ultimate outcome. Catastrophe is total. But here’s the good news: in the best case scenario, what we do matters. If projections tell us that, say, 50% of the Earth’s species are likely to die off, and we can do something to help make that “only” 49%, shouldn’t we try? Indeed. We must protect all that we can. We must do everything in our power to limit the damage, as well as become resilient enough that at least some of us survive with our humanity intact. What we want here is a better catastrophe.
Imagine the protest rallies: “What do we want? A better catastrophe! When do we want it? As late in the century as possible!” Door-to-door recruitment: “Excuse me, Ma’am, would you sign this petition to only half-fuck over the planet?”
A defeatist attitude, you say? Hardly. It’s hard-nosed, courageous, and full of hope for the future. What was Winston Churchill’s rallying cry in the darkest moments of WWII? “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat!” Not exactly an upbeat message. He wasn’t one to over-promise, and nor should we. He too had a choice of catastrophes: Europe as a Nazi-occupied Death Camp. Or Europe bombed to pieces and split down the middle, with some take-away wisdom about the nature of evil. He chose a better catastrophe and so should we. If catastrophe is where we’re headed, let’s fight hard — lay down our lives if we need to — to get the best catastrophe we can.
I refuse to go extinct.
(Based on a speech given by 15-year-old Swedish high-schooler, Greta Thuneberg, at the “Declaration of the eXtinction Rebellion,” Wednesday, October 31, 2018, outside the UK Parliament.)
When I was eight years old I first heard about something called “climate change.” Apparently, it was something that humans had created by our way of living. I was told to turn off the lights to save energy and to recycle paper to save resources. I remember thinking it was very strange that humans, who are just one of millions of animal species, could be capable of changing the Earth’s climate. If this were true, how could we be talking about anything else? As soon as you turned on the TV, everything ought to be about that. Headlines, radios, newspapers — you simply wouldn’t hear about anything else. As if there was a World War going on.
But no one ever talked about it. If burning fossils was so bad that it threatened our very existence, how could we simply continue like before? Why were there no restrictions? Why wasn’t it made illegal? To me, that did not add up. It was too unreal.
I have Aspberger’s Syndrome. To me, most things are black and white. But we Autistics might be the normal ones. People keep saying that Climate Change is an existential threat, and yet they just carry on like before. If the emissions have to stop, then we must stop the emissions. Every day we use 100 million barrels of oil. If to survive, we need to keep that oil in the ground, then must to keep that oil in the ground. To me, that is black and white. There are no gray areas when it comes to survival. Either we go on as a civilization or we don’t. We have to change.
Seriously change: Rich countries like Sweden and the UK need to get down to zero emissions within 6 to 12 years. How can we expect countries like India or Nigeria to care about the climate crisis if we who already have everything don’t?
When most people think about the future they don’t think beyond the year 2050. But if I live to be 100, I’ll be alive in the year 2103. What we do or don’t do right now will affect my entire life and the lives of my children and grandchildren.
When school started in August this year I decided: Enough. I sat myself down on the ground outside the Swedish Parliament. I went on strike for the climate. We can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Everything needs to change, and it has to start today. It is time for civil disobedience. It is time to rebel.
© 2018 Andrew Boyd | bettercatastrophe.com
