Guest essay by Eric Worrall
City liberals worrying about what survival skills they will need in the near future when the climate change sixth mass extinction causes society to collapse.
Humans in the headlights: frozen in the path of a climate catastrophe
By Alex Fletcher
March 22, 2019 — 9.07am…
On the surface, I’m spending my days normally. But most of the time, I’m thinking about climate change and what that means. Pretty much everything I thought I knew and relied on is now hazy. My assumptions about the past, the future, and the solidity of my world are in question. Beyond that, our actual values and behaviours as a society no longer make sense.
…
Either way I spend a lot of time searching things like ‘climate change news’, ‘sea level rise news’, and found another phrase that really took the wind out of my sails – ‘near-term societal collapse‘.
I read books on wilderness survival and have mini-panic attacks if I think about all the new skills I would need to learn to be self-sufficient, and protect and sustain my family, should organised society come to a creaking halt. I obviously don’t want this to happen, but do enough reading on climate change and it’s hard to escape it as a real possibility.
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We’re in the sixth mass extinction. The insect world is dying. Forests are not growing back after wildfires.
These things are happening right now, we can’t ignore them anymore. It is undoubtedly cause to panic.
…
We humans are rabbits in the headlights, intuitively knowing we’re in trouble, but standing around watching as it thunders towards us.
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Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/national/humans-in-the-headlights-frozen-in-the-path-of-a-climate-catastrophe-20190320-p515uv.html
City greens learning “sixth mass extinction” survival skills. I’m not sure whether to laugh or worry.
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The reason that society might collapse is because misguided people, worrying about society collapsing act in unison, in such a way as to make stupid policies that caused this very outcome which they fear the most.
Here’s a suggestion: Give all people who fear societal collapse from climate change their own country, … to do with whatever they wish. Then when their society collapses, we who live in reality can say, “Out of respect for your point of view, we gave you all the freedom necessary to execute your vision, and we are sorry that it did not work out the way you idealized, but we tried to tell you, and now we cannot help you, because we have our own real problems to deal with.”
Yep, we can send them all to “Coventry.” See “If This Goes On” by Robert A. Heinlein.
“We’re in the sixth mass extinction.”
–Alex Fletcher, a Perth lawyer and cycling enthusiast
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https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/the-ends-of-the-world/529545/
Alex Fletcher, “Here’s your sign”…
How utterly astonishing. He’s a lawyer and cycling enthusiast.
Remember folks, you trust these people with your legal affairs.
His stupid literally does burn…
I recently read a piece about the realistic fate awaiting us if society collapsed, say from complete electrical failure due to a massive CME, in which it would be months before power could be restored. While the piece focused on preppers or survivalists, the main point was that, in the U.S., with a population of over 323 million, in a year or less, well over 300 million would die.
Just think … no power … what happens to your food? Refrigerators are out, as are grocery coolers; perishables won’t last long, and there’s only so much that you can do with canned goods. Another point raised was that most preppers are middle-aged and beyond … how will they stack up against a strong and healthy 20something male intent on survival? And another thing, how are you going to cook your food without electricity? Oh, you say you have an old gas range with a pilot light? And how long before the gas stops flowing without electricity to run the pipelines?
The cities would not be a fun place to be in during such a scenario. And way out in the countryside will only be a slower, gentler passing.
So let the alarmists worry themselves into an early grave about possible disasters that’ll never happen.
there might be some “woke” fit 20yr olds in rural areas
but the city ones?
dont underestimae us oldies for survival skills, been there done that , many of us.
anyone citified and under 60 say…different story
Even people in fly-over country would have trouble if all the electricity went out. It takes time to get a new crop planted and harvested even if you have the land available. In the meantime, what?
It’s probably a good idea to stock up on enough supplies to feed your family for a year. That can be done fairly inexpensively and the food will last for years in storage.
Noone is going to be able to depend on outside sources in such a situation. Active farmers and gardeners and preppers will be in pretty good shape. The rest will be scambling.
I expect that if there is a catastrophic breakdown of civilization, the two primary groups to survive will be the Mormons and the Amish — and a few ‘preppers’ that don’t get overrun by the exodus from the cities.
Married preppers won’t survive.
Their wives will give everything away to neighbors who didn’t prepare. The neighbors will survive another week. As will the preppers.
More like dodos, by choice. Everyone wondered. Now we know the evolutionary path.
You poor deluded and deranged Leftists…
Skeptics are not “squirrels in the headlights”, or frogs in slowly boiling water, or ignorant simpletons “clinging to our guns and bibles”…
We’re rational and sentient humans that know the CAGW scam is the biggest and most expensive Hoax in human history..
Keep “checking the Sea Level Rise” on a daiky basis and you’ll see we’ve been stuck at 7~10” inches per CENTURY since 1800, regardless of CO2 levels, and keep checking global temperature rise and you’ll see there hasn’t been a statistically significant warming trend in 23 years, despite 30% of all manmade CO2 emissions since 1750 were made over the last 23 years, and if you read anything other than the NYT, you’d know the terrible California wildfires were caused by insane enviro-wackos implementing rules and regulations that prohibited forest services from clearing deadfall, thinning trees, neglecting forest roads, allowing sustainable lumber harvesting, and removing diseased trees….
The only “societal collapse” we need to be concerned about is whether or not any part of the crazy New Green Deal is ever actually implemented… Oh, the irony…
Leftists are a delusion wrapped in utter derangement and surrounded by an enigma…
Excellent!
As I mentioned in a previous letter, growing up during a war does help to make one realise what is important and what is not.
Number one is staying alive. Next is of course food, , then comes shelter. If in a cold climate such as Europe was in the 1940 tees then clothing too, not to worry about fashion, just to keep warm.
In times of strife then its the basics that matter. . Essentials are firearms, true one can survive without, but firearms make hunting game a lot easier, but you would soon realise that just as we have people today who think that the World owes them a living, they will in a future which is back to basics still think like that. It will be a case of Kill or be killed, something that today’s soft living people will find hard to understand.
In such a world the first few months will see a massive decrease in the population as the less well suited to living in the tough world die off.
And we will revert back to the “Birds of a feather flock together “. Only” those who look or wish to live our way will be accepted in what will revert to Tribalism. No generous Government to look after “Special interest groups”. As for the odd idea of a Multi culturalism, forget it.
As for those who cannot figure out what their Gender really is, well nature
will soon sort that one out.
We will very son revert to ” Life will be short and brutal.”.
MJE VK5ELL
Adults who think like confused children are now using confused children as role models.
The comments at the article are typical of the readership at the Sydney Morning Herald. The article’s author is a typical uninformed person following the alarmist story. There have been so many articles recently with the build up to the New South Wales state election listing climate change as the most important issue voters are concerned about. Apparently, the LNP (Liberals/Republican) was going to lose, in a landslide, to the ALP (Labor/Democrat).
As it happened, the LNP won!
Big issue will be federal elections coming soon, again, climate change is a big issue for voters.
“… again climate change is a big issue for voters.”
—
” … the lack of climate change is a big issue for voters.”
FIFY
Reminds me of an interview of some old US gulf coast fishermen. The interviewer is asking how they are coping with the sea level rise and they have this confused look on their faces and are asking what sea level rise? Joe have you noticed any sea level rise?
This article is a prime example of how climate change has morphed into a theology for these people. It is their End Times doomsday prophesy. What really gets me is that these same urban liberals who think the world is ending are often the same ones who mock the very right-wing leaning Prepper culture as being paranoid. Claim you shouldn’t rely on the government to protect you? Own guns and ammo, gas masks, medical supplies, long-term food supplies, practice wilderness survival, etc…seek to have at least basic preparedness for things ranging from a friend needing the heimlich maneuver to a nationwide grid failure? You’re a paranoid right-wing nutjob. But OMFG THE WORLD IS ENDING DUE TO CLIMATE CHANGE, AND WE HAVE TO TAKE DRASTIC ACTION NOW.
These people really do need their own planet or island or something, some sort of “safe space” that they can retreat to and regain that “everything is just fine, nothing is wrong” mantra that used to go spinning through their pea-sized brains.
I find it difficult to believe that any reasoning person can be so easily hornswoggled into this irrational behavior, when I see nothing happening at all, even with the massive flooding in the Midwest this year and the return of a very deep snowpack in the Sierras/Rockies, that lends any kind of credence to the idiocy they are following.
I think I’ll get a wheel of brie and sacrifice a few ounces of it (with a nice Tuscan red) to the Gods of the Armosphere, who are likely laughing up their sleeves at these idiots.
They make lemmings look brilliant. They really do.
I believe it points to the fact that they never get out of the city and see the real world. Anyone who spends time outside tending the garden and mowing the lawn has long recognised the cyclical nature of weather. The only people who could be so divorced from nature are unit dwellers in a city.
It beggars disbelief how they can proclaim such widespread tragedy happening; when anyone standing outside just sees the same-old, same-old. They just believe it, wilfully ignorant of any discussion to the contrary.
City greens learning “sixth mass extinction” survival skills – LOL. How to make a Cappuccino from wild berries and nuts – post-apocalyptic social networking, the essentials – Can you make granola from sheep droppings?. City greens wouldn’t survive the first 7 days without their iPhone. It always makes me laugh when disaster movies stuff the underground bunkers with politicians and royalty – as if they would be essential to a post-apocalyptic world
Here is a bit of advice for the worried Liberal author concerned about surviving his imaginary society collapse.
It is not possible to survive a complete societal collapse.
You will simple wither and die because you could not provide enough security or provisions to survive.
The good news is, society is not about to collapse any time soon, if ever.
So long as we continue to have access to plentiful energy supplies and create sufficient CO2 to nourish the biosphere all will be well with the world.
I can’t feel the same confidence about Liberal worriers though.
Please take care with labelling.
In Australia a ‘Liberal’ is a supporter of the center right party..
Yes we have ‘liberals’ as well. But thse tend to be more leftish’.
The West Australian lawyer is dfinitely not a supporter of the Liberal party in Australia.
Confusing perhaps ? But such are the results of a different history to the USA and even the UK
Being and aussie myself, I did some digging on the word liberal and it’s history is interesting – it meant right wing once, a perjorative spat from the lips of the True believers but as usual it became a word hijacked by the left – one of the many words which had it’s meaning altered to suit their cause. I recently read a lot of the old(est) communist manifestos and they too were enlightening.. I wonder how many lefties realize who identify as ‘anarchists’ know they were once deemed the greatest threat to communism and socialism? Anarchists seeking independence from authoritarians, liberal .. liberty seekers . We’ve been left with libertarians but it’ll only be a matter of time. OK so they foisted fascist onto us because that gained a negative connotation and they even managed to lump a certain German left wing leader onto the right because they had gained controlling access to the ‘education’ of children, but saying it do’n’t make it so.
Controlling the meaning of words was their greatest success.. but Orwell did warn us about all that 😉
Karlos51
I was doing some reading online the other day to understand the UK’s Parliamentary process in a bit more detail. For fairly obvious reasons, it’s in one hell of an effing mess over Brexit.
I digress. I stumbled on a Wiki devoted to political terms including ‘far right’. Man, was it an eye opener.
Now, I’m as far right as one could get. I believe in small governments, the freedom to work, freedom of speech and peaceful political discourse……You know, all the usual stuff we right wingers strive for. I have never had the slightest compulsion to shave my head and cover it with swastika tattoos!
According to this Wiki, however, we far right are in fact associated with Nazism, Hitler and fascism.
“The far right or extreme right is a political label used to identify parties and movements based on fascist, racist and/or extremely reactionary ideologies. Officially those on the far right embrace the concept of the “inequality of outcome”, meaning that one group is naturally better than another. This can apply to everything from absolute monarchies to Nazism, meaning that many far-rightists oppose others on the far right who have a different idea of what the ruling class should be.”
If you can suffer it, it gets worse! “racial supremacy, politically-oriented religious fundamentalism, Anti-immigration, Islamophobia”
Your really going to love this bit – “Despite the fact that Islamist groups like ISIS are by nature far-right, just not by Western standards”
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Political_spectrum#Far_right
This is what we’re up against!
“Now, I’m as far right as one could get. I believe in small governments, the freedom to work, freedom of speech and peaceful political discourse……You know, all the usual stuff we right wingers strive for.”
Your position is my position and is the position of those on the Right, although I think these basic principles would be favored by most people, so this position of the Right is really a Centrist position because it does not embrace extremes, it embraces personal freedoms.
The use of “Far” Right is a perjorative. It implies extremism.
pejorative
We need some new comment software. 🙂
So if you don’t believe that all outcomes should be equal, then you are a “far right wing racist”.
Wiki is useless for anything more controversial than the date of Battle of Hastings and maybe the atomic weight of Hydrogen.
Point taken Bill.
Perhaps I should have used the more general term Green Socialist.
The Constantly Offended Green Socialists (COGS) are also permanently anxious because of their misunderstanding of how the real world operates.
Those of us who wake up every day and rejoice at the stability and beauty of life, are sen as enemies by the COGS.
GOGS must be akin to COPS-
Completely Oppressive Progressive Socialists.
I think about all the new skills I would need to learn to be self-sufficient, and protect and sustain my family, should organised society come to a creaking halt.
Oddly, he doesn’t worry about the skills he would need to learn should we stop using fossil fuels…
I suspect they are the same skills, but actually require discipline and effort to accomplish in either situation.
” …many homes will become uninsurable … the last time the atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when the sea level was 15 to 25 metres higher …”.
==========================================
Alex stop worrying old son, waterfront houses in, say, Fremantle will remain safe for the foreseeable future, it would take a 1,000 years or more for melting of the ice caps to cause a 25 meter sea level rise.
The sea level 3 million years ago (Pliocene) was the result of thousands of years of a climate 2–3 °C higher than today, read your Wikipedia again.
Evidently he hasn’t looked at the data, generally from 1900.
1. Hurricanes and typhoons have not increased in strength or numbers per year.
2. Tornadoes have decreased in numbers overall globally.
3. Global droughts have decreased overall.
4. Precipitation and stream flows have remain steady or slightly increased.
5. Sea level rise has remained at about 7 inches per century and is not accelerating.
6. Northern Hemisphere fall/winter snow cover has increased steadily.
7. Antarctica Ice volume has increased gradually.
8, Greenland ice volume is debatable but has remained steady overall.
9. Wild fires have decreased, globally.
10. Due to increased CO2 globally, crops and general vegetation have increased dramatically.
11. Extreme weather events have decreased globally.
12. Extreme weather events have killed far less people even though global population has increased substantially.
13 there are probably many more data examples – etc.
I don’t think this guy has actually looked at the actual data.
Alex might do better to ponder how he can best protect his family from the impending “mass extinction” new world order socialism is likely to inflict upon his family and todays indoctrinated Centennials and Millennials. Not to mention of course the beleaguered wrinkly survivors of a more sanguine baby boomer generation like me who have at least some understanding of what an alternative socialist/fascist future means?
Yup. Alex should read up on Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot for more information on any real possibilities of mass extinction.
“Either way I spend a lot of time searching things like ‘climate”
Searching for events does not make them happen in reality. Cognitive dissonance ensues, panic follows.
Part of what we learned in situational awareness for cockpit resources management.
The only real tragedy facing green activists is that there is no climate tragedy at all.
As a result, they wander babbling ridiculous fairy tales that highlight their serious mental imbalance.
Since they have no scientific knowledge, they can only rely on their beliefs fueled by the prophets of the apocalypse (IPCC, UN, Malthusian psychopaths, snake oil salesmen, etc.) which can only worsen their mental state.
This is indeed a real issue, because among these, many children are concerned.
The global social problem the writer has felt is the gullibility of the individual. Most people have been suckered into believing in many products that do not deserve a second look, even some that are criminally fraudulent.
Given a restart of my life, I think that I could make a credible advertising executive, honing psychology, polling, statistics and observations of human conduct into ways of selling increasing quantities of whatever product was selected. I did not do this, preferring a career of finding new wealth through mineral discoveries of a magnitude to affect national budgets and provide quite a few extra quid into the pockets of all.
That is, I provided actual physical goods whose value the market would assess. Many, on the other hand, are creating a nebulous product, not an item one can hold and not one that the market can assess with any accuracy. A block of gold versus a thought fart.
All around me, here in Melbourne, people have been led by thought farts to buy goods under false pretenses. We can quickly get into legal trouble by being too specific, but a list of products that do no good, possibly do harm, are unwanted, that deprive society of workers doing something valuable, might include products like
– fertilizers made from seaweed, one of the most barren starting materials one could imagine
– alternative therapies like hideously-priced multivitamin products, definitely harmful in excess, quite useless to all but a few people with uncommon medical conditions
– any product from homeopathy, one of the pioneering large frauds, with no scientific basis at all
– virtually all female face cosmetics, commonly made from not much more than refined mud
– the SUV automobile, purely a marketing product, heavier, less manoeuverable, blown off-course by side winds, fuel guzzling vanity product to keep up with other Moms dropping kids off at kindy
– likewise, all-electric vehicles need for a range of a hundred or 200 km a trip. High weight, still needs fossil fuels for charging, etc. You know all this, but some continue to fall for the con
– the endless flow of special diets for ordinary people, little more than short-lived fashion statements
– and a few hundred more, but you get the drift.
I would guess that close to half of the average daily household expenditure in places like Melbourne goes to fraudulent items whose only interest is created by advertising campaigns. Take away the advertising input and they will flop. Society will be better off by one hell of a large amount. Ah, imagine the bliss of no hourly mention of climate!
Geoff.
Geoff,
You have forgotten windturbines, which additionally are foisted upon us whether we like them or not. The ultimate in austerity creation.
Sailing: Tearing up £5 notes in a cold shower. Some people love it. I do.
Windturbines: Tearing up £50 notes in the dark. Not many will like that. I won’t.
Alasdair
If wind turbines produce lots of clean, cheap energy, how come Africa isn’t covered with them?
Geoff re ” fertilizers made from seaweed, one of the most barren starting materials one could imagine”
I’ve used seaweed on the garden..Yes useless and a a waste of considerable effort as I went & got it from the beach myself…
BUT….
I long ago discovered that a solution of dilute fermented seaweed is excellent for minimising transplant shock in seedlings and fruit trees…And now that is available as a commercial product..Though I haven’t seen any significant advertising.
But as you say 50% of household expenditure goes on fraudulent items promoted by advertising.. Yes agree entirely.. But then it twas ever thus…Even when we were young !
Geoff,
Marketing and advertising are significant influencers for getting consumers to buy things they don’t really need. It is recognized to be so influential that companies will pay obscene amounts of money to get a spot on TV. Yet, there is general denial that TV, Hollywood movies, and video games have any influence on the rise in violence using guns.
It’s pretty clear that big cities and Universities foster mass neurosis in a significant percentage of their populations and down right insanity in more than a few.
Alex Fletcher is a hypochondriac whose been driven crazy by reckless, self-serving doomsayers.
You mean he is going to Channel 10?
Alex is in need of professional help. Otherwise men in white coats loom large.
The idea that these people , who come across as the least able people you could meet to survive a day without even ‘wifi ‘ and a skinny latté , will be able to deal with anything more serious is frankly hilarious.
Song for climate psychosis (adapted from Rolling Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown”)
Here it comes
Here it comes
Here it comes
Here comes your climate nervous breakdown
Oh who’s to blame
That cult’s just insane
Well nothing they say don’t come to pass
They just keep pulling stuff out of their @ss
Oh pleee eeeee eeee eeese
Here we come
Walking down the street
Get the funniest looks from
Everyone we meet
Hey Hey, we’re the Greenies!
We’re not Greening around
We’re too busy screaming
And being great big Climate Clowns