Guest essay by Eric Worrall
“Deep Adaptation” appears to be a group of climate doomsday depressives whose message is too much even for other believers.
Deep Adaptation: Could Climate Change Lead To Societal Collapse?
27/11/2021
MARIANNE APOSTOLIDESThe ‘Deep Adaptation’ movement situates the conversation about society’s future in a new realm, one in which catastrophic climate change is a given.
The movement creates a framework to think about climate adaptation by inviting people to contemplate four guiding questions.
But despite its contributions to thinking about climate change, ‘Deep Adaptation’ has a weak premise at its core: that climate change will lead to society’s collapse.
The news reports from the UN climate change conference in Glasgow this month followed a predictable pattern. World leaders took to the stage one after the other, each of them issuing dire warnings about imminent climate disaster and concluding with urgent calls to action: It’s not too late… but we must act now!
This message feels tired, its urgency attenuated from decades of repetition. “Now” was once the 1970s, with the birth of the modern environmental movement; “now” was the Kyoto Protocol and its carbon-reduction commitments of the 1990s; “now” was Paris 2015. Now, some believe, is now too late: The tipping point has come. We’re at the apex of the curve, on the verge of an unstoppable cascade that will irreversibly alter the systems governing the natural world. It’s too late. And if we, as a society, copped to that fact, we’d all benefit immensely.
This is the argument of ‘Deep Adaptation’, a movement launched in 2018 by Jem Bendell, a professor of sustainability leadership at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom. The movement situates the conversation about society’s future in a new realm, one in which catastrophic climate change is taken as a given. Bendell says the world will become an unfamiliar place: Everything we’ve known about the dynamics driving our lives will be overturned by climate-induced disruption, leading to societal collapse. Only when we accept this inevitability can we prepare for the coming catastrophe “in ways that may reduce harm, especially by reducing conflict and trauma,” writes Bendell.
‘Deep Adaptation’ has attracted a worldwide following: The founding document was downloaded more than a half million times, according to Bendell, and forums have solidified a base of participants, from students to psychologists to scholars. Recently, more than 500 scholars signed an open letter espousing the main tenets of ‘Deep Adaptation’, and urging policymakers to “engage openly with the risk of disruption and even collapse of our societies.”
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Blinded by utopian visions, Bendell seems to overlook the advancements, in science and technology and other realms, that are capable of upholding society. In sectors such as energy, water, materials science and agriculture, basic science and innovative technology are spawning new realities that could stabilise societies, even amid horrific shifts in the natural world.
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Read more: https://science.thewire.in/environment/deep-adaptation-could-climate-change-lead-to-societal-collapse/
I think Marianne Apostolides, the author of the critique, could spend more time examining the evidence for her own beliefs. In my opinion she seems way to ready to embrace climate doomsday narratives herself, even if she tempers those beliefs with a well placed faith in technology and innovation.
But its nice to see someone standing up against unrelenting pessimism of climate leaders like Professor Jem Bendell. It is all very well wallowing in your own climate grief. But when you lead thousands, possibly millions of others down the same path, in my opinion that way lies Jonestown.
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If CO2 can’t bring about societies collapse (it can’t), then the proponents of CAGW will do their best to bring that outcome through their idiotic solutions. I don’t think they’ll get far as voters tend to come to their sense as soon as their own comfort is eroded.
“voters tend to come to their sense as soon as their own comfort is eroded.”
This is true. I think we are going to get a demonstration of this in the near future.
Some facts of life are so obvious and so commonplace that people miss them in the same way as the proverb, “Fish are the last to know about water.”
Humanoids have made “deep adaptation to climate” ever since they learned to walk on their hind legs. That was quite a while ago, a million years at least. Bepedalism enables a steady gait in hot sun with minimal exposure to direct sun. The earliest clothing helped even more. Bipedalism, and the binocular vision that goes with it, also makes hunting, gathering and self-defense easier by making it possible to carry stuff in your hands and walk at the same time.
Some time later, Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa to parts near & distant where climates varied widely. Colder climates have fewer bugs and parasites, but it’s tougher to survive in winter. Somehow we adapted.
Toolmaking and weapon-carrying led to finer arts like written language, which facilitates the transmission of knowledge. A reasonably literate person can build an igloo, sharpen a stick into a spear, and identify dangerous bugs — including human humbugs — even if he’s never seem them before. And so on.
But why did people migrate from comfortable savannas to hostile places like nothern forests and swamps? Not by their will of course, they were chased out by stronger tribes.( I’m afraid to continue, it may seem non-woke..)
Professor Jem Bendell’s name is an anagram of Bellend. How interesting, at a time when the new Coronavirus variant has been called Omnicron, which is an anagram of moronic. Who is taking the Mikki of who?
Technological society is more resilient, not less.
Technology creates new ways to solve old problems, but the old solutions are still available.
Technology creates wealth, and wealth creates reserves which make it easier to ride through any disruptions.
If the dire warnings about imminent climate disaster are true,
and if it’s not too late… but we must act now,
then the “Deep Adaptation” Climate Doomsday Narrative makes sense, because it’s blatantly obvious that we aren’t going to act now.
(So I’m glad that the warnings are bogus.)
I think that imminent societal collapse is inevitable, and that it is the desired outcome that the global elites have been planning for a very long time . It’s no secret ; it’s called “Build Back Better”, in case you haven’t noticed.
These useful idiots blaming it on climate are just providing cover for the overlords.
Nothing to see here ; same old, same old.
Except, no one has any intention of building anything back better once they have control over the bulk of the wealth. They’ll be completely self sufficient once society finally collapses. Why else do you you think that people like Bill Gates is buying up cheap farmland?
Needless to say that “Build Back better ” is simply the latest manifestation of The Big Lie.
You’re right , it won’t be better.
How about all those people who think the world is ending build great big underground bunkers and they go live in them until it is all over? They can just leave the rest of us in peaceful bliss.
there’s no need to worry. All we need is for the countries of the world (and political parties within those countries) to agree on the urgent need for action, and to start cooperating for the good of all.
Could The EV & Clean Energy Revolution Start An Economic Crisis? (msn.com)
Even more importantly, net producers and consumers of oil must work together to spread the pain and the profit fairly.
So I’ll ask AGAIN, is Dr Rosling correct and if NOT why NOT?
This takes less than 5 minutes of your time and plots 120,000 data points of the HUMAN world HEALTH + WEALTH over 200 years, 1810 to 2010 and can anyone find a substantial error since the start of the Ind REV?
The co2 levels in 1810 perhaps 290 ppm and today about 415 ppm. Just asking, Willis, anyone?
OH and ditto question for Mark Mills video claims as for Dr Rosing’s previous BBC video.
Is Mark Mills substantially wrong on any of the points he makes about the TOXIC, UNRELIABLE, FRAUDULENT, DILUTE S&W IDIOCY?
Climate Change is nothing but a scam by the UN bureaucrats to give them excuse to tax corporations. The entire narrative is controlled by UN Bureaucrats that wouldn’t even consider papers and evidence that they misunderstood climate warming by a NASA scientist, Dr. Ray W Spencer that managed to put a spacecraft in orbit to measure energy in and out of the earth. He tried several times over years to get papers reviewed by UN bureaucrats that control the narrative but they always figured excuses for not reading his ideas and measurements. See “The Great Global Warming Blunder. How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists.” If those controlling the narrative won’t even consider ideas of a scientist who put a spacecraft into orbit to measure earth’s energy balance then they are interested in SCIENCE.
“, ‘Deep Adaptation’ has a weak premise at its core: that climate change will lead to society’s collapse.”
I agree. Why this narrow focus on climate change? Society doesn’t need climate change to collapse. It’s perfectly capable of collapsing under its own weight. Of course a suitable plague, CME, asteroid, etc. could speed things up. But the collapse has already started, and appears to be irreversible.
From the article: “But despite its contributions to thinking about climate change, ‘Deep Adaptation’ has a weak premise at its core: that climate change will lead to society’s collapse.”
The even weaker premise is that Human-caused Climate Change is significant enough to have any descernible effect on the Earth’s weather, or humans living on the planet.
Talking about Society Collapse is putting the cart before the horse. Society has to have a reason to collapse. it won’t be from CO2. It might be from CO2 propaganda, though.
This doomsday cult paper is a real hoot!
“Climate tragedy” – makes it all sound like a work by Shakespeare.
“Human extinction” “social justice, re-localisation, decolonisation, financial reform, psychology and spirituality” – it’s all in here, the full master plan.
“Social collapse” – sounds like the author already suffered a mental collapse…
Okay, I admit to wanting to get some t-shirts printed with the dodos from the “Ice Age” cartoon (which I loved!!!!) spouting ‘DOOM ON YOU! DOOM ON YOU!”
I do not understand (and probably never will) this desperate need to ignore the real world and live in a doomsday fantasy mindset. I just DON’T. I may some day give up trying to understand it.
But if the Doomsayers really want to traipse down that path, I will certainly get out of their way and watch while they go wandering off into The Nothing of Unreality. I have plenty of popcorn, turtle cheesecake and soda on hand, and can quickly concoct a big pot of chili. Please let me know if there is a schedule for that parade.
The geese flocks and cranes (mostly sandhills with the occasional whooper!) have mostly gone south, although the weather is not yet nasty enough around here to send them any further south than they feel like going. Plenty of fodder along the way, too, and hunting season is pretty much over with. This is the real world, the one that Mother Nature put together, and these Doomsayers ignore it at their peril. If they want to be locked up in cities and never know or understand the Real World, that is their choice, but it is pathetic.
Thank you. (Wanders off, muttering “…they must be blind to the real world….”)
Well if we have just entered a grand solar minimum life is going to get very tough for the mid latitudes.