Today will be different. Enough water will come.
November 19, 2022 7:10 AM Subscribe
"How The Forest Dies: The Amazon is going dry. In one parched corner, a desperate wait for water is only just beginning." A sobering portrait of the human cost of deforestation of the Amazon, from the Washington Post.
Two additional pieces on water:
1. Phenomenal World today linked to this interview on what Hurricane Ian showed about federal flood insurance. Particularly chilling was this quote: "FEMA requires disaster survivors in high-risk areas to have flood insurance in order to qualify for other forms of disaster assistance. In theory, this requirement is designed to incentivize people to purchase and maintain flood insurance coverage. In practice, it can punish low-income households that can’t afford to pay their premiums [...] As a result, low-income households not only lose out on insurance payouts post-disaster, but then are disqualified from receiving federal assistance altogether."
2. Jeff Goodell's 2017 The Water Will Come is a look at the broader question of sea level: How has it influenced where we live, how will its inevitable rise change the shape of our current world? Jeff Masters of Weather Underground fame wrote an informative review that gives a taste of Goodell's research.
Two additional pieces on water:
1. Phenomenal World today linked to this interview on what Hurricane Ian showed about federal flood insurance. Particularly chilling was this quote: "FEMA requires disaster survivors in high-risk areas to have flood insurance in order to qualify for other forms of disaster assistance. In theory, this requirement is designed to incentivize people to purchase and maintain flood insurance coverage. In practice, it can punish low-income households that can’t afford to pay their premiums [...] As a result, low-income households not only lose out on insurance payouts post-disaster, but then are disqualified from receiving federal assistance altogether."
2. Jeff Goodell's 2017 The Water Will Come is a look at the broader question of sea level: How has it influenced where we live, how will its inevitable rise change the shape of our current world? Jeff Masters of Weather Underground fame wrote an informative review that gives a taste of Goodell's research.
Cubeb, as I was reading the WaPo piece, those were exactly the sorts of things I was thinking--as I mentioned in another thread, I sort of vacillate between doomerism and optimism (call it a carryover from my protestant upbringing), but both reactions can get very abstract very quickly. Meanwhile, actual people are actually suffering, right now, all around us, and we owe it to them to let empathy override our inclinations toward apocalypse. Knowing that the woman whose story frames the article must keep going--she's not a character in a miniseries, she doesn't get to exit stage left--that there are still clothes to scrub, dishes to clean, thirsty children to keep up with, within a rapidly-drying world, keeps us morally centered.
posted by mittens at 7:56 AM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by mittens at 7:56 AM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
We mentioned the similarly critical Russian forests and scientists like Anastassia Makarieva in the biotic pump thread, but I'd no idea how concrete the evidence had become until mittens shared this article.
We've a massive techno-optimism political problem, which amounts to "someone else will solve this", aka "let them eat cake", so doomy comments are often legitimately dismantling earlier techno-optimist comments, but sure not all doomy comments do.
At least right now we've some hope thanks to Lula's election. I'd think even if Lula lacks the votes for real jungle protection, maybe his bully pulpit could move the window by parading scientists and suffering people in front of legislators and the Brazilian public.
It's largely meat demand causing this deforestation, so really we need huge taxes upon meat and feed everywhere.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:24 AM on November 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
We've a massive techno-optimism political problem, which amounts to "someone else will solve this", aka "let them eat cake", so doomy comments are often legitimately dismantling earlier techno-optimist comments, but sure not all doomy comments do.
At least right now we've some hope thanks to Lula's election. I'd think even if Lula lacks the votes for real jungle protection, maybe his bully pulpit could move the window by parading scientists and suffering people in front of legislators and the Brazilian public.
It's largely meat demand causing this deforestation, so really we need huge taxes upon meat and feed everywhere.
posted by jeffburdges at 8:24 AM on November 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Re Lula, "At COP27, Brazil’s Lula vows halt to rampant deforestation." Which will be great news if he can bring it about, although there's still the troubling thought that deforestation isn't enough, the Amazon needs the trees put back, millions and billions of them, with all the ecosystem that went away with them...and how do you do that?
posted by mittens at 8:45 AM on November 19, 2022
posted by mittens at 8:45 AM on November 19, 2022
Cubeb: THANK YOU. That exact kind of "we're dooooooooooomed" comment also pisses me off too, and you've articulated exactly why.
There's a Muslim saying I heard a short while back, something like "If the end times come and you have the shoot of a plant in your hand, if it's possible to still plant it, you must plant it." Even if we are fighting a losing battle, and the worst-case scenarios still come to pass, why not continue to fight anyway to ensure that at least the damage is lessened for even just a few people? It's basically the attitude Theoden has at the end of the Battle at Helm's Deep - even though it seems certain we're gonna die, then dammit, we're gonna go down swinging, so we buy time so that even just a few of the women and children escape.
The trees that we replant in the Amazon will take a long time to have an impact, and they won't be an overnight fix. But we're not planting them there for us. We're planting them there for people generations in the future. If it's possible to do something good, it is our duty to do it, to at least try.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:50 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
There's a Muslim saying I heard a short while back, something like "If the end times come and you have the shoot of a plant in your hand, if it's possible to still plant it, you must plant it." Even if we are fighting a losing battle, and the worst-case scenarios still come to pass, why not continue to fight anyway to ensure that at least the damage is lessened for even just a few people? It's basically the attitude Theoden has at the end of the Battle at Helm's Deep - even though it seems certain we're gonna die, then dammit, we're gonna go down swinging, so we buy time so that even just a few of the women and children escape.
The trees that we replant in the Amazon will take a long time to have an impact, and they won't be an overnight fix. But we're not planting them there for us. We're planting them there for people generations in the future. If it's possible to do something good, it is our duty to do it, to at least try.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:50 AM on November 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
Just to begin with, I'll put in this, from a different biotop and about a person I disagree with politically, but also an example of the fact that we can do something.
I don't know how I missed the biotic pump thread, it is one of my favorite subjects, not least because I have experienced it in my own life, and also described it in other threads. To put it briefly here: my grandparents bought a farm in a desert area in 1966, and set out to use all the technology and chemicals available to make it profitable. And failed. In the end, my gran turned to horse-farming, which she had grown up with and was good at, and sort of made it. But the secret succes story were the little trees my granddad planted, which have now grown to maturity as a lush, fertile forest with its own micro climate. I'm trying to introduce even more biodiversity to the forest, which I won't live to see, but I was so angry when my granddad refused to get going with diversification because he wouldn't see it himself. I'm determined to leave more value than I was given, not in money, but in quality of life and the environment.
But then: this is terrifying, including the part that the poor people in the depleted region voted for Bolsonaro, because they are more concerned about their short-term survival than the long-term consequences. People all over the world are making similar choices, even in rich countries like the US. We can't separate climate justice from social justice.
posted by mumimor at 8:59 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
I don't know how I missed the biotic pump thread, it is one of my favorite subjects, not least because I have experienced it in my own life, and also described it in other threads. To put it briefly here: my grandparents bought a farm in a desert area in 1966, and set out to use all the technology and chemicals available to make it profitable. And failed. In the end, my gran turned to horse-farming, which she had grown up with and was good at, and sort of made it. But the secret succes story were the little trees my granddad planted, which have now grown to maturity as a lush, fertile forest with its own micro climate. I'm trying to introduce even more biodiversity to the forest, which I won't live to see, but I was so angry when my granddad refused to get going with diversification because he wouldn't see it himself. I'm determined to leave more value than I was given, not in money, but in quality of life and the environment.
But then: this is terrifying, including the part that the poor people in the depleted region voted for Bolsonaro, because they are more concerned about their short-term survival than the long-term consequences. People all over the world are making similar choices, even in rich countries like the US. We can't separate climate justice from social justice.
posted by mumimor at 8:59 AM on November 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Also thank you mittens for a great post, I'm ordering the Goodell book right away.
posted by mumimor at 9:01 AM on November 19, 2022
posted by mumimor at 9:01 AM on November 19, 2022
We all hear how the Amazon is being burned by cattle ranchers, so then native people cannot live as they did, and as this article shows they even wind up without water, doe the end of the biotic pump effect. An important and devastating detail in the article: the cattle ranchers are the native people too.
How does it stop? It needs the cattle, chickens, pigs, and their feed to all become unprofitable somehow.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:08 AM on November 19, 2022
How does it stop? It needs the cattle, chickens, pigs, and their feed to all become unprofitable somehow.
posted by jeffburdges at 9:08 AM on November 19, 2022
Hopefully this doesn't qualify as I'm-just-being-a-realist grimdark prognostication, but the big takeaways from this for me have to do with the recent media fretting about the threat of declining birth rates built around the 8 billion humans milestone we just hit - and especially with the recent thread here on the Blue about rich tech bros worrying about the best people reproducing themselves.
And those takeaways are: a) that when civilization collapses, people not having enough babies is going to be pretty much dead last on the list of causes, and b) given that the carrying capacity of the planet is about to shrink dramatically, reducing the birth rate is probably one of the best things we can do now to prepare the species to survive it.
posted by Naberius at 11:23 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
And those takeaways are: a) that when civilization collapses, people not having enough babies is going to be pretty much dead last on the list of causes, and b) given that the carrying capacity of the planet is about to shrink dramatically, reducing the birth rate is probably one of the best things we can do now to prepare the species to survive it.
posted by Naberius at 11:23 AM on November 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
"and especially with the recent thread here on the Blue about rich tech bros worrying about the best people reproducing themselves."
You'd think that these super innovative geniuses could come up with something better than warmed over white supremacy.
posted by kzin602 at 1:11 PM on November 19, 2022
You'd think that these super innovative geniuses could come up with something better than warmed over white supremacy.
posted by kzin602 at 1:11 PM on November 19, 2022
“Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.”
— Gladys Bronwyn Stern
posted by jeffburdges at 1:30 PM on November 19, 2022
— Gladys Bronwyn Stern
posted by jeffburdges at 1:30 PM on November 19, 2022
The solution needs to come from the recognition that ecosystems like the Amazon basin provide an essential service to the entire world, that wealthy people living far away from those ecosystems benefit from that service, and that it is not only a moral imperative but also in their economic long-term self-interest to fund that service, in the form of paying for reforestation, land management, and protection. The management and protection of the Amazon could and should be a source of jobs and prosperity to the people who live there, paid for by the people who live in cities and benefit from that work. Tree planting, irrigation construction and maintenance, wildlife management, ecotourism hospitality, all of these should be things that bring prosperity to families like Franco's. The taxes of people living in cities in the global North should sustain them.
Capitalism, in its current manifestation, is incapable of solving this problem and will soon destroy the Amazon and other ecosystems essential for regulating the global climate, if it is not checked. We are not doomed, but we must act to fundamentally change the way our societies are structured. Those of us currently living relatively comfortable lives in developed nations will have to make real sacrifices, and it will be hard because many of us already feel that we are living precariously and being asked to make further sacrifices will seem impossible and unjust. But I truly believe it is still possible to create a society that permits the world that birthed us and nourishes us to flourish while also ensuring a stable, sustainable, and comfortable life for everyone. But we have to seriously reexamine our belief in the real existence of money as anything more than a social technology that can serve a useful function in some, but not all, contexts; and abandon the doctrine that private property is on the same or superior moral footing as the common wealth.
posted by biogeo at 2:06 PM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Capitalism, in its current manifestation, is incapable of solving this problem and will soon destroy the Amazon and other ecosystems essential for regulating the global climate, if it is not checked. We are not doomed, but we must act to fundamentally change the way our societies are structured. Those of us currently living relatively comfortable lives in developed nations will have to make real sacrifices, and it will be hard because many of us already feel that we are living precariously and being asked to make further sacrifices will seem impossible and unjust. But I truly believe it is still possible to create a society that permits the world that birthed us and nourishes us to flourish while also ensuring a stable, sustainable, and comfortable life for everyone. But we have to seriously reexamine our belief in the real existence of money as anything more than a social technology that can serve a useful function in some, but not all, contexts; and abandon the doctrine that private property is on the same or superior moral footing as the common wealth.
posted by biogeo at 2:06 PM on November 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
It's true reforestation would be extremely valuable, but alone replanting achieves little if they cannot halt the deforestation. We'll see what Lula achieves, but we need to work towards ending long-distance trade, especially in meat products and animal feed.
As discussed in the Kohei Saito thread, we definitely speed up problems via modern capitalism, but all modern political ideologies are incredibly productivist aka growthist, including communism and socialism flavors, so they'd all bring about this same calamity, just slower. Marx won't save us. Marxist just try beat capitalism by producing more than capitalists. We need less not more, which does not require eliminating private enterprise, but surely requires eliminating the stock market and other monetary features.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:11 AM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
As discussed in the Kohei Saito thread, we definitely speed up problems via modern capitalism, but all modern political ideologies are incredibly productivist aka growthist, including communism and socialism flavors, so they'd all bring about this same calamity, just slower. Marx won't save us. Marxist just try beat capitalism by producing more than capitalists. We need less not more, which does not require eliminating private enterprise, but surely requires eliminating the stock market and other monetary features.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:11 AM on November 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
Marx might not save us--and I totally respect the point that, for many poor nations escaping the shackles of colonialism, Marx (and Mao) served as a sort of lodestar for how to organize development that ultimately grew into yet more capitalism. But I think we need a Marx nonetheless. There's just too much of this problem, and it needs a synthesis.
The people who relied on their portion of the Amazon to have trees to create water, voted for Bolsonaro because they needed relief from their poverty. And you can see the same thing happening here, in the US. We vote with our bellies, with our fears. If one candidate suggests we tighten our belts so the rest of the world can live, the other will suggest monster trucks in every driveway, and will win by one vote. And progress comes undone.
We need a Marx, because we need for someone who deeply understands our current system to describe the ratchet by which we get out of this. (Oh god, am I referencing Margaret Thatcher? "Today we are no longer in the election politics of the pendulum, but of the ratchet.") What is the decision a government could make today that provides a new baseline which we can go back to, or beyond, but never beneath? Is there some move that would, to biogeo's point, relieve precarity, that would be too popular to take away? Something to convince that fifty-first percent of voters. (I'll admit, here in the US, I thought that might be the COVID-related tax credits, or possibly even the enhanced unemployment benefits, but all those went away.)
But no nation is an island, politically at least. We're in a web of relations, diplomatic and economic, and is there a ratchet within those relationships? If enough countries decide not to align themselves with a narrative where the US runs the world, then does that monster-truck voter finally get countered, his fears unable to reshape the world?
In the population thread the other day, one of the underlying themes is that many of our programs are based not just on economic growth, but population growth. And we can all agree, yes, bad idea, unsustainable, but the worrying question is, how does welfare work if your country will not have more money tomorrow than it has today? Here in the US, how does Social Security work, without bonds? How do the day-to-day activities of private enterprise work, without the debts that keep cash flowing, the debts that require a little more money tomorrow?
When we talk about what a non-precarious world willing to come together to solve the climate might look like, that I think is probably the thing that worries me most. Even if you were a full-on eco-authoritarian who believed all the hesitations of democracy should be swept aside, how would you restructure an economy where, every day, a company needs to borrow a little bit of money to get by, where that debt provides the safety net? How do you operate your business in a degrowth world? You could do it, certainly--it would remain very small, and very fragile--but if all our businesses become very small and very fragile, then where do we get the money needed for the welfare state, that keeps the precarity at bay, that keeps the monster-truck voter from wrecking it all?
It feels like there must be an explanation and a solution to all this, and maybe there is, right this minute, some person sitting in a reading room in a library, suit stinking of tobacco, who is meticulously putting together the notebooks that will lead us out of this mess. Someone has to be able to articulate that vision, the details of it, how the world could work, because I don't think any of us really see it yet.
posted by mittens at 5:29 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The people who relied on their portion of the Amazon to have trees to create water, voted for Bolsonaro because they needed relief from their poverty. And you can see the same thing happening here, in the US. We vote with our bellies, with our fears. If one candidate suggests we tighten our belts so the rest of the world can live, the other will suggest monster trucks in every driveway, and will win by one vote. And progress comes undone.
We need a Marx, because we need for someone who deeply understands our current system to describe the ratchet by which we get out of this. (Oh god, am I referencing Margaret Thatcher? "Today we are no longer in the election politics of the pendulum, but of the ratchet.") What is the decision a government could make today that provides a new baseline which we can go back to, or beyond, but never beneath? Is there some move that would, to biogeo's point, relieve precarity, that would be too popular to take away? Something to convince that fifty-first percent of voters. (I'll admit, here in the US, I thought that might be the COVID-related tax credits, or possibly even the enhanced unemployment benefits, but all those went away.)
But no nation is an island, politically at least. We're in a web of relations, diplomatic and economic, and is there a ratchet within those relationships? If enough countries decide not to align themselves with a narrative where the US runs the world, then does that monster-truck voter finally get countered, his fears unable to reshape the world?
In the population thread the other day, one of the underlying themes is that many of our programs are based not just on economic growth, but population growth. And we can all agree, yes, bad idea, unsustainable, but the worrying question is, how does welfare work if your country will not have more money tomorrow than it has today? Here in the US, how does Social Security work, without bonds? How do the day-to-day activities of private enterprise work, without the debts that keep cash flowing, the debts that require a little more money tomorrow?
When we talk about what a non-precarious world willing to come together to solve the climate might look like, that I think is probably the thing that worries me most. Even if you were a full-on eco-authoritarian who believed all the hesitations of democracy should be swept aside, how would you restructure an economy where, every day, a company needs to borrow a little bit of money to get by, where that debt provides the safety net? How do you operate your business in a degrowth world? You could do it, certainly--it would remain very small, and very fragile--but if all our businesses become very small and very fragile, then where do we get the money needed for the welfare state, that keeps the precarity at bay, that keeps the monster-truck voter from wrecking it all?
It feels like there must be an explanation and a solution to all this, and maybe there is, right this minute, some person sitting in a reading room in a library, suit stinking of tobacco, who is meticulously putting together the notebooks that will lead us out of this mess. Someone has to be able to articulate that vision, the details of it, how the world could work, because I don't think any of us really see it yet.
posted by mittens at 5:29 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
What are people saying about the COP27 deal? (Reuters) (spoiler: "It is mindboggling that countries did not muster the courage to call for phasing down fossil fuels, which are the biggest driver of climate change.")
posted by mittens at 5:45 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mittens at 5:45 AM on November 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
It sounds like vulnerable nations are happy they received some new aid promise, which helps them solve immediate problems, but nothing much changed about emissions, so they "came together" to plan a bribe, perhaps some of which gets spent on coal plants.
We need wild economic changes, some of which improve some peoples' lives, but.. I'm dubious anytime someone says climate solutions, or solving other ecosystem collapses, depend upon addressing some afaik intrinsic human problem, like equality or precarity, especially when they trot out failed past efforts. We'll make life more precarious for these people, if trade wars ended meat and feed trade, but it's right thing to do.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:10 PM on November 20, 2022
We need wild economic changes, some of which improve some peoples' lives, but.. I'm dubious anytime someone says climate solutions, or solving other ecosystem collapses, depend upon addressing some afaik intrinsic human problem, like equality or precarity, especially when they trot out failed past efforts. We'll make life more precarious for these people, if trade wars ended meat and feed trade, but it's right thing to do.
posted by jeffburdges at 2:10 PM on November 20, 2022
Elizabeth Kolbert (Field Notes from a Catastrophe, The Sixth Extinction) has a new New Yorker piece, Climate Change from A to Z.
posted by mittens at 12:00 PM on November 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by mittens at 12:00 PM on November 21, 2022 [2 favorites]
Speaking of water, the Washington Post had another interesting interactive today, about Hog Island on the Virginia coast. It's a barrier island--thus always shifting around and so already a little unstable--but sea-level rise and hurricanes are eating away at it. There's also a look at a particular skeptical mindset: "I've been here all my life, I don't see any sea level rise, and even if there was, there's nothing to be done about it"--even as maps, satellite photos, and buildings propped up on stilts say otherwise.
posted by mittens at 6:14 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 6:14 AM on November 28, 2022 [1 favorite]
And one more--I feel like this is something I can't quite wrap my head around, but: U. S. to Pay Millions to Move Tribes Threatened by Climate Change (NYT). It's necessary, but I wonder how long it's possible to do this. We can't afford, or won't afford, to move every threatened town away from the coast. How will we decide who gets help to move, and who just internally migrates on their own dime?
posted by mittens at 5:59 AM on November 30, 2022
posted by mittens at 5:59 AM on November 30, 2022
Good lord, the water-related news never stops. Officials fear ‘complete doomsday scenario’ for drought-stricken Colorado River
posted by mittens at 11:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 11:38 AM on December 1, 2022 [1 favorite]
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I am going to ask that we try not to indulge in that kind of prognostication about The End Of Everything, whether it's a "laughing at the reaper" vibe or a "y'all just don't GET IT" vibe. There are a couple of reasons for this request. First, despair causes people to mentally check out. If everything is fucked forever and ever, and nothing anyone does will ever help anything to be a little less fucked, then we slide into passivity. Second, even if humanity is destroyed, the rest of the biosphere still matters. Non-human life also has rights. Non-human life also matters. And there is a very, very high probability that life on earth is going to continue even if we do not.
posted by cubeb at 7:42 AM on November 19, 2022 [18 favorites]