Kent Pitman<p><span class="h-card" translate="no"><a href="https://climatejustice.social/@breadandcircuses" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>breadandcircuses</span></a></span> </p><p>A bit optimistic, perhaps.</p><p>For a dozen and a half years, 2035 seemed the worrisome date, but of late I can't extrapolate any societal effect curves in ways that help me see how we get even that far. People shouldn't get too comfortable with this far out dates that seem to anchor the conversation safely in the future. Even my mention of 2035 is not intended to suggest that's a good anchor date.</p><p>Especially with the accelerant we've this week poured on the fire in the US, destroying progress, reversing course, undercutting safety nets.</p><p>People will differ on this, but I don't think individual protesting in the US will help because I think this administration is looking for an excuse to declare martial law and to have something they can point to and characterize as dangerous as part of bootstrapping dictatorship. I'm told this is how it's been done elsewhere.</p><p>But I do think there are intact legal processes that need to be used. I do think that the people now in office are nervous about this and that pleas from constituents can still affect things. I think slowing the onset of dictatorship long enough to get to the midterm elections (2 years out) in the US and possibly create a legal roadblock is our best bet. It's a long ways off, and I'm not for a moment suggesting physics is willing to hold itself up waiting for process to run. But I think the climate science is not the issue at this point. It's all about politics.</p><p>I will say also that not that many days or weeks or months ago, depending on where you count from, but not long, all this stuff in the US was just so much academic talk. And today it is reality for many of us. There's an analogy to be made with Climate. It all seems academic right now, but soon enough the fires of LA won't seem like isolated events. For many around the world who don't control the media focus, it already is reality.</p><p>In the Asimov & Silverberg novel Nightfall (not the short story), after a big global cataclysm (which I think is not a spoiler since the story is about the how, not the what), a psychologist named Sheerin who'd predicted social chaos says later, looking back:</p><p>«"It's one thing to predict it. It's something else to be right in the middle of it. It's a very humbling thing, Theremon, for an academic like me to find his abstract theories turning into concrete reality. I was so glib, so blithely unconcerned. 'Tomorrow there won't be a city standing unharmed in all [the world]' I said, and it was all just so many words to me, really, just a philosophical exercise, completely abstract. 'The end of the world you used to live in.' Yes. Yes." Sheerin shivered. "And it all happened, just like I said. But I suppose I didn't really believe my own dire predictions, until everything came crashing down around me.»</p><p>We all talk about what's coming but we aren't going to really be able to hear ourselves until it happens. And then we're going to be horrified beyond imagination and wonder why we didn't do more.</p><p>To lighten the mood slightly, and only slightly, I'll end by noting I'm also reminded of a parody movie poster from decades ago that showed then British-PM Thatcher in then-President-and-former-movie-star Reagan's arms and bore the caption "She promised to follow him to the end of the earth. He promised to organise it!" The concern at the time was nuclear war, which seems almost a quaintly simple concern at this point. This is the sequel that never should have been made.</p><p><a href="https://archives.victoria.ac.nz/repositories/2/archival_objects/3029" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">archives.victoria.ac.nz/reposi</span><span class="invisible">tories/2/archival_objects/3029</span></a></p><p>(There's a color version at <a href="https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgg84vtmnw6f31.jpg" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%</span><span class="invisible">2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fgg84vtmnw6f31.jpg</span></a> as well. I wish I knew who owned the IP to find out the license restrictions or I'd have included the image more directly.)</p><p><a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/climate" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>climate</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/ClimateDenial" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateDenial</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/dictatorship" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>dictatorship</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/fascism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>fascism</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/USPolitics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>USPolitics</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/politics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>politics</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/ClimateEmergency" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateEmergency</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/ClimateCrisis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClimateCrisis</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/ClimatePolitics" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>ClimatePolitics</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/Nightfall" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Nightfall</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/Reagan" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Reagan</span></a> <a href="https://climatejustice.social/tags/Thatcher" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Thatcher</span></a></p>