[D66] Doom or denial: Is there another path?

[R.O.]

Doom or denial: Is there another path?
By Richard Heinberg, originally published by Resilience.org

     July 24, 2020

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I was recently asked to comment on a dustup between some members of 
Extinction Rebellion (see Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall, and Colleen 
Schmidt, “The Faulty Science, Doomism, and Flawed Conclusions of Deep 
Adaptation”) and Jem Bendell, founder of Deep Adaptation (see his 
“Letter to Deep Adaptation Advocate Volunteers about Misrepresentations 
of the Agenda and Movement”). Since the issues raised in this 
controversy seem relevant to readers of Resilience.org, I thought it 
might be worthwhile to accept the invitation and weigh in.

For those not familiar, Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation (DA) takes as its 
starting point the judgment that, because of unfolding human-induced 
climate impacts, the near-term utter collapse of society is nearly 
inevitable. Extinction Rebellion (XR) is an activist movement that uses 
civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid climate tipping 
points that would lock in trends leading ultimately to ecological and 
social collapse. In simplistic terms, you could say that Deep Adaptation 
is about accepting and coping with the reality of climate-driven 
collapse while Extinction Rebellion is about acting to prevent it.

The nub of the controversy is this: some folks involved in Extinction 
Rebellion think that Bendell is being too fatalistic, thereby 
discouraging his followers from taking actions that might still save 
civilization and global ecosystems. Bendell, in his response, accuses 
his critics of ignoring evidence and misrepresenting his views.

I don’t propose to plunge into the weeds, adjudicating each point raised 
in each essay. Instead, I prefer to step back and offer my own 
interpretation of the evidence, and then discuss the subtext of the dispute.

My conclusion, after years of studying environmental research 
literature, is that some form of societal collapse is indeed highly 
probable this century, depending on how we define “collapse.” Quite a 
few environmental scientists with whom I’m acquainted agree with this 
assessment. With regard to climate change, the problem is not that 
global warming has already proceeded too far to be reined in (on that 
point I am agnostic: I agree with the XR authors that the science is not 
yet settled, and they make some good points in this regard); rather, 
it’s that the things we would have to do to minimize climate change 
would undermine industrial societies by other means. That last statement 
requires some substantiation.

The only realistic way to minimize climate change is to stop burning 
fossil fuels; and, in my judgment, there is no way to do that without 
shrinking energy usage and therefore economic activity (I’ve explained 
my reasoning on this point elsewhere; repeating it here would make this 
essay over-long). Continuing to depend on fossil fuels likewise leads to 
economic contraction, because aside from the fact that they are 
destabilizing the climate, these are depleting, non-renewable resources 
that we have extracted using the low-hanging-fruit principle: what’s 
left of them will be increasingly expensive to get, both in monetary and 
energetic terms. And energy is the ultimate driver of the economy; with 
less of it available, manufacturing and trade will necessarily contract. 
So, one way or another, we must accept economic degrowth. However, we 
don’t know how to degrow our economy controllably, particularly in the 
context of a massive global debt bubble. Moreover, the structures of 
representative democracy which respond to the short-term concerns of the 
electorate, make planning for degrowth even harder. For decades, policy 
makers have promised only more growth, and economists have turned 
logical summersaults providing rationales for why growth in energy and 
materials usage can continue forever on a finite planet. Since we are 
unprepared for sustained economic contraction, we are unlikely to handle 
it well.

Moreover, global warming isn’t our only sustainability crisis. Others 
include: resource depletion, worsening environmental pollution, a food 
system that ruins topsoil and destroys biodiversity, the overuse of debt 
as a way to transfer consumption from the future to the present, 
worsening economic inequality leading to political destabilization, and 
increasing overpopulation and overconsumption (especially by the rich), 
justified and encouraged by the flawed belief that the Earth will always 
be able to support more people consuming more resources on a per capita 
basis.

Further, the complex interactions of known system stressors—let alone 
the unknown ones—make matters worse. Climate change worsens economic 
inequality, while social instability due to increasing inequality makes 
it harder for national leaders to focus their attention on climate 
change. Similarly, the growing crises of democracy around the world 
(with the rich and powerful feeling insulated from danger and blocking 
needed change) are a threat multiplier, making it harder for societies 
to deal with any of these problems.

In sum, we have created a fundamentally unsustainable way of living. In 
recent decades, as more problems have arisen, we have learned to rely on 
fossil-fueled economic growth to solve them, but now growth is just 
making those problems worse, and we have no other plan.

Pointing all of this out is not an effective way to win friends and 
influence people—and that leads us to the core of XR’s argument. Let’s 
suppose the totality of the evidence favors Bendell’s conclusion (and I 
believe that it does, with a few caveats). XR’s criticism is that, if 
the people who are most aware of the climate crisis, and thus likely to 
drive change, consciously accept the near-certainty of collapse, this 
will lead to inaction and cynicism on their part, which will only worsen 
the situation. That criticism must still be answered.

One way of responding is to redefine collapse. Past civilizations have 
collapsed, and usually the process took two or three centuries and 
eventually led to some sort of renaissance. We see similar cycles of 
buildup and release in ecosystems (resilience scientists describe this 
universal tendency in terms of the adaptive cycle.)
The Adaptive Cycle (figure)

Source: Hollings,The Adaptive Cycle. Holling, Gunderson, and Ludwig. “In 
Quest of a Theory of Adaptive Change.” 2002.

Collapse needn’t imply that nearly everybody dies at once, or that the 
survivors become wandering cannibals. Rather, it means our current 
institutions will fail to one degree or another and we will have to find 
alternative ways to meet basic human needs—ways that are slower, smaller 
in scale, and more local. Even if we can’t altogether avert the release 
phase of the adaptive cycle we’re in, it may be within our power to 
modify how release and reorganization occur. Perhaps, if we think of 
collapse in these terms, accepting its near-inevitability won’t be so 
debilitating.

But a happy version of collapse is likely to be realized only if we act. 
Past civilizations didn’t have fossil fuels (hence climate change) or 
nuclear weapons. Without a great deal of luck and hard work, we might 
get a version of collapse that is indeed unsurvivable, or nearly so.

Can we mentally accept that the odds are stacked against us, yet still 
act sanely and vigorously? That’s a question that has dogged me for some 
time. I believe clues leading to an answer may come from a realm of 
psychology known as Terror Management Theory—which Bendell discusses in 
Deep Adaptation’s founding document, “Deep Adaptation: A Map for 
Navigating Climate Tragedy.”

Non-human organisms appear not to be aware of the inevitability of their 
own death, so they don’t have to cope with that awareness. A few 
intelligent animals (including crows and elephants) take note of the 
deaths of their comrades and appear to mourn them, but we don’t know if 
they are able to contemplate their own mortality. For us humans, though, 
usually beginning in late childhood, language and rational thought 
ensure that we inescapably know that everyone will die sooner or later, 
ourselves included. Knowledge of death creates a psychological conflict 
between our self-preservation instinct and our knowledge of our own 
eventual demise, and we as a species have gone to great lengths to 
overcome that conflict. This, according to Terror Management Theory, 
explains a wide array of cultural beliefs and institutions that 
explicitly or implicitly promise immortality—including, but not limited 
to, religious teachings and rituals.

As a result, denial has become a deeply entrenched human capacity. In 
their book Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origin of the 
Human Mind, Ajit Varki and Danny Brower suggest that, as language 
evolved, our emerging expectation of personal extinction would have made 
us so depressed and cautious that we probably wouldn’t have been able to 
compete successfully with other species, or other members of our own 
species who were not so burdened, if not for the appearance of a 
simultaneous adaptation—our ability to deny death. Denial thus served an 
evolutionary function as an essential tool of terror management. Over 
time, our denial muscle strengthened—and it has arguably done so 
especially in recent decades, as a great collective death via nuclear 
war or climate change has become a distinct possibility.

Denial can take several forms. One form stems from cognitive dissonance, 
the motivational mechanism that underlies the reluctance to admit 
mistakes or accept scientific findings when they contradict our existing 
views (hence those disinclined to believe in climate change go out of 
their way to seize upon any evidence, however flimsy, to support their 
opinion). Another is disavowal, a state in which we’re aware of climate 
change and its effects, but “find ways to remain undisturbed” by its 
implications, rather than being stirred to action.

Denial of climate change (and the likelihood of societal collapse) is 
therefore more than just a political tool for maintaining the corporate 
profits of the fossil fuel industry. It is a complex collective coping 
mechanism. We’re all in denial, in varying ways and degrees.

The XR folks have a point: if we accept the inevitability of collapse, 
we could psychologically short-circuit our ability to make collapse 
survivable. However, if we indulge more in denial, we might blithely go 
our merry way, again doing nothing to improve our survival prospects. Is 
the solution to indulge in just the right amount of denial? What is that 
perfect quantity, and how should we go about monitoring everyone’s dosage?

There may be a sliding scale for how much “doom” each of us can handle. 
In which case, the XR vs. DA quarrel could at least partly be about 
groups of people sorting themselves according to their levels of 
psychological tolerance, then walling themselves off from one another 
through cognitive dissonance.

However, that assessment somewhat trivializes the debate; there’s more 
going on here. Just one additional angle: maybe collapse has already 
arrived, and it just isn’t evenly distributed yet. Hundreds of millions, 
perhaps a couple of billion poor people around the globe are already 
experiencing many of the horrors that are likely to follow in the wake 
of the collapse of modern industrial societies (not to mention the 
billions who have not benefitted equally from, or have been victims of 
global, industrial capitalism and imperialism). These people, whose 
plight is likely to worsen, don’t have the luxury of sitting back and 
philosophizing about the future; they spend each day doing what’s 
necessary to survive, which sometimes means fighting back against the 
forces of capitalist exploitation, which usually coincide with the major 
causes of climate change. Perhaps DA followers are mostly privileged 
people whose bubble has been popped by awareness of climate change and 
who, for the moment at least, can afford to be somewhat immobilized by 
this sudden disorientation.

I would counsel folks more inclined toward the DA point of view not to 
waste effort trying to convince their XR critics that catastrophic 
collapse is indeed inevitable within the next few years. Resist the 
pitfall of certitude: none of us knows at this point whether near-term 
human extinction is inevitable, or whether concerted action could result 
in a relatively benign version of collapse. Instead, concentrate on 
areas of agreement, and join with XR critics in taking action—which, 
among other things, is an effective way of managing our terror. Reject 
the tendency toward navel-gazing stasis.

Meanwhile, here’s a bit of advice to the XR critics of DA: go easy. 
Despite its questionable tendency toward worst-case fixation, DA 
nevertheless provides a support system within which people can undertake 
the inner work entailed in facing the reality of the great unraveling 
that is upon us. While that inner work shouldn’t become an end in 
itself, thereby subverting effort toward minimizing harm to ecosystems 
and human communities, it is nevertheless a necessary stage in moving 
beyond denial.

Perhaps the great classic of ancient Hindu literature, the Bhagavad 
Gita, has wisdom to offer in this regard. The Gita is a dialogue between 
prince Arjuna and his guide and charioteer Krishna, which occurs beside 
a battlefield during a war between Arjuna’s kinsmen and another tribe. 
Arjuna is overwhelmed with moral dread about the violence and death—the 
utter doom of it all!—and that his actions may contribute to it, even 
though he believes his kinsmen are in the right, and he wonders if he 
should renounce his title and duty and devote himself to philosophizing. 
Krishna counsels Arjuna to fulfill his warrior obligation, but to act 
without thought of self or attachment to outcome.

Similarly, those of us with awareness of the crises ahead must 
understand that action will have largely unknowable consequences. We 
find ourselves drawn to a role simply by the fact of our awareness; 
however, our awareness is incomplete. Despite that limitation, it’s up 
to us to play our role in the defense of nature and humanity as cleanly 
and selflessly—and as effectively—as possible.

Photo: A flag from the Extinction Rebellion Protest in Wellington (2019) 
By Heapsrich via Wikimedia Commons 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Extinction_Rebellion_Wellington_Protest_Flag_3.jpg. 
Creative Commons license 1.0.