Great article, right on target. And as someone who’s been shouting warnings from the rooftops, and chronicling the eco-evolution, for a few decades, I can only wonder if this will be the disaster that finally wakes US up🔥😳
Appears that the Uber-wealthy lives matter more than “We the Serfs”, which will most likely never change until our planet reclaims itself from the life forms that have trashed it!
Sooooo, here's the thing. The misinformed people in denial die faster and more often than the people paying attention. Normally this is a small effect, but... recent events, such as Covid, have made it a much larger effect.
I have been modeling how many years it will take before so many of the misinformed people in denial die that the people trying to do the right thing outnumber them and can take power. It's too long, obviously, but it's not THAT long, it'll happen within a decade or two
Technically true, but imagine the state of the world in 2 decades. Imagine how many people who pay attention are being forced to suffer. Mask bans are a great example. By law in NC now, you can be arrested for refusing to unmask. So we have to keep speaking up, for our right to pay attention.
We absolutely have to keep speaking up and fighting. Mask bans are unenforceable and we can make them unenforceable, especially as the people who are charged with enforcing them get sick and die of preventable diseases.
It just seems difficult to win the fight because we're currently a minority. There will come a point when we have the numbers to win.
The thing is, Earth is not personal. Many people who are (or were) informed and aware are being impacted by these extreme events. I know some of them, perhaps you do too. Population may be impacted, but Earth does not care what our politics are. If we are in the deluge, we are swept away.
Well I’ve already invested 2M trying to educate and engage the public—doing some 5,000 interviews with solutionaries over 27 years—so any day now there should be an ROI.
I applaud you for your effort. Like Jessica (but without her readership numbers unfortunately) I have spent the last three years writing and warning about the dangers we face. I intend to keep going. I view it as a responsibility. So many threats now from climate change, species extinction, trending fascism, the scale of disasters that ramp up with every tenth of a degree, and the fantasy that life will go on without societal change as oil dwindles and limits our ability to build a renewable economy. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/the-end-of-oil
While I do agree that these are issues that no one is addressing, I think we need to view the ideological reasons that nothing is being done. This is a liberal capitalist hellscape we have created, and we need to move away from capitalism to find any solutions. People like Matt Taibi say things like "we'll figure it out" because that is the point of neoliberal doctrine. Their belief is that The Market will solve the problems created by The Market. Market logic and consumer culture both dictate that tech will somehow save us and the only thing necessary is to buy our way out of the problem. As part of breaking ourselves out of the cycle of never acknowledging the problems we are seeing (and by "ourselves" and "we" I mean society at large) we must also break ourselves of the thinking that brought us to this point, otherwise we will simply recreate the issues facing us. It's us or capitalism now, and we need to start facing that. I think we should be more clear about that as well, and talk about it every time we have these discussions.
It definitely reads like it and is why I enjoy your writing. I merely think it needs to be made more explicit. Perhaps it's me but the comments I read sometimes don't always seem like the dots have quite connected
Just more and more signs of the collapse of the U.S. empire. The government is more concerned about their unipolar hegemony than taking care of the domestic issues that they face. The U.S. is facing another twist in its history and as more and more people get fed up with seeing all of their money going to other countries for nothing (in their viewpoint), with nothing being done to help them out when weather disasters hit, there will be more and more anger and the U.S. may see another uprising like they had during the Nixon presidency. January 6. 2021 will be a garden party in comparison.
No lives matter in America. I think that middle class white people will see that they are no different than the survivors of hurricane Katrina.
No lives matter in America.
Why would any American expect help after a natural disaster? Didn’t they see what happened in New Orleans? Didn’t they see over 1,250,000 Americans die, including thousands of children, from a virus? People are still dying from the effects of the virus, and will continue to, forever.
Everyone who has been harmed by Helene needs to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. That’s the “American way. “
Thank you for continuing to warn. So many planetary boundaries have been crossed and tipping points surpassed. The mainstream media will never acknowledge with the urgency needed. Now I'm going to buy some cool stuff the CNN website thinks I should get. It's all farce.
Funny the libs love screaming about how with Project 2025 government agencies like FEMA won’t exist. And that would be different than now how?
We’re supposed to believe Biden isn’t for Project 2025 when DeJoy is still running the post office, Wray is still running the FBI and FEMA can’t pay for or do anything for anyone?
Do you honestly think one man in less than four years can fix EVERYTHING we’ve fucked up through many far-right presidencies — the ones who lost the popular vote? Obama tried but the fascists openly fought everything he tried to do.
I've read so many US citizens who have no idea how our country's governance apparatus works. People seem to think the president is more like a monarch, and have no basic idea as to the separation of powers between the states and federal government. Though they usually have some idea as to the separation of powers at the federal level, they are often unaware that agencies such as the Federal Reserve, or the Post office, are governed by congressional statute, not at the whim of the president.
Thank you for pointing out that our tax dollars are being spent on weapons and fossil fuels, and anyone complaining about that is a terrorist. My own daughter, who is devoting her life to climate resiliency for a million people in a land that will soon be uninhabitable, shames me for complaining about a boil water order when people in Buncombe County have no water at all. Our drinking water is downstream from an explosives plant and open burn pits, spewing heavy metals into the air, water, and soil on an ordinary day, but after Helene, the river crested at 27 feet above flood stage. What do you think is in the water now? No offense to my daughter, but I'll take my chances with filtered rain, and send as much cash as I can to people in harm's way.
My take-away: "Our politicians are funding war while abdicating their most basic responsibilities to help their own citizens during times of chronic crisis, with millions of people now struggling without food, water, fuel, or shelter. It is a vast understatement to call this reckless and irresponsible."
People don't matter! MIMAC:
Military
Industrial, Media,
Academic
Complex is running things, not the people of the USA...
I feel as safe as it’s possible to be in central Illinois. I see people running to buy houses in really vulnerable areas and I wonder if they’ve really thought it through.
Thank you for yet another eye-opening piece of writing, Jessica.
If it's of any interest to you, I'm curious to hear your perspective on the mid- to long-term impact on silicon wafer refining (i.e. modern computing) as per zerohedge:
...and actually this is a common feature. There are relatively few things which most humans use which are just going to become unavailable.
But a LOT of things are going to become MORE EXPENSIVE. Standard of living drop is inevitable because we're paying the "disaster overhead tax" with everything.
Yeah. I am familiar with overshoot and collapse - I'm painfully aware of diminishing eroei and compounding predicaments coming together to force prices upward and living standards downward. Just fascinating to follow the specifics sometimes
Americans only care cause the Palestinians are white. And, the USA is actively supplying weapons to Israel to kill the Palestinians.
Americans haven’t cared about children and babies and women dying Yemen, the Congo, Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, etc. Americans don’t care about Black lives. They also don’t care if babies die due to America’s inaction.
Either way, this IS America. This country has been like this since the genocide of the Indigenous Americans, who now live in abject poverty, with no running water or electricity. Like the “Americans” in the southeast. Why do they expect help from the feds?
The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota exemplifies how much the feds care about Americans.
Ummm. Palestinians are not white. They are as Arab and brownskinned as the Yemenis you rightly state are ignored. The difference is where this crisis is happening and who is directly involved.
While I do agree that these are issues that no one is addressing, I think we need to view the ideological reasons that nothing is being done. This is a liberal capitalist hellscape we have created, and we need to move away from capitalism to find any solutions. People like Matt Taibi say things like "we'll figure it out" because that is the point of neoliberal doctrine. Their belief is that The Market will solve the problems created by The Market. Market logic and consumer culture both dictate that tech will somehow save us and the only thing necessary is to buy our way out of the problem. As part of breaking ourselves out of the cycle of never acknowledging the problems we are seeing (and by "ourselves" and "we" I mean society at large) we must also break ourselves of the thinking that brought us to this point, otherwise we will simply recreate the issues facing us. It's us or capitalism now, and we need to start facing that. I think we should be more clear about that as well, and talk about it every time we have these discussions.
“Most people will run from the truth about this as if their sanity depends on it” - C. ingram in Facing Extinction
Great article, right on target. And as someone who’s been shouting warnings from the rooftops, and chronicling the eco-evolution, for a few decades, I can only wonder if this will be the disaster that finally wakes US up🔥😳
It should, but I think we've crossed into a new era.
Nope. People are too misinformed by our politicians and psychopaths. It’s going to be bread and circuses until everything is gone. Soon.
Correct. There will never be a wake up.
Katrina.
Sandy.
Sarscov2.
The Tubbs Fire.
The Paradise Fire.
No lives matter in America. Not only Black lives. White lives don’t matter. The lives of children don’t matter.
No lives matter.
Appears that the Uber-wealthy lives matter more than “We the Serfs”, which will most likely never change until our planet reclaims itself from the life forms that have trashed it!
Thanks for saving me the time by writing that, Patrick
Sooooo, here's the thing. The misinformed people in denial die faster and more often than the people paying attention. Normally this is a small effect, but... recent events, such as Covid, have made it a much larger effect.
I have been modeling how many years it will take before so many of the misinformed people in denial die that the people trying to do the right thing outnumber them and can take power. It's too long, obviously, but it's not THAT long, it'll happen within a decade or two
Technically true, but imagine the state of the world in 2 decades. Imagine how many people who pay attention are being forced to suffer. Mask bans are a great example. By law in NC now, you can be arrested for refusing to unmask. So we have to keep speaking up, for our right to pay attention.
We absolutely have to keep speaking up and fighting. Mask bans are unenforceable and we can make them unenforceable, especially as the people who are charged with enforcing them get sick and die of preventable diseases.
It just seems difficult to win the fight because we're currently a minority. There will come a point when we have the numbers to win.
Hmm not sure about that, Neroden. Ashville is said to be a place climate aware people saw as a refuge
The thing is, Earth is not personal. Many people who are (or were) informed and aware are being impacted by these extreme events. I know some of them, perhaps you do too. Population may be impacted, but Earth does not care what our politics are. If we are in the deluge, we are swept away.
I wouldn't put money on that, Betsy, sorry.
Well I’ve already invested 2M trying to educate and engage the public—doing some 5,000 interviews with solutionaries over 27 years—so any day now there should be an ROI.
I applaud you for your effort. Like Jessica (but without her readership numbers unfortunately) I have spent the last three years writing and warning about the dangers we face. I intend to keep going. I view it as a responsibility. So many threats now from climate change, species extinction, trending fascism, the scale of disasters that ramp up with every tenth of a degree, and the fantasy that life will go on without societal change as oil dwindles and limits our ability to build a renewable economy. https://geoffreydeihl.substack.com/p/the-end-of-oil
It will not
While I do agree that these are issues that no one is addressing, I think we need to view the ideological reasons that nothing is being done. This is a liberal capitalist hellscape we have created, and we need to move away from capitalism to find any solutions. People like Matt Taibi say things like "we'll figure it out" because that is the point of neoliberal doctrine. Their belief is that The Market will solve the problems created by The Market. Market logic and consumer culture both dictate that tech will somehow save us and the only thing necessary is to buy our way out of the problem. As part of breaking ourselves out of the cycle of never acknowledging the problems we are seeing (and by "ourselves" and "we" I mean society at large) we must also break ourselves of the thinking that brought us to this point, otherwise we will simply recreate the issues facing us. It's us or capitalism now, and we need to start facing that. I think we should be more clear about that as well, and talk about it every time we have these discussions.
The bankrupt ideology of neoliberal capitalism is the burning backdrop behind every single thing I write.
It definitely reads like it and is why I enjoy your writing. I merely think it needs to be made more explicit. Perhaps it's me but the comments I read sometimes don't always seem like the dots have quite connected
Yes, yes, yes...!!!!
Just more and more signs of the collapse of the U.S. empire. The government is more concerned about their unipolar hegemony than taking care of the domestic issues that they face. The U.S. is facing another twist in its history and as more and more people get fed up with seeing all of their money going to other countries for nothing (in their viewpoint), with nothing being done to help them out when weather disasters hit, there will be more and more anger and the U.S. may see another uprising like they had during the Nixon presidency. January 6. 2021 will be a garden party in comparison.
Isn't it time for a national civil legal action against all the fossil energy producers for the costs of climate change?
Helene will affect us all. Even those of us in Minnesota.
“Nation's largest supplier of IV solutions temporarily closes amid Helene”
No IV solutions.
People will die when we run out of IV solutions.
Our medical supply infrastructure is made where it is cheapest. No unions. Puerto Rico. Costa Rica. Vietnam.
Get ready people
No lives matter in America. I think that middle class white people will see that they are no different than the survivors of hurricane Katrina.
No lives matter in America.
Why would any American expect help after a natural disaster? Didn’t they see what happened in New Orleans? Didn’t they see over 1,250,000 Americans die, including thousands of children, from a virus? People are still dying from the effects of the virus, and will continue to, forever.
Everyone who has been harmed by Helene needs to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. That’s the “American way. “
Many Americans are about to be treated like the 1,200,000,000 people in the world without access to electricity.
Why do we think we are entitled to our cushy lives? And the people living in Sudan, are not?
Thank you for continuing to warn. So many planetary boundaries have been crossed and tipping points surpassed. The mainstream media will never acknowledge with the urgency needed. Now I'm going to buy some cool stuff the CNN website thinks I should get. It's all farce.
Funny the libs love screaming about how with Project 2025 government agencies like FEMA won’t exist. And that would be different than now how?
We’re supposed to believe Biden isn’t for Project 2025 when DeJoy is still running the post office, Wray is still running the FBI and FEMA can’t pay for or do anything for anyone?
Do you honestly think one man in less than four years can fix EVERYTHING we’ve fucked up through many far-right presidencies — the ones who lost the popular vote? Obama tried but the fascists openly fought everything he tried to do.
He could have tried. DeJoy could have been removed within a year, he just didn't really bother
The president doesn't fire the Postmaster General. It's up to the Board of Governors.
The current Board of Governors is heavily republican appointed, although Biden just appointed a new member.
It's not as simple as Biden firing DeJoy. Wish it were.
I've read so many US citizens who have no idea how our country's governance apparatus works. People seem to think the president is more like a monarch, and have no basic idea as to the separation of powers between the states and federal government. Though they usually have some idea as to the separation of powers at the federal level, they are often unaware that agencies such as the Federal Reserve, or the Post office, are governed by congressional statute, not at the whim of the president.
Harris certainly isnt for Project 2025. Start there.
Thank you for pointing out that our tax dollars are being spent on weapons and fossil fuels, and anyone complaining about that is a terrorist. My own daughter, who is devoting her life to climate resiliency for a million people in a land that will soon be uninhabitable, shames me for complaining about a boil water order when people in Buncombe County have no water at all. Our drinking water is downstream from an explosives plant and open burn pits, spewing heavy metals into the air, water, and soil on an ordinary day, but after Helene, the river crested at 27 feet above flood stage. What do you think is in the water now? No offense to my daughter, but I'll take my chances with filtered rain, and send as much cash as I can to people in harm's way.
The people of the Navajo nation have never had running water. That’s how much the feds care about Americans
My take-away: "Our politicians are funding war while abdicating their most basic responsibilities to help their own citizens during times of chronic crisis, with millions of people now struggling without food, water, fuel, or shelter. It is a vast understatement to call this reckless and irresponsible."
People don't matter! MIMAC:
Military
Industrial, Media,
Academic
Complex is running things, not the people of the USA...
"War is a Racket"
https://youtu.be/26O-2SVcrw0?si=vajh2iMN7WKGj6OA
I feel as safe as it’s possible to be in central Illinois. I see people running to buy houses in really vulnerable areas and I wonder if they’ve really thought it through.
guaranteed they have not
Thank you for yet another eye-opening piece of writing, Jessica.
If it's of any interest to you, I'm curious to hear your perspective on the mid- to long-term impact on silicon wafer refining (i.e. modern computing) as per zerohedge:
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/modern-economy-rests-single-road-north-carolina-where-hurricane-collapsed-bridges
It's not the sole source, it's used for making crucibles which last for 6+ months and are recyclable. It just makes things more expensive
...and actually this is a common feature. There are relatively few things which most humans use which are just going to become unavailable.
But a LOT of things are going to become MORE EXPENSIVE. Standard of living drop is inevitable because we're paying the "disaster overhead tax" with everything.
Yeah. I am familiar with overshoot and collapse - I'm painfully aware of diminishing eroei and compounding predicaments coming together to force prices upward and living standards downward. Just fascinating to follow the specifics sometimes
An unpopular opinion about Gaza.
Americans only care cause the Palestinians are white. And, the USA is actively supplying weapons to Israel to kill the Palestinians.
Americans haven’t cared about children and babies and women dying Yemen, the Congo, Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, etc. Americans don’t care about Black lives. They also don’t care if babies die due to America’s inaction.
Either way, this IS America. This country has been like this since the genocide of the Indigenous Americans, who now live in abject poverty, with no running water or electricity. Like the “Americans” in the southeast. Why do they expect help from the feds?
The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota exemplifies how much the feds care about Americans.
Ummm. Palestinians are not white. They are as Arab and brownskinned as the Yemenis you rightly state are ignored. The difference is where this crisis is happening and who is directly involved.
I think the Palestine/Israel issue is cared about in America for a variety of historic reasons other than race, including those reasons you mention, but the concept of what is "white" or "black" has changed quite a bit over the years depending on what is focused on. https://www.reddit.com/r/ForwardsFromKlandma/comments/1derkuc/british_magazine_from_the_early_1960s_called/
Understand the anger, Theresa. But to be realistic, people arent seeing images from places like Yemen, the Congo, Sudan, Rwanda, Ethiopia, etc.
They are from Gaza. And are rightly disgusted.
While I do agree that these are issues that no one is addressing, I think we need to view the ideological reasons that nothing is being done. This is a liberal capitalist hellscape we have created, and we need to move away from capitalism to find any solutions. People like Matt Taibi say things like "we'll figure it out" because that is the point of neoliberal doctrine. Their belief is that The Market will solve the problems created by The Market. Market logic and consumer culture both dictate that tech will somehow save us and the only thing necessary is to buy our way out of the problem. As part of breaking ourselves out of the cycle of never acknowledging the problems we are seeing (and by "ourselves" and "we" I mean society at large) we must also break ourselves of the thinking that brought us to this point, otherwise we will simply recreate the issues facing us. It's us or capitalism now, and we need to start facing that. I think we should be more clear about that as well, and talk about it every time we have these discussions.