Guest essay by Eric Worrall
“Deep adaptation” seems to be a group of climate apocalypse degraders who have too much of a message even for other believers.
Deep adaptation: Can climate change lead to social collapse?
11/27/2021
MARIANNE APOSTOLIDESThe ‘Deep Adaptation’ movement places the conversation about the future of society in a new field in which catastrophic climate change is at stake.
The movement creates a framework for thinking about climate adaptation by inviting people to reflect on four guiding questions.
But despite its contributions to thinking about climate change, ‘Deep Adaptation’ has a weak core premise: that climate change will lead to the collapse of societies.
UN climate change bulletins conference in Glasgow this month in a predictable pattern. World leaders take to the stage one after the other, each of them released dire warning about the impending climate disaster and conclude with urgent call come work: It’s not too late… but we must act now!
This message makes you feel tired, its urgency fades after decades of repetition. “Now” was the 1970s, with the advent of the modern environmental movement; “Now” means the Kyoto Protocol and its carbon-cutting commitments in the 1990s; “Now” is Paris 2015. Now, some believe, it is too late: The time has come. We are at the tip of the curve, on the brink of an unstoppable cascade that will irreversibly change the systems that govern the natural world. Too late. And if we, as a society, face that reality, we will all benefit immensely.
This is the argument of ‘Deep Adaptation’, a movement launched in 2018 by Jem Bendell, professor of sustainable leadership at the University of Cumbria in the United Kingdom. The movement puts the conversation about the future of society in a new arena, one where catastrophic climate change is seen as a given. The world will become a strange place, says Bendell: Everything we already know about the dynamics that drive our lives will be turned upside down by climate-induced disruption, leading to the collapse of our societies. festival. Only when we accept this inevitability can we prepare for the coming disaster “in ways that can reduce harm, especially by reducing conflict and trauma,” says Bendell Write.
‘Deep Adaptation’ has attracted a large following around the world: establishment document has been downloaded more than half a million times, according to Bendell, and Forum has consolidated a solid base of participants, from students to psychologists to academics. Recently, more than 500 scholars have signed a open letter endorses key tenets of ‘Deep Adaptation’, and urges policymakers to “engage openly with the risk of disintegration and even collapse of our society.”
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Blinded by utopian visions, Bendell seems to ignore the advances, in science and technology and other fields, that have the potential to develop society. In fields such as energy, water, materials science, and agriculture, basic science and innovative technology are creating new realities that can stabilize society, even in the context of the natural world. terrible changes are taking place.
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Read more: https://science.thewire.in/enosystem/deep-adaptation-could-climate-change-lead-to-societal-collapse/
I think Marianne Apostolides, the author of the review, could spend more time reviewing the evidence for her own beliefs. In my opinion, she seems ready to embrace climate apocalypse stories, even as she curbs those beliefs with a firm belief in technology and innovation.
But it’s great to see someone stand up against the relentless pessimism of climate leaders like Professor Jem Bendell. All very well in your own climate grief. But when you lead thousands, maybe millions, of others down the same path, in my opinion, that road lies Jonestown.
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