Wednesday, September 30, 2015

As COP21 approaches, more reasons why "we are doomed, doomed" as the Climapocalypse approaches in the next 30 generations of man

 
 
Note to readers: As COP21 approaches in late November and early December, here are some more reasons why "we are doomed, doomed" as the Climapocalypse approaches in the next 30 generations of man. By "we" I mean humakind, all of us, the human species. I have started work on a cli-fi novel with the working title of "THE LAST GENERATION OF MAN" and set in the far distant future -- pick a date! -- and many people have asked me why I am so down on hope, down on optimism, down on the future. Here is part of my response, much more of which I will try to explain via the story I plan to tell in the novel, which has a 2020 publication date.


Clive Hamilton, in a recent oped in The Conversation in Australia, noted that geophysicist Brad Werner in 2012 argued the case that we are in this Approaching Climapocalypse (A.C.) mess not because the market system is not working well enough but because it is working too well. Werner’s startling presentation to the annual conference of the American Geophysical Union that year was titled ‘Is the Earth Fucked?’ and he posed in public the question climate scientists and others who follow their work had been asking in private. His answer was bleak, or just possibly inspirational, according to Hamilton, one of Australia's most brilliant climate change observers. (I've spoken to him on the phone about this, too.)

Werner’s conclusion is that the Earth is indeed fucked, unless somehow the market system can be prevented from working so well. So Hamilton is arguing that what we urgently need is friction; sand must be thrown into the machine to slow it down. Only resistance to the dominant culture will give some hope of avoiding collapse with the next 30 generations of man.


''Only activism that disrupts the dominant culture — including ‘protests, blockades and sabotage’ — provides an avenue for a negative answer to his rude question," Hamilton said. "It is a kind of geophysical model of Naomi Klein’s recent call to arms.

This brings me to an important new book, co-written by a friend of mine in Australia named Christopher Wright, who I have known for a while via our cli-fi Twitter exchanges and links. The book is title ''Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations,'' and Wright wrote it with Daniel Nyberg, both academics with the University of Sydney. The duo gives readers a detailed and fascinating analysis of what global corporations do to keep the wheels of the system spinning; a phenomenon they term ‘creative self-destruction’.


''When Bill McKibben calculated that limiting global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels requires that 80 per cent of proven reserves of coal, oil and natural gas be left in the ground untouched, but that doing so would destroy the balance sheets of several of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations, he showed us in the starkest possible way the fundamental incompatibility of the current structure of economic power and the survival of the world as we know it," Hamilton underlined in his essay, which has been well-received Down Under and in North American and European capitals, too.

Hamilton says it with tough love here:

 "The hard truth is that these corporations would sooner see the world destroyed than relinquish their power. As Wright and Nyberg show in fascinating detail, it is not that the executives who run them are evil; they simply function the way the system dictates and the system, as we find over and over, is structured to keep the global capitalist system growing."

''In other words: The executives have no choice: if they cannot stomach it then they must leave and be replaced by people with fewer scruples or an enhanced ability to deceive themselves, to believe the stories their own PR people make up.''

[It is astonishing how gullible we all can be. In the history of greenwash rarely has there been a more cynical corporation that the oil company BP, which in July 2000 rebranded itself ‘Beyond Petroleum’, announcing it would over time transition out of fossil fuels and into renewable energy.]

Today it has sold out of its small investments in wind power and solar energy and is investing heavily in the development of shale gas, oil sands in Alberta (the worst kind of fossil energy), and, we must not forget, new oil fields under the melting Arctic, Hamilton warns.

Read ''Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations'' as an important wake up call and a very welcome corrective to the beguiling world of mistaken ideas we carry around, ideas that have us sleepwalking into disaster as the Climapocalypse approaches in the next 500 to 1000 years (some 30 to 50 generations of man).

Because of the economic system that we humans have created and live under, many of us an unthinking slaves of fashion, pop music, pop culture, cartoons, Hollywood gossip and hundreds of other parts of modern life that are a total waste of time and in fact bringing us closer and close to the End Times 30 generations from now, that is why I say "we are doomed, doomed."

That is why I am writing ''THE LAST GENERATION OF MAN'' as a cli-fi novel. I am writing as fast as I can. The shit won't hit the fan for a long long time, so those of you reading this essay today do not have to worry. And our childrend and grandchildren will be fine. Life in the luxurious fast lane of modern life will go as crazily as ever, distracted as we are as ever, and nothing will change, not even with the Bill McKibbens and Naomi Kleins and Andy Revkins and Clive Hamiltons and Margaret Atwoods among us. We are doomed, doomed.

So what's my purpose in writing THE LAST GENERATION OF MAN and keeping these blog posts online? I am trying to send a message to the future generations in 2121 and 2222 and 2323 and 2424 ane 2525 to help them help their descendants to prepare to die with grace and dignity as the END comes after the Climapopaclypse impact events turn the human species into a thing a thing of the past. The Earth will go on, without us, thank you.

Is tehre a God? If you think so, pray. If you know there is no such thing, prepare, prepare, prepare and stop feeing yourself like a glutton at the fountain of distraction and time-wasting entertainment shit on TV and from Hollywood. The human species is at risk. And all you want to do is play video games and see the next anime from Japan?

Peace on Earth. We don't have much time. Five hundred years will come and go ... in a cosmic second!

Escritor Daniel Galera [BRAZIL] fala do mundo pós-utópico de romances ''cli-fi''

Escritor Daniel Galera fala do mundo pós-utópico de romances cli-fi - Revista Trip

BRAZIL Cli-Fi News in Portuguese as meme goes GLOBAL: -
http://m.revistatrip.uol.com.br/artigo/40682?#_=_



Excerpts:

Avisos de tempestade

Em texto especial para a Trip, o escritor Daniel Galera fala do mundo pós-utópico e catastrófico dos romances cli-fi

24.09.2015 Texto: Daniel Galera Foto: Alison's adventures/Caters new agency

Alison's Adventures/Caters News Agency
Não é ficção: Thilafushi, uma ilha artificial, nas Maldivas, feita de lixo
Não é ficção: Thilafushi, uma ilha artificial, nas Maldivas, feita de lixo
 
O que pode significar, para a ficção, a derrocada do mundo em que vivemos e morremos? Essa pergunta ganha novos contornos diante dos efeitos da mudança climática e dos cenários de catástrofe que proliferam em nosso imaginário desde a virada do milênio.
 
Evidência disso é a popularização do termo ''cli-fi,'' contração de climate fiction, ou ficção climática. Embora o autor norte-americano Dan Bloom y Wired autor Scott Thill reivindique para si a invenção do termo em 2008, o conceito de um subgênero de ficção científica dedicado a especular sobre os efeitos da mudança climática não é novo.
 
No início da década de 1960, por exemplo, o grande escritor inglês J.G. Ballard publicou uma série de romances centrados em desastres naturais. Em The Drowned World (1962), a radiação solar derrete as calotas polares e inunda cidades inteiras.
 
Em uma de suas sacadas visionárias, Ballard mostra a catástrofe climática provocando a dissolução da distância psicológica que nos separa da natureza lá fora. Hoje, um conjunto de evidências cada vez maior associando a ação humana às alterações violentas no clima e nos ecossistemas leva muitos cientistas e filósofos a defenderem a adoção do termo Antropoceno para nomear a era atual do planeta. Mais do que mero organismo habitante, o homem figura como força geológica com responsabilidade direta sobre as condições de vida na Terra.
 
Em um artigo publicado em 2013 no jornal The Guardian, o escritor Rodge Glass apontou uma diferença entre a ficção científica clássica e a literatura ''cli-fi.'' Enquanto a primeira gira em torno de possíveis descobertas do futuro, a segunda lida com questões imediatas, apenas intensificando o que já se faz sentir no presente. A ficção climática ganha força à medida que as catástrofes ecológicas saem do domínio da especulação pós-apocalíptica para ocupar outro lugar no subconsciente das pessoas. O sentimento que esses escritores traduzem não é o medo da catástrofe, mas a noção, ainda pouco articulada no discurso cotidiano, de que ela já aconteceu.
 
Vemos isso em obras recentes de escritores como Margaret Atwood e David Mitchell, que em seu romance The Bone Clocks (2014) imagina a vida no ano de 2042, depois que a maioria dos desastres ecológicos previstos hoje pelos cientistas se tornou realidade. Resta saber se obras desse tipo se tornarão previdentes ou datadas como um desenho dos Jetsons. 
 
Em todo caso, o desafio da literatura contemporânea é não recair em cinismo à medida que desabam as utopias de um mundo melhor, entre elas a da harmonia com a natureza e a do crescimento econômico e demográfico ilimitado, apoiado em milagres tecnológicos.
Os impasses ecológicos e filosóficos desse século exigirão que abandonemos o antropocentrismo sem jogar fora o humanismo.
 
A visão dos ficcionistas, creio, terá papel valioso nessa empreitada.

Sobre o autor

Nasci em julho de 1979 em S緌 Paulo, mas sou de fam璱ia gaha e me criei em Porto Alegre. J� adulto, vivi alguns anos em S緌 Paulo e Santa Catarina, e hoje moro em Porto Alegre de novo. Publiquei contos e textos diversos na internet de 1996 a 2001, com destaque para os tr瘰 anos como colunista do mailzine Cardosonline (COL), e lancei meus dois primeiros livros pelo selo independente Livros do Mal, criado em 2001 por mim, Daniel Pellizzari e Guilherme Pilla. Al幦 de escrever prosa de fic誽o, traduzo autores de l璯gua inglesa e de vez em quando publico resenhas, ensaios e reportagens. Rights handled by Laurence Laluyaux (Rogers, Coleridge & White), l.laluyaux@rcwlitagency.com

"Break a keyboard!''

HUMOR BREAK: What to say to friends about to publish their new book (tomorrow, for example or soon)...not "break a leg!" which is theatre slang ...but "break a keyboard!''

''Now Is Not The Time For Realistic Fiction,'' Says Margaret Atwood on NPR radio segment with Lynn Neary



Margaret Atwood says she'll try anything once. That spirit of adventure — coupled with her curiosity about the intersection of storytelling and new technology — led her to write a serialized book for the digital publisher Byliner. That book, The Heart Goes Last, is out now in a print edition.


Is it a satire? Is it a parody? Dystopian fiction comes close, though Atwood says wryly, "any fiction that shows a society which is worse than your own is dystopian." In truth, she adds, "I think I'm just writing reality as it is unfolding."



 

                       
 
At 57, Margaret Atwood is still plunging ahead fearlessly into terrain that few younger writers male or female would dare to enter. "Writing is just fun for me." she says — and at this point in her life, it's obvious she believes that literary risks are well worth taking.

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/30/444775853/now-is-not-the-time-for-realistic-fiction-says-margaret-atwood

Monday, September 28, 2015

A rundown of Margaret Atwood's live webchat on 9-28 at the Guardian offices and website