informage

I've been reading Derrick Jensen's remarkable book 'Endgame'. His basic premise is that civilisation is inherently unsustainable and if allowed to continue will destroy most life on our planet. I've also recently watched Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' that brought home to me the very immediate threat that we'll do this with carbon dioxide. Jensen argues that our only sane collective response to this destructiveness is to begin the task, through whatever means necessary, of dismantling our civilisation immediately. This is an extreme position, and as such the book perhaps isn't for everyone.

Bluntly put: Endgame isn't for those who believe that because environmental scientists have been wrong before in their models and predictions, they surely must also be wrong this time. It isn't for those who pick holes in the overwhelming scientific consensus wherever they see even the smallest opportunity because it challenges their faith in civilisation (climate change deniers seem more and more like creationists in their rhetoric to me every day!)

It isn't for those who think that pumping far, far more CO2 into the atmosphere than 650,000 years' ice record shows as a maximum isn't a problem, that melting glaciers all over the world aren't a problem, that already rising sea levels aren't really a problem, that falling levels of certain pollutants revealing that for fifty years we've been cooling the earth as well as warming it and now we seem to just be doing the latter isn't worth worrying about (of course we can't predict the effects of this stuff with certainty, we can't even predict the weather accurately any more than about a week out, for me that's not the point)

Moreover, the book isn't for those who think that civilisation's relentless and brutal murder of all life that stands in its path, sentient or not, is either in any way ethical or in any way not insane.

In short: Endgame won't help you become sane if you aren't some of the way there already; it's directed at those who already think that there's some extremely serious problems around, more serious than anything humanity has ever encountered, and that we need to understand why and what needs to be done to rescue the planet and its lifeforms from likely, if not certain, extinction.

If you think differently: if you are clinging resolutely to the faith that all is basically well with the world, bar some tweaks and minor adjustments, then the book will probably come across as fringe lunacy and will be of little value. As Jensen himself dryly remarks: if you don't see the problem "good luck with your career in politics or business".

Once again I’m moved by a thoughtful critique of my posts to offer a follow-up, and once again I’m grateful for the generous time given in reading and responding to my writing - this time to Marcus. I’m going to try and address some of his points, this time just offering opinions in response. There’s a whole wealth of material out there discussing these things in more detail and with more in the way of hard evidence (see my politics links for some pointers).