A taxonomy of Doomer categories

Great stuff!! A very thorough taxonomy of Doomers! By Kirk Hall, a leading voice in the Degrowth movement.

And a question, for those of us who identify as a Doomer (or Doomster): Which type(s) are you? I’ll share my answer at the end.

Those of you who know me, see if you can guess my type(s). 😉 I’ll post the answer later.

Thanks always Kirk for your wise words and emotional support to the Degrowth movement.

And now, without further ado, Kirk’s classification of Doomer/Doomsters;

“Many types of people get labelled doomers. What type are you?

“Sadly, many posts and comment adopt a false dichotomy just to get attention. Let’s face it, balanced articles are boring.

“Here is my humble attempt to list the types of Doomers. Many types overlap.

  1. The Overwhelmed. An understandable reaction. Like a rabbit in the spotlight frozen in fear. Unable to take action.
  2. The Wallower. Seems to enjoy the doom.
  3. The Humorous Doomer. Anything for a laugh.
  4. The Denier. Previously denied or downplayed climate change in order to carry on their comfortable life. Now they say it’s too late to do anything so they carry on their comfortable life.
  5. The Blamer. Puts all the blame on their chosen villain: governments, big business, fossil fuel companies, etc.
  6. The Conspiracy Theorist. Similar to the blamer but not only do they have their favourite villain but it’s all a giant plot.
  7. The Advocate. Advocates for their particular actions. Those actions will potentially make the predicament better or worse. Covers many types listed below.
  8. The Collapsologist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapsology
  9. The so-called Green Growther. Tech is the ‘solution’. They often aren’t doomers but, quite the opposite, but sometimes get labelled as such by fossil fuel enthusiasts.
  10. The Anarcho-primitivist.
  11. Deep Green Resistance. Advocates tearing down industrial society. Probably the same as Anarcho-primitivist.
  12. JustCollapse. Just Collapse is an activist platform dedicated to socio-ecological justice in face of inevitable and irreversible global collapse. Recognizes that there will be no social justice in an unplanned collapse.
  13. The Optimistic Degrowther. Acknowledges collapse while advocating for lots of good policies. Often downplays the problems of Degrowth.
  14. The Realistic Degrowther. Acknowledges collapse while advocating for lots of good policies. Happy to admit that the chances of widespread uptake are slim. Is happy to raise the many problems. Often gives the optimistic version of Degrowth to newcomers.
  15. The Localist. Focuses heavily on community preparation for collapse.
  16. The Prepper. Focuses on weapons and individual actions.
  17. The Scientist. Labelled doomers just for telling the truth.
  18. Other types of Doomer? What did I miss?”

Further exploration:

• You can also read the above post by Kirk on the public page “Degrowth — it’s urgent.” And if you like this post, you’ll enjoy the other posts on that public page.

• Responding to Rebecca Solnit’s recent article on Doomers, in The Guardian (Renaae Churches; medium.com): “This is the Doomster Way, the Way of Acceptance. We are in #collapse and if we refuse to accept this we risk making a bad situation much worse. … if we accept the reality of climate breakdown, we have a chance to make amends and save as much of the natural world as possible while we still have a relatively intact society with the social order to get things done. Think orderly descent — powering down the global enterprise.”

• PPS. My answers as promised. Which type am I? I’m lots of 3 (Humor Doomer), mainly 12 (Just Collapse), also 14 (Realistic Degrowther) and 15 (localist).

Carbon footprint rant-o-saurus rex

I don’t care if the concept of carbon footprint was invented by a BP or whoever. I don’t care if it was invented to shame us into focusing on our own personal actions as the problem.

It’s our job as critical-thinking humans to understand that both personal and systemic action are needed.

Think about it: The consumption-entrenched governments and corporations of course want to distract us away from pushing for systemic change, so we will be forced (by the overpowering weight of the dysfunctional system) to keep consuming. They want to keep us dependent. So they don’t want system change.

And yet, because of how the system is, it’s very diehard-difficult for those of us who really want to make extreme voluntary personal reductions, to do so. You kind of have to be hard-core. I see myself (with my bicycle and my rain tubs and my uberlow electricity consumption and my voluntary low income etc.) as sort of an experimental lab-rat or shock troops or point person for the middle of the green bell curve.

By middle of the bell curve I mean the genuinely greenminded masses who really WANT to make change but are overwhelmed by the systemic barriers. Plus, the middle of the bell curve also includes the large swath of the population who are not particularly interested in eco-conscious living, but will be automatically living in a more eco-friendly manner as the systemic shifts take place. (As a real life, right-now example, your basic citizen of the UK or Spain etc. has a much much lower footprint than your basic citizen of the USA, all other things remaining the same. Because the default systems in Europe or Japan or Singapore etc. do not enable/force an everyday lifestyle of massive consumption as much as those in the USA. Just one example we can all recognize, the difference in transportation systems between the USA and the other places mentioned.)

Once we tip the balance on the systemic barriers, once we even make a tiny crack in it, the massive green tide will be unstoppable.

What I keep telling people is that our personal actions still DO matter – not in the tiny additive sense, but in the multiplicative or even exponential sense of social influence. I always ask myself and other green minded people, what are we normalizing today by our personal choices?

Fellow Boomers posting on social media about their robber-baron level of decadent travel vacations are broadcast-legitimizing consumerist travel gluttony. We deep-green troops need to do the same for legitimizing walking & cycling & public transport; finding joy in our local areas.

It’s not a matter of pushing for systemic change versus what we do in our everyday lives. Because when those things don’t match, we look like a bunch of hypocrites and no wonder people don’t respect environmentalists.

I’m really done seeing so-called green liberal people drive everywhere, live in huge airconditioned houses, hang on tight to their Wall Street funds, gush with pride when their grandkids join the military-industrial complex, etc. We have the resources; it’s on us to turn the tide.

I always say everything you do makes a difference. Do what you can, but don’t beat yourself up over what you can’t do. And, we can all help normalize anti-destructive choices by sharing a social media post about a beautiful forest, a charming DIY upcycled skirt, a food garden, etc.

Or as Dominique puts it in today’s Antiracism Daily, “While individual solutions can’t fix systemic problems, a mass societal shift in our habits and values can create pressure and change on industries and governments to enact sizable change.”

PS. As I mentioned in my book and have often mentioned elsewhere in this blog: One huge motivation to reduce one’s consumption is that said reductions can have a huge impact on us personally. For example, it can save lots of money. And it can simplify life, allowing us to slow down and relax more and appreciate the here and now. All of which makes a huge difference on each of our individual lives, even if it doesn’t make a huge difference in the planetary scheme of things.

Further exploration:

• “My carbon footprint is broken”; YouTube video by Kurtis Baute. The very engaging narrator gives a good overview of their household footprint, and what we greenminded people are up against as we strive to reduce our footprint. (It’s still a worthy battle though, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.) I will be watching other videos in his channel too, because he’s really good at explaining things in a commonsense and compassionate way.

Cry me a blue-red river

(The following comment applies only to a subset of the population. People who think the blue states are terrible and communist, but they spent their entire working life in those blue states earning big bucks, and then move down here like carpetbaggers to take advantage of the low taxes, etc. Of course not everyone who moves to Florida is like this. And I did not mean to imply such.)

Prompted by comments I’ve seen over the years from right-wing retirees on Nextdoor who just love the boot of an authoritarian regime, and are so glad they moved away from their terrible communist blue states to Florida, because Florida is such a “fReE sTaTe of LaW aNd oRdER”:

I just love how some people manage to endure an entire lifetime of working in blue states. Yes, they manage to endure an entire lifetime of those $40 and $50 an hour union jobs. How hard that must’ve been to endure the labor protections, access to health insurance, etc., in those blue states.

And now they get to come retire to maximize the stretch of their dollars in a nice red-meat, low-tax state. Very very interesting, the level of self-serving that I see in many of my fellow white Boomers who came from “Blue” states to live a cushy old age here in this anti-labor, racist govt regime of authoritarian overreach.

Acreage Farms at 1 Million Cups Daytona Beach

An excellent presentation by Acreage Farms of Daytona Beach, at today’s 1 Million Cups Daytona Beach. (I attended online. Kudos to the 1MC organizers for continuing to offer Facebook Live.)

Various thoughts that it sparked in me, from a permaculture perspective:

  • Great example of how technology can be used to improve the human-built environment, and increase abundance.
  • Great example of how permaculture is about so much more than just the immediate operation of growing food! It’s about optimizing processes and maximizing resources.
  • Colin mentions that although they use low-energy LED lighting, the expense does add up. I think they could reduce their overhead significantly by using skylights for lighting. Also, there may be opportunities to use passive solar design elements to save money & fuel on cooling. At the very least, the sun’s free energy could greatly supplement the energy needs of an indoor growing facility and help shift the overhead equation in a sustainable direction.
  • In this group we tend to prefer 100% outdoor growing. And we turn to look askance at systems that require a lot of manufactured elements such as plastic containers etc. But the fact of the matter is, field agriculture is chewing up too much acreage, water, nutrients, and biodiversity; plus the climate is changing super fast. So we all kind of need to be a giant laboratory for various techniques. Vertical indoor growing is one option that can be just the right thing in some settings.
  • The topic of Terroir came up. It’s fascinating to me that growers have been able to replicate the Terroir to grow a Japanese strawberry in New York for example.
  • Also, if we can locally grow cacao and coffee and other high-demand crops, that would be a huge win. The industrialized world’s high demand for certain crops has caused a lot of hardship and ecological degradation in many parts of the world.
  • It struck me that the vertical growing industry might potentially be a good market for recycled single-use plastics (or better yet reused, upcycled plastics).
  • Our focus, within the permaculture movement, on mainly the food-growing aspect of permaculture has done our movement and the general public a grave disservice. Many of us simply are not cut out for growing food. However all of us are cut out to be involved in some aspect(s) of growing food, which can include space design, engineering, robotics, process optimization, plumbing, electrics, monitoring, transportation, processing, hospitality businesses, the cultivation of sales channels, not to mention the design and making of comfortable and functional work clothing, tool design and making, etc. etc. etc. and so much more. To examples of the huge range of skills that can help with the growing of food, just look at the profiles of the Acreage Farms team members.
  • I love that this company is in my local area, and I will be seeking to support them in cultivating beneficial relationships in our region.
  • 1 Million Cups, itself, is a prime example of Permaculture. We are literally creating the local business ecosystem; local economic resilience. This is an aspect of permaculture that merits much more attention.

Public drinking fountains; splash fountains

There needs to be an outdoor drinking fountain at every single park / rec center at least. Thank you to a fellow Daytona Beach citizen for bringing this up. My fellow citizen was specifically referring to the houseless population, but truthfully, like so many other things such as public benches, water fountains are a basic bare-minimum essential for livability of a city.

One of my nearby parks has a three-level drinking fountain / water-bottle refill fountain. Tallest level for tall humans, mid level for shorter humans, and the bottom level for dogs and other furbabies.

Constant steady availability of drinking water fountains/waterbottle refill stations is a necessity to all of us.

BTW I noticed that the beautiful, newly reopened opened Dickerson Center doesn’t seem to have a water fountain outdoors. I will be bringing that up to the city, and I’m going around noticing where else we need outdoor water fountains.

And the intensifying heat only emphasizes the need.

The availability of water stations outdoors is a non-negotiable essential. It helps serve as a cooling system as well. Could save lives. Anybody, housed or unhoused, can be done in by the heat very quickly. This is just one example of how caring for our unhoused population is in the best interest of us all.

Another old-fashioned type of cooling facility is a public fountain. Nowadays in a lot of places the closest equivalent is what’s called a splash pad. But a splash pad is more of a children’s recreational facility, and people would probably look askance at adults trying to cool themselves there.

Actually people do look askance at the unhoused population trying to cool themselves there. However, we actually all need public fountains. Not only for cooling ourselves, but also as a “third place”; a public commons for reestablishing basic trust and human connection.

Overwhelm and disconnection

Out and about, I meet a lot of people who are very overwhelmed in their work. Never quite being able to do it all; not quite knowing what tasks to focus on. And these are smart, really good hearted people.

Over time, I have started to notice a pattern. A lot of these overwhelmed people are also very disconnected. What I mean is that they are not plugged in to community. Via social media, via in-person relationships in their residential neighborhood or the neighborhood of their business, or both.

This isn’t necessarily related to introversion versus extroversion. There are ways for introverts to form networks and plug into community without having to be fake extroverts. Ask me how I know this <wink>.

Of course if a person feels overwhelmed they’re not exactly going to feel like reaching out to other people. That might just feel like another task on top of everything else that they’re already overwhelmed by.

The thing is to see community as essential. Plugging in is non-optional. Plugging in is what prevents overwhelmed, and I would venture to say that a lot of the people who were overwhelmed are overwhelmed because they are not plugging in.

People like that can be exhausting to deal with because they tend to know little or nothing about upcoming events, aligned organizations, or relevant local resources. I say exhausting because for those of us who are connectors, we feel obligated to keep them connected too because they are part of our network.

None of this post is to try to make anyone feel bad. And we all have our skill areas. And areas where we’re more willing to apply attention than others. That said, everybody needs community. And if you are overwhelmed, I will suggest to you today that you look to plug into your immediate neighbors, and follow your local social-media channels that announce events and resources.

There are a lot of you exhausted, goodhearted people out there trying to do great work for the planet. Get out of your own way: Plug in. It may seem like extra work at first but I promise you it will very much lighten your workload while also adding joy to your life.

Short list of easy ways to plug-in:

Online

• Follow your city government’s Facebook page or Twitter account etc. (And if each department has its own account, you could follow those too if you like).

• Follow your neighborhood association / neighborhood watch’s Facebook page.

• Join NextDoor

• Sign up to get text alerts from your city government

Offline

• At the bare minimum, at least meet all of the neighbors adjacent to you. Ideally more.

• Same goes for a business, meet at least your immediate neighbors but ideally the whole street or whole block.

• Joy in your neighborhood association or neighborhood watch and attend the meetings. If you are a business, join your merchant’s district and attend the meetings.

— There are a lot more ways you can plug-in, but this is at least a start. You’ll reduce the workload on yourself and also on other people. And you might really meet some people you like!

Militarism, flying, and the environment

The people who brought up the environmental footprint of fighter jets, other military aircraft, and militarism in general make a very important point. (This was on a thread in the Deep Adaptation group, about the high footprint of flying.) Militarism is a huge environmental detriment. Not to mention of course the unacceptable human cost. And my country, the USA, is the leading instigator of militarism.

On that note, I am looking forward to attending the Veterans for Peace Convention later this month. Aug 25-27. It is the USA national convention.

Here’s the link to see the schedule, read the FAQ, and register: https://www.vfpconvention.org BTW there is even going to be a poetry soirée on the Friday evening!

Major kudos to the VFP for having its conference be a VIRTUAL event. All conference organizers, particularly organizers of climate conferences <forehead-slapping emoticon>, should take note.

Thank you VFP for fully recognizing the cost of flying (and all the other stuff that goes with in-person conferences) to people and the environment.

Thanks for walking your talk!

#peace #environment #veteransforpeace