This is the first blog I wrote initially for Substack (so far). (Everything else I post there is from this blog.) Luckily, the loons didn't see it.
tl;dr
I only want less suffering in the world.
I’m not writing this to argue with people who disagree with me. I’m writing this for anyone for whom reducing our world’s real suffering is the bottom line.
Cult thinking, broadly defined, is incredibly seductive, no matter how “smart” we are. (You can also think of “cult” as “tribe,” and every one of us has at least one tribe.)
Cult / tribal thinking has led to much unnecessary suffering, and it continues to.
Progress is not inevitable. Backsliding is common. It is incredibly hard to overcome cult thinking.
“Bad” things are not just “the other side’s” fault.
Is it about how virtuous you are?
Or is it about actually trying to better conditions?
–Margaret Atwood, quoted here, p. 304
Preface to the Preface
I know everyone discussed in this piece is just following their programming. All evidence indicates that humans need a religion. And in our evolutionary history, having a “tribe” was a matter of life-and-death.
However, one of the two main problems of today’s Carbon Cultists (the more superficial of their downsides) is that they present themselves as “rational” (and “moral”). To hear them tell it, only they believe in “science.” “Everyone is stupid except me.”
An Aside
"In relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for the animals, it is an eternal Treblinka."
–Isaac Bashevis Singer
Wailing about “carbon emissions!” without talking about animal agriculture is like a Nazi screaming about the air pollution from the ovens at Auschwitz.
(This is in no way meant to imply that “Vegans” are the rational and moral ones. Or that I am, either.*)
(Also: This is not another “If you’re not vegan, you’re a fucking hypocrite!” article. It is a “Please care about actual suffering” article.)
Yet More Preface
This essay doesn’t cover any new ground beyond what I’ve written on my blog and in Losing My Religions. I was driven to write, again, after hearing three very highly educated people (who know about the horrors of factory farms) go on and on and on about “carbon emissions.” Two of the three are quite famous, and one has been a bigshot in the last two Democratic administrations in the U.S.
No mainstream climate models suggest a return to a world as bad as the one we had in 1950, to say nothing of 1150.
-Ezra Klein, co-founder of Doomer Central (Vox.com), in the New York Times, quoted here, p. 448.
Introduction: “Only I can fix it”
Two days before I started this essay, I posted this comment on a Hannah Ritchie (Not the End of the World) column:
It would be great if people moved away from supporting factory farming, no matter what they did instead. It would be great if ‘suffering footprint’ supplanted ‘carbon footprint’ as something we cared about.
I got up this morning to this reply:
Carbon footprint is an absolutely crucial concept, as climate catastrophe is the most dire and urgent crisis in history. It will destroy civilization and most life on Earth if not solved immediately by radical changes in almost every aspect of global society.**
“If you talk only in absolutes, you just may be a cultist.”
That reply says it all. “Shut up about factory farms! My concern is the only one that matters! And it is infinitely important and infinitely pressing and can only be solved by everyone doing exactly what I want!”
I have documented, over and over and over again, how this “destroy civilization and most life on Earth” hysteria is entirely false, hyperbolic, and harmful. (You don’t have to believe me, though.) But you can’t reason with cultists. A tribe’s identity is tied to their dogma, be it Doom or Deity. Non-falsifiable, non-negotiable.
You know you are dealing with dogma when people speak in frantic absolutes: “most dire and urgent crisis in history. It will destroy civilization and most life on Earth.”
Nothing is black and white – not even my focus, factory farms. In this case, the use of fossil fuels has enabled the “developed” world to develop. Fossil fuels have lifted billions out of abject poverty. Fossil fuels created the world where Keyboard Kommandos like Mr. “We’re All Gonna Die!” can spend his days sitting well-fed and comfortable at his computer, screaming about fossil fuels.
“If you say, ‘My way or the highway!’ you are definitely a cultist.”
Mr. “We’re All Gonna Die!” not only knows the Truth about The Only Important Thing, he also knows that there is only one, huge, all-encompassing solution: “radical changes in almost every aspect of global society.”
Even the three famous people I mentioned above only talked about “cutting carbon.” The countries that have emitted carbon are “wrongdoers,” full stop. (That would make the low-carbon-emissions, high-poverty countries the “right-doers.”)
For the Carbon Cultists, there can be no discussion of the exact negative consequences of carbon emissions. We can’t take steps to address those actual issues. Don’t use the words “mitigation” or “adaptation.” No discussion of how to reduce the warming effect of greenhouse gases. No mention of how to sequester the evil carbon.
Verboten.
From Losing My Religions, reproduced in I Hate It When the Right is Right:
And not to be cynical, but if global warming truly is The Worst Thing Ever, why is geoengineering a topic we can’t even discuss? Ocean seeding and enhanced weathering [or this] – these aren’t even part of the discussion. Increasing albedo is verboten because the sky would look different? A slightly-less-blue sky overrides The Worst Thing Ever?
The Carbon Cultists’ rhetoric clearly shows they don’t want solutions, they just want their “good-vs-evil” religion with their noble and doomed “us-vs-wrongdoers” struggle:
Vox’s Bryan Walsh wrote in July 12 2022’s Future Perfect: “To argue, as the climate activist Greta Thunberg did in a tweet earlier this month, that nuclear power can never be considered ‘green’ is to implicitly reveal that your fear of nuclear trumps your fear of climate change. And if that becomes the norm, the climate will pay the price.” [Already done – and worse.] Or, as James Lovelock put it decades ago: “Some time in the next century, when the adverse effects of climate change begin to bite, people will look back in anger at those who now so foolishly continue to pollute by burning fossil fuel instead of accepting the beneficence of nuclear power.”
Those who refuse to learn from history are Doomers
Haven’t there always been [doomers] yelling ‘The sky is falling’? Hasn’t every single one of their doomsday predictions from the 60s, 70s, and 80s been proven wrong?
-Here, p. 457
Women voting (or working), interracial couplings, gay marriage – all going to “destroy civilization.” “Chemicals,” fertilizer, the next ice age, “pollution,” and, of course, over and over, “overpopulation” – all going to “destroy the planet.”
The other refrain that unites all the Doomers over time? “This time is different!”
But seriously, check out those prophecies and the confidence with which they were offered.
And then (foreshadowing) ask yourself, “Why didn’t any of them come to pass?” It wasn’t because of “radical changes in almost every aspect of global society.” It was because of pragmatic, practical, politically-possible policies.
Digression: Carbon Is Life
It is particularly ironic to have “carbon” vilified as evil incarnate. Carbon is, of course, the miraculous atom that is the basis of life. And carbon dioxide in particular is necessary for “civilization and most life on Earth.”
Over a decade ago, I came across a sentence buried in a New Scientist article noting that increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased crop yields. Asking ChatGPT today to summarize the research on crop yields and increased carbon dioxide concentrations produced this table:
📊 Summary of Average Yield Increases Under Elevated CO₂ (~550 ppm)
Wheat 10–15%
Rice 10–15%
Soybeans 15–20%
Maize 0–5%
Now, a serious question for you:
Did you know that our most important crops were more productive because of increased carbon dioxide concentrations?
Another serious question:
Why do you think that fact isn’t known?
Of course, the climate cultists will offer caveats to try to distract from this fact. (This is exactly the same as the “population bomb” people, who have been 100% wrong for over 50 years, yet still insist they are right, and are still promoted by the media. Hell, I once read a long article claiming the Green Revolution was a terrible thing, a view I later discovered was common. A hugely dishonest but widely praised book about climate change (below) claimed that agriculture and civilization itself were a mistake.)
One last serious question:
If crop yields were down because of increased carbon dioxide, do you doubt for a second that the doomers would scream about it, over and over and over?
(While editing this piece, Doom.com (sorry, I mean Vox.com) published a piece admitting humanity is producing more food than ever, but it's all about to collapse! We really mean it this time!)
Don’t look at me. Look over there!
The more important issue: Vilifying carbon distracts from suffering, the only metric that matters.
Ignoring actual cruelty and unnecessary misery at the altar of “Climate Catastrophe!” is immoral. This is true even if you only care about humans. (1, 2, 3, and not from me.)
(And these “We’re all gonna die!” lies are directly causing a lot of unnecessary suffering among “liberals.” Hannah Ritchie covers that well (book, podcast, article); see also Climate activists are to blame for some of the suffering caused by climate change and Greta Thunberg’s misery is the result of child abuse; full chapters in Losing.)
Enough. Stop. Just Please Stop.
*Re: my irrationality mentioned above: I continue to beat my head against this brick wall, the very definition of insanity!
“Pull people out of poverty. This is the most important thing we need to do to adapt to climate change.”
**Of course, Mr. “We’re All Gonna Die!” has sent me thousands of words to “prove” he’s right: “Unprecedented … tipping-point … poor countries … fossil fuels have killed tens of millions.”
And of course: “This time is different.”
“Poor countries” is exceptionally cruel, since the climate cultists' demanded “solutions” would lock poor countries into poverty. (1, 2)
The last one – “fossil fuels have killed tens of millions” – is particularly informative. Ezra Klein again:
As my colleague [the unbelievably dishonest – seriously, read the posts at the link] David Wallace-Wells … wrote to me, “What looks like apocalypse in prospect often feels more like grim normality when it arrives in the present.” Oof.
This is no mere abstraction or prediction. The evidence that we ignore mass suffering is all around us. We are ignoring it right now, just as we did yesterday, and just as we will tomorrow. “An estimated 20 million people died of Covid, and now we’re over it. What do we make of that?” Wallace-Wells wrote to me. “Ten million people a year are dying of air pollution. What do we make of that? And what does it tell us about climate change, which is quite unlikely (as I wrote in my big piece on pollution) to ever kill as many as now die from particulates?”
Every year, particulates are doing what Mr. We’re All Gonna Die! attributes to fossil fuels. Particulates come primarily from burning fields, using biomass for fuel, and unregulated coal burning. These deaths overwhelmingly occur in poor countries because of poverty.
If anyone truly cares about poor people suffering and dying unnecessarily, they would actually advocate for helping poor people. But instead, they do the exact opposite.
Conclusion, from Mind the Frame:
For some reason (either because she actually believes it or is trying to have a broader appeal) Hannah [Ritchie] sometimes seems to accept the frame that climate change is fundamentally bad in and of itself.
Of course, just between you and me, climate change is neither good nor bad.
Suffering is bad. Full stop.
…
Non-human animals aside, there is this [from Not the End of the World]:
When you are living hand to mouth, a bad crop season could be the last one for you and your family. That is the cruelty of climate change.
I understand why she makes this claim, but it is factually wrong.
That is not the cruelty of climate change.
That is the cruelty of living hand-to-mouth.
That is the cruelty of poverty.
The best thing we can do to help people living in poverty is to help people in poverty.
Luckily, unlike cruel climate fanatics, Hannah gets it:
Pull people out of poverty. This is the most important thing we need to do to adapt to climate change. Being poor makes you incredibly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. In fact, being poor makes you vulnerable to almost any crisis. When you live close to the poverty line, you are just one shock away from being pushed below it. If you already live under the poverty line, you live with the constant stress that the smallest shock could be the last straw. It’s a truly terrible position to be in, but it is the reality for billions. Even though deaths from natural disasters have fallen by roughly 90% over the course of the 20th century, we expect that the frequency and intensity of disasters will get worse with climate change. As we’ve seen, fewer people die from natural disasters because we’ve figured out how to protect ourselves against them. Much of that resilience has come from poverty alleviation.
Additional bonus: You can actually do something to reduce suffering, human or non-human, rather than wasting your life wailing about carbon!
Giving the last word to Open Philanthropy’s Alexander Berger (p. 396 here):
The ethos of the Global Health and Wellbeing team [which includes Farm Animal Welfare] is a bias to improving the world in concrete, actionable ways as opposed to overthinking it or trying so hard to optimize that it becomes an obstacle to action. We feel deep, profound uncertainty about a lot of things, but we have a commitment to not let that prevent us from acting.
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| How did someone so cute become so cynical?? |
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