The New Denialism
The old denialism denied the reality of climate change. Funded by the fossil fuel industry it spouted disinformation and lies and fostered doubt. It changed climate change from an objectively observable fact into a political โopinionโ. The old denialism is dead. Not even the fossil fuel industry denies climate change anymore. A new denialism has replaced it, however. The new denialism doesnโt deny climate change. In the contrary, it emphatically affirms it. The new denialism doesnโt deny that climate change is a serious problem either โ it admits that too. What the new denialists deny is how big the crisis...
Lessons from the Ongoing Disaster (for the Next One)
Presumably, you are aware that weโre in the middle of a disaster. Thatโs unpleasant โ to say the least โ but itโs also quite instructive. There is much we can learn from the ongoing disaster and humanityโs responses to it. But whether we can use those lessons to avert the even bigger disaster looming on the horizon is questionable. Rather, it seems that the most important thing that we can learn from the corona crisis is that we as a species may very well be incapable of avoiding catastrophy. ignore and deny For months, the general attitude of most governments...
The Lesser Dystopia
(This is part 3 in the No Time for Utopia series.) In On the Fragility of Civilization, I argued that due to the slowly compounding effects of an increasing number of relatively localized โnaturalโ disasters caused (directly or indirectly) by climate change, a vicious circle of failing disaster management, economic decline, civil unrest, and hunger will trigger a cascade of collapsing societies, eventually leading to global societal collapse in roughly 25 to 30 years from now (give or take a half decade). The world during and after collapse will be very different from what most of us have ever experienced,...
On the Fragility of Civilization
(This is part 2 in the No Time for Utopia series.) Doom has always been a major attraction for some, perhaps even many people. There are whole subgenres of extreme (heavy) metal built on the aesthetics of death, doom, and decay. But โdoomโ in the form of extreme pessimism about the (near) future is also increasingly common in discussions about climate change and its effects. In Stages of the Anthropocene I tried to look into the more distant future. Whether what I found is an example of โdoomโ in this sense is debatable โ at least I didnโt predict human...
Fictionalism โ or: Vaihinger, Scheffler, and Kรผbler-Ross at the End of the World
In 1911 the now almost forgotten German philosopher Hans Vaihinger published Die Philosophie des Als Ob (The Philosophy of โAs ifโ) in which he argued for something approaching global fictionalism. In the preface to the second English edition of his book he wrote: The principle of Fictionalism . . . is as follows: โAn idea whose theoretical untruth or incorrectness, and therewith its falsity, is admitted, is not for that reason practically valueless and useless; for such an idea, in spite of its theoretical nullity may have great practical importance.โ Fictionalism is the view that claims in some area of...