The Nothing New Year

Information theory talks about signal and noise.  Real information--relevant, important, effective--has to be distinguished from the noise around it.  In terms of the future of civilization, 2019 is very likely to be dominated by noise.

Lots and lots of noise.  But that's not new.  What would be new is focusing on what will matter most: the signal issue of our time.

Not that everything even out of Washington lacks meaning or doesn't affect lives. But in terms of priority, it's just more and more noise.  Seductive at times, but deafening.  What is the media buzzing about at this moment?  The Wall, which is utter nonsense on so many levels, and will be forgotten.  But even the ins and outs, ups and downs, of investigations and indictments, ever closer to the Oval Office. Even the ups and downs, ins and outs of who will run for President...Really, in the end, it's noise.  Noise that distracts everyone from the most important, the most consequential issue: the survival of human civilization and the natural world as we know it.

People have needs that must be met every day.  But so much that we focus on, win or lose, will be meaningless in contrast to the threats of climate and extinctions. Instead we will be angered, amused, frightened, entertained and above all distracted, by the noise.

The now former Governor of California Jerry Brown has it right in an interview with Politico:

During an interview with POLITICO at the governor’s mansion here in late December, Brown was indeed serious. He is not full of warm words about the native wisdom of the people: They strike him as scared, easily prone to distraction and cynical manipulation. He is not more optimistic than ever: He is worried the planet is hurtling toward catastrophe.

And yet, as he sees it, America’s entire political culture—elected officials, the news media, intellectuals—seems blithely disengaged from the magnitude of the peril, endlessly distracted by trivia. On climate change, nuclear proliferation and the new awareness that technology can be an instrument of oppression as well as individual empowerment, he continued: “The threat is huge; the response is puny; and the consciousness, the awareness is pathetically small.”

The start of the year is also traditionally the time when attention is given in the media and in conversations to the expression of optimism.  But if optimism is the belief or confidence that things will work out for the best, and if that "best" includes a robust and advanced civilization say a century from now, that optimism is getting harder to defend.

It's not just that the effects of global heating are accelerating, and are widely predicted to threaten millions of humans, including by endangered animal and plant species, and the water, soil, forests and climate that sustain us. Or even that our continuing failure to reign in greenhouse gases emissions threatens all of that to a much greater extent in the farther future.

It isn't even that our still babyish awareness, and incremental efforts to address the climate crisis is likely to be insufficient and too late to forestall these greater consequences, that will change the planet for thousands of years to a condition inhospitable to human life and most of the life we know.

It is that we are increasingly ill-equipped to address any of it, including the effects.  Which may well bring self-destruction that much sooner.

Two examples come to mind.  In the US, we have learned the hard way that our political system is increasingly incapable of sustaining efforts to address these large-scale and complex needs.  In less than two years, the current administration has not only reversed the beginning policies of the Obama administration to address climate crisis causes over 8 years, but environmental policies that grew through administrations of both parties that, insufficiently but at least incrementally, helped sustain a healthy ecology of wildlife, clean water, restorative land and forests.  It's happening elsewhere as well, even more dramatically in Brazil, where the previously protected fragments of rain forests are endangered.

Without the foundation of deep understanding and attitudes, an election victory means next to nothing when nascent efforts can be so quickly reversed.

In the world, we see the rise of significant political factions--and changes in government--that are increasingly xenophobic and nationalistic.  This at precisely the time when global cooperation and action are most necessary.

The first effects of the climate crisis, including droughts and sea-level rise, can lead to secondary threats at least as dangerous, such as warfare over resources or because of desperate migration.  These climate factors are already implicated (though largely ignored as such) in recent wars in the Third World, from Somalia to Syria.

It is this aspect that the Pentagon worries about, when it considers the climate crisis the greatest global threat (or it did, before the current administration banned the word.)  A world of factions or "tribes" suspicious and hostile towards others is a retrenchment that makes warfare more likely, increasing migration pressures even more and creating more likelihood of diseases spreading.

 If these conflicts involve nations with nuclear weapons, destruction obviously could be greater and more widespread, leading to global chaos. This factionalism and nationalism is happening at a moment when virtually everyone is dependent on the smooth operation of a global economy.  Disruptions could bring rapid chaos, even to countries not directly involved in war.

2019 also begins with some positive possibilities.  The new Speaker of the House began her tenure asserting that the climate crisis is the "existential threat of our time."  (The same wording as President Obama used.  Unfortunately, "existential" as a word is too abstract and vague to most people; its meaning as a threat to existence is not the usual way this word has been used.)

On the other hand, some assert that the new climate crisis committee in the House is weaker that the one the Democrats created the last time they were in power.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, running for Democratic presidential
nomination with climate crisis as his main focus

There is also the possibility that the climate crisis will at last be a major issue in a presidential campaign.  One announced candidate says it will be his main issue, and another possible candidate (Michael Bloomberg) is likely to do the same.  But other "issues"--most of them made up by the opposition--seem to inevitably create so much noise that anything this serious and complex is apt to be drowned out.

The dynamic new Member of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is initially focused on the Green New Deal proposals that link green energy with job creation (although her first appearance on Rachel Maddow was devoted to responding to the latest presidential noisemaking on the invented crisis at the southern US border) and her proposals--not unrelated to addressing the climate crisis--of returning to a sensible tax rate for the wealthy have met with somewhat surprising approval amidst the predictable opposition.  (See Nathan Robinson,  Eric Levitz and Paul Krugman.)

But these are baby steps, and we're still years from even taking them.  We are still in the infancy of awareness.  The latest projections suggest we need to be far more advanced in our understanding, and in our actions, or we will be too late to save even the future that narrowly focused futurists are predicting this January.

If a recent Meet the Press devoted entirely to the climate crisis is any indication, our media leaders as well as political leaders are just beginning to think about what the climate crisis is, let alone how to address it.  This makes it less likely that they will know how to cover it, or to hold leaders accountable for inaction.  Instead they will be drawn into the frenzy of the familiar noise.

Add this to the question that follows from our recent national and global politics, as well as the cultural implications of new technologies: are we even still capable of dealing with something at least as complex as World War II?  The climate crisis was always going to be a test of whether humanity had advanced or evolved enough to address this mortal threat to the planet.  As 2019, we are still flunking that test.  Badly.

None of this is a basis for optimism.  Any degree of success will necessitate urgency.  While individuals who feel there is little they can do may well need to defensively maintain a sort of faith that they call optimism (or adopt a more cosmic view about the consequences of failure) this does not justify an optimistic judgement that assumes we'll figure it out and do the right thing in time.  We're not necessarily on that path, let alone going fast enough.

But all of this has nothing to do with hope.  As Speaker Pelosi rightly said last week, looking to her Catholic background, hope is where it always has been, in between faith and love (which for Catholics are the three theological virtues.)

Hope, like faith and love, aren't judgments about the likelihood of anything.  They are commitments.  Hope is what you do.  Hope is becoming informed, deeply and widely.  Hope is choosing what you can do, and doing it.