Switzerland’s record-breaking summer by numbers

This is still not nearly enough. People will prioritize economy over ecology, thinking that somehow, we can high-tech our way out of this while ignoring that the effects we’re feeling are partially due to the deployement of high-tech and its material/energy needs. I’d bet that even next summer with higher temperatures would not be enough for radical adaptation.

My hope is that the Hormuz situation/crisis hit us in the following months, making us face the reality that the era of “always more” is ending and we have to adapt to a bumpy road with a thick mist while managing our economy with, at best, a plateau (meaning no GDP growth) or a descent in GDP (because the underlying reality of energy/material flux will decrease).

Given that there are still many people that seem to think that because of various reasons (we’r rich, we’re smart, we innovate, etc.), we’ll always have GDP growth and always more stuff (houses, chips, tourism, AI, etc.), I don’t know how people will handle this new era.

Our best bet remains permaculture, agroforestry and lowtechs for territorial resilience and robustness.

We’re doomed.

It’s a new world, where the USD goes down, prices go up, China dictates world policy, climate becomes less predictable, and the super comfy swiss boat gets rocked a bit….we won’t change course for another 50-100 years. In the meantime, kleptocrats will continue their blatant disregard for the majority.

It’s a question of pain tolerance, priorities, and margins.

If we wanted to make improvements, if there was a will, then it happens practically overnight. We are the only ones holding ourselves back. We are milking the old steady boat, as the thesian ship is reconstructed by AI…and we will all act shocked and dismayed when the floor disappears from underneath us.

I am 50, and have been hearing about ecology, and the climate boogie man since I was in preschool. We recycled since I could walk. This has zero impact in a performative world. I can make social media posts about cleaning a river, or a beach, and get clicks that represent as much CO2 output from internet traffic as my 12 trashbags of litter. I can assuage my personal guilt, shame my neighbours, and I ride my high horse to the edge of my bubble…only to peer out on a world that is 200 years in the past…no running water, no functioning government, no electricity, endless war.

I can use paper straws, while I watch flightradar tracking single occupant private jets.

As somebody working in healthcare, I can’t help but see the situation as a patient. We were told by the docs almost 70 years ago that we are sick, and we need to improve our lifestyle. We refuse to stop smoking 3 packs a day, drinking 2L of whiskey, and working 20 hours/day at a desk with 6 monitors for a boss that is literlly a monster. We go home every night, shout at our dog, and cut off a toe, or a finger, an arm or a leg, blaming that body part for all our woes. We will never honestly look at ourselves in a mirror and change our pleasurable addictions…free time, hidden costs, closets full of skeletons.

As long as our priorities are absolute luxurious pleasure and escapism, our pain tolerance, especially for the suffering of others, is high, and we can see black to the end of the month, or red that is acceptable in terms of GDP, we’ll just keep blaming random body parts and slowly fire all the doctors. Suggesting that we are sick will become illegal. Pride will be the death of us. There is no way to talk sense to a dogmatic, strung out, hyper emotional society.

The only hope is transformation through will, through vigilance, through persistant effort…which is achievable when you are still a bit healthy, but becomes more and more difficult, the more toes and fingers you amputate, the more delusional you become. I don’t think we’ve completely lost our way yet, but we need to stop feeding the oligarchs and the kleptocrats, because they think we are a brain in a vat, and that they can remove the entire body to solve their illness.

Simplicity is the answer, circularity. But we are all loyal subjects of the stubborn brain, a minority of cells that hogs the resources, and is habitually dishonest. Imagine if the world as a whole practiced self care, thought beyond the fiscal quarter?

If we can just survive another day, the boogie man will turn out to be a bad dream, we’ll adapt happily to the new day, and we’ll rejoice for having all fingers and toes….but until then, it is fear, desperation, anger, jealousy, disgust, and hatred. Hooray! Doom scrolling, information overload, outrage saturation, compassion fatigue.

How can we be addicted to vapid rage? Where is the politically productive indignation? Do we not have a functioning civil society? Are we so weak that we cannot admit fault, and can only blame others? Stupid toes and fingers, making me do things!

/rant