“HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by Russian historian Alexei Yurchak, who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. He described how in the 1980s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, know that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal.
I think the same applies to climate change. After a long time of denial, which as we know was and still is funded by the fossil fuel industry, we have more or less accepted that science has got it right, that the burning of fossil fuels causes CO2 emissions which in turn result in climate heating and that to avert the devastating consequences of this, we humans must act now. As in NOW. But instead of decisive actions by governments (renewable energies in all areas of life, such as building, housing, transport, work, you name it) to implement the existing alternative visions and concrete plans for a different kind of society, we are presented with this fake message that individuals must reduce their carbon footprint (a concept designed by the fossil fuel industry) and that we must use less plastics and recycle our household waste and buy EVs to commute long distances and whatever tiny steps we are shamed into doing. And all this while the big corporations continue to make as much money as possible from fossil fuels.
Sometimes I think if sunshine (e.g. solar energy) would need to be mined/drilled and thus become a lucrative source of wealth to the few the same way that oil, coal and gas are, renewables would be the most wanted commodity on the planet. And we would not be where we are now.
We had what was hopefully the last night of frost. Although R talks alarmingly about The Polar Vortex.
I listen to the blackbirds belting out their mating songs before sunrise. One early February when S was maybe 12 or 13, she had to identify the number of blackbirds mating and mark the area on a map as part of a biology project and while her science teacher father blissfully ignored her efforts (not my school etc.), her mother, i.e. me, would sit with a tape deck and a map next to a very sleepy girl by the window, sipping tea, nudging her on. I don't think the project was very successful but I found out a good bit about blackbirds. I hope she did too.
This is the river on a very frosty morning.
And this is a lovely song.
I finished Bewilderment and had a good cry. What will the children think of us?
ReplyDeleteThat river. Oh. That river.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard what Curtis says about Russia. I do wonder about the fact did all people knew? When making a comparison here for me in Canada. ... i feel that we might all feel a bit of doom. So yes i kind of get what you are saying. Yet i still believe it also has to come from the bottom up, when we do not change our ways the big companies are just laughing . A crazy thing that happened here last month, something that i think of to what you write: Trudeau here ordered fighter jets, Fighter jets i wonder if they are green? of course not, so my question is why does the individual have to give up oil and the people in charge can just order away .supporting the oil business big time.
ReplyDeleteSo much happening in this post, as the river flows and Lisa O'Neill sings in a way that always moves me.
ReplyDeleteStill thinking of your post; The comparison to Russia, where i think in the Western world we can see their maybe erroneous ways, but can we see our own?
ReplyDeleteIf you have time at your hand, have a look at Artus Curtis's documentary films. He has a unique style - not to everybody's taste. Some people think he exaggerates. I find his work quite stimulating, making me think. The first documentary I watched was "Oh dearism", which is rather short. But I also watched the longer series, spaced out over time, like the latest on Russia (Trauma Zone). I got to know about him through my son-in-law while he was writing his sociology dissertation on fake news and how we only see what we want to see.
DeleteYou can find most of the documentaries online here:
https://youtu.be/8moePxHpvok
And more info on Adam Curtis himself here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Curtis
Humans are destructive by nature and for all our big brains and visible achievement and accumulated knowledge, we won't even act to save our species. Well, why should we? We kill because we can, not because we need to. We destroy habitat because we are selfish and greedy. We shit in our own backyard, something other animals know instinctively not to do. We poison our land, water, and food. I just hope when we've made the planet unsuitable to support human life, we haven't made it impossible to support all life.
ReplyDelete37paddington:
ReplyDeleteThat quote about normalization applies as much to America today as it does to climate change. Our poor world.
Don't recall if I identified myself, that last comment was from 37P.
ReplyDeleteYes I know Big Business goes on making obscene amounts of cash, etc, etc. And it's horrible, and we're all at risk of choking or frying to death. But big improvements come at a price. Laws have been passed that mean no more IC engine cars wil be manufactured after 2030. And - reluctantly - the world's car giants are switching to electric (which, I know, may present slightly different but nevertheless recognisable environmental problems anyway). And what's the initial result? Huge cuts to the car manufacturing labour force. We say they shouldn't have been doing it, that's what. But how the Hell does one earn a crust if one lives in Detroit, or Luton (in the UK) or Wolfsburg?
ReplyDeleteSeriously? So should we ask the atmosphere to postpone climate changes until we've sorted out the car industry and workers' rights? Because changes come at a price? What price? Who pays it?
DeleteBTW Volkswagen has copped on, nice line of affordable EVs on the way.
Yes, yes, yes, I acknowledged all that. And added that all the big car companies are now making electric cars. Fact is that to do this they're firing thousands of people who were employed developing IC engine cars. The work is not necessarily interchangeable. What I'm saying is it's a real dilemma where both options have major disadvantages. OK for you and me but not if your major pay cheque comes from Ford, Nissan, and one or two others.
DeleteMind you I am interested in the adjective "affordable". Is that relative or absolute? Fiat makes the only car that I know of that can be considered affordable but it is, in effect, a two-seater. More important a titchy car usually means a titchy battery which means a measly distance between charges. The county I live in is quite large but sparsely populated. It's virtually impossible to talk plausibly about "public transport" over the whole area and people need some form of autonomous transport. Not least to get to the GP, a breed of medical personnel becoming rarer and rarer.
And yes, yes, yes, I'm well aware of the larger imperatives. When we ask Who pays? we are not just talking about cash but - quite likely - a diminished infrastructure. In the end those who pay are, as always, at the bottom of the food chain. And let's avert our eyes from these problems when transferred to, say, Africa. Echoing the poetic line (amazingly by TSE, I've only just found out) which ends "...and besides the wench is dead".
You are looking at the scenario from what we know as (in)action of current and previous shortsighted administrations/government and their catalogue of "solutions" which are always geared towards shareholder values and maintaining of their status quo for as long as possible. My observations re the UK are that you are stuck in a worse situation than most EU countries.
DeleteTake public transport and of course you are stuck in rural England because having a car is essential and it seems to be written in stone that no other solutions are possible. Why? Have a search for sustainable villages and rural mobility concepts if you find the time.
The city I live in is dramatically cutting access by car to its commercial center (which by the way is increasingly becoming - once again - also a housing center with all that entails) and new developments are only accessible now by foot, electric bus, bicycle and a variety of other small electric vehicles that drop of/pick up people. Norway is also big on that, with small communal uses EVs that are parked and charged from lampposts.
In my work area, a university campus stretching for several kilometers across and close to 8000 people working there, no cars are allowed to enter, instead, we can use electric/non electric scooters, bicycles, jump on any of the small electric no-driver buses that crisscross the campus or even walk.
My point: There are so many solutions for literally all aspects of life. We just have to allow ourselves to see them and think outside the box we have been shut into.
Whoops, I mis-Googled. TSE may have said it but was actually quoting. It is of course from The Jew Of Malta, Chris Marlowe
ReplyDeleteMany solutions, none of them currently painless. Q: Who bears today's pain, whatever eco-friendly paradise lies somewhere round an ill-defined corner. ? A: Those who are least able to influence the decision makers. And we know who they are..
ReplyDelete