Politics and Polycrisis, from where I sit.

A problem well described is a problem half-solved -- but what we face is worse than a problem. Where to even start...

“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” -E.O. Wilson

A problem has a solution. A dilemma is a forced choice, with painful tradeoffs. We face a quandary, perhaps. Or maybe a quagmire — the more we struggle, the harder things get.

I see a mismatch between what most people in Canada are worried about and the challenges that we face. Politics reflects this. Democracy is alive and well by focusing on the concerns of the majority. Media, similarly, is very democratic — shining a spotlight where people want to look.

But one doesn’t have to look much farther than the main show to see that we’re in a hell-of-a-mess, and it isn’t grocery prices.

• Climate change is moving faster than we hoped, costing us so so much and what’s needed to properly keep us safe is nothing less than totally transformational.

• Half-measures to ‘address’ climate have become the scapegoat for all affordability challenges (eg ‘tax axing’), while the big challenges go virtually unaddressed.

• AI is an Alien Intelligence that can self-reproduce in the blink of an eye, undermine society without our fully noticing, is beginning to run more of society and will soon be self-improving (all powerful). And some people who currently hold the reigns of AI say things like “Power over nature is power over people, and power is valuable.”

• Fossil fuels that underpin the surge in population and consumption, most of the economy (everything modern-human) — these keep getting more expensive and we have to move off them immediately, representing a financial bubble that makes 2008 look like a walk in the park.

• Threats to consumption (from climate, energy, pandemic etc) are felt as existential threats, deranging reality for many (including many ‘middle-class’ Canadians who are beginning to look like a cornered animal)

• Inequality is insane. So few have so much more than they need, while so many have not enough.

• Nukes — still a big deal. Pandemics, yep. Bioengineering? Sure.

• Biodiversity, land-use change, insects, plastic macro/micro/nano/forever, neo-colonial invasion (with some classical as well), demographic change, loneliness, conspiracy thinking/polarization…

• and more (I’m sure I’m missing a lot…)
  

  update: here’s a map! https://actuaries.org.uk/media/g1qevrfa/climate-scorpion.pdf

  

  
  

Even the RCMP is concerned about the polycrisis (see helpful interpretation here). Some of our brightest minds have, of course, published on it (here, and here and here for example).

It’s all a bit much. Any one of these challenges could upset the apple cart (collapse). They interact and compound — and as a society, I don’t think we’ve fully acknowledged most of these.

My own personal experience as a paramedic of the polycrisis was to notice that we seriously contemplated whether we would have enough fuel for the ambulance when the flooding shut down the pipeline in the lower mainland. And during the heatdome (atop the pandemic), call volumes were so high that callers in my community waited on hold while ambulances sat idle. I’m also seeing farmers retreat from farming for a combination of climate impacts and economic inequality. And we have all experienced inequality, loneliness and social-media-AI-algorithms combine with the fear of climate action into a great amount of disinformation and polarization. The apple cart wobbles.

When things go wrong, it’s usually because of a few compounding issues.

To be clear, I don’t want to perpetuate opulent decadence — but I do want a soft landing in the hopes that maybe we can keep anti-biotics and the odd hot shower while also not doing the thing where some get way too much while others get not enough (and a boot on their neck).

For a few reasons, I think it could be helpful to focus on climate (as I wrote here). But I do fully acknowledge that I don’t know what is most pressing, or whether we should acknowledge the whole overshoot package. Or maybe the financial bubble will pop first.

In any case — we know that our society is off the mark. We still hear prominent leaders and all gov’ts in this land talking about our Paris Agreement commitments, while setting climate targets that wholeheartedly violate those commitments and while the paris goal of ‘well below 2C, trying for 1.5C’ shrinks into impossibility.

We know things aren’t going particularly well — at times it seems we’re moving a step forward, and two steps backward.

It is an often repeated mantra from those with some awareness of the polycrisis (who also sit comfortably on the sidelines) that ‘it has to get worse before it can get better’. I sometimes share this belief — but it looks like we may have a diverse backfire effect.

People prefer security in heirarchy to the insecurity of change. And people who live through climate disasters are less likely to support or act on climate mitigation. There are myriad ways that our paleolithic wiring may predispose us to ignore the big stuff.

Did we see some of this nationally in 2023? Record shattering wildfire season, with a decrease in climate concern (concern is still high, and people still want action).

Notice this interaction — climate change impacts and the pandemic and workers demanding more and consumerism combine to raise prices. The response is a populist right-wing lie-machine becomes very popular.

And then there is the mis- and dis-information.

…………………………….

I care deeply about people who struggle under financial pressure to feed and shelter their loved ones. And fixing grocery prices to some artificially low energy-slave-subsidized level is not the solution we need. The solutions must be more systemic and they may not be ‘solutions’ in the usual sense — controlled collapse might be more appropriate.

I don’t know what the answer is — but if we don’t describe the problem better we’re highly unlikely to solve it.

For me the answer has been a great simplification of life, needs, desires with an increase in thinking, and getting involved with democracy and society. I have been incredibly fortunate to have the support and access to resources to do that. I want that for everyone.

And as dark as our quagmire is at the moment, I think that there is a positive and bright future for us if we can get our priorities straight. In a way that is both the simplest thing and the hardest thing.

(it’s a bit embarassing to try to jam such a big topic into one article… so thank you in advance for your evaluation generosity.)