Are Fascism and Conspiracy Theories Symptoms of Climate Change?
It feels like years since I posted on my blog, the consequence of focusing narrowly on transposing my dissertation, “Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism,” into my forthcoming book, “Divining Chaos; The Autobiography of an Idea” coming out next summer, and completing the anthology “Ecoart in Action,” https://nyupress.org/9781613321485/ecoart-in-action/ which I co-edited with Chris Fremantle, Amara Geffen and Ann Rosenthal, which will launch next February, both from New Village Press, distributed by New York University Press. Together, these two books articulate my vision for how art can address environmental crises.
Meanwhile, the world has experienced unparalleled fires and floods, accelerating consequences of climate change caused by global warming. In June, I chaired a panel on “Managed Retreat,” at Columbia University, with Bebonkwe Brown, Eliza Evans and Nina Tuschev. The term managed retreat will soon become familiar to everyone, as in effect, millions of people across the planet already or imminently face either evacuation from vulnerable regions or catastrophic consequences. I chose speakers for our panel who could address the various forms of resistance to this Age of Ecocide that is requiring managed retreat.
Session 13C Land use consciousness managed retreat from ecocide - YouTube
The powers that be seem passively or deliberately intent on driving everyone else onto a trail of tears of managed retreat now. The first Trail of Tears was the forced Cherokee evacuation of their lands almost 200 years ago, grace of the American Government https://www.history.com/news/trail-of-tears-conditions-cherokee. The driving powers seem to be spearheaded by a fascist mentality that simultaneously assaults democracy while committing ecocide with impunity.
Many researchers have clearly and convincingly connected the dots in a loop between capitalism, racism, sexism https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2019.1710362 and extractivism/ colonialism: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2017.1303432, assumptions which I argue inevitably lead to ecocide, actually, murder-ecosuicide. I contend that climate change is a symptom of that loop as a complex adaptive model (CAM: a snapshot of how agents interact to define and predict probabilities in a system), but fascism is the primary interactive driver, nibbling at the edges of any hope we might have for either redemption of survival.
A few years ago, there was discussion around what this age is about. I think we should stop calling this either the Anthropocene or the Capitolocene because I think it is really the Age of Ecocide. I can't call it ecosuicide because not everyone, i.e., Indigenous Peoples, ever agreed to this carnage: https://www.pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=779.
Recently, Michael Mann https://michaelmann.net/content/books, author of the infamous hockey stick graph for global warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_graph commented on NPR, that of all the systemic collapses he fears as a consequence of climate change, what scares him most is the potential collapse of civilization. Mann presumes, as I do, that we have less than a scant handful of years to turn around this ocean liner headed for shoals.
I found myself considering the potential for the collapse of civilization in terms of what I have observed with alarm in recent years. We know from island biogeography http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0036-8075%2819760123%293%3A191%3A4224%3C285%3AIBTACP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-L that systems die from the edges, the ecotones where species interact and adapt most intensely, not the center. The center is the last place we observe collapse, by which time it is too late to effect healing and maintain equilibrium. This dynamic is why habitat contiguity is such a critical goal of conservation work.
I have long speculated that the cascades we observe are snapshots of how nature deals with extremes: it trims the edges till the flow between input and out stabilizes. “Strong men” that drive fascism and the conspiracy theories they espouse simply enable the efficiency of that process. They serve the Age of Ecocide, the ultimate Malthusian answer to profligacy https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Introduction_to_Sociology/Book%3A_Sociology_(Boundless)/17%3A_Population_and_Urbanization/17.02%3A_Population_Growth/17.2D%3A_Malthus_Theory_of_Population_Growth.
What is easy to miss, are the individual costs of this loop, the casualties in the ecotones. The Hearings for the Jan. 6 insurrection was Exhibit A of just how horrendous the individual and personal impacts are of that CAM, not “just” for marginalized peoples, but for those who are tasked with guarding some of the very same fascists intent on ecocide.
As an artist, I continually ask myself, how to balance joy, beauty with horror, need in the world right now? The Earth is burning alive and soon the season will come for drowning in floods caused by storms. Corporations are murdering the Indigenous peoples who might save us with their Traditional Knowledge, abetted by power mad governments, ink Australia, China, the USA and Brazil and meanwhile, Q-Anon crazies spread their toxins across the Earth. And still, the sun rises daily.
Last week, fellow ecoartist Stacy Levy and I sat in my studio in Maine and watched a couple Guillemots dive outside my French doors, lifting their red feet into the air, as we discussed lost species and the ineffable yellow color of seaweed and lichen here. I was thinking about how furiously the birds’ feet need to paddle to allow them to float gracefully over the water like ballet dancers.
“… we all know that the secondary cause for climate change is fossil-fuel dependent economic growth, primed by the root cause of human greed and ignorance, and an utter lack of integrity.” -Joan Halifax
https://www.upaya.org/2021/06/integrity-and-moral-suffering-in-relation-to-the-climate-catastrophe-and-health/?fbclid=IwAR29IdpixWiQVPUlCOk0Qx0Dwrs-kxZOVG6DIA_FFHKT7fVWjdyl_OhlVuw -Posted on Facebook by Rebecca Solnit 7-27-21.
"It was a loving crowd," t.
"It was bad. ...I'm still recovering from all those hugs and kisses... I wish him (t.) all those hugs and kisses," Sgt. Gonell
"It hurts ...It's disheartening that we have people like that in our country," Officer Dunn
"They tortured me. They beat me. I believe they intended to kill me.," Officer Fanone
"It was raw survival," Kinzinger
"Is this America? …I guess it is. … (but) this committee is the America I like.... get the guy who sent the hit man," Dunn
"They (the mob) will be remembered forever as (the) fascist traitors (they are)," Representative Jamie Raskin
Devastating video clips were shared to illustrate the hearings. The audio alone was the sound of hell unleashed, of the officers under attack, furiously peddling like the guillemots Stacy & I watched yesterday, being defenders of democracy, trying to survive in an ocean of hate unleashed by t. and his despicable cohorts as they peddle their conspiracy theory lies of a stolen election.
Watching the hearings July 27, happened just a few hours after considering what denial has wrought on nature.
I had written on Facebook before the hearings, after I watched Geese flying this morning, “I find it exhausting to consider a small flock of geese- about 4- flying thru the toxic haze from California fires caused by climate change caused by selfish billionaires, ignorant religious zealots, right-wing politicians and ordinary thoughtless people and try to imagine what I can do, write, paint ... nothing in time to make life easier for that flock of geese. It makes my heart stop on the heartbreak. This is the new Trail of Tears for the entire Earth.”
Meanwhile, in Brazil, Bolsonaro has just encouraged ranchers and farmers destroying the Amazon, the lungs of the Earth, to shoot on Indigenous Peoples trying to protect the forest, their home.
There is an urgent request now to fund body cameras to document this genocide: The Indigenous Federation is fundraising for 500 body cameras for the protest in Brasilia (5000 people). Because of the timeline and other restrictions, crowdfunding is not an option, but if you know anyone who could make a substantial contribution, please forward this video: https://youtu.be/rmXtu-cBG_o Send donations to https://lastwarning.org/donations. Thank you!!!
Like the four officers January 6, we all seem called upon now to, “hold the line,” that the center of civilization might hold long enough to save us all.