Deep Adaptation and the Anthropocene: Man-made Climate Change and the Seeming Inevitability of Near-Term Societal Collapse

1. HOT MESS:
CLIMATE CHANGE
Deep Adaptation in the Anthropocene

2. “It’s Gettin’ Hot in Herre (So Hot)*”
• 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 are the 5 warmest years on record
• 9 of the 10 warmest years have occurred since 2005 (1998 is 10th)
• 20 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the last 22 years
• 2018 was the 42nd consecutive year with an above average global temperature
• June 2019 was the hottest month of June on record** and July 2019 is the hottest month EVER on
record**
• Average global temperature has already increased by 1° Celsius (1.8° Fahrenheit) since 1880***,
with another .5° C (.9 ° F) guaranteed due to carbon already in the atmosphere
• The IPCC and climate scientists have stated that temperatures need to stay well under 2° Celsius
(3.6° F) above the pre-industrial average**** to avoid the most catastrophic climate effects
*From the 2002 Nelly song, 5 years after 1997 Kyoto Protocol and when there was around .8° Celsius warming above 1880-1920 average.
**Per National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Programme.
***James Hansen et al, NASA. In 2016, Hansen et al. estimated average temperature increase of 1.07° Celsius above average global temperature from 1880-1920****.
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3. Melting Cryosphere
• The 12 lowest September Arctic Sea Ice extents have occurred in the last 12 years*
• Greenland lost 2,200 Billion tons of ice from 2010-2018**, jumping to 500 Billion tons of
ice loss in 2019***
• The World’s mountain glaciers are collectively losing 215 Billion tons/yr****
• Antarctic Ice Sheet lost 252 Billion tons of ice per year from 2009-2017, a more than six-
fold increase over the 40 Billion tons/yr lost from 1979-1989*
• Since 2015, Antarctica has lost over 800,000 miles2***** of sea ice
• Arctic and Antarctic sea ice reflect as much as 80% of sunlight, whereas dark ocean
water absorbs 90% of sunlight (and heat)
*WMO Statement on the state of the global climate 2018.
**The Atlantic, April 23, 2019; equivalent of 280 Billion tons/year.
*** As of late Septemer, 2019, quoting Xavier Fettweis, climate researcher at the University of Liege, Belgium.
****Science for Students, January 23, 2019.
*****”A 40-y record reveals gradual Antarctic sea ice increases followed by decreases at rates far exceeding the rates seen in the Arctic,” by Claire L. Parkinson (Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory, NASA)
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4. Melting Cryosphere
• Greenland lost 197 billion tons of ice in the month of July (2019) as a part of a melt season that started a month
earlier than usual – the August 1st ablation rate is what the most pessimistic models were projecting for 2070*.
• Illustrative: Sea ice in the Inglefield Gulf, Greenland on June 14, 2019
*Inside Climate News, August 1, 2019 quoting Xavier Fettweis, climate researcher at the University of Liege, Belgium; overall summer melt rate equal to IPCC projections for 2050s. © Steffen M. Olsen/AP
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5. Setting a Course for Disaster
• Warming planet = more melting ice = less reflection/more absorption = higher
and warmer sea levels = more moisture in air = more extreme weather events
• Hotter planet exacerbates extremes – both extreme heat/drought and extreme
rain events/cyclones
• Extreme weather definition is evolving from “natural” disaster to “man-made
climate change influenced” disaster
• It’s not just polar bears who suffer – we are at the beginning of the Earth’s sixth
mass extinction
• Scientists estimate we're now losing species at up to 1,000 times the background rate, with
literally dozens going extinct every day*
• As many as 30% to 50% of all species are possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century*
*Center for biological diversity. Source: https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/
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6. Extreme Weather in 2018 - HOT*
• Dozens of cities all over the world were hit with record heat waves
• Denver, Ottawa, Glasgow, Belfast and whole swaths of southern Russia
• The daytime temperature in one city in Oman reached 121° Fahrenheit and did not drop
below 108° all night
• In Quebec, Canada 54 people died from heat
• 100 major wildfires burned in the American West
• The term “fire tsunami” was invented for a Colorado fire with a 300-foot volcano-like
eruption of flames
• The Camp fire hit Paradise in N. California and became the deadliest fire in state history,
killing 85 people and burning several hundred sq. miles, including almost 20,000 homes
• The Woolsley fire burned at the same time in Los Angeles and forced the evacuation of
170,000 people
• During a 1-in-384 year drought, Cape Town, South Africa got within 10 weeks of “Day
Zero,”** when 75% of a municipality of 3.8 million people would have lost access to piped-in
water
*Excerpts from articles and book “The Uninhabitable Earth,” by David Wallace-Wells.
**”How Cape Town is Running Dry,” by Jonathan Watts in The Guardian February 3, 2018.
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7. Extreme Weather in 2018 - WET*
• Ellicott City, Maryland endured a 1-in-1,000 year rain event (2nd such in 3 years)
• Biblical rains flooded Japan, where 1.2 million people evacuated their homes
• Typhoon Mangkhut forced the evacuation of 2.45 million from mainland China
• Hurricane Florence turned Wilmington, NC into an island and flooded parts of the state with
hog manure and coal ash
• Hurricane Michael was first Category 5 storm to make landfall in the U.S. since Andrew in
1992 and caused over $25 Billion in damages**
• Continued destructive hail storms (following 2017 worst year on record) of higher frequency
and with larger hail size caused over $15 Billion*** in damages, mainly in Colorado and Texas
• The state of Kerala, India was hit with its worst floods in almost 100 years
• East Island, Hawaii was wiped almost entirely off the map by a Hurricane
*Excerpts from articles and book “The Uninhabitable Earth,” by David Wallace-Wells.
**”Hurricane Michael,” Wikipedia article
***Institute for Business and Home Safety quote from article “Hail damage costs this year could hit new annual high in U.S.”, April 19, 2019 by Ed Leefeldt
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8. Following 2017 Extreme Weather Records*
• Hurricane Harvey caused historic rain (up to 60 inches) and flooding in Houston, TX
• Was the third Houston flood event after 2015 and 2016 to be described as a 1-in-500-year event
• Resulted in over $125 Billion in damages and destroyed over 200,000 homes
• Hurricane Maria was a Category 5 storm that did unprecedented damage to Puerto Rico
• Death toll estimated at 3,059 people, mainly in Puerto Rico
• Resulted in over $91 Billion in damages and left over 1.5 million people without electricity even 3 months after
storm
• Hurricane Irma was the strongest hurricane on record in the open Atlantic
• Caused 134 deaths and catastrophic damage to many Caribbean islands (including Puerto Rico prior to Maria)
• Upon hitting Florida, resulted in over $50 Billion in damages and destroyed/damaged tens of thousands of
homes
• Hurricane Ophelia was the worst storm to hit Ireland in 50 years
• Tubbs, Atlas and Thomas Fires in California caused over $18 Billion in damages
• Killed over 30 people and burned significant portions of Napa Valley
• Thomas fire was largest in state history until one year later, surpassed in 2018 by the Mendocino Complex’s
Ranch fire
• Severe flooding in South Asia displaced more than 45 million people from their homes in the affected
countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Pakistan
*Source: Wikipedia.
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9. $91 Billion Cost of U.S. Disasters in 2018
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10. The Increasing Cost of “Disaster”
• 2017 was the costliest U.S. year on record with losses at over $315 Billion
• In the 4 decades of NOAA tracking the annual costs of weather and climate
disasters, the average annual cost has gone from under $20 Billion to over
$80 Billion
• 1980s - $19 Billion average annual cost/decade total of $171* Billion
• 1990s - $26.6 Billion average annual cost/decade total of $266 Billion
• 2000s - $50.4 Billion average annual cost/decade total of $504 Billion
• 2010s - $83.2 Billion average annual cost/decade total of $750* Billion
• If significant action is not taken to curb climate change, some estimates put
annual losses from climate “disasters” by 2100 at between $14 Trillion**
and $100 Trillion***
* Dollars have been adjusted for inflation. No data available for 1987 and 2019 is incomplete. Source: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/summary-stats .
**Environmental Research Letters, July 4, 2018 and ***Global Climate Forum, February 4, 2014.
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11. Four Decades of Climate Change Discussions
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Annual Mean CO2
Annual CO2 Atmospheric
Landmark Climate Convention/Organization Year Emissions/Gigatons1
Parts per Million2
1st World Climate Conference in Geneva, Switzerland 1979 19.6 337
International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Established 1988 21.7 352
World Resources Institute Conference in New Delhi, India 1989 22.2 353
Drafting of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 1991 22.4 356
Rio Earth Summit 1992 22.2 356
COP1, UNFCCC's 1st Conference of Parties in Berlin, Germany 1995 23.0 361
UNFCCC's COP3 Drafting of Kyoto Protocol in Kyoto, Japan 1997 23.9 364
COP7 in Marrakesh, Morroco to Finalize Commitments under Kyoto Protocol 2001 25.1 371
COP11 in Montreal, Canada to Establish Working Group on Kyoto Protocol 2005 29.3 380
COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark to Attain Framework for Global Response to Climate Change 2009 31.5 387
COP18 in Doha, Qatar the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol is Adopted 2012 34.9 394
COP21 in Paris, France where 196 countries sign the Paris Agreement 2015 35.5 401
IPCC Issues 2018 Special Report on Climate Change 2018 37.1 409
1
Data sourced from Global Carbon Project and Our World in Data (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region). 2018 data is est. per Global Carbon Project.
2
NOAA, Earth Systems Research Laboratory -data set measured since 1959 from Mauna Loa, Hawaii.
3
Global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3–3 mya) was 2–3 °C higher than today, carbon dioxide levels were the same as today, and global sea level was 25 m higher (Wikipedia).
40 YEARS OF CLIMATE CHANGE DISCUSSIONS AGAINST INEXORABLE RISE IN EMISSIONS
SCIENTISTS' RED-LINE FOR WARMING, DO NOT EXCEED 400 PPM CO2 - LAST SEEN IN THE MIDDLE PLIOCENE EPOCH3

12. Culminating in the Paris Agreement
• Heralded as a major breakthrough over 20 years in the making to address man-made climate change, this
2015 Agreement between 196 countries asked signing members to meet emissions targets to keep warming
under the threshold for “catastrophe” of 2° Celsius (3.6° F)
• Paradoxically, if every country in the Agreement actually achieved the emissions targets agreed upon, they
would yield warming of closer to 3°- 3.4° Celsius (5.4°- 6.1° F), and considerably higher if carbon-cycle
feedback loops are considered
• In 2017, the U.S. (the world’s second largest carbon emitter) very publicly pulled out of the Agreement while
only 7 countries are actually living up to their emissions targets
• Carbon emissions would need to be reduced by over 5% per year through 2030 and hit “Net Zero” by 2050 in order
to meet IPCC minimum threshold for warming to stay at 1.5 ° Celsius (2.7° F)*
• Instead, global carbon emissions increased by 2.7% in 2018 over 2017 levels, a nearly 8% swing in the wrong
direction
• The UNFCCC’s** goal for preventing “dangerous anthropogenic*** influence with the climate system” for
this century is already untenable
*Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 special report citing a need for 45% reduction in emissions from 2010 levels by 2030 (assuming 2018 as start).
**United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
***(Chiefly of environmental pollution or pollutants) originating in human activity.
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13. The Vicious Syllogism*
• Premise 1: If we do not keep average atmospheric temperature rise below 2°
Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we are in for dangerous, unpredictable and
potentially catastrophic climate change
• Premise 2: If the world does not keep further anthropogenic emissions of CO2
equivalent to no more than an additional 1,300 Billion tons**, we shall not keep
average atmospheric temperature rise below 2° Celsius
• Premise 3: If we are not now even minimally embarked on a programme that
might make limiting ourselves to such a carbon budget even remotely feasible,
we shall not keep further anthropogenic emissions of CO2 equivalent to no more
than an additional 1,300 Billion tons**
• Premise 4: We are not now even minimally embarked on such a programme.
*Excerpts from the book “After Sustainability: Denial, Hope and Retrieval,” by John Foster
**Lower emissions budget with a 50% chance of remaining below 2° C warming by 2100, Friedlingstein et al. (2014). Studies with a 66% chance to limit warming to 1.5° C
show significantly lower emissions budget available (400 – 500 Billion tons), Shurer et al. (2018).
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14. Even with Paris Agreement Targets*….
• At 2° Celsius (3.6° F) warming:
• 150 Million+ more people would die of air pollution than in a 1.5° warmer world
• 99% of coral reefs suffer annual bleaching events/decline**
• Ice sheets begin to collapse
• 400 million more people will suffer water scarcity
• Major cities in equatorial band of the planet will become unlivable
• Even in the northern latitudes, heat waves will kill thousands each summer
• 32x more extreme heat waves in India, lasting 5x as long, exposing 93x more people
• This is the BEST-CASE scenario
• At 3° Celsius (5.4° F) warming:
• Southern Europe would be in permanent drought
• Average drought in Latin/Central America would last 19/21 months longer
• In northern Africa, average drought would last 5 years longer
• Areas burned by wildfire each year in Mediterranean would double (2x)
• Areas burned by wildfire each year in United States would sextuple (6x)
*Excerpts from articles and book “The Uninhabitable Earth,” by David Wallace-Wells.
**Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 special report citing a need to limit warming below 2 ° Celsius.
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15. Even with Paris Agreement Targets*….
• A radical reduction in emissions to meet Paris goal of warming could still produce as much as
6 feet of sea-level rise by 2100
• Here are a few things that will be lost in the next century:
• Any beach you’ve ever visited
• Facebook’s headquarters
• Kennedy Space Center
• U.S. largest Naval Base, Norfolk, West Virginia
• The entire nations of the Maldives and Marshall Islands
• Most of Bangladesh (including ancient mangrove forests)
• All of Miami Beach and much of South Florida
• Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy
• Venice Beach and Santa Monica in Los Angeles
• The White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
• Mar-a-Lago
• All of the Keys in Florida
*Excerpts from articles and book “The Uninhabitable Earth,” by David Wallace-Wells.
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16. Or “Business as Usual*”
• At 4° Celsius (7.2° F) warming (U.N.’s best-case “business as usual” case):
• Following the path we are on today, the UN estimates 4.5° Celsius warming by 2100
• There would be 8 million more cases of dengue fever each year in Latin America alone
• Close to annual global food crises
• Damages from river flooding would grow 30x/20x/60x in Bangladesh/India/UK
• In certain places, 6 climate-driven natural disasters could strike simultaneously, and damages could pass $600 trillion
(more than 2x all wealth in world today)
• Conflict and warfare could double
• At 8° Celsius (14.4° F) warming (U.N.’s worst-case, feed-back triggered “business as usual” case):
• Humans at equator and tropics would not be able to move outside without dying
• Oceans would eventually swell 200 feet higher flooding 2/3 of world’s major cities
• Hardly any of the planet would be capable of producing food we now eat
• Forests would be roiled by rolling storms of fire and coasts with more hurricanes
• Tropical disease would reach northward to parts of what is now the Arctic
• Probably 1/3 of the planet would be made unlivable by direct heat
• Today’s unprecedented droughts and heat waves would be a daily occurrence
• No IPCC or UN climate modeling currently even considers the continued warming effects past
2100, but that would be the “century of hell.”
*Excerpts from articles and book “The Uninhabitable Earth,” by David Wallace-Wells. 16

17. The New “Abnormal”
• It is tempting to look at this recent string of disasters and think that
climate change is here and that this is the “new normal,” but the
truth is actually much scarier*
• We have already exited the state of environmental conditions that allowed for
human development in the first place
• The climate system that raised us and every other human being that has ever
inhabited this planet is now dead
• The climate system observed recently, as malevolent as it is, is not our bleak
future preview – it is already a product of our recent climate past and it is a
beyond-best-case scenario for what awaits us in the near future.
*Excerpts from articles and book “The Uninhabitable Earth,” by David Wallace-Wells.
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18. Process that information and
recognize that humankind has
created a new geological epoch
-- the Anthropocene*
*Per Wikipedia, The Anthropocene is a proposed epoch dating from the commencement of significant human impact on Earth's geology
and ecosystems, including, but not limited to, anthropogenic climate change.

19. Learning to Die in the Anthropocene
• The Anthropocene is the new era we live in, one characterized by the advent of
the human species as a geological force
• The greatest challenge we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this
civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront our situation and realize that
there is nothing we can to do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to
the difficult task of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality*
• Climate change means, quite plausibly, the end of everything we now understand
to constitute our humanity**
• The problem, it turns out, is not an overabundance of humans but a dearth of
humanity. Climate change and the Anthropocene are the triumph of an undead
species, a mindless shuffle toward extinction**
*Learning to Die in the Anthropocene: Reflections on the End of a Civilization, by Roy Scranton.
**”Human futilitarianism” by Sam Kriss and Ellie Mae O’Hagan from “The Tropical Depressions, “ The Baffler 36 (2017).
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20. Inevitable Societal Collapse
“Looking at the current climactic changes, the rising emissions and
habitat destruction, the biological impacts, the warming feedbacks, the
agricultural impacts, the slowness of response, the intransigence of
capitalism and its client politicians, and the cultural dependence on
ideas of progress and control, and the rise of stories of blame that
avoid reality and foster ignorance and hate, I think that ‘inevitable’
societal collapse is a more accurate way of communicating my view
that it is now unavoidable, than saying collapse is likely or near
certain.”*
*Jem Bendell from Jembendell.com.
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21. Mathematical Certainty of Collapse
“What causes [global societal collapse] is the mathematical certainty
that when disaster damage keeps increasing, it will at some point
surpass a society’s ability to cope with and mitigate disaster, because
that ability depends on economic growth which cannot continuously
increase. In other words, if natural disasters continue to occur more
often and continue to cause more damage, then societal collapse will
inevitably follow. It may be far away for some countries (and much
closer by for others), but no country can outrun continuously
increasing disasters forever.”*
*Given “business as usual” for coming decades, with likely range in 20 – 40 years from now. Excerpted from “A Theory of Disaster Driven Societal Collapse and How to Prevent It,” by
Lajos Brons, Nihon University, Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Lakeland University, Japan Campus, Tokyo, Japan, September 2019.
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22. Deep Adaptation*, Not Hopelessness
• But while the collapse of our current society is highly likely or even
inevitable, it doesn’t mean you give up all hope:
• This involves building resilience, both physical and psychological, learning
to relinquish long-held beliefs and aspirations (such as that ode uninterrupted
‘progress’), and the attempted restoration of attitudes and practices which our
carbon-fueled way of life has so dangerously eroded**
• It is not that acknowledging the hard truths….. might still enable us to avoid climate
disaster. For that it is…. now too late. Rather, it is the hope that through accepting
the inevitability of such disaster for our present civilisation, we may yet find our way
to genuinely transformative change, capable of avoiding terminal catastrophe for
humanity and the biosphere**
• The sooner we realise that humanity won’t have a Hollywood ending to climate
change, the more chance we have to avoid ours becoming a true horror story**
*Jem Bendell from Jembendell.com, coined the term “Deep Adaptation” in his Institute of Leadership and Sustainability (IFLAS) Occasional Paper from July 27, 2018.
**Rupert Read, John Foster and Jem Bendell.
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23. Deep Adaptation Agenda*
• Resilience
• Conceived as the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances so as to survive with valued norms and behaviors
• The question is asked “What are the valued norms and behaviors that human societies will wish to maintain as they
seek to survive?”
• Relinquishment
• Involves people and communities letting go of certain assets, behaviors, and beliefs where retaining them could
make matters worse
• E.g. withdrawing from coastlines, shutting down vulnerable industrial facilities, or giving up expectations for certain
types of consumption
• Restoration
• Involves people and communities rediscovering attitudes and approaches to life and organisation that our fossil fuel-
based civilization has eroded.
• E.g. re-wilding landscapes so they provide more ecological benefits and require less management, changing diets
back to match the seasons, rediscovering non-electronically powered forms of play, and increased community-level
productivity and support
• Reconciliation
• With what and whom shall we make peace as we awaken to our mutual mortality?
*Jem Bendell from Jembendell.com.
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24. Congratulations.
Step one is to WAKE UP.

25. Now That You’re Awake, Don’t Hit Snooze
• “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary
depends on his not understanding it.”
-- Upton Sinclair, American Author (“The Jungle”) and political candidate
• Denial of the realities of climate change based on ignorance or fueled by
special interest propaganda is not the most worrisome form of climate
denialism, but rather it is “willed denial”*
• Willed denial always goes with vested interests of one kind or another*
• It is always a form of refusing to know something that really we do know, or have at any rate
very strong grounds for suspecting, because we have too much staked on not admitting it
• This reaction is peculiarly prevalent among those who are NOT ignorant or misled about
anthropogenic climate change
• Can take on the form of dogged persistence or of technological hyper-optimism against the
encroachments of scientifically literate realism – the identity crisis of environmentalism
* Excerpts from the book “After Sustainability: Denial, Hope and Retrieval,” by John Foster
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26. Questions for the Near-Term
• Given that the UNFCCC was established in 1992 to urgently address climate change and that, since then,
more carbon has been emitted than all the carbon emitted in the previous century, what makes us think that
these same organizations (UNFCCC, IPCC, etc.) are going to be able to mandate impactful change NOW?
• When it comes to having a meaningful dialogue about catastrophic climate change and the correlated near-
term societal collapse posited by Bendell et al. based on the non-linear (i.e. exponential) warming indicated
by all current data, how can we get people to shed their fear of voicing certain thoughts when they go
against the social norm around them and/or their social identity?
• How do we get off the treadmill of debt-fueled economic/GDP growth “at all cost” as the underpinning of
our current economic structure? How do we transition from a market system that overvalues short term
profits (quarterly reports) over any long-term sustainability and fails to adequately assess the very real
environmental “costs” associated with extracting limited resources and polluting the biosphere?
• How did we ever think that a system built on the unlimited exploitation of finite resources and needing (at a
minimum) food, water and shelter for up to 10 billion human inhabitants by 2050, while at the same time
suffering crop yield shortfalls* and fresh water** availability decline…how was that ever sustainable?
• Given that 85% of all warming has occurred in the life-span of those born since WWII, during a singular
period of carbon-fueled, consumer-industrial Capitalist expansion, how do we get our current society to
function like a war-time society, accepting deprivations and stringent top-down mandates to help “defeat
the enemy,” except where “war” is “catastrophic climate change” and the enemy is our accustomed lifestyle?
*2019 IPCC special report August, 2019. **World Health Organization (WHO) source: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/drinking-water and NASA study source:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2015WR017349 . 26

27. Read “The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After
Warming” by David Wallace-Wells
Check out the Deep Adaptation paper for
download as a PDF at jembendell.com
Nothing short of protesting for, demanding and
accepting radical change to our current fossil-
fuel driven consumer lifestyle will change our
terminal plight. Your life and that of your loved
ones depends on it.

28. If this information disturbs you and moves
you to do something, please pass it on
Compiled and presented by Barrett Stuart,
human and fan of the Earth
barrett_stuart@bsproductions.org