Coming Back from Climate Doomism

Editor’s note: This article contains statements that sometimes misrepresent claims by Dr Jem Bendell, or falsely claim they are unsubstantiated, or imply he does not use scientific literature to support his analysis. In some cases, these statements incorrectly form the basis for implying that Dr Bendell misleads people in dangerous ways. Annotations have been made in some cases where this is so. Dr Bendell’s letter of complaint with evidence for his views can be found here (PDF).

If you’ve been wondering whether the end might be nigh, you’re not the only one.

With the rise of dystopian fiction over the past century, as climate change accelerates around us, and as we continue to feel the shocks of global pandemic, we’ve become good at imagining dark futures. On TikTok, Reddit and Facebook, large online communities have formed to discuss their conviction that the collapse of society—perhaps even the extinction of humanity—is inevitable in the short-term.

The young seem particularly affected. In one survey, more than half of Australian respondents aged 16–25 said they believed ‘humanity is doomed’. Perhaps teenagers who’ve been told it’s their job to ‘save the planet’ are feeling overwhelmed by the expectations thrust upon them.

At one time, as I watched business continue as usual despite the increasingly commonplace fires and floods, I came to believe it was too late to do anything about our environmental crises and our species was more or less doomed. That belief seeped into my daily life. Often, it was just below the surface. At other times, while I was doing the most ordinary things, like standing at a bus stop, it would bubble over.

Everything around me would seem despicable, the product of an inherently unsustainable industrial society that was killing us all. With horror, I’d consider the road made of concrete, the approaching bus powered by diesel, and the music in my earbuds being streamed from carbon-intensive data servers onto a device filled with rare earth minerals and charged with fossil-fuelled electricity.

I came to believe it was too late to do anything, and our species was more or less doomed. That belief seeped into my daily life.

The people around me seemed oblivious to all this (though would I have not looked the same to them?). They stood there, chatting in pairs or looking at their phones. Didn’t they realise we were about to fall off a cliff? Why weren’t they panicking? Why was I the only one who ‘got it’?

I was working full-time on environmental activism, so climate was constantly on my mind. At night, I’d trawl through Google results or my Twitter feed, trying to work out how bad things really were. The more dire the predictions, the more I took notice.

Late one night in 2021, I hit the doomscrolling jackpot. I stumbled across a scientific paper in the peer-reviewed journal Energies, titled ‘Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition’, by Megan K. Seibert and William E. Rees. The paper argued that ‘ecological overshoot’, defined as ‘too many people consuming too much and over-polluting the ecosphere’, will cause an inevitable crash. According to Seibert and Rees, a transition to what they call ‘so-called renewables’ is no alternative to fossil fuels, for it would be polluting, costly, unjust and ineffective.

Seibert and Rees suggest there is a way to ‘save civilisation’, but their prescription is brutal. They propose a ‘managed descent’, an urgent transition away from both fossil fuels and renewable technologies. In the world they envision, within ‘a decade or two’ we forego all electricity and engines, relying instead on mechanical windmills, burning wood and the labour of humans and animals for energy. They call for a global one-child policy and a reduction of the world’s population to about a billion. They say this can be achieved in a way that is ‘socially just and humane’ but offer no explanation of how such an extreme population descent could happen without brutality.

‘Life after fossil fuels will closely resemble life before fossil fuels,’ they say, which sounds appealing if you imagine a world without oil spills, catfishing, and capitalism. But Seibert and Rees’ utopia, and the population crash it entails, looks a lot like the kind of devastation climate activists are working to avoid. It is unclear where vital medical, educational and agricultural technologies fit into this society, nor who would do the ‘managing’ of the ‘managed descent’—though history offers some ominous clues.

These are very Western ways of looking at the world—rooted in ideas of a blissful state of nature that existed before society’s corrupting influence.

If Seibert and Rees are to be believed, their nightmarish prescriptions are the lesser of two evils, when compared to the (undefined) ‘social-ecological collapse’ they say their program could avert. Was this the cost of doing what was ‘necessary’? The dilemma kept me up at night. The paper’s list of references was long, the authors and journal appeared to have credibility. By taking this seriously, was I not ‘following the science’?

*

As it turns out, the science was flawed. In January 2022, Energies released an editorial apologising for publishing the ‘strongly biased’ original paper. It also published two commentaries that debunked Seibert and Rees’ claims and outlined a long list of academic sins, including cherry-picking sources, using references that didn’t support claims, and citing climate deniers.

Many who anticipate societal collapse believe there’s a point somewhere along the line where humans lost their way, after which apocalypse became inevitable. For some, like Siebert and Rees, that point is the advent of industrial society. Others go further back: the primitivist philosopher John Zerzan blames the agricultural revolution and even the invention of language. These are very Western ways of looking at the world—rooted in the Christian myth of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden and filtered through Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about a blissful state of nature that existed before society’s corrupting influence.

Such a yearning for purity can justify all kinds of terrible things being done in attempts to return to a state of grace. In recent years, mass shooters in Christchurch, El Paso and Buffalo have claimed their actions are a response to environmental degradation caused by over-population. They believed that by murdering migrants they might restore an idealised vision of the past stolen from them by so-called ‘invaders’. Ignoring the fact that the overconsumption of the wealthy and privileged is responsible for the vast bulk of the world’s pollution, these ecofascists show in extreme how a focus on dire prognoses and a desire to recreate a gloriously imagined past can be used to rationalise the most horrific of actions.

*

Around the same time I read the rebuttals to Seibert and Rees, I was also having doubts about another academic paper that had given me sleepless nights. In 2018, I read sociologist Jem Bendell’s ‘Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy’. The paper was rejected by a peer-reviewed journal before being self-published online. Bendell outlines his belief that we’ll experience ‘an inevitable near-term societal collapse due to climate change’, based upon his own reading of the climate science. In the original version of the paper, Bendell did not define exactly what he meant by ‘societal collapse’. In a revision, he defines it as ‘an uneven ending of our normal modes of sustenance, shelter, security, pleasure, identity and meaning,’ while remaining vague on details. He even allows the possibility of imminent human extinction. As a way forward, he offers a framework for ‘community dialogue’ in the face of climate breakdown.

The paper went viral, and not just among academics—as it circulated online, it developed a reputation for being so grim it supposedly sent people to therapy. ‘Deep Adaptation’ became a social movement, and Bendell gained a dedicated following: High-profile media coverage, online forums, in-person retreats, and a book all followed.

So did the critiques. Some pointed out that the scientific basis of Bendell’s argument is shaky. Others saw value in Bendell’s conceptual framework but considered his focus on ‘societal collapse’ unfounded and unhelpful. Others still noted a disturbing antihumanist element in the Deep Adaptation movement.

Bendell’s conceptual framework provides questions that are useful for thinking through our environmental predicaments. He rightly points to neoliberalism as a systemic driver of the climate crisis. His paper also offers some useful ideas about how we can adapt societies to face worsening climate impacts.

But the certainty of which he speaks of societal collapse creates a narrow focus. By Bendell’s own admission, the Deep Adaptation movement has largely been concentrated on ‘inner work’. While this can be valuable, there’s also a pressing need to pursue outward, societal transformation. Although Bendell says we should pursue emission reductions, if collapse is inevitable, it seems less urgent to challenge corporate and state power which continues to cause climate destruction. The climate movement needs an inspiring vision it can share to become a truly powerful mass movement. Bendell’s vague warnings of inescapable tragedy won’t cut it. And as scientists Thomas Nicholas, Galen Hall and Colleen Schmidt say in their detailed critique, ‘A belief in near-term collapse or extinction engenders a depth of desperation which makes the kind of long-term planning we need in order to live through the climate crisis redundant.’

Engagement with Bendell’s ideas added to my sense of panic and disillusionment. But a wake-up call came. During COVID quarantine, Bendell began a side gig as an earnest singer-songwriter. I stumbled across a music video showing Bendell strumming his guitar and singing what was billed as a ‘freedom protest song’, while a posse of young musicians sit beaming at his feet. The lyrics complain that ‘pharma owns the brains of bureaucrats and scientists’, and of ‘viral evolution caused by jabbing all the same’. At the conclusion, Bendell and his band croon ‘Something’s needling me…is something needling you?’, as a giant cartoon hand holding a syringe chases them around the room.

It was three chords and some mistruths. [Editor’s note: In a response to KYD, Dr Bendell contends that the statement that the lyric of his song on ‘viral evolution’ is a ‘mistruth’ is incorrect, and that this a normal a matter for scientific inquiry. KYD withdraws this statement.] Bendell had embraced the antivax movement, sharing and amplifying deadly misinformation. [Editor’s note: In a response to KYD, Dr Bendell contends that the claim he was spreading ‘deadly misinformation’ incorrectly used for its source his tweet calling for urgent discussion on how vaccination impacts on infection, and that it is now not controversial science that the vaccines are not curbing transmission, and simply an open question about whether they might increase it. KYD withdraws this statement.]

On his website, he said COVID vaccines were ‘mostly ineffective experimental compounds’ which ‘don’t work well’ after a few months, and that ‘If a vaccine works, then other people taking it should not matter to us’, showing an ignorance of how vaccines protect populations. [Editor’s note: In a response to KYD, Dr Bendell contends that the implication he does not understand ‘herd immunity’ for COVID would be incorrect, as it is now widely regarded by epidemiologists that ‘herd immunity’ is unlikely for COVID. KYD withdraws this statement.] In another YouTube video, he implied that Africa was experiencing low rates of COVID mortality in part because of its low vaccination rate, despite a range of more plausible explanations existing. [Editor’s note: In a response to KYD, Dr Bendell contends that this implication is false, and his article on learning from Africa can be found here. KYD withdraws this statement.]

When change happens, it can happen fast…we won’t successfully address climate crisis if our imaginations are limited by what seems plausible now.

The shock of seeing Bendell spread this kind of misinformation made me take another look at Deep Adaptation and see a conspiratorial outlook existed there too. In the initial paper, Bendell questioned the motivations, methods and institutions of academics and scientists, and distorted scientific fact. This has the dangerous effect of discrediting established climate science. As Nicholas, Hall and Schmidt say, the paper repeatedly ‘invokes an extreme prediction by an outlier scientist (or even non-scientist), and then seemingly implies that we should trust that prediction because it goes against the consensus.’

[Editor’s note: In a response to KYD, Dr Bendell contends that the general argument that he is an outlier with his views on climatology is no longer true, given the range of new scientific literature on climate-induced collapse being a plausible scenario.]

Deep Adaptation gave its adherents the absolute certainty provided by conspiracy theories. Rather than having to confront messy and unpredictable reality, believers thought they had insight into the way things really were and could look down smugly on those who didn’t. In the Deep Adaptation Facebook group, established by Bendell, posters write with pity about family members and strangers addicted to ‘hopium’ who just can’t ‘awaken’ to reality. Any critics are easily dismissed as being unwilling or unable to accept truths that are supposedly right in front of them.

Accepting the lack of scientific rigour in these two papers was a relief which allowed me to pay attention to more hopeful views of the climate predicament. But not all climate doomers base their conclusions in science. Another variety believes political reality makes it ‘too late’ for us to address the climate crisis. The novelist Jonathan Franzen fits into this category: In a gloomy New Yorker article, ‘What if we stopped pretending?’, Franzen claims ‘climate apocalypse’ is technically avoidable, yet still inevitable. ‘As a non-scientist,’ he writes, ‘I do my own kind of modelling. I run various future scenarios through my brain, apply the constraints of human psychology and political reality’. Franzen says he can consider ten thousand scenarios, none of which result in the world limiting warming to less than 2 degrees.

For an author of fiction, this demonstrates a dearth of imaginative power. A long view of history shows that ‘political reality’ is almost infinitely malleable with few constraints. Even considering more recent events shows that when change happens, it can happen fast: Who would have predicted a decade ago that from 2019 the Australian Capital Territory would be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy? Or that in 2021 the Western Australian government would give in to community pressure and ban native forest logging? Or that Australia’s dirtiest coal power station would shut itself down thirteen years early? None of these victories were perfect, but they were victories nonetheless.

Franzen’s ten thousand scenarios are just variations of the same tired narrative of business-as-usual. At the root of climate and ecological crises lies an exploitative, unrestrained capitalism that relies on endless economic growth and is supposedly the natural state of things. Even many who dedicate their lives to fighting for a safe climate become nervous around critiques of these forces. But we won’t successfully address climate crisis if our imaginations are limited by what seems plausible now. The task is to break down the walls of plausibility and see new vistas of possibility beyond them. In the words of another novelist, Ursula K. Le Guin, ‘We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.’ Le Guin’s masterful sci-fi world-building was influenced by an immersion from an early age in anthropology; she knew that radically different worlds could exist, in fiction and reality.

True hope is open to the unknown and unpredictable but not naive. It also involves action.

Science, politics and history all allow space for hope. I don’t mean a limp hope that things will just work out, that governments in countries like Australia and America will have an epiphany and stop new fossil fuel projects, or that fossil fuel companies will wind themselves down. True hope is open to the unknown and unpredictable but not naive. It also involves action. In the words of Rebecca Solnit, the great scholar of hope: ‘Anything could happen, and whether we act or not has everything to do with it.’

The scale of change required to begin making things better is unprecedented. It will take a massive social movement of people willing to work outside established structures. This movement might not come in time to avert some of the more dire climate predictions. But it certainly won’t come if no one believes it could. What’s more, there are a whole range of possible outcomes that are in play. Every tonne of carbon we can stop from being emitted and every fraction of a degree of warming we can prevent will avert real suffering.

Fossil fuel companies, who benefit from inaction, want you to believe we’re doomed. That’s why they’ve used their money and influence to seed despair, using it as an inverted complement to climate denial. By giving in, we allow powerful interests to continue to make things worse.

I still experience bursts of eco-anxiety; after all, there’s plenty to worry about. But hope makes it less consuming, less guilt-ridden, less lonely and more productive. I allow myself more nuance, more gratitude for the wonders around me and more empathy.

There’s much I agree with doomers on. It would be foolish to not consider worst-case scenarios. To continue to pursue ‘green growth’ would be disastrous. The renewable transition, if not well executed and accompanied by an overall reduction in energy demand, could be an environmental and socially calamity. And the climate crisis is causing immense suffering, right now, especially for the marginalised and vulnerable. Things will only get worse, not better.

But we can still find ways to live together that are more ecologically sane, and there’s plenty we can protect. To succeed, we need to abandon the black and white thinking which insists the only possible outcomes are that we’re either ‘doomed’ or ‘saved’. There’s a narrow path between the dead ends of naivety and doom. We can walk it together.