In the past few years, global warming has failed to reach critical mass in the mainstream consciousness, even as (or perhaps precisely because) the evidence has become increasingly clear that we have passed the tipping point after which it is impossible to avoid exponentially synergistic positive feedback effects that will lead to an unimaginably hellish future.

I’m not being hyperbolic. Just read http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2011/09/28/330109/science-of-global-warming-impacts/ (and maybe also the links at http://pinboard.in/u:metamw/t:global_warming), think about the cracks in the system already starting to emerge due to food insecurity, and tell me how the next 100 or even 50 years can happen without the collapse of civilization and billions of deaths.  (Then, consider what James Hansen, the NASA climatologist who has been sounding the alarm on global warming longer and more accurately than just about anyone else, has said: if we burn all the unconventional sources of oil left in the earth, we run a serious risk of setting off runaway warming that will boil off the oceans and leave Earth uninhabitable for life.)

Ultimately, until it actually happens, you can doubt whether it will; out of sight, out of mind, no need to confront ultimate despair, your cosmic impotence in the face of humanity’s mass suicide.  I am not going to respond to any arguments for denial, delay, or trust in geo-engineering that may arise in the comments as a rationalization of inaction.  I have read enough to decide that expecting this century to be anything but an unmitigated disaster is life-threateningly risky.  I have given up on humanity’s ability to wake up and organize itself in time to prevent catastrophic warming in favor of merely highly disruptive warming, and I, for one, am going to do everything I can to ensure that I live at least a natural lifespan.  If you’re not already preparing to obtain arable land at a high latitude away from population centers, you’re behind the game.  If you wait ten or twenty years, it may very well be too late.

If you are unwilling to continue further into this century awaiting the approaching collapse of normality while pretending that inhabiting whatever niche you inhabit of the system that got us into this mess is an acceptable course of action, then let me know, and we can all buy some land together and set up a sustainable, self-sufficient community.  A community, where, in the last days of the race to utopia or oblivion, maybe we can be a safe haven for work on things that have the potential to save us from ourselves, like technology that enables better forms of social organization, or superhuman AI.

Going forward, I think people who are conscious of the overriding importance of sustainable living as we face catastrophic global warming need to start using it as a litmus test.  If you are too proud of your learned ignorance or too content in your learned helplessness to admit the facts and take action, I can only regard you as a mortal enemy; you are hurting our shared future, and if I could, I would rather live on a different planet than you.  If geo-engineering saves the day in the end, you can laugh at my naiveté all you want, but if it doesn’t, and I was prepared, don’t expect me to help you.

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