John Oliver on wrongful convictions, and some thoughts on the worship of process

John Oliver doesn’t get everything right, but he hits far more often than his misses, especially when critiquing aspects of domestic policy within the United States. In this case, the team at Last Week Tonight has put together an excellent video on the issue of wrongful convictions in the U.S., and how deeply fucked up that whole process is.

There’s one thread in this video that I want to pull a little, and that’s this:

When one of the West Memphis Three tried to get a new trial based on new evidence, including DNA, an assistant AG appeared before the state supreme court to try and talk them out of considering it, citing the harm that could do.

Judge: “What harm is there to allowing him to present all evidence?”

Assistant AG: “Well the harm is in the finality of a criminal judgment that is not demonstrated to have any constitutional or procedural defect, and just to try it again- I mean you’re suggesting, it sounds to me, Justice (inaudible), as though every 15 or 17 years or so we we really ought to try cases again to reestablish guilt so the harm is in is to the criminal justice system’s interest in finality.”

And a similar point comes up a little later, about a different case:

But the thing is a quick ruling like that is not remotely unusual. Many times appeals judges will just sign the state prosecutor’s documents without even changing the heading. One study looked at post-conviction appeals in the largest county in Texas, and found judges adopted the prosecutor’s findings verbatim in 96 of their rulings, and if at this point it seems like our whole system is set up to preserve its process even at the cost of human life, well during one death row appeal before the Missouri supreme court for this man, Joe Amrine one assistant ag basically admitted as much:

Judge: “You’re suggesting if we don’t find there’s a constitutional violation, then even if we find that Mr. Amrine is actually innocent, he should be executed?

Assistant AG: “The US Supreme Court in Herrera- ”

Judge: “I’m asking if that’s what you are arguing this day-”

Assistant AG: “That’s – That’s correct, your honor.”

It’s popular on the left to compare the center and right-wing worship of capitalism to actual religion, both in the dedication of its believers, and in their refusal to acknowledge reality. That’s why, while there has been real social progress in recent decades (though we’ve got a long, long way to go), economic policy has been moving far to the right, with the help of both major parties. I think there’s another ideological commitment that getting close to being as destructive as worship of capitalism and profit, and that’s worship of “the process”.

This seems to be a largely Democratic belief system these days. The Republicans have more or less openly embraced fascism, and they have a clear set of goals – more power for them and their donors, no matter the cost to the United States or the world. Democrats, or at least the leadership and a majority of the party, seem to have little in the way of actual beliefs, beyond their belief in capitalism, and in the process. That’s why it seems like the GOP fights tooth and nail for what they want, testing every boundary and looking for every loophole, but the Democrats always seem to fall short on their “big policies” before they even start negotiating with the GOP.

The Democrats don’t test the boundaries in pursuit of their goals, because the boundaries are their goal. Most of the party doesn’t actually want change. They’re willing to accept change, so long as it is very small, very popular, doesn’t require much effort from them, and doesn’t threaten to meaningfully change anything at a systemic level. They’re willing to embrace change that doesn’t hurt the powerful, like Obama’s continuation of the war on terror, or Biden’s continuation of Trump’s border policies, but when it came time to “fight for healthcare”, a universal system was never seriously discussed, and a public option was taken off the table before negotiations really started. And when a candidate was winning the primary with his Medicare for All message, there was a coordinated effort to tilt the field to favor a far more right-wing candidate.

If we assume that they aren’t consciously working to prevent left-wing change (and I think that’s an unsafe assumption), then they seem to hold a devout belief that change can only be good if it happens “within the rules”, and they even avoid things that aren’t against the rules, or that just might be against the rules. One of the better examples of this is the “Day One Agenda” from The American Prospect. They pulled together a number of actions that are within the power of the Executive Branch, or that haven’t been ruled to not be within that power. The GOP has made it clear that there’s no real punishment for making unconstitutional executive orders, to the point where they kept re-wording their “Muslim ban” until it managed to get through the courts.

Biden, as has been pointed out many times, couldn’t even be bothered to do things – like forgiving federal student loan debt – that pretty much everybody agrees he has the power to do.

Protocols and processes can be good, in theory. It’s good to have rules restricting the use and accumulation of power – I want more of those! But adhering to protocol for its own sake, especially when the “other side” has openly changed it in ways that hurt people, isn’t much better than causing that harm in the first place. Our system and its rules are designed to prevent any changes that might disempower the ruling class, and it seems to be that spirit of the law that the Democratic Party is committed to following, no matter how many people are hurt as a result.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work I do. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

If you haven’t read The Shock Doctrine, you really should. The audiobook is free!

Content warning: Descriptions of torture re: CIA, MkUltra, Cold War torture programs, and so on.

I’ve made this pitch before, but I’m making it again, and I’m going to keep making it. The audiobook for Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is youtube, and EVERYONE should listen to it, or read a paper or e-book copy. It provides historical context for a lot of what has happened in the world since the 1970s, for what’s happening right now, and for what we can expect from the current COVID-19 crisis, and from the crises we will be seeing from climate change in the coming years. If you believe that healthcare should be available to all, or that everyone should be free to pursue happiness in their own way, then understanding what’s in this book is essential. People with an unimaginable amount of power continue to carry out the tactics described here, and resisting their efforts will require us to be able to understand what’s going on as it’s being done to us. This book is probably the best way to get that understanding.

 

New drought forecast for the 21st century looks grim. We urgently need to move food production indoors.

We need to move food production indoors. I keep saying it, but weirdly nobody running the world seems to read my blog. One of the central theses of this blog is that we missed the deadline on climate change, by at least a decade. That doesn’t mean we’re all doomed, but it does mean that returning to the global climate that gave birth to our current civilization is not an option. It could happen in a few hundred years, with active efforts from a global human society, but for that to happen, we need to survive those centuries of warming. To do that, we need to change how we do things in a number of ways, and agriculture is very near the top of that list.

A Washington State University-led research team analyzed climate, agricultural and population growth data to show continuing fossil fuel dependence will increase the probability of co-occurring droughts 40% by the mid-21st century and 60% by the late 21st century, relative to the late-20th century. That comes out to an approximately ninefold increase in agricultural and human population exposure to severe co-occurring droughts unless steps are taken to lower carbon emissions.

“There could be around 120 million people across the globe simultaneously exposed to severe compound droughts each year by the end of the century,” said lead author Jitendra Singh, a former postdoctoral researcher at the WSU School of the Environment now at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. “Many of the regions our analysis shows will be most affected are already vulnerable and so the potential for droughts to become disasters is high.”

I’d just like to pause to emphasized that. 120 million people dealing with severe drought each year. For a comparison, the WHO estimates the current annual number at 55 million, and they don’t even specify “severe” drought. I’ve mentioned before that starvation and malnutrition around the globe isn’t due to a lack of resources, but the factors that create that artificial scarcity are likely to be exacerbated by this increase in drought, causing mass famine well before we get to the point where conventional farming can’t produce enough food because of climate change. Without systemic change, this could mean anywhere from hundreds of millions to billions starving to death.

But because we know this is coming, I would argue that none of those deaths are unavoidable, even now. We could invest heavily in various forms of indoor food production, which can recycle water used, and be immune to things like drought. Making that a global priority now would mean that our inevitable mistakes will do less harm, because conventional farming is still producing food. If, as seems more likely, the people running the world continue to procrastinate on avoiding our looming extinction, then we’re going to have much less leeway. We’ve already lost a lot of that slack, but I fear we’re going to lose what remains pretty quickly.

The elevated risk of compound droughts estimated by Singh and colleagues is a result of a warming climate coupled with a projected 22% increase in the frequency of El Niño and La Niña events, the two opposite phases of the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO).

The researchers’ projections show that nearly 75% of compound droughts in the future will coincide with these irregular but recurring periods of climatic variation in the world’s oceans, which have played a large role in some of the greatest environmental disasters in world history.

[…]

The researchers’ analysis specifically focused on ten regions of the planet that receive most of their rainfall during June-September, have high variability in monthly summer precipitation and are affected by ENSO variations, factors that lead to an increased potential for co-occurring drought. Several of the regions analyzed include important agricultural regions and countries that are currently facing food and water insecurity.

Their results indicate areas of North and South America are more likely to experience compound droughts in a future, warmer climate than regions of Asia, where much of the agricultural land is projected to become wetter.

Food produced in the Americas could therefore be more susceptible to climatic hazards. For instance, the United States is a major exporter of staple grains and currently ships maize to countries across the globe. Even a modest increase in the risk of compound droughts in the future climate could lead to regional supply shortfalls that could in turn cascade into the global market, affecting global prices and amplifying food insecurity.

“The potential for a food security crisis increases even if these droughts aren’t affecting major food producing regions but rather many regions that are already vulnerable to food insecurity,” said coauthor Weston Anderson, an assistant research scientist at the Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center at the University of Maryland. “Simultaneous droughts in food insecure regions could in turn amplify stresses on international agencies responsible for disaster relief by requiring the provision of humanitarian aid to a greater number of people simultaneously.”

There is some good news, Anderson said. The researchers’ work is based on a high fossil fuel emissions scenario, and in recent years, the global community has made progress toward lowering carbon emissions which would greatly mitigate the frequency and intensity of co-occurring droughts by the end of the 21st century.

Also, the occurrence of nearly 75% of compound droughts alongside ENSO events in the future climate highlights the potential to predict where these droughts may occur with a lead time of up to nine months.

“This means that co-occurring droughts during ENSO events will likely affect the same geographical regions they do today albeit with greater severity,” said Deepti Singh. “Being able to predict where these droughts will occur and their potential impacts can help society develop plans and efforts to minimize economic losses and reduce human suffering from such climate-driven disasters.”

Research and development of new technologies should always be an ongoing investment we make as a society. That said, it is not necessary to do more research and development in order to take major action on climate change. We already have everything we need to make a huge difference in what our future looks like, except for a political and economic system that actually values humanity (let alone the rest of life). I know I keep repeating myself, but until real change actually happens, it needs to be repeated, and said in different ways and different contexts. The people who currently run the world, and the political and economic systems that put them in power are not going to save us. I don’t think they particularly want to, but I also don’t think they’re capable of doing it.  We can work within the system to do at least some good, but that will not be enough. I feel like that should be increasingly obvious to people, given how many decades it’s been since the IPCC was first convened. Vote, protest, and do all the rest, but we need to view democracy as a part of our daily lives and our daily work, not just something we participate in now and then. We need to stop relying on political parties for our political organizing, and start organizing more directly to put real pressure on politicians no matter who’s in office, and to work towards revolutionary change in who our society serves.

If you like the content of this blog, please share it around. If you like the blog and you have the means, please consider joining my lovely patrons in paying for the work I do. Due to my immigration status, I’m currently prohibited from conventional wage labor, so for the next couple years at least this is going to be my only source of income. You can sign up for as little as $1 per month (though more is obviously welcome), to help us make ends meet – every little bit counts!

Video: Post-Satire Capitalism

I don’t know if satire is dead, but a lot of this video gets at how I’ve been feeling for a while now. Life has a sort of surreal quality, with the cheerleaders of capitalism becoming ever more cartoonish in their praises for murderous profiteers. How is it that these people have so much power? How is this supposed to be the best the world can be?

How can this possibly last?

It can’t.

If you like this content, consider giving to Leon’s patreon.

Agrovoltaics 101: A synergetic relationship between food production and power generation

I’ve written before about the need for us to change how we do agriculture, to protect crops from climate change. A lot of where I think our focus should be is on moving food production indoors, but it’s unlikely that’s going to happen as quickly as I’d like, and doing what we can to protect existing farmland is also a good idea. Retrofitting is almost always going to be cheaper than building entirely new facilities. One of the approaches to climate-proofing I’ve seen discussed is “agrovoltaics” – the practice of using a piece of land for power generation and food production simultaneously. As with everything else, this isn’t going to be “the” solution for our power problems or our food problems, but it’s an interesting idea, and I’m glad to see people experimenting with it. I think this is a good introduction to the topic:

An Educational Series: It’s Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen

One of the most important lessons I learned growing up was the importance of listening to people whose experience is different from my own. It’s not a lesson I can remember learning one day, nor is it one I learned particularly quickly. I like to think I’ve gotten the hang of it now, but I have no doubt I’ve still got a long way to go.

Either way, it’s helpful to be reminded to listen, from time to time, and to have people who take the time to make it easier to do so. My fellow blogger Iris Vander Pluym, of Death to Squirrels is one such person, and I’d like to draw your attention to the series she has been working on this month: It’s Black History Month and We Whites Are All Going to STFU and Listen.

The series touches on black history and activism, and while a lot of it is focused on the United States, it also touches on global issues. I particularly appreciated this talk by Mallence Bart-Williams

[…]

Of course the West needs Africa’s resources, most desperately, to power airplanes, cell phones, computers and engines. And the gold and diamonds of course: a status symbol, to determine their powers by decor, and to give value to their currencies. One thing that keeps me puzzled, despite having studied finance and economics at the world’s best universities, the following question remains unanswered:

Why is it that 5,000 units of our currency is worth one unit of your currency, when we are the ones with the actual gold reserves?

It’s quite evident that the aid is in fact not coming from the West to Africa, but from Africa to the Western world. The Western world depends on Africa in every possible way, since alternative resources are scarce out here.

So how does the West ensure that the free aid keeps coming?

By systematically destabilizing the wealthiest African nations and their systems, and all that backed by huge PR campaigns, leaving the entire world under the impression that Africa is poor and dying, and merely surviving on the mercy of the West.

Well done, Oxfam, UNICEF, Red Cross, Life Aid, and all the other organizations that continuously run multimillion-dollar advertisement campaigns depicting charity porn, to sustain that image of Africa, globally. Ad campaigns paid for by innocent people under the impression to help with their donations. While one hand gives under the flashing lights of cameras, the other takes, in the shadows. We all know the dollar is worthless, while the euro is merely charged with German intellect and technology, and maybe some Italian pasta. How can one expect donations from nations that have so little?

It’s super sweet of you to come with your colored paper in exchange for our gold and diamonds.

But instead, you should come empty-handed, filled with integrity and honor. We want to share with you our wealth and invite you to share with us.

The perception is that a healthy and striving Africa would not disperse its resources as freely and cheaply, which is logical. Of course. It would instead sell its resources at world market prices, which in turn would destabilize and weaken Western economies, established on the post-colonial free-meal system. Last year, the IMF reports that six out of ten of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Africa, measured by their GDP growth. The French treasury, for example, is receiving about 500 billion dollars, year in, year out, in foreign exchange reserves from African countries based on colonial debt they forced them to pay. Former French president Jacques Chirac stated in an interview recently that we have to be honest and acknowledge that a big part of the money in our banks comes precisely from the exploitation of the African continent.

In 2008, he stated that without Africa, France will slide down in the rank of a Third World power.

[…]

I’ve mentioned before how war, espionage, assassination, and debt are all used to maintain the so-called poverty of Africa, while enriching the “former” colonial powers. Those of us in wealthy nations who do talk about this stuff naturally focus on the crimes being committed by our nations. It’s an important aspect of what’s going on, particularly because I feel it’s our duty to do what we can at our end to stop these injustices from which we benefit.

Bart-Williams describes Sierra Leone as the richest country on Earth, and she makes a powerful case to support this claim, and ties it directly to the people of Sierra Leone, and to the artists she has worked with. Understanding is a prerequisite for real justice, and as Iris says, that often means we need to STFU and listen. Check out the video at the link above, or if you prefer a transcript with images, Iris has provided that as well.

This series has one post for each day through February, and each has links to those that came before. That means that in addition to checking out everything else Iris has posted this month, you should also revisit Death to Squirrels for the rest of this month to make sure you’ve seen the whole series.

 

Tegan Tuesday: The National Black Doll Museum needs your help!

“The National Black Doll Museum has a three-fold mission: to nurture self-esteem, to promote cultural diversity, and to preserve the history of black dolls by educating the public on their significance.” – Mission statement of The National Black Doll Museum of History and Culture

I only recently learned about this interesting museum, The National Black Doll Museum, that used to be housed in Mansfield, MA. For all I lived in Massachusetts for 12 years, I rarely explored the many small and unusual museums in the area. The NBDMHC has a collection of over 7000 Black dolls, and the oldest dolls are from the late 18th century. This isn’t just about the past, however, as these dolls are equally loved and displayed with Black Panther action figures. Although many doll museums include Black dolls in their collections, prior to 2020, this museum was the only physical museum in the US dedicated to Black dolls specifically.

The museum got its start from the personal collection of the founder, Debra Britt, who used to take her private doll collection on tours to women’s shelters or community centers to share the history and communal heritage as the Doll E Daze Project. The museum, which is a 501(c) 3 non-profit, still supports this community outreach as well as a number of workshops and educational resources. The workshop on the Power of Play looks at the impact of Black dolls on the self-pride and explores the stories of Black activists post-Reconstruction through today; The workshop on African wrap dolls works to preserve this important cultural handcraft; and the museum offers support and assistance for geneology research as well. For a project focused around children’s toys, the staff involved have found ways to connect with many aspects of the Black community at all stages of life.

But, unfortunately for the project, 2020 was a difficult year for them, like so many others. With the lack of school engagements, workshops, or in-person celebrations, the museum lost their space in Mansfield due to lack of funding. However, all is not lost! Attleboro, MA has set aside land for cultural development and is interested in working with the National Black Doll Museum to relocate to the new area. But they need funding to do so. The current phase of fundraising has a goal of $100,000 and a deadline at the end of the month — February is Black History Month after all! So I hope that you, much like myself, find the concept exciting and the project worthwhile, and will help to make the new location a reality. Let’s let this understudied aspect of history have a chance to shine again!

An interview about this absolute Tucker of a Carlson.

I regard Tucker Carlson as the most influential and dangerous fascist propagandist in the United States. He’s now well known for pushing white supremacist propaganda, and he’s developed a pattern of making almost-left criticisms of capitalism or corporations, and then taking a hard right into things like immigration an self-hating white people as the cause for those problems. I keep meaning to write more about him and his bullshit, but I find the man so insufferable that it’s hard to make myself do the research.

I think this discussion in two parts between David Doel of The Rational National and journalist Eoin Higgins is useful both in discussing Carlson, and a number of other relevant issues.

A useful but somewhat frustrating video on nuclear power

Power production is a subject about which I’m not especially knowledgeable. I know a decent amount about what the options are, but a whole lot less about the exact mechanics of how they work. It’s something I’m trying to learn more about, but it’s far less of a priority to me than other aspects of climate change and the politics surrounding it. As I’ve said before, I think the primary obstacles are social and political, rather than technical. That is true for renewable energy, it’s true for agricultural changes, and it’s true for nuclear energy. I was looking through the youtube channel for Yale Climate Connections, and I came across this video, which I think serves as a good example of what I’m talking about:

Leaving aside my reflexive annoyance at having to listen to Bill Gates talk, I think there’s useful information in there. I also think there are parts of the video in which we can clearly see there are a couple limitations in perspective. The first one is the rather fatalistic take on whether new nuclear reactors will be cost-competitive with renewables, as though economics are just a force of nature, rather than the deliberate result of government policy. The idea that cost should be a primary concern in responding to climate change continues to be one of the most apocalyptic mind-viruses of our age, and it’s infuriating to see otherwise intelligent and well-educated people showing those symptoms.

The other thing I want to quibble with is this:

The first small modular reactor will be eight, ten years from now. We need to have pretty much solved the whole problem, and have overwhelming momentum to zero carbon electricity by that time

There’s one aspect of this that’s fine – Dr. Makhijani is absolutely correct about the scale of action needed within the next decade, if we want to keep the warming below two degrees Celsius over pre-industrial temperatures. We certainly should want that, but whether or not we actually achieve it, life will continue, and we’re going to need a lot of power generation. If we miss that mark, we’re going to need more power if we want to avoid mass death unlike anything our species has seen. I get why there has been so much focus on avoiding this crisis, but just because we’ve largely failed at that doesn’t mean it’s “game over”, and I think Makhijani’s framing there can do real harm.

A huge portion of this crisis was caused by a societal inability to make decisions based on long-term outcomes. We can’t afford to continue that. That’s why I think societal change is such an important element of this. It’s also why resilience needs to be the focus. My primary objection to nuclear power, over the last few years, has been something that’s mentioned in the video – all conventional nuclear power plants rely on a constant supply of water for cooling. Some of them are far more efficient in their use and re-use of water than others, but for all of them, things like drought, heat waves, and flooding are a concern for safety and for efficiency. That’s not a reason to discard the technology, but it is a reason to build with the assumption that our infrastructure will be subjected to conditions unlike anything we’ve seen before. That goes for everything we’re doing to deal with climate change. If, as seems increasingly likely, we miss the 2°C mark, then life is going to get a whole lot harder. We’re going to need to spend increasing amounts of energy cooling our homes and places of work, keeping crops alive, repairing infrastructure, and so on. Nuclear power – including the small, modular designs mentioned in the video – could be a powerful tool in that effort, but only if we’re clear-eyed about the conditions under which it will be used.

We don’t get to just give up if we haven’t solved everything in a decade, and that means we need to consider how technology like this can and cannot be used in a much hotter world. We’re at a point, horrific though it is, where we need to be planning for the scenarios we’d been hoping to avoid, and frankly people like the ones involved in this video need adjust their thinking to account for the passage of time. I think we should absolutely be continuing the momentum of wind and solar power. I also think that adherence to the focus on the two degree deadline, and the idea that this all has to be done via capitalist competition, are both perspectives that do more harm than good.

Thank you for reading. If you find my work interesting, useful, or entertaining, please share it with others, and please consider joining the group of lovely people who support me at patreon.com/oceanoxia. Life costs money, alas, and owing to my immigration status in Ireland, this is likely to be my only form of income for the foreseeable future, so if you are able to help out, I’d greatly appreciate it. The beauty of crowdfunding is that even as little as $1 per month (that’s like three pennies a day!) ends up helping a great deal if enough people do it. You’d be supporting both my nonfiction and my science fiction writing, and you’d get early access to some of the fiction and some other content.

Dipping into degrowth

I’m a believer in the power of repetition to spread and embed ideas in our culture. Just as repetition is useful for learning new subjects or skills, it’s also useful for making certain ideas familiar to people. An example that’s relevant to this blog is the switch from using “global warming”, to using “climate change” in mainstream public discourse. It was a deliberate policy, pushed by Frank Luntz, because his focus groups thought the latter was less scary than the former. Not only did that effort work, but it also paved the way for climate deniers to say that the change was made by environmentalists because there wasn’t any warming.

There’s a simple rule: You say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and you say it again, and then again and again and again and again, and about the time that you’re absolutely sick of saying it is about the time that your target audience has heard it for the first time.

-Frank Luntz

I think this approach is also why it’s now pretty normal to heard the Democratic Party referred to as the “Democrat party”, because someone decided that change made them look worse, and the Republicans look better. Luntz is a horrible person, judged by the harm he has done, but I think his understanding of propaganda is worth learning from.

All of this was to say that I’m aware that I repeat myself on this blog, and to some degree that’s deliberate. That said, this blog isn’t just about spreading a set number of messages I believe should be spread. It’s also an ongoing learning process for me, and for anyone who happens to learn from my work. That means that as much as I do repeat myself, I also try to delve into new topics on a regular basis.

Degrowth is one of those topics that I’ve been meaning to dig into, but I’ve been putting off. At my current level of understanding, it feels a little over-simplified, but like an obvious conclusion. Infinite growth is not possible in a finite world, and so any system that relies on infinite growth is definitionally unsustainable, and so dangerous. As with the constant calls to “organize” or to “build collective power”, my knee-jerk reaction is to ask, “Ok, yes, but how? What can we actually do in our day-to-day lives that counts as ‘organizing’?”

I don’t have the answer, and my guess is that most other people are in the same situation. We mostly haven’t been taught how a post-capitalist society could even exist. The default stance in mainstream “western” politics is that capitalism and liberal democracy are the end goal of humanity, and that they should be how everything is run for the rest of our existence of a species.

This is, apparently, as good as it gets.

It’s not surprising that we weren’t taught to think outside that box – that’s not what our education systems were designed for. So I’m trying to do at least a little to fill that gap, as one human among a multitude working on the same project. I’m going to start learning more about “degrowth” and writing more about it, about the proposals for achieving it, and so on.

For now, here’s a video from Our Changing Climate on the subject:

There are lot of ways a degrowth scenario could play out, the worst of which would be forced upon us by the climate. I remain firm in my belief that we can build a sustainable society that still benefits from advanced technology, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t require big changes to our own lives as we change things at a systemic level. I think that the more pro-active we are about this, the better our chances for a good outcome, and the more room we will have to screw up without disaster.

Going forward, I’m going to be putting more effort into degrowth content, and stuff like that, and I welcome any input and suggestions that you, dear reader, may have.

Thank you for reading. If you find my work interesting, useful, or entertaining, please share it with others, and please consider joining the group of lovely people who support me at patreon.com/oceanoxia. Life costs money, alas, and owing to my immigration status in Ireland, this is likely to be my only form of income for the foreseeable future, so if you are able to help out, I’d greatly appreciate it. The beauty of crowdfunding is that even as little as $1 per month (that’s like three pennies a day!) ends up helping a great deal if enough people do it. You’d be supporting both my nonfiction and my science fiction writing, and you’d get early access to some of the fiction and some other content.