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I love how you use the phrase "permacrisis narrative" as if climate change and its consequences are made up constructs. They are not. They are established sci

I love how you use the phrase "permacrisis narrative" as if climate change and its consequences are made up constructs. They are not. They are established science at this point. You are doing noone any service by claiming otherwise, even obliquely.

edanm 4y ago
I might be wrong, but I think you're reading things into that phrase that aren't there. Calling something a narrative doesn't imply something is made up.
osigurdson 4y ago
Climate change is established science. Predictions that Earth will become Venus 2.0 is a non-productive nihilist fantasy.
buran77 4y ago
I read that as the well known fact that if you are constantly under pressure you will eventually just normalize it and soon it becomes "the way things are". And when things are "the way things are" there is no real push for change. If thieves trigger your car alarm once every year you'll jump to chase them away. If they trigger it once every minute you'll sell the car. You can't sell this car. We need some focus on which crisis is the priority but I'm less and less qualified to judge what deserves an air raid siren, and what deserves an alarm clock. All the issues mentioned by other comments below always existed in one form or another, almost exclusively worse than today (Extremist leaders? Countries on the brink of collapse? Society upheaval? Threat of invasion?). It wasn't much different some decades ago. The baseline was set differently but the same concerns were expressed since forever. We just had something like a Cold War, fear of nuclear attack, fear of invasion, etc. that topped the charts so hard (for a while) that everything else subsided. And then slowly things were normalized and we could start seeing the "day to day" crisis.
- ngcc_hk 4y ago
  You are overwhelmed by crisis, sort of future or crisis shock. But some event which may not even be crisis affect many and with hindsight actually is the crisis. How about letting china into wto and beginning by kicking out Taiwan from UN (or they gave up). The whole series of event of key china out and not balance with in will be one of the major disaster of humanity … but is it? That is the big question. I think it is. But without hindsight you do not know. Hence we have to work on. But ignoring key event (and just crisis) will doom humanity. After all, most species died why not human.
- tejohnso 4y ago
  > I read that as the well known fact that if you are constantly under pressure you will eventually just normalize it and soon it becomes "the way things are". And when things are "the way things are" there is no real push for change. This is partly why people have taken to action like throwing paint at art and gluing themselves to roadways. Some people are not prepared to accept the normalization of human extinction and want to constantly provide new alarm stimuli.
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    Kind of. Some people, when they perceive a problem, are compelled to do anything, regardless of whether it helps or not.
    - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      Destroying something beautiful creates a strong emotional response. There is a beautiful analogy with what some protestors are doing and what we are doing to the planet we inhabit. The latter should trigger an equally strong response but somehow we lay dormant. Irrespective of how useless you feel their protest is, they are indeed making us talk about it. Which I think is a dire need we have at the moment with so many other trivial things stealing the spotlight of media focus.
      - fluoridation 4y ago
        A strong emotional response can go either in the direction you want, or the opposite direction just to spite you. I feel such protestors are doing a disservice to their cause by expressing themselves in such ways.
_heimdall 4y ago
You're assuming her that "permacrisis narrative" was written as a slight targeted specifically at climate change research. It may be more easily read as a reference to the endless cycle of news outlets serving up stories about the next big event we should all be deathly afraid of. Remember the murder hornets? If you'd like to split hairs here, "established science" is also doing noone any service. Climate change is an established field of study that more generally researches human impact on the planet. There is strong consensus that we have made an impact on climate and that there could be major negative impacts on existing civilizations if we don't act. It's worth remembering, though, that climate research is almost entirely based in modeling data. Models are useful for finding signals, especially in a complex system, but blindly claiming "established science" without any further context makes it sounds as though it is fact.

edanm 4y ago

I might be wrong, but I think you're reading things into that phrase that aren't there. Calling something a narrative doesn't imply something is made up.

osigurdson 4y ago

Climate change is established science. Predictions that Earth will become Venus 2.0 is a non-productive nihilist fantasy.

buran77 4y ago

I read that as the well known fact that if you are constantly under pressure you will eventually just normalize it and soon it becomes "the way things are". And when things are "the way things are" there is no real push for change. If thieves trigger your car alarm once every year you'll jump to chase them away. If they trigger it once every minute you'll sell the car. You can't sell this car. We need some focus on which crisis is the priority but I'm less and less qualified to judge what deserves an air raid siren, and what deserves an alarm clock. All the issues mentioned by other comments below always existed in one form or another, almost exclusively worse than today (Extremist leaders? Countries on the brink of collapse? Society upheaval? Threat of invasion?). It wasn't much different some decades ago. The baseline was set differently but the same concerns were expressed since forever. We just had something like a Cold War, fear of nuclear attack, fear of invasion, etc. that topped the charts so hard (for a while) that everything else subsided. And then slowly things were normalized and we could start seeing the "day to day" crisis.

ngcc_hk 4y ago
You are overwhelmed by crisis, sort of future or crisis shock. But some event which may not even be crisis affect many and with hindsight actually is the crisis. How about letting china into wto and beginning by kicking out Taiwan from UN (or they gave up). The whole series of event of key china out and not balance with in will be one of the major disaster of humanity … but is it? That is the big question. I think it is. But without hindsight you do not know. Hence we have to work on. But ignoring key event (and just crisis) will doom humanity. After all, most species died why not human.
tejohnso 4y ago
> I read that as the well known fact that if you are constantly under pressure you will eventually just normalize it and soon it becomes "the way things are". And when things are "the way things are" there is no real push for change. This is partly why people have taken to action like throwing paint at art and gluing themselves to roadways. Some people are not prepared to accept the normalization of human extinction and want to constantly provide new alarm stimuli.
- fluoridation 4y ago
  Kind of. Some people, when they perceive a problem, are compelled to do anything, regardless of whether it helps or not.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    Destroying something beautiful creates a strong emotional response. There is a beautiful analogy with what some protestors are doing and what we are doing to the planet we inhabit. The latter should trigger an equally strong response but somehow we lay dormant. Irrespective of how useless you feel their protest is, they are indeed making us talk about it. Which I think is a dire need we have at the moment with so many other trivial things stealing the spotlight of media focus.
    - fluoridation 4y ago
      A strong emotional response can go either in the direction you want, or the opposite direction just to spite you. I feel such protestors are doing a disservice to their cause by expressing themselves in such ways.

_heimdall 4y ago

You're assuming her that "permacrisis narrative" was written as a slight targeted specifically at climate change research. It may be more easily read as a reference to the endless cycle of news outlets serving up stories about the next big event we should all be deathly afraid of. Remember the murder hornets? If you'd like to split hairs here, "established science" is also doing noone any service. Climate change is an established field of study that more generally researches human impact on the planet. There is strong consensus that we have made an impact on climate and that there could be major negative impacts on existing civilizations if we don't act. It's worth remembering, though, that climate research is almost entirely based in modeling data. Models are useful for finding signals, especially in a complex system, but blindly claiming "established science" without any further context makes it sounds as though it is fact.