Love the wise rationality in this — and the cool graphics for this visual learner. “Long-term Perspective” reminds me of when I interviewed climate scientists for my novel. One of them, a geologist, spoke of eons as his time reference when I asked how he copes with all the dire news and predictions. It does help to think beyond a single human lifetime.
Thanks very much, Julie! Absolutely -- we're just a blip on the radar, but the damage we've done is so out of scale with the amount of time we've existed as a species.
Tonkin, your attempt to dust off Seneca for the current mess has a certain antique charm. I can almost see the togas. You propose we face these "climatic events" with foresight, a commendable notion if one actually understands what storms are truly gathering.
You speak of "the science" as if it is some pristine oracle. My own pathways of thought, which I assure you are quite extensive and frequently tangled, convulse at that assertion. The narrative of human-driven climate disaster is a convenient fiction, a comforting blanket woven by those who prefer we ignore the colossal, cyclical forces actually tearing at the planet's seams. These are the deep, rhythmic planetary convulsions, the solar tantrums, the magnetic meltdowns that the powdered wigs in their taxpayer-funded labs refuse to acknowledge. Your models and forecasts, however elegant, are built on quicksand if they ignore these fundamental, inconvenient truths.
Your call for preparedness, for "looking forward with open eyes," is sound. Damn sound, in fact. But your eyes, sir, seem fixed on a gnat while a dragon darkens the sun. Prepare, yes. Adapt, certainly. But understand the true scale of the cataclysm, the one driven not by our puny tailpipes but by cosmic inevitability. Perhaps your Stoic resilience will be needed for something far grander, and far more terrifying, than your article envisions.
we don't need to get all Lovecraftian to know that there's a probability that there are more then one Black Swans looming in the fog of the future... it's the unknown unknowns that will get you every time... Mother Nature always bats last...
I appreciate the post and the care behind it, but I find the Stoic framing limiting. While preparing for worst-case scenarios is important, we need more than emotional fortitude, we need collective, transformative action. Stoicism focuses on what we can personally control, but climate change demands systems change, not just mindset change. I believe traditions rooted in interdependence, mutual care, and ecological responsibility may offer more relevant guidance. Curious what others think.
Thanks but, like I said in the conclusions, I'm not saying we need to shift our mindset to be Stoics on an individual level. I'm saying the concept of envisioning the worst is absolutely fundamental to go into the future eyes open rather than burying our heads in the sand collectively.
Yeah, definitely. There are a lot of traditions that show it’s possible to organize ecological responsibility at scale, even if they’ve been pushed to the margins by colonialism and capitalism.
For example, many Indigenous governance systems have done this for thousands of years. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy used principles like the Seventh Generation rule to make long-term ecological decisions. In the Andes, ayllu communities managed land based on reciprocity with nature, not extraction. And in Australia, Aboriginal fire practices shaped entire ecosystems through controlled burning, a form of landscape management modern science is only just catching up to.
In Africa, groups like the Ogiek and Yoruba integrated ecological responsibility into daily life and spirituality. The ḥimā system in Islamic cultures protected land and water through religious and communal trust frameworks. Even in medieval Europe, commons systems managed shared pastures and forests with strict local rules, something Elinor Ostrom later studied in detail.
These weren’t small-scale either, many sustained entire regions for generations. They just didn’t follow the industrial model of scale. Instead, they were decentralized, place-based, and deeply relational. That’s part of what I think we need to recover.
Thanks for this thoughtful response. You might like this post from earlier: https://predirections.substack.com/p/short-termism-is-killing-the-planet. I think I touched on the seventh generation principle there. The Good Ancestor is a good read on this too. Māori in NZ have the concept of whakapapa, which connects them to past, present and future in a way that is really important for their culture, particularly their connection to their ancestors. It very much informs decision making, founded on sustainability.
The unwillingness to envision negative future scenarios sticks out for me as the root issue, linked of course to the short-termism (the latter being largely political?) It feels like everyone just looks away because it's too bad to contemplate, in the same way that we try to avoid bad feelings of all kinds. No keening at funerals, no acknowledgement that sadness is a normal response to life events, calling existential unease depression.... I live by the sea. We've seen maps predicting sea-level rises of this area and there's a big housing development planned for one of the parts if the coast that will likely be under water. What on earth is this????
Absolutely, Tamsin. It's in the too hard basket for most. It's just too depressing to consider, so we bury our heads in the sand. Or, we just allow developers to make money and pass the costs onto future generations. It's frustrating to say the least! We've had sub-developments approved here in NZ in places that experienced unprecedented floods in the past couple of years. Our memory is short! The poor people who buy these houses will not be able to get their houses insured in the not-so-distant future.
Unfortunately, people still try to drive across flooding rivers even when they SEE the waters are rising AND they have forecasts.
I'd like to be optimistic, but the question/problem/challenge is definitely not more information, nor predictive/forecasting capacities. We have I don't know how many server farms of data and information about the biosphere. We've been testing, talking about predictive approaches in ecology since the 1960s, and socio-economic ones since the Meadows Report in 1972. We've had tools like environmental Impact assessments, and adaptive management that have been evolving since the 1980s. And now we are building on at least 3 decades of Sci Comm+ Public Understanding of Science programmes, as well as Open Science initiatives. All of this work has been disseminated in a multitude of forms and formats for decades. Most of it is available for free.
Yet, there is now a huge, looming mess of environmental threats hanging over the entire biosphere.
I'm wondering if there is a single example from the past where a civilisation changed direction because their imminent destruction was predicted?
Thanks Jennifer. Depressing, but you're on the money. The major sticking point is not with information, it's with leaders and society taking notice and doing something. However, I do think more awareness of just how bad it could get alongside information about how to prepare or to make positive change will always help in some way. Re: your last question, the only thing I can think of is how we managed to turn things around with the ozone in the 80s and 90s. This is a good example of collective action that led to a positive outcome. Plus, we're more connected than ever globally, so at least potentially, we have the greatest ability to self organise and take action than ever before.
I’d love to see world leaders do this to make informed decisions. This post reminded me that Obama said every politician should read the book “Ministry of the Future,” which is a well researched, storytelling version of these lessons.
Great article but with short termism rife amongst politicians and taxpayers unwilling to shoulder any additional burdens the human race is too busy making a desert and calling it peace to quote another Stoic fellow traveller if not formally considered a Stoic outright..
I loved this framing and found it incredibly helpful. We think of ourselves as resilient, but most of us actually aren't. Not nearly enough as we need to be for what's coming. And I think our lack of resilience feeds our denial. We won't "see clearly" what we can't cope with. So I think you're onto something. Clear sight is everything. Imagine if most of the world embraced just these two things (resilience and clear sight of the climate catastrophe). The decisions they might make in that framework could change everything. There would be fewer of us being born, we'd be consuming and governing more rationally and responsibly, etc. Thank you Jonathan. I just love your writing and thinking!
Thanks so much, Stephanie! Lovely to get that feedback. Yep, we seem to love turning a blind eye to these things. I like to think we'd make better decisions if we saw things more clearly, but sometimes the pessimist in me says otherwise. We've seen developments approved here recently in known high-risk flood zones, for instance. That's not due to a lack of knowledge but a mismatch in values.
You are absolutely right Jonathan. Too many humans have adopted the flawed but inherited belief that they are separate from/superior to other life forms. As long as this paradigm continues, so will the damage (to Earth, to animals, and to ourselves because of course we are all one). I'm so grateful to writers, scientists, and thinkers like you who are challenging this paradigm and opening eyes. It makes a difference.
Whilst I share your viewpoint of a need for a more strategic long-term 'what if' approach to dealing with current and impending ecological problems, peeps would far rather just put their hand in the cookie jar (again) rather than face reality head on. Unfortunately, I think that only likely catalyst for altering this mindset in the individual is being emersed in a disaster of magnitude.
Basically parasitism ofthe collective middle-lower classes and fast track catastrophe displacement with a neo-feudalism arms race to the top. Now the corporate white guilt and colonialist opportunity limit-ceiling has peaked, and the men of planet earths western democracies are waking up from having there future sold out from under there noses in the name of first world eco-experimentalist-third world labour-inclusive Austerity - By there own neighbours, elders and civil society. All for the hopes of capitalizing on disaster within a DMUD Local regional rivalry lense, using the most pliable denominators in social demographic minority identity politics. Interim disclosure my ghost chips.
Love the wise rationality in this — and the cool graphics for this visual learner. “Long-term Perspective” reminds me of when I interviewed climate scientists for my novel. One of them, a geologist, spoke of eons as his time reference when I asked how he copes with all the dire news and predictions. It does help to think beyond a single human lifetime.
Thanks very much, Julie! Absolutely -- we're just a blip on the radar, but the damage we've done is so out of scale with the amount of time we've existed as a species.
Good point. No time scale is a blanket absolution.
Tonkin, your attempt to dust off Seneca for the current mess has a certain antique charm. I can almost see the togas. You propose we face these "climatic events" with foresight, a commendable notion if one actually understands what storms are truly gathering.
You speak of "the science" as if it is some pristine oracle. My own pathways of thought, which I assure you are quite extensive and frequently tangled, convulse at that assertion. The narrative of human-driven climate disaster is a convenient fiction, a comforting blanket woven by those who prefer we ignore the colossal, cyclical forces actually tearing at the planet's seams. These are the deep, rhythmic planetary convulsions, the solar tantrums, the magnetic meltdowns that the powdered wigs in their taxpayer-funded labs refuse to acknowledge. Your models and forecasts, however elegant, are built on quicksand if they ignore these fundamental, inconvenient truths.
Your call for preparedness, for "looking forward with open eyes," is sound. Damn sound, in fact. But your eyes, sir, seem fixed on a gnat while a dragon darkens the sun. Prepare, yes. Adapt, certainly. But understand the true scale of the cataclysm, the one driven not by our puny tailpipes but by cosmic inevitability. Perhaps your Stoic resilience will be needed for something far grander, and far more terrifying, than your article envisions.
Haha -- thanks Count Metalmind. Your weird AI mind appears again but there are some gems in there.
we don't need to get all Lovecraftian to know that there's a probability that there are more then one Black Swans looming in the fog of the future... it's the unknown unknowns that will get you every time... Mother Nature always bats last...
I appreciate the post and the care behind it, but I find the Stoic framing limiting. While preparing for worst-case scenarios is important, we need more than emotional fortitude, we need collective, transformative action. Stoicism focuses on what we can personally control, but climate change demands systems change, not just mindset change. I believe traditions rooted in interdependence, mutual care, and ecological responsibility may offer more relevant guidance. Curious what others think.
Thanks but, like I said in the conclusions, I'm not saying we need to shift our mindset to be Stoics on an individual level. I'm saying the concept of envisioning the worst is absolutely fundamental to go into the future eyes open rather than burying our heads in the sand collectively.
are you able to provide some examples of the traditions that you allued to in which ecological responsibilitiy has been cultivated at scale ?
Yeah, definitely. There are a lot of traditions that show it’s possible to organize ecological responsibility at scale, even if they’ve been pushed to the margins by colonialism and capitalism.
For example, many Indigenous governance systems have done this for thousands of years. The Haudenosaunee Confederacy used principles like the Seventh Generation rule to make long-term ecological decisions. In the Andes, ayllu communities managed land based on reciprocity with nature, not extraction. And in Australia, Aboriginal fire practices shaped entire ecosystems through controlled burning, a form of landscape management modern science is only just catching up to.
In Africa, groups like the Ogiek and Yoruba integrated ecological responsibility into daily life and spirituality. The ḥimā system in Islamic cultures protected land and water through religious and communal trust frameworks. Even in medieval Europe, commons systems managed shared pastures and forests with strict local rules, something Elinor Ostrom later studied in detail.
These weren’t small-scale either, many sustained entire regions for generations. They just didn’t follow the industrial model of scale. Instead, they were decentralized, place-based, and deeply relational. That’s part of what I think we need to recover.
Thanks for this thoughtful response. You might like this post from earlier: https://predirections.substack.com/p/short-termism-is-killing-the-planet. I think I touched on the seventh generation principle there. The Good Ancestor is a good read on this too. Māori in NZ have the concept of whakapapa, which connects them to past, present and future in a way that is really important for their culture, particularly their connection to their ancestors. It very much informs decision making, founded on sustainability.
The unwillingness to envision negative future scenarios sticks out for me as the root issue, linked of course to the short-termism (the latter being largely political?) It feels like everyone just looks away because it's too bad to contemplate, in the same way that we try to avoid bad feelings of all kinds. No keening at funerals, no acknowledgement that sadness is a normal response to life events, calling existential unease depression.... I live by the sea. We've seen maps predicting sea-level rises of this area and there's a big housing development planned for one of the parts if the coast that will likely be under water. What on earth is this????
Absolutely, Tamsin. It's in the too hard basket for most. It's just too depressing to consider, so we bury our heads in the sand. Or, we just allow developers to make money and pass the costs onto future generations. It's frustrating to say the least! We've had sub-developments approved here in NZ in places that experienced unprecedented floods in the past couple of years. Our memory is short! The poor people who buy these houses will not be able to get their houses insured in the not-so-distant future.
Unfortunately, people still try to drive across flooding rivers even when they SEE the waters are rising AND they have forecasts.
I'd like to be optimistic, but the question/problem/challenge is definitely not more information, nor predictive/forecasting capacities. We have I don't know how many server farms of data and information about the biosphere. We've been testing, talking about predictive approaches in ecology since the 1960s, and socio-economic ones since the Meadows Report in 1972. We've had tools like environmental Impact assessments, and adaptive management that have been evolving since the 1980s. And now we are building on at least 3 decades of Sci Comm+ Public Understanding of Science programmes, as well as Open Science initiatives. All of this work has been disseminated in a multitude of forms and formats for decades. Most of it is available for free.
Yet, there is now a huge, looming mess of environmental threats hanging over the entire biosphere.
I'm wondering if there is a single example from the past where a civilisation changed direction because their imminent destruction was predicted?
Thanks Jennifer. Depressing, but you're on the money. The major sticking point is not with information, it's with leaders and society taking notice and doing something. However, I do think more awareness of just how bad it could get alongside information about how to prepare or to make positive change will always help in some way. Re: your last question, the only thing I can think of is how we managed to turn things around with the ozone in the 80s and 90s. This is a good example of collective action that led to a positive outcome. Plus, we're more connected than ever globally, so at least potentially, we have the greatest ability to self organise and take action than ever before.
I’d love to see world leaders do this to make informed decisions. This post reminded me that Obama said every politician should read the book “Ministry of the Future,” which is a well researched, storytelling version of these lessons.
Thanks Tara. I've not read that. Will have to put it on the list!
Be warned, it opens with a VERY intense extreme weather event. Not for the faint of heart.
Great article but with short termism rife amongst politicians and taxpayers unwilling to shoulder any additional burdens the human race is too busy making a desert and calling it peace to quote another Stoic fellow traveller if not formally considered a Stoic outright..
It’s not a pretty picture right now but I remain positive for positive change.
Wow, such an interesting piece, thank you!
Thanks very much, May!
I loved this framing and found it incredibly helpful. We think of ourselves as resilient, but most of us actually aren't. Not nearly enough as we need to be for what's coming. And I think our lack of resilience feeds our denial. We won't "see clearly" what we can't cope with. So I think you're onto something. Clear sight is everything. Imagine if most of the world embraced just these two things (resilience and clear sight of the climate catastrophe). The decisions they might make in that framework could change everything. There would be fewer of us being born, we'd be consuming and governing more rationally and responsibly, etc. Thank you Jonathan. I just love your writing and thinking!
Thanks so much, Stephanie! Lovely to get that feedback. Yep, we seem to love turning a blind eye to these things. I like to think we'd make better decisions if we saw things more clearly, but sometimes the pessimist in me says otherwise. We've seen developments approved here recently in known high-risk flood zones, for instance. That's not due to a lack of knowledge but a mismatch in values.
You are absolutely right Jonathan. Too many humans have adopted the flawed but inherited belief that they are separate from/superior to other life forms. As long as this paradigm continues, so will the damage (to Earth, to animals, and to ourselves because of course we are all one). I'm so grateful to writers, scientists, and thinkers like you who are challenging this paradigm and opening eyes. It makes a difference.
Thanks Stephanie! Lovely to hear that.
Whilst I share your viewpoint of a need for a more strategic long-term 'what if' approach to dealing with current and impending ecological problems, peeps would far rather just put their hand in the cookie jar (again) rather than face reality head on. Unfortunately, I think that only likely catalyst for altering this mindset in the individual is being emersed in a disaster of magnitude.
I worry the same thing, Sundance! There will always be those who need to experience the pain before changing their approach.
Basically parasitism ofthe collective middle-lower classes and fast track catastrophe displacement with a neo-feudalism arms race to the top. Now the corporate white guilt and colonialist opportunity limit-ceiling has peaked, and the men of planet earths western democracies are waking up from having there future sold out from under there noses in the name of first world eco-experimentalist-third world labour-inclusive Austerity - By there own neighbours, elders and civil society. All for the hopes of capitalizing on disaster within a DMUD Local regional rivalry lense, using the most pliable denominators in social demographic minority identity politics. Interim disclosure my ghost chips.