Climate change will lock us into a feedback loop of stupidity

Desdemona Despair

By Tom Whyman
15 August 2018

(VICE) – What a gorgeous summer it’s been! What lovely, pleasant weather we’ve had! Normally the UK is – aha – wet and overcast, so it’s a lovely change that this summer will be remembered for … horrible sickly yellow red beating down on you, stopping you from working, sleeping, eating, walking anywhere, doing anything, thinking straight; my muscles always ache, my skin itches, I can’t think. Fuck off with it being this hot, fuck off.

Anyway, long story short, I’m glad the weather seems to have changed now. But perhaps, in a way, the heat is continuing to dominate. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but accompanying the recent heatwave there seems to have been a sort of upsurge in stupidity. I’m not saying the UK was exactly a brilliant, gifted child before – this, after all, is the country that did Brexit, that welcomed austerity, that voted David Cameron in as Prime Minister, twice. But over the last few weeks, things in British public discourse have been getting, astonishingly, even more stupid than they were before.

Just try looking at the news, if you can bear it (at this point, it’s like watching a couple have a fight a few places across from you in a train carriage). Yes, I know that technically it’s “silly season”, so all the political journalists are pacing around their cells (or wherever they work) like hungry dogs looking for something to gnaw on, but Jesus fucking Christ if it hasn’t been an unedifying spectacle recently. […]

There has been the odd noble exception, but in general, no one in the media seems capable of treating any of the issues they are dealing with, with the real seriousness they in fact deserve. And this is particularly frustrating given that all this has been unfolding against a backdrop where complete disaster for humanity as a species seems to be lurking just around the corner.

Because – as already noted above – it’s been hot. It’s been really fucking hot. It’s been record temperatures in Europe hot. It’s been 93 dead from fires in Greece hot. It’s been Arctic Circle on fire hot. It’s no longer possible to claim that man-made climate change is a problem we’re only going to have to worry about in a hypothetical future. It’s here right now, and we are experiencing it. […]

Elevated CO2 levels aren’t even the only threat. Studies have shown that elevated heat levels impair cognitive performance as well.

And so, it seems, we are becoming trapped in a sort of endless feedback loop of stupidity. We’ve done one very stupid thing (wrecked the environment by burning fossil fuels), and this in turn is making us even stupider. That will breed more stupidity, which will presumably cause us to accelerate climate change further, which will make us still stupider, and so on, until eventually the stupidity becomes so intense that we all simply die.  [more]

Climate Change Will Lock Us Into a Feedback Loop of Stupidity