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Alex Steffen Profile picture
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20 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
This is a fine piece of climate journalism, focusing on efforts to hoard the future by buying up supplies of cobalt, a mineral critical for making a number of low-carbon technologies.

Geopolitics in the planetary crisis.

nytimes.com/2021/11/20/wor…
I discuss these sorts of geopolitical changes in this podcast.

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-planetar…
Amos Hochstein, State Department senior adviser for global energy security, calls access to solar panels & EV batteries "a national security imperative."
Nice clear graphic. Image

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More from @AlexSteffen

Alex Steffen Profile picture
20 Nov
You should immediately mistrust any linear projection of positive climate impact, such as "Alaskan agriculture will benefit from warming temperatures."

(mini-rant)

[image:flickr.com/photos/baggis/…] Image
First, tho models are improving, there's always the chance that specific, long-term local impacts may work out differently than expected, for complex reasons.

"Our model indicates temperatures will rise" is different that knowing, for sure, that temperatures will rise steadily.
Second, variability is at least as important as trend. If nine years out of ten there are warmer conditions, but the other year there are unprecedented and catastrophic floods, the net result is not a gain for farmers.
Read 9 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
19 Nov
There is no issue in American political life that comes close in magnitude and seriousness to this reality, that we have moved into a change of era.

Such a total collapse of leadership—that we effectively have no public discourse about the reality in which we now find ourselves.
It can make a fella tired.
More here:

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/the-last-hur…
Read 4 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
18 Nov
We're on our own, guys.

No one's coming to save us.

This isn't going to be "made right."

Personal ruggedization is no longer an idle consideration.

Indeed, there are reasons to believe it should be a primary concern for every family.

My next letter is about this clusterf***.
Right now, we see a real appetite for what I call safe utopias — fantasies where the planetary crisis is so successfully addressed that continuity is restored, and zero-sum conflicts over the pace of change become irrelevant.
But this is no utopia, and nothing about this situation is safe.

Imagination is powerful, and necessary, but imagining possibilities arising from a world where we aren't, and then treating our visions as anticipations of our options in this actual world is dangerous and deluded.
Read 6 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
16 Nov
We are surrounded by failure.

The climate mov't should be having a scathing self-examination about whether the strategic assumptions, organizational cultures and ideological assertions guiding climate activism work — or are part of the problem.

I see 0% chance that will happen.
We'll see how many people have the courage to even retweet this idea.
I'm hearing/seeing/reading so many urgent demands that the climate movement be exactly what it's always been, but more so!

It's like the old generals saying, after the Somme—after a million dead—that all we need is the right *kind* of frontal assault, with the proper spirit...
Read 5 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
15 Nov
In foresight circles, there is much discussion of general-purpose technologies.

These are techs that change everything: Printing, steam, computation.

Much effort is spent anticipating what's next.

I think, tho, that the planetary discontinuity is what will next fill that role. Image
It's orthogonal, uncomfortable to imagine.

We like to think of game-changers as being either events in the world that happen to us, or technologies we create that let to change the world.

The idea shifts in our physical relationship to the world can have similar impacts is new.
But the physical world is not just the environment in which our actions play out, it is deeply interconnected with every action we can or could take.

A physical-world discontinuity of this magnitude, then, is also a massive social, cultural and technological discontinuity...
Read 6 tweets
Alex Steffen Profile picture
15 Nov
The central error in thinking about the planetary crisis is believing if we tackle the climate and ecological destruction that hurled us into this new era, then we'll return to a world that works the way it worked before (or the way we thought it worked).

alexsteffen.substack.com/p/were-not-yet…
Discontinuity is a one-way trip.

The forces unleashed by the climate/ecological crisis are even stronger than the climate chaos and ecological collapses we rightly fear.

If we "solve" the climate/ecological crisis, we'll still live in a planetary crisis for generations to come.
Belief we can "reverse" climate change, "regenerate" nature & *thereby restore continuity* absolutely undermine the urgency we should feel as we face the scope, scale and speed of the changes we need to make to live sustainably on the planet we've now permanently transformed.
Read 5 tweets

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