Posthuman Blues

I'm a fan of NuSapiens. (Its motto is "Human Evolution Remixed" -- how could I not be?)

But I disagree with a recent critique of the climate change controversy, focusing on Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and the rightful role of humans when faced with the specter of widespread desertification, plunging coastlines and derailed ecosystems.





In An Inconvenient Truth for Environmentalists NuSapiens concedes, a little reluctantly, that global warming is indeed happening:

It's pretty clear that Global Warming is happening. It's not clear to me that it's only caused by human activity (but it could very well be precipitated by human activity).

Well, of course it's not caused "only" by human activity. It's caused, ultimately, by the Sun. The problem is that our fossil-fueled economy has severely compromised the planet's ability to shed excess solar radiation; this has resulted in a dramatic rise in global temperatures in a remarkably brief period of time. The notion that human activity is merely peripheral to a far larger climatic problem over which we have no control, while perhaps comforting, is resoundingly false.

NuSapiens continues:

And I'm lukewarm on whether we should all become "Green" to "stop" it.

Well, what do you suggest? Personally, I think embracing non-polluting technologies and fastidiously phasing out archaic -- if financially profitable -- carbon-based technology (the very essence of "going Green") is a rational step toward minimizing damage precipitated by anthropogenic climate change. With a name like "NuSapiens," I expected a little transhumanist moxy; instead, we're left with what amounts to apathy toward a problem left conveniently undefined.

But here's where things get really bad:

The irony of the Environmentalist movement is that Nature is not a static prop for humans to enjoy or even admire. Forces like Darwinian evolution and its elder sister, Plate Tectonics, require all life to stay perpetually on its toes. Organisms that get lazy and don't change, perish. Al Gore is wrong simply because you can't stop Nature.

So, because we're wreaking unthinkable damage on the biosphere, it's up to Nature to set things right. Let's abandon reason and leave our fate in the hands of Mother Gaia; after all, what's going to happen? Mass extinction?

NuSapiens is, of course, right when it characterizes Nature as indifferent and ever-resourceful. But it neglects to tell us that one of the principle ways this resourcefulness is enforced, as evidenced again and again in the fossil record's grim pageant of evolutionary failures, is by a process known as dieback.

When things get bad, species die. NuSapiens accepts, presumably on faith, that humans are exempt from known phenomena with the power to do us in -- ironically enough, indefinitely postponing the transhuman future the blog purports to celebrate. Without humans now, there won't be any posthumans later. "Evolution remixed"? Not likely when the mixing boards are left unmanned.

NuSapiens continues:

These processes pre-date civilization as we know it. Al Gore shows some great photos of Lake Chad, which has shrunk dramatically in the past 40 years. However, what he doesn't mention is that 6,000 years ago, Lake Chad was an inland sea called "Mega Chad." These things happen, with or without the approval or intervention of us naked apes. The best we can do is adapt ourselves to change.

A lake changing dramatically in 6,000 years is something a civilization could readily accommodate. But 40 years? Is it even necessary to point out that the discrepancy in time frames is absurd? Or that Lake Chad's demise over a 40-year span only underscores the relevance of industrial emissions to temperature increase?

I'm against Environmentalists trying to freeze-frame Nature for the same reason I'm against isolation of the nation state and/or labor pools (as seen on the latest Immigration His-Panic). People who try to freeze frame the world guarantee their own degeneration and/or destruction.

Environmentalists aren't seeking to "freeze-frame Nature." They're seeking to save our species from extinction. The debate is not -- and has never been -- a quaint matter of preserving pretty scenery for the aesthetic benefit of our great-grandchildren; it's about the application of caution lest we unleash events with the power to undue everything we've accomplished.

Yes, evolution is inherently transitional; if we perish, something or someone will eventually take our place. So why does that strike me as exceedingly cold comfort?

And the two issues (Global Warming and Immigration) do coincide: one thing Al Gore mentions is the possibility of a massive Greenland melting, disrupting flow of warm air in the Atlantic and plunging Europe into an Ice Age. If that happens, all those Europeans might have to make friends with their neighbors. Sealed borders ain't gonna work, because the climate won't stay put. Deal with it.

"Deal with it." (Read: Do nothing.) Sure, it sounds bad-ass. But it amounts to a whimper, a concession of abject defeat, a wholesale negation of our collective and individual potential for the sake of ideology.

Our planet is dying as we watch and do nothing. Deal with that.