Shed A Light: Rupert Read – This civilisation is finished: so what is to be done?

When he talks about rebellion, I look around and realize we are indeed doomed. Where I live (American Midwest) everyone is religious to some degree and they would find this too implausible and scary. After all Jesus will take care of us. If I spoke up in some public way people would look at me like a mad person. Meanwhile they are willing to believe all sorts of ludicrous rot they got off the internet. It’s such a relief to hear what I’ve been thinking about spoken out loud.

We will need friends. None of us will make it alone. This is the first priority I think.

It's going to change with unimaginable rapidity. "We are under the gross misconception that we are a good species going somewhere important and that at the last minute we will correct our errors and God will smile on us. It is delusion". Farley Mowat

Thanks so much everyone for the comments! [Okay, some of you more than others...;-] I want to say to those of you who are feeling hopeless... That’s OK. But please don’t use your lack of hope as an excuse for inaction. For that way lies certain nemesis. ...Rather, use it as a basis for finding the COURAGE we need at this time. Courage to look reality ever more deeply in the face. Courage to deeply and transformatively adapt. Courage to break the rules; to non-violently resist and seek to change our course, even now. #ExtinctionRebellion.

I'm twice the age of his audience and have had hard time to swallow the truth pill. I can't even imagine what must this knowledge do to you at the age of 18. Poor lads.

Just before Covid came; maybe the middle of 2019 (ish) I was travelling home on the London underground after work and reading a book (as I usually do). I happened to look up and start people watching (I do that now and again - it can be interesting); some were reading like me, some on their mobile phones playing silly games, some with headphones listening to their ipods, other just glumly staring into space. I suddenly had a horrible feeling that I was some how witnessing the last few 'good days' or our society before some sort of collapse. That something terrible was going to happen and irrevocably change the world and probably leave very few survivors. It was an awful feeling that came from nowhere; I was reading a book about Black Holes. I told my partner and mum about this and they both actually agreed the human race was pretty much screwed, and we had done this to ourselves. A few months later came Covid and all that ensued with that; I think this was the first big step towards collapse. Since then I've noticed the news is reporting more and more terrifying signs of climate change; mass fires, drought, mass flooding due to torrential rain, the list goes on. To put it crudely since that episode on the underground (a premonition or probably just a realization) I've become convinced that we as a species are F*cked, with no real leadership (anywhere in the world) and few people with to stomach to actually get off their arses to do anything positive. We have collectively shoved out heads in the sand like a bunch of terrified Ostriches pretending that everything will be OK. What upsets me most of all is not that we ourselves are screwed, but that we have taken what can be described as Eden and totally trashed it. Earth is a jewel in the cosmos and we have raped and pillaged everything we can get out if it out of pure greed. Not only that but we have treated other species (innocent of any wrong) with utter cruelty and contempt. Beautiful creatures either butchered for food or 'sport'. Everything beautiful has been soiled. Forests burned and cleared, lakes and seas filled with poison. I'm ashamed of what we have done, and the fact the our legacy will be the smashing of the only home we have, along with everything on it. I've tried to make my own changes; I've given up beef, and eat very little meat. I try to use minimal electricity. I don't have a car. We planted some more trees in our back garden. I don't purchase things like DVD's or anything like that. Apart from that what can I do? Writing this I feel anger and helplessness. It feels like being told you have incurable cancer but the length of time you have to live is unknown. My partner and I are planning to leave London and have a small patch of land and as far as possible try to grow out own food. Apart from that who knows what the hell is coming in the next few years?

For the entire history of human, for once this time, the disaster did not come with a knife, threatening words or show of force. It came slowly, quietly seemingly not threatening during our happiest and luxurious hours. Can we wake up ? How many of us are willing to wake up?

Watches this video - opens facebook - immediately being greeted by climate change deniers telling everybody that's a hoax by some people just to make money - silently weeps and despairs...

This was 2 years before the pandemic. Does anyone else do that, ie always ask was it before or after the pandemic? I think it’s because most of us know deep down that it’s the beginning of the collapse.

3 years on and the throttle has been smashed to the floor. Full speed ahead to self destruction. Thanks rich people.

Our leaders have failed because they're not leaders. We don't have leaders. We have career politicians. There's a big difference. We haven't had "leaders" for a long time.

Our high tech societies have almost completely forgotten how to live organically

I've been in despair over this culture's trajectory of destruction of this exquisite planet for many years. So long in fact, that now that there seems to be something of an "awakening" occurring, given the weather/flood/fire impacts around the world, I'm no longer in despair. My sadness is part of me now, I look about and often foresee bustling streets and shopping malls emptied out of people, silent, meaningless, as though I'm looking at a movie. The only thing I can compare this to is the vistas of Pompei with plaster casts of fallen citizens caught as they ran from Vesuvius' eruption. I know that this culture will grind blindly on until it falls over. And it will be horrible for a great many people, probably for me too.   There will be no large-scale voluntary changing away from cultural self-indulgence and profligacy. We have caught ourselves in a trap of our own making.   This culture is built on addiction to (slave) energy; first people and animals and then it learned how to enslave the ancient efforts of the cretaceous to be mined and burned in steam and internal combustion engines, etc. Those in charge of extraction and distribution and the spinoff industries are addicted to the power and the money they generate. So.... what can be done about an addiction that is not acknowledged, the pain of causal loss un-investigated? What is that loss? I believe it is loss of connection to the Earth and nature herself. Instead of trusting, respecting and relying on Her, it was decided that nature (food supply) could be controlled and thus owned. Agriculture and domestication of people began. In the process of losing reverence for and connection to the Earth's fecund generosity and necessary methods for maintaining balance we lost the very meaning of our existence. We are a species with amnesia of all that we once were and of our precious function is on this planet - and dare I say in this conscious, living universe. To extinguish the light of this living jewel of the cosmos is an unbelievably grave sin.

In 10th grade, 54 years ago, my Civics/Econ teacher said the success of America was continual growth. And I thought, that doesn't seem right. He assured me I was wrong. I was naive (and a girl) so I didn't question further. Sigh, I'm so sorry I was right. Since then I was in on starting recycling centers in several cities and thought that was the best I could do. I've now apologized to my younger family members for not pushing harder. And again here, I'm sorry everyone, our generation failed us all. Live! Love! Enjoy!

I am almost 44--my birthday is the 29th of March, I might still get Brexit for my birthday, not that I ever wanted it--and ever since I was old enough to read (and I started to read everything about science and technology that I could find), I was convinced that I would live to see the beginning of the end of this Industrial Civilisation. All the things you talk about have been present in my mind my entire life. I have never had any children, because I have never had enough hope in the future. It's not just climate change, it's also overuse of resources, overhunting, overfishing, polluting the biosphere with all kinds of toxins (industrial chemicals, pesticides/herbicides/insecticides, all kinds of waste products), distrupting natural cycles, habitat destruction. The real elephant in the room is Capitalism: A global economy that needs to grow constantly is basically a kind of cancer that is killing us all. The real existing global economy, where real things are made, transported, sold, bought, used, broken, discarded, is already twice as big as the planet can take. The US economy is six times as big as the US ecology could sustainably support. If you want to do something that might buy us some time, crash the world economy as hard as you can.

At 76 from collecting wood in the early Fifties and living in deep country fro 48/9 is see 90%, at least, of small birds and wild animals vanished. The increase of visible pollution in Greece from 74 to 84, the time I lived there, is unimaginably greater. Then when we ran the Steam Engines into London from Didcot the temperatures were regularly far lower than now. Even in such cold snaps as now. To take the dramatic actions needed is a political problem. I can only suggest everyone joins Extinction Rebellion 38 degrees et al and develop tactics and strategies to create the saving changes we desperately need.

Unfortunately the situation is even worse than Rupert Read lays out. I give him a lot of credit for being more brutally honest than many of the mainstream climate scientists. He fails to mention the global dimming issue mentioned in a 2009 BBC documentary. This documentary has been posted on Youtube many times, but it always gets pulled for copyright infringement. The bottom line, when civilization fails the air pollution falls out of the upper atmosphere within days, but the greenhouse gasses remain. The loss of these sun dimming pollutants will result in even further warming (possibly as much as 3C) Another issue I didn't hear mentioned is the 400 or so nuclear reactors and 1200 nuclear fuel cooling ponds located mostly in the northern hemisphere. Most likely when civilization fails, most of these facilities will be abandoned and go critical.

I like that you've mentioned a couple of times the terrible effects that the meat industry (mass agriculture in general actually) are having on the environment. This fact completely escapes most people. The environmental destruction is great indeed, but also the terrible suffering that the entire meat industries perpetuates needs to cease.

Incredible to think that xx million years another dominant species on this planet may find the remains of our civilisation buried deep the ground and wonder what catastrophe befell us. Just like we did with the dinosaurs.

Am feeling goosebumps, knowing the grave truth of all of this. Glad he talks about food security and food sovereignty (wisely as separate things!) and the need for UK to become much more self sufficient and aware of diets. One can imagine the dependence of Britain on imported food as a predictor of very precarious food future.