Make Hay While the Sun Shines
Drill, Baby, Drill
World set to quadruple oil and gas production by 2030, led by new US projects
I’ve gone full-tilt nihilist on climate change. Discovering Erik Michaels’ incredible trove of climate change posts tipped me over the edge.
My nihilist take is not just doomsterism, either. I’ve been a doomster for a couple of years now. Doomsterism tells me: The end of industrial civilization is coming and cannot be prevented at this point. It’s already in runaway, not simply based on physical principles, but also because the flywheel of our culture cannot be slowed meaningfully in any effective timescale. My guess is that society crumbles quickly, by 2030. Knowing and accepting all of this is nothing new for me.
However, as a good doomster, I believed it was important to do what we can to soften the collapse, reduce suffering, and decrease the chances of Near Term Human Extinction (NTHE). That our actions are meaningful, even if they are futile.
Existential nihilism is the position that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose, and unlikely to change in the totality of existence.— Wikipedia
My new nihilism says, Why bother? As the expression goes, you can’t fight City Hall. Why expend the energy to beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly to our doom?
Sha la la la la, let’s live for today. Let’s go out engorging ourselves in a rapacious orgy of fossil fuel consumption, CO2, global warming, income inequality, pollution, gas-guzzling Hummers, eating meat, war, slavery, genocide, and all those other things civilized humans just love! Punch a Nazi if you feel like it. Doom is happening, inevitably. Let’s make hay while the sun still shines, with no guilty feelings. Drill, baby! Drill!
