Short Selling the Apocalypse

 

 Above is a photo of our new house. We should be able to move in by early Spring. We live in an area where artificially inflated home values only exist because of the local fossil fuel economy. The odd juxtaposition of owning for someone who knows the climate and over consumption realities we face, is that its value is only maintained as long as the oil keeps flowing and the consumption keeps happening. This causes my very human self-centered, self-preserving brain to wonder if I can "short-sell the apocalypse" and make it out with a profit before the bottom falls out of appreciative value. It is a very human hope to preserve the value of my home and a bizarre conceit trying to keep the wealth that is creating the crisis in the first place. 

Actual short selling is a little different than my usage, but I use it to mean trying to sell out before a significant decline in value and running with the money. It would be better to say something like "How to make money before the end of the world as we know it", but short selling just sounds dirty. What a strange thought. Where in the world does my simple primate brain think I will run off to when the world is literally burning? The past few years have me wondering if I will be able to withdraw my 401k or IRA even five years from now, or whether anything not tangible will be worth anything. As I like to say, "normal is over," and the age that has allowed ordinary people to rise above poverty with appreciating home values and investment is really in question. Normal is truly over in that we have left behind the narrow band of stable climactic expectations that have allowed human civilization to exist since after the last ice age.

 Our existential crisis in a best-case or worst-case scenario may force us to reorder our lives in opposition to appreciating housing and investments that depend on the massive harvesting of our planet. What are we to do? A new single-family home on an oversized lot is part of a bigger problem of too much consumption by rich westerners like myself. Fully aware of this, I am following a misguided self-interest that is part of an even vaster problem of contradictions in human behavior. Taking a page from the current news cycle, where radical activists are splashing liquids on valuable artworks, I reflect on my own hypocrisy. It is as if I am trying to make a point about over-consumption by using my venti Starbucks mocha latte in its plastic-coated paperboard cup to dump on my consumption footprint. It is my favorite delicious ecological disaster in every cup. From the bleached paperboard made of virgin wood, to its plastic coating and cover destined to become invasive microplastics, to the tropical habitat clearing, human exploitation and dubious mono-cultures of Arabica beans, cane sugar and cocoa, topped with a dollop of rainforest destroying soy milk, all shipped great distances with fuels, to give me the flavorful irony of consuming a truly world consuming beverage. Consuming the Earth is delicious.

 Even with my extensive knowledge of the urgency of the crisis, I keep going forward as if I can just ignore everything and continue to live a normal life. What we should all do is as Jesus and the Buddha advised: "to gain everything, we must give up everything" You won't hear that coming from the mouth of the mega-church consumption Christians like Joel Osteen or wealthy Buddhists. Still, it is the core of their messages and the answer to our future. 

 Fossil fuels have become the focus of the environmental movement at the expense of the more holistic look at the problematic totality of how we live on the earth. Singling out fossil fuels as the only pariah involves magical thinking that we can simply switch them out for renewables, while ignoring that all those new things are still destroying our world through mass consumption. Even at this late date, approaching the issue holistically, viewing the totality of human impacts on the planet, with all but the most radical granola eaters, is to be labeled an extremist. The changes that we need to make won't be made; I am afraid, until that "ecosystem Pearl Harbor hits us", shocking us in some awful way. My grandfather was on a train to a military base in the South when he was awakened to be told about the bombing. So tired, he went back to sleep. An ecosystem Pearl Harbor will not let us rest. Sadly, our systems don't seem to be able to change without significant shocks.

 The holistic view of the Anthropocene doesn't just involve how we heat our homes but how we build, furnish, and maintain them. Collectively, each of those small choices is detrimental to our earth.Some might wonder how I can be so cold and callous as to do a thought experiment about getting my money out before the system breaks. Still, it is no colder than the hypocrisy of most of us continuing to live business as usual until we push things to the breaking point.