• Quote
  • "Assembly theory was developed to capture my intuition that complex molecules can’t just emerge into existence because the combinatorial space is too vast,"
  • Author
    • Lee Cronin

• in other words
  • we could make a claim that we could extrapolate (intrapolate?) evolution to apply to abiotic, physical phenomena.

• In Other Words
  • it factors in time and history a key variables in explaining how biota emerges from abiota

Assembly theory

Summary - a growing body of research suggests that - the reasons we sleep is far more fundamental than simply neurological - and far more widespread - experiments with a wide range of neurologically primitive organisms did that they possess behavioural characteristics of sleep - this suggests that sleep may have evolved fire reasons of cellular metabolism

David Robert Lewis - founder of the Muizenberg Electricity Crisis Committee

Contact at CPUT - expertise in microgrids, etc.

Title: Proposed electricity co-op in Muizenberg as residents are 'fed up' with load shedding

• When everyone has a right to bear arms
  • and so many citizens feel they have a right to use them to defend themselves,
  • situations arise in life which are perceived as life-and-death,
  • and the decision to use deadly force is made
  • based on a false narrative playing out in the mind of the gun-owner.

• The claim is that the default narrative is critical to the way society organizes itself
  • capitalism and classic leberalism assumes competition (seflishness) is the default and collaboration secondary
  • Bauwens argues that collaboration (commons) needs to be the default going forward and competition secondary

• Michel Bauwens provides a summary and theoretical analysis of

  • the current stagnant, polarized and highly charged political environment, as well as
  • a proposed third commons-based option that could mitigate the problem.

• In this analysis, he introduces new terminology to describe the three categories of salient actors:

  • somewheres
  • nowheres
  • everywheres

Where there is a problem to be solved, there is a focus of attention Where there is a focus of attention, there is simplification of a complex system Where there is simplification of a complex system, there is a vast amount of knowledge relationships that is ignored Where this is a vast amount of ignored knowledge relationships, there is the potential for a progress trap

The systemic problem is the way our form of progress formulates problems and the inherent (over) simplification that comes with.that.

Question - Those is the big question!

In Other Words - our present economic distribution must be flipped going forward - That minority of elites that enjoy high wealth/high carbon emissions - must now dramatically reduce emissions - so that the disenfranchised people of the world have to a chance - of building up their lives towards acceptable levels of well-being

Key observation

In Other Words - These recommendations, if we followed continue the existing inequality, Indeed can exasperate it. - Wealthy countries and individuals cannot be allowed to continue emitting high levels of carbon if we are to honour the principle of climate justice andequity written into the climate agreements

Question - Who is controlling and advocating - the dominant techno-based NET narrative? - This narrative creates many scenarios that carry strong colonialist assumptions that perserve existing inequalities - Whilst IAM scientists strive to work with integrity, the fundamental framing narrative constrains their work to support ethically questionable recommendations - reference the work of Kanitkar et al.https://theprint.in/environment/why-indian-scientists-are-critiquing-ipcc-report-unfair-burden-on-developing-countries/1298871/

• The report claims that
  • to reach target of 50/50 chance of staying within 1.5 deg C,
  • we must reach meet zero by 2050
    • Yet, updating the IPCC’s estimate of the 1.5°C carbon budget,
      • from 2020 to 2023, and then drawing a straight line down from today’s total emissions to the point where all carbon emissions must cease, and without exceeding this budget,
    • gives a zero CO₂ date of 2040.
    • Furthermore, adding policy delays to set things up, it is more likely a date closer to mid 2030's.

Title IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change Author Kevin Anderson

Summary The influential 2023 IPCC Synthesis report for policy makers is quite misleading and can steer policy makers in the wrong, and disastrous direction.

Title IPCC’s conservative nature masks true scale of action needed to avert catastrophic climate change Author Kevin Anderson

Quote - matter is a phase of consciousness

Author - Iain McGilchrist

// Metaphysics eats culture for breakfast - a takeoff of a well-known business meme - culture eats strategy for breakfast - Beiner goes one level deeper and claims - metaphysics eats culture for breakfast - He justifies this via this argument - Our strategies for changing the world - are often inspired by - a culture created by a physicalist metaphysics. - That’s why I propose that metaphysics eats culture for breakfast. - What we believe to be real and relevant - is the most significant factor - in the formation of culture, - which in turn influences our thoughts and emotions, - which in turn influence our values, - which influence our institutions and political policies. - The change has to happen at the deepest level - if it’s going to have any significant impact - on an issue as important as whether or not we go extinct.

Key finding Paraphrase - So what does a conscious universe have to do with AI and existential risk? - It all comes back to whether our primary orientation is around - quantity, or around - quality. - An understanding of reality - that recognises consciousness as fundamental - views the quality of your experience as - equal to, - or greater than, - what can be quantified.

• Orienting toward quality,
  • toward the experience of being alive,
• can radically change
  • how we build technology,
  • how we approach complex problems,
  • and how we treat one another.

Quote - metaphysics of quality - would open the door for ways of knowing made secondary by physicalism

Author - Robert Persig - Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance // - When we elevate the quality of each our experience - we elevate the life of each individual - and recognize each individual life as sacred - we each matter - The measurable is also the limited - whilst the immeasurable and directly felt is the infinite - Our finite world that all technology is built upon - is itself built on the raw material of the infinite

//

Quote - Let us remember that - our knowledge of the world begins - not with matter - but with perceptions. - I know for sure that - my pain exists, - my ‘green’ exists, - and my ‘sweet’ exists - … everything else is a theory. - Later we find out that our perceptions obey some laws, <br /> - which can be most conveniently formulated - if we assume that there is some underlying reality - beyond our perceptions. - This model of the material world obeying laws of physics - is so successful - that soon we forget about our starting point and say - that matter is the only reality, - and perceptions are only helpful for its description.

Author Andrei Linde - https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/universe-life-consciousness-by-andrei-linde

Quote - Our argument for a mental world does not entail or imply - that the world is merely one’s own personal hallucination or act of imagination. - Our view is entirely naturalistic: - the mind that underlies the world - is a transpersonal mind behaving according to natural laws. - It comprises but far transcends any individual psyche…. - The claim is thus that the dynamics of all inanimate matter in the universe - correspond to transpersonal mentation, - just as an individual’s brain activity - which is also made of matter - corresponds to personal mentation.

Author - Henry Stapp - Bernardo Kastrup - Menas C. Kafatos - https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/coming-to-grips-with-the-implications-of-quantum-mechanics/

Definition - philosophical Idealism - the view that reality is fundamentally a mental process (consciousness) rather than a physical thing

Definition - generator function of existential risk - the deeper driving cause of existential risk - two examples of deep causes - rivalrous dynamics - complicated systems consuming their complex substrate

Claim - Alexander Beiner claims that - the generator function of these generator functions is physicalism

Key observation - If the metaphysical foundations of our society tell us we have no soul, - how are we going to imbue soul into AI? - Four hundred years after Descartes and Hobbs, - our scientific methods and cultural stories are still heavily influenced by their ideas.

Quote - Descartes created the mind / body dualism - Thomas Hobbes reduced consciousness to physicalism - by claiming that thinking was an epi-phenomena of atomic interactions

Key finding - Values cannot be quantified - but are something felt, - and which has a quality (qualia)

Quote - AI Gedanken - AI risk - The Paperclip Maximizer

Key observation - Quantity is all modernity values - Quality is thrown out the window - Later, the author connects - quantity to the Cartesian world view, - that seeks to measure everything - and quality to the Idealist worldview - that elevates consciousness over physicalism and materialism - (Destructive) growth - is an outcome of the cartesian worldview

// - To find a God that can kill Moloch - requires an understanding of the nature of progress as well - Relationship to progress traps - Exponential technologies - are technologies, and all suffer the same fundamental flaw - Progress is an expression of our cumulative cultural evolution - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=cumulative+cultural+evolution - which grows exponentially faster than genetic evolution - The problem of which is that - the shadow side of progress, the progress trap - - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=progress%2Btrap - is growing even faster, due to our misunderstanding of it, - allowing it to fester like an untreated wound - turning a minor condition, into a life-threatening disease - Human progress has always been a bungling two step forwards, one step backwards dance - the imperfections of progress are inherent - and baked into the innovation process itself - For we develop technologies based on what we know, or what is visible - but what we know is like the tip of the latent knowledge iceberg - and is always accompanied by a much larger hidden component of what we don't know - In other words, - finite and visible knowledge - is always accompanied by infinite and invisible ignorance - Design is based on intent, - a one dimensional, inherently myopic imagination - of a multi-dimensional reality - A problem is a one dimensional focus - on a small sliver of reality - A solution to the problem is necessarily - myopic and - one dimensional as well - Both problems and their (designed) solutions - are extreme simplifications of a complex system - Language itself is a way - to direct and focus our attention - to this aspect of reality - then that aspect - Thinking is reduced to parts, and never experiences the whole, undivided gestalt of reality - Out of this process - Progress traps are born //

In Other Words - AI researchers are calling on one another to find a higher value than growth and technological advancement, - but these values are absent from the humanistic perspectives that built the tech to begin with. - Therefore, it is of limited effectiveness - to appeal to ethics in the socio-economic growth framework that values growth above all things - that motivates AI research. - Deep down we probably know this, - which is why our nightmarish fantasies about the future of AI look very much like - a manifestation of Moloch, - a new god that cares nothing for us. - AI as Moloch is a mad deity, - that much like late stage capitalism, - can see nothing beyond consumption.

Quote - Only another God can kill Moloch - Author - Scott Alexander - Source - Meditations on Moloch - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

Question - What is meant by "higher power"? - a belief in God, religion?

Paraphrase - why is a humanistic stance enough to create ethical technology? - imagine that Moloch is an unseen force, - an emergent property of the complex system we create between - all our interactions as human beings. - Those interactions are driven by: - behaviors, - memes, - ideas and - cultural values which are all based on<br /> - what we think is real and - what we feel is important.

Multi-polar trap

AI is a multi-polar trap

Quotation - If there's a force that's driving us toward greater complexity - there seems to be an opposing force, - a force of destruction that uses competition for ill. - The way I see it, - Moloch is the god of unhealthy competition, of negative sum games

• A good story
  • about how myopic, self-interested short-termism behavior
  • can lead to temporary success
  • and long term failure

Title Reality Eats Culture For Breakfast: AI, Existential Risk and Ethical Tech Why calls for ethical technology are missing something crucial Author Alexander Beiner

Summary - Beiner unpacks the existential risk posed by AI - reflecting on recent calls by tech and AI thought leaders - to stop AI research and hold a moratorium.

• Beiner unpacks the risk from a philosophical perspective

  • that gets right to the deepest cultural assumptions that subsume modernity,
  • ideas that are deeply acculturated into the citizens of modernity.

• He argues convincingly that

  • the quandry we are in requires this level of re-assessment
    • of what it means to be human,
    • and that a change in our fundamental cultural story is needed to derisk AI.

Definition - Global Phase Shift - A global process of civilizational transition in which - Human civilization - a complex adaptive system, - in the twenty-first century finds itself - at the early stages of a systemic phase-shift - which is already manifesting in local sub-system failures - in every major region of the periphery of the global system. - In this context, it is precisely the acceleration of global system failure - that paves the way for the possibility of - fundamental systemic transformation, - and the emergence of a new phase-shift in the global system - Human civilization is in the midst - of a global transition - to a completely new system - which is being forged from the ashes of the old. - Yet the contours of this new system remain very much subject to our choices today - there remains a capacity for agents - within the global system - to generate adaptive responses that, - through the power of transnational information flows, - hold the potential to enhance collective consciousness. - The very breakdown of the prevailing system - heralds the potential for long-term post-breakdown systemic transformation.

Key observation - due to the critical role of information in phase-transitions, - the primary pathway to global systemic transformation - will depend on our ability to process information on our current predicament coherently - in order to translate this into adaptive action.

In Other Words The human INTERbeing - our relational nature - our Dunbar number past - is denied by modernity

this is Donella Meadows top leverage point to intervene in a system - change in paradigm, worldview and narratives of the individual - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=leverage+points

Meaning crisis

Interesting to observe that South Africa has the worst indicator of all.

In Other Words - the degradation of the indvidual/collective entanglement

Annotate this report

What is important is the inner/outer entanglement

The inner / outer crisis relationship. This is one of the major relationships identified by Stop Reset Go and Deep Humanity.

Title: The Planetary Emergency is a Crisis of Spirituality - The collapse of reductionist materialism is a defining feature of the global phase-shift. The question is, what comes next, and what are we going to do about it?

Author - Nafeez Ahmed

• Rewilding large terrestrial and marine animals can sequester 500 gigatons co2 by 2100

Title: Rewilding’ Parts of the Planet Could Have Big Climate Benefits

Title: Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions

Another unknown not yet included in IPCC report

AMOC slowdown may reduce my efficacy of co2 absorption.

Part One of two-part article - on the relevance of 1.5°C, - unpack the policy gulf that exists between - the Paris Agreement climate goals and - real-world emissions trajectory. - Part one challenges - the techno-optimistic position, - embodied by international leaders and the COP process - as being wilfully ignorant of reality.

Part two, forthcoming - question - is still tenable to claim that 1.5°C is in any meaningful sense ‘alive’. - Question recent suggestions that, - because a 50% chance has all but slipped beyond reach, - 1.5°C is now effectively dead in the water. - Exploration of the dangers of disregarding societal transformations - that could yet deliver an outside chance of 1.5°C.

Title: How Alive Is 1.5? Part One – A Small Budget, Shrinking Fast

Author: - Kevin Anderson - Dan Calverley

Key Messages - For a 50:50 chance of staying below 1.5°C, we’re using up the remaining carbon budget at around 1% every month. - Following current national emissions pledges (NDCs) to 2030 puts the temperature commitments within the Paris Agreement beyond reach. - Claims that 1.5°C is now inevitable also assign “well below 2°C” to the scrapheap. - An ‘outside chance’ of not exceeding 1.5°C remains viable, but ongoing fossil fuel use is rapidly undermining it. - The few credible pathways for an outside chance of 1.5°C are not being discussed. This is an active choice by policymakers and experts, who have largely dismissed equity-based social change.

• acknowledging and working with complexity
  • means implementing strategies
  • to deal with the changing landscape of knowns and unknowns
• We are always working with limited knowledge
  • we need to explicitly recognize that
  • and develop pragmatic strategies
    • to integrate the unknown into decision-making processes

5 principles for mitigating progress traps - 1) - a priori assessments of potential unintended consequences of policies - should be conducted by - multidisciplinary teams - with as broad a range of expertise as possible. - This would require decision-making - to flex around specific policy challenges - to ensure that decision-makers reflect the problem space in question. - 2) - policy plans made in light of the assessment should be iterative, - with scheduled re-assessments in the future. - As has been discussed above, - knowledge and circumstances change. - New consequences might have since - become manifest or new knowledge developed. - By planning and implementing reviews, - organizational reflexivity and - humility - needs to be built into decision-making systems (e.g., Treasury, 2020).

• 3)
  • given the scale of systems
    • such as the water-energy-food nexus
  • and the potential for infinite variety and nuance of unintended consequences,
    • pragmatism necessitates specification of boundaries
      • within which assessments are made.
  • It should be noted that this can in itself give rise to unintended consequences
    • through potential omission of relevant areas.
  • Hence, boundary decisions regarding
    • where the boundaries lie
      • should be regularly revisited (as per 2) above.
• 4)
  • unintended consequences identified
    • should be placed in the framework
      • with as much consensus among decision-makers as possible.
  • The positioning does not need to be limited to a single point,
    • but could be of the form of a distribution of opinions of range
      • of knowability and
      • avoidability;
    • the distribution will be indicative of
      • the perspectives and
      • opinions of the stakeholders.
  • If a lack of consensus exists on the exact position,
    • this can highlight a need to
      • seek more diverse expertise, or
      • for further research in order to improve consensus, or
      • for fragmenting of the issue into
        • smaller,
        • more readily assessable pieces.
• 5)
  • there is a need for more active learning
    • by decision-makers
      • about how to avoid repeating past unintended consequences.
  • To support this,
    • assessment process and
    • outcomes should be
      • documented and
      • used
    • to appraise the effectiveness of policy mechanisms,
      • with specific attention on outcomes
        • beyond those defined by policy objectives and the
          • assumptions and
          • decisions
        • which led to these outcomes.
  • Such appraisals could reflect on - the scope of the assessment, and - the effectiveness of specific groups of stakeholders
    • in being able to identify potential negative outcomes,
      • highlighting gaps in knowledge and limitations in the overall approach.
  • Additional records of the level of agreement of participants
    • would allow for re-evaluation with new learning.

• Example
  • insect for animal feed
    • as a example of knowable and avoidable unintended consequence

• Example of unknowable and avoidable
• The same insect problem above
  • can also be classified as
    • unknowable and
    • avoidable
  • in EU regulation (EC) No 999/2001
    • that does not distinguish between
      • ruminants and
      • insects,
    • in effect banning the use of insects in
      • aquaculture,
      • poultry and
      • pig feed

Title: Unintended Consequences: Unknowable and Unavoidable, or Knowable and Unforgivable?

Abstract - Paraphrase - there are multiple environmental limits within which humanity can safely operate, - potential negative outcomes of seemingly positive actions need to accounted for. - “nexus” research is consistent with the above - it recognizes the integrated and interactive nature of water, energy and food systems, - and aims to understand the broader implications of developments in any one of these systems. - This article presents a novel framework for categorizing such detrimental unintended consequences, based upon: - how much is known about the system in question - and the scope for avoiding any such unintended consequences. - The framework comprises four categories: - Knowable and Avoidable - Knowable and Unavoidable - Unknowable and Avoidable - Unknowable and Unavoidable - The categories are explored with reference to examples in both: - the water-energy-food nexus and - planetary boundary frameworks. - The examples: - highlight the potential for the unexpected to happen and - explore dynamic nature of the situations that give rise to the unexpected. - The article concludes with guidance on how the framework can be used - to increase confidence that best efforts have been made to navigate our way toward - secure and sustainable water, energy and food systems, - avoiding and/or managing unintended consequences along the way.

// - This paper is principally about - progress traps, - how they emerge, - their characteristics - as they morph through the knowability / avoidability matrix - and how we might predict and mitigate them in the future

// - This is the critical question - Looking at history, can we see predictive patterns - when it makes sense to stop and take questions of the unknown seriously - rather than steaming ahead into uncharted territory? - We might find that society did not follow science's call - for applying the precautionary principle - because profits were just too great - the profit bias at play - profit overrides safety, health and wellbeing

// - This is a good basic framing - for future basic research - on progress traps - Future paper would explore details in a much more granular way //

Johari Window states the same thing

• genetic and cultural evolution
• as well as individual and collective learning are deeply enmeshed
• The distinction between
  • genetic and cultural evolution and
  • individual and cultural learning
• are ambiguous at best

Definition - socially based individual learning - an individual learns by interacting with the embedded environment - but the environment is itself biased - so that certain learning outcomes - are more easily learned - than they would otherwise be

moss sponging by chmpanzees - is a phenomena observed by researchers - in which the distinction between<br /> - individual and - collective learning - is fuzzy - Sponging is a technique of wild chimpanzees - in which they use chewed up plant material - as a sponge to soak up water - One individual wild chimpanzee - named by the researchers as KW - picked up a discarded sponge used by another wild chimpanzee - which happened to have moss in it - and so developed a sponge for water specifically from moss - KW did not learn it socially from another chimpanzee - yet if it weren't for - the behavior of other chimpanzees in the group - cultural artefacts they left behind - niche construction that resulted to changes in the environment - the individual learning of KW would never have produced moss sponging

individual and social are deeply entangled

• This primate example demonstrates an ambiguity between individual and social learning.
• The problem with this way of defining things exclusively as either
  • individual or
  • social
• is that we ignore the fact that,
  • even when acting in a manner
  • that appears to involve no direct interaction with other creatures,
• organisms nonetheless develop and learn in environments
  • that have been affected by the prior actions of their conspecifics (and not just their conspecifics).
• This is precisely the sort of phenomenon
  • stressed by the proponents of the niche-construction approach to evolution,
  • and it is also stressed by developmental systems theorists [40,41].
• Organisms grow in environments that have been constructed
  • by the actions of previous generations:
    • in that way, what an organism learns
    • can be profoundly affected and enhanced
    • by the collective activities of individuals it may never meet.
• In other words, we should not assume
  • that there is any good distinction
  • between
    • individual learning and
    • what we might call ‘social transmission’.
• The latter can be achieved via the former.

Best known example of gene-culture coevolution - co-evolution of pastoralism and lactose intolerance - the adoption of dairying set up a modified niche - in which the ability to digest lactose into adulthood was an advantage. - ancestors who were lactose tolerant could take advantage of a new source of calories. - Hence it is the learned acquisition of dairying which explains the natural selection of genes favoring lactase persistence, - the continued production of the enzyme lactase beyond weaning - Dual inheritance theory (Gene-culture coevolution) typically uses this example to explain - Dairying is inherited via a cultural channel - lactase persistence is inherited via a genetic channel - Recent supporters of this also make recent claims that it is not possible to distinguish between - what is biological from what is cultural

The eintangled human - bio-social human interBEcomING

Definition - Cumulative Cultural Evolution - The core criteria follow the definition of CCE provided in Tomasello's quotation above - A population exhibits CCE iff - (i) a change in behaviour (or product of behaviour, such as an artefact), typically due to asocial learning, followed by - (ii) the transfer via social learning of that novel or modified behaviour to other individuals or groups, where - (iii) the learned behaviour causes an improvement in performance, - which is a proxy of genetic and/or cultural fitness, with - (iv) the previous three steps repeated in a manner that generates sequential improvement over time.

• Boyd & Richerson give a nice explanation of CCE
• In contrast [to non-human species' cultural traditions],
  • human cultures do accumulate changes over many generations,
  • resulting in culturally transmitted behaviors that no single human individual could invent on their own.

• Cumulative cultural evolution has emerged as the front runner to explain human "success"
• CCE was popularized by Boyd & Richarerson and Tomasello.
• Tomasello argued that only humans could "accumulate modifications over time"

New term for me - the Ratchet effect! - equivalent to CCE - A ratchet is a device with angled teeth that allows a bar or cog to move in one direction only. Here, it is a metaphor for the accumulation of increasingly effective modifications without reverting back to prior, less effective states.

Title: What is cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)?

Authors: - Alex Mesoudi - Alex Thornton

Abstract - In recent years, cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has become the focus of major research interest in - biology, - psychology and - anthropology. - There is a range of opinions on CCE - some argue that CCE is unique to humans - and underlies our extraordinary evolutionary success as a species. - Others claim to have found CCE in non-human species. - Yet others remain sceptical that CCE is even important for explaining - human behavioural diversity and - complexity. - These debates are hampered by multiple and often ambiguous definitions of CCE. - Here, we review how researchers define, use and test CCE. - We identify a core set of criteria for CCE - which are both necessary and sufficient, and - may be found in non-human species. - We also identify a set of extended criteria - that are observed in human CCE - but not, to date, in other species. - Different socio-cognitive mechanisms may underlie these different criteria. - We reinterpret - previous theoretical models and - observational and - experimental studies of both - human and - non-human species - in light of these more fine-grained criteria. - Finally, we discuss key issues surrounding information, fitness and cognition. - We recommend that researchers are more explicit about what components of CCE they are testing and claiming to demonstrate.

Three obstacles to policies limiting elite carbon emissions - First is the realization of connection between wealth and carbon emissions - Second is polarized politics making it difficult to pass or implement policies to limit dangerous consumption - Third is focused policy on the oversized contributions of elites

key finding - staying within 1.5 or even 2 deg C will be difficult without addressing wealth growth - a significant share of the remaining carbon budget risks being depleted by a very small group of human beings

// - if millionaire consumptive behavior - threatens the survival of civilization, - then laws can be created to ban the dangerous consumptive behavior - if they cannot self-regulate

Graph - millionaire emission growth vs remaining carbon budget - Note the year 2037 on this graph - This is when millionaire emissions exceeds remaining carbon budget

key finding - Elite consumption has the potential to make 1.5 Deg C target unreachable - US$2020 millionaires will deplete 72% of the 1.5 °C carbon budget (400 Gt CO2, 67% chance of staying within temperature range), - or 25% of the 2 °C budget (1150 Gt CO2, 67% chance) - over the next 30 years.

graph - millionaire numbers by region - 1990 - 2020 - 2050

• Quote
  • carbon inequality stat
    • 1% of the world's population is responsible for 50% of emissions from commercial air transport

yacht stats - 2021: 5245 superyachts of lengths 30-180m - 1990: 1090 superyachts of lengths 30-180m - stats - yachts - quote - yachts

carbon inequality follows a power law

• Table
  • Interrelationship of wealth and emissions per capita. //
• It is clear that we have an urgent need
• to bend the curve of emissions of elites

Quinn Slobodian's Crack-Up Capitalism may be a new form of disaster capitalism that will emerge as the polycrisis continues - https://hyp.is/go?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdocdrop.org%2Fvideo%2Fr8k0r3dZsog%2F&group=world - as the growth of elites attest, we can count on capitalism to capitalize on disaster.

Quotable carbon inequality stats: - the top 1% responsible for 17% of total emissions, - the top 10% for 48%, - the bottom 50% for12% - stats carbon inequality - quote carbon inequality - 2019

// A key question is also this: - what are individuals using those carbon emissions for? - is it being used just for luxury consumption - or is it being used to develop and actionize scalable low carbon strategies? - if it is the later, it could be seen as a de-carbon investment

Noteworthy countries with the most high carbon net worth individuals (HCNW): - USA - 3.16 million individuals emitting an average 318 t CO2-e/year/person, - Luxemburg: 10,000 individuals emitting an average 287 t CO2-e/year/person, - Singapore: 50,000 individuals emitting 251 t CO2-e/year/person, - Saudi Arabia: 290,000 individuals emitting 247 t CO2-e/year/person, - Canada: 350,000 individuals emitting 204 t CO2-e/year/person

Biggest source of emissions of the elite: - yachts - private air transportation - multiple homes in different countries

// - luxury industries of: - private jets - luxury home real estate - yachts - are unsustainable - this irresponsible, unsustainable consumption is imperiling civilization itself

Yacht stats: - close to two thirds of the overall carbon footprint of those billionaires owning yachts is caused by yacht-ownership. - Carbon footprint is - 6500 times greater than the global average of 4.5 t CO2 per person per year, - 300,000 times greater than the poorest, at 0.1 t CO2 per person and year - stats - carbon inequality - quote - carbon inequality

Quotable carbon inequality stats: - top 0.01% emit more than 2300 t CO2-e per capita in 2019, - global average is 6 t CO2-e - therefore, the top 0.01% emit 2300/6 = 383x more than the global average. - quote - carbon inequality - stats - carbon inequality

key observation

Title: Millionaire spending incompatible with 1.5 °C ambitions Authors: - Stefan Gossling - Andreas Humpe

• Abstract

  • Research question

    • Growing evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionally to climate change.
    • This study considers the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions,
      • and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5 °C (about 400 Gt CO2).
    • The study presents a model that extrapolates observed growth in millionaire numbers (1990–2020)
      • and associated changes in emissions to 2050.

  • Results

    • The share of US$2020-millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050,
      • and cause accumulated emissions of 286 Gt CO2.
    • This is equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget,
      • and significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5 °C.
    • Continued growth in emissions at the top
      • makes a low-carbon transition less likely,
      • as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest
      • is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize.
    • To this end, we question whether policy designs
      • such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters
    • will be sufficient.

// and if it is not sufficient, then what?

Taxing? No, they have enough wealth to just keep going. - if we people don't act on their own, legal regulation is required - unless they can transform themselves and the global luxury industry also undergoes a huge transformation

Quinn Slobodian - in his book "Globalists" traces roots of neoliberalism - back to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire

• Definition
  • Crack-Up Capitalism is defined as
    • a form of economic activity
    • propagated by people
      • whose profit model and
      • their kind of a normative vision of
        • change and
        • the social future
      • relies on an idea
      • of an accelerating process of
        • social dissolution and
        • an accelerating process of political fragmentation
          • in the near future and
          • the medium-term future

Book review of historian Quinn Slobodian's new book: Crack-up Capitalism

• Quote
  • A hundred years ago, the robber barons built libraries. Today they build spaceships.
  • Author Quinn Slobodian

or more directly, people power.

• A good observation
  • about the cognitive dissonance of the situation

Indeed, - and the market could very well make the decision - that will exceed planetary boundaries - after all, the highest priorities are the lowest cost goods - those already well established in the market place by reliance on fossil fuels, - that can maintain an individual's life

• The hands of politicians are always bound.
  • by the fossil fuel interests that power the ordinary person's lives
• The current dependency of the ordinary person on fossil fuels
  • is still the greatest barrier to system change.

• Quote

• The supreme court is tilted in favor of the fossil fuel industry through these appointments.
• The battle to keep fossil fuel litigation away from state courts and in federal court is big oil's attempt to leverage their conservative allies

• Title: Climate Homicide: Prosecuting Big Oil for Climate Deaths

• Author:

  • David Arkush
  • Donald Braman

• Abstract

• Paraphrase
  • Prosecutors regularly bring homicide charges against individuals and corporations
    • whose reckless or negligent acts or omissions
    • cause unintentional deaths,
    • as well as those whose misdemeanors or felonies cause unintentional deaths.
  • Fossil fuel companies learned decades ago that
    • what they
      • produced,
      • marketed, and
      • sold
    • would generate “globally catastrophic” climate change.
  • Rather than alert the public and curtail their operations,
    • they worked to
      • deceive the public about these harms and
      • to prevent regulation of their lethal conduct.
  • They funded efforts to
    • call sound science into doubt and
    • to confuse their
      • shareholders,
      • consumers, and
      • regulators.
    • poured money into political campaigns to elect or install
      • judges,
      • legislators, and
      • executive officials hostile to any
        • litigation,
        • regulation, or
        • competition
      • that might limit their profits.
  • Today, the climate change that they forecast
    • has already killed thousands of people in the United States,
    • and it is expected to become increasingly lethal for the foreseeable future.
  • Given the
    • extreme lethality of the conduct and
    • the awareness of the catastrophic risk
      • on the part of fossil fuel companies,
      • should they be charged with homicide?
  • Could they be convicted?
  • In answering these questions,
    • this Article makes several contributions to
      • our understanding of criminal law and
      • the role it could play in combating crimes committed at a massive scale.
  • It describes
    • the doctrinal and
    • social predicates of homicide prosecutions
  • where corporate conduct endangers much or all of the public.
  • It also identifies important advantages of
    • homicide prosecutions
    • relative to
      • civil and
      • regulatory remedies,
    • and it details
      • how and
      • why
    • prosecution for homicide may be the most effective legal remedy available in cases like this.
  • Finally, it argues that,
    • if our criminal legal system cannot focus more intently on climate crimes soon
    • we may leave future generations with significantly less for the law to protect.

-In Other Words - Die before you die -Paraphrase - If the ego is mentally constituted by this dualistic way of thinking, - the ego should be able to die without physical death. - That is precisely the claim of Buddhism: - the sense of self can disappear, - but there remains something else - that cannot die, - because it was never born. - Anatma is the "middle way" - between - the extremes of eternalism (the self survives death) and - annihilationism (the self is destroyed at death). - Buddhism resolves the problem of life-and-death - by deconstructing it. - The evaporation of it is dualistic way of thinking - reveals what is prior to it, - which has many names, - the most common being "the unborn."

• Title: Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today
• Author: David Loy

David Loy explains how - the denial of ego-self, also known as anatma - becomes the root of a persistent sense of lack - as self-consciousness continues to try to ground itself, reify itself and make itself real - while all the meanwhile it is a compelling mental construction

A good paper on the role (non-rational) relational ritual can play to help us out of the current polycrisis is given here: https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbrill.com%2Fview%2Fjournals%2Fwo%2F25%2F2%2Farticle-p113_1.xml%3Flanguage%3Den&group=world

Good explanation of what self-consciousness attempts to do:

Self-consciousness is not something obviously "self-existing" it is a fiction, - it is ungrounded because it is - a mental construct.

Rather than being selfsufficient, - consciousness is like the surface of the sea: dependent on unknown depths ("conditions," as the Buddha called them) that it cannot grasp - because it is a manifestation of them.

The problem arises because this conditioned, and therefore unstable, consciousness wants to - ground itself, to make itself real.

But to real-ize itself is to objectify itself - meaning to grasp itself, since an object is that-which-is-grasped.

The ego-self is this continuing attempt to objectify oneself by grasping oneself, something we can no more do than a hand can grasp itself.

Quote - becoming ones own ground and not recognizing groundlessness (tantamount to our nature as evolutionary beings)

Quote - the sin of being born. - the worm in the heart of the human condition - an inescapable consequence of self-consciousness itself

Quote - normality is our collective, protective madness in which we repress the grim truth of the human condition.

Quote - do our fears cause us to perceive the world the way we do, and might someone experience the world differently if they were brave enough to face the thing we avoid most? key question - could we imagine a world where we are free of these fears?

• definition
• anatma: the denial of the ego-self

//* Loy is stating... - Those engaging compulsively in money, fame, power, materialism - are actually deeply repressing - the fact that the ego-self, and therefore self-consciousness is a construction - To continually reify the ego-self, we engage in these activities - and of course, this is fueling the polycrisis we now find ourselves in

// SELF CONSCIOUSNESS IS A MENTAL CONSTRUCTION

//In Other Words - Money is the new secular reiigion

• Title: Buddhism and Money: The Repression of Emptiness Today
• Author: David Loy

The evolution of a human being

• Quote

• Wright points out that answering the first two questions
  • is the key to answering the third one

Paul Gauguin's painting: - Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where_Do_We_Come_From%3F_What_Are_We%3F_Where_Are_We_Going%3F#:~:text=Que%20sommes%2Dnous%20%3F,the%20themes%20of%20the%20Gospels%22. - Wright uses this painting as a appropriate introduction to his work tracing human progress because to answer the third question - where are we going? - requires answering the first two - where do we come from? - what are we?

• Ronald Wright gives his famous Massey talk on = progress traps
• The book
  • A Short History of Progress
• is based on a series of 5 talks he gave at the Massey Lectures
• All five talks are recorded here

google search for "Ronald Wright surviving progress"

Title: THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF TECHNOLOGY: SOLUTIONS, BREAKTHROUGHS, AND THE RESTART WE NEED

Title: The Unanticipated Consequences of Technology - progress traps

Longtail experience

The origins of politicians! - politicians had their roots in an earlier age when there was no communication or transportation technology - settlers lived in small communities and had to send a horse rider to represent them at the capital city. - now, communication technology has made them obsolete but too late, the antiquated politician is here to stay!

pictures of early 1900 child labor in the United States

built right into the rocky landscape, leaving all the trees undisturbed and building a swirling roof of beams and glass that accept the trees

• picture of Chuzhi house
  • sustainable house built with combination of natural and waste materials

shuttered debri wall - beautiful wall using rocks found on site

Wallmakers updates ancient building techniques for the 21st century, building beautiful architectural buildings using mud, waste and creativity as the main components

Title: Fox News producer files explosive lawsuits against the network, alleging she was coerced into providing misleading Dominion testimony

// - This is an example of how big media corporations can deceive the public and compromise the truth - It helps create a nation of misinformed people which destabilizes political governance - the workspace sounds toxic - the undertone of this story: the pathological transformation of media brought about by capitalism - it is the need for ratings, which is the indicator for profit in the marketing world, that has corrupted the responsibility to report truthfully - making money becomes the consumerist dream at the expense of all else of intrinsic value within a culture - knowledge is what enables culture to exist, modernity is based on cumulative cultural evolution - this is an example of NON-conscious cumulative cultural evolution or pathological cumulaitve cultural evolution

The most impactful system change is the mindset

It has been suggested that - the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI).

there is disagreement about - how to apply the ETI framework to our species - and whether culture is implicated - as either cause or consequence.

Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) i- s - also poorly understood.

argued that - culture steers human evolution,

Others proposed - genes hold culture on a leash.

After review of the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans - emerge a set of common themes. - First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance - and is probably driving human evolution. - The evolutionary impact of culture occurs - mainly through culturally organized groups, - which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. - Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, - increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential. -Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by - an evolutionary transition in inheritance - from genes to culture - which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Research on GCC should focus on the possibility of - an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

Summary

Human Patterns of ETI - non-kin scale of cooperation - prominence of human language - complex and full-time division of labor

Definition : Evolutionary Transition in Individuality - This is a very good definition of ETI - A new individual is a new level of biological organization - The new individual emerges out of an integration of subsiduary units as competitive individuals synergize and form well-integrated functional groups

• Title: Long-term gene–culture coevolution and the human evolutionary transition

• Authors:

  • Timothy M. Waring
  • Zachary T. Wood

• Abstract

• Paraphrase

• key observation // In Other Words
• when cultural evolution overtakes genetic evolution,
• it makes socio-ecological collapse much more likely
• This makes sense because in modernity,
  • cultural evolution may happen in a matter of days,
  • especially in a globalized society where
    • information can be broadcast globally in a few seconds, and
    • goods and services can be sent anywhere by air travel in a day
• the recent pandemics were spread globally and rapidly due to air travel. Without that, such viruses would likely have been restricted to one locality of the planet
• our encroachment onto nature also serves to expose us to more viruses
• genetic evolution takes place on much longer time scales than cultural evolution
• this large time lag difference means that genetic evolution doesn't have time to adapt to quick-moving cultural changes

• simple diagram showing trend towards collapse

• spectrum from sustainable to collapse:

  • sustainable
  • unsustainable
  • socio-ecological crisis
  • socio-ecological collapse

• key observation

• Historical societies that have experience ecological collapse:
  • Mayan
  • Roman
  • Greek
  • Easter Islands
  • Pitcairn Islands
  • Norse colony in Greenland
  • Cahokia in American Midwest
  • Anasazi

• Quote
  • In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives,
  • Tim Waring

• key observation
  • human culture may represent a key evolutionary milestone
  • culture may be the next evolutionary transition state
    • pre-single self organisms like mitochondria increased fitness by sharing the environment with other life forms and formed the single cell
    • then multi-cellular organisms set the stage for the next big evolutionary paradigm
    • splitting into plants and animals
    • sexual reproduction
    • transition to land
  • we are possibly undergoing the next major evolutionary transition
  • in which we will still evolve genetically,
  • but genetics may not determine human survival as much as culture does

• key observation
• paraphrase

• why cultural evolution is too fast for genetic evolution

  • Culture is group-oriented, and people in those groups talk to, learn from and imitate one another.
  • These group behaviors allow people to pass on adaptations they learned through culture faster than genes can transmit similar survival benefits.
  • An individual can learn skills and information from a nearly unlimited number of people in a small amount of time
    • and, in turn, spread that information to many others.
  • And the more people available to learn from, the better.
  • Large groups solve problems faster than smaller groups,
  • and intergroup competition stimulates adaptations that might help those groups survive.

  • As ideas spread, cultures develop new traits.

  • In contrast, a person only inherits genetic information from two parents

    • and racks up relatively few random mutations in their eggs or sperm, which takes about 20 years to be passed on to their small handful of children.
  • That's just a much slower pace of change.

!- key finding - human culture may be driving evolution faster than genetic mutation can work - the major delay, measured in many orders of magnitude - does not allow genetic evolution to adapt quickly enough - to harmful environmental changes brought about through cultural evolution

• TItle: Humans might be making genetic evolution obsolete

• diagram
• consumption domain diagram

• diagram
• living in a sustainable consumption corridor
• bound by minima and maxima consumption

• Title: Consumption Corridors: Living a Good Life within Sustainable Limits
• This book explores how to enhance peoples’ chances to live a good life in a world of ecological and social limits.

• Paraphrase
• Claim
  • earth-friendly, justice-supporting consumers cannot translate their values into meaningful impact.
• Evidence
• “the shading and distancing of commerce” Princen (1997) is an effect of information assymetry.
  • producers up and down a supply chain can hide the negative social and environmental impacts of their operations, putting conscientious consumers at a disadvantage. //
• this is a result of the evolution of alienation accelerated by the industrial revolution that created the dualistic abstractions of producers and consumers.
• Before that, producers and consumers lived often one and the same in small village settings
• After the Industrial Revolution, producers became manufacturers with imposing factories that were cutoff from the general population

• This set the conditions for opaqueness that have plagued us ever since. //

• time constraints, competing values, and everyday routines together thwart the rational intentions of well-meaning consumers (Røpke 1999)

• assigning primary responsibility for system change to individual consumers is anathema to transformative change (Maniates 2001, 2019)

• This can be broken down into three broad categories of reasons:

  • Rebound effects
    • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=jevon%27s+paradox
    • increases in consumption consistently thwart effciency-driven resource savings across a wide variety of sectors (Stern 2020). -sustainability scholars increasingly critique “effciency” both as:
      • a concept (Shove 2018)
      • as a form of“weak sustainable consumption governance” (Fuchs and Lorek 2005).
    • Many argue that, to be successful, effciency measures must be accompanied by initiatives that limit overall levels of consumption, that is, “strong sustainable consumption governance.

  • Attitude-behavior gap

  • Behavior-impact gap

// - The power of transformation also lay in new organizational forms at the intersection of citizens as both resource users and voters. - It lay in understanding that the existing dichotomies are also created by us and we can create new forms if motivated - If there are enough of us, we can create new truly consensus forms of resource usage, such as Cosmolocal production - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=cosmolocal

// key observation

// argument against consumer sovereignty

// - indeed - coordinated collective action is what is missing here

// In Other Words

• we must undo the myopic cultural evolution that has already taken place with a more collectively conscious form of cultural evolution //

// - This article provides an intersectional study of: - climate change, - collective action research - terror management theory / mortality salience - it explains the beneficial impacts of non-rational relational ontology and recommends the use of ritual practices based on this as a way to promote pro-environmental behavior

//

• key observation
• key insight

• key observation
• key insight

• Quote
  • increased knowledge tends to strengthen our position on climate change, regardless of what that position is
  • (Hoffman 2015:5).

• key observation
• key insight
• quuotable
• quote

// - this is the mechanism by which ritual practice can bring about interpretive shift unconsciously -because bodily movements have a priming effect - Lakoff points to the concept of "biconceptualism, a compartmentalism in our physical brain

// in other words, - interpretive shift is unconscious and brought about through practice. It is a shift in ontology, habitus and many things happening at once and is also Polyani's tacit learning

• Key Observation
• The interpretive shift occurs when:
  • perception of the world (what they notice and experience is altered
  • how they interpret their perceptions is also altered

// - new cognitive patterns imposed upon the same sensory information - bring about attentional shift - resulting in the noticing of new patterns

//

• Key Definition
  • Interpretative Shift (Luhrmann)
  • can be initiated through ritual practice // We can build interventions based upon encouraging ritual practice that causes interpretative shifts

• separate mental categories

//summary - This sounds like compartmentalization, although frame shifting would be another way to look at it - when people know about the problem in an abstract way that is not “integrated into the sense of immediate reality” - (Norgaard 2011: loc 800). She found that knowledge about climate change is socially organized such that it is perceived as a “distant” problem that is “outside the sphere of everyday reality” - (Norgaard 2011: loc 917).

//Summary of Haluza-Delay and Polylani's conception of Tacit Knowledge - Haluza-Delay’s description of informal and incidental learning sounds much like Michael Polanyi’s (1974) “practical knowledge.” - Haluza-Delay discusses it as tacit learning, a term Polanyi introduced. - From Polanyi’s description, much of tacit learning is: - initially conscious, - but subsides into subsidiary awareness - People learn values in this fashion, but core values are picked up through imitation without conscious awareness.

//Quote - If the facts don’t fit the frames in your brain, the frames in your brain stay and the facts are ignored or challenged or belittled - (Lakoff 2014: xiv).

// quote - increased knowledge tends to strengthen our position on climate change, regardless of what that position is” - (Hoffman 2015:5). - The wealth of information available on the internet and through social media does not make us better informed, but simply makes us more certain that we are right - (Hoffman 2015:45)

// Interconnecting many thinkers and ideas throughout modern history related to knowledge deficit - knowledge deficit model is closely related to homo economicus, which is based on human beings a rational, self-interested agents - all these inter-relationships are new knowledge to me - this individualized ontology has its roots at least in Descartes and has been extensively critiqued - Edmond Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty critiqued it - Their critique influenced Gregory Bateson, as reflected in his book "Steps in an Ecological Mind" - It also influenced Emmanuel Levinas' understanding of ethical subjectivity and Bruno Latour's actor network theory - Latour's work influenced anthropologies of Indigenous people - This knowledge is well known with field of environmental humanities, but little known in the world of politics and economics

// in other words - presenting knowledge alone can trigger a host of counter-productive behaviiors

// in other words - mortality salience alone is counter-productive - it triggers psychological defense strategies. - it must be accompanied by expressions of gratitude to be effective and transformative

// in other words - more is less

// abstract - summary - Rationalist approaches to environmental problems such as climate change - apply an information deficit model, - assuming that if people understand what needs to be done they will act rationally. - However, applying a knowledge deficit hypothesis often fails to recognize unconscious motivations revealed by: - social psychology, - cognitive science, - behavioral economics.

• Applying ecosystems science, data collection, economic incentives, and public education are necessary for solving problems such as climate change, but they are not sufficient.
• Climate change discourse makes us aware of our mortality
• This prompts consumerism as a social psychological defensive strategy,
• which is counterproductive to pro-environmental behavior.
• Studies in terror management theory, applied to the study of ritual and ecological conscience formation,
• suggest that ritual expressions of giving thanks can have significant social psychological effects in relation to overconsumption driving climate change.
• Primary data gathering informing this work included participant observation and interviews with contemporary Heathens in Canada from 2018–2019.

• Title: Gene–culture coevolution and the nature of human sociality
• Author: Herbert Gintis

//Abstract - Summary - Human characteristics are the product of gene–culture coevolution, - which is an evolutionary dynamic involving the interaction of genes and culture - over long time periods. - Gene–culture coevolution is a special case of niche construction. - Gene–culture coevolution is responsible for: - human other-regarding preferences, - a taste for fairness, - the capacity to empathize and - salience of morality and character virtues.

• Title: Human niche construction in interdisciplinary focus
• Author:
  • Jeremy Kendal
  • Jamshid J. Tehrani
  • John Oding-Smee
• Abstract
  • summary
  • Niche construction is an endogenous causal process in evolution,
• reciprocal to the causal process of natural selection.
  • It works by adding ecological inheritance,
  • comprising the inheritance of natural selection pressures previously modified by niche construction,
  • to genetic inheritance in evolution.
  • Human niche construction modifies selection pressures in environments in ways that affect both human evolution, and the evolution of other species.
  • Human ecological inheritance is exceptionally potent
  • because it includes the social transmission and inheritance
  • of cultural knowledge, and material culture.
  • Human genetic inheritance
  • in combination with human cultural inheritance
  • thus provides a basis for gene–culture coevolution,
  • and multivariate dynamics in cultural evolution.
  • Niche construction theory potentially integrates the biological and social aspects of the human sciences.
  • We elaborate on these processes,
  • and provide brief introductions to each of the papers published in this theme issue.

//Summary* - The central question of the Anthropocene: - why did behaviorally modern humans gain the unprecedented capacity to change an entire planet? - cannot be answered by genetic changes in human behavior. - To explain why human societies scaled up to become a global force capable of changing the Earth and why there are so many different forms of human societies and ecologies shaped by them, - explanations must be sought beyond the theories of - biology, - chemistry or - physics. - Here I introduce a new evolutionary theory, sociocultural niche construction, - aimed at explaining the origins of human capacity to transform the Earth . - As will be seen, this theory also explains why - behaviorally modern human societies came to - transform ecology in so many different ways over the past 50,000 years as they expanded across the Earth. //

• Abstract
• summary
  • The exhibition of increasingly intensive and complex niche construction behaviors through time
  • is a key feature of human evolution,
  • culminating in the advanced capacity for ecosystem engineering exhibited by Homo sapiens.
  • A crucial outcome of such behaviors has been the dramatic reshaping of the global biosphere,
    • a transformation whose early origins are increasingly apparent
    • from cumulative archaeological and paleoecological datasets.
  • Such data suggest that, by the Late Pleistocene,
  • humans had begun to engage in activities
  • that have led to alterations in the distributions of a vast array of species
  • across most, if not all, taxonomic groups.
  • Changes to biodiversity have included
    • extinctions,
    • extirpations, and
    • shifts in species
      • composition,
      • diversity, and
      • community structure.
  • We outline key examples of these changes,
  • highlighting findings from the study of new datasets, like
    • ancient DNA (aDNA),
    • stable isotopes, and
    • microfossils, as well as
    • the application of new statistical and computational methods to datasets that have accumulated significantly in recent decades.
  • We focus on four major phases that witnessed broad anthropogenic alterations to biodiversity:
    • the Late Pleistocene global human expansion,
    • the Neolithic spread of agriculture,
    • the era of island colonization, and
    • the emergence of early urbanized societies and commercial networks.
  • Archaeological evidence documents millennia of anthropogenic transformations
  • that have created novel ecosystems around the world.
  • This record has implications for:
    • ecological and evolutionary research,
    • conservation strategies, and
    • the maintenance of ecosystem services,
  • pointing to a significant need for broader cross-disciplinary engagement between:
    • archaeology
    • the biological sciences and
    • the environmental sciences.

• Title: Ecological consequences of human niche construction: Examining long-term anthropogenic shaping of global species distributions
• Author:
  • Nicole L. Bolvin
  • Melinda A. Zeder
  • Dorian O. Fuller
  • Michael D. Petraglia

• 21:52 Carbon credits, carbon markets
  • it's a scam designed to perpetuate fossil fuel use, in a phoney war against the climate crisis
  • Offsets were designed to allow polluters to pay others to create schemes that would compensate or "offset" that pollution. The classic example WAS afforestation, the planting of trees that can sequester that carbon.
  • Carbon neutrality comes from this idea that you can keep polluting if you offset it and become "carbon neutral"
  • A company may decarbonize a lot of their supply chain but may struggle to get rid of airflights around the world. In that case, they use offsets. When companies analyze the very difficult choices, they take the easy way out and use carbon offsets
  • However, there is so much offsets for afforestation now that there isn't enough land on earth
  • Carbon markets are a recipe for grifting and fraud or zero impacts
    • https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe
  • This is the current state of offsets

31:00 Shell oil carbon offset greenwashing scam - the sky zero proposal - Shell claims they can offset all the O+G emissions out of the ground - it is preposterous - there's not enough land on earth when you tally up all the carbon offset afforestation schemes

• 32:30 Neo-colonialism

  • rich white man can offset his emissions by buying land from a developing nation. Now the indigenous people cannot use that land for any reason.
  • also, will require huge amount of water to grow those trees
  • we don't have enough land and we don't have 100 years, only 5 years.
  • nature-based solutions are an industrial, myopic approach

• 37:00 Deferred Emission Reduction

  • a lot of carbon credits are called deferred emission reduction credits.
  • this is avoided emissions - ie. trees in a forest with 100 ton of sequestering potential
  • this is promise to not destroy the biosphere any further so it's not removing any existing carbon
  • maybe multiple people might own the same forest, or someone might come along and burn it down
  • Trees are vulnerable to climate impacts - ie. Microsoft bought a large forest in California that later burned down in a climate change intensified wildfire

• 40:00 can we do anything within the extractive capitalist system?

  • some people claim that as long as extractivist capitalism still persists, we cannot have system change
  • also a neocolonialist element - global north exploited the global south to create most of the emissions in the atmospheric commons
  • a number of people are beginning to see that an extractivist capitalist system is not in line with effectively addressing the climate crisis
  • wind, solar, etc has displaced electricity generation in a number of countries like in the UK. However, these are only a few countries.Renewables are helping increase overall energy production

• 44:22: Stop burning fossil fuels

  • t doesn't matter if investments in renewables triple. It won't make a difference if we don't significantly stop burning fossil fuels at the same time.

• 47:00 economic growth prevents real change

  • Insisting on 1, 2 or 3% growth, will limit the response to the climate threat to render it irrelevant
  • Climate change is still mostly an optimization problem. They are more concerned with economic damage.
  • Economists believe that anything that threatens economic growth cannot be accepted

• 51:00 Degrowth making headway

  • Degrowth scholars are getting more attention on the need to decouple economic grwoth from climate policies

• 52:10 Is there a positive future scenario - The role of solidarity

  • Solidarity is the greatest strength we can harness.
  • The success of Doughnut Economics gives me hope
  • The richest 1% must reign in their impacts and redistribute to allow the impoverished to live humane lives
  • We can all have good lives and we don't have to manufacture that wonder
  • This is what it is to be human