Balázs Stumpf-Biró - It is time to think about the possibility that we are too late..

"I'm doing what I can, where I am, with what I have - that's all you can expect from people."

Now is the time to consider the possibility that we are too late to avert an environmental disaster that will affect the entire planet, with all its consequences, in the lifetime of the people living today. To be more precise, it will threaten the lives and existence of all humanity under the age of seventy.

We have lost control, which may never have been in our hands. I am not saying that everyone and everything will be destroyed, but our world as we have known it will be transformed beyond recognition. That is roughly how Balázs Stumpf-Biró, co-founder of Cassee Climate Adaptation Consulting Ltd, sums up his view of our future.

Hopium or confrontation?

  
Needless to say, with this opinion our researcher has managed to create a huge media sensation around him at a tremendous speed, which we didn't want to miss. Not least because the consultancy is associated with the Cassandra Programme, whose CEO, physicist Zsolt Szalóczy, we had the opportunity to exchange views with this spring. He didn't promise much good for the future either, while explaining in detail how the Polar Vortex and the Jet Stream, the two eddies that have managed to keep climate systems stable, have fallen apart over our heads. Let us remember the winter behind us well, he suggested, but he did not venture any further, perhaps leaving the role of 'bearer of bad news' to his colleague.

- Of course, no man's son can say it's all over, we can close the shutters.

But anyone who offers people a solution, a hopeful promise of hope, a 'hopium' in the wonderful English phrase, is deceiving them. It robs them of the opportunity to face reality honestly and courageously and make the really important decisions about their lives. Of course, everyone likes to dive into the future in some way - through their religiosity, their belief in future generations or their faith in human ingenuity.

But self-exciting processes have been set in motion that it would be a mistake to believe can be reversed.

This is borne out by what is already happening to us. That is why it is unnecessary, if not harmful, to delude ourselves.

It is quite certain - and all my colleagues agree with me - that we will see some very dramatic things in this decade, both in terms of primary consequences and secondary effects," he said. Apparently not one to mince his words, he even revealed that he was looking for a shaving knife. He wants to be ready for when disposable or interchangeable blades become a niche product on the market, which he believes could come soon.

Three major factors have led to the current unfortunate situation, he pointed out: the human psyche, fossil fuels, and the scale and speed of the processes that surround us.

We are caught in our own merry-go-round

 
- I believe that the so-called ecological overshoot, which I would translate as overuse, is primary. We are using what we have in such a large and exploitative way, and so much of it, that it is unsustainable.

And while I understand humanity, I cannot excuse it. If you look at the 200 million years of crocodiles, man's 200-300,000 years are minuscule in comparison.

Yet, Homo Sapiens has been able to generate ecological change on a scale that the planet can no longer sustain without extreme change over the last 150-200 years.

It is amazing that its overuse programme is still running today as it has always run: squeeze everything out of our environment quickly, preferably now, not tomorrow or the day after. We want to suppress the competition, we want power and comfort, and we do not want to hear about distant and abstract problems. This model can be passed at the individual level, here and there, but for the masses it is impossible.

- Also problematic - one of the many consequences - is climate change, the scale and speed of which is becoming increasingly staggering.

It is also generating a number of secondary effects, including a global food crisis and water scarcity. Just think: nearly 60 percent of our carbohydrate intake is made up of just three crops: wheat, maize and rice. There are 4 or 5 major cereal-producing regions on earth, and if only two or three of them are affected by extreme weather events, we are already at the point of global hunger.

It is hard to imagine what the starving masses will do when people are already breaking, smashing, setting fire to things because their lives have become a little harder - we have given a few examples.

- Throughout the history of mankind there have always been elites and masses, it is pointless to point fingers at anyone now.

But the fact is that there has never been such a difference in scale and quality between the two, and the gap is widening at an astonishing rate - Balázs Stumpf-Biró began his response to our suggestion that some believe that the current 'covidhist' will soon be followed by a harsh 'climate hysteria', which will allow the elite to further restrict the human rights and freedoms of the masses.

Meanwhile, research by the European Environment Policy Institute (IEEP) and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) shows that 1 per cent of humanity is responsible for seventy times more carbon emissions than half of the poorest.

Ten minutes in the air in a private jet adds roughly 70 tonnes of carbon dioxide to the environment, Liner.hu recently reported.

- I cannot say, nor would I like to, how much of the processes are planned and spontaneous, but by now humanity has built up a system so complex and complicated that no human being can see through it.

Nor do we know what technological or knowledge advantages the elite have, obviously they will do whatever they have to do to maintain the order they deem necessary.

And as the need for a predictable order is gradually increasing among the masses, it is hard to avoid moving towards authoritarian regimes throughout the world.

Jem Bendell, a professor at the University of Cumbria, warned in a 2018 paper that most climate change researchers and practitioners assume that our current economic, social and political systems are resilient enough to adapt to the enormous challenges and thus survive unchanged.

He has coined the term 'deep adaptation' to describe a school of thought that, contrary to the above, accepts that the collapse of our natural and human systems is a real possibility, even in our lifetime.

Deep Adaptation

 
- Of course, no one can say when or how the dreaded collapse will come, we have been addressing the question of most interest to us.

"The primary consequences - that weather events, say, are becoming more extreme, more intense, and are showing up in places where they never have before - are something we have been experiencing for some time.

I was very shocked when a tornado destroyed villages in the Czech Republic, whereas up to now this has only happened in North America. But even more serious are the secondary effects, such as melting ice, desertification, methane release in permafrost areas. And while it is a fact that ecological, small-scale farming can provide some solutions, I do not believe that people will go en masse to a farm to farm, which they will try to protect with bows and spears.

It is sad to see that the groundwater table is getting lower and lower, that we are not a water power, because rivers flow through our country and thermal water is not really drinkable. That agriculture is still a major consumer of fossil fuels, and that we consume one and a half Earths a year, with the difference that while in Europe the planet 'runs out' in May, in our country it 'only' happened on 8 June this year," he said.

Of course, we couldn't end the discussion without a few words of caution.

According to Balázs Stumpf-Biró, everyone should learn about Jem Bendell's four-step theory of Deep Appetite. According to this, we need to know what is worth keeping, what we should let go of, what good practices we can trace back from the past and what we will be forced to come to terms with.

In this, the Deep Adaptation Hungary group is of great help to those who are psychologically distressed by these processes.

And the Betyáros Világ podcast helps us to get the facts and accept change. This is a prerequisite for understanding the challenge. And it is the first step on the road to awareness.

What is left?

   
- People need to be confronted with the reality around them, so that when the fabric of society starts to crack after the utility shutdowns, they don't panic. In the future, the Cassandra Programme will offer adaptation solutions not only to farming organisations, but also to individuals living in small communities.

Next time, for example, we will assess the resilience of families. Internal, mental preparation cannot be avoided either, as we are in the phase of overshoot, and the signs of the feedback loop have multiplied, and in many cases we have reached the tipping point, the turning point where processes become self-driven and can no longer be reversed.

Obviously, we must do everything we can to slow down these processes, but the human factor - seeing that we cannot outstrip ourselves, that in 2040 we are still projected to be using 70 per cent fossil energy - does not really allow us to do so.

What I can say is this: we need to strengthen our human relationships, because in time we may have nothing left, and we need to keep in mind the most important thing: love each other.

Balázs Stumpf-Biró - Now we can only decide what to do with the remaining time of humanity - interview with futurologist Balázs Stumpf-Biró

If you thought the end was far away, it's not anymore.

Balázs Stumpf-Biró is co-founder of Cassee Climate Adaptation Consulting Ltd., which develops the Cassandra Programme to identify the impacts of climate change and support the adaptation process. He is the Hungarian representative of the Deep Adaptation movement, which emphasises mental preparedness, and creator of the Betyáros Világ podcast, which helps to shape attitudes. We talked to him about what lies ahead and what we need to prepare for. He did not paint a hopeful picture.

- "The only way to prepare is to talk openly about the possibility of our civilisation collapsing!" The quote is from an open letter, signed, I believe, by a number of international scientists. Did it have an impact?

- Indeed, hundreds of scientists, including Hungarians, have joined the Scholars Warning initiative. The letter made its way through the international press and then the issue went quiet. But this is not an isolated case. There is a good chance that the 2018 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - ed.) special report will be put on the agenda at COP26 in Glasgow in November... "Oh, we can wait for that", I say with bitter irony.

- So, obviously we don't have time. The situation is getting worse and worse. But perhaps most people have good reason to hope that with the right attitude and technology we can solve the problem of climate change... or do they?

- Unrealistic hope robs us of real opportunities because we waste precious time trying to prepare and reduce the physical and psychological damage we face.
The biggest problem with the popularity of the "we'll fix it" approach is that it makes it taboo to have an important dialogue about what we can do in the knowledge that we are unlikely to be able to solve the problem. The age we live in expects us to take a hopeful view of reality. Hopeful and hopeless are two sides of the same false coin.

It is not hope that we need to move on, but the free determination that comes from sincere sorrow.

 

- So what can a man do who wants to move on? Is there some kind of guide?

- In a 2018 study, Professor Jem Bendell of the University of Cumbria in the UK, highlighted that the majority of climate change researchers and practitioners assume that our current economic, social and political systems are resilient enough to adapt to the enormous challenges and thus survive unchanged.

He has coined the term 'deep adaptation' to describe a school of thought that, contrary to the above, accepts that the collapse of our natural and human systems is a real possibility, even in our lifetime.

 

What was really disturbing in the paper was the conclusion, drawn in simple, plain language, that "we've overdone it, my Believers", there is little we can do in any meaningful way here... except of course the most important thing, to prepare and begin to adapt to a fundamentally changing world.

- The question that immediately comes to mind about the deep adaptation movement is what is deep and what is it adapting to.

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