Professor Guy McPherson, known to many as Dr. Doom.

Are you a doomer, a climate change doomer? 

I’ve been called one, although I don’t really feel like a doomer.  

OK, I did fly down to Belize, rented a vehicle with the 4WD option, bought the insurance to cover tire damage (both options highly recommended by Crystal Rentals, thanks Crystal), and drove up into the jungles of Belize to meet with Professor Guy McPherson, known by many as Dr. Doom.  

So, you’re thinking doomer with a capital D, right?  But wait, before you box me up, it’s important to understand that I didn’t even know that the good professor lived in Belize until after my partner Phyllis had already bought the plane tickets.  She also rented a small thatched hut at Mayan Mountain Lodge, largely due to its location, which was a short distance (but an hour’s drive) from Stardust Sanctuary, the cool little permaculture farm that Guy’s partner Pauline owned. 

More on Guy in a moment, but first let’s get back to you and your own personal doomer status. Wikipedia says doomer, and by extension doomerism, are terms which arose primarily on the internet to describe people who are extremely pessimistic or fatalistic about all of the problems facing us today. Climate change tops the list, with its irreversible tipping points all looking a tad bit tippy and weak at the knees. 

But the list includes everything from political and economic instabilities, peaking fossil fuel resources, overpopulation, faltering food production, unbridled consumption, pollution, pandemics, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, and one of the new kids on the block, artificial intelligence. Oxford describes doom as, “death, destruction, or some other terrible fate.”

While this does sound rather bad, apparently doom does not have a strangle hold on death, with destruction, as well as other terrible fates, offering other possible outcomes. Terrible is defined as something “extremely or distressingly bad or serious,” with the ‘fate’ part apparently making it something of a sure thing. Some people say that one word more accurately defines doomers, and that’s extinction. The belief that for humans, and for all of humanity, the end is near.

But, as Professor McPherson points out, no one will ever know if humans will go extinct, not even the last human alive on planet Earth.

That said, some of us alive today will know if humans will become what is known as "functionally extinct." Functional extinction refers to an animal species on the edge of extinction, perhaps a rare bird species that, while not extinct, can no longer live anywhere outside of a zoo. They live in a conditioned environment, are fed food that can no longer be obtained from their former environment, and have lost the skills to do so should they suddenly be released back into the "wild." 

Within their caged environments, parent birds, themselves born into this world, now teach their offspring how to peck food from a tin dish. Might this sound eerily familiar, this living in a conditioned environment, eating food that comes from an unknown location, and learning how to peck at the buttons on a microwave oven or those on a cash register at the local Walmart?  All of it, by the way, precariously perched atop a dwindling supply of ancient sunlight in the form of prehistoric atmosphere, fossilized in dead stuff.  

An interesting side note about doom is that how it descends upon the doomed can make a big difference. Doom can usually be broken down into two basic types. There's the doom that happens suddenly and strikes without warning, a category that would include asteroids, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. 

It's been shown that when a community of individuals are faced with sudden doom, their immediate response is to pull together to help others around them in need.  When, however, it takes a while for the doom to bloom, it can be quite a different story.  As they say, Rome didn't fall in a day, and the decline was not only very unpleasant, but it lasted for many generations. A slow societal unraveling likely includes political instability, economic collapse, unemployment, loss of social services, food insecurities, infrastructure decay, heighted war probability, etc. 

It may even occur so slowly as to not even reach true doom status, at least not until you add in the human response element, which in the case of slow-motion doom, does not typically include a lot of the kumbaya moments seen in sudden doom.

But I digress. A google search of Guy McPherson lists him as an American scientist, and professor emeritus of natural resources, ecology, and evolutionary biology.” He's published a bunch of peer-reviewed papers, written a number of books, and he's a very nice person with a good sense of humor – dry and on the rocks (doomer humor).

Most of the experts on the subject of anthropogenic climate change are in total agreement with McPherson in regards to the immense threat it poses. They do, however, deviate from him on the topic of Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE), and especially in any attempt to put a time-line to it. 

I suspect that Guy now regrets having made predictions as to when doom would descent. Predictions, as you may have heard, are difficult to make, especially about the future.  Of course, I don't believe Guy has made many predictions since back in 2018, when he said that he couldn't imagine there would be any humans left on Earth by 2026.

I won't point out the obvious on that one, that would be too doomerish.  

In any case, I feel comfortable calling Guy McPherson a doomer, but only in the best sense of the word.  What I don't like, and what I believe to be a dangerous trend, is the use of the word doomer to dismiss and discredit anyone pointing out that what we are doing to avert a climate catastrophe is simply not working.

The plan, if you can call it that, is fatally flawed, literally. What we are currently doing is not working, and the things we should be doing, perhaps better described as things we should not be doing, are not being done. The population of humans on planet Earth has grown to 8,045,319,417, a population that exploded exponentially with the discovery of hundreds of millions of years of concentrated sunshine in the form of fossil fuels. We are Hell-bent on burning it all, and Hell-bound in doing so.

This is not a problem, it is a predicament. Stop burning it, and that big number listed above rapidly reduces in a very bad way. Continue burning it, and that big number listed above rapidly reduces in a very bad way. That's not a problem, that's a predicament, a dilemma, and yet we are still approaching it as a problem that needs a fix.

Our changing climate is probably best understood as a symptom of something much more systemic. The current "fix," apparently, is to replace the 1,750,345,202 petro-powered cars that are currently in use on the planet with electric ones, and, of course, pepper the planet with charging stations powered by the sun and wind. We should also use solar energy (present day, not the past) to heat and cool our homes, heat our water, grow our food and power up all our manufacturing as well as energize our ongoing resource depletion.

OK (deep breath), if this is the fix, we need to get going. The report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), way back in April of 2022, said that in order to stay below the 1.5 degree centigrade temperature threshold, and thereby avoid toppling the irreversible tipping points and feedback loops, we need to get half of this done by 2030. That’s now just six years away, and greenhouse gases have only increased since the release of that IPCC report.

Couple this with the fact that we already saw 1.5C in 2023, and it's now being said that 2C will be the new 1.5.  Can't hit the target?  Move the target. What we are currently doing is taking a problem that is deeply systemic, rotting at the core and fouled by an economic system that requires continuous growth, and simply treating all of the many problems that fester within and rise to the surface with a giant can of green spray paint.    

OK, I guess I am a doomer, but before I'm am dismissed and discredited as such, I have a couple more things to say in doomer defense. First, doomer’s don't want to be doomers and they find no satisfaction in being one.

Second, people seem to think that being a doomer means you give up. Perhaps that's true for some doomers, but most are only giving up on the concept that we can keep doing what we have been doing and expect different results.    

Finally, the term doomer is obviously abused, too broadly used, and has become a kind of comfort food for those who can’t stomach the truth. It's also too small a box to try and fit so many different individuals into – too binary, too myopic. I'd suggest freeing up a little space, opening the door for all of those who have feared coming out with thoughts of their own, and simply refer to us doomies as being on the "Doomer Spectrum." I'll even go so far as to predict that we will all be on the spectrum someday very soon. 

Maybe then we can get something done.  One can always hope.