The looming threat of El Niño

On this episode of Chaos and Conviviality, Dip and Scooter discuss the looming threat of El Niño and the need to build communal climate resilience.

See time stamps below:

• 1:20: Defining El Niño and discussing recent updates
• 4:00: Should we be scared?
• 8:20: All the (climate) solutions are already here
• 11:10: Discussing Dip’s the essay
• 15:10: What about the AMOC collapse?
• 17:25: Dip shares some inspiring community responses
• 24:55: What folks often miss when calling for communal climate resilience

This conversation is adapted from an essay linked here. 

Highlighted show notes (for full references/links, see the essay):

• El Nino set to return as early as May, impacting global weather patterns, UN weather agency says
• The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies of Ecological Revolution from Below
• A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster 
• Super El Niño: What it could mean for US weather, global heat and daily life
• World enters era of ‘global water bankruptcy’

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Hey y'all, I'm Dip. And I'm Scooter. And this is Chaos and Conviviality.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

This is a show where we discuss current events and culture with an eye towards liberation.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

And we come from a radical perspective that is anti-capitalist, anti-statist, and eco-trans feminist.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

You can find the article that this podcast is based off of at our ghost website, Chaos and Conviviality. Dip, can you start us off by sharing what El Nino is? Share about the recent updates that are in the news right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

Yeah. El Nino is the like flip side to La Niña. Basically, uh trade winds become weaker, um, which warms the water, and La Niña is cooling the water. So, what that ends up meaning is for the continental US, so pretty much everything that's not, you know, Alaska or Hawaii, creates wet winters across the west and the south. Um, and then it also makes the north more warm and dry. And so this upcoming cycle, as in, you know, the one that could hit as soon as May, but will probably happen more, you know, a little bit later in the year. Um, if all you know, if we can hope for anything, let's hope for that. But um, this cycle is said to be a quote unquote super El Nino, which means that like the surface of the Pacific Ocean, which is the one that would be getting warmer, um, will raise more than two degrees Celsius, which is a lot. Again, as far as what this will end up creating or causing beyond the kind of stuff we mentioned about the temperature changes and the dryness and wetness of the US, the actual like you know, ambient temperature will increase, which would exacerbate like extreme heat conditions, right? Um, and then another thing that would happen is that like coral reefs, which have have been experiencing a lot of bleaching because of just uh ocean temperatures rising in general, that bleaching would exacerbate. And then crop failures would be more likely just because again the temperatures are shifting, and obviously crop growth is very uh seasoned and temperature dependent.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

Yikes. I know in the article you touched a little bit on that this I guess happened in 1877 as well. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Yeah, and let me know, like, you know, if you have any things that you wanted to pull out in particular, but I think the biggest headline from that was that four percent of the world's like human population died as a result of the famines and you know other kind of negative like knock-on effects from this kind of quote unquote temporary, it was temporary, but like it gets kind of dicey as far as like in this current moment, will it be you know, it's it's a mess. But the temporary kind of climate, you know, extremity led to a lot of this death as a result of it directly, as a result of like the other knock-on effects like famine and things of that nature. Um, and so that four percent number at the time would have went to about 50 million people, so it's a pretty big deal.

SPEAKER_01 3:54

Yeah, that's not good in in this current context. Do you think we should be scared?

SPEAKER_00 4:01

Yeah, that's a that's a good question. And I think like it's an existential question, which isn't bad, but it's just one of those things where it's like, okay, like this is this becomes a thing of like how do you relate to existential things? And I think it bel depends on like if that's helpful for a person or not to be scared. Like if that's motivating, then like sure, if not, then I mean you should be aware, you shouldn't pretend that's not an issue, but I don't think it's good to be paralyzed. So like I'm scared, you know, but I also think that like it's very easy for fear to be an excuse for people to be to not do things, and I don't mean excuse in a negative way per se, though sometimes it is negative, but sometimes people do have like you know, it's like I can't do it because I'm overcome with this fear, but that's not helpful, and we can't really afford that in any, you know, any wide scale because people need to do stuff to make these changes, right? And in a general sense, I don't think that fear should be a fuel. Maybe it could be a spark, right? Like it maybe kicks you in the gear and it's like, okay, I need to take action, but like if that's all that's sustaining the movement of you as a person, your communities, your social context, whatever, then it's like that's not really a great sustainable fuel. But yeah, like if we want to, you know, the question under this question is like, is this an existential crisis or is this crisis serious? And the answer is yes, right? Like it is something that's really existential. And I think about it, and I'm this is probably a thing we'll do every episode, so I apologize if you get tired of it, but I think about it in relation to like colonization and how so much of that was related to these similar kinds of fears about like the world ending or trying to grapple with that possibility. And that was something that like was very imbued across all these colonial processes, but like just as an example, Christopher Columbus was a millenarian, which basically just meant that he like believed in this idea that you know there is a way in which the world might end soon, and then you have to kind of like really be oriented around deliverance and absolution, basically. These kind of ideas of like you know, the world being completely changed in this usually like cyclic manner, again, through religion, right? Like religion was the lens by which uh Columbus and all these other kind of you know people in his milieu, so to speak, in his profession of colonization, I guess, like thought of these things, right? And given that, that is kind of like very, you know, you think about like what it means to be in the Americas in the kind of afterlives of like colonialism and slavery and all this stuff. So given all that, I don't like say it very lightly that you know this crisis is existential and it could quote unquote lead to the end of the world. Like, I'm not saying that in a kind of glib way. I'm trying not to, at least. Right. But I also want to contend with the fact that like given that reality of colonization, that reality of slavery, thousands of years of patriarchy, like ableism, all these things, right? Like all of these systems of domination that are interlocking and intermeshed and holding on to each other so tightly, given all that, I do think that like what we consider, and I'm using we in a kind of expansive way, uh, what is often thought of as the world does need to end in general, regardless of if like this climate stuff is happening, right? And in my mind, I think ideally, if we get our shit together, that can happen along degrowth terms, along decolonial terms, along feminist terms, rather than like, you know, these systems of domination I was describing bending the world until it breaks, right? And just as like a little aside, when I say the world, I don't literally mean something like the earth's going to explode or something like that. What I'm saying is like the all of the social structures and dynamics that have allowed the like physical world and the kind of ecological, like the globe itself sense to like be put into this, you know, situation, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:13

That makes a lot of sense. I I wanted to touch on in in the article you talked about, you know, quote unquote, all the solutions are already here. What does that mean to you?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, that idea is like this is a thing I like to do if you you know, for the people who are really good readers and click on the links of the pieces we write, um, you will see that a lot of times it leads to like a book title. Like I'll like hyperlink a book title. And that's basically the title of one of um Peter Gelderluse's books, uh, who is a person, by the way, that I do have kind of like mixed feelings on, um, given the fact that like you know, he's had some like Twitter spats, and this is the thing about Twitter, is like you really do find out who people are on there, but um have some Twitter spats with some people in I'm in community with, and it was like a very weird situation. But anyway, not necessarily super duper relevant for this particular point, but uh is worthwhile thinking about if you go and decide to read his work, uh is that he's weird to black marginalized gender people. Um and so basically in that book, it's about the ecological crises we're facing in this kind of period of like being in the 2020s, right? And he was writing about community responses to ecological collapse, and then alongside that, doing what you know any good anarchist would do, which is critiquing responses that don't necessarily fit that mold, so responses from NGOs, responses from governments, right? And it really is kind of like a lot of different things, but the basic idea is kind of what it sounds like, right? Is like there is not a need to like hope for some in some far-flung future for some like fancy technological intervention to save us, or for the state to like return to the whatever kind of muscular form we imagine it existing as with all the welfare programs back in the you know, in between World War I and World War II or whatever, or if there's any other kind of like, oh, this is a design issue, and if we just get like the right designers or engineers in the room, they can like make a thing or do a thing or develop a thing that will just like you know allow us to not have to worry about these problems anymore. And I think like given all of that, understanding that even really basic and rudimentary technology that folks already have access to or can like figure out in short order can be really meaningful if they are again situated in this more like degrowth feminist decolonial context and not kind of seen as uh catch-all solutions. I think that's kind of the thing. It's like all the solutions already here is like we have all the stuff we need in a general sense, and it's really about making connections between those different things, between those pieces, rather than trying to find like the one true fix to like allow us to find an exit hatch for this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yeah, I and I understand you at this point. Well, you're writing a piece kind of touching a little bit more on this. It's not out right now, but by the time this podcast is released, it'll probably be out. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Do you want to touch a little bit, like go a little bit deeper? I know you had highlighted a couple pieces. Do you want to give us a little tidbit on that?

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Yeah. And so I'll kind of talk in a way inspired by the piece rather than referring to it directly. But just to use an example, is like people really, I think in America especially, um, have a hard time imagining not having AC, especially in certain places. And that's not to say, you know, me saying this sounds like I'm probably gonna be anti-AC, which like I don't know if that's necessarily the point I'm trying to make, but it's more like okay, again, AC kind of has this very like environmentally harmful profile. In instead, I think it's worthwhile to think about things like passive cooling, passive heating, as in you know, how buildings are built in such a way to where they can like regulate airflow and store heat and things of that nature, and then combining that with like more personal ways to heat yourself or like cool yourself off, right? Like, even like really silly things like you know, I don't know, boiling water and then like putting it in a thermos or something, and then like putting that in your shirt. I know that sounds really silly and like maybe it sounds like a survivalist thing, but like I think this is the kind of stuff that needs to be like thought through, and there's other examples that are more you know, less rudimentary, but just as an example of like thinking about where and should these technologies be deployed, rather than just starting from the place of like, oh, you know, we all need to have a C or we all need to have, you know, these things, so that again, like you start moving away from this over-reliance on all these technologies that are directly impacting the kind of climate situation and like the ecological situation we're in now. Especially because there is probably a world where we like do need some of that, right? And like we want to be able to like say, like, okay, like well, the hospital should probably, you know, I'm saying we probably should be able to regulate the temperature of that place really well. Or if we have like, I don't know, like scientific labs where like things need to be temperature regulated a certain way, right? Like, like those things, it's like okay, I'm not saying we should just let you know let the air blow and whatever and like hope for the best, but it's to say that okay, for those situations, there should be the resources for that rather than it being used up in kind of for the sake of like comfort now at the expense of everything later, is basically what I'm getting at. It's like that's what I am thinking about when I'm thinking about like appropriate technology or basic technology, rudimentary technology. Like, that's kind of what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Yeah, it makes me think about the prior conversation on data centers and how we absolutely do not need to be cooling our data centers.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

No, I don't think we need data centers.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Um, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

And that asks a lot of big questions, right? About like, you know, well, what does that mean for digital technology? Right. And it's like, well, because you know, data centers aren't just the AI thing, they're just like a big tech thing, right? Like, like, you know, the cloud and you know, server racks and all this stuff. Uh the infrastructure relies on that a lot, right? And it's just being exacerbated by AI, needing more of those things. And so if you're you're the question to ask is like, are you against those things? I'm kind of like, well, yeah, I don't know. Like, like, you know, like I don't know what you want me to say. It's like, I personally am like, maybe we just need to figure out how to do without. And maybe that's hard, maybe that's difficult, maybe that's not super quote unquote practical, but like I think that's something that needs to be grappled with really seriously because of the impacts that they're having. Is is having that shit now worth losing the ability to like uphold, you know, many a way of life 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years down the line, you know?

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Yeah. That's uh I don't think it's a hot take, but I think many would think it's a hot take. Sad. So sad. Yeah, I mean, just yeah. Switching topics, like in in the article, you briefly touch on AMOC collapse. Do you want to explain what that is and go into a little bit and also define what it is? Because I just said amok, but what is what is AMOC?

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Mm-hmm. Yeah, basically, I think that collapse is, you know, if I had to encapsulate it, it'd be like, oh, this is really bad. And again, I'm not trying to fear monger, I'm not trying to be pessimistic or whatever, but I'm like trying to be honest with y'all. And it's not it's not looking good, right? So basically, AMOC stands for the Atlantic Meridinial or yeah, meridinial overturning circulation. It's basically the system that like regulates the Atlantic Ocean's temperature in the same way we were just describing with El Nino and La Niña, like that's the Pacific Ocean's temperature, essentially. Basically, the risk there is that like this regulation process, which is slowing down because Arctic waters, which usually like cool, you know, the Atlantic, like they are getting warmer, like the baseline is raising essentially. And so as that happens, then like this AMOX system could shut down, which would raise the temperatures of the ocean, could potentially release a bunch of carbon. And hopefully we all know by now that that's never that's never a good thing. And then alongside that, you know, the sea levels would rise, like Atlantic sea levels, and so you can imagine as it already is happening, a lot of issues would be exacerbated with that as it relates to like coastal Atlantic coastal cities and stuff, right? And so, as far as the risk of this circulation system collapsing, it was you know 35 years ago, whatever, it was like what 5% or something like that. And then that number has like of risk has been raised to like at least 50% by one of those scientists who's been I forget their name right now, but uh we have it linked and it'll be in the show notes and stuff. But one of those scientists has been watching this since the 90s and they're kind of like, oh, like this is getting a lot worse, right? The risk of collapse is so much higher than what it used to be.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Yeah. It's fun stuff. Sorry, I shouldn't, I'm not really joking, but I guess I'm being sarcastic. That's not great, is what I should say. Being that we're you know talking about this podcast with an eye towards liberation. What are the inspiring formations, projects, and movements you're seeing in response to things like El Nino and what's probably to come with the Amok, likely Amok collapse?

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Yeah. I would say, you know, on one hand, there isn't a like, I don't know, like a save the Amok, you know, protests happening or you know, like that kind of thing. I don't know if that would ever happen. I don't know. It's just like hard because there is so much illiteracy in a general sense, and I'm not saying that in a judgy way, but just like that just kind of is what the situation is. So I don't know if people are organizing around those kind of more seemingly abstract scientific things as much as they are like, oh, this specific thing is happening, right? Like, like I my town is flooded or whatever, right? And I'm responding to the flood. So the concrete impacts are kind of more where I'm seeing stuff around. And so there's this book called The Like a Paradise in Hell, and I mentioned that in an article, and it's basically the whole thing is about how people respond to disaster situations by leaning into mutual aid, right? Like as part of their survival, because without it, they probably wouldn't be able to make it. Um, and people obviously people don't make it, but like that is something that people try to do in order to like again survive. And so please go look at that book. It's a really good book, it's a great like way to start thinking about. Um, if you're someone who finds hope to be a useful thing to orient around, great place to really start thinking about like the limits and possibilities of you know what people can do even in these situations that are maybe like super scary or unimaginable, and which will be much more common as time goes on, given the all the climatological things we're dealing with. But anyway, book gives a lot of examples, but I really want to lean into one that feels a little bit more personal to me, just given my connections to the people in my life. And so that specific one I want to talk about is Occupy Sandy, which was basically kind of a group movement organization situation that was responding to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, which hit New York City in the like before times, you know, the ancient times of 2012. So, similar to the you know, hells and paradise discussed by the book I was just talking about, people were really able to come together and provide relief for each other in the wake of that hurricane, right? And so, as the name Occupy Sandy implies, the efforts for that relief and for that kind of mutual aid response were really rooted in the infrastructure, if you could call it that, built by like New York's activist communities, especially or principally coming out of Occupy Wall Street, which was a big movement back in like the era 2010 or sorry, 2011, maybe a little bit into 2010, but like 2011, especially, which you know, Occupy Wall Street obviously, maybe not obviously, but like that was the catalyst for the wider Occupy movement. There's tying into like Air Spring. And if y'all don't know what some of these things are, please go look into them. You know, very important, like recent history of like social movements and stuff. And so if you're interested in our work, then definitely something worth looking into. And maybe if y'all want, we can talk more about that in the future. Anyway, I think one thing to really take away from this kind of occupy sandy experience, and something that seems true across various experiences, like in Hurricane Katrina and another one I'll talk about in a sec, is that the real first responders are like the people who are experiencing the things, right? Like, you know, the folks who are directly impacted by these disasters, right? Because it can take days, weeks, however long for the for the government to show up, whether that's they can't access it or they just are like not coming for whatever reason, right? And so I think that like we see efforts to kind of maybe re address some of that contradiction of like this idea of first responders versus like who's actually there in the immediate kind of situation. And we see like these things called like cert programs, which is like a community emergency response training, is what cert stands for. And it's a thing run by FEMA, but usually, like, for example, in Chicago, I know they like the like Chicago Police Department Department like hosts cert trainings or whatever. It's not technically the police department, it's like the whatever the apparatus the police departments connect to as far as like security or defense, I forget what they call it, but anyway, so that's the point. Um cert programs are kind of a way in which people like community members can get like basic first response training, right? So like how to put out basic like small fires, or like how to like you know, do all these like really basic like skills to help in these disaster situations. But I think that like again, given this. Occupy Sandy situation, like the lessons from that, and given, like I said, the fact that it takes so long for people to get there as far as the first actual quote unquote actual first responders, right? The people who would be labeled as such, the FEMA people and all that. I really do think it's important to build autonomous infrastructure, both so that people can actually get the needs met in these situations more robustly and readily, but also so that like the status quo isn't just able to kind of get sewn back together. Because I like that's what ends up happening a lot of times, right? It's like you have these disasters, people kind of like end up out of necessity living in a different way, some good and some maybe not so good, and then you end up in the situation where like the state is able to kind of like stitch things back together, and maybe you can see maybe it's not a you know very clean repair, but they're able to kind of restore some semblance of quote unquote order, right? On their terms, which I think is problematic, like because that is in part of what makes it so hard to respond to these disasters, is that people are kind of alienated from the ability to control their lives, but that's that's my little anarchist tangent, but anyway. But yeah, like the reliance on the state hasn't really gone well, right? So thinking about Sandy specifically, the Red Cross, like just has so many documented abuses of like the situation and mismanagement where they're like, for example, using vehicles that could be used for relief, and like they're they're somewhere else because they're doing a photo shoot, or like you know, they they have people who are doing all this problematic stuff with children, like in proximity to children, and like like there's all these things where it's like they have so much control of the situation that it kind of just leads to this like ineptitude becoming really harmful, right? And I also think about like the general you know inability for FEMA to do what they're supposed to be able to do uh in local governments as well, because like you know, in Chicago a couple years ago in like 2023, there was a pretty big flood in one of the neighborhoods, right? And a lot of people are still reeling from that and like waiting for support for that, and like the city hasn't really done what they're supposed to do with the money they got from the government for that, and you know, within the past month there's been a lot of flooding again because of you know historic levels of rain or whatever. And so, given all of this stuff, like that is why I'm really interested and passionate about like alternative infrastructure because it is so critical in order for people to actually be able to like respond to the issue shit that's going on in their lives, you know? And like, yeah, that's kind of why I'm like I said, I'm really putting uh exclamation point on that, right? Like putting some emphasis on that. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

I love it. I I want to move to uh kind of like the last, I guess our last question. In in your article, you talk about you know, kind of starting off talking about with the need to build communal climate resilience. I know you, so I I kind of know where you're gonna go with this, but I mean what am I saying? It's for the podcast. What what are you what do you think people are missing genuinely when we hear calls to build communal climate resilience?

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Yeah, and and we kind of got into this a little bit earlier, but I think that like again, we're gonna do this thing where we do callbacks because that's what podcast people do, is they do callbacks, previous episodes. But um in a previous episode, it was I think it was around video games, funnily enough, and like the games industry, we talked about a framework that was basically like building, fighting, inspiring, and empowering, right? And to answer your question directly, I think that like when it comes to talking about climate resilience specifically, there's a lot of focus on the building part, which is one of those four. Um, and maybe it has elements, yeah, maybe it has elements of like you know, inspiring, empowering, and then maybe you have people like XR who are doing fighting in some way, whatever, whatever, there's some climate activists, right? Like people, but I think that like the issue is seeing those things as like separate spheres rather than like mutually reinforcing gears is really problematic. Um, and maybe that feels a little bit too uh uh abstract, I hope not, but like like if you're just like, oh, I'm just gonna build these communal situations, right? Like, like I'm gonna, okay, well, we know we need mutual aid when the hurricane hits or when the flood happens, so we're gonna start building mutual aid now, great. But then if you're just thinking about like that, when you know you you try to do distro in like a like a homeless encampment, for example, and the cops are mad because you're you know what I'm saying, like it's technically illegal in a lot of places in America to like get food out, they just maybe don't always, you know, get people uh grief over that. But I hope that makes sense, right? Like, like you're already, even when you're doing the non quote unquote non-confrontational stuff, the more nurturing, care-oriented, resource-oriented stuff, you're already seen as like a threat in a confrontation. It's just like up to them whether or not they decide to act on that as like the state or whatever. And so, like, I say I'd say like all these things kind of have to be thought of in tandem because the reality is they all do exist in tandem already, and like are limiting factors for each other, right? And so that is kind of like the big thing I feel like is missing is like being able to kind of have that wider purview that understands, like, oh, you know, the thing I may be focused on and care about. That's not to say I have to be able to like envision how everything connects in this very clear way, but to say that like there's a need for connections to be made between different kind of parts of a movement or different functions of a movement, right? Like they're again, building and fighting are kind of commonly talked about, especially in some of the spaces I'm in. But like the inspiring and the empowering piece, which again, all these things are kind of linked together, so it's hard to like truly, truly, truly articulate them separately. But like being ready for the fact they are already connected, I think is really important. So that again, like when you're building your mutual aid stuff, you're able to be like, we can resist getting kicked out of a space or having a plan for if people try to, you know, there's agitators or there's people who are like against people giving food out, which sounds weird, but that is a thing that happens, right? People have hecklers, people have counter protesters, people have all these different things. And so, yeah, just having that more ecological, I guess, you know, if I have to put in the word, ecological kind of view on these things so that they can mutually enforce each other and be effective. And a lot of that just comes from making connections with people, uh organizing in a way that like allows for those connections to become visible to y'all, if not to the outside world, so that when somebody starts messing with the mutual aid folks, maybe there's a defense crew that comes and pulls up, you know, or maybe those mutual aid folks do have some basic level of like defense capacity within their formation so that like they don't have to deal with, you know what I'm saying? Like those issues don't become as big of a problem, and like just really being ready to protect the capacity to do stuff so that the stuff can get done and that and so those things can be like bolstered, right? Yeah, but that's kind of my big thing, is like really orienting from that like ecological standpoint in the sense of like there being multiple pieces to this thing, and like understanding that all the pieces kind of work together for the holistic functions that we're looking for, which is this more like liberatory, like movement-oriented approach that is able to like you know, shift conditions.

SPEAKER_01 29:36

Beautiful.