Yes, the Zeitgeist has turned more and more towards macrofutilism in a stunningly rapid manner, but no, humanity can never let itself be so bold in public state the truth in no uncertain terms.
A fine writer, popular science naturalist, father of three triplets, and husband to a long Covid victim, authors 2023 treatise on imperiled wild species across the globe, replete with honest and affecting overviews of our looming and now gathering Climatastrophe.
I often find myself psychologically turning to stone, unable to full grasp what I’m reading or seeing, unable to think clearly or write coherently, even for weeks at a time. Sometimes I can intellectually understand something abut climate breakdown, but it feels so abstract as to be meaningless, even if it right in front of me.
Adam Welz, The End of Eden,2023, pg. 236.
That’s a sign of humanity getting closer to an actual understanding of the human predicament, even if 99% of the surrounding culture propounds bullshit emanating from a rotted core. Welz takes it up that last ratchet of tension:
Sometimes it seems hopeless. We’ve already done so much damage. Solving the climate crisis is an almost incomprehensibly massive job; we must change so much so fast, and there are no silver bullets, no single actions or policies, or technologies that’ll help achieve our goals. We must retain unity of purpose while being bombarded by a cacophony of conflicting opinions about what’s needed, many of them cunningly crafted by bad actors to throw us off track. We must take on and beat extremely strong, entrenched fossil fuel profiteers who will do almost anything- including murder their opponents, foment revolutions and wars, and destroy their own families’ opportunities to live on a stable, thriving planet – to retain their power.
And there is a rea; possibility we will fail.
All this is true, so it’s no wonder that many people succumb to climate “doomism,” slumping into indifference and inaction because they believe global disaster is inevitable.
Adam Welz, The End of Eden, 2023, pg. 239
Ah, you were doing well, and then you blew it, Mr. Welz – falling into that utter inanity that marks the failed mind. Of course humanity cannot change so much so fast – that’s not the way hypercomplex social reality works. Nobody has the slightest idea or track record of anything more significant than a local bake sale that “takes on” the global corporate and state corporate supersystem, let alone “beat.” who thinks in such nonsensical terms? Do you see any oil exec in leg chains? Anybody witness crying hedge funders or investment bankers? Any weapons developers and sellers walking around in barrels? Nothing has been done against the global power structure. Zero. Nothing for over 50 years. Power has become ever more concentrated, evermore totalitarian in operation, evermore destructive in reality and in prospect.
Nobody “succumbs” to climate doomism – it’s an intellectual position that approximates truth, nothing more, nothing less. No underlying action separates doomers from non-doomers – we are equally beholden to the greater social realities that govern our particular lives, rendering us able to buy a solar panel or two while knowing its mining reality and futile overlay; recycle while aware of the con and the lie of preposterous planet-killing waste; support green policies that are ultimately nothing more than ineffectual greenwashing. “indifference and inaction” would probably be much better for the CO2 values than earnest fossil-fuel-dependent activism, but that is not what humanity is doing, and is going to do – it will go about its business, no matter how ecocidal, no matter how stupid and shortsighted it is in the face of guaranteed Climatastrophe, because that is the nature of ultrasocial humanity.
Oh no, there’s such hope yet in our world, counters Welz, such grandiose re-speciation possibility:
Dominant moral values and habits can shift over the span of a single generation, and we can swiftly stop ding harmful things to ourselves when necessary. I remember clearly when cigarette smoking as normal almost everywhere, most adults seemed to smoke, and conventional wisdom held that it was almost impossible to stop because nicotine is so addictive. Now cigarettes are almost invisible in the public places of many countries, and I often go to large social events where no one smokes.
Welz, The End of Eden, pg. 240
The corporate mass murder through the production and selling of tobacco products is not a hopeful tale. How stupid could a species be to permit such global mass murder for so many decades at the direct costs of millions upon millions of lives, which still continues to this day? Who in their right mind connects such laissez faire ghastliness of abdication of regulation to the infinitely greater task of drawing away every trace of fossil fuel blood in our bloodstream and replacing it with sweet non-CO2 -containing nectar? “Identity” politics has produced some welcome change at the barest margins of humanity’s conduct, while leaving its suicidal supersystem not only intact, but further strengthened.
Here’s the last, most pitiful boosterism from a writer who at least was showing some signs of getting it:
We must change a lot about the way we make things and use things, how we consume and dispose of things, to prevent the worst effects of climate breakdown. This is a colossal, intimidating job, but it means that opportunities for making a positive difference are abundant everywhere.
Welz, The End of Eden, 2023, pg. 240.
Now that’s the pure bullshit that we are so used to and dependent on. We are not changing jackshit- how difficult is that to see? If by making a car that runs on mushrooms we save 4 people for three additional weeks out of the 8 billion going extinct , is that going to be some grand accomplishment? If we have a terminal illness, and we somehow grab an extra day of hacking, wheezing, non-living life, is that supposed to gladden our hearts?
There are precisely no, zero, “opportunities for making a positive difference,” let alone be “abundant everywhere.” By doing what in the face of the human predicament? Exactly, manifestly what, right now, today, tomorrow? None of us can bring the dead back to life. none of us can arrest the course of the growth-dependent supersystem. We are here to ride the whirlwind of destruction, and the best we can do is hang on and try to keep the self-ennobling lies to a minimum. We can try to aim in our unreplicable privileged individual lives for micro amounts of lesser harm in whatever terms are suitable, but that’s about it, and we can know where this is all headed. Isn’t that enough?
MACRO-FUTILISM 
There’s an image missing from the book cover depicting missing animals: humans. It’s a disappearing act already underway. I’ve called the hopes and dreams of an eleventh-hour rescue from collapse lots of things. A “last-second swerve” is as good as any because it calls up a game of chicken — except that in this instance, no one can or will swerve before the crash. In terms of evolution, no species adapts to its changing environment in advance of need. So yeah, we carry on without altering course, and the headlights directly in front only get bigger and brighter.
I appreciate your remark that “no one succumbs to climate doomerism.” The rebranding of reality as something other than truth is the mark of mental gymnastics at work to kill the messenger and avoid unpleasantness. However, I will point out that there is one thing we’re doing collectively: having fewer children. Human birth rate is declining and is already below replacement rate in some countries, which becomes a self-reinforcing demographic cycle. Population projections still say human population will reach 9 billion by 2037 and 10 billion by 2057 but I have doubts.
8 billion, 10 billion, 2 billion, zero, 28 billion – somewhere in that ballpark lies the answer to the great overpopulation dilemma. This is the range covered in there sources:
https://www.collapse2050.com/mandatory-viewing/
Anti-natalism is definitely a contender to flavor-of-the-month intellectual trend, a very welcome happenstance when the Quiverful movement occupied that transitory throne a few years ago.