Cyclone Otis and the Acapulco Ringing Bell: Climate Change Realities and Gross Domestic Burning Fallacies

This article was exclusively written for The European Sting by one of our passionate writers, Mr. Alexandros K. Liakopoulos. The opinions expressed within reflect only the writer’s views and not necessarily The European Sting’s position on the issue.

October 25 was the day the loudest ringing bell of Gaia’s Climate Change realities clung to the megaphone of planet Earth, when Otis, a category 5 Cyclone landed on Acapulco and devastated it. The images of the shores, the beach and the iconic city are breathtaking. Testimonies are also telling. People could not believe how fast and how hard Otis formed just outside their coastline and hit them. Until just 12 hours ago, weather forecasters were predicting that Otis was going to be only about heavy rains and some strong winds – nothing to really worry about. And then came a hammer. People are still counting their dead, amounting to about a hundred so far, and their missing ones.

Why did this happen? How is this even possible? Well, Otis came just a week after Andra Garner, climatologist of the Department of Environmental Science, Rowan University, Glassboro, New Jersey, published a scientific report where she was predicting these exact phenomena: “Quickly intensifying tropical cyclones (TCs) are exceptionally hazardous for Atlantic coastlines. An analysis of observed maximum changes in wind speed for Atlantic TCs from 1971 to 2020 indicates that TC intensification rates have already changed as anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have warmed the planet and oceans. Mean maximum TC intensification rates are up to 28.7% greater in a modern era (2001–2020) compared to a historical era (1971–1990). In the modern era, it is about as likely for TCs to intensify by at least 50 kts in 24 h, and more likely for TCs to intensify by at least 20 kts within 24 h than it was for TCs to intensify by these amounts in 36 h in the historical era. Finally, the number of TCs that intensify from a Category 1 hurricane (or weaker) into a major hurricane within 36 h has more than doubled in the modern era relative to the historical era. Significance tests suggest that it would have been statistically impossible to observe the number of TCs that intensified in this way during the modern era if rates of intensification had not changed from the historical era.”

Put in less scientific terms, Garner observed that due to the rise of the temperature of the oceans due to fossil fuel burning that has triggered Climate Change, what were previously typical tropical storms we could easily navigate become an unstoppable force of nature in a super-fast manner. What is more, the change happens near the coastline, allowing for little time to even think what to do: flee or freeze and take refuge? If you do the former, is there enough time and what way to follow? If you do the latter, what is the safe refuge you are looking for? Nobody knows how to answer these questions, as the phenomenon is new – Otis was a firstborn – and countries are not prepared to address new problems. What is even more, countries seem trapped in catastrophic denial of the new challenges and the urgency to address them: at best, they think of Climate Emergency as a problem of the future; at worst, they think of it as Climate Scum, denying it altogether. Yet, Otis did hit and Garner was right: in contrast to religious beliefs of any kind, scientific knowledge helps exactly because it works, it predicts things accurately, it can make us understand the whys and the hows the world works beyond superstition and unsubstantiated hopes or fears. 

This year has been the hottest year we have ever recorded. As has been the year before and the year before. This tendency is well observed and quite constant for the last decades. The oceans become hotter and hotter, the Ice Sheats are melting, and the wild-forests are wild-burning. The predictions are dire: West Antarctic ice-shelf melting is predicted to lead to a Sea-Level Rise (SLR) of about 5,3 meters; the Greenland ice sheet melting will produce another 2 to 7 meters SLR, as we are overshooting the critical threshold; couple all these with the fact Canada has faced in 2023 the wildest wildfires ever recorded, starting much earlier and burning much wider, as also did Russia and you ‘ll get the whole picture. Gaia is on fire. A major climatic instability happens, but we cannot even record it while we continue business as usual. Actually, we do record it, each and every one of us feel the difference and see the images in every day news but in the same time does not know how to correspond to it: the drama is too big for any one of us to feel ready to contribute with our small, miniscule powers and resources. So, we let the drama unfold, erasing forests, coasts, species, and – essentially – our very futures.

Nevertheless, not all of us behave in a similar manner. There are Climate Change deniers out there, as there are Climate Change culprits: the fossil fuels industry along with the warmongers of the world. They also continue business as usual: the former are extracting fossil fuels and put them in world circulation to create their profits as they also put them at the disposal of the latter, who range their wars to assure the extraction spots of the former, along with their profits, in parallel with their own personal gains in national or personal prestige, fame and eternal glory. In the same time, since the ecological footprint of wars is huge, Climate Change gains further speed and momentum, like Otis, turning from an innocent tropical storm to a catastrophic category-5 Armageddon.

The last couple of centuries we have devised GDP to quantify the “progress” our societies made year by year in the production process. Nate Hagens has observed that for every specific Product we produce, there is a corresponding energy consumption, i.e. energy burning, that has to be spent. So, he has proposed that we no longer speak for GDP, but instead we speak for GDB: Gross Domestic Burning. I find this terminology very useful, in order to bring us closer to current realities. In a 2022 article of hers, Erin Remblance, co-founder of (re)Biz, supports that capitalism is incompatible with our survival from Climate Change, as it supports infinite growth within a fin

ite planet: it will exhaust it and burn it till we have nowhere to stand, in a sense. And this is happening already. But we cannot change course, because capitalism has affected our minds to the extend that we feel incapacitated to even think that we can change a socio-economic system, Remblance upholds. So, firstly and mostly, we need to “decapitalize our minds”: this the key to addressing climate change.

Techno-optimists believe that AI will help us address climate change within the existing paradigm; I believe they are wrong. You cannot solve the problems using the same methods that got you were you stand. A day after Otis hit Acapulco, UNSG Antonio Guterres appointed his Advisory Body on AI, urging it to help put the technology at work for the achievement of the SDGs. However, we do not stop, immediately and totally, burning fossil fuels, no matter the cost on growth and comfort and satisfaction, except for reasons of life and death, and if we do not adopt a decapitalized mindset based on a degrowth philosophy, I hardly believe we can make it through the forthcoming Climate Dramas. Even more, if we continue killing each other instead of helping each other to cope with our dire futures, succumbing to our lowest instincts instead of our higher intellects, the Climate will fall upon our head much faster. In his latest book, titling it “Our Fragile Moment, the world renown climatologist and geophysicist, Michael E. Mann leaves a very short window of opportunity for us to act. Yes, he upholds. We do have a way through our fragile moment. But to go through it, “we need to act before it truly does become too late”. Otis was the alarming bell that “too late” is approaching fast. Let’s start acting. The time to wait and see is over.

So, get off your couch, get informed, get mobilized, push your government to take measures, stop fossil fuels from extracting and circulating their products, do all you can to change the socio-economic system, contribute to the paradigm shift that Gaia is yelling for. Should you not do it, who will? Should you not do it now, when will you? No other is left but you, as everybody on the planet is you, me included. No other moment is left to act but now, as all other moments have passed and no other moments remain: we already stand at the edge of chaos. We are regarding the Abyss for long.