Squirrelative overshoot

You may have heard an apocryphal story about squirrel who could, in the era predating Industrial Revolution or possibly even the Roman conquest, traverse the island of Britain without touching the ground, jumping tree to tree. It is mostly a licentia poetica, sure, but then again, tree cover change explains about 13 % of the observed greening mostly via forests planted in China and the US. In the aforementioned forest areas, for example, wild ginkgos (sic) still exist.

That is to say, I’m not against credibility of the climate change per se, I’m against those who posit its uniqueness, against eco alarmism and “selling overshoot.” The Club of Rome already had an edge in that; mature, developed business now. Each time when, to wit, a forest fire engulfs particularly expensive parcel of suburban land in SoCal under the skies black not with December snows, but with ashes unshed, we hear about global warming running amok; actually, catastrophic wildfires are endemics of this beautiful land.

I’m more inclined to the point of view that is/was being supported, say, by Julian Simon in The Ultimate Resource and his ilk.

Though even in science fiction, hopepunk sells much worse than (post)apocalyptic settings.

For example, as stated by my (alas) late pen friend Jerry Pournelle, Fallen Angels, which I reckon one of the very best hopepunk novels (and, at the same time, the best stinging satires on unabated progressivism/green transition hype) in existence, didn’t reach sales figures of Lucifer’s Hammer or Footfall.

Another moderately sad analogy: we already have something called the Aurora syndrome (after the book of Kim Stanley Robinson) in transhumanist/space exploration speculative studies, but its “hopepunk” antithesis is yet to emerge out of generation ships stories, albeit I have a good nominee.

Why is it so? Because ever since the times of Heinlein, Simak, and Aldiss battles of mutant wildlings inside the generation ships gone with the cosmic winds sell better.