In 2040 I will be 60. In 2050 I will be 70. I am lucky enough that I am likely to remain relatively healthy throughout my middle age; I like to think that my old age will not start until I am 70. I have read enough now about the -more or less global- Collapse of modern civilization that is highly probable before 2050, and highly possible by 2040. This means that civilization is likely to become decrepit before I do, and I am likely, like the majority of humans alive after 2040, to suffer a tragic death (although I may not). How can I make my death less tragic? How can I die well? Firstly, I can resolve not to die in a state of blind ignorance about what is happening to the world, as unfortunately, many are doomed to do (I urge you to read about Collapse, particularly its thermodynamic and ecological bases). Secondly, I can resolve not to die in a state of blind panic. If I know my death may be tragic, the least I can do to prepare is contemplate the various possibilities of my death, as well as maintain a good meditation practice of letting go: letting go pain; letting go all distractions from the present moment. This is dying well amidst Collapse.
Category: Ecology of the absurd
Cryptic episode
Two animals circled each other in love and hate. One of them was wild and one obsessively tame. The wild one started to see danger everywhere, fear and aggression artificially heightened when she became aware that her kind was threatened. The tame one encouraged her into a cage, but only, or so he thought, because it was a cage where she might rest and ingest calming substances and sentences in safety, so as not to explode her brain. Because the tame one had been so hurt by her exaggerated wildness, and he saw that the wild one had hurt herself too.
The tame one picked a tarot card, and it read, ‘La Force’ which gave him the strength to encourage the wild one to stay in the cage. A few days later he picked another card, ‘Roy de baton’ which helped him to adopt the role of a just and kind father, or so he thought. He spoke soothingly through the bars of the cage:
‘This will make you stronger, so that you may fight for the survival of your kind’ he told the wild one, his enemy and lover, and she understood, or so he thought. Secretly she used her restrained wildness to hatch a plan to undo her lover’s tameness. Ultimately, it was her wildness that was the stronger force in both of them.
Originally published in the Schemattic digital garden.
Chipper Dale
By Nina Hart: This story originally appeared in the book of short stories, Somewhere in a Town You Never Knew Existed Somewhere
Charles Chipper Dale stood dressed in the full regalia of an eight-year-old on his front lawn in Xenia, Ohio. The air was hot, and black, and sweet. Charlie jumped nervously from one foot to the other, nostrils flaring like a hunting dog’s. “The tornado will hit without warning!” prophesized Chipper to his audience of six children, one dirty sparrow, and a beat-up red Tonka Truck. “We will all be dead, taken up into the wormlike mass, cold faces pressed against one another in the brutal raging wind!” The children all sighed and began to shake and cry. “I have to go home and get my Snoopy Roo-Roo.” cried Ellen, who looked like a ringing bell in her oversized green dress. “Well the clouds will suck you up like a milkshake into the sky if you do, Ellen! I forbid you to go anywhere, Ellen.” said Charlie. “Where are the parents? Where are the parents?” asked Jake Lacky, who had a wide chest just like his pot-smoking dad. “My teacher said I’m a latchkey kid. What’s a latchkey kid?” No one knew. In the distance the raw smell of rain drew closer. The children could taste the mist as it slipped on their lips like hard candy. They could feel a rumble in the earth under their hot tennis shoes. “What do we do, Charlie?” asked Rainbow, one of Jake Lacky’s three siblings, latchkey kid and daughter of the pot smoker. “Look to the wind.” said Charles Chipper Dale, fingers twitching, eyes veering off into the far distance. “It’s here, it’s coming, and it won’t be long. We won’t wait for the sirens to go off. We’re children. We can feel things. Let’s head on down to the root cellar, one at a time. Single file.” “I love you all so much,” whispered Rainbow, as she held her brother Jake’s hand and followed him down the stone staircase. Cars and their drivers drove past the children on the street. Faces and heads and necks propelled forward on their way back to work after lunch break. All of them ignoring the twisting sky in the distance and the staunch smell of darkness. The tornado would hit without warning. The latchkey kids would be safe in Charlie Dale’s root cellar, listening to the roaring sounds of the King of Winds. All of them holding hands and Rainbow mouthing I love you I love you and I love you all into the dark green landscape.
You can really do it!
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”, Shakespeare, Hamlet circa 1600
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven”, John Milton, Paradise Lost, 1667
Zeal is what you need! Get UP! Get unentranced! True, it is hell, but ride the diamond seams right through it, to where your grateful grand nieces will be waiting. Have an apple a day until there are none left, and then a handful of bitter berries a day, and find a new sweetness in that sharp taste.
Enough enough! I know I know, it worsens by the day, you do not need to tell me. Choose your own private bliss and hold steadfastly to it, do what work you can, enjoy the sunrise but more than ever the sunset and all that it is setting on.
I had a new student today. Just ten years old. He was not very communicative. He told me about his best friend. I asked him, why are you best friends? He replied, because I love him and he loves me. He reminded me that sometimes, love can be beautifully simple.
Zeal is what we need. Imagine the good we could do, even if it were just a few of us. There is zeal in ecology, the way it thrives and burns. But we have become lazy. Soon the Earth will force our hands, and we can thank God or Life at least for that.
The Fate of the World: The History & Future of the Climate Crisis by Bill McGuire
The Fate of the World: The History & Future of the Climate Crisis by Bill McGuire, was released today on 21st May 2026. Bill McGuire is a volcanologist, climate scientist, activist, keynote speaker and writer of popular science and speculative fiction.
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Bill is Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL, a Co-director of the New Weather Institute, a Patron of Scientists for Global Responsibility, and Special Scientific Advisor to WordForest.Org. Bill has a personal connection with the founding editor of Centre of the Web, Matthew Azuley: Bill kindly wrote the introduction, for free, for the anthology Climate Collapse? -Calls to Action from Around the World, compiled and edited by Matthew Azuley and published by Arkbound.
Matthew is delighted about the release of Bills new book, although perhaps delighted is not quite the right word to use, in the context of unfolding climate collapse. Matthew remembers how impressed he was with Bills very accessible introduction text for Climate Collapse? Bill is a great science communicator, and he puts to shame other climate science communicators. Below is an example, an extract from the introduction to Climate Collapse?
We are in deep, deep sh*t. It’s what I told a BBC journalist interviewing me in 2021 about our failing climate, and nothing has happened since to alter my view. Indeed, things have gotten considerably worse. Whether we accept it or not, our climate is already broken to such a degree that it will have a colossal impact upon every aspect of our lives, the lives of our children and their children, and the lives of those to come, not just for years, but for millennia. 2023 and 2024 were the hottest on record, and quite probably saw the highest temperatures since the warmth of the last interglacial period, 125,000 years or so ago. Already supercharged weather has become even more monstrous, exemplified by catastrophic flooding in Spain and apocalyptic wildfires in southern California. Prospects are bleak, to say the least, but before delving more deeply into the future of our overheating world, let’s begin with the current state of play...
Buy Bills new book here.
Centre of the Web 