ecospirit

For many years now, this blog has swung between deep pessimism about climate disruption and study of possible techno-fixes.  The most time-consuming of those periods of study was 2006-07, when I took off six months to study nuclear power.  My conclusion was that, despite the manifold dangers, it was worth the risk, given the certain doom of fossil fuel addiction.  This was not a popular position at the annual Quaker Earthcare Witness meeting, and some folks were looking daggers at me when I refused consensus with their public statement about its dangers, which my study showed me included errors and lies.  Fifteen years later, world reliance on nuclear power has lessened, and we have produced as much CO2 since 2000 as we did from the outset of the Industrial Revolution, 1790-2000.

But I have always returned to my dark roots, and that has happened again.  Led by the indefatigable Michael Dowd, I have encountered the work of Dahr Jamail, whose book, The End of Ice,  is the latest in a series of books that have profoundly influenced me with respect to climate disruption.  Each time I read accounts of the latest science, I face anew the starkness of our future as a species, and of whole pieces of the biosphere.  In the case of Jamail, meticulous journalism is combined with personal history and a willingness to record his feelings about our dilemma– and crucially, those of the scientific experts he interviews.  Jamail models for me personal practices (he might agree with the broad term “spiritual”) of going to the woods when he reaches overwhelm, and going through grief, fear, and anger, rather than walling them out. For these reasons, I find his truth-telling unparalleled in my extensive study of climate science during the last twenty-odd years. 

In addition to Ice, there are two fine Jamail interviews, one with Dowd, another with Carolyn Baker and Andrew Harvey.  Other extremely helpful interviews in Dowd’s “Post-Doom” series are those with Jem Bendell (“Deep Adaptation”) and the droll and thoughtful Alan Weisman, author of The World Without Us.

Last night, I read Jamail's devastating chapter on the imminent loss to seal-level rise of the Everglades, along with virtually all of South Florida.  In his interviews with engineers, city planners, and scientists in the greater Miami area, he encounters some deeply responsible public officials whose response to the frightening sea-level data is to create a timeline and budgeted priorities in abandoning property prudently and responsibly.  This includes a seaside nuclear reactor site at which the NRC has approved adding another reactor! As I read these encounters, I realized that they were outlining a third position to my own polar travels. That is a position of orderly and dignified retreat, modeled especially by the mayor of South Miami, Phillip Stoddard, who is also professor of biology at Florida International University.  Continuing denial, or unqualified optimism, will only lead to the kinds of chaotic responses that have characterized most of our "adaptive" responses to date.

This is an unglamorous position, and very hard work, especially in an era of continuing Republican denial and the generally inconsistent response to climate and other ongoing large dilemmas that populist politics has mired us in. But it is an admirable response, both practically and morally, which one can contrast with both doomer “quitting” and activist eleventh-hour behavior when midnight is baked into the pudding. (The key data here is that every 100-ppm CO2 increase in the atmosphere produces 100 feet of sea-level rise. At 410 ppm, 130 feet of sea-level rise is insured, no matter what happens with future emissions Ice, 130-31. I'll leave it to my readers to check the elevations of the world's major coastal cities.)  This is responsible behavior in terms of humanity, but also in the interest of the beings involved in the holy mystery of ongoing evolution.  The overarching vision is described in E. O. Wilson’s sublimely optimistic Half-Earth  (now whittled down to "30-30"), highlighted by such efforts as planting trees poleward to insure the best possibility of their surviving the current Sixth Extinction. 

Labels: 30-30, Dahr Jamail, End of Ice, EO Wilson, Everglades, Half-Earth, Miami, Michael Dowd, sea level rise, sixth extinction, South Florida