Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Lima COP as Patchwork Quilt
I must confess to being one who has
been caught up in strategy and effectiveness, sometimes discounting
or forgetting my leadings. This has meant a series of Advents in
which I have had my faith in the rebirth of Light regularly
challenged by the failure of climate geopolitics. Reading my friend
Mary's comment today brings me back to my own little square, leaving
the grand design of solving humankind's greatest challenge ever. And
today's piece of that square is simply giving an honest appraisal of
what happened at Lima.
The image of a patchwork is actually a
good one for the outlines of a Paris accord. Instead of a grand
design, a treaty where every nation agrees to the same action, the
last couple of years of patient exhausting work have led to an
agreement where each nation chooses its way forward toward the goal
of holding global warming to 2 degrees C.
The language in the approved text is
“common but differentiated responsibilities and respective
capabilities.” It's not a binding deal.
It's all about early adopters and peer pressure. But the biggest
three emitters have provided momentum, with the US, China, and
the EU promising the most at this point. And they produce over 60%
of current emissions. For once, the rest of the world is not
pointing at the US for blocking progress.
Still missing is a commitment from the fourth largest emitter, India, which is still playing catch-up in economic development (and I can tell you from experience that it has the world's most inefficient electrical grid). Hopefully that will change by the end of March, which is when nations have agreed to present their “ante,” the initial reduction promises. Narendra Modi, the wildly popular new PM, besides being a business booster, had a something of a reputation as a green chief minister of Gujarat. We shall see.
One of the big roadblocks in
negotiations thusfar has been over the climate justice argument.
Poor nations argue that those who have historically created the most
emissions should provide substantial assistance to developing
economies as a kind of reparations payment. The rich nations have
responded that the most important thing is to address current
emissions, where some of the developing nations are the worst
offenders, especially China, the world's biggest emitter, and India.
Though the divide is still large, Lima saw a softening of these
positions. $10 billion has now been committed to the Green Climate
Fund (designated funds to help with both mitigation and adaptation to
climate change among poor nations). Most importantly, several
developing nations have now committed to this fund, including several
South and Central American nations and South Korea (technically a
developing nation in UNFCCC terms). This is still a small amount,
considering the goal of providing $100 billion a year for these
efforts worldwide. But there is now a core of countries on both
sides of the divide willing to cooperate.
The biggest boost to a potential Paris
accord, and to breaking through the rich-poor divide, was the joint
announcement by US and Chinese leaders to reduce (US) and cap (China)
carbon emissions a few weeks prior to the Lima conference. China has
promised to cap its carbon emissions by 2030, and the US to reduce
its emissions from 2005 levels in 2025 by 26-28%. These reductions
would be primarily due to the EPA's recent decision to severely
curtail coal in the mix of fuels for the US electrical grid, along
with last year's mandated fuel economy increases for vehicles,
including for the first time, freight trucks. As for China, it has
the biggest green energy program on earth, as well as the largest
build-up of nuclear power plants, which are virtually fossil-free
after they are built. After a record-breaking build-up of coal-fired
plants, they now promise to stop building new ones in a few years.
Looking at the global picture, the
patchwork metaphor allows us to see that there is indeed a trend
towards reducing CO2 emissions, a combination of regional carbon
markets, commitments by individual nations, as well as hundreds of
cities world-wide. The week of the People's Climate Rally, a World
Bank director announced that there was a substantial surge in the
world's carbon markets, now covering 25% of carbon emissions. During the Lima talks, representatives of these markets were
hard at work making their interactions more efficient.
The COP process itself is adopting this
approach, which means more participation, but less assurance of
success. Nation-by-nation commitments due by March 31 are voluntary,
as is compliance. The hope is that a regular cycle of review will
provide the impetus to improve on these initial positions, an "ex-ante" process whereby the carbon reduction stakes can be
raised, driven forward by peer pressure. The potential success of a
Paris accord rests squarely on how well this process works.
Obviously, for any hope of even getting close to the 2 degrees C goal
(which many feel is not attainable), this process will need to ramp
up rapidly.
The clerk of Quaker Earthcare Witness, my friend Roy, responded later in the day to the quilt square analogy, pointing out that the frame and backing for the global carbon reduction quilt is provided by the community. It is the group that stitches the backing and the borders of the quilt. Otherwise, you just have a bunch of squares lying around. This is the context provided by the UNFCCC process, and the whole idea of international cooperation. Many green activists, despairing over the slow progress made thusfar, have given up on the frame and backing, retiring to their own piece of the quilt. That's okay, because the whole process goes forward regardless of our individual postions. But I want to affirm the international process, flawed as it is, because it provides the frame and backing for this emergent quilt.
The clerk of Quaker Earthcare Witness, my friend Roy, responded later in the day to the quilt square analogy, pointing out that the frame and backing for the global carbon reduction quilt is provided by the community. It is the group that stitches the backing and the borders of the quilt. Otherwise, you just have a bunch of squares lying around. This is the context provided by the UNFCCC process, and the whole idea of international cooperation. Many green activists, despairing over the slow progress made thusfar, have given up on the frame and backing, retiring to their own piece of the quilt. That's okay, because the whole process goes forward regardless of our individual postions. But I want to affirm the international process, flawed as it is, because it provides the frame and backing for this emergent quilt.
Will it be finished in time to
accomplish the goal of halting runaway climate change? This remains
improbable, but we are all working within the web, and cannot step
out and see the whole picture, including the Mystery which underlies
the process, the ultimate frame and backing for our effort at
planetary survival. My bedrock hope is in the power of that Mystery,
which supports and transcends the individual conscience and the
checkered endeavors of the global community.
Labels: Advent, carbon market, COP 15 and 20, Copenhagen, ex-ante process, Lima, Narendra Modi, Paris climate accord, patchwork quilt, Quaker Earthcare Witness, UNFCCC
Monday, March 31, 2014
Collapsing Consciously: Transformative Truths for Turbulent Times
Among the political-ecological early warning community, Carolyn Baker has always been the voice of going inward to find the emotional and spiritual resources for this challenge. Her sequel to Sacred Demise continues her reflections on how to turn the epochal crisis of the collapse of industrial civilization into an opportunity for self and communal transformation. In the few short years since the earlier book's release (2009), the global corporate industrial juggernaut has only dug deeper ruts in the fragile earth, and those who see collapse on the horizon are no longer a fringe group. If Sacred Demise was edgy and prescient, Collapsing Consciously is clearly timely, judging by the number of friends who have picked it up with interest. These same folks ignored the prequel five years ago.
The introductory chapter challenges us
to move away from the pursuit of happiness and into “the joy of
mindful preparation,” building inner resilience as well as moving
logistically towards a world without supermarkets, viable
trasnportaion, hospitals, or the state security apparatus. As I
listen to her talking about the joy that comes from life with daily
risk, I am reminded of paleolithic life, when everything was more
alive, more beautiful, more terrifying, because we had not yet
retreated behind the fortresses of sedentary habit. And joy comes
from building community, recognizing that your neighbors will
vitally matter to your security and well-being post-collapse. These
are the foundations of turning our fragmented civilization around,
whether or not collapse is on the horizon. This thread runs
throughout the book, moving into deepening our relationships to take
time to hear each other's stories (for instance when one has lost
everything; collapse is like one tsunami after another), eventually
becoming “hospice workers for the world.”
Baker minces no words in looking
squarely at the suffering and loss that even the wealthy will face in
what is probably a near future. She speaks of the breakdown of civil
society, with the accompanying loss of law-and-order. And she worries
about undoing all the progress made in gender and race relations. As
a Quaker pacifist, I worry about being prepared for a world in which
armed vigilantes become the chief security force. A member of our
Meeting spoke to me a few years ago to about the possibility of
training a local militia, pointing out the success the Swiss have had
with this approach, wondering what the Meeting's stance towards this
would be. As clerk, I considered bringing this concern to monthly
meeting for business – but the time did not seem ripe.
Baker's early career featured Jungian
and feminist writing, and that strain comes out in this work as well.
I accept her statement about the death of the ego as it is presently
constructed, allowing something deeper to emerge and lead us, as well
as the patently Jungian question, “What does collapse want from
us?” And I love the allusion to native ceremonies which focus on
“spiritual employment” - especially the unique gifts each new
human being brings to the community in a world where the idea of
economic opportunity will be virtually meaningless.
But I find her characterization of
“masculine and feminine archetypes” overly formulaic, with a
tiresome reassertion of the superiority of a matriarchal world,
something that has been falsely represented, more fantasy than
history. We will need the positive masculine in the times ahead as
much as the positive feminine, and these energies are more evenly
distributed and enacted now than they have been since the beginning
of the industrial revolution. More important than these over-used
archetypal contrairies, she speaks of re-owning the animal within the
human. Our contrived, dysfunctional stance that the human had
“transcended” animal nature, from whence we look down (as
stewards, wardens, or worse) upon the rest of the animal kingdom is
at the root of civilization and its trashing of the biosphere –
which no animal would ever do. I have always been moved by Jung's
assertion that each of us still contains a Two Million Year-old Great
Man who knows exactly what we have to do. In this archetype, the
animal and human are not split. And his idea of a “syzygy” or
union of such opposites as the masculine and feminine archetypes
remains a fine ideal, though I doubt those who haven't achieved it
yet will do so under the duress of collapse. Of course, Baker writes
now, so that we can prepare, to do the hard work of personal
transformation before things break down. We will need all the
integrated and competent leaders we can muster once that happens.
Sacred Demise was criticized for
being too apocalyptic, despite the wisdom of her response to the
global ecocrisis. This time, she defers to John Michael Greer, the
comforting archdruid who speaks of the step-wise process of decline,
saying both the myth of unending progress and that of apocalypse are
wrong. But Sacred Demise was published before the
effective collapse of the international climate treaty process at the
tragic Copenhagen COP debacle later the same year. Nothing has
happened since that watershed event to change the trajectory.
Ironically, the tone of the current book fits spring 2009 better than
the prescient Sacred Demise. I look back to that year, and the
palpable hope that built before the conference, as the halcyon days
of honest hope. Now the best we can do is talk local resilience, the
Transition Movement and other forms of bracketing the larger
picture, which includes an atmospheric and oceanic chemistry that
knows no boundaries; where any local event is momentary before
acceding to the inexorable averaging by the laws of disequilibrium.
As a savvy old friend wrote this morning, current scientific reports
“kind of make Guy McPherson more plausible.” In such a
world, we need to thoughtfully imbibe Carolyn Baker's wisdom, no
matter where we measure on the doomer scale.
Labels: Carolyn Baker, Collapsing Consciously, Copenhagen, Guy McPherson, honest hope, hospice, John Michael Greer, Jungian, Sacred Demise, spiritual employmnent, Transition Movement, two million year-old Great Man
Friday, August 24, 2012
Requiem for a Species: An Unfolding Tragedy
Australian
ethicist Clive Hamilton's Requiem for a Species is both deeply
sobering and salutary, in the sense that it awakens us not only to
the climate war we have shrunk from engaging, but its likely result
if we do not. As the climate data gets more and more alarming while the international political response remains gridlocked, he states
what many of us deeply sensed at the time, that Copenhagen December
2009 was the “last hope for humanity to pull back from the abyss.”
“Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change.” Hamilton answers the book's subtitle in a series of no-nonsense chapters: growth fetishism, addiction to consumer life, denial in a myriad of forms, and the “new foundation” (Descartes) upon which the others are built, disconnection from Nature. Each of these chapters is compelling, but I found the one on denial particularly enlightening. I have blogged about one of the cornerstones of recent Republican policy, climate denialism, trying to understand the curious phenomenon ("Why Educated Republicans Are in Denial about Climate Change” - see April 25). Hamilton's searching analysis takes us into its historical roots with the fall of the Berlin Wall, closely followed by the breakup of the Soviet Union (1989-91), to reveal how quickly the conservative right seized upon a new enemy, environmentalism: “America did not fight and win the wars of the twentieth century to make the world safe for green vegetables” (Richard Darman, the elder Bush's OMB director).
My post argues in terms of Nietzsche's will to power (conservatives embrace it and liberals don't), but Hamilton's analysis is more telling. The twin ideas of progress and mastery of nature “define modernity itself” for conservatives, and progress is identified for them with unfettered growth. He goes into detail tracing the conservative think-tanks, initially founded by nuclear war hawk-scientists, and how they have systematically and effectively worked to undercut the liberal critique of human overreach. And if there is collateral damage, it can easily be managed by geo-engineering, whose origins lie with those same military-scientific heroes of the right.
Hamilton outlines where we are headed in a chapter entitled “The Four-Degree World.” It is the briefest in the book, for he relies on Mark Lynas's brilliantly documented Six Degrees. I am reading that as well, and am in the midst of the terrifying long chapter “Three Degrees.” In Requiem, all that Hamilton needs to do is point to what is now the consensus view of climate scientists of where we are headed – 4 degrees Celsius warming - which he gets from attending a pre-Copenhagen global conference in Oxford of climate scientists with which he frames the chapter. As opposed to public statements, these sober and shaken researchers shared among themselves their deepest fears based on the dawning truth that global civilization was not coping with a situation that the scientists were finding was much, much worse than the two-degree world they had initially assessed.
“Relinquishing our rosy view of how the future will unfold is a task more difficult that it may appear because the vision of a stable and sympathetic future undergirds our sense of self and our place in the world.” (210) “Awakening to the prospect of climate disruption compels us to abandon” our comfortable beliefs. Thus begins a powerful final chapter in which Hamilton argues that we must “despair, accept, act.” Earlier, he acknowledged the adaptive quality of unrealistic illusions about the future; they keep hope alive, producing action (Shelley Taylor, Positive Illusions). But he seizes upon Taylor's key distinction, “Illusions respond and adapt as reality forces itself upon us, while delusions are held despite the evidence of the outside world...evidence that large -scale climate change is unavoidable has now become so strong that healthy illusion is becoming unhealthy delusion” (131-32).
Many of us have had exposure to Joanna Macy's despair and empowerment work. Hamilton enlists her approach in conclusion, founded upon the necessity of admitting despair when honest hope has been exceeded by planetary events. As those of us who have trained with Joanna know, allowing despair, we can work through it to a more realistic ground for action. Denying negative emotion slowly shrivels the amplitude of positive emotion as well. We may continue to act, but with less and less belief in our own actions. Our energy dries up, for it is fueled by the internal lie of false hope.
Reading Hamilton, Lynas, and Joanna Macy's latest book, Active Hope (co-authored by psychologist Chris Johnstone), I have been forced to admit that, though I had worked through Joanna's circle of gratitude, despair, and re-imagining more than once, I was stuck once again in denial and powerlessness. The bad news has helped me bottom out once again, and my acceptance has deepened and ripened into renewed action. That action is directed at helping others get on with the process while remaining alert to opportunities for effective public demonstrations, including civil disobedience as I am led.
Despair, accept...Act! After accepting the immensely challenged state of affairs -read Lynas on the projected death of the Amazon in a three-degree world for a snapshot (Six Degrees, 137-42) - we have one final chance. Like Bill McKibben in his masterful piece in Rolling Stone, Hamilton calls us to mobilize a mass movement “to build a countervailing power to the elite and corporations that have captured government,” thus holding the catastrophe to something within the reach of our imaginations. Though it is tempting to think of a benevolent dictator who might achieve results more rapidly, we really “must democratise survivability” through a new radicalism that “aims to shift the ground of politics itself.” To the ramparts, planetary citizens!
“Why We Resist the Truth about Climate Change.” Hamilton answers the book's subtitle in a series of no-nonsense chapters: growth fetishism, addiction to consumer life, denial in a myriad of forms, and the “new foundation” (Descartes) upon which the others are built, disconnection from Nature. Each of these chapters is compelling, but I found the one on denial particularly enlightening. I have blogged about one of the cornerstones of recent Republican policy, climate denialism, trying to understand the curious phenomenon ("Why Educated Republicans Are in Denial about Climate Change” - see April 25). Hamilton's searching analysis takes us into its historical roots with the fall of the Berlin Wall, closely followed by the breakup of the Soviet Union (1989-91), to reveal how quickly the conservative right seized upon a new enemy, environmentalism: “America did not fight and win the wars of the twentieth century to make the world safe for green vegetables” (Richard Darman, the elder Bush's OMB director).
My post argues in terms of Nietzsche's will to power (conservatives embrace it and liberals don't), but Hamilton's analysis is more telling. The twin ideas of progress and mastery of nature “define modernity itself” for conservatives, and progress is identified for them with unfettered growth. He goes into detail tracing the conservative think-tanks, initially founded by nuclear war hawk-scientists, and how they have systematically and effectively worked to undercut the liberal critique of human overreach. And if there is collateral damage, it can easily be managed by geo-engineering, whose origins lie with those same military-scientific heroes of the right.
Hamilton outlines where we are headed in a chapter entitled “The Four-Degree World.” It is the briefest in the book, for he relies on Mark Lynas's brilliantly documented Six Degrees. I am reading that as well, and am in the midst of the terrifying long chapter “Three Degrees.” In Requiem, all that Hamilton needs to do is point to what is now the consensus view of climate scientists of where we are headed – 4 degrees Celsius warming - which he gets from attending a pre-Copenhagen global conference in Oxford of climate scientists with which he frames the chapter. As opposed to public statements, these sober and shaken researchers shared among themselves their deepest fears based on the dawning truth that global civilization was not coping with a situation that the scientists were finding was much, much worse than the two-degree world they had initially assessed.
“Relinquishing our rosy view of how the future will unfold is a task more difficult that it may appear because the vision of a stable and sympathetic future undergirds our sense of self and our place in the world.” (210) “Awakening to the prospect of climate disruption compels us to abandon” our comfortable beliefs. Thus begins a powerful final chapter in which Hamilton argues that we must “despair, accept, act.” Earlier, he acknowledged the adaptive quality of unrealistic illusions about the future; they keep hope alive, producing action (Shelley Taylor, Positive Illusions). But he seizes upon Taylor's key distinction, “Illusions respond and adapt as reality forces itself upon us, while delusions are held despite the evidence of the outside world...evidence that large -scale climate change is unavoidable has now become so strong that healthy illusion is becoming unhealthy delusion” (131-32).
Many of us have had exposure to Joanna Macy's despair and empowerment work. Hamilton enlists her approach in conclusion, founded upon the necessity of admitting despair when honest hope has been exceeded by planetary events. As those of us who have trained with Joanna know, allowing despair, we can work through it to a more realistic ground for action. Denying negative emotion slowly shrivels the amplitude of positive emotion as well. We may continue to act, but with less and less belief in our own actions. Our energy dries up, for it is fueled by the internal lie of false hope.
Reading Hamilton, Lynas, and Joanna Macy's latest book, Active Hope (co-authored by psychologist Chris Johnstone), I have been forced to admit that, though I had worked through Joanna's circle of gratitude, despair, and re-imagining more than once, I was stuck once again in denial and powerlessness. The bad news has helped me bottom out once again, and my acceptance has deepened and ripened into renewed action. That action is directed at helping others get on with the process while remaining alert to opportunities for effective public demonstrations, including civil disobedience as I am led.
Despair, accept...Act! After accepting the immensely challenged state of affairs -read Lynas on the projected death of the Amazon in a three-degree world for a snapshot (Six Degrees, 137-42) - we have one final chance. Like Bill McKibben in his masterful piece in Rolling Stone, Hamilton calls us to mobilize a mass movement “to build a countervailing power to the elite and corporations that have captured government,” thus holding the catastrophe to something within the reach of our imaginations. Though it is tempting to think of a benevolent dictator who might achieve results more rapidly, we really “must democratise survivability” through a new radicalism that “aims to shift the ground of politics itself.” To the ramparts, planetary citizens!
Labels: Active Hope, Bill McKibben, climate denial, Copenhagen, death of the Amazon, geo-engineering, Joanna Macy, Requiem for a Species, Rolling Stone, Six Degrees, will to power
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Tiny Advent Star
There's a star-sized hole in the snow balanced on my deck railing, but you can only see it from one angle. We look for the star during this season, especially this year, with CoP-15 concurrent with Solstice and Advent. Amidst the post-Copenhagen spin, there is a smallish star, when looked at from the angle of climate diplomacy, namely the little non-binding agreement that Obama brokered in an accidental context, a coda to the exhausting proceedings.
But we look for Big Things during Advent, a guiding star that is unmistakable And the summit did not bring this from the world leaders. However, the mass movement generated by a significant portion of the world population through the organizing efforts of 350.org, Avaaz, and other groups was the real star of the season, starting with the Oct 24 rallies, on through the vigils Dec 12 and the mass petition signed by 12 million, tens of thousands of whose names were read aloud in the conference hall, the Bella Center. The only reason that many of us are not in despair right now is that this movement is primed to grow, keeping the pressure up for a “real deal.” The climate justice movement provides a genuine counterweight to the Tea Party movement in the US and the neo-Nazis in Europe.
President Obama, after his feat of extraordinary diplomacy, barging in on a cabal of developing nations plotting against the US and turning it into a collaborative session, albeit too late to significantly alter this much-ballyhooed summit, declared that what we need most as a global community of nations is trust. Both in the halls of international summitry and within the D.C. Beltway, trust is the missing ingredient, even though we all have interests that are more common and vital than national, sectarian, or party. Without it, nothing important can be accomplished as a nation or as a world community.
That is why the international quality of the climate change movement gives some grounds for hope. In terms of the politics of a climate treaty, there is far more hope in Europe, the UK, Japan, even Russia, because virtually all parties recognize and accept the science of climate change, and therefore the urgency of abating it. In the US, party and ideological divisions are rendering intelligent conversation on the issue extremely difficult. A key indicator of the difficulty is that the co-sponsor of the first climate bill, John McCain, has not shown any willingness to support the bill presently clogged in the Senate. It is more important for his party to wreck Obama's presidency than to save civilization as we know it.
This must change. Our main hope, now that our leaders have failed us, is to build an unstoppable people's movement that must be heard. Last Thursday, a day before the climate summit ended, 350.org called for a worldwide fast in support of a “real deal.” We will need more, longer fasts, and acts of civil disobedience. Everything will need to be disciplined and well-organized. The targets of these acts of conscience in this country are US Senators, who hold the key to our country's seriously joining a just, meaningful, and binding climate treaty. The Congress as a whole must come up with a bill for the President to sign, but it is the Senate that must ratify a UN treaty, by a two-thirds vote. Electing Obama was not the political act of the era; winning that treaty vote for the planet will be.
So, on to Mexico City without faltering. And start preparing now for your own role in the treaty vote in the Senate. The fate of the Earth depends upon it.
But we look for Big Things during Advent, a guiding star that is unmistakable And the summit did not bring this from the world leaders. However, the mass movement generated by a significant portion of the world population through the organizing efforts of 350.org, Avaaz, and other groups was the real star of the season, starting with the Oct 24 rallies, on through the vigils Dec 12 and the mass petition signed by 12 million, tens of thousands of whose names were read aloud in the conference hall, the Bella Center. The only reason that many of us are not in despair right now is that this movement is primed to grow, keeping the pressure up for a “real deal.” The climate justice movement provides a genuine counterweight to the Tea Party movement in the US and the neo-Nazis in Europe.
President Obama, after his feat of extraordinary diplomacy, barging in on a cabal of developing nations plotting against the US and turning it into a collaborative session, albeit too late to significantly alter this much-ballyhooed summit, declared that what we need most as a global community of nations is trust. Both in the halls of international summitry and within the D.C. Beltway, trust is the missing ingredient, even though we all have interests that are more common and vital than national, sectarian, or party. Without it, nothing important can be accomplished as a nation or as a world community.
That is why the international quality of the climate change movement gives some grounds for hope. In terms of the politics of a climate treaty, there is far more hope in Europe, the UK, Japan, even Russia, because virtually all parties recognize and accept the science of climate change, and therefore the urgency of abating it. In the US, party and ideological divisions are rendering intelligent conversation on the issue extremely difficult. A key indicator of the difficulty is that the co-sponsor of the first climate bill, John McCain, has not shown any willingness to support the bill presently clogged in the Senate. It is more important for his party to wreck Obama's presidency than to save civilization as we know it.
This must change. Our main hope, now that our leaders have failed us, is to build an unstoppable people's movement that must be heard. Last Thursday, a day before the climate summit ended, 350.org called for a worldwide fast in support of a “real deal.” We will need more, longer fasts, and acts of civil disobedience. Everything will need to be disciplined and well-organized. The targets of these acts of conscience in this country are US Senators, who hold the key to our country's seriously joining a just, meaningful, and binding climate treaty. The Congress as a whole must come up with a bill for the President to sign, but it is the Senate that must ratify a UN treaty, by a two-thirds vote. Electing Obama was not the political act of the era; winning that treaty vote for the planet will be.
So, on to Mexico City without faltering. And start preparing now for your own role in the treaty vote in the Senate. The fate of the Earth depends upon it.
Labels: 350.org, Avaaz. Tea Party. John McCain, COP-15, Copenhagen, Mexico City, Obama
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
"ADVENT IS COPENHAGEN"
Saturday, December 19
That was how I entitled a discussion group post the eve of the climate summit in Copenhagen. The next day, I broke six weeks' silence at Meeting with ministry on a haunting Gaelic carol, Christ often comes in the stranger's guise, reminding Friends that, in the climate emergency, it is the poor and island countries who are the stranger at the table. They were indeed present at the table in Copenhagen, but were lucky to get even crumbs from the repast. If Copenhagen has proved the impotence of our international political system, what are we to make of Solstice 2009, and the hope of Advent?
Yesterday, as the COP-15 talks concluded in a whirlwind of desperate diplomacy, I went for a walk with my wife Geeta in the fresh deep snow of our drive. Hemlocks, pines, and rhodos hung low, heavy with snow. Mirroring Copenhagen coming up with so little, the forest seemed to bow, draped in sympathy with the colossal failure of the international political system. It reinforced my deep sadness.
I mentioned this to Geeta, and she laughed, recognizing the pathetic fallacy. But I went deeper than sympathetic magic, recognizing that they are bowing to the Earth. The earth and all her myriad creation, yes, but also honoring her as natura naturans, the infinitely creative matrix of life. Gaia may well be in mourning as the deepest of Solstice nights approached, but she still retains the miraculous power to produce new life-forms.
Then, last night, as I played a variety of seasonal music, marking the whole scope of the seaon, I felt a deep sweetness, surrounded by darkness marked by white tree-sentinels. This was indeed a pivotal Solstice for humanity, and we may now be heading towards climate disaster. If so, I remind readers that emotionally, it is the same as facing personal death within a web of family. Experiencing the “last time” with our loved ones is both immensely sad, and for some, fearful, but at the same time it can be sweet, harvesting the richness and depth we have created through faithful relationships.
So I cherish each little bird I hear singing, rather than remembering when there were more. I admire the grace and beauty of the deer who eat my garden. I delight in the constant number of chattering, busy squirrels, still fed by our stand of hickories in a Southern Appalachian forest that remains, for a while longer, oak-hickory.
If you know your family well, but not the earth-place that gives you a home, then by all means, get to know that place while it still has some integrity. Even if we are headed into a downward spiral, there is so much to cherish.
And as the brave folks at 350.org remind us all today, through we lost a big battle yesterday, the war for climate justice goes on, and the cadre of climate warriors could welcome a boost. But first, gather 'round with those you love, get outside despite the weather and greet your earth-place and its denizens. Enjoy a sabbath. Then, with the New Year, be ready to bring it on again, and that's going to mean holding Congress to the task of passing climate and energy legislation worthy of the science and faithful to the cause of climate justice.
This is obviously no mean task, but when you come to the end of the road, will you look back and see that you were too preoccupied with your own comfort to join the biggest moral campaign in history? Weakened by a rebellious Congress, our political savior had no prophetic rallying cry, only scrappy diplomacy to round up some key developing nations, promising to do more next time. The real heroes at Copenhagen were the little countires who wouldn't fold on the rack of pressure, and the people in the streets, including all the NGO's progressively ousted from the negotiating hall, massing outside as the summit headed into virtual deadlock. Our leaders have failed us; now leadership needs to come from the people.
It's our turn to lead, friends, each in ways that we never dreamed we could. The courage and creativity are all there, if only we have the faith to dig for it.
Labels: 350.org, Advent, COP-15, Copenhagen, natura naturans, oak-hickory forest, Solstice
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Waxman-Markey Bill up for House Vote
This bill, entitled the American Clean Energy and Security Act, though severely weakened in committee, is still our best hope for the U.S. to bring a serious national plan to the table in at the U.N. forum for negotiating the successor to Kyoto in Copenhagen this December. Enviros are lobbying their representatives to restore some of its original provisions for tough caps, fully auctioned carbon emission allowances, and justice for the poor who will be impacted by its provisions.
Though many of us would prefer a carbon tax to the more slippery cap and trade plan, this bill is the only game in town. Carbon taxes are not popular, as the Liberal Party of Canada learned in the last national election. If carbon could effectively be capped, without the loopholes that Kyoto allowed, then some inevitable charades in trading of emission credits might not be too damaging. But the system is going to have to be much tougher and smarter than Kyoto, which slowed, but did not reverse, the growth in the emission curves of its signatories.
Though an international framework is imperative for us to have a chance at salvaging a meaningful human presence on the planet, my fear is that, even if Copenhagen advances a new protocol, the tremendous attachment to the status quo of corporate globalism will put us closer to the runaway CO2 emission curves of BAU (business as usual) than those tracking sufficient carbon restraint to give us a chance to avoid catastrophic climate runaway. We need a new system, ASAP, one which structurally acknowledges that the global economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global ecosphere. Many are working towards articulating a new system that integrates the human economy with its earth household, notably the economist Herman Daly. A newly released book, Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy, shows promise of laying out the principles as well as a method of governance, for this long-delayed advance on Adam Smith’s assumption of an endless, “externalized” resource base. I will review the book, published under the auspices of the Quaker Institute for the Future, with whom I have worked on energy issues, in a forthcoming blogpost.
Many players in the Obama administration understand the centrality and weight of the climate crisis, especially John Holdren, the president’s science advisor, NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, Steven Chu at Energy, and the new US climate negotiator, Todd Stern. But you have to wonder if the President really understands, deep in his heart, that we are on the verge of complete climate catastrophe, as he continues to make it clear that health care is his overriding priority. If we don’t restore the health of the planet, human survival, much less health and comfort, are hugely at risk.
We have a long way to go, and we must get there fast. Waxman-Markey will be a start, and it has a reasonable chance of passing the House in the next couple of weeks. But there are thunderclouds in the Senate, and we only have so much time to weather this storm. Unfortunately, the usual political horsetrading and its inevitable compromises is ineffective with respect to the laws of nature. The climate science for which the IPCC was rewarded the Nobel was not subject to a vote, though some of the more drastic scenarios got weeded out in the peer review vetting.
It is important to understand basic systems theory, especially the working of feedback loops. Once “positive” feedback starts moving the gargantuan mechanism of global climate towards a new equilibrium, it is too late to do anything but wait a thousand years for the new norms. If only Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and industry leaders committed to the status quo of short term profits would remember that they, too, have grandchildren, who will beget grandchildren of their own.
Now is the time to do more than install compact fluorescents and take 5-minute showers. Get to know your elected officials and their staff as a buffer against the massive tide of industry lobbyists. Repent of your over-affluence, and find novel, clever ways to engage your neighbors and communities in downsizing their material use quotient. Most importantly, we all need to be able to answer to our grandchildren when they look back to this critical juncture in human history.
Though many of us would prefer a carbon tax to the more slippery cap and trade plan, this bill is the only game in town. Carbon taxes are not popular, as the Liberal Party of Canada learned in the last national election. If carbon could effectively be capped, without the loopholes that Kyoto allowed, then some inevitable charades in trading of emission credits might not be too damaging. But the system is going to have to be much tougher and smarter than Kyoto, which slowed, but did not reverse, the growth in the emission curves of its signatories.
Though an international framework is imperative for us to have a chance at salvaging a meaningful human presence on the planet, my fear is that, even if Copenhagen advances a new protocol, the tremendous attachment to the status quo of corporate globalism will put us closer to the runaway CO2 emission curves of BAU (business as usual) than those tracking sufficient carbon restraint to give us a chance to avoid catastrophic climate runaway. We need a new system, ASAP, one which structurally acknowledges that the global economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the global ecosphere. Many are working towards articulating a new system that integrates the human economy with its earth household, notably the economist Herman Daly. A newly released book, Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy, shows promise of laying out the principles as well as a method of governance, for this long-delayed advance on Adam Smith’s assumption of an endless, “externalized” resource base. I will review the book, published under the auspices of the Quaker Institute for the Future, with whom I have worked on energy issues, in a forthcoming blogpost.
Many players in the Obama administration understand the centrality and weight of the climate crisis, especially John Holdren, the president’s science advisor, NOAA chief Jane Lubchenco, Steven Chu at Energy, and the new US climate negotiator, Todd Stern. But you have to wonder if the President really understands, deep in his heart, that we are on the verge of complete climate catastrophe, as he continues to make it clear that health care is his overriding priority. If we don’t restore the health of the planet, human survival, much less health and comfort, are hugely at risk.
We have a long way to go, and we must get there fast. Waxman-Markey will be a start, and it has a reasonable chance of passing the House in the next couple of weeks. But there are thunderclouds in the Senate, and we only have so much time to weather this storm. Unfortunately, the usual political horsetrading and its inevitable compromises is ineffective with respect to the laws of nature. The climate science for which the IPCC was rewarded the Nobel was not subject to a vote, though some of the more drastic scenarios got weeded out in the peer review vetting.
It is important to understand basic systems theory, especially the working of feedback loops. Once “positive” feedback starts moving the gargantuan mechanism of global climate towards a new equilibrium, it is too late to do anything but wait a thousand years for the new norms. If only Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and industry leaders committed to the status quo of short term profits would remember that they, too, have grandchildren, who will beget grandchildren of their own.
Now is the time to do more than install compact fluorescents and take 5-minute showers. Get to know your elected officials and their staff as a buffer against the massive tide of industry lobbyists. Repent of your over-affluence, and find novel, clever ways to engage your neighbors and communities in downsizing their material use quotient. Most importantly, we all need to be able to answer to our grandchildren when they look back to this critical juncture in human history.
Labels: American Clean Energy and Security Act, Copenhagen, IPCC, Kyoto Protocol, Right Relationship
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