ecospirit

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.

Labels: American Clean Energy and Security Act, Copenhagen, IPCC, Kyoto Protocol, Right Relationship

Come to our conference! Link to website justremnants.org March 9 for more details.

A Southern Appalachian conference working to fabricate a remnant quilt of community in the tradition of Isaiah's "just remnant," justice to the human community and crucially, the bioregion. At the end of the warm, stable, Holocene period, we are entering the "long emergency," an era of global warming, with accelerating species extinction and potentially rapid climate change. We trust deeply that our collective piece-work will inspire hope and action in these trying times. We will work together as a human community and earth citizens, but anchoring more deeply, listening for the divine source which alone can sustain us, and what emerges from us, through this interval of unknown duration and destination.

Where: Arthur Morgan School, Celo, NC
When: July 16-19, 2009
Cost: $175 ($135 for early birds), plus housing.
Scholarships and work-trades available.
Early bird registration deadline June 1, 2009

The purpose of the conference is to gather, energize and encourage networking among community leaders in the Southern Appalachians, encouraging bold thinking and courage to build a sustainable regional society in advance of the inevitable ravages of climate change and systemic economic downturn.

We invite you to join us in creating a remnant “quilt” of just, sustainable, hopeful practices to preserve and sustain the Katuah bioregion. The conference will feature presentations, experiential exercises, roundtable with representatives from a broad range of bioregional organizations, and field trips. These will all be anchored and woven together by small home groups, where participants will create a remnant epistle quilt at conference end. Poetry reading and contradance Saturday night with local musicians. Food will be local, mostly vegetarian and organic, and fabulous.

The great anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss spoke of human cultural activity as bricolage, the bricoleur being a scavenger, tinker, jack-of-all-trades, making his living by collecting society’s remnants. Our work of bricolage will include

ECOJUSTICE
the land ethic, wildlife corridors, buffers, healing forests
VIABLE, DURABLE SMALL TOWNS AND RURAL PLACES
sustainable agriculture, cooperative enterprises and small business development, distributed energy, community justice
PLACE-BASED CULTURES
Cherokee keepers of traditions
Appalachian farmers and crafters

PRESENTERS
*have already agreed to participate

*Thomas Rain Crowe, yeoman, poet/essayist/activist, bookstore owner, Jackson County
*Paulus Berensohn, artist/teacher working at interface of Deep Ecology and the craft arts, Penland, NC.
*Thomas Peterson, climate scientist, NOAA, Nobel laureate (IPCC), AVL. *Stuart Rosenthal- international consultant in cooperative business Chapel Hill
*Rob Messick – Researcher, regional old growth forests Rutherford County (field trip)
Jim Veteto - Heirloom vegetables. PhD candidate in Ethnobotany, Celo Community (field trip)
*Kevin Welsh - Cherokee native plants and stories. Bog Cove Community *Lee Barnes, history of Katuah, our bioregion
*Brent Martin, history of Katuah. Regional director, Wilderness Society, former president, Little Tennessee Land Trust, Franklin.
*Forrest Westall – North Carolina Environmental Management Commission, hydro engineer, author of Outstanding Resource Waters bill(NC), Celo. South Toe River was first to receive this designation, and remains the purest water in the state.
Joe Hollis - Yeoman, Paradise Gardening, Chinese herbalist, Celo (field
trip)
Patryk Battle/*Gaelen Corozine/Scott Paquin. CSA’s of South Toe Valley (field trip)
Yancey farm family (field trip)
PANEL connecting spirituality and ecojustice:
*Jill Rios, Director, NC Interfaith Power and Light, writer. Asheville
*Evan Richardson, past clerk, Asheville Friends Meeting.
*Nancy Hastings - Baptist Peacemaker, Circle of Mercy. Peace and justice activist, prison chaplain. Asheville
Representatives of DISTRIBUTED ENERGY (solar and wind), mostly local.

Labels: bricoleur, climate change, ecojustice, IPCC, just remnant, Katuah, Long Emergency, NOAA, Paulus Berensohn, Thomas Rain Crowe

A colleague posed this query a few weeks ago. It accompanied James Hansen’s letter to Jim Rogers, Duke Power CEO, passionately trying to dissuade him from building a huge new coal-fired plant at Cliffside, south of Charlotte, NC. Hansen is one of the worlds’ foremost climate scientists, working tirelessly to inform politicians and corporate leaders of the disastrous consequences of business as usual. Climate change is the key moral issue of our time and the greatest challenge our species has ever faced. Chief among the Pandora’s box of ecological crises unleashed by the global corporate industrial complex, it is worthy of enlisting prophetic voices. But because it is sworn to value neutrality, science itself is not prophetic. Peer review attempts to assure allegiance to the scientific method, but in the public statements which the IPCC releases periodically, it is the politics of careful consensus that determines the averaged truth we hear. What makes the reports of bodies like the IPCC prophetic is that they deliver with considerable authority a truthful view of the world, one which our shackles of habit and comfort resist. Cal DeWitt, legendary environmental science professor, pointed out recently that the job of the scientist, as well as the ordinary citizen, is simply to describe what he sees when he honestly looks at the world we live in. Thus the scientist and the honest citizen play the role of the little boy who pointed out to a kingdom of sycophants that the emperor wore no clothes. Science is descriptive. By its ability to measure concentrations of atmospheric gases, and compare them to other climatic eras, the IPCC is able to make a comprehensive case for the earth’s condition. By taking on the role as arbiter of truthful evidence in the post-Enlightenment world, science plays less the role of prophet than priest. In the case of climate change, it provides an enormous counterweight to industry and the politicians who do its bidding. But in other cases, like the pharmaceutical industry, it is thoroughly complicit in the corporate goal of fleecing the consumer by controlling the means of relief from the mortal reality framing our lives. In the case of the IPCC reports, the sense that science is prophetic comes from its ability to predict future climates based on more and more precise modeling of those from the past and present. Since its models are so powerful, we experience the dawning future like a fearsome wave asymptotic to the present reality; the future is collapsing upon our poorly-defended present. For those with eyes open it feels like prophecy unfolding. Science is also normative, and those norms not only dictate the practice of science, they enshrine it as the technological fix. Running out of food? No problem, we’ll synthesize it in the lab. Too much CO2? Let’s pump it into the ground, perhaps piping it under the ocean. The latter dream reminds me of Goethe’s Faust and his vast scheme for water projects spanning the northern hemisphere. Ignoring Faustus’ fate in the Medieval morality play and in Marlowe’s drama, we honor him as Goethe’s romantic hero, the superscientist who holds the keys to the kingdom of sustainability. Individual scientists take what their science has given them to speak in moral terms. In his letter to Jim Rogers, Hansen speaks of both the tragedy and the dangers to humankind presented by desperate climate refugees. He speaks of the moral imperative to preserve a habitable world for our children and grandchildren. But in the same letter, knowing he’s addressing a businessman, he dwells longest on the liability of building coal-fired plants in a business climate overshadowed by global warming. Hansen acknowledges greed by pointing out the similarity in the disinformation campaign on climate change to the tobacco industry’s use of the same strategy, enabling it to amass huge profits while it diverted society from incontrovertible evidence that smoking caused cancer. But a true prophet would address our common greed, a whole society that has turned away from God’s charge to be stewards of the Garden. We like to blame the politicians and corporate overlords, but we are the ones who elect the politicians and buy the array of plastic from China, demanding food, oil, and electric power anytime from anywhere, at a huge cost to the earth. The prophetic response to climate change emerges not from science but from allegiance to a power deeper than humanity. In the case of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that power resides in the Old Testament land ethic and in Jesus’s social gospel. The prophet would point out the special risk to the poor from climate disruption. To the prophetic ear, the message of the climate scientist leads to an examination of structural sin, a political liberalism that discounts the good of the whole, confident that individual liberty will liberate us all, including the least of these, into the horn of plenty. The mechanism for this is the Market, today’s Mammon enshrined by left and right alike, an economic structure that continues to enrich a minority while the poor remain mired in poverty. A rising tide raises all boats say the other modernist priests, neoliberal economists. Tell this to islanders and coastal dwellers already washed by that tide. “See how Christ's blood streams from the firmament!” says Marlowe’s Faustus, his heart locked against repentance. In the next scene, the demons pull him bodily into hell. In contrast to the cool view of science, the universe is shot through with the divine, and has a moral structure. Faustus looks up and beholds the river of the suffering divine as it enters into relation with the world. Creation may not have taken place by means of the haunting poetry of Genesis, but scripture points out that ours is world structured by the divine, not chance. The Genesis Garden is laid out in quarters by the two rivers flowing through it. Prophecy is rooted in the recognition of this moral structure, and today it proclaims how our ecological sin has damaged it hugely. Fundamentalists are retrograde to deny the atmospheric facts, but they are faithful in their witness to the divine foundation of prophetic speech and action. We need science’s help in getting the facts of Creation right, but all people of faith need to reach for the requisite motivation to preserve this old earth in the face of another great wave of extinction. We must re-affirm our deepest love and stewardship, for this time around, we are the Flood, and must learn again to be Noahs, undoing what our engine of progress has wrought.

Labels: Cliffside coal plant, climate change, Faust, IPCC, James Hansen, Jim Rogers, neoliberal economics, science and prophecy