ecospirit

Over the past year, the self-censorship of climate scientists has begun to thaw, and the timid predictions of  the IPCC are being questioned ever more robustly.  Academics from allied fields peering into the abyss are no longer fearful of losing their careers, and elder scientists no longer fear losing their grants. Catastrophic climate change either has already begun (see accompanying firemap), as some researchers argue, or it will be upon us in a matter of scant years. The popular article announcing this sea-change is the recent NYT Magazine piece, “Losing Earth.”

In this richly researched piece, focusing on a few key figures (James Hansen and Rafe Pomerance are the good guys; John Sununu their chief nemesis), Nathaniel Rich argues that “we” had a chance during the pivotal decade for climate science and public policy (1979-89), but blew it. He sums his argument with this: “Human beings, whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties, or as individuals are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations.” It seems we are wired to "obsess over the present, worry about the medium term and cast the longterm out of our minds, as we might spit out a poison.”

Naomi Klein, the brilliant and passionate ecosocialist journalist, replied furiously that it was the neoliberals who “lost the Earth,” not the royal “we” of Rich’s piece, because the masses are disempowered, even in so-called liberal democracies.  Climate research arrived at the moment between two political and economic paradigms, with the remnants of the New Deal, augmented by Rachel Carson,  Earth Day and the Nixon Congress, replaced by neoliberalism.   Any “deals” on the climate, would have to work within the new framework, viz carbon trading, carbon taxes, and that ugliest of terms, “ecosystem services.” Klein’s analysis - see her full-blown argument in This Changes Everything-  is astute and well-researched, though her solution to the climate dilemma – a global socialist revolution by 2019 – is a progressive’s fantasy. 

Though neoliberalism arrived during the Reagan presidency, it continued into the first Bush presidency, Clinton, and the presidents serving since the pivotal 2000 election.  The Republican Party remains its primary champion, but it has captured the political elites of all sides and in all countries. I remember the amazement with which I read a short newspaper piece reporting on an Asian economic summit where Bill Clinton called the Market a “force of nature.”   Here's an excellent history and critique of neoliberalism.

Peter Sawtell, whose Ecojustice Notes is a welcome weekly invitation to ecospiritual dialogue, also challenges Rich’s assertions about human nature, linking to a rich series of articles from the liberal press.  More than one of them points out that, whereas Rich tries to show that some Republicans in Congress were ready to act on climate even before their Democratic colleagues, and that Exxon did early research which corroborated the claims of climate scientists, the Republican Party, above all other political forces on the planet, and the Big Fossil oligarchy, headed by Exxon, have done more damage in the political climate wars than any other players. 

So, are Klein and Sawtell et al correct, that it is social, political and economic structures at work here, rather than something called “human nature?”  From a broadly Marxist perspective, they are. But I’m afraid that both personal psychology and social behavior are aspects of the all-too-human.  Industrial capitalism, which has extended its reach beyond liberal democracies to the state capitalism of China, has magnified the terrifying power of our crafty minds and vastly extended hands. Yes, Naomi, just as the necessary conditions for grappling with the dreadful awakening of the Climate Beast (Tim Flannery) came together, the perfect storm of the neoliberal inflection of economics, industry and politics arrived as well.  

In This Changes Everything, Klein makes the case for a simmering global socialist uprising, which is the only thing that can save us.  She is arguing for structural change, and she’s talking non-violent revolution.  Precisely.  The powers that be, even if they have a vise-grip, remain in power only as long as the masses tolerate them.  Change must be born in the hearts and minds of human beings, which are immensely malleable, however noble their capabilities at the highest range. My mentor Joanna Macy has identified the key problem, which is that the self-reflexive consciousness that humans and a few other big-brained mammals have achieved, has not broken through to the level of social systems.  We do have “esprit de corps” in various organizations, though it’s probably declining, and orators can stir mass passions  - for good or bad.  But the whole social system responding as one to all the feedback necessary for survival has not happened yet.  The history of consciousness is full of such breakthroughs at the level of the individual personality, all the way to God-consciousness. Joanna suggests that the current crisis for the survival of higher life on Earth could be what engenders “self-reflexivity on the next holonic level,” that is at the level of social systems.  She wrote this twenty years ago.

Rich’s focus on individual personalities satisfies our hunger for and identification with the hero’s quest – and James Hansen, who I have met twice, is one of mine.  But this model is inadequate for the terrifying global moment in which we stand.  As Larry Rasmussen says, we cannot solve anthropocene problems with holocene tools of imagination and morality.  Some of these are part of the problem, especially our enduring tendency to measure everything in terms of its effect on humans alone, rather than the whole Earth community.

A perfect storm stopped effective climate action just as it was crystallizing. It was more than just “human nature” that caused humanity to miss the chance in the 80’s to prevent climate catastrophe. Neoliberalism both 1) undermined the devotion to social welfare of a world order where Keynesian constraints (“embedded liberalism”) reigned in unfettered capitalism and 2) led us more fully into the all-too-human characteristics of procuring as much as we can for ourselves and our tribe.  Indeed, the “end of history” now has the ironic ring of the end of global civilization, rather than the triumph of the capitalist West.

However, underneath political and economic theory, anthropologists and primatologists have identified patterns which make escaping the endgame of civilization unlikely, and the exhaustive polymath Craig Dilworth has written a longterm history coming to the conclusion that we are Too Smart for Our Own Good (and too Dumb to Change), which I reviewed in this blog. Though it’s not fashionable these days, there is something one could call human nature, rooted in the genetic and behavioral matrix of the primate order.  Evolutionary breakthroughs which might refine that nature may be more frequent at moments of great stress, but it’s getting awfully late in the game.

After the Flood, the Unnameable made a rainbow sign in the clouds signaling his covenant  “between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come,” to preserve Creation (especially to not send the floodwaters again).  Generations have felt comfort from these words in Genesis (12-16).  But with the oceans beginning their now inexorable rise, anxiety creeps in among the faithful who pay attention to Creation, and dread certainty among those of who are awake.  We have broken our end of the covenant, upon which the theology of stewardship has been built.  But this is not the end of the story.

Labels: "Losing Earth", Anthropocene, catastrophic climate change, Exxon, Genesis Covenant, James Hansen, Joanna Macy, Naomi Klein, neoliberalism, Republican Party

Labels: 350.org, Break Free, Delta 5, James Hansen, Jay O'Hara, Justinian Code, necessity defense, Paris Accord, philosopher-king

Labels: bill Gates, climate justice, Exxon's denial and prosecution, G77, Green climate fund, historical carbon debt, James Hansen, john Holdren, Paris COP 21

Labels: "The God Species", Anthropocene, climate change, deep time, El Nino, geo-engineering, industrial aerosols, James Hansen, james lovelock, Mark Lynas, Paul Gilding, sulfur dioxide, The Great Disruption, Thomas Berry

The Quaker renewal I prayed for in the last entry may feel far away in some of it previous centers of influence.  In the first generation, as many as 20% of the English and Welsh were Quaker; it was a contagion sweeping Britannia.  Now there are barely 20,000 left in Britain.  On the East coast of the US, especially Pennsylvania, New York, and North Carolina, where Friends once flourished, meetings are languishing.  The older generation is dying off, and they are not being replaced.  Quaker organizations, especially the American Friends Service Committee, which was a vital force for peace and postwar recovery in the mid twentieth century, are suffering because these generous donors are passing from the stage. Friends United Meeting, a mainstream, pastored style of Quakerism with planned sabbath services, is undergoing a serious split over a staunch anti-gay stand by its ruling oligarchy. 

Labels: Cleqan Power Plan, COP 21, James Hansen, Jay Inslee, Paris climate accord, Party of Denial, Paul Gilding, Pope Francis, Quaker renewal, The Great Disruption

The world is warming. No arguing this. The Greenland ice shelf is melting, the Arctic's been ice-free for the last couple of summers, the West Antarctic ice shelf is starting to disintegrate. All of this guarantees sea-level rise, the question is simply how much (a meter and a half to 15 meters, excluding most of Antarctica). In an Oscar-nominated film, “Sun Come Up,” filmmakers document the disappearance of the Carteret islands off Indonesia, and the relocation of its people. Permafrost in the northern tundra is melting, releasing an accelerating amount of a vast methane sink, and methane is 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2. Last summer there were widespread fires in Russia, disrupting grain production, blanketing Moscow in smoke for weeks. Flooding in Pakistan and Australia has come from unseasonable rainfall and disruption of the Indian monsoon. Deserts are increasing, including the North American southwest, which may now be in a fateful shift from semi-arid to arid. The oceans have taken up so much CO2 that they are acidifying, threatening creatures that manufacture shells and tiny plankton that form the base of the marine food chain. We are already past some key climatic tipping points. In the face of all these undeniable facts, there are a disturbing number of public figures who claim that climate change is a hoax . But more generally, the argument is over the cause. It goes, sure there's warming, but it's part of a cyclical pattern. Moreover, CO2 levels do not predict warming, they follow it. These folks, who receive far more press than their numbers (in both senses) deserve, agree there's warming, but do not accept an anthropogenic cause. This despite the consensus of 99% of climate scientists backed up by over 20,000 data sets from across the globe that have produced models that have come ever closer to the global climate shift unfolding around us – ahead of schedule, and clearly linked to human burning of fossil fuels. So, this mainstream of denial argues, either we shrug our shoulders and go on as if nothing were amiss, or we invest in geo-engineering at the last possible moment to prevent absolute catastrophe. Climate change deniers' typical option of no response leaves our planet to some freak of natural history to save us, or simply accept accelerating doom. There's a core of the rapturous right that is fine with that. Tired of exercising moral choice, confident that they are already saved, they are ready for a reckoning, the Rapture. But most tea-partyers are not enraptured, more worshippers of a misunderstood US Constitution than the God of Revelations. Faced with rapid climate change, they would simply retreat further into denial,lashing out at “communists” who urge responding with deep cuts in CO2 emissions, overseen by a U.N. treaty It is true that, as a human trait, denial has evolutionary advantages. Putting aside looming problems, we focus on what works for our family and community (thus traditional farming and other forms of settled life). If we focused too much on the threat, we might be paralyzed by fear, losing hope, unable to respond. Because of this deep hard-wiring, there is some degree of denial in all of us. We deny the full consequences so that we can retain hope. One version of this is the normalcy bias, the inability to accept change due to the comfort of habit. Such was the case with the majority of Jews who stayed in Germany as the thirties rolled on, eager to hold onto their homes, communities, and fortunes. So denial has survival value only up to a point. If the problem (i.e. climate change) requires a total revolution in behavior and yet denial persists, then any hope gained is dishonest, undercutting the possibility of mitigating the problem. Suppose you're not convinced that anthropogenic climate change is for real, but you concede that it may be. This is the position of many in the middle of the debate. My own organization, NC Interfaith Power and Light, held several meetings with our WNC Congressman Heath Shuler, a blue dog Democrat who was initially reluctant to support climate legislation in the House. In the end, Shuler embraced the precautionary principle, explaining his action to a dubious conservative electorate as an “insurance policy.” Active in his church, he did this not just as a practical matter, but out of a sense of biblically based stewardship. He was re-elected in November. Bravo for you, Heath! As I noted in the last post, the issue has become politicized, the parties taking polar opposite positions. Just a few months ago, we were on the verge of a climate package in the Senate, with mainstream environmental organizations working carefully towards a compromise with US senators and more sober business leaders who understood this whole climate change business was for real. The collapse of those talks is painfully traced in the New Yorker, showing the weakness of the political process. Losing sight of the stakes, the climate issue has become political football, with many Republicans who agreed to some form of legislation prior to the last election undergoing a conversion during the campaign (John McCain, co-author of the first congressional climate bill, is a sad example). Cow-towing to the center of their own party, Harry Reid and Barack Obama have shown virtually no leadership on the issue. At this point, with a wave of tea-partyers assaulting Washington, climate legislation appears dead. This dodging of the facts and repudiation of moral responsibility is unfortunately true of many failing leaders in both industry and politics. Short term gain, be it the corporate bottom line or political success, trumps the kind of long-term planning required for victory in the greatest war humankind has ever faced. Confronted with a crisis, we are better at fabricating short term strategies from what's at hand, seeing the situation in a local or perhaps regional context, than long-term global cooperation and planning. The ascendant right fears world federalism, which they feel would inevitably follow from U.N.-sponsored emissions monitoring, yet all of us would work together to help our neighbors during a flood or a fire. On the geopolitical stage, “national interest” - viewed narrowly and short-term – prevents cooperating with our “enemies,” as we have sadly seen in climate negotiations, especially at Copenhagen. As for the local perspective, far too many of us are willing to ignore huge changes far away from us, swayed by two severe winters in a row in most of the US. But even here, a careful observer would note that winter is still shorter than it used to be – a lot shorter this winter in Western NC. And last summer was hotter than usual for most of us. Globally, 2010 tied for the hottest year on record. Just ask the Russians, the Pakistanis, or the Aussies. Climate change progressives, “climate hawks” as David Roberts of Grist calls us, also harbor subtle forms of denial. Like others not so convinced of the evidence, we simply need to go on with our lives, going to work, enjoying our families and hobbies, taking a vacation now and then. I quit my job as a tenured professor to devote my life to fighting climate change, but I still fly airplanes to be with my family. And if I still taught college humanities, planning classes and conducting research would be a welcome buffer against reading scientific reports of accelerating climate doom. Even grading student essays would keep despair at bay! After ten years of studying climate science and nuclear safety, reading almost no fiction, only fitfully reading poetry, which was my field of study and a source of deep inspiration and wonder, I now indulge in the occasional novel and poetry. It's just too hard to stay with our current global reality on a daily basis. Finally, the most harmful form of denial is not of climate facts, but of personal responsibility for political action. Scientists working on the Manhattan Project wore blinders to the possible fruits of their research. As the reports cascade in, climate scientists are challenged to speak, yet few of them will take a stand on the governmental action required. They approve in principle, but not with passion, perhaps risking their careers. Last summer I hosted an Asheville climate scientist, one of the lead authors of a section of the Fourth Assessment, thus a Nobel Prize co-winner, as part of a conference on preserving the Blue Ridge bioregion. After his presentation on the effect of climate change on the US and the South, I pressed him for support of climate legislation. He shook his head, saying that was the business of politicians. James Hansen, on the other hand, whose seminal climate science work I have frequently quoted here, breaks the mold, aggressively lobbying for (sometimes being arrested) vigorous climate legislation. Some policy wonks complain that he sometimes backs the wrong horse because he doesn't fully understand the economics. But at least he takes a position, in contrast to the studied neutrality of my Asheville IPCC contact. Ecojustice requires that we take a stand, partaking in messy politics, risking being wrong. It keeps the conversation going, hopefully lurching towards political action that is informed and effective. Leaving politics to the politicians is ultimately moral suicide. Next: A passage to India, and a swami's brand of climate denial.

Labels: Carteret Islands, climate denial, climate hawks, ecojustice, global flooding, James Hansen, methane sink, normalcy bias, the Rapture, tundra melt, world federalism

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