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
Two weeks ago I saw a fine documentary,
“
Expedition to the End of the World,” about a three-masted
schooner venturing into the newly open seas off Greenland. Rapidly
melting glaciers had afforded the opportunity for a group of
scientists and artists to explore territory that had not been
experienced by humans for thousands of years. Some of it was
probably being seen by human eyes for the first time. An onboard art
photographer made sure the images were spectacular, and the sharp eye
and ear of the filmmaker captured some great conversation among the
mostly-Danish crew.
In the process of eavesdropping on
daily life aboard the ship, the filmmaker (Daniel Dencik) captured
many discussions of climate change. Most of these folks were
scientifically trained, and there was a lot of matter-of-fact
acceptance of our current global climate situation. Some seemed
simply to accept the gift of glacial melt as another scientific
opportunity. Taking the long view, some of them remained ethically
neutral, whereas the philosopher on board worked the whole time to
figure out the meaning of his life, given the especially fraught
times we live in. The character simply called the Artist provided
immense comic relief with his off-the-wall statements and antics.
There was no attempt to show the research team or the species to
which they belong as noble. For the most part, these were just naked
apes who were having a lot of fun, with some thoughtful observations
along the way,
Of all the remarks on the
responsibility of humans to the planet, the archeologist's was most
telling. He said that carrying a moral sense of our action at all
times was just too tiresome; sometimes you really needed just to
live. Having written in my early twenties that all of a life is a
moral problem, if we would only see it, yours
truly felt a sympathetic sigh of relief. Though I had deeply sensed
this early on, I certainly had not lived my life by its standard.
“Of course, he's right. We're only human,” I thought.
I have
chosen to keep my retirement from academe honest by focusing as much
as I allow myself upon the very crux of human life as a moral
problem, the crescendo of global ecological disruption, hugely
accelerated by anthropogenic climate change. Simply look at the
masthead above this post, and the “about” sidebar. But, like the
archaeologist, I have not been able to consistently stay with that
focus. When I criticize my son for his materialism, he always points
out my car use. I live 50 miles away from him, and visit frequently
(he seldom reciprocates, although he looks for opportunities to ride
here on his bike, along the magnificent Blue Ridge Parkway). For me
it gets a lot worse than driving the car, as my readers can see just
by reading last month's post in answer to the pointed query, Do
all aspects of your life bear the same witness?
The very next day
after viewing the documentary, I watched an online
interview by Michael Dowd of the most thoroughgoing climate ethicist I have
ever witnessed, Kathleen Dean Moore. I shivered as she said ,
This is the greatest moral problem we have ever faced, and we must
act upon this knowledge, which is deep within us all, every day
(sic)
. Isn't' it great how life throws you a paradoxical
curve, right when you need it? Since the interview, I have visited
both of her blogs, and absolutely quaked at what is written and
spoken there. The key resource is the book she co-edited,
Moral
Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril.
The three pieces that I particularly recommend are “
A Call to Writers”, the
Blue River Declaration (assembly of
ethicist-naturalists) and the ferociously gripping speech on
“
The Ethics of Adaptation to Climate Change." If you
aren't moved by these statements, and what they ask of you, then
you'd better find another planet.
I once had an
exchange with the clerk of
QEW where I challenged her statement
that she loved the whole earth, pointing out that you could only
really effectively love that part of the earth you were in
relationship with. The traveler in me had been chastened by Wendell
Berry, who wrote that if one needed to get away, then travel within
one's own bioregion, continually getting to know its inhabitants.
You won't save what you don't love, and you can't love what you don't
know in intimate detail.
Kathleen Moore
speaks of loving the earth the way a mother bear loves her cubs –
with everything you have. “What do you love too much to lose?”
she says, her piercing blue eyes looking directly into the camera. A
few minutes later, “It's time to start tearing the pages out of our
field guides.” She isn't speaking of loving a romanticized earth,
but specific creatures and flora she's starting to lose. For the
greatest moralist-naturalists of our time – Thomas Berry comes to
mind – it is indeed the earth that they love too much to
lose. It is I who does not pay enough attention, care enough,
love enough. So I owe my friend Hollister an apology, wherever
she is.
But encounters with
fiery, steady folk like Kathleen Moore are priming me for change.
And when is that? As another of Dowd's interviewees, Lierre Keith (day 9), said last night, “This is the last moment... Find your
passion, and follow it now.”
Labels: Blue River Declaration, Expedition to the End of the World, Greenland glacial melt, Kathleen Dean Moore, Lierre Keith, Michael Dowd, Moral Ground (book), QEW, Thomas Berry, Wendell Berry
