ecospirit

Dear reader, do you not see that we Greens are also falling into the trap of hubris? In our case, are we not prescribing nineteenth century (or Medieval, or paleolithic – though this is more true of Earth Firsters than the curious case of the paleo-dieter,) values for the vastly more complex and challenging Anthropocene? Would not the greatest hubris be condemning much of the present world population to starvation, because we prefer a world with less humans? This could be the case if we prescribed organic farming for all the world's farmers, if that would indeed require twice the land to make up for producing half the yield of industrial farming. To be honest, I have found myself rather moralistically accepting the necessity of a huge die-off, primarily from starvation, because I prefer a world with fewer humans, feeling the world is too much with us. But until I read Lynas' book I did not place myself in a Third World father's sandals, watching my kids die, one by one. What about you?

“Can we not have peaceful coexistence?” Lynas asks in terms of the conflicting values of small organic farmers and industrial farming. There is plenty of room for the wonderful growth of organic produce in this country and others. But if we applied our strictest organic values to the world's cereal crops, we would not only condemn the world's poor to starvation, but threaten to make the current extinction wave, via habitat encroachment, much worse. On the other hand, GM seeds have already escaped into non GM fields (and Monsanto has sued the hapless farmers who did not plant them), and current proposed federal regulations would set up the same scenario for salmon. Peaceful coexistence, mediated by markets, might well be impossible without much more careful regulation of industrial farming, with human error reduced virtually to zero.

Of course, it is highly likely that, as we work to correct the excesses of technological overreach, we will end up creating a situation of such complexity that it must crash. But reading Lynas has caused me to at least ponder the wager that we can buy more time, as Borlaug put it. We are not going to change our species' imperative, deeply bred into us, to keep trying to maximize our own growth, by resorting to moralism. And, short of collapse, there will be no revolution of the kind that Naomi Klein suggests could come with the union of socialist and Green causes. Might it just be possible that careful crafting of the present industrial agriculture and global capital system could create conditions for a barely tolerable (to the Earth) sustainability?

Once, teaching a humanities class where we read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, I was surprised when a young man, who had just discovered his Quaker roots and was attending our meeting in Fargo, stood up to the entire class to argue against Quinn and his telepathic ape. Tavis passionately spoke for our evolutionary imperative, alarmed that the rest of us would give up on our intelligent problem-solving prematurely. As a teacher who encouraged democratic discussion, I was pleased for another point of view to emerge, and respectful of his position as the discussion proceeded. Though I have continued to hold the other view, I must say that Tavis's defense of modernity stayed with me, now rekindled by reading Lynas. I agree with the population biologists and the ecologists that we are subject to the same laws as all other species, and with the consensus figure of 1.5 – 2 billion figure for maximum sustainable population – after all, it is in line with my own figure. But I am open to Lynas' (and Donella Meadows) argument that we could use our ingenuity, with safeguards in place for all the physico-chemical boundaries we face, to continue to make agronomic breakthroughs sufficient to feed 9-10 billion.

I am increasingly encountering Tavis' position from the more rational among my spiritually-oriented ecofriends. Slowly, they are coming out of the closet, academics and engineers and writers who still feel that, if we could just muster the political will, we could use the recommendations of policy analysts so create a soft-enough landing to muddle through. Of course, political will is at the crux of all approaches. Nobody in the environmental movement, whether they be back-to-the-land types or think-tank denizens who don't understand Greens' fear of technology, believes that unfettered capitalism and the resultant acceleration of the BAU curve (RCP8.5 – see note at bottom of current post) will bring us anything but catastrophic collapse. The point of the policy wonks is that we have a system that, with a few key adjustments (carbon tax, commiditization of all biosystem services), could bring us to the Promised Land of good enough. Doubters on the left will point out that this can't happen, won't happen without a more fundamental revolution, both in terms of the financial and world trade system and the related conditions of social (in)equality.

If we do crash, and it is the likeliest scenario, our remnant will continue to develop, working to do the best they can from the reduced level of complexity and comfort, at least as long as we haven't totally shot all the boundaries Lynas outlines. But the same problem that bedevils us now will continue to challenge us. Though we have been able to engineer materials, and now, for better or worse, the very germ material of life, we have yet been able to engineer human behavior, try as we might. We are still wired for tribal life with limbic patterns that trump reason almost every time they are in conflict. Individual human beings can achieve transformation, but this happening on a a societal scale appears to be a California pipe dream.

Yet once, in what Lynas calls “humanity's finest hour,” we were able to use international diplomacy to engineer the Montreal Protocol, which protected one of our boundaries (ozone), buying time until the next crisis. Now those crises are coming thick and fast. We are not genetically prepared for this, but instead of asking the world to stop and let us get off at the next organic farm, we might put faith in the U.N., and the continuing, patient work it will take to get us to the next international protocol, leap-frogging past the failures of Kyoto and Copenhagen. Expectations are low, but our hearts and wills need to be with the challenged delegates at Warsaw, praying that they will hear the passionate plea from the Philippine delegate Naderev Sano in the wake of the most powerful storm ever to make landfall (a second annual event for the beleaguered Philippinos), to “stop this [climate] madness.” Sano has initiated a hunger strike until the UN climate delegates achieve “meaningful progress” - and scores in Warsaw have joined him.

In a letter to the editor a few weeks ago, I said it was not such a bad thing that the fairly weak cap-and-trade bill that passed the US House in 2009 failed in the Senate. If things had gone otherwise, we might have congratulated ourselves and become prematurely complacent. Cap-and-trade failed in Europe and Japan because the system was subject to gaming and manipulation. What we need is a carbon tax, which international leaders from both left and right have tried to enact. A carbon tax is fairer and much harder to cheat, the main issue being pricing carbon high enough to put a brake on CO2 emissions, encouraging rapid development of alternative energy sources. Senator Maria Cantwell's CLEAR act was a brave, though flawed start.

On the eve of the 2012 election, it is almost absurd to be discussing the possibility of government being able to do anything about the impending climate doom I outlined in the last two posts. Though dissatisfaction with Congress is at record levels, pundits predict the GOP will retain its hold on the House, while the Democrats are likely to barely hold onto the Senate, an essentially frozen institution shackled by its own bizarre rules. So even if the candidate who has most consistently aligned himself with science in the past wins, the chances of getting something done through the legislature is close to zero. Perhaps our nation's approach to international climate action needs to shift.

Looking at the failure of international negotiations to slow down climate change, MIT policy wonk David Victor argues in Global Warming Gridlock for a new strategy, a series of bilateral agreements among countries with similar goals and interests. Immediately, I thought of the US and China, who together produce over 50% of the world's emissions. We are also huge trading partners. A bilateral agreement with China, preposterous as it seems, could turn nationalist competition into global climate security. Like the Russians with their space program in 1960, China is ahead in the Green Revolution, giving it more resources by far than any other country (though admittedly they are still challenged by the growth of their grid, still mostly fueled by coal). Such a priority shift in a somewhat frosty relationship could definitely dampen global warming in one huge blow. And of course there are other parties highly motivated to work against climate change, including the large economies who were signatories to the Kyoto Accord. With a new international accord proving unlikely, bilateral treaties modeled on trade accords could work with a carbon tax to achieve goals in CO2 reduction. The favored model is tax and distribute, and the distribution just might be tailored to offset the huge inequalities in historical carbon production.

Sure, this is a tall order, but the US diplomatic corps is large, with some very talented people. China is ramping up its diplomats, and its climate scientists have the ear of the regime. The biggest obstacle remains massive denial here in the US fueled by a calculated attempt by think tanks and ad agencies funded by Big Carbon. The PBS program Frontline recently aired a report on the key players in this process. The alarming shift in public opinion is hugely abetted by the Republican Party, which is fast cleansing itself of those who have the courage to go on on record that anthropogenic climate change is for real. We need to undo the right wing assault on climate science and the coalition of the Tea Party with the Christian Right.

Secular environmentalists and liberal Christians need to form bonds with more conservative Christians to elevate ecojustice to its fundamental position as a Christian witness. West Coast evangelicals include a significant, vocal minority of young folks who are putting their bodies on the line, tree-huggers for Christ. A large number of citizens signed a petition to Jim Lehrer to ask a climate change question in the first debate. At the second, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action met in silent prayer under banners to awaken the campaign to the enormous centrality of climate change. Their mentor, Richard Cizik, though thrown out of the National Association of Evangelicals for supporting committed gay relationships, continues to fire up steady crowds who come to hear his prophetic climate action message.

And of course we need political leadership. A first-term President Obama made the fateful choice to prioritize health care. After that protracted, draining battle, the 2010 elections ended his window of opportunity for major legislative initiatives. A second-term Obama would not have to work for re-election, leading hopeful liberals and progressives to dream that he might bust out of his prison. Thus far he hasn't shown that kind of leadership, consistently being a pragmatic deal-maker. But a climate deal with China, though initially radical, would require a lot of the lawyerly deal-making that he finds natural.