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
Monday, February 28, 2011
Climate Denial II: the Massive Continent Underneath
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
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Climate Denial: Tip of the Iceberg
“He's fighting for his life,” Geeta said.
I had just complained about NC Senator Richard Burr's lack of leadership on climate change legislation, knowing from a source within his office that he understood and essentially accepted the science. A few weeks before, when his opponent Elaine Marshall asked for questions to pose in their second debate, I suggested she confront him with this key contradiction.
Fighting for his life – what an odd thing to say about a rich, powerful man, seemingly in good health. I thought instead of the leaders of island nations, then the large delegation from Nags Head (Outer Banks) I accompanied to DC last fall to lobby for climate legislation. In both cases, rising sea levels actually threaten livelihoods. The base for North Carolina Republicans has long been in the eastern part of the state, but few of these conservatives actually live on the front lines, right on the ocean. It certainly did not occur to me to ask what party the gravely worried mayor belonged to as she passed photos of projected sea level change in Nags Head around the senatorial office.
But we all know that positions on climate science depend fairly uniformly upon party affiliation. As someone who is liberal to progressive in outlook and with a strong science education, I continue to struggle to take this in. But the script in Washington is clear. Republicans want to defeat anything that President Obama supports, because their principal aim is to defeat him in 2012. If you accept the science, as does Senator Burr, you do so privately and quietly. Perhaps when the season rolls around, behind the scenes he will support a Republican presidential candidate who wants to do something about climate change, which was once John McCain's position.
After the initial awakening shock among viewers of “An Inconvenient Truth,” it has now become easier to be a climate denier. The religious right is more resurgent than ever, and our science education is below average for the developed world. If even scientifically literate Republicans shy away from the moral imperative to craft a societal response to climate change, we are in huge trouble.
Let me give you an example. Several months ago I had a conversation with a brilliant conservative medical doctor who was delighted that I had actually taken the time to study safety issues involved with nuclear power and changed my position to accept nukes as a far wiser investment than any form of coal. When I shifted the conversation to climate change, he was disgusted that I was revealing my true colors, aligning with the liberals after all. He dismissed me, showing no willingness to discuss the issue. And this guy is a highly trained scientist.
More recently, I had a discussion with an old student of mine, a bright woman who understood science when she was young. She showed a profound mistrust of both scientists and the government. When I pressed her more deeply with regard to a possible motive for the right's allegation of conspiiracy on the part of global climate scientists, she said, “World government. They all want climate regulation as an excuse for world government.” And then my own prejudices flooded me as I recalled her conversion to conservative Catholicism, with its links to the Illuminati Conspiracy.
Okay, so I mistrust Big Business and the conservatives mistrust Big Government (never mind that George Bush presided over the biggest increase in the national debt in history. The second biggest was under Ronald Reagan.) In the wake of Copenhagen, which exposed the collusion between these two giants, climate activists are more and more putting their faith in smaller units – states, cities, towns, small farmers and enlightened small businesses. But, though there is definitely hope in many of these, I consider this tack another, more subtle form of climate denial. What it shows is that we cannot live without hope, and with our country as split as any time since the Civil War – on so many levels – the possibility of largescale action of any sort seems virtually nil.
But as I argued in a recent post, following Dianne Dumanoski, hope is sentimental and shallow if it lacks honesty. Honestly, I do not think we can change on the level required without concerted international action. This can happen through 1)deliberate international agreements, heretofore negotiated through the U.N., 2) a global movement like the civil rights movement of the sixties, or 3)economic collapse. One year after Copenhagen, as COP16 at Cancun concludes, an international treaty continues to elude climate diplomats. I contrast to Copenhagen, there was general goodwill, but the big decisions were again postponed until next year (Kyoto expires in 2012 folks!). And the global movement for ecojustice is growing, but unless it is rapidly transformed in terms of numbers, energy, and strategy - massive waves of civil disobedience, especially here in the US - it will be insufficient.
It's hard not to see the most painful form of mitigation, global economic collapse, as the likeliest way to avoid catastrophic runaway global warming. Its portents are many, starting with the weaker Eurozone economies, but with the world's biggest economy teetering at their heels. The political leadership so absent in the climate wars is doing little to avert a massive debt spiral, leading to hyperinflation and Endgame Depression. Witness the huge debt risks of the President's current deal with the Republicans on tax policy.
Of course the ultimate “hostages” in the current debate on tax policy go far beyond Middle America to the very boundaries of modernist civilization and beyond to the great community of life. It is past time, Senator Burr and your brothers-in-hiding, to realize that fighting for your life means working for a world in which your grandchildren can thrive. To do so means to fight for Gaia, for the health of the biosphere is the bottom line for all political posturing and economic tinkering . The Iroquois Creed of making decisions with eight generations in mind would be a modest place to start (they were a democracy!). Partisan gain does not equal survival, any more than a narrow sense of self-interest drives the Invisible Hand to dispense the wealth of nations. Our wealth is retained in an earth system that is as close to steady-state as possible. That means, Senators Burr, McCain, Lugar, Scott Brown, and the Maine Olympians, that you only win when we all win - all classes, all parties, all species. And remember, even if beleaguered President Obama achieves the improbable and wins a second term, there are term limits. Your side will have its turn again. And if you work for strong, meaningful climate legislation, I will support you. Underneath our partisan differences, we all need and want the same thing. Fighting for your life really comes down to the chance for the survival of your species on a viable planet.
I had just complained about NC Senator Richard Burr's lack of leadership on climate change legislation, knowing from a source within his office that he understood and essentially accepted the science. A few weeks before, when his opponent Elaine Marshall asked for questions to pose in their second debate, I suggested she confront him with this key contradiction.
Fighting for his life – what an odd thing to say about a rich, powerful man, seemingly in good health. I thought instead of the leaders of island nations, then the large delegation from Nags Head (Outer Banks) I accompanied to DC last fall to lobby for climate legislation. In both cases, rising sea levels actually threaten livelihoods. The base for North Carolina Republicans has long been in the eastern part of the state, but few of these conservatives actually live on the front lines, right on the ocean. It certainly did not occur to me to ask what party the gravely worried mayor belonged to as she passed photos of projected sea level change in Nags Head around the senatorial office.
But we all know that positions on climate science depend fairly uniformly upon party affiliation. As someone who is liberal to progressive in outlook and with a strong science education, I continue to struggle to take this in. But the script in Washington is clear. Republicans want to defeat anything that President Obama supports, because their principal aim is to defeat him in 2012. If you accept the science, as does Senator Burr, you do so privately and quietly. Perhaps when the season rolls around, behind the scenes he will support a Republican presidential candidate who wants to do something about climate change, which was once John McCain's position.
After the initial awakening shock among viewers of “An Inconvenient Truth,” it has now become easier to be a climate denier. The religious right is more resurgent than ever, and our science education is below average for the developed world. If even scientifically literate Republicans shy away from the moral imperative to craft a societal response to climate change, we are in huge trouble.
Let me give you an example. Several months ago I had a conversation with a brilliant conservative medical doctor who was delighted that I had actually taken the time to study safety issues involved with nuclear power and changed my position to accept nukes as a far wiser investment than any form of coal. When I shifted the conversation to climate change, he was disgusted that I was revealing my true colors, aligning with the liberals after all. He dismissed me, showing no willingness to discuss the issue. And this guy is a highly trained scientist.
More recently, I had a discussion with an old student of mine, a bright woman who understood science when she was young. She showed a profound mistrust of both scientists and the government. When I pressed her more deeply with regard to a possible motive for the right's allegation of conspiiracy on the part of global climate scientists, she said, “World government. They all want climate regulation as an excuse for world government.” And then my own prejudices flooded me as I recalled her conversion to conservative Catholicism, with its links to the Illuminati Conspiracy.
Okay, so I mistrust Big Business and the conservatives mistrust Big Government (never mind that George Bush presided over the biggest increase in the national debt in history. The second biggest was under Ronald Reagan.) In the wake of Copenhagen, which exposed the collusion between these two giants, climate activists are more and more putting their faith in smaller units – states, cities, towns, small farmers and enlightened small businesses. But, though there is definitely hope in many of these, I consider this tack another, more subtle form of climate denial. What it shows is that we cannot live without hope, and with our country as split as any time since the Civil War – on so many levels – the possibility of largescale action of any sort seems virtually nil.
But as I argued in a recent post, following Dianne Dumanoski, hope is sentimental and shallow if it lacks honesty. Honestly, I do not think we can change on the level required without concerted international action. This can happen through 1)deliberate international agreements, heretofore negotiated through the U.N., 2) a global movement like the civil rights movement of the sixties, or 3)economic collapse. One year after Copenhagen, as COP16 at Cancun concludes, an international treaty continues to elude climate diplomats. I contrast to Copenhagen, there was general goodwill, but the big decisions were again postponed until next year (Kyoto expires in 2012 folks!). And the global movement for ecojustice is growing, but unless it is rapidly transformed in terms of numbers, energy, and strategy - massive waves of civil disobedience, especially here in the US - it will be insufficient.
It's hard not to see the most painful form of mitigation, global economic collapse, as the likeliest way to avoid catastrophic runaway global warming. Its portents are many, starting with the weaker Eurozone economies, but with the world's biggest economy teetering at their heels. The political leadership so absent in the climate wars is doing little to avert a massive debt spiral, leading to hyperinflation and Endgame Depression. Witness the huge debt risks of the President's current deal with the Republicans on tax policy.
Of course the ultimate “hostages” in the current debate on tax policy go far beyond Middle America to the very boundaries of modernist civilization and beyond to the great community of life. It is past time, Senator Burr and your brothers-in-hiding, to realize that fighting for your life means working for a world in which your grandchildren can thrive. To do so means to fight for Gaia, for the health of the biosphere is the bottom line for all political posturing and economic tinkering . The Iroquois Creed of making decisions with eight generations in mind would be a modest place to start (they were a democracy!). Partisan gain does not equal survival, any more than a narrow sense of self-interest drives the Invisible Hand to dispense the wealth of nations. Our wealth is retained in an earth system that is as close to steady-state as possible. That means, Senators Burr, McCain, Lugar, Scott Brown, and the Maine Olympians, that you only win when we all win - all classes, all parties, all species. And remember, even if beleaguered President Obama achieves the improbable and wins a second term, there are term limits. Your side will have its turn again. And if you work for strong, meaningful climate legislation, I will support you. Underneath our partisan differences, we all need and want the same thing. Fighting for your life really comes down to the chance for the survival of your species on a viable planet.
Labels: "Inconvenient Truth", climate denial, COP-16, debt spiral, hyperinflation, Senator Richard Burr, world government
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