Climate change

The Club of Rome report The Limits to Growth was published in 1972. I didn't read it back then, I was pretty much oblivious of what was happening and what would happen in future. I was still in school in South Africa, in standard 7. It was not mentioned in the papers, not discussed in class.

I graduated high school in 1975, still oblivious of population growth, the finite nature of resources and climate change. I knew indiscriminate DDT use had probably obliterated my beloved chameleons but other than that, I was clueless. In those days in South Africa, any kind of conservationist stance was seen as wimpy, naive and immature, laughable, so environmentally minded people did not stand front and centre with their opinions.

I left South Africa for the Netherlands in 1985 - a very densely populated country. I became aware quite quickly of environmental issues such as acid rain, pollution of air water and ground. Still, this was low-key, not mainstream news. I became more aware of things environmental but still did not realise the gravity of the situation.

Then, I entered university and studied biology. It seemed like a massive wave of information hitting me from all sides at once and all of it negative. Acid rain, ground contamination, water drenched it agricultural effluent (poisons and nutrients) etc etc... and the Club of Rome report. I read it and walked about in shock for about a year or so, reading furiously and informing myself as fast as I could.

After the shock wore off I was at first very angry at myself for being so blind for so long. Then I became quite missionary about spreading the message and probably made a real pest of myself! One environmental scandal followed another without leaving people room to breathe. This relentless avalanche eventually resulted in the public at large turning off the panic switch. The breathless reactions became ...."meh", another environmental scandal.

Time went by and it became pretty clear that we humans were changing our environment on a global scale. I got my degree and carried on with my life, trying to keep my footprint small and my own people (community) informed. Alarmist, fear mongerer, drama queen etc was an often heard response. This did not make me give up, I just tried to find other, more effective methods of spreading information on environmental issues. Some listened, most just shrugged and went on. At some point I understood that talking about problems without offering solutions will end up with the same reaction time after time. And, there were very few solutions on an individual scale... the problem was global, the solution simply had to be global too.

The IPCC published their first report in 1990 to a deafening and indifferent silence. Two, three and four followed with the contents increasingly alarming and the tone increasingly alarmed. I discovered the Internet around that time and developed my voice in online forums etc. At first, I came across the same indifference except where I was preaching to the converted (which at first was exhilarating!): there I was, finally being heard.... until I realised that while it was definitely pleasant to have my ego stroked, it was also getting me absolutely nowhere. When you talk about a problem that's unsolvable unless a massive and painful (let's be honest about it) lifestyle change takes place sooner rather than later, people tend to switch off.

By the time Kyoto came along I understood the issues and was in full agreement with it. In fact, it just didn't go far enough for me! Years went by and by and by without ratification in the big countries, and everything that could possibly be perverted, was. I was becoming profoundly depressed, then I would rally and fight on the good fight again. Increasingly I felt as if I was simply a witness, an informed, powerless witness of a disaster happening in slow motion.

Over the years I tried fear, persuasion, pretty words and pictures, tons of proof, kumbaya and every other approach out there. Up till recently, people were stubbornly unconvinced about it even being possible that little old you or I could influence climate on a planetary scale. These days, the realisation is slowly dawning for some. Others remain firmly in denial and will probably hold that position till the day they die.

Today we have CO2 levels around 390 ppm while 350 ppm is considered the upper safe limit by leading climate scientists. We have a variety of other issues affecting global climate, like methane releases into the atmosphere, ocean acidification, steep phytoplankton decrease, etc. Kyoto dies in 2012 and there is nothing to replace it other than "voluntary" targets that are greenspun beyond belief. N.O.T.H.I.N.G. Copenhagen was a shocking failure and since then, a stunned inaction prevails. Some leading scientist like James Hansen are doing all they can in a world currently in the grip of a financial crisis of shocking magnitude that leaves no room for talk of CO2 reduction. The TV, night after night, broadcasts fluff and fun. Substantive reporting and seriously researched documentaries are absent from such public forums and consequently, climate change simply doesn't make it into the mainstream social discourse.

My mind has given up even as my heart still refuses to accept the reality: that we would act like blind bacteria growing profusely on a rich medium till we poison ourselves out of existence. A small corner of my mind is still in denial that climate change is happening at all and a huge part of my mind cannot conceive that we have the knowledge and know-how to get out of the hole we are digging for ourselves... but, collectively, won't.

Climate change

Yes, that's about how it is. In this morning's Independent:

The scientific debate is not between deniers and those who can prove that releasing massive amounts of warming gases will make the world warmer. Every major scientific academy in the world, and all the peer-reviewed literature, says global warming denialism is a pseudo-science, on a par with Intelligent Design, homeopathy, or the claim that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. One email from one lousy scientist among tens of thousands doesn’t dent that. No: the debate is between the scientists who say the damage we are doing is a disaster, and the scientists who say it is catastrophe.


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Now there is a radically different theory that is gaining adherents, ominously named the Medea hypothesis. The paleontologist Professor Peter Ward is an expert in the great extinctions that have happened in the earth’s past, and he believes there is a common thread between them. With the exception of the meteor strike that happened 65 million years ago, every extinction was caused by living creatures becoming incredibly successful – and then destroying their own habitats. So, for example, 2.3 billion years ago, plant life spread incredibly rapidly, and as it went it inhaled huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This then caused a rapid plunge in temperature that froze the planet and triggered a mass extinction.


Ward believes nature isn’t a nurturing mother like Gaia. No: it is Medea, the figure from Greek mythology who murdered her own children. In this theory, life doesn’t preserve itself. It serially destroys itself. It is a looping doomsday machine. This theory adds a postscript to Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest. There is survival of the fittest, until the fittest trash their own habitat, and do not survive at all.


But the plants 2.3 billion years ago weren’t smart enough to figure out what they were doing. We are.

source


The window to act has come and gone. Hansen and others are fiercely fighting but all I can see is inaction, obstruction and Kyoto ending soon.

This is it.





PS I do like Hari's comment that we can choose to do things differently. I still have hope struggling against my inner cynic. Who knows.