A great little 6 min video by Peter Sinclair for The Yale Forum on Climate Change & The Media contains most of the important visualisations of how the extent of Arctic sea ice has declined over the last 30 years, reaching the lowest volume since records began in September of 2012.
I finished reading Paul Gilding’s book The Great Disruption earlier today and I believe it is the most important book I have read since Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers and would heartily recommend both. In the absence of the book I have found a video of a 30 min talk Paul gave to the World Affairs Council (with another 35 mins of Q&A). Or you can view the abridged 16 min version at the bottom.
The main ideas of the book are that the environmental movement has failed to cause a cultural change that will enable us to take pre-emptive action and avoid the serious impacts of climate change and resource depletion. Despite decades of effort, the world is still in denial. But when looking at human psychology and serious world events this is not actually surprising. As Paul argues – we are slow, but not stupid. The obvious prior example is World War II. Hitler and the stirring of Germany was not a new idea when war was declared in 1939. Prior to that there was much denial about the real threat of Germany, most notably the political policy of appeasement. But once war was declared things changed remarkably quickly and policies and achievements that seemed impossible before all of a sudden happened. Paul believes we are in much the same situation and it will take a great deal of climate pain for the world to wake up from its state of denial. Once this happens the world will go to war decarbonising our economies and it will happen at a pace that seems incomprehensible now. Paul argues that this will happen because there is no other choice. This is the key problem now, there is a choice.
But the story doesn’t end there. Paul argues that the climate problem is not the base problem, but the symptom of a much larger issue – the worldwide pursuit of endless economic growth on a finite planet. The economic model on which we base our societies is flawed and at some point needs to change to a steady state economy. Again this is not a new idea, it was acknowledged my many of the fathers of economics. But listening to politicians of today, the mantra of growth is so firmly embedded in our attitudes that it will take many years of failed growth for the idea that we have reached our planetary limits to sink in. While the transition will likely be unpleasant, the destination of an economy that has limits on the resources it uses and the pollution it produces is a positive one. It will mean a redistribution of wealth and a more equitable society. Despite the commonly held view that more money equals happiness (true only if it pulls you out of poverty), research shows that more equitable societies are much healthier societies. It could mean that advances in productivity translates into less time working.
One can argue that the book has a slightly optimistic outcome, one where we are successful in meeting the climate challenge. We could fail, just a few different decisions taken in WWII might of resulted in the citizens of the UK saluting the Fatherland. It does gloss over the difficulties to come. But (again as Paul touches on) if we are to be successful in meeting the upcoming challenges we will have to be outwardly positive and optimistic even if we sometimes inwardly doubt ourselves. It is equally incorrect to assume that society will just collapse without a fight and we are often pessimistic of what we can achieve when we really put our minds to it.
Where the truth lies I don’t know, but this book has articulated many of the feelings I have on where the world is at. You can argue about the details but the underlying ideas in the book are spot on. It is an important book as it has helped me come to the realisation that those of us not in denial need to spend less time fighting those that are (as the evidence will become overwhelming) and more time preparing for the great disruption.
I urge you to buy the book The Great Disruption. The link goes to amazon so you have the most amount of reviews to read, but please try and buy from your local bookstore (unless you have a kindle/ipad).
China, Climate Change, Climate Destabilisation, Climate Science, Economics, Economy, environment, fossil fuel, GDP, Global Warming, Growth, Paul Gilding, population, Renewables, sustainability, VideoI discovered this brilliant Channel 4 documentary series late night on TV which tracks man’s struggle with a constantly evolving climate over our last 200,000 years of history. Climate change is not new and the show goes back in time to try and discover how various groups of humans dealt with the challenges of changing weather patterns which affected their ability to feed themselves and have enough water to survive. Some groups were successful in adapting, some weren’t. It will likely be the same story for us in the future, but unlike then, the sheer number of us on the planet today will be another huge factor in how we can adapt. It also highlights how humans have flourished only in the last few thousand years during a period of almost unusual climate stability.
Will the modern human with it’s knowledge base and technology be able to adapt to the now inevitable changes to our climate that are already locked in and will we be smart enough to avoid the more disastrous changes that are on the cards if we don’t change our ways.
I unfortunately cannot embed the videos so you’ll have to click the link on the episode heading but the copy and paste job of the episode description should help.
Tony Robinson explores how a small group of our earliest African ancestors were rescued from extinction by the last great global warming 130,000 years ago. The barren landscape surrounding the oases in which they lived was transformed to lush savannah, enabling them to traverse the continent and eventually make it to Europe. As temperatures rose, so they would also later fall: in the Russia steppes Dr Joy Singarayer finds out how the European Homo Sapiens adapted to survive the last great Ice Age. But not all humans coped so well. In Gibraltar, Tony finds the last resting place of our Neanderthal ‘cousins’. Lacking our ‘social brains’, which enabled us to trade and get help from outsiders, the Neanderthals starved, dying out in lonely communities, and even resorting to cannibalism.
Tony Robinson traces how global warming at the end of the last Ice Age was the catalyst for the dawn of civilisation, but also unleashed devastation. Twelve thousand years ago our planet emerged from the last great Ice Age, with temperatures rising by five degrees in just a few decades. After 190,000 years living as nomadic hunter-gatherers, our ancestors were forced to change with the world around them. In Europe the rise in temperature unleashed an agricultural revolution, while in North Africa around 7,000 years ago a savage drought led Saharan refugees to settle along the River Nile. In the limited space they had to learn new skills and form new social structures, going on to found the Kingdom of Egypt. Five hundred years later this same global warming triggered catastrophe as Canadian ice sheets containing 900,000 trillion tonnes of water melted into the Atlantic, causing massive flooding. In less than a year Britain was amputated from mainland Europe, and the Black Sea was formed, washing out the pioneer farmers from that region. What happened to the people that had cultivated this fertile land changed the future of the continent.
Tony Robinson picks through the ruins of three great civilisations from the last 2,000 years to ask what made these civilisations more vulnerable to climate catastrophe than the ones who survived. In the jungles of Central America he investigates how decades-long drought brought the advanced Mayan civilisation to an apocalyptic end, resorting to human sacrifices to plead to their gods for salvation. Dr Joy Singarayer travels to the extraordinary landscape of Greenland to discover how the mini-Ice Age of the 13th century wiped out the ‘advanced’ Vikings, while their ‘savage’ Inuit neighbours developed new tools and strategies to stay alive. Meanwhile, in the deserts of America’s southwest, Dr Jago Cooper investigates the climate crisis that made the Puebloan inhabitants of extraordinary cliff cities homeless 750 years ago.
Tony Robinson examines societies similar to our own, who not only survived climate change, but flourished. In Peru the Hauri people embraced a savage drought, developed advanced techniques of water management and founded a great empire, itself the basis of the great Inca nation. In Europe, Tony learns how a mini-Ice Age triggered the Black Death; but rather than cripple medieval Europe it launched a period of unprecedented progression. The Industrial Revolution and globalisation were hastened by the benefits of a stable climate, but Tony also learns how this stability appears to be ending, bringing a new threat to human societies.
Climate Change, Climate Destabilisation, Climate Science, environment, Global WarmingThis hour long Channel 4 “documentary” contends that some of the positions that the green movement has taken in the past, particularly on nuclear power and genetically modified foods has been wrong and has actually not helped the general aims of the movement get where it wants to go. It suggests that parts of the green movement is now trapped in an ideological corner and needs to reconsider it’s position on these key issues.
The follow up discussion on the Channel 4 (UK) youtube channel will help put some of the points made in the doco into perspective although it highlights that there still isn’t a consensus view on much in the green movement still. But I suppose with such a big subject and with so much at stake it will be almost impossible to take the human emotion out of the debate. Passionate people can be a help and also a hinderance.
The reason why i put documentary in quotation marks is that this video is more of an opinion piece than a real documentary. I in fact agree with a fair chunk of what stance the doco made (nuclear is the lesser evil and I am ambivalent about GM) but as the debate after the show highlights, the complexity of the issues involved cannot be simplified into a 60 minute video. Also you cannot label the green movement with a single brush. Just as with the Occupy Wall St movement, it captures a broad cross section of people who all involved for very different reasons and want many different things.
But it does raise the question of what is going wrong and why the most consequential issue on the planet right now is fading from the political landscape. Not having a consensus on issues such as nuclear cannot help the fact that the issue of climate change is not resonating with people at the moment.
Climate Change, Climate Destabilisation, environment, NuclearDefinitely worth a watch. The big boys from the IEA give their take on the very important annual World Energy Outlook report which was released November 2010.
Click the link for the csis.org page detailing the event, the speakers and the slides that go with the presentations.
Before the financial crisis I never really understood what all the business bits in the news really meant, the whole economy was a bit of a mystery. Since then I have learnt a few things, one of which is that money is largely an illusion. As an individual it is very real, how much I have will determine much of how I live my life. But on a societal/global level it is simply a way in which we humans organise ourselves and the economic system is just a loose rulebook on the distribution of materials and labour. As much as we think the rulebook is based on rules that are fixed like the laws of nature, it can in fact be changed at any time, you just need the political will to do so.
Which is why it is encouraging to see the whole Occupy Wall Street movement spread throughout the world. As this great Business Insider chart article shows the economic system is well and truly broken. I have said for a long time that the 2008 financial crisis wasn’t a crisis enough. Maybe I was wrong.
If economic growth is the main driver in human behaviour (on a governmental level) and this apparently is for the good of the people and the future why is this link now broken?
The current system is now supporting the rich at the expense of the 99%. Also the levels of debt will not be able to be paid of for decades. The way in which we extract our energy and extract resources to feed this economy is slowly poisoning or eroding the natural capital base on which we are all dependent. Our desire for babies and our belief in family values has caused a boom in consumption, indirectly harming others. The notion of “love miles” – jumping on a plane to see our loved ones – is also doing the same thing. And once again, the bottom 99% are going to be most affected by all of this. Just what is the system designed for?
One of the problems is that we have all grown up thinking our actions are inherently “good”. It has been a long time since we as a society have looked in the mirror and questioned this.
If this video of Dylan Ratigan doesn’t stir the blood and get you thinking I don’t know what will. Just as the political process has slowly been corrupted, so too have our values as a society.
The New York Times reports that since 1990, more than 110 million gallons of mostly crude and petroleum products have spilled from the nation’s mainland pipeline network. More than half of it occurred in three states — Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana — where more pipelines exist.
Source: Department of Transportation, Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration
Crude Oil, environment, Info-graphic, Oil, Oil Spills, Pipelines, Polution, United StatesOn first glance it would be hard to see why, but this talk by Professor Bartlett is one of the most utterly compelling things I have watched and makes you totally rethink what “reasonable growth” means. A must watch.
Professor Al Bartlett begins his one-hour talk with the statement, “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” He talks about:
- arithmetic of steady growth
- concept of doubling time
- impact of unending steady growth on population
- consequences steady growth in a finite environment
- growth as applied to fossil fuel consumption
- oddly reassuring statements from “experts”, the media and political leaders – statements that are dramatically inconsistent with the facts
- widespread worship of economic growth and population growth in western society
The talk brings the listener to understand and appreciate the implications of unending growth on a finite planet, and closes noting the crucial need for education topic.
