Our world's at risk

Back in 2007, a book entitled The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, was published. A Second Edition has since been printed. We believe it would be incredibly wise if more people read it. We wonder if, and hope that, both Biden and Harris have read it. It's pretty clear to us these days that the folks in Texas should have been more familiar with its premise and that season by season, year by year, farmers are finding more and more black swans landing in their fields. This latter assessment is based on reading Tom Philpott's Perilous Bounty, the Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It.

our only home
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

The importance of the preceding was heightened yesterday when we became aware of a recently published United Nations report, Making Peace with Nature. Many of the themes parallel those of Taleb's book.

Key Messages 

Summary 

•    Climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution add up to three self-inflicted planetary crises that are closely interconnected and put the well-being of current and future generations at unacceptable risk.   

•   Ambitious and coordinated action by governments, businesses and people around the world can prevent and reverse the worst impacts of environmental decline by rapidly transforming key systems including energy, water and food so that our use of the land and oceans becomes sustainable. 

•   Transforming social and economic systems means improving our relationship with nature, understanding its value and putting that value at the heart of our decision-making.

We haven't yet read the full report, but we suspect there are few references to profit maximization or lean supply chains. Back in the days when we were a practicing planner, before we became a recovering planner, we tried to always remember the dictum "More of the same never solved a problem." And yet, that seems to be the best our current political and business "leadership" can offer. It reminds us of the joke about the problem that can arise with a skewed reliance on faith in miracles.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (after Wallace Stevens)

Craig Santos Perez

I

Among starving polar bears, 

The only moving thing 

Was the edge of a glacier.

 

II

We are of one ecology

Like a planet

In which there are 200,000 glaciers.

 

III

The glacier absorbed greenhouse gases. 

We are a large part of the biosphere.

 

IV

Humans and animals 

Are kin. 

Humans and animals and glaciers 

Are kin.

 

V

We do not know which to fear more,

The terror of change

Or the terror of uncertainty, 

The glacier calving

Or just after.

 

VI

Icebergs fill the vast Ocean

With titanic wrecks. 

The mass of the glacier 

Disappears, to and fro. 

The threat

Hidden in the crevasse

An unavoidable cause.

 

VII

O vulnerable humans,

Why do you engineer sea walls?

Do you not see how the glacier

Already floods the streets

Of the cities around you?

 

VIII

I know king tides, 

And lurid, inescapable storms; 

But I know, too, 

That the glacier is involved 

In what I know.

 

IX

When the glacial terminus broke, 

It marked the beginning 

Of one of many waves.

 

X

At the rumble of a glacier

Losing its equilibrium, 

Every tourist in the new Arctic

chased ice quickly.

 

XI

They explored the poles 

for offshore drilling. 

Once, we blocked them, 

In that we understood 

The risk of an oil spill

For a glacier.

 

XII

The sea is rising.

The glacier must be retreating.

 

XIII

It was summer all winter. 

It was melting 

And it was going to melt.

The glacier fits

In our warm-hands.

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