Been there? Done that? A response to climate breakdown

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently released the latest in their series of reports on its assessment of climate change.

The report shows that emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities are responsible for approximately 1.1°C of warming since 1850-1900, and finds that averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming.

There are really few, if any, surprises in the report. In fact, the entire IPCC series has been foreshadowed by work done with support by the Club of Rome and first published in 1972, The Limits to Growth [available as download]. The report’s authors found that

The earth’s interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology. In the summer of 1970, an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began a study of the implications of continued worldwide growth. They examined the five basic factors that determine and, in their interactions, ultimately limit growth on this planet-population increase, agricultural production, nonrenewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. 

In 1992 there was an update to The Limits to Growth, titled, appropriately, Beyond the Limits to Growth. It reinforced, with some revisions, the original report’s conclusions:

1. Human use of many essential resources and generation of many kinds of pollutants have already surpassed rates that are physically sustainable. Without significant reductions in material and energy flows, there will be in the coming decades an uncontrolled decline in per capita food output, energy use, and industrial production.

2. This decline is not inevitable. To avoid it two changes are necessary. The first is a comprehensive revision of policies and practices that perpetuate growth in material consumption and in population. The second is a rapid, drastic increase in the efficiency with which materials and energy are used.

3. A sustainable society is still technically and economically possible. It could be much more desirable than a society that tries to solve its problems by constant expansion. The transition to a sustainable society requires a careful balance between long-term and short-term goals and an emphasis on sufficiency, equity, and quality of life rather than on quantity of output. It requires more than productivity and more than technology; it also requires maturity, compassion, and wisdom.

Twelve years later, in 2004, Chelsea Green Publishing Company published Limitsa to Growth: The Thirty Year Update. It included a chapter on “Tools for the Transition to Sustainability.” This latter piece has not been prominent in any of the IPCC’s work. The essence of Chapter 8 is available online at the Donella Meadow’s Project web site. One of the critical tools cited is a shared vision such as the following:

A sustainable world can never be fully realized until it is widely envi­sioned. The vision must be built up by many people before it is complete and compelling. As a way of encour­aging others to join in the process, we’ll list here some of what we see when we let ourselves imagine a sus­tainable society we would like to live in–as opposed to one we would be willing to settle for. This is by no means a definitive list. We include it here only to invite you to develop and enlarge it.

• Sustainability, efficiency, sufficiency, equity, beauty, and community as the highest social values.
• Material sufficiency and security for all. Therefore, by individual choice as well as communal norms, low birth rates and stable populations.
• Work that dignifies people instead of demeaning them. Some way of providing incentives for people to give their best to society and to be rewarded for doing so, while ensuring that everyone will be provided for sufficiently under any circumstances.
• Leaders who are honest, respectful, intelligent, humble, and more inter­ested in doing their jobs than in keeping their jobs, more inrerested in serving society than in winning elections.
• An economy that is a means, not an end, one that serves the welfare of the environment, rather than vice versa.
• Efficient, renewable energy systems.
• Efficient, closed-loop materials systems.
• Technical design that reduces emis­sions and waste to a minimum, and social agreement not to produce emissions or waste that technology and nature can’t handle.
• Regenerative agriculture that builds soils, uses natural mechanisms to restore nutrients and control pests, and produces abundant, un­contaminated food.
• The preservation of ecosystems in their variety, with human cultures liv­ing in harmony with those ecosys­tems; therefore, high diversity of both nature and culture, and human appre­ciation for that diversity.
• Flexibility, innovation (social as well as technical), and intellectual chal­lenge. A flourishing of science, a con­tinuous enlargement of human knowledge.
• Greater understanding of whole systems as an essential part of each person’s education.
• Decentralization of economic power, political influence, and scien­tific expertise.
• Political structures that permit a balance between short-term and long-term considerations; some way of exerting political pressure now on behalf of our grandchildren.
• High-level skills on the part of citi­zens and governments in the arts of nonviolent conflict resolution.
• Media that reflect the world’s diver­sity and at the same time unite cultures with relevant, accurate, timely, unbiased, and intelligent information, presented in its historic and whole­ system context.
• Reasons for living and for thinking well of ourselves that do not involve the accumulation of material things.

The challenges we face are not new, although the need for promptly implementing successful solutions grows more urgent by the day. Many wise and intelligent people have been trying to get our attention for generations. Slowly, they’ve been succeeding. There are many who are creating the alternatives we need to today’s mainstream systems. In future postings, we’ll devote more space to sharing those we know about. For example, most of today’s posting is based on the work of Donella Meadows, being continued posthumously at The Donella Meadow’s Project. So, in addition to a poem today, we close with one of her observations.

A History of Kindness

By Linda Hogan

When a child becomes an animal in clouds
changing forms to other creatures,
our grief becomes a kindness to the sky.

When the hay is baled and you worry
if a mouse or snake was inside,
that is a gentleness.

When the horses are fed and all that's left is a withered apple
for a woman to eat, and she is grateful
for the life of all things and so feeds it to the horse,
that is a good heart.

When you are gentle to the s kin of others,
touching them softly, speaking with gentle words
that is compassion.

When there is agreement among those
who might have argued instead,
it is a gift to all.

When skin is the first organ to form in the body of a woman,
skin, the largest organ we have,
that is a mother's first protection.

If you still love the invisible place where a child once stood,
the heart recalling her long dark legs, her soft wind-blown hair,
that is the spaciousness of memory.

And when you pick up the old woman on the worn road
to help her home and you see that she has nothing, 
you give the food you have.

You give the only can of coffee, then start her woodstove
you leave your coat behind on purpose.
What else would a real human do?

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