Climate Breakdown: address the disease not just the symptoms

Between newspaper headlines, television news, and much (most?) of social media, there’s more than enough  dreary and depressing news to fill our days. Meanwhile, there are a number of talented, smart, collaborative people and organizations doing lots of good to great work providing models and other tools we can use to "build back better." As a partial response to the opportunities created by both COVID-19 and climate breakdown, we’re going to share some of what we've learned over the years, and are still discovering, which may be of use to others responding to changes, potentially apocalyptic or other.

There’s an article in The Atlantic that offers one of the most comprehensible and comprehensive summaries on the status of COVID-19 we’ve seen so far. Try reading How the Pandemic Now Ends if you’re wondering how we get out of the hole dug by a pandemic and how to stay as safe as possible and protect loved ones.

Yesterday we posted about a fifty year long series of studies and related books that had been warning US if we didn’t change direction and mode of travel, we’ll end up where we are. Donella and Dennis Meadows were principal authors and researchers of those books and studies and are co-founders of The Balaton Group.

The Balaton Group generates new research, new action and new solutions for sustainability. We believe that through systems thinking, networking, communication, and envisioning we can make a huge change for the better in global sustainability. We think of systems in terms of natural resources – advocating their use only at rates that permit them to regenerate or be replaced by renewable alternatives.

The Meadows did much of their systems work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], which is also the base for Peter M. Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline and the founding chair of SoL (Society of Organizational Learning). (I’ve often fantasized about how great it would be if our political institutions were actually Learning Organizations.)

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts-Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders-held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the Earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis.

Image Credit: NASA

All of the preceding is important if we are concerned about global issues such as pandemics or climate breakdown. The Earth, our home planet, is primarily a closed system. To paraphrase a(n) (in)famous tag line, “what happens on Earth, stays on Earth.” 

Tomorrow we’ll visit a wonderful source of solutions to climate breakdown. Until then. please practice collaboration with  those who see things your way and, especially, those who don’t.

Earth Day

By Jane Yolen

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me.

Each blade of grass,

Each honey tree,

Each bit of mud,

And stick and stone

Is blood and muscle,

Skin and bone.

And just as I

Need every bit

Of me to make

My body fit,

So Earth needs

Grass and stone and tree

And things that grow here

Naturally.

That’s why we

Celebrate this day.

That’s why across

The world we say:

As long as life,

As dear, as free,

I am the Earth

And the Earth is me. 

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