Stephen Rogers was among the eight who
joined that first “chat” Beneath the
Wisteria.
Below
are some of his reflections on climate change:
When I think about the reach of Climate Change I realise
that it affects and has implications for all aspects of human existence.
The very idea of Climate Change seems to be embedded in our humanity. Big
claims I know so let me expand on this.
The Personal:
It
is trite to state that the climate has always changed. Individual humans
experience a change of climate every time they move from one geographical
location to another. I grew up in Nelson in New Zealand. The
climate there maritime and is very benign being due to it being protected from
the worst of New Zealand’s weather by mountains to the west, south and
east. I enjoyed warm sunny days with few weather extremes. I moved
to Wellington at 18 and experience some of the windiest weather of any major
city in the world. The climate was cooler, more windswept and wetter than
Nelson. After a year I found myself in Shepparton in the Goulburn Valley
region of Australia. Here was a huge change of climate to hot and dry
with flies and spiders to match. Over some 40 years off and on in
Shepparton I have learned to live with some of the extremes but find 35+ degree
days very taxing without air-conditioning.
My Fear:
Having
experienced a number of radical changes of climate by moving my location, I
have come to fear the prospect that Nelson will become like Shepparton and
Shepparton something akin to the fires of hell. In 2009 when we
experienced a series of 40+ days culminating in the Black Saturday fires I
began to realise the implications of the prospect of that sort of event
happening more frequently in future. It is generally accepted that human
induced warming of around 0.8 degrees has so far occurred. If, as I
believe they are, the 13 year rain deficit from 1996 to 2009 and the heat wave
of January/February 2009 are the predicted consequences of such an
apparently small change in average temperature, then I fear the consequence of
the already in train 2 degree rise will be a catastrophe for humans. The
question uppermost in my mind is “How will humans respond?” As I have
written this piece I have
Mike
Hulme in his book “Why we Disagree About Climate Change” identifies four common
emotional responses to Climate Change being:
REMEMBERING
EDEN: The belief that there once was a Golden Age in which humans lived a
paradise like existence with no problems such as disease, over population,
discord or war. As our thinking matures we come to understand that this
is a human yearning that probably has never been an actuality of human
existence. Why would it be, when existence for all living organisms is
randomly peaceful and violent by turns. I have recently come to question
my understanding of this but will let it stand for the time being. See my
later discussion of “The Continuum Concept”.
ARMAGEDDON:
The biblically expressed deep seated fear in humans that all will come
crashing down in a great catastrophe any moment now. Once again mature
thinking leads us to notice that notwithstanding all of the dire warnings from
history, humans have prospered on the earth for quite a long time, in the human
time frame. Yes things look like getting worse for a very long time but
it is likely that at least some humans will continue to exist when the climate
again stabilises sometime in the next 1,000 odd years. See also my later
discussion of “The Continuum Concept”.
BABEL
being the belief in humans that we can do the same job as nature. That we can
manipulate our environment to our ends ahead of its natural tendencies.
In the past this lead hunter gatherers to create civil society (Cities) leading
seemingly inevitably to over population, over exploitation of resources and the
invention of a whole world of things that promise comfort and ease but deliver
pollution and unquenchable desire for more. It is this thinking that
leads to proposals to put sulphur into the atmosphere in order to achieve the
sort of temporary cooling produced by huge volcanic dust clouds and proposals
to put some sort of light filter between here and the sun.
JUBILEE
being the example provided by the Jewish concept of forgiveness and renewal
every 50 years (Jubilee). This is the hope that in seeing and
experiencing the consequences of civilisation carried to its final extreme, we
may find a way to change our nature and live sustainably on the earth.
I
recommend that those interested in the debate over Climate Change read Mike’s
book and visit these two related web sites http://mikehulme.org/ and http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/
Another Response:
After
35 odd years, I am reading again “The Continuum Concept”, by Jean Liedloff.
It contrasts the way that children are raised in so called “civilised”
cultures with the child rearing practices of indigenous cultures in remote
South American jungles. The continuum refers to the way that human
children are born expecting, based on the whole of human history, to be
gently introduced to life outside the womb in the arms of a loving mother
figure. The young of all living creatures are born into an expectation of
being raised according to the history of their species. The coming of
civilisation seems to have broken the continuum for humans and I can see it is
possible that unsustainable living is an inevitable consequence of this.
Civilised humans seem separated from and fearful of nature and yearning for
something that seems to be missing. Thus perhaps the REMEMBERING EDEN
emotional response to Climate Change is a reflection of our not having been
born into the continuum we expected and ARMAGEDDON describes the fear of
catastrophe experienced at birth when the expected continuum is not there.
Perhaps
we wasteful, all consuming, moderns can find in those few remaining sustainable
human cultures some acceptable examples and lessons for a way to live in the
future. Clearly there is no way back to nature for us. However,
many of us want to change the way we act in order to address the known dangers
of Climate Change. I for one propose to keep thinking along these lines
and read as much as I can on the topic. Whenever I think about the wisdom
of the indigenous cultures around the world, I deeply regret and am dismayed by
the vigour with which “civilised” humans dismiss, belittle, attack and seek to
wipe out indigenous humans wherever they encounter them. It tells me that
there is clearly a fundamental divide between being civilised and living
sustainably. I think a lot about this sort of stuff. I have
not yet found a way to act on the thinking and so my partner and I do the best
we can and try to cut down our carbon emissions by cutting power consumption at
home, generating some of our own power and growing our own vegies.
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