Join me in Paris at the 'Last-Chance Saloon'

P

aris is the home of the Eiffel Tower and, of course, many Frenchmen, but beyond that it was of little consequence to someone growing up in Australia.

There was always, though, a sense of difference about Paris for it forever seemed that place where the world’s flotsam and jetsam washed up, where the eccentrics gathered, where bizarre ideas were hatched and breed and where it was okay if you behaved and lived a little differently.

Things, however, have changed.

The intellectually homeless maybe still gather in Paris and it is still a place where ideas roost, but this year it has shifted from that bohemian background and personal irrelevancy to something of a “last-chance saloon”.

Climate change has emerged as the most significant problem humanity has ever faced with a potential devastating outcome, outstripping with ease any human conflict or natural disaster ever faced.

Well now we, or at least thousands representing the world community, will gather in that “last-hope saloon” in Paris to talk about, and decide how we might avoid the worst of climate change.

(And what is the Last-chance Saloon? - In 2015, France will be hosting and presiding the 21st Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP21/CMP11), otherwise known as “Paris 2015” from November 30th to December 11th.)

I won't physically be in Paris,
but I'll be there spiritually - join me?

For more than a decade now I have followed the climate change conversation and it has gone from being little more than a passing interest to almost my “reason”; the purpose I get up each morning to see if the world’s governments have finally seen sense, understanding that unbridled profit and growth has just one inevitable conclusion; a conclusion we watch arriving now as the world’s disrupted climate system is going to unsettle our way of life to such an extent that humanity’s future is somewhat problematic.

My hopes for Paris will not be realized.

Present carbon content of earth’s atmosphere is such that a warming of at least two degrees above pre-industrial levels is certain and that will bring with it disturbances and disruptions to the world’s weather systems with which we have no experience.

To avoid any further increases in C0² levels we need to stop what we are doing immediately and that, I’m sure will not happen as it will so unsettle the world’s economy so that only handful of people have attempted to understand how we could switch from the existing profit and growth, gross domestic product paradigm to which we are now addicted, to something quite different; something that concerns itself with people, rather than accumulation.

Paris might give us decisions that will bring admiration from many, but they won’t be sufficient to divert the disturbing disruptions humanity will be forced to endure as this century unfolds.

Humans are known for their ability to adapt and those attributes will be pushed to their extremes this century.

And that adaptation has, for some, already started with them trying to figure out new ways to live; new ways to bind and build societies, new ways to ensure people can live in contentment, safety and thrive through collaboration.

What happens in Paris may provide some impetus, but it won’t provide a solution for the required resolution is so different from what exists that a society so embedded with present processes will be unable to change.

We have been “sold”, and accepted, the corporate/neoliberal story that profit and growth will resolve all the world’s difficulties, when in fact that duopoly only worsens what it is we are facing and deepens the climate change crisis.

I won’t be in Paris, but spiritually I will be at the “last-chance saloon”.

-      Robert McLean.