It’s simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up

Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham.

'The mother narrative to all this is carbon-fuelled
 expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots.' 

Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It's 2.5 billion billion solar systems. It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.

To succeed is to destroy ourselves. To fail is to destroy ourselves. That is the bind we have created. Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues miraculously vanished, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.

Read George Monbiot’s observations on The Guardian - “It’s simple. If we can't change our economic system, our number's up.”

Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary)

Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary) is what financier Jeremy Grantham argues in a story published in the latest International journal of science, “Nature”.

Jeremy Grantham.

In the November 14 story, Grantham declares he is yet to meet a climate scientist who doesn’t believe that global warming is a worse problem than they thought a few years ago.

“I am a specialist in investment bubbles, not climate science. But the effects of climate change can only exacerbate the ecological trouble I see reflected in the financial markets — soaring commodity prices and impending shortages,” Grantham said.

Considering Grantham’s views, along with the overwhelming evidence of climate change and its potential civilization-ending implications, the responsibility to become more obvious to others and active falls with us.

Beneath the Wisteria organizer, Robert McLean said: “I’m not naturally inclined to be confrontational or disruptive, but the stakes in this conversation have become so large that I’m being forced to reconsider my position.”

“Each of us needs to think about the realities of climate change, how they will impact on family and friends and how we could best invigorate the thinking of our communities enabling them to understand and address the unfolding difficulties associated with our changing climate,” Robert said.

“Let’s”, he said, “talk about the next time we gather Beneath the Wisteria on November 24 at 11:30am.

Read the full Nature story here – “Be persuasive. Be brave. Be arrested (if necessary)”.