Dilemmas for climate change skeptics

Recent storms along Australia’s east coast posed some dilemmas for climate change skeptics as this letter in today's Melbourne Age asks:

Many loved, accepted and understood traditions will be unsettled by climate change

-by Robert McLean

New ways of living forced upon us by climate change will unsettle many traditions.

This recently published book
encourages us to adopt
a vocabulary for a new era.

Chief among them and probably the most disconcerting for most will be society’s governance.

Market driven capitalism has existed in its concentrated form for about two centuries and while the benefits to humanity have been many its fundamental thesis of infinite growth has led us into a blind canyon.

Not only is there no apparent way out, also crowding in as humanity mills about, huddled in a finite space, are the effect and impacts of a seriously disrupted climate system.

That climate disruption has been brought upon us by an incessant need for profit and, within that, our careless and wasteful use of fossil fuel powered energy and ceaseless consumption of “stuff”.

Existing forms of societal governance, primarily democracy in the developed world, seem illusory in the benefits they promise and despite the many advances that can be pointed to, they simply take us deeper into that blind canyon.

Any reasonable response to the dilemmas of climate change insists that we live and behave differently and that by implication equally insists that we consider our governance processes.

Adhering to existing status quo practices simply ensuring our ongoing association with “business as usual”, means methods and behaviours that have unleashed climate disrupting gases remain uninterrupted.

Governance processes covering every variety of “isms” have been contemplated, but most every considered option or alternative seems to fall within the boundaries of what exists.

The recently published book, “Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era”, edited by Giacomo D'Alisa, Federico Demaria and Giorgos Kallis does however reject the illusion of growth.

It calls for a fresh public debate; a debate that has been colonized by the idiom of “economism”.

An Amazon.com comment about the book says, “Degrowth is a project advocating the democratically-led shrinking of production and consumption with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability.”

Here in Australia we have “The Simplicity Institute”, a non-profit education and research centre dedicated to advancing the Simplicity Movement.

The Institute says it is: “Directing our critique toward consumerist and growth-obsessed economies, our defining objective is to show that lifestyles of reduced and restrained consumption are a necessary and desirable part of any transition to a just, sustainable, and flourishing human community.

“We aim to promote this vision of the good life and help build a new society based on material sufficiency,” the Institute says.

The one “ism” rarely even considered, even by adventurous thinkers, is that of anarchism.

Anarchy is a desperately misunderstood idea

Interestingly, it is a method of governance, or lack of governance that should appeal to the libertarians among us.

However, most equate anarchy with disarray in every sense, portraying it as primarily as rape and pillage in which man’s base and less than honourable behaviours are given full rein.

Such a judgement is incorrect and makes no allowance for the fact that most men, in fact the overwhelming majority irrespective of culture, colour or any other difference, are fundamentally decent and wholesome people who inherently align with all that is good about being human.

Stereotypical incantations have seen anarchy wrongly lumped in with political evils that are about dominating and controlling people, rather than seeing it through the clear lens of freedom.

Noam Chomsky - he has thought
deeply about anarchism.

Renowned public intellectual, who aligns himself with the values of anarchy, linguist Professor Noam Chomsky, has written extensively about this form of human freedom.

Looked at through the prism of what exists, few of us sufficiently intellectually athletic to imagine or contemplate a life unencumbered by state control.

Centuries of living under, and within a statist system has produced little about which we can boast and bequeathed a process in which millions, probably billions of people have died violent deaths and, as a bonus, endowed us with a way of life that has seriously disrupted earth’s climate system and threatened an apocalyptic end to life as we know it.

So where do we stand, what do we do?

We can point to what exists and say with confidence “it doesn’t work” and as the Degrowth editors, and others suggest, initiate urgently a public conversation about the governance of society.

Climate change demands we 'at least do something'

John Kennedy.

“At least do something!” was the plea to his players by famous Hawthorn Football club coach John Kennedy Snr.

Although important in the moment, it was, in the sweep of world events somewhat insignificant.

However, and interestingly, Kennedy’s plea and advice has regained centre stage and still rings true today being resoundingly applicable to the dilemmas presently facing humanity.

The half-time exhortation by Kennedy to his players in 1975 Victorian Football League grand final was prescient and applies today generally and widely to humanity.

Considering major weather events around the world and the indisputable evidence of science pointing to definite and dangerous changes in the world’s weather patterns, it is beyond doubt that we must take Kennedy’s advice and “And at least do something”.

A battered Philippines recovers from Typhoon Haiyan and the same storm, claimed to be the most powerful tempest top ever make landfall, now stalks Vietnam.

The people of the Philippines have endured Haiyan, but fear that people in the world’s rich countries, that is you and me, are ignoring climate change and in doing that are guaranteeing similar events will follow.

A story published by The Guardian by John Vidal headed: “Typhoon Haiyan: what really alarms Filipinos is the rich world ignoring climate change”, tells about encountering the distraught chief negotiator with the Filipino delegation at the annual UN climate talks, Naderev Saño.

Saño told the world last year, Vidal reported, that time was running out.

“Please,” he said, “let this year be remembered as the year the world found the courage to take responsibility for the future we want. I ask all of us here, if not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here, then where?”

Kennedy’s plea echoes around the world - “At least do something!”

Thanks John! Comment from New York about climate change

Beneath the Wisteria supporter, John Lawry, frequently alerts us to interesting stories and this time it’s “Hicks Nix Climate Fix” from the New York Times opinion pages.

The piece by Timothy Egan discusses the troubles faced by American farmers brought on by the dilemmas of climate change.

2013 begins with a blast!

This year, 2013, has started with something of a blast.

Temperatures throughout the country are rattling the record books and already some are suggesting the drought from which Australia has just emerged is set to return, or continue.

Is what we are seeing further evidence of climate change or is it simply seasonal?

The sceptics and doubters will unquestionably see the climatic dilemmas Australia is facing as seasonal, although the overwhelming evidence points to clearly measurable changes in in the world’s climate structure.

Today’s Melbourne Age (January 5, 2013) includes the story “12th with a bullet, and the race to a record is heating up” details through a graph what happened last year and discusses emerging challenges.

'The Reason' for Beneath the Wisteria

By Robert McLean

 

George Monbiot has helped me understand the reason for Beneath the Wisteria.



George Monbiot's
Age of Consent.

Writing in “Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order”, the English thinker, author and newspaper columnist, discussed how rarely an upheaval happens spontaneously and how existing institutions are unable to reform themselves.

Considering that climate change, humanity’s greatest ever threat, will only be abated if our way of life is subjected to an upheaval and if existing institutions are reformed, then those who gather Beneath the Wisteria face a significant challenge.

We are the “specific you” discussed by Monbiot and although it is important we personally instigate changes that will ease the dynamics of climate change; the overriding importance to we, “specifically you”, is to act and behave in such a manner that encourages, enables and ensures the broad sweep of our community to become sensitive to the societal needs and demands of this new and emerging world.

Monbiot discusses the need for a “shift” adding: “This shift, in other words, depends not on an amorphous them, but on a specific you.

“It depends”, Monbiot added, “on your preparedness to abandon your attachment to the old world and start thinking like a citizen of the new; to exchange your security for liberty, your comfort for elation.

“It depends on your willingness to act”, he wrote.

Beneath the Wisteria is the medium through which we can act.

The need to address the foundational paradigm that is manifesting itself as climate change is urgent and demands more than simply gathering each month to really only “talk among ourselves” and so have little or no influence on the unfolding dilemmas.

True, it is beneficial to gather with like-minded souls, have your emotional resources refurbished and refreshed to return to the respective parts of our communities and be willing to again discuss climate change realities with your counterparts.

Many, it seems, acknowledge that our climate is changing and those same people all want to do something that will help, but within that most are unsure what it is they need to do. Changing a few light globes will not help.

Gathering Beneath the Wisteria each month, and supporting the essence of its reason, illustrates that you are conscious that the human story has become somewhat distorted and that we need not simply start a new chapter, but re-write the entire book.

Our society’s adherence to an extremist ideology, namely capitalism, for the past couple of centuries is what has brought us to this troubling position.

Writing in his 1999 book, “The Post Corporate World: Life After Capitalism”, David Korten said “Societies based on extremist ideologies of either the far left (rigid collectivization) or the far right (ruthless individualism) are inherently unstable”.

Korten continues: “There is nothing inevitable or immutable about the ways in which we choose to structure our economic lives. Choices as to the rules and structures that define our economies are human choices. Because those rules and structures play such a powerful role in expressing our values and shaping how we live, it is proper that they be subject to thorough public debate and dialogue informed by serious, critical and non-ideological analysis.”

It has been the voracious appetite of the world’s corporations that has lead us to this point; a place at which inequality abounds, the earth’s environment is in absolute disarray and the “common” upon which we all depend, the atmosphere, has been, and is being, fundamentally changed, putting humanity at risk.

David C. Korten's
'Post-Corporate
World'.

Turning to Korten again: “Although capitalism claims to be an engine of wealth creation, in fact its primary vehicle, the corporation is more accurately described as a powerful engine of wealth extraction – it profits dependent on imposing enormous costs on the rest of society so that a few top executives and large shareholders may enjoy unconsciously large financial rewards.

“If market rules applied, most of the dominant corporations would have long ago found themselves unable to cover their own costs and gone bankrupt or been restructured into smaller, more efficient firms,” Korten wrote.

Korten, an enthusiast of the traditional market, but not the all-consuming corporation notes that far less than one per cent of the world’s population has a consequential partnership in corporate ownership.

“This leads”, he wrote, “to a rather shocking conclusion. The triumph of global capitalism means that more than half of the world’s one hundred largest economies are centrally planned for the primary benefit of the wealthiest one per cent of the world’s people!

“It is a triumph of privatized central planning over markets and democracy. Even more it is the triumph of the extremely wealthy over the remainder of humanity,” Korten wrote.

It is clear that neither the ideologies of either extreme (the far left or far right) have within them the capacity to mitigate the dilemmas of climate change and so we need to choose a middle road built on sharing, co-operation, mutuality and collaboration, values that are somewhat foreign to those extremist ideologies.

The sad and confusing part is that those from the capitalistic side of the spectrum believe they adhere to those values and yet a wounded earth and a community in which the ever-widening fiscal gap between people suggests otherwise.

We gather Beneath the Wisteria in the hope increasing our understanding of the damage we are doing to environment; what we can do about that; enjoying the company of like-minded people; and, hopefully, helping our community to see that the “business as usual” belief of the corporate world is absolutely inadequate and, importantly, inappropriate.