Signs of change: are you ready for the great transition?

Signs of change are accumulating, but most people still are not taking notice

By Alexander Ac

Is Homo sapiens a truly serious evolutionary project? And with that I mean sustainable, are we able to sustain  all what we have done and built; constructions, networks, and  knowledge into a (distant) future? Can we choose a dramatically different path that we are currently on?

There are many people thinking deeply and constantly about sustainability, global problems, overpopulation, deforestation, overfishing, soil erosion, air pollution... and on top of everything climate change; since it is a survival issue for our species. But the real question is not whether a certain number of people think about sustainability and try to live accordingly. The real question is whether we (will) do so collectively. In other words, it is not important what 50 000 people do for few hours per day (e.g. protesting Keystone pipeline), but important is what 7 billion people do for 365 days per year.

We can see that the great change from Hunters and gatherers to Agricultural societies was enabled by a stable local climate and predictable weather (and crop yields!) during the last 12 000 years. At the end of the last Ice Age, this planet was inhabited by not more than 20 000 people. We do not really want to leave the Holocene behind us.

Look carefully at the two following graphs:

Fig. 1.: The upper graph shows that we are rapidly leaving behind the Holocene temperatures. The lower graph shows that this Holocene period is exceptionally steady in the 100 000 years of temperature record from Central Greenland. Some people confuse it with global temperature record, which is not the case.


Now, the latest speech of president Obama might sound optimistic for some scientists, and even if the promises are fullfilled, which is highly questionable given the past, consider also the following graph:

Fig. 2. You do not need to be a mathematician, or to fit an exponential function to see that this rate of debt increase is not sustainable. Planet resources will not allow to repay all the debts we have created. Source: St Louis FED. Effect of planet Earth is added for illustrative purpose.

In the graph you can see the Total Credit Market Debt Owed in the USA. The same country in which Obama promised to (finally) solve climate crisis. This is not meant to criticise president Obama. This is to show what we are collectively doing. Everyone with a mortgage, or almost any other type debt is claiming exponentially growing demand on our finite planet resources. How is that compatible with declining carbon footprint?

Debt is basically a claim on the future (energy) resources. So if we are to repay ALL debts, we need to continue in the exponential growth. If we are not going to repay all debts, debt deflation is upon us. And hyperinflation later on. Well, its already happening, despite the ultra-loose monetary policy and "money-printing" (can-kicking experiments), which is in exact opposite to what needs to be done in order to solve climate change and other sustainability related problems. But you will not hear it from monetarists like Ben Bernanke or Paul Krugman.

Of course debt deflation means huge economic problems and social unrest. Again, this is already happening. But it is also a solution for the climate change problem. At least until it lasts. We need to get rid off bad debt, and use good debt to transition away from fossil fuels and climate chaos.

Are we ready for that?

The important thing is to do something

A post by Max Iacono, inspired by the post by Ugo Bardi on the meeting on climate change held in the town of Fiesole

by Max Iacono

A meeting such as the one whichtook place in Fiesole easily could be viewed as the first in a longer series of stakeholder meetings convened as part of a participatory local economic and social development program lasting several years.   Two “development” paradigms or models come to mind here.  One is “community development” and the other is “local economic development” or more generally “local development”.  “Local development” is a more encompassing term which can include local economic, social, political/ governance, cultural and environmental kinds of development; and an adequate local response to climate change can be viewed as engaging in a particular type of “local environmental development” program; in reality the various “dimensional” types of local development mentioned above all are inter-related and mutually supportive or constraining.

Without going further into the distinctions between community development and local economic or other kinds of local development each pursued in different ways  -since the international experience is wide and diverse- it is useful to note that often participatory local development initiatives begin with an assessment of the current situation in which the locality finds itself;  the local stakeholders look at both problems and opportunities which the community faces and then try to identify strategies and programs to self-develop the locality or community to which they belong.  If the meeting in Fiesole -or in the countless other localities throughout the world where it might have taken place- is viewed in this way, then the meeting might be seen as only the first in a series of many geared to assessing local problems and needs, developing strategies and then implementing an appropriate set of practical measures and actions. 

It is of course very difficult -in fact impossible- to know in advance what practical measures eventually should or could be implemented by local stakeholders at the community or local levels in the millions of communities and localities existing throughout the world  to mitigate against climate change and its many diverse effects in each particular place.   These measures by necessity will vary enormously from place to place and context to context.

One fairly obvious general effect of climate change however is that the weather is getting “wilder” in various ways.  So there are  -and there will continue to be- more droughts, more fires, more very heavy rainfall or snowfall, more floods, more hurricanes,  more tornados, and seasons that are ever more out of kilter -e.g. longer or shorter and more intense summers or winters- thereby also affecting agriculture in various and differing ways,  as well as plants, trees, animals, insects, pollinators, vector-borne diseases and etc.

It would seem that the first thing any community or locality would need or wish to do is to understand:  i) how exactly it is being affected already in some of the ways above or in other ways over any single calendar year period;  and ii) how  is it most likely going to be affected in let’s say another five years based on current trends in the worsening of climate change.  Since this is the most probable scenario because parts per million of CO2 continue to increase by about 3 ppm per year and increasing quantities of methane also are being released and more ice melt also is occurring.   But it also can be useful to look at the history of severe weather events in the locality and around its general area over the past 50 to 100 years, if it is available.   This is because a flood that before might have occurred only once in every 100 years now might occur on average once per decade.  

Once this first general assessment is done it will be easier for local stakeholders to discuss sensibly what might be done and what could be planned and done by the local community,  or by the province or the region or the country within which it is set. 

The other aspect which I think any local stakeholders probably need to understand is the difference between various kinds of actions and measures which are possible and namely those which belong in four categories:  i) prevention ii) mitigation iii) adaptation and iv) reversal.  Measures implemented in one category may have effects in some of the other categories too but generally speaking there are different measures for different objectives.

 

For instance although Fiesole may wish to focus on preparing better for any fires which may occur, nothing prevents its residents from also being aware of what is involved in the Keystone pipeline decision in the United States which will affect prevention probably more than any other single development at this time. And although I wouldn’t necessarily advocate it because I think it would be mostly ineffective, they also could write a letter about it to president Obama so that he at least might know that people all over the world are watching what he does or fails to do.  Doing something about preparing for fires  (mitigation locally) while writing such a letter (prevention internationally) would help to synergize and further activate the concern and action for climate change by those involved.  The important thing is to actually do something and to remember that it is mostly by doing –and often by trial and error- that we learn ever more about what to do and how to do it and develop further both our capacities and our confidence and motivation for taking further action.