HAVE WE GONE PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN?

Three nights ago, I began watching the first half of What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire a documentary I bought from the Kapiti Transition Towns group at the recent Kapiti Coast Sustainable Home and Garden Show.

From the start, I was inundated with information that thus far – I still have the second half of the film to watch – has left me feeling somewhat depressed, guilty and more than a bit overwhelmed. What a Way to Go looks at four major problems facing all of us: climate change, peak oil, mass species extinction and population overshoot. Individually, each of these topics is quite sobering. However, when put together, they not only expose the extremely dangerous path we are taking, but they compel us to critically examine how we choose to live, as well as contemplate the legacy our actions will leave for our descendants.

Adding to this, yesterday I just read George Monbiot’s March 16 column “A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.” Monbiot writes – based upon increasing amounts of scientific research with the same conclusion – that we have already pushed ourselves past the point of no return: no matter what we do from this day forward, we have basically secured ourselves at least a global average temperature increase of 2˚C (3.6˚F). He also believes that mitigation – in spite of its less-than-successful record to date – is still the only option humans have, because adaptation is nearly impossible due to the predicted severity of climate change.

As if the film and Monbiot’s column weren’t enough bad news, I then followed one of Monbiot’s source links and skimmed through Deiter Helm’s February 21 lecture at Oxford: “Environmental Challenges in a Warming World: Consumption, Costs and Responsibilities”(PDF). Amongst many other things, Helm had this to say:

For many resources are – even when there is unemployment and excess capacity – scarce. In the general macroeconomic context, financial capital is scarce now, and the corollary of all the proposed sending is borrowing – creating a mortgage on the future. We got into this credit crunch and recession through excess borrowing, and the proposed solution is yet more borrowing. This was not just financial – we have borrowed the atmosphere and the biodiversity too from the future – we have been writing a large environmental mortgage on the consumption possibilities of future generations.

They – of course – have not been consulted.

“We have been writing a large environmental mortgage on the consumption possibilities of future generations” was a terrible statement that resonated.

In spite of the dire warnings that have been and continue to be given by the science community, the world in which we live is governed by money – and it seems to wield a disproportionate influence on decisions which have far-reaching implications. Thus I have begun to educate myself about the economics that drive these decisions. Currently I’m reading two books about ecological economics: Energy and the Ecological Economics of Sustainability by John Peet (1992) and Natural Capital and Human Economic Survival by Thomas Prugh, et al. (1999).

I have purposely started with books written in the previous decade because they seem to hone in on the differences between ecological and neoclassical (or conventional) economics. Back then, ecological economics seems to have been very much an upstart branch, and thus, in-depth historical background as well as justification for a paradigm shift in economic theory is given. In learning about neoclassical economics, it was shocking to see that all inputs (labor, capital and land) are considered substitutable on a one-for-one basis. I may not be an economist, but it seems this ideology (along with others such as exponential growth being limitless, etc.) is a major contributor to why we are now in the current predicament.

Were neoclassical economics not the conventional path, perhaps there would not be such need for alarm, but the truth appears to be that this form of economic theory informs major policy development on local, national and international levels. It seems that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) as well as the way in which climate change policy is being handled in the discussions that are leading to the international post-Kyoto framework in Copenhagen at the end of this year still, for the most part, are utilizing neoclassical economics.

Feeling pessimistic about our future, and just simply depressed from all the scientific predictions as well as the current economic model, I needed something that could uplift me in a realistic manner. I happen to run across Garrett Hardin’s writing. Two sentences from his book Living within Limits: Ecology, Economics, and Population Taboos (1995) helped put my feelings into perspective:

One who looks for causes before seeking remedies should not be condemned as a pessimist. In general, a great deal of looking for causes must precede the finding of remedies. (p. 5)

Finding remedies is precisely the point. What a Way to Go, Monbiot, Helm, and many others seek causes so that more of us can then look for remedies. Though not an epiphany per se, it did put into place a continued reason for me to remain optimistic about our future. And having two sons, I don’t really have a choice but to do my best to ensure that the worst repercussions of the environmental mortgage that Helm spoke of do not become reality.

Though it seems governments, businesses and citizens are not awakening at the speed which is needed, they are waking up nonetheless to the fact that climate change is a complex problem that requires an inter-disciplinary approach. Established, large institutions such as the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and many others are gaining more receptive ears from mainstream media and citizens (as opposed to just scientists). And, increasing numbers of new organizations are being created with multi-disciplinary approaches, such as the recently formed Center for Island Climate Adaptation Policy at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and the University of Victoria’s New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute.

Human beings – more so than any other animal that has walked the earth – have an uncanny ability to fight with all the resources they can muster once they have come to understand that they and their loved-ones’ lives are at stake.

Monbiot attempted to tap into this fighting spirit in an almost William Wallace-like inspirational ending to his column:

Yes, it might already be too late – even if we reduced emissions to zero tomorrow – to prevent more than two degrees of warming, but we cannot behave as if it is, for in doing so we make the prediction come true. Tough as this fight may be, improbable as success might seem, we cannot afford to surrender.

Less poetic, but certainly very clear in his thinking is – “earthship” eco-architect and subject of the documentary Garbage Warrior – Michael Reynolds’ reason for fighting the good fight:

If humanity takes the planet down the tubes – I’m dead. I’m trying to save my ass, and that is a powerful force!

If it’s true that we have gone past the point of no return for a global average temperature increase of 2˚C, I certainly hope we have the foresight to harness our collective human fighting spirit to ensure that we don’t surpass the next threshold of 3 or 4˚C.