Emulating the complexity of nature

“What we failed to appreciate is how quickly the ‘scaffolding’ of civilisation became so elaborate and so energy intensive and so unknowable”.

So said Wes Jackson in his 2011 book “Consulting the Genius of the Place: An Ecological Approach to a New Agriculture”.

Jackson, a Kansas-born biologist who founded "The Land Institute" where he has attempted to emulate nature on a farm, studying environmental ethics, exploring appropriate technology and educating others, is alarmed at the amount of fossil fuel energy consumed in getting food from the paddock to the plate.

He says the fossil fuel epoch is ending, the world’s arable soils have been irreparably degraded or lost, and hovering above that fragile superstructure is the unfolding dilemma of a damaged climate.

Those thoughts or similar concerns will be on the minds of those Goulburn Valley people who gather on Sunday at Shepparton’s Victoria Park Lake to illustrate their concern about society’s disregard for matters discussed by Jackson, particularly climate change.

Sunday’s gathering at the lake is a part of the Australia-wide Get-Up National Day of Climate Action in which people from cities, towns and villages throughout the country will illustrate their concern for climate change.

The Tony Abbott-led Coalition has dismembered government bodies and through that has effectively ended any possibility of Australia, or Australians, helping the world ease what is becoming, or is, a catastrophic reality.

Where we are at, and how and why we arrived, is something easily understood.

Our predecessors saw their first sunrise about 200 000 years ago and we muddled along keeping everything pretty much in balance until the agricultural revolution about 10 000 years ago and with food being reliable and more widely available, our numbers grew exponentially.

Some 200 years ago came the industrial revolution and that coupled with our natural inquisitiveness, innovation, experimentation and application saw us access the billions of years of energy locked in fossil fuels, described by some as “ancient sunlight”.

All that was fine until it became apparent we had broken the pact with nature that assured balance and the earth’s biosphere was in desperate trouble as we considered nature’s sinks, the atmosphere and oceans, as bottomless pits for our refuse.

Humans have many laudable qualities, but an equal number of less than honourable traits, among them, recklessness and even though it is obvious we depend entirely upon finite and depleting fossil fuels that have given us exponential growth in every sense and with that a desperately damaged climate, we still allow ourselves to be governed by climate change skeptics who idolize growth.

Sunday’s National Day of Climate Action is about solidarity of thought and illustration to government that the people are restless about their apparent disinterest in climate change.

Hypocrisy and Spaceship Earth solutions

Hypocrisy riddles my writing.

"Spaceship Earth" - rebuilding it in
flight demands courageous leadership.

Frequently I lament public behaviour that furiously depletes earth’s finite resources and worsens the damage to our atmosphere and yet I stand with those my criticisms target.

That’s hypocrisy or in more colloquial terms, is the pot calling the kettle black.

My only defence, and it is rather weak, is that at least I am aware of the damage, why it is happening and what societal responses are necessary to mitigate the trouble, or at least how we should prepare ourselves for what is ahead.

A friend discussed the dilemma just recently and he too feels like something of a hypocrite in that he frequently espouses the challenges of climate change, but in the broader scheme of events is doing little, or at least in his view.

Personally, my life and that of my family, is embedded in the consumer society and although the courage to step aside from it is absent, that alone does not appear to be the solution.

Individual actions are wonderful and deserve applause, but without society as a whole shifting and realigning its priorities, we simply end up with a bunch of individuals living in way that might be sustainable, but absolutely inadequate in context to counter the behaviour of most.

The honourable work and intentions of that absolute minority is simply not enough to support society’s “free-riders” – that’s me, you and a whole bunch of people we know.

There is no immediate or easy solution to climate change – something unimaginable to generations of people who have grown up in an era in which technology could solve anything – as a two-degree increase over pre-industrial temperatures is certain  and three, four and five degrees is almost certain this century.

And so what does a hypocrite do?

Admit to the problem, find like-minded souls, set about creating a community conversation about the unfolding difficulties; ready, as best you can, local communities for what is ahead; and hopefully have some impact on Local, State and Federal politicians in the expectation that they may have vision and understanding of the coming challenges; and, subsequently, the courage to introduce legislative changes that will significantly alter society’s behaviour before nature steps in, forcing despotic changes, without appeal.

The idea of retreating from society to survive has its appeal, but ultimately it is strangely defeatist and it is worth remembering that climate change plays no favourites and while withdrawal to a well-stocked bolt-hole might allow momentary preservation, it will not, in a truly altruistic sense, do much for the overall salvation of society.

Rebuilding an airliner in flight would be an impossible undertaking; spaceship earth is in flight and with all systems failing, we now need courageous and innovative leadership to take us through this delicate refurbishment.

Progress invariably linked to the economy

Progress, a recent meeting in Melbourne seemed to agree, was invariably linked to our economy.

A $14 trillion debt threatens to
 unravel the U.S. economy.

Nothing, not even an idea, could be advanced, it was noddingly agreed, until it could be demonstrated that what was proposed would financially enrich the community, or particularly, some individuals.

Money followed barter and is one of civilization’s earliest inventions and its implications have troubled us ever since as his or her success has long been measured by the financial capital they controlled or could influence.

However, while there is no denying the power of such capital, it is always social capital that is overlooked and rarely valued.

With the world locked onto a trajectory that will see us progress into damnably difficult times in which financial capital will be of little value and social capital will have values never seen before, certainly in modern times, or understood.

In times past, and in some countries, your affluence was measured by the size of your woodpile, but as we venture into circumstances unknown, affluence will be more about your social network than the size of your woodpile, although that would undoubtedly be helpful.

The adage suggesting it is who you know rather than what you know is what matters will become increasingly important, but for reasons different to those that have added meat to the adage.

Finding and securing affluence in society as we know and understand it was linked, sometimes to knowledge in a chosen field, but frequently from links within the same social stratum – nepotism was at play.

Rather than preferential treatment for a few, the community of tomorrow should be interwoven, appreciate and work for equality and accept that real wealth is in social capital and not in accumulated goods or bigger bank balances.

So again it will be about who you know, but in this case it will be your neighbours and your immediate community and, importantly, what they know about living in a low-energy and sustainable way.

It’s not about money rather, it’s about a rich social capital in which the wealth of the community will be measured by the fertility of relationships.

America presently faces a dilemma evolving from a dynamic built around materialism, accumulation, individualism and inequality and, subsequently, is troubled by a US$14 trillion public debt.

America has, along with most of the developed world, enriched itself courtesy of easily accessible, cheap and finite fossil fuels, but now the debt is being called in and the country is unable, it appears, to erode its arrears.

Most other countries are in a similar position, having used nature’s bounty for frivolities, rather than building tight-knit, resourceful, self-reliant communities that put social capital ahead of the rude, and often violent, scramble for economic riches.