Human construct stands between us and mitigating climate change

A human construct is what stands between us and moving toward mitigating human-induced climate change.

Humanity is surrounded
by an economy that was
once our servant, but
 now is now our master.

Humans, bit by bit, piece by piece have built an economy that now straddles the globe and while it was at first our servant, it has now, through the apparent fault of no-one, become our master.

The economy has been elevated to God-like status and to suggest anything likely to unseat it, borders on blasphemy and brings accusations of ignorance, naivety and even stupidity, arguing that such foolishness is a misunderstanding of what it is that gives humanity sustenance.

Such allegations arise from an addiction to the paradigm in which the world economy is embedded and with most governments, whether they be liberal democracies, communistic, despotic regimes, religion-based democratic facades or something of any other flavour, bowing before the might of money, to suggest something different is not only decried, but considered grossly irresponsible.

Humanity, or at least some of it, has been fortunate to escape from the daily trepidations of the hunter and gatherer life; something that has been achieved through the construction of an economy which has, in many ways served us well, but at the same time has ignored the subtle beauties of life; beauties that are sadly irrelevant to the simplistic brutalities of the economy.

Growth, a code word for exploitation, has seen man excavate the world’s ancient sunlight, and in the past two or three centuries use the fossil fuels we discovered with a rude rush of exuberance to see all the available environmental sinks on the earth filled to over-capacity, disrupting the earth’s atmosphere to create disarray in the world’s climate to manifest weather patterns with which humans are unfamiliar.

That unfamiliarity is of such a dimension that the future of humanity, along with most other species with which it shares the planet, is problematic.

The time for action is already a few decades past and certain weather related difficulties cannot be avoided, but it is time to bury our concerns about the world economy and change our rhetoric to align it with ideals that are about equality, philanthropy, altruism, sharing, kindness and an understanding of the other to ensure that life on earth can endure.

The world’s economy has evolved in such a way that the distribution of wealth is disturbingly wrong in that about 15 per cent of the population controls 80 per cent of the wealth and nearly half the population less than two per cent.

The economy has served a few on earth well, disadvantaged more and if we are unable to rein it in and return it to again being the servant, as opposed to a master, then climate change will continue its march to a rather gloomy conclusion.

 

Our understanding of growth and a fresh approach to the dynamic will enable us to navigate our future

An adage of uncertain origin is front of mind for many today.

Tim Jackson has written
about "Prosperity
without Growth".

America is shivering and the world, including many Australians, is afraid it will sneeze.
The axiom, attributed by some to a newspaper editorial says that when American sneezes, the world catches a cold.

Today some in the world watch on breathlessly as American politicians attempt to negotiate the country into a position from which it can avoid falling off what is colloquially known as the “fiscal cliff”.

Australia is geographically remote from America, but considered financially we live in its hip pocket and some are arguing that if the U.S. trips and falls over the imagined “cliff”, the impact will be felt tomorrow in Australia’s financial markets.

The “cliff” is about budgetary matters and the legislative need for that country’s politicians to inject some imagined stability into its finances, which could be significantly worsened if existing laws remain unchanged.

America has the world’s biggest economy and when the U.S. falls into recession, which is possible if laws remain unchanged, the resultant domino-like slowdown effect on other economies, including ours, sweeps around the world.

To restore some balance to its troubled economy (its national debt presently exceeds $US16 trillion), the U.S. had legislated laws the come in effect from tomorrow to introduce possible tax increases and spending cuts and to reduce its budget deficit or; the country’s leaders could act to repeal the several laws to resolve the immediate difficulty, or simply postpone an inevitable confrontation with reality.

Any attempt to argue “this” or “that” would resolve the U.S. difficulties and so ease the domino-like trouble Australia can expect would be hollow and pointless, but what we can do personally is consider our attachment to an economic way of living that has clearly overwhelmed the human beauty of life and eroded social equality and our natural sociability.

Life has evolved to become intricately entwined with the economy and today the quality of life is wrongly judged by an accounting process called “gross domestic product” (GDP), which includes as “good” even costs associated with efforts to counter and repair such damage as that caused by floods in north-eastern Victoria, including Numurkah, Nathalia and Rochester.

Economists sensitive to what is happening in the world argue for a more enlightened approach to growth; oxygen the present and dominant ideology urgently needs for sustenance.British ecological economist, Tim Jackson, wrote about a fresh approach in his book “Prosperity without Growth”.

In the final analysis, whether America goes over the “fiscal cliff” or not, and whether we follow, is substantially irrelevant, for what really matters is being able to look beyond this impending forest of troubles, to see and understand that the ultimate solution is in ideas like those of Tim Jackson.

The importance of Schumacher's 'smaller' life

Nearly 40 years ago we were urged to embrace a “smaller” life.

The late E.F. Schumacher.

German-born British economist, E.F. Schumacher, developed the concept of intermediate technology and wrote about small being beautiful.

Schumacher’s idea quickly developed something of a cult following, but proved inadequate in the face of the growth-juggernaut that crushed all 20^th Century alternatives.

The appeal of growth has swept all before it, but promises of riches for all are unrealized with, in fact, many being plunged into poverty.

Some, very few, have become fabulously rich and many are equally fabulously poor.

Schumacher, who died in 1977, wrote about his ideas in his book, “Small is Beautiful”.
Sadly, those with the power in the early 70s took no note of Schumacher’s advice and today the world suffers because of those intellectual inadequacies and marches blindly toward the abyss because of that “short-termism”.

Today we need to turn away from the corporate structure of the world and work with urgency toward the concept articulated by Schumacher.

There is an urgency for “smaller”, which works in tandem with “slower”, and along with those concepts there is a need for an intense focus on localism.

We all need to work fewer hours and enable the enrichment of our lives through the freeing up of more purposeful leisure time.

Working hours should be restricted to four-hours a day, no overtime and no double-shifts, with those limitations being relaxed significantly for small privately owned businesses (employing no more than four people) or genuinely publicly owned and run enterprises, such as health, law and public transit systems, but not military forces as traditionally understood.
Some argue that a change should come from the bottom up, but such a change is so dramatic and launches us into such a significantly different paradigm that it needs to be a top-down led systemic change.

Such change demands leaders with hitherto unseen courage and a deep sense of fairness, individual rights and equality.

Schumacher's
 book.

Such super-souls are rare, but to ensure the future has a human history it is time that person; a compassionate, understanding, bold, patient and forgiving person stepped forward.

Those leaders need to be forthright about the incorporation of markets and government: markets as elucidated by Schumacher and a genuinely transparent democratic government unencumbered by the financial machinations that presently have civilization in a choke-hold.

A cursory look at the world economy illustrates manipulation of many by the power elite giving conspiratorial theorists something genuine to chew on, but conspiracies only become realities when good men do nothing.

Those driving the hedonistic growth economy promise a better life, but say nothing of the environmental or human costs while those of the Schumacher mindset promise only austerity and hard-work, but a good life.

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.

Noisy 'hurrahs' and a chorus of criticism meets Budget

A "business as usual" Budget
 from Australia's treasurer,
 Wayne Swan.

Noisy hurrahs matched by a chorus of criticism greeted last week’s Federal Budget.

None were right, none were wrong, but missing was the long, long, long view; something that in the contemporary conversation is called “sustainability”.

Business as usual, seen from whatever political view you favour, is no longer appropriate and that, even allowing for a difference in opinions, is what our Treasurer, Wayne Swan, delivered.

That approach to, and acceptance of, the fact that we live in an unchanging world is problematic in the extreme.

The realities of last week’s Budget infiltrate our economy and the lives of most fundamentally change little, maybe we shift from one foot to the other, but change to a different lifestyle is foreign to all but a few.

The Swan Budget went to extremes to ensure we could live life as it is – more hurrahs and applause – but it overlooked the reality that our nation should be building and preparing for a distinctively different future.

Global warming is a gathering storm on the horizon and coupled with impending world food shortages, an imploding world economy, an exploding population, oil scarcity and climate difficulties, of which we have as yet only seen the leading edge, Mr Swan’s Budget should have responded to those unfolding dilemmas.

Rather that concerning himself with the much touted surplus, Mr Swan, supported by his Labor contemporaries, needed to demonstrate courage in delivering a budget that created a platform from which Australia could easily step to address those aforementioned difficulties.

The unfolding circumstances are hitherto unknown to the human project and with the ego-driven individuality of the past millennia being obviously not appropriate, the budgetary process should have addressed those excesses.

Rather than sketch out a scenario that allowed Australian’s to continue as being among the worst in the world on a per-capita basis at pumping carbon dioxide into our atmosphere, Mr Swan should have helped us understand numbers, and actions, that would have eased, if not stopped, that behaviour.

That, of course, would not have been easy as recent surveys have shown that Australians concern for their environment, and after all climate change is an environmental issue, has disappeared almost entirely from their list of worries.

With a deep breath, Mr Swan should have used his economic tools to shape a new look Australia: one whose strength lies in simplicity as opposed to complexity; the need to switch from growth and consumption to resilience and conservation; and an Australia that understood the dilemmas of our unfolding world and was prepared to bond to address those challenges.

Fine ideas, but waiting outside the door to mug us all is “reality” and there is our first challenge, untangling ourselves from that pseudo reality and addressing irrefutable truths.

A secure and non-violent future demands a daring, daunting and perilous mission

Grand and heroic projects are sadly most often allied with violent historical epochs, but life has evolved to present us now with an even more daring, daunting and perilous mission.

Nonviolence will play a
key role in addressing global
 warming.

Faced with global warming; entrenched inequality; crumbling economics; the exhaustion of our fossil fuels, particularly oil; exponential population growth; the degradation of the world’s top soils; vandalism of our forests; the looming crisis of our food supplies; the erosion of our humanity by God-like technology; the collapse of earth’s bio-diversity and endless wars brought about by a surreptitious and misunderstood anger that has infiltrated life at every level, we look, with desperation, for the exit sign.
Many turn to supernatural forces or beings in their search for a solution, but the answer they seek is right here, with us, we hold it in our hands or, at least, in our way of thinking.
The remedy rests with nonviolence and although that might seem easy and achievable, it is not. Living a genuine, and unflinching, nonviolent life is only possible through a courageous and radical reshaping of our lives: a truly grand and heroic project.
That said and accepted, where do we start? Facing sweeping emotionally and seemingly overwhelming difficulties, many do nothing, but to lean, for a moment, on a cliché – the journey to anywhere, in this case nonviolence, begins with the first step.
That first step can be here, in Shepparton, or more intimately, in your mind and that beginning is simply about using language that is nonviolent, both in terms of the words you use and, importantly, their intent.
Although subtle, such a change can alter your understanding and interpretation of events and equally how others feel about what is happening in their lives.
Along with paying attention to what we say, and how we say it, we should consciously avoid anything that normalizes violence, something about which the mainstream media is frequently guilty.
Television is among the worst offenders and so should be simply turned off, and other information sources – newspapers, magazines, books, movies and the various forms of social media – should be treated with caution and accessed selectively.
Much of what we imagine entertainment, and frequently sport, is fanciful cloaked violence and our modern commercial world is about winners and losers in which covert violence boosts bank balances.
Genuine nonviolence is a concept so difficult to both comprehend and employ that is rarely has any true traction prompting the observation from one that nonviolence was tried for a week and abandoned as it didn’t work, ignoring the fact that centuries of violence have completely failed humanity.
Bad things happen quickly, good things take time – violence springs from our ancient, reptilian brain; nonviolence arises from modern, sophisticated and mature brains.