Climate should be discussed and notice taken of W.B. Yeats

Climate change must be the first order of business at Brisbane’s November G20 forum.

W.B Yeats - "“Things fall apart;
the centre cannot hold”.

Those at the forum should not or cannot avoid the topic.

An understanding of the science explaining how our world is changing would allow those at the forum to make informed and reasoned judgements about international economic cooperation.

Any decisions made without first recognising and allowing for the differences climate change will bring to our market-driven society are irresponsible.

Economic growth, as understood by most, is entirely dependent upon a benign climate and the uninhibited access to the earth’s finite resources; resources that have taken billions of years to accumulate.

Those ageless resources are now so depleted and subsequently becoming so scarce and expensive that to enhance a process depending on unlimited “everything” is  reckless and in the eyes of some, a crime against humanity.

Strong words: words that elicit thoughts of the post WW1 Yeats poem, “The Second Coming” in which he writes: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.

The equations that will drive our ultimate demise are not complicated and to understand them requires little more than primary school mathematics and nothing of the arcane, convoluted and bizarre intellectual trickery the will prevail at Brisbane in November.

Our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, one who stands among those who deny global warming, has already declared that climate change will not be allowed to interfere with the “important” talks at the Brisbane forum.

Contrary to that, Mr Abbott should be encouraging his international counterparts to consider the undeniable realities of climate change, while adhering to its stated aim: “We will identify the remaining key obstacles to be addressed and reforms needed to achieve stronger, more sustainable and balanced growth in our economies”.

These obviously highly-intelligent people appear to be locked into fantasy-fuelled belief that technology will rescue humanity from this collision of economic chaos, resource depletion, over-population, governance disorder and seemingly endless military confrontation. It won’t, we need social solutions.

G20 leaders say their immediate task is to break the cycle of low growth and diminished business and consumer confidence, something it says it is well placed to achieve in Brisbane.

Should they be serious about global economic security then they must first consider climate change; restructure the global economy to ensure financial equality for all, end the hugely disparate earnings around the world; understand what “sustainable” really means; ensure gender equality; invest heavily in building resilient communities; and educate and help people understand how they can grow and provide much of their own food.

Organic growth, and resilience, will sprout from communities of a type sadly unlikely to be considered at Brisbane in November.

Quoting Yeats again: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”.

 

Living in perilous times as civil religion unravels

We live in perilous times.

The civil religion of progress is unravelling.

Our careless use of fossil fuels is
changing the world's climate.
 

History is peppered with apocalyptic predictions that amounted to naught and to question someone’s religion is tantamount to foolishness for even disconfirmation of the belief frequently only deepens commitment.

Even though the collapse of progress is irrefutable, its adherents believe with religious-like fervour and to question or doubt it brings scorn and castigation driven by simmering anger, even a sense of insult.

Progress as presently known and understood became possible when we stumbled upon ancient sunlight and in discovering how to release the abundant energy stored in coal and oil, humanity’s trajectory changed, dramatically.

Progress of the past three centuries has been almost wholly dependent upon on the fossil fuels earth has carefully put aside for millions of years and after what is only a geological blink in time, we are scrapping the bottom of the energy barrel.

Many believe contemporary progress, essentially that profit and growth is infinite, but the finitude of our earth contradicts that and rather than maintain our focus on the contemporary idea of progress, we need to abandon the precepts to which we are addicted and re-invent the idea.

Progress should be about the broad betterment of the human project, based on a sweeping and fresh understanding of what leads to human happiness and flourishing; values, that when examined closely, are unrelated to existing beliefs of progress.

Present progress is built on the energy of our rapidly diminishing fossil fuels and because they have been used with such exuberance and foolishness, we are facing unimaginable changes in the human condition, complicated by equally unthinkable changes to the world’s weather system.

The garrulous among us praise the modern market system, but chief economist for the World Bank, Nicholas Stern, has described climate change as the greatest market failure in human history.

Rapid deterioration of our climate is a symbol of the unravelling of the progress myth, but it is not alone for evidence of its collapse can be seen in our refusal to acknowledge that we live in a finite world and that we need a new way.

Our consumer-based lifestyle revolves around and depends upon our continual gouging of finite resources; resources we need to husband rather than wastefully use to pander to a lifestyle that will leave our children, their children and those who follow with a world stripped of its essence.

Many believe technology will resolve emerging difficulties, but nothing exists, is being developed or is even imagined that is able to fill the void left by the seriously depleted fossil fuels.

Our devotion to progress and technology has removed the need for innovation, severely limiting our chances of inventing a fresh and resilient future.

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.

Far too little, far too late!

Proposals to upgrade the rail infrastructure on the Seymour line are far too little, far too late.

Prof Kevin Anderson.

Rail is unquestionable to most environmentally friendly way to move people and goods, but the climate change broadside that is about to pin us down will ensure we are not going anywhere.

Rather than invest time, money and effort into figuring out how we can maintain the status quo, that being “business as usual”, those energies and resources should be directed at strengthening communities, making them more resilient and so more able to cope with the unfolding and unquestionable changes.

Rather than worry about our rail network, we need help people understand and create the “five-minute-life”, that is, a way of living which everything important in our day-to-day lives is five minutes cycling or walking away.

Writing in his latest book, “The Conundrum”, American journalist, David Owen, argued that if we are to endure the emerging difficulties; we should not be going anywhere.

His “stay at home” philosophy is about each of us using less energy and so reducing our carbon dioxide emissions; emissions that according to the world’s leading climatologist, James Hansen, are making the world an uncomfortable place.

"The Conundrum" by
David Owen.

Hansen’s thoughts, and warnings, have been repeated by a former director of Manchester University’s Tyndall Centre, the UK's leading academic climate change research organization, Professor Kevin Anderson.

Watching what is happening in and around Shepparton suggests that many continue blissfully unaware of the shifts in lifestyle predicted by the likes of Hansen and Anderson.

After two century-long indoctrination into the capitalistic insistence on growth, most of us, myself included, are unable to escape the mantra that life should be bigger, better, faster, safer, happier and packed with consumer goods, mostly resulting from fossil-fuelled energies.

A few minutes spent listening to either Hansen or Anderson will remind us, that our future will be somewhat different from that decades-long promise.

Interestingly, a friend recently said many young people have fallen into a depressive malaise because of such doom and gloom, but there is little I can do other than apologise.

However, what we can do as a broader society is encourage our governments, at all levels, to force us into decided austerity; an austerity that would enforce a degree of poverty and so slow our consumptive behaviour.

Hansen and Anderson’s thoughts were reinforced when the ABC reported last week that carbon dioxide levels were now higher than at any time in the last 800 000 years, while the last decade in Australia was the warmest on record.

To ease the doom and gloom malaise my friend pointed to, we need to invest time and energy into making our neighbourhoods and our communities more inclusive and happier places, rather than making them easier to leave.

Machiavelli's thoughts from five centuries ago are relevant today

Consider what the Italian philosopher, Machiavelli (below right), said during the 16th Century Renaissance – It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system.

Having considered that, now let us contemplate that our survival, literally, hinges on us, that is you and me, agreeing on a new system of living, implementing it and nursing it to success.

So the journey ahead is going to be challenging, risky, the outcome elusive and to plagiarize the five century-old Machiavellian observation, dangerous to manage.

Human instinct sees us turn away from such difficulties to retreat from the unknown and seek solace in what it is we know, that is, put simplistically, business as usual.
Retreat, to that known way of life, is pointless as it is exactly what brought us to this impasse, a place at which human induced changes to the world’s climate have left us with a restless planet.
Science – we rely on it every day for everything from beer to brain scans – has repeatedly warned us of the difficulties ahead and yet many of us seem unable to accept, or understand, its increasingly urgent protestations about climate change.
Massive weather events (floods, storms, blizzards or droughts are now called “events” as that seems softer even though they are equally destructive) have now troubled every continent on earth and yet the skeptics still cling desperately to ideologies that science has long shown to be seriously misleading, in simple terms, wrong.
The idea of capitalistic growth brought many benefits to mankind since it emerged a couple of centuries ago following the Industrial Revolution, but the ideal is now exhausted.
Arriving at the difficult and dangerous system Machiavelli discussed begins with psychologically freeing ourselves of the growth dogma and within that considering something like a steady-state economy that puts human happiness ahead of tumour-like expansion.
Our planet can no longer sustain capitalism as we know it and while it has served us well, it is time for us to take that difficult, doubtful and dangerous journey, a journey whose destination is survival.

Island's collapse and book launch dynamic similarities were unsettling

Similarities between the 17th century collapse of the Easter Island population and the social dynamics at the recent launch of a book acknowledging Shepparton’s 150th birthday have crowded my thinking.

Listening as the former Member for Murray, Mr Bruce Lloyd, launched the coffee table-like book – Water: The Vital Element, 150 Years of Shepparton’s Growth – I couldn’t avoid thinking about the demise of the small Pacific Ocean island’s population.
That, you could argue, may be a long bow to draw and although I might agree, the similarities were unsettling.
The people of Easter Island (above right) lived comparatively happily, but for reasons not fully understood they were addicted to building huge monuments to assuage their superstitions and used most all the island’s trees to enable their transport.
Here in Shepparton our superstitions might be different, but allegiance to them is as damaging as those at Easter Island for instead of our community blooming into beautiful fulfilment it limps ahead paying homage to values that trouble our planet.
Those at the book launch celebrated many things, and people, as they should, but in doing so helped perpetuate the many myths that negate the long-term unfolding welfare of Sheppartonians.
The idea that growth is good prevails and the subsequent contagion, although it has always been a human instinct, accelerated wildly with the impetus of the industrial revolution and so has been a part of Shepparton’s 150 years.
Growth has served the district well, but then in the 1970s scientists began to truly understand what impact humans were having on earth and so while our addictions were enriching they also had a dark side.
That dark side was only surreptitiously evident at the book launch in that our inherent drive for growth that is the energy of Shepparton’s history is also the essence of the paradigm now holding the world hostage.
Our insistence on the growth and success equation is now such that it is almost superstition and myth, but those beliefs bring difficulties similar to those of the Easter Islanders and to use the words of recent visitor to Shepparton and former Greenpeace CEO, Paul Gilding, threaten “the survival of human civilization”.