Blind adherence is leading us toward the abyss

Our blind adherence to what exists stands between us and mitigating the effects of climate change.

It is not too difficult to see and
understand how our global
temperatures continue to rise.

A never-ending retinue of recipes aimed at resolving climate change or global warming, call it what you please, are paraded before us, but in nearly every instance those ideas are about maintaining life as it is, or at least as it is for the rich minority, and so ensuring the sustenance of ways of living that brought upon humanity the very troubles these schemes purport to resolve.

Emerging dilemmas have the potential to decimate humanity with climatologists illustrating, unquestionably, that the human-induced changes to earth’s atmosphere, and so the earth’s weather patterns, are so expansive and dramatic, that the near “goldilocks” conditions of the past 10,000 years of “not too hot, not too cold, but just right” are quickly ending.

Earth’s surface temperatures are nearly one degree above pre-industrial levels and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 parts per million (ppm) prior to the 18^th century to nearly 400 ppm today, breaking the nexus we have enjoyed for millennia between rather pleasant, predictable and understandable weather and something that is quite different and largely untenable for many species on earth, among them humans.

Circumstances arising from lifestyles rooted in a paradigm that depend upon endless growth and the continued combustion of fossil fuels, primarily coal and oil, threaten us all and will only get worse before they get better for carbon dioxide, a natural by-product of that process is a long-lived chemical compound and so what is produced today will be with us for centuries to come. The maxim, “This too shall pass” doesn’t apply.

At a less than one degree increase in global temperatures we are witnessing some unexpected changes to the world’s weather, changes to which humans and associated infrastructure are not adapted, and yet a two degree increase is not simply predicted, rather unavoidable; changes that will bring with them what we, humans and many other species, will find not only challenging, but rather difficult to survive.

The science of climate change is quite complex, but even a layperson can understand it to see that what lies ahead will be, by brute insistence, quite different from what has been.

Proposals to avert the difficulty (we can no longer avoid it for we are 30 years too late) include high-risk and unproven geo-engineering ideas, including carbon dioxide sequestration, and significant alternative energy intervention (unlikely as the fossil fuel industry has massive political and social clout), but never have we truly explored dramatic changes to our way of living, substantially reducing energy use, changing our egoistic consumptive wants and switching our near obsessive interest from building bank balances to building resourceful and resilient neighbourhoods.

Our primary role is to multiply, but it is a process that can easily become dysfunctional

The primary role in life for you and me, as with any other species, is to multiply.

A sign of the tmes.

That is to procreate and within that behave in such a manner to ensure our genes are protected and have the best chance of survival.

Survival within the tumult of life is a brutal affair and it was Charles Darwin who arrived at a complex understanding of how life evolves and that has been reduced, in a sense wrongly, to “survival of the fittest”.

Reductionism is sometimes callous and unforgiving, particularly when it tears apart and strips bare the powerful and emotional human concept of birth that has been subjected to aggrandizement over the millennia of human life.

Humans have evolved to have a powerful thinking apparatus, the mind, and unlike most other species understand the past, present and future; memory and anticipation allow changed behaviour in the present.

Most other species, from microscopic to mammoth, survive on what might be termed instinct and humans, while also driven by that, have the capacity for consideration.

Equipped with that “powerful thinking apparatus”, an understanding of the past, present and future, having the ability to consider and plan, and, within that, physically change the circumstances of their environment, human numbers have, and are, growing exponentially.

The world already has in excess of seven billion people and although human endeavour broadly warrants applause an honest appraisal of our achievements should ignite a stern rebuke.

For decades now we have known about and understood the nexus between human numbers and resources – too many people gouging relatively scarce resources produces an inevitable collision; a collision, if left unattended will decimate the human population.

Like so many other difficulties facing the world, or at least humans, any workable solution to this one, limiting our numbers, is weighed down with millennia-old emotional baggage that inhibits clarity.

Birth is a landmark event for humans and is celebrated with enthusiasm in all cultures and having a deep and mysterious sense of success, it is a great leveller as birth is available to all, whether rich or poor.

Any suggestion that in some way birth should be restricted and human numbers subsequently limited is met with outrage, but if allowed to continue without restriction, we face unimaginable difficulties ranging from famines to water shortages and from conflicts to simply space to survive.

With a comprehensive tripartite understanding of life – that is the past, present and future – man needs to consider what was appropriate from the past, our present behaviour and how they equate with predictive predicaments.

Any workable solution is not obvious, but we need to stabilise the population; we need to have fewer people dependant on the planet; and we need to have a bias in which deaths exceed births.