Climate change is bring a decidely different future

Survival is going to
 need deep thought.

Tomorrow will be different from yesterday, no surprises there, but gone will be the status quo and many perceived freedoms.

 

Unmitigated climate change, a dilemma presently troubling the world, is something to which many are antagonistic for it brings with it the inevitable demise of most everything people in the developed world take for granted, especially imagined freedoms.

The discovery of fossil fuels along with the realization of and release of its embedded energy, set humanity on a troublesome trajectory that at first brought unimagined bonuses, but has now created equally unimagined complexities.

Humanity, interestingly, has the intellectual capacity equal to what is happening to our climate for when looked at analytically, it was our endeavours that unleashed the process, and now we understand the science.

So, we know what causes the difficulty and we know how to approach the solution, but the question is still, and it has never changed, are we intellectually bold enough, and sufficiently courageous, to implement the solutions we know exist?

The burning of oil, one of the prime causes of climate change, along with coal, suddenly saw those in developed countries, and other places to a lesser degree, freed from much physical labour as a barrel of oil represents more than 20 000 hours of human work.

Almost overnight many people went from being tied to the daily toil of sheer survival to a comparative life of luxury as oil, and coal, were put to work ending, largely, man’s drudgery.

This emancipation of our time wasn’t, sadly, put to figuring out how to husband this effectively free energy and so ration it rather, we wrongly assumed this was party-time and in about three centuries, we have nearly exhausted this rich resource.

Correction, it is unlikely we will ever exhaust earth’s fossil fuel resources rather our continued burning of them will disrupt human life to such an extent that we will no longer be able access or use them.

Freedom is an elusive smoke and mirrors concept, now you see it and now you don’t, and subsequent to the fallacy of the liberation promised by the military/industrial complex, we need to look to another freedom in which the needs of nature are equal to the wants of man.

Modernity has brought many advances allowing humanity to thrive, but within most enhancements has been an almost secret ideology that has gradually removed our freedoms, ensuring our behaviour enriches a relative few with most of the costs lumped upon the environment.

Should we value our freedom, then its survival depends almost entirely up us happily relinquishing some aspects or it.

The successful mitigation of climate change rests with you and me foregoing many traditional wants, readjusting our aspirations and understanding that genuine freedom is inextricably linked to discipline.

A life of discontinuities and risk - certainly a strange affair

A promotional brochure
 for Al Gore's newest
book, "The Future".

Life is a strange affair, full of weird happenings and discontinuities and as a friend once said, “It’s so risky we’ll not get out of it alive”.

Much of it can be, and is, so intellectually dishevelled that it gives pause to wonder “why”, but then equally, many moments burst upon you leaving a beautiful sense of hope and an enrichment of purpose.

Recently while walking with my brother, two young boys approached on their bicycles and a step off the footpath to allow them to pass resulted in a rather clumsy fall.

Hurting all over, my spirits were repaired somewhat and for a moment made me forget the pain, when the two young boys who could have easily sped on laughing about the “old bloke” who fell over, stopped and enquired about my welfare.

The pain was momentarily gone and a few seconds, I was not feeling as glum about humanity as is often the case.

Just a few days ago while travelling on and standing in a crowded tram in central Melbourne, a young Indian fellow offered me his seat – again, for a moment, the world seemed like reasonable place.

However, those moments of personal encouragement seem irrelevant and trivial in consequence when by chance of birth, your country prefers to be governed by a group of people whose passions are driven by short-term objectives and beliefs that the good life is to be found in materialism and the momentary joy of acquisition.

Promises in the lead-up to Australia’s recent federal election were many, but rarely did anyone illustrate concern for, a suggest anything that might enable you and me to endure the unfolding decades that will be clearly, and unquestionably, decidedly different from which we have just emerged.

It seems our leaders are devoid of the robust and bold thinking that enables them to imagine equality, decency, collaboration and fairness; things not fundamental to the economy rather behaviours that evolve from sharing, friendship, caring and empathy.

Should you consider that utopian thinking then, for a moment, consider the alternative to which humanity has adhered to for three centuries and upon any reasonable measure, what we have is a distressing dystopia in which the world economy is vacuumed up by just a few and billions are left either in or teeter on poverty.

Complicating that is the fragility of world governance with our much fêted democracy being sold to the highest bidder leaving it obligated to corporatism.

Writing in “The Future”, Al Gore said: “The extreme concentration of wealth is destructive to economic vitality and to the health of democracy”.

Yes, it’s a weird world in which a few have plenty, billions are in poverty, democracy is almost a memory and uplifting moments are disappointingly rare.

Surviving soon will simply be tough enough without such things as 'Tough Mudder'

Personal fitness regimes appear proportional to the rise of our dependence upon fossil fuels for energy.

The massive amounts of
 human energy expended on
events such as 'Tough
 Mudder' will be needed soon
 to  simply survive.

The latter has led to the former as there is an obvious relationship between our addiction to fossil fuels and the collapse of the need for human energy to undertake work.

Hence the emergence of regimes, or places, to repair subsequent human feebleness, a natural by-product of the sedentary life that is dependent on energy from somewhere else, that arose in lockstep with our habitual use of fossil energy.

Becoming increasingly dependent upon fossil fuels for energy, human muscle fell into disuse and following the emergence of boxing gyms in the 1930s, exercise regimes became an increasingly regular part of life.

In the past decade many have profited handsomely from an increasingly bizarre array of exercise programs that have proliferated, including curiously named events such as “Tough Mudder”.

The personal energy we now use for what is mostly recreation, in which many exhaust themselves to collapse, was in earlier times needed to simply survive, although many continue to deny that our hungry wants are taking us back to what once was.

The discovery of fossil fuels, along with an understanding how they could be used as a substitute for human and animal energy, liberated mankind from the demanding daily necessary exercise regime of hand-to-mouth survival.

Fossil fuel energy companies plead a contrary view, but the simple facts, supported by undeniable realities, illustrate that the storehouse of ancient energy is becoming exhausted and on a human time-scale we will have little choice but to return to personal manual labour.

The gymnasium of ancient Greece, beyond being a place where people trained for major public events, encouraged political discussion and frequently had a library attached, which was quite different from the stack of magazines in today’s gymnasiums.

Much discussion presently goes on between those pursuing various exercise regimes, but most of it is shallow, of little consequence and frequently is of little relevance to fundamental human needs.

Human energy will soon be again in demand for although we might see and explosion of renewable energy sources, it is unlikely that beyond some energy source not yet imagined, our daily needs will still only be satisfied through the use of our muscles.

Obesity and diabetes are modern problems that equate with too much time doing too little, unlike our predecessors who had to spend a few hours every day to ensure food was available.

That usually vigorous endeavour included much incidental exercise denying obesity and diabetes, but left time to connect with family, neighbours and friends.

Our exercise in the future will come vicariously as we bend our backs to ensure personal and community resilience and Tough Mudder-like frivolities will be unimaginable, irrelevant, and unnecessary.

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.

We missed a chance we never really had

We have missed our chance.

Well, not really for we never, in fact, had a chance.

Rachel Carson wrote
'Silent Spring' warning
us that our
 capricious wants were
damaging the earth.

Humanity is headed in precisely the wrong direction for rather than improving the values under which humans flourish, they are worsening.

Inequality is greater now than ever; fewer people than ever control the world’s wealth, be that economic or material; class distinctions are greater than ever; and peace is more distant than ever.

What exists and the choices offered on Saturday, is and were contrary to what is needed if society is to thrive and arrive at a point from which we can build resilience.

A friend argues that “what” is without substance or reason until we understand the “how”; demonstrable realities, both big and small, refute that view, illustrating that until we understand “what” we want, “how” is hollow and irrational.

What we need is to escape from the environmentally destructive rigours of the corporatocracy that has routed democracy and in which the economy is sacrosanct, while the wellbeing of people is seemingly irrelevant.

We live in a world in which authoritarian or totalitarian governments are eschewed, but that is exactly the guise under which most of the world’s corporations and other successful businesses operate.

Solidarity and success for them comes through a command and control system, which, beyond a few rare instances and the constructed guise of democracy, are effectively despotic with an allegiance only to profit and growth.

Donella Meadows
told us about
the realities
of the 'Limits
to Growth'.

Rachel Carson, warned us in her 1962 book “Silent Spring” of how our industrial way of life was destroying nature at an alarming rate and a decade later, a team led by Donella Meadows, wrote and published “The Limits to Growth.

Carson and Meadows were castigated by the business as usual brigade, but the authors told truths, which today are being realised with the added complication that the ceaseless and careless burning of fossil fuels has damaged our climate to the extent that civilization itself is under threat.

Professor David Karoly from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne recently warned at Swanpool that immediate cessation of our carbon dioxide emissions was our only hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

No option on Saturday offered anything remotely like that, in fact quite the reverse, and so now it falls upon us to gather under the umbrella of intergenerational responsibility and bond with those who want to preserve people rather than profit.

What do we do? We acknowledge that not all is not as is should be and that the promises that influenced our vote on Saturday will do naught to ease the situation; and stand and work with those mostly volunteer groups that aim to build resilient communities able to endure an unfolding age of scarcity.

Where are we now? What do we do? What do we want?

Our politicians, regardless of philosophy, right or left, or anywhere else on the political spectrum, appear disconnected from reality.

Albert Einstein - doing
the same thing and
 expecting a different
 result equates with
insanity.

The Greens are probably closest to being in the moment, but because we live in a liberal democracy, they too are powerless to make the changes needed if humanity is to flourish.

The voting process is a vital and if nothing else is a symbol that the idea of democracy is still intact and so whatever we may think or imagine, vote we must and vote we should.

We cannot ignore the September 7 election and hope that something will change, for doing nothing and expecting a different result echoes with the Albert Einstein observation that insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.

So where are we now?

The world is in environmental, economic and resource disarray; food security for billions is a fantasy, happiness for an equal number rests with the fluff of consumerism, peace is always seemingly out of reach, and history, both ancient and contemporary, clearly illustrates that it is the rich, and responsible men, who decide on our future.

Interestingly the status quo, which has been, and is, the engine behind this shambles with which the world community presently wrestles, has many influential advocates, while the future is abandoned largely to silence and chance.

The future is an unknown place for no-one has ever been there, but our behaviour today is the building blocks from which tomorrow is constructed.

Sadly, most candidates on September 7 offer little or nothing to enable us to break the status quo shackles that bind us to a profit and growth paradigm that is destined only for chaos and disaster.

What do we do?

We need wake-up and arise from our entertainment induced slumber and understand that we are not powerless, rather not accepting responsibility and being powerless are either side of the one coin and so in accepting responsibility, we become powerful.

Our politicians, right, left or otherwise, must, beyond anything else, accept responsibility for the broad ethical, inequality and societal collapse that have engulfed Australia, and pressure from a responsible electorate, that is you and me, will force that attitudinal change.

What do we want?

We want acceptance and understanding from our government that all is not well with the world; we want them to acknowledge and act on the fact that our climate is in grave danger; we want them to also acknowledge that our economy is collapsing and can only be rescued through the implementation of a steady state economy; we want the decentralization of all services; the localization of food supplies; we want them to re-shape how we live, making traditional work less important; and to create and build resilient communities.

We don't need a new government, we need new and improved governance

Rather than a new government, Australia needs new and improved governance.

"Surviving the Century" - writings
 about what we will need to
 do to survive the 21st Century.

All the options open to us on September 7 are about more of the same and even a casual look at history illustrates that the liberal democracy of modern Australia is both regressive and inadequate, just as are their counterparts around the world.

The classical Greek philosopher, Plato, argued that democracy’s natural evolution was to that of an authoritarian government.

Australia has what by name is a democracy, but which in practice is an authoritarian government; a government which is manipulated by the elites for the elites making a lie of lie of Abraham Lincoln’s observation: “Government of the people, by the people, for the people”.

The most pressing problem facing Australia, and the world, is the constant corrosion of our climate, a dilemma that no liberal democracy anywhere in the world is able to address for it is deep in the embrace of the corporations’ “responsible men”.

Looked at closely and dispassionately, liberal democracies everywhere are beholden to corporate power and are subsequently powerless to stop the environmental degradation big business rains down upon us in the name of progress, profit and growth.

What is presently known as a liberal democracy is little more than a corporate puppet: its survival is intimately implicated in and dependent upon big business whose only responsibility is to ensuring a profit for its shareholders, with scant regard for the earth’s biosphere and or its finitude.

The externalities of business, being the environment upon which our survival depends, is not considered in any agreement and so what is known as “the commons” (our atmosphere, oceans and soils) along with every example of our flora and fauna, is left in a degraded condition.

Liberal democracy is a fine idea, but its corruption and distortion has littered the journey from conception to reality and so now what exists is a sliver of what was intended.

Discussing humanity’s survival in his book, “Surviving the Century: Facing Climate Chaos and Other Global Challenges” Herbert Girardet wrote: “If we embark on this, the most difficult journey humanity has ever undertaken, with the steering wheel still in the hands of the limited-liability corporations mandated to maximise profits, then we will never arrive”.  

The world’s corporations have liberal democracy in a choke hold and with this form of governance about to draw its last breath, those of us who value decency, fairness and truth, and who are eager to leave the world in a state in which our children and grandchildren, and their children, might flourish, need to step-up and do all they can to dilute the power and influence of those whose oxygen is growth, profit and dominance.