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Jim Hansen, Climate Code Red and the Atmospheric Singularity
Alex Steffen, WorldChanging
Jim Hansen, who to my thinking is the most credible and important voice in American climate science, sent off the slides (PDF) from a talk he gave recently. Their argument is worth pondering on for a moment:
… The argument of the new Climate Code Red report is much the same, though made at greater length and with a more direct advocacy appeal:
… There are moments that I believe that it might be better to shelve discussion of tipping points for the moment, and pick up that hoary old late-90s metaphor of singularities.
(A singularity, in this usage, is a turning point in human affairs that is so radical it is almost impossible for those who live before it to imagine life after it. Most commonly, the term is used by old-school science fiction writers to describe a future in which evolving artificial intelligences hurtle humanity into a technological maelstrom of innovation. But increasingly, people describe historical moments — the dawn of agriculture, the “discovery” of the New World, the Industrial Revolution — as social singularities.)
I increasingly suspect that we are at a shearing point on either side of which a singularity looms.
If we fail to tackle our sustainability crisis, and, most pressingly, our climate crisis, we will with increasing rapidity find ourselves in a world which is not only unthinkable to most people in the developed world, but literally beyond the ability of scientists to confidently predict. If we get things under control, our odds of things staying somewhat the same increase dramatically. But if we can’t, we enter a world where nothing we’ve taken for granted for 10,000 years can be relied upon. Think of it as the Atmospheric Singularity.
On the other hand, if we do come to grips with our challenges, I’m more and more convinced that it will be because we recognize that “small steps” and “swap out” technologies (think Hummer-to-Prius) are not even vaguely sufficient, and we proceed to embrace really radical rethinking of the best ways to deliver prosperity in a sustainable manner. And I’m pretty sure that the end result of that process will be a world which is pretty difficult to even imagine for most people at the moment. Think of this as the Sustainability Singularity
The point is, either way we go, the future will work by its own rules, not the rules we are used to living within today.
(8 February 2008)
Powerful. -BA
Review (part 2): William Kotke’s Final Empire
Carolyn Baker, Speaking Truth to Poser
In Part One of this review, I focused on the author’s stunning explanation of collapse as a kind of time bomb imbedded in civilization. What I failed to mention is that Kotke wrote this book in 1993 which makes its contents all the more momentous. Likewise, his vision of alternative communities based on the principles of natural culture was ahead of its time in terms of defining how humans need to live in relationship with the more-than-human world.
At this point, I’d like to share how The Final Empire and the timing of its appearance in my life, in synchronicity with other concepts and events, informed my vision of possibilities.
On a chilly morning in Boulder, Colorado I sat in a circle with about 34 other individuals as we concluded a weekend of deep talking, deep listening, and deep feeling regarding the topic of collapse and the end of the world as we have known it. People began to cry and allow words and sounds of grief to pour forth, and not only grief, but fear and rage. My body softened, and tears flowed. Piles of used Kleenex accumulated under my chair, and I felt the deepest connection I had ever experienced with a group of human beings in my life, many of whom had been total strangers only 48 hours before.
…Earlier in the weekend, when intellectual engagement was appropriate and necessary, we considered Peter Senge’s Integrating Principle, explained in his article “The Leader’s New Work,” and Robert Fritz’s Structural Tension Principle which honors the power of creative tension resulting from “seeing clearly where we want to be, our ‘vision,’ and telling the truth about where we are, our ‘current reality’.” As I sat with this principle I realized that I had been focusing primarily on current reality virtually to the exclusion of vision. Further, it became clear that even if my vision is unrealistic, naïve, implausible, and rendered moot by collapse, it is vital for myself, and for my community, that I continue to embrace it.
Why? Because from holding vision alongside current reality, creative tension emerges which allows for the dynamic realization of possibilities which could not have been created by fixating only on current reality or on one’s vision. “Without vision,” Senge says, “there is no creative tension. Creative tension can’t be generated from current reality alone.” Often we remain in analysis of the current situation to our detriment because as Senge notes, “All the analysis in the world will never generate a vision.”
Conversely, “…creative tension can’t be generated from vision alone; it demands an accurate picture of current reality as well.” This is one reason I cringe when people talk about “preventing collapse” or refer to those of us who are willing to look deeply into the abyss as “doomers.” They appear to insist on having the groovy, green, good times rolling endlessly or bypass feeling all of the painful emotions that collapse quite naturally evokes by quickly supplanting them with their vision. At the same time, however, staring into the abyss without vision may be equally unproductive.
…What I envision as I struggle, and I mean struggle, to hold current reality along with my vision is a transformed culture, but not without suffering, before, during, and after collapse. I reiterate my belief that collapse is both a “long emergency” process with dramatic tipping points along the way. It will not be a singular event in time. It will almost certainly bring with it a massive die-off of humans.
…Nevertheless, survivor groups are likely to be those that have consciously achieved a level of food security, community gardens, and drinkable water supplies. They will have learned some pre-collapse skills such as permaculture, game hunting, butchering, organic farming, water dowsing, the making of shoes and clothing, alternative healing and herbal medicinal techniques, and communication skills which involve deep listening and truth-telling.
…In “The Seed Of The Future,” Kotke admonishes us from what was then a 1993, pre-collapse world, regarding our most urgent responsibility:
To be actively mobilizing toward setting up what might be called ‘seed’ communities is the really significant action. If people don’t actually get out of the money economy to a significant degree, if they don’t create a new land based culture that aids the earth, all the other political and environmental efforts will ultimately be meaningless. (460)
Mobilizing toward setting up “seed communities”? During the past two years of Truth To Power’s existence, a number of examples of vision have been featured on the site. It feels extremely important to mention some of those, along with others that we have not focused on.
(7 February 2008)
Money as Metaphor
Dmitri Orlov, ClubOrlov
Those who feel that they have a good handle on reality often hate to hear that their perception of reality is shaped by their language. Yet this is often the case. For instance, we think about electricity in terms of current (amperage) and pressure (voltage) because it is too difficult to think directly in terms of electromagnetic fields. We think about the origin of the universe as an explosion – a very loud one, hence the term “Big Bang” – although no physicist can tell us just how loud it was in terms we can appreciate. Loud enough to pulverize your eardrums and shoot them clear out of the Solar system at relativistic speeds? Since you wouldn’t be left standing around to enjoy such a noise, why call it a noise at all? Probably because “Big Bang” is the best we can do, being unable to directly imagine a universe erupting out of nothing, and need a linguistic handle by which to hold it. Metaphors allow us to take something that is too abstract and to make it visceral enough for us to comprehend.
A long time ago, money was quite visceral: bags and boxes of shiny metal coins, or bits of paper that you could take to a bank and exchange for shiny metal coins. The coins could be both weighed and counted. But with the advent of fiat money – paper money that is not directly redeemable for a fixed quantity of anything – we are left with just naked digits printed on scraps of paper. All that remains is the lingering metaphor of coinage. Unlike numbers that represent physical quantities, which are usually known only to a few decimal places, money still demands the arduous task of counting, summing up meaningless pennies. The people at the top, who have all the power, and who create money out of nothing by writing government IOU’s, force the rest of us to keep track of every penny.
Somewhat more significant than these pennies are our own heads, which, in a democracy, are also supposed to be counted, by voting. Elections are conceived of as strict counting exercises, such as what you might have in a roll call. But since they are done for the benefit of those who lack power, to give them the illusion that they have some, the rules are more lax than with counting pennies.
(8 February 2008)
Not a strong connection to energy and sustainability, but it’s Dmitry Orlov so one has to give him a long leash and see where he goes with the topic. -BA
The (un?) sustainability of growth
Athanassios Boudalis, ZNet
Modern market economy has taken an almost religious worship to certain indicators. If those indicators were gods, then “Growth” might probably be their Zeus.
On the other hand, the deterioration of the environment by human activities, and the depletion of natural resources has evoked the concept of “sustainability”, i.e. the attribute of an activity that allows it to go on indefinitely. A more concise definition is given at the Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary. Sustainable is a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or permanently damaged, or a lifestyle involving the use of sustainable methods. If growth is the holy grail for businessmen, politicians and economists, then it is fair to say that sustainability is the holy grail for environmentalists and conservationists. The question arises however; can both these goals be achieved? Can we have what is called “sustainable growth”?
For practical purposes, we should refine the definition of a sustainable procedure, since nothing is really sustainable in an infinite time horizon (probably, not even the universe itself). In other words, which is a valid approximation to infinity? Human existence is roughly dated at 100,000 years, while whole historical periods, rarely supersede the timescale of one or two millenia. Therefore, any timescale between 10,000 and 100,000 years could be considered as close to infinity, in historical or social terms. Thus, any process that can be anticipated to last for at least as long without significant implications may be considered as sustainable.
This will not be a quantitative analysis (this is left to people more up to the task), but a qualitative one. It is intended as a first qualitative approach to the matter that may hopefully inspire more exact analyses.
(8 February 2008)
