Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
After an extended discussion of the reasons why constructive change is effectively impossible in today’s America, there’s more than a bit of irony in proposing possibilities for constructive change. Still, this week’s Archdruid Report focuses on one such change as a way to cast light on the widening mismatch between the assumptions that undergird our daily lives and the imperatives of existence on a finite planet.
I suddenly realized that my sense that I had time to do my end of year wrap up was rapidly becoming incorrect – New Years is tomorrow, of course, but somehow it snuck up on me.
For those involved in issues of sustainability, peak oil, climate change, and relocalization it might be better to feel a certain hopelessness in our situation. For hope implies dependence on forces outside ourselves. Once we abandon that hope, we can get down to the tasks at hand, the tasks that need to be done–for which we need to ask no politician or government official permission–tasks that we can get started on today. In this way hopelessness concerning the current political and economic arrangements becomes an ally.
The failure of the Copenhagen climate talks has been blamed on everything from Chinese intransigence to Barack Obama’s failure to live up to the messianic fantasies projected onto him. Behind the rhetoric, though, lies the uncomfortable reality: the political systems of America and most other industrial nations are pinned in political cul-de-sacs that make them incapable of constructive change.
It will come as little surprise to most readers that the world is near to, or past, peak world oil production. Petroleum is so essential to the economics of transportation that many believe when oil peaks, the global economy must also shrink in terms of the total output of goods, even as the population increases. Most who study peak oil and accept the findings of the Hirsch Report do not expect a lasting economic recovery, likely for decades.
Taking responsibility for our own lot and the climate crisis means we must first reject an unworkable system and culture. I hasten to clarify; this does not mean there aren’t a lot of nice people caught up in it. But if they believe elections and voting with their consumer dollars are going to save them from the ecological crisis and the slide into societal chaos of collapse, they are of no help to themselves or to the countless species being driven extinct by modern civilization.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen never expected the U.N. climate talks in Copenhagen to amount to much. He told the British Guardian newspaper that it would be better if Copenhagen failed. That’s because Hansen is a vocal critic of the economic policies discussed there, and he hopes Copenhagen’s failure gives the public a chance to talk about new options.
-Ed Miliband: China tried to hijack Copenhagen climate deal
-Carbon Supplicants on the Copenhagen Pilgrimage
-Review of the Year 2009: Climate change
-How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room
-There’s No Negotiating With Nature
-BC Fossil of the Decade Awards
-Copenhagen’s failure belongs to Obama
-Clear-Cutting the Truth About Trees
-Doom and Gloom
-Mammals May Be Nearly Half Way Toward Mass Extinction
-West should allow Iran to solve its own problems, says opposition leader
-Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says US fabricated nuclear documents
-Iran rejects nuclear trigger claim
-Iran calls for specifying Iraq border areas
This afternoon I sit near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, reveling in the brilliant sunshine which pierces the dry, nippy air, knowing that in less than three hours, it will be dark. I count the hours until the shortest day and the longest night of the year signal that magnificent turning point of light and time when the days slowly become longer and the nights shorter.
By now, you’ve likely heard conflicting reports on what was or was not accomplished in Copenhagen these past two weeks. Whatever you’ve been told, I can tell you with conviction you need only know this: The U.N. convention on climate change in Copenhagen resulted in zero meaningful progress on global emissions reductions. Feel free to read the spin, but please, don’t get caught up in its spokes.
So Copenhagen has been and gone, with no meaningful agreement being reached, and now the politicians and lobbyists have headed home having failed to do anything meaningful to address this staggeringly pressing challenge. Hugo Chavez came up with the quote of the fortnight when he observed “if the climate was a bank, they would already have saved it”.
