A Little Book About Climate Change by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

Meeting the Challenges

Here are four broad ways that the above challenges could be met:

1. We take action to prevent further climate change so far as possible (mitigation) and to coping

with

crises

already

taking

place

(adaptation).

2. We work towards a smooth and peaceful transition from oil-based economies to ones based on alternative energy and fuel sources.

3. We re-evaluate our relationship with the rest of nature — perhaps giving back areas of land to return to wilderness as well as assessing the 10

A Little Book about Climate Change rights of other species with whom we share this planet.

4. We seek to re-evaluate our attitudes with regard to the environment, money and economic growth and to awaken to ways in which our well-being might be understood and realised in other ways. The link between increased consumption

(realised

through

economic

growth) and human flourishing might come to be seen as a deeply flawed view of what makes a good society.

Perhaps it is clear that the first two solutions to our challenges — whilst daunting — could nevertheless be viewed as purely technical solutions. It is where many stop, hoping that a Western economic model of growth can be prolonged indefinitely into the future by ongoing technical fixes.

The technical fixes that are available right now are potentially more than sufficient to meet the challenge of climate change. However, the will to implement these fixes and the manner in which they may be implemented depends very much on the motivation for making the changes.

Is it to secure an ever-increasing level of material wealth? Or do we recognise new goals and aspirations as individuals, communities and societies?

The challenges of the over-use of natural resources and the loss of bio-diversity are less amenable to purely technical solutions. And that’s where the third and fourth solutions come into play. We need broader perspectives if we are to meet all our challenges.

11

A Little Book about Climate Change We are still very much addicted to stuff as individuals, and societies see material prosperity as what constitutes ‘the good life’. So we might solve the climate change problem, but at the expense of still using vast amounts of the Earth’s natural resources and taking more and more land away from natural habitats. That might lead to a ‘sustainable’ world for humans, but if we destroy most of nature in the process, then is it a world we would really like to live in, or to leave to future generations? Sometimes this is called ‘business as usual’ but without the carbon. It’s not really clear whether this is possible or if it would mean a whole lot of additional technical fixes needing to be brought in to make up for the diminishing world of nature.

Hence, there is more to be considered. How do we meet the challenge of climate change without an excessive reliance on technology?

How do we manage our use of natural resources and our other impacts on nature such that all of nature can flourish and not just us humans?

These are the questions this book tries to address.

I should say right at the outset that I think we have a future. I am not of the opinion that civilisation will collapse, or indeed, that the whole planet will suffer some kind of ‘heat death’ through runaway climate change. A century from now we may well have different worries from the ones I have described above.

There may be political tensions between the Earth and Mars, problems with animal and plant species that have been ‘resurrected’ from their 12

A Little Book about Climate Change DNA and questions over the legal rights of artificial intelligence. Humans will go on changing, inventing and exploring, so there will always

be

new

challenges

and

looming

catastrophes. But the point is, things get solved and we move on.

That’s not to say that the current issues are not serious. One of the main concerns of climate change is that we reach a point where the rise in temperature caused by humans pushes nature to the point where further warming occurs because of nature herself, irrespective of what we might do. We’ll look at this a bit more in the chapters ahead.

There has certainly been a ramping up of concern over climate change in the last few years, such that it is difficult for governments to ignore public feeling that something must be done. Targets have been set across much of the world. If fully implemented, we would be within a range of 1.5 to 2 degrees centigrade of extra warming (above pre-industrial levels) by 2100

— the target set by the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015.

An important split can be identified between solutions that try to reduce or stop the change and those that accept change is going to happen. The first types of solution are described as ‘mitigation’. The second type of solution — living with the changes — is described as ‘adaptation’. We’ll look at each of these in turn over the following chapters.

13

A Little Book about Climate Change 14

A Little Book about Climate Change Mitigation

This chapter and the next is looking mainly at climate change — the first of the challenges that we identified in the Introduction. As mentioned, there are two broad approaches to tackling climate change — mitigation and adaptation.

Mitigation means to stop or reverse climate change, by whatever means. Adaptation, by contrast, is to accept that change is happening and to change our ways in turn so that we live with how the world is now and is likely to be in the future.

Because our climate is already changing there is inevitably going to be a bit of both mitigation and adaptation in whatever we choose to do.

Looking

at

mitigation

versus

adaptation,

something else is clear. Mitigation is a choice, but we may be forced to adapt! We might adapt well or we might adapt badly, but either way, it’s not a choice. There are a few sceptics who suggest that we are already beyond a tipping point such that we are now unable to stop climate change from happening. Those feedback loops in nature (such as the sun’s heat being absorbed more effectively by water than by ice and the release of Methane from thawing permafrost) are driving climate change forward 15

A Little Book about Climate Change no matter what we might choose to do. So, they conclude, it is mainly about adaptation.

But, for now at least, many still believe that there is an opportunity to slow down or stop climate change, so mitigation measures are still important.

Both mitigation and adaptation aim at achieving sustainability. Sustainability has been defined as ‘….in a broad sense…the capacity to endure.

It can be defined as the ability of an ecosystem to maintain ecological processes, functions, bio-diversity and productivity into the future. In Biology, the word describes how biological systems remain viable and productive over time.

For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of well-being, which in turn depends on the well-being of the natural world and the responsible use of resources.’ It also helps to distinguish between sustainability and

‘sustainable development’. Jonathan Porritt, in Capitalism as if the World Matters, contrasts these two terms:

‘Sustainability may best be defined as the capacity for continuance into the long-term future. Anything that can go on being done on an indefinite basis is sustainable. In that respect, capacity is the end goal, or desired destination, for the human species as much as for any other species.

‘By contrast, sustainable development is the process

by

which

we

move

towards

sustainability … sustainable development is a dynamic process which enables all people to realise their potential and to improve their quality of life in ways that simultaneously protect and enhance the Earth’s life-support systems.’ (Author’s emphasis.) 16

A Little Book about Climate Change The phrase, ‘sustainable development’ is often used by politicians and others — perhaps trying to give the impression that we can still try to promote business whilst at the same time addressing climate change. But sometimes the phrase slides away from what Porrit was explaining above, into something more like: How can we keep on having economic growth without trashing the planet? So, it slides into contradiction, according to some folk. They would say that all resources are essentially finite and that therefore continual growth in a finite world is impossible. We would be well advised to heed the words of Kenneth E. Boulding, who says: ‘Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.’

Who Should Change?

This brings us to the awkward question of who should be responsible for making the changes that mitigation is asking of us. Let’s consider three options: government, the ‘producer’ (that is, agriculture and industry, especially large-scale industry) and the ‘consumer’. We’ll consider each of these in turn.

Government could just legislate climate change out of existence right now. Problem solved! To do this they might, for instance, ban the use of fossil fuels. Along with that, they might impose heavy penalties on all forms of pollution. And they might put large areas of the land and the ocean

into

protected

zones

where

all

exploitation of natural resources is forbidden, or strictly limited. Obviously though, such 17

A Little Book about Climate Change measures would put many millions of people out of work, cause economic meltdown and no doubt lead to civil unrest, if not world war! More to the point, any government suggesting such immediate and drastic change would likely be thrown out of office by its electorate (if the nation is a democracy) or face civil war in the more autocratic nations of the world. In other words, one way or another, it’s us, the populations of each nation of the world, who determine how far any government can go in legislating for change.

So what about changing agriculture and industry? Well, both farmers and manufacturers must work within the constraints imposed by government, and as I’ve said above, if those constraints are too tough then there will be economic meltdown, the farm or the business will cease trading (or be forced to break the rules). Farmers and manufacturers need a market for what they produce. So again it is consumers who call the shots here.

That leaves us consumers. Can we make the change? Granted, sometimes businesses will try to create a market for products that we neither need or really want, by advertising and suggesting to us that we are not fully happy with our lifestyle, our homes, or our bodies until we have whatever it is they are trying to sell us.

This, and similar arguments, imply that as consumers we are the passive victims of such manipulations by industry. But I think this is a cop-out. I think we can take responsibility for what we purchase, how we live and how we work. For now, we can note that most of us are not politicians, most of us are not in a position 18

A Little Book about Climate Change to directly decide what farms grow and what businesses produce. But all of us are consumers. As such, we have the power to force change in society through our choices. So, whilst it might be a contentious point for some, I come down firmly on the side that says it is individual choice that is going to make the difference.

Our relationship to things is complex — so it’s not just a case of living with less in order to achieve a simple and sustainable lifestyle. A person’s vocation — their life goal, their bliss —

may be deeply related to particular types of things. This may be their enchantment!

Perhaps they are collectors or craftworkers, or artists or carpenters. When we think then about giving things up, it is more about all the superfluous things that tend to gather in lofts and garages. The impulse buy that turned out not to be such a good idea — the novelty Christmas presents the outdated tech gadgets like old phones, laptops or games consoles.