A Controversial Assertion on Climate Change
I recently wrote a multi-part series about Turning Climate Change On Its Head. In this post, I will try to reduce the essence of that series to 30 statements, and a controversial conclusion. I am dispassionately following the facts where they lead. You tell me where the logic might be questioned.
The Aanimad Assertion on Climate Change
1. Climate Change is the process whereby the climate of the Earth is warming up due to the greenhouse effect, which is caused by megatons of greenhouse gases (primarily CO2) being released into the atmosphere at rates where natural processes are unable to re-assimilate them.
2. The vast majority of current CO2 production is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which has exponentially increased because of civilization’s exponentially increased use of fossil fuels to provide energy.
3. The energy from fossil fuels has been used to power massive leaps in human technology, survival, and standards of living, including the ability to live in relatively inhospitable climates and to provide food for a hugely growing population.
4. All living things are characterized by a drive for growth and propagation. Without such imperatives, any species would soon disappear from the biosphere. Humans are no different.
5. The natural control for unfettered exponential growth of any one species is negative feedback. It is a necessity for sustainable systems.
6. Negative feedback occurs in two forms: kind and unkind. Kind negative feedback includes concepts of sufficiency, where the organism chooses to alter a behaviour. Unkind negative feedback includes impacts such as resource shortages, disease, and conflict, which almost invariably arise as a direct result of the growth itself.
7. While physiological concepts of sufficiency (as applied to food, sleep, warmth, etc.) have not changed for humans, our knowledge and understanding of science have progressed to the point where, combined with the awesome energy of fossil fuels, we are able to circumvent many of nature’s unkind negative feedback mechanisms, such as disease and food scarcity.
8. Having apparently bypassed nature’s unkind negative feedback for population control, humans have followed the natural drives of any species for growth, propagation, and maximal use of all available resources.
9. The rise of agriculture transformed our required food inputs from things found in nature to things managed (and therefore ‘owned’) by humans.
10. Since humans no longer felt totally vulnerable to the influence of nature, and saw its resources as boundless, they developed human-centric economic paradigms consisting predominantly of producers and consumers, where nature’s bounty was simply a given.
11. That evolution of agriculture, trade, and ownership led to increasingly sophisticated numeracy skills, and societies where numbers were used to measure wealth. For example, trade led to the introduction of some form of money, and ownership led to counting what is owned.
12. Number-based values are measures where more is always worth more. Since numbers are limitless, wealth measured by number is such that More is Always Better, and the negative feedback concept of sufficiency does not apply in such calculations.
13. Having removed the concept of sufficiency from our predominant measure of wealth, humans eventually created entities (business corporations) who embodied number-based values exclusively, leveraging the intrinsic positive feedback loops of numbers, without being subject to the mortal filters of human qualitative values or even the limitations of human life spans.
14. Adopting value systems which have no concept of sufficiency, while bypassing nature’s unkind negative feedback, results in an unsustainable way of life for our species. (See 5.)
15. Exponential growth of human population and technology meant that nature did not have the typical time to evolve adaptations for the changes or processes to deal with the inevitable waste products of exponentially increasing economic activity.
16. As civilization is something that happens with physiological beings who must live within nature’s complexity on a finite planet, any economic model that does not account for nature’s inputs and waste management is fatally flawed.
17. The greatest need of economic activity and human survival is energy. Fossil fuels continue to provide the vast majority of cheap energy, so their exponential consumption is tied to exponentially growing economic activity.
18. One impact of relentless economic activity expansion and population growth is (1) anthropogenic climate change. Other direct impacts include (2) freshwater withdrawals, (3) nitrogen/phosphorus loading, (4) land conversion, and (5) biodiversity loss.
19. Being disconnected from nature, the neoliberal economic models did not effectively address waste management, resulting in (6) chemical pollution, (7) ocean acidification, (8) air pollution, and (9) ozone layer depletion.
20. The nine impacts listed above are collectively known as Ecological Overshoot. Climate Change is only one of these serious threats to human civilization and the continuance of our species. This combination of multiple looming disasters is where the term “polycrisis” originates.
21. We got here because we adopted a measure of wealth that had no concept of sufficiency (reducing the influence of natural kind negative feedback on our consumptive behaviours), and we circumvented nature’s typical unkind negative feedback (which controls population growth).
22. Our current economic model of More is Always Better, combined with the absence of integration with concepts of finite resource and waste management, can be directly tied to all nine components of Ecological Overshoot. This Value Crisis – a single common cause of a polycrisis – is where the term “metacrisis” originates.
23. Given that we are in a polycrisis, solving, mitigating, or adapting to Climate Change will likely have minimal impact on any of the other major threats of Ecological Overshoot.
24. However, addressing the metacrisis and correcting the basis of our economic values will mitigate and potentially reverse all of these threats.
25. We will not voluntarily correct our current way of life and the economic values that underpin that. We are unable to solve the metacrisis on our own.
26. Any serious attempt to correct our flawed economic values will be vigorously opposed by the massive forces that derive their wealth from those values.
27. Still, Climate Change poses a serious threat to our current way of life. It is the most pressing (and increasingly visible) threat to our economic activity.
28. Climate Change therefore constitutes nature’s negative feedback to the economic values that caused it.
29. The other aspects of Ecological Overshoot will not be far behind, and will have similarly disastrous consequences for human civilization.
30. Unkind negative feedback is never desirable to the targeted species. We are therefore highly motivated to resist it. However, the negative outcomes of our poly/metacrisis for the human race are similar, whether Climate Change is ‘solved’ or not.
Concluding Assertion:
a) Theimpulse to demand action on mitigating the effects of Climate Change is inevitablefor human nature, but that action will not dramatically change the prospectsfor civilization and our species. (See26, 29, 22, 24, 25 and 28.)
b) Onthe contrary, given that Climate Change could be the force needed to breakhumanity out of its flawed economic values, the sooner that happens the better,before the effects of the other aspects of Ecological Overshoot becomeirreversibly fatal. (See 24, 27, 21,23, and 28.)
c) Climate Change could well be a major part of the solution to our metacrisis. Our primary focus should be on the values to be adopted after the old values are no longer working for us, and how to minimize the damage from that transition.
d) Rejecting the unquestioned precedence of number-based values, acknowledging our interrelationships with nature, and rethinking the definition and role of commercial corporations could be enough to redirect civilization towards a sustainable model. (See 21, 16, 13, and 5.)
Disclaimer:
?- Am I opposed to citizens demanding action on Climate Change?
No,but only so long as there is a realization that the real challenge is thecausal value system underpinning Climate Change. Our compassionate instincts insist that we doour best to combat the destructive impact of fossil fuel burning, however, I do not accept that anysignificant gains will be made in the attempt.
Ifexplicit by-products of any climate change action include an increasedawareness of the root cause of our multi-part polycrisis (that being a flawed value system), and greater acceptance of our truerole within the biosphere, then I have to support that.
If,on the other hand, the proposal is that we can somehow continue our currentbehaviours and economic model simply under an alternative energy source, then Ioppose such delusional thinking.
I also oppose the demonization of the fossil fuel industry. Those corporations, like all commercial corporations, are acting precisely in the manner that society programmed them and continues to demand them to.
