The 3 Scenarios of Climate Response

I’d advise everyone with an interest in restoration technologies such as iron fertilisation to read the new book by the founder of the Foundation for Climate Restoration , Peter Fiekowski.  Peter has been investigating this work and others with a lot of the scientists over a decade or more, so you will find identified in the book the parameters for the appropriate use of such technologies.

On the broad issue of technology and science in climate change solutions. While many investigations were in their early bloom a decade ago, much is now known. And of the unknowns, such as ocean fertilisation, a lot more research in the field is now required. For some people (an I have talked to environmental consultants who raise this objection), trying to solve nature with science is anathema. And they have a lot of well-documented stories of everything that has gone wrong so far. Even if there was an outside chance of making an error, let’s say, to really stretch the argument, making an endangered species, extinct, why might we use science? The answer to this question is a risk management one. It goes like this, (and you can fill in the data gaps): What are the losses of xxx species, xxxxx individuals of flora, fauna and human, and whole local and regional ecosystems, given three scenarios: unmitigated climate change; nett zero emissions by 2050 but only by restoring local ecosystems; and restoring atmospheric CO2 levels using a range of technologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering as such in a variety of ways.

In the first scenario, we are already experiencing touch and go on species loss. At some point we will begin to have local ecosystems fail, here and there. And as that chaotic system change amplifies over time a certain tipping point will probably cause the collapse of all global ecosystems which could increase those losses logarithmically and very quckly. Here’s a species loss story from the USA in the 19th c to exemplify what can occur. There was a pigeon called the Postal Pigeon. It is recorded that there was only one huge flock of these pigeons in such numbers as to darken the sky for hours when they flew overhead. Colonisers would just go out with shotguns and shoot in the air and bring down hundreds of pigeons. It seemed they never dented the population of these birds. Then one year, and it is estimated that the flock numbers were still around 1 million birds, the species went extinct. Apparently less than 1 million birds created a breeding collapse. In other words, we will find it difficult to predict the collapse point. Perhaps we are already near there.

In the second scenario, we already have 95% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. Natural restoration like planting trees is estimated as unlikely to restore the CO2 levels except over a long time. Meanwhile the chaotic climatic conditions are already perturbing though a high flux and that flux drives itself along a positive feedback loop. Some of you will be aware that the mathematical theory called chaos theory was identified by a climateologist, Lorenz. To remind us, Lorenz in the 1960’s found that an 1/1000th of a shift in the conditions (a parameter of data) at any time compared to a predictable order, will create a vastly different weather pattern over time. This came to be called the butterfly effect. The greenhouse in which we are now living is not just a new stabilised system. It is a very unstable system that will, for sure, over a long time, find it new ‘strange attractor’, a new stability, a new more or less predictable pattern. But whatever happens between then and now throws all ecosystems and human communities to the whim of an increasingly unpredictable and volatile weather system. And at ‘then’ the pattern will be most likely unkind to our current ecosystems and therefore unkind to us. We may still find ourselves faced with tipping point collapses of ecosystems, globally.

In the third scenario, we are able to restore the greenhouse to pre-industrial levels. Let’s say over the period 2030-2050 there is a double effect: the gradual movement to nett zero emissions from humans AND the gradual removal of legacy GHGs from the atmosphere. The weather continues to be increasing unpredictable but now also in a different way, hopefully a softer way, as energy is removed from the climate and weather system.  I doubt we can say that we can ‘restore the climate’ which is the catch phrase of F4CR, however, so long as we have i) softened those volatile and unpredictable effects in the first instance; and II) bring the climate to a new more human-friendly balance, we will have mitigated the loss of many species, billions of individual members, local ecosystems and avoided tipping into global collapse, then only being able to say that a species loss (say) is unlikely under a new technology is the only viable stand we can make for a future that can sustain us and the ecosystems we flourish within.

I have come across arguments, the most recent during a trip through a town called Lismore, NSW, Australia, in which an environmental activist told me she would be okay with the loss of human beings from the planet, so long as we just stop playing God with nature, coz the planet will bounce back. Given what we had seen here in 2019-2020 with massive bushfires (wildfires), I must admit to a horrified feeling at the casualness of dealing with the possibility of the losses worldwide. A few weeks after our conversation Lismore had the biggest flood since colonised settlement, 14metres, people clinging to rooftops to get rescued. Two weeks later, it got re-flooded, just a clean-up of the first was partly underway. The issue with this is that, Lismore is flood-prone, it was predictable, except this year people thought the flood period was over, safe for another year, and then it was just worse than ever, and a double dose. I haven’t had the opportunity to find out whether anyone feels differently about the climate ‘mission’, in Lismore. I have some empathy. It is a big ask for us to deal with all of who we are as human beings without feeling it can all go to hell in a handbasket. It is a big ask to take on that we might make choices that result in the loss of a species for the saving of a hundred species (this is the classic challenge from moral philosophical mind games). While there’s no such thing as an isolated species loss as fall-out, definitely not when it comes to endangering the lives of a lot of homo sapien sapiens for those critters have a tendency to hunt and dig up and chop down anything for their survival. Nonetheless, it is an important question for all of use to ask, what would we trade off (let go, even for now) for what we would work towards solutions. I think we can certainly avoid species loss from any technological adventuring as there is no reason why we are unable to finese any work. And there is hopeful expectation in most arenas that the technology even improves ecosystem restoration as well a human economic activity. 

Scarcity, Energy, Climate Solutions, and a New Civilisation

Andrew Nikiforuk of The Tyee, writes, “So, if our current civilization is to survive in any shape or form it needs to fundamentally rethink all energy spending, from how we harness it to what we use it for. As Michaux concludes in his number-crunching report, “replacing the existing fossil fuel powered system (oil, gas and coal), using renewable technologies, such as solar panels or wind turbines, will not be possible for the entire global human population. There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the world’s most influential nations. What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds.”

Erin Remblance responds, “How we make that transition to lowered demand should be the most prominent discussion in our media, classrooms and households. Why is it nearly invisible?”

She goes on to note, “Years ago the great psychologist Bruno Bettelheim wrote a book about what happens to people in dehumanizing environments. Having survived two Nazi concentration camps, Bettelheim knew the subject well. Near the end of The Informed Heart, he offered this prescient observation. Jews who accepted the status quo and believed in business as usual perished. Those who did not believe in business as usual left before the Germans arrived, sailed to Russia or America or joined the resistance. Many survived. “Thus in the deepest sense the walk to the gas chamber was only the last consequence of a philosophy of business as usual,” wrote Bettelheim. It was “a last step in no longer defying the death instinct, which might also be called the principle of inertia.”

Now a widespread inertia prevents us from seizing control of our fate. We must do all we can to overcome that torpor. The implications are plain. Those communities that reject business as usual and cut their energy spending and all the materialist values that go with it, just might survive the long emergency and write a different ending to this story.

I have two responses to Erin’s points. They are my elaboration on the two key notions in her comments: Business as usual, and scarcity of energy.

I open talking about business as usual because seeing this clearly is the foundation of any transformation of civilisation, and technological and energy paradigm shift is pivotal in sweeping civilisation transformation along. (See particularly the copious and optimistic works of Jeremy Rifkin). What some have called ‘spiritual malaise’ and others “tranquilised obviousness”, business rarely is as usual, and if, like the history of European Jews, you punish a group regularly in small to harsh ways, I reckon they might just think the next bit of noise is just more of the same.

It does take quite a bit of training to be able to get up in the morning and take a fresh look at what’s happening, and that requires even putting yesterday in the past. It also requires being fully cognizant of our biases and mindsets. Anyone who says they don’t have any are doomed to play them out. What then do we hold to that gives us some predictive viability? First is cultivating an independence of thought, a detachment from the tribe whether professional, national, sub-cultural, or party as usual. And that is not antipathy, even the opposite, what others have called “indifferent love”. This stance supports an ability to: follow the evidence from several fields of science; hold doubt without discarding anything until resolved in evidence; and reviewing fully any arguments against. This ability for independent thought supports the interdependence of all independent thinkers for it is only in the recognition of true independent inquiry (search for truth) that a collective of thinkers can divine a greater magic.

This situation we find ourselves is a call to be so much more than we have ever been, so much more than we wound up being, individually and collectively. We will either rise to the call or we will fall. And whatever happens will be what happens. As the WWII holocaust found traction, Lydia Zamenhoff chose to go back to Poland from the USA in the face of immanent danger, she chose to support the last moments of her community and die with them. We don’t know how many hands she held but we do know she died with them. Those of us in the frontline of transforming this civilisation may well find ourselves in a future of ‘holding hands’. We must accept that this is one possible future.

In terms of policy, economics, and human behaviour, the basic economic reality of scarcity does work. Many people living in rural Australia grew up looking after water usage. If you have to make a meagre annual rainfall and a watertank last a year, you have watch usage like a hawk. On the other hand, if old people can’t afford heating in winter, they could die. Well, that’s a time honoured tradition. Australia has ineptly allowed gas companies to sell much of its gas, internationally, leading to scarcity and high prices for energy as we enter winter. I’m expecting an unusual winter death rate among the elderly this year. Feeding into an inflationary boom, those on more basic incomes can be expected to suffer housing dislocation. This in, perhaps, the wealthiest per capita nation on the planet.

Meanwhile the environmental impact of windfarms is already been felt and the next phase of renewable energy farms will not be given such an easy ride. The real difficulty is that we aren’t learning fast enough because, here in Australia, for the last 20 years 80% of our intellectual energy has been spent on arguing climate change denialism with our government. In the end, the example of the holocaust goes to one characteristic of modern politics so far – we are often very slow to the table. Timing being the essence, and we can’t escape the clear timing the IPCC have provided, we will damage our way out of this catastrophe. The question is, which is the lesser poison or the better trade off? Presumably the one that improves the chances of the ecosystem and human civilisation. There’s not much chop in voting for the view that 1 or 2 or 3 billion people can just suffer and die. There’s not much chop in loosing much more of the world’s ecosystems and species than we already have, because that will inevitably lead to the billions of people suffering and dying. The inextricableness of human development and a narrow range of climate and a particular variety of ecosystems, is conclusive. I support the work of the Foundation for Climate Restoration, the third and often overlooked leg of climate solutions. The scalability of technologies of removing CO2 from the atmosphere over the next decade is likely to have less impact and perhaps even a very positive total impact on ecosystems, than any other climate change solution, namely renewable energy development and population adaptation. To solve this crisis, to transform global civilisation so the next phase of human development is of a higher order of workability for people and ecosystems, we’ve got to work urgently together on all fronts, even if it means government ordered rationing.

The UK in WWII proved that a people faced by a single existential threat can adhere to austere rationing policies for several years. Even in the 1930’s the mathematical and nutritional knowledge was ample so that there were no cases on malnutrition in the UK during WWII. Today, we certainly have the capacity to design sophisticated systems for the allocation of energy, the development of renewables, the weaning from fossil fuels, and the equitable establishment of systems worldwide, together with an food security systems. What is still required is for nationalistic governments to get to the table put aside their extreme patriotisms for the future of humanity and the planetary ecosystems that support us.

We have a political choice: the easy choice or the hard choice. The easy choice is for all national governments to come to the table with good will to design global systems that will create both equity in resource access and as rapid a transition from fossil fuel energy as possible. The hard choice is to continue to bicker and terrorize each other.

Either choice will lead to the new civilisation, will lead to the transition off fossil fuels and to equitable distributions of resources. Even if making the hard choice, once a billion people have died and billions of others have suffered through the defensive and aggressive attitudes of extreme patriots, the billions of people of good will remaining,will see those extremists off. Such has been the way of history to date. Will this be the moment we will be able to put our past in the past and take the easy way, or will we insist that the past dictates our actions and only massive numbers of deaths will convince us that another model of governance and social organization is viable.?

Land Acknowledgements and Cognitive dissonance.

What I wrote in response to “Against Land Acknowledgement” written by a self proclaimed ‘Georgist’.

I also consider myself to be a ‘georgist’ and if by that you mean having the economic view that all living humans share equally in the planetary resources, then there are a number of issues pertaining to colonised indigenous lands, like my own Australia.

1. There was no treaty made or properly observed with the original inhabitants of the land. if you see a legal loophole then shame on you. The land is stolen and never ceded. To imagine otherwise is to say that I can come onto your property and just camp there, erect a building, force you out, and there would be no legal support you could turn to. Although this does happen in the west bank of Israel, it is anathema to most most civilised people;

2 The evaluation of land to be shared can only come about with full agreement of all parties from the get go. When one party has been force to concede, then no georgian equation can be made except on the restoration of a fully agreement of all interested parties, and that would mean dealing with restoration claims. To take that off the table is only to enact domination over part of the community, rather than any sense of equity.

3. How do we truly evaluate the resource that has been conquered, stolen centuries ago? Think of the value that has been derived from the resource of the Australian or North American continent, for that, in Georgian terms, is the full evaluation of the commons. Our failure to evaluate the commons has lead to the modern tragedy of the commons called climate change, but also the poorer developmental situation of all colonialised indigenous peoples. Why, because the failure of appropriate taxes on the value of the use of resources has lead to essential overuse, ecological systems destruction, climate change and an enormous mountain to climb in relation to social and economic equity. How do we know that? Because by definition, when resources are borrowed from the commons by a company, individual or even government as a whole, the taxable level for the use of that resource is set at a rate that allows the commons to conserve and even improve the resource. The appropriate tax does slow down the rate of development to a degree that allows conservation while placing a greater contribution from product to the community at large, thereby paying for equity in public accessible advancements – ‘highways and Byways’ like transport, energy, education, communication, knowledge growth etc.

All that being said, what has it to do with acknowledgments of country? Firstly, and as we include in many of our acknowledgments in Australia, the land was never ceded. It is a reminder across boardrooms, universities, government departments, and the self-centred, that we haven’t paid the rent. We are, like parasites, living off other people’s lost lives, and we are living off the rewards of theft, piracy, conquest.

Yet there is a deeper proposition also at stake. The proposition that, entangled with our conquering, we have overlooked important cultural resources. That too is part of the commons. And a Georgian would wonder, why are we not utilising that resource at all? Why is that human resource left to sit segregated, stagnating. My own view is that it is left to stagnate for the same reasons that up until recent decades, there was a single world view about productive agriculture and, regardless of the damage it has caused to our food quality, soils, and conservation of production for future generations, an ecological view of agriculture was laughed out of town.

But now the chickens are coming home to roost. The piper needs paying all the same, for as you imply, it is the land, the ecosystem, that requires the appropriate equities to be followed, and failing that, the ecosystem will languish, become unbalanced and ultimately become dangerous to the human being. And part of restoring those equities is fully acknowledging what we had been denying, who we are as a complete community, a commonwealth of diverse peoples, which diversity is a large part of the value of the commons.

If it feels humbling to acknowledge what you are complicit against others, then rather than give into your cognitive dissonance around it, trying cleverly to avoid what it is, you would best sit with your dissonance. Perhaps there is indeed a fully human answer that will come to you.

COVID lessons: Nothing we did will deal with Climate Change.

It is increasingly clear to me that it is not our conspiracy that hurts us, but that when we are smart at something we are equally, if not more, stupid. And by stupid I mean that we have a very blinkered selfish view of life that prevents our considering the impact of our demands on each other, and our descendants. We can consider these few examples that have been defined by this last 18 months of worldwide COVID pandemic and the socio-political problems that have sharpened against that force of corporate scientific ineptitude (COVID 19). Firstly, medicine is one of our smartest tools, but societies are a system that cannot be solved by pathologising it and using medical science alone. Secondly, the smarts that gave us the nation and a partisan political democratic model and made a deal with corporate capitalism, has also disenfranchised societies and communities across the world from a role in governance and an opportunity to develop a capacity for community consultative processes. Thirdly, the smarts that gave us fossil fuels and the enormous amount of energy to kickstart the possibility of a new global civilisation, has also been supporting the corporate control of democracies and non-democratic nations alike, while killing hundreds thousands people each year, globally, for 200 years. This latter, as the key driver in climate change, will make refugees out of 1 billion people in 30 years.

Our future determines whether we can grow into wisdom, and, in case you hadn’t noticed your exam has started and you have 10 years to pass it. The COVID pandemic has been a huge learning curve for all nations . However most of how nations responded, even when successful in slowing COVID spread, point to our weaknesses in solving global complex problems. There are few things that we have applied to COVID that we will be able to apply to the destructive forces of climate change. It is unlikely that ‘lockdowns’ and ‘distancing’ will operate as effectively when dislocations of populations move en mass to new locations. We have not in the least worked out how to plan as communities let alone communities that are under stress of large new populations. People align and try to be right rather than listen and consult. That won’t work over the next 10 years. The development of wisdom among the people as a whole warrants an enormous transformation in the time period. Partisan politics is our weak point as political animals leverage for power regardless of the fallout for people and communities. Authoritarian mandates such as public health legislations policed by armed forces type tools and methods are an anti-social sledge hammer which in future scenarios may aggravate rather than domesticate the chaos that is looming.

We are unlikely to be able to deal with the human fallout of climate change with equinimity, without coming to terms with death. There is a desire by health professionals around the world to stop death whenever they can. They have a deep empathy for the grief that comes when families loose a loved one. They believe that grief and the impact it has on them is something to be done away with. They believe loss itself is something deplorable. Politicians for power reasons also desire to be rid of death, and support the medicalisation of legislation when it suits their prospects at the ballot box, and don’t support such medicalisation when it doesn’t. Yet, whether authentic or not, the selfishness behind this motivation to deny death has had its largest political impact in the western democracies during COVID, because it is the largest voting population, the ‘baby boomer’ voter who fears death most. That older group of people, faced so strongly their own mortality, clamour for the support of the nation, not to die, while they are also happy to support Australian youth being killed in war, and even more so, to cast any refugee to our shores, even children, in permanent imprisonment and torture.

The cowardice of the ‘baby boomers’ at large, to put their own lives on line for the stability and future of the nation is further enacted at the ballot box, as they vote for politicians to continue supporting their embellished lifestyles by ignoring climate change. Even though this will likely kill more children globally each year from here in, than the total of the COVID pandemic deaths, the baby boomers offer the historical murmur of ‘not my problem’, and, when they are passed, what recourse does that generation of loss, have?. For more elaboration what we are faced go to this summary of the scientific predictions of a global temperature rise of 1.5 and 2 degrees celsius.

So to you who are afraid of your own death, and clamour that you only want to save people dying earlier than they need, prove it. If you are a coal or oil or gas mine worker, vote for climate solutions, a new type of job, and an education for your children. If you are a capitalist, vote for climate solutions and move your investments there. If you are a farmer, you already have access to the best climate and soils and production science – just start doing it. If you are an office worker, vote for sustainable systems because in 10 years your current job is most likely to fail along with the economic failure following the collapse of agriculture, food security, etc etc. If you are a politician, put everything on the line for our grandchildren. I’ll only vote for a person who can lead me to putting everything on the line for a flourishing future, passed my time, for my grandchildren.

Image Courtesy of Adrienne Surprenant/NRC