What Gordon Brown Really Meant
Yesterday the G8 in Italy agreed, in principle, to cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. This is hopelessly inadequate — see http://www.sub350.org/ — but it’s the best we can expect from industrial nations. That said, nothing was actually committed to. Oh, and there is no evidence that this cut will actually take place.
Nevertheless, Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, was cock-a-hoop about the agreement, and he wanted to make sure we all knew it. Here is a recording from BBC Radio last night of him briefly talking about it, with some introduction at the beginning:
Gordon Brown, BBC 5 Live, on the G8 carbon agreement.
I heard him say it, and realised that it made no sense at all. It was good for carbon emissions? I’m sure the carbon emissions are loving it, but Gordon, why are you talking about jobs and growth when this is about protecting the future of humanity? And then I realised, the mentions of the environment (sorry our environment, because we own it, don’t we?) and carbon emissions had just been hastily spliced into his capital-obsessed train of thought.
The clip only made sense when I removed the offending sections (note, I didn’t swap any of this around, just deleted):
Gordon Brown, BBC 5 Live, and what he really meant to say.
Honestly, anyone would think the future of humanity on Earth mattered…
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Why James Lovelock Is So Wrong
From memory, Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth came out on 1978. I didn’t read it until 1990, when I was studying for a Geography degree, then it hit home how little I knew about the world, and how little I was likely to ever know. James Lovelock has always been there at the back of my mind as a dominant figure, an intellectual giant who was responsible not only for bringing to wider humanity the concept of a self-regulating global system that would be able to take care of itself during even the darkest of times (and yes, Daisyworld was just symbolic, but a bloody good symbol at that), but also alerting us to the terrible dangers of CFCs, and the horrible potential of positive feedback loops in taking us towards climatic catastrophe. He is the public face of environmental scientific radicalism.
No wonder then, that when he speaks, we take note: even when he makes life difficult for himself in avowedly supporting nuclear power, or just making statements that are plain wrong. No one is perfect, and some people can be forgiven the odd quirk more than others.
Proposing a series of heavily-defended climate refuges, in which Industrial Civilization can remain, locking out the billions who failed to live in the “right” parts of the globe, is not a quirk.
In his latest book “The Vanishing Face Of Gaia”, Lovelock sees the world as already having passed the climatic point of no return – he may be right; in fact he is most definitely right, but only in the context of Industrial Civilization remaining as the dominant cultural influence on Earth. Whether we will definitely see the predicted loss of billions of humans, and the desertification of half of the Earth’s landmass, whatever we do, is another question entirely, but one that Lovelock is seemingly unable to contemplate.
I posed a difficult question to him (via an interviewer) on BBC Radio 5Live last week:
“I have been a follower of your work for a long time, and watched your views harden and become more apocalyptic in recent years. In many ways this is welcome, especially to warn people of the likelihood of catastrophic change, and also to ridicule the ideas of the mainstream environmental movement, who still think we can tinker around with civilization to make things better. I was wondering, though, whether you welcome the views of people like myself and Derrick Jensen, who see Industrial Civilization as the cause, and the removal of Industrial Civilization as the solution to our current predicament?”
The key point was the last one, which would reveal whether Lovelock could see beyond civilization into a world in which humans lost all pretence of domination over the Earth, and instead accepted that only true sustainability would allow humanity to continue as a going concern.
His response can be heard by clicking on this link.
His response is factually wrong: Industrial Civilization is an extreme way of living, and other ways of living are not “stone age” they are just non-industrial; whether hunter-gatherer, kitchen garden, permaculture or a hybrid of these, or any other way of life that is fundamentally sustainable. These ways of life can easily support as many people as are currently on the Earth, but with far less impact.
It’s difficult to explain to someone who is so cast in a civilized mould, that everything they believe about civilization may be wrong: even more difficult to convince them of this. After all, when you are civilized, surely that makes you the epitomy of what it means to be a fully developed human being – Homo sapiens sapiens civitas – and so anything else is a step down from your current position. Step down or not, it is surely not a morally defensible position to suggest that you can carry on living in much the same manner as you have become accustomed to – providing you have been lucky enough to have been born in the right place, at the right time, to the right people (you don’t really think everyone living in a Lovelock “Life-Raft” will be allowed to stay, do you?).
But we continue to defend this way of life, and this Culture of Maximum Harm, because it is all we have ever known: we are blinded by our lack of perspective, and are thus prepared to support this behemoth, even though we probably know it will end up killing most of us; just as it has started killing so much life already. No other way of life is more destructive than Industrial Civilization.
Your choice: do you follow Lovelock and the rest of the civilized world into a future where we live in city states, ringed by gun turrets, thronged by the bodies of the unlucky millions; or do you make the leap into a way of thinking that may be alien to you now, but which – when you have a chance to contemplate it – is really the only logical conclusion.
Keith Farnish is the author of “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis.”
www.timesupbook.com
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Good lord…
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After receiving numerous e-mails about their “protest” marches and sending numerous responses (all unanswered) from the Campaign Against Climate Change saying I would like some dialogue about making their work more effective and explaining that symbolic action doesn’t work, I decided to phone them up.
Initially, I thought they would be willing to talk, but the guy in the office wouldn’t let me say anything useful, talking loudly over me every time I said something he didn’t feel comfortable with, then he cut me off. He then cut me off twice more, once after putting me on hold for 5 minutes, so I decided to record the call, which you can listen to here.
The identity of the person at CampaignCC is not revealed, but I know he was listening because when I told him my “jokes” (sorry, they were terrible) and said I was on mute, his typing stopped.
Link below: Enjoy and pass on.
Campaign Against Climate Change brick wall
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I was inspired to include this first official extract from the forthcoming book “A Matter Of Scale” after listening to an inspirational story about the people of Vanuatu; officially the happiest place on Earth. The audio from the BBC Radio 4 programme, From Our Own Correspondent can be heard by clicking on this link.
Here, I ask the question: “In the dominant global culture we call Industrial Civilization, are humans vital, relevant or irrelevant?” In a culture that puts humans at the centre of everything, above all other life on Earth, surely humans are vital…
Much of humanity has become a commercial entity. No longer are we about subsistence, despite the rich, fulfilling life that it can entail. There is apparently far more to life than this: we enjoy listening to music; watching TV; buying toys, clothes, cars and computers; eating fast food; flying to far-off places and, when it suits us, giving a little money to charity. We even pray, for others and ourselves: for longer lives, for healthier lives, for the dead, for the living, to make us wealthy, to make us happy. Some of us pray for a healthier natural environment; some of us try to create a healthier natural environment. When it comes down to it, though, it’s really all about taking what we want, so long as we can afford it.
The predominant culture is one that certainly puts humans at the centre of things, so it’s clear that humans cannot be irrelevant, but does this culture really suggest humans are vital? In this culture, wars are started and countries are invaded, within and beyond its cultural boundaries. In this culture, only some people have access to universal health care, and commercial pressure is encouraging those countries that do have it to privatise their health provision. In this culture, heavy metals are released into the water and air; organophosphates and other long-lived human toxic chemicals are widely used in poorly controlled conditions; corporations lobby to prevent the control of cancer-causing substances. In this culture humans are warming the Earth as a by-product of the commercialism that dominates the cultural symbols we flock to: in the shopping malls, on the television and in our homes. The implication is that some humans are vital to this culture, but not all of them.
One more way of judging the cultural importance of humanity is to look at the aspirations of humans: what it is they want to achieve in the long run. It is certainly not a universal truth that all humans aspire to something beyond living their lives in a regular way: what can you possibly aspire to if your life is deeply fulfilling? In Western cultures, on the other hand, aspirations to greatness have driven technological and social development to places where, without the desire for greatness, they would never have reached – for better or worse. In Western educational systems, and also those of many other modern cultures, it is assumed that people want to “become†something. Presumably many peoples’ aspirations are going to be cut tragically short due to the kinds of activities I mentioned above; but there must be more than just commerce if humans really are Vital.
Michio Kaku, author of Parallel Worlds, is a highly respected cosmologist who dabbles in philosophy. He views humans as having enormous potential for good, even beyond the lifespan of the Earth, but has severe doubts about our current efforts to realise that potential. Beyond carrying out useful work and giving or receiving love – two vital ingredients (he says) in ensuring humans are fulfilled – he sees two other key factors that, in my mind, make the difference between whether humans are Vital or just Relevant: “First, to fulfil whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest rather than allow them to atrophy and decay.â€
“Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide.â€
Does this culture fulfil all of Michio Kaku’s requirements? If so, then I can, without hesitation, pronounce humans as being Vital. But it’s not true, is it? The culture does not truly care for the environment; it does not give equal opportunity for all to fulfil the range of their talents; it does not provide widespread provision for nurturing mentors and guides. It does not even value love in any obvious capacity: certainly nowhere near as much as it values economic work. The 2005 European Working Conditions Survey found that an average of 83 percent of workers were either “very satisfied†or “satisfied†with their working conditions. Interestingly, when asked about job opportunities to learn and grow (mentoring and guiding), only 54 percent of respondents agreed that this was a factor in job satisfaction. For some reason, an awful lot of people don’t see work as a means of self-improvement.
In some cultures humans are considered to be no more than Relevant, largely because the rest of life is considered to be just as important. In other cultures humans are considered to be transcendent – right at the top of existence – yet such cultures also manage to treat the natural environment with sufficient care as to not being grievously damaged. The predominant culture, in which exists the majority of financially wealthy nations, and is having an increasing influence on billions more people, seems to put humans right at the centre of things; but somehow it has conspired to treat the majority of humans as not really important at all.
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