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First, Step Up
At any given moment we face as a society an enormous number of problems: there's the mortgage crisis, the health care crisis, the endless war in Iraq, and on and on. Maybe we'll solve some of them, and doubtless new ones will spring up to take their places. But there's only one thing we're doing that will be easily visible from the moon. That something is global warming. Quite literally it's the biggest problem humans have ever faced, and while there are ways to at least start to deal with it, all of them rest on acknowledging just how large the challenge really is.
What exactly do I mean by large? Last fall the scientists who study sea ice in the Arctic reported that it was melting even faster than they'd predicted. We blew by the old record for ice loss in mid-August, and by the time the long polar night finally descended, the fabled Northwest Passage was open for navigation for the first time in recorded history. That is to say, from outer space the Earth already looks very different: less white, more blue.
What do I mean by large? On the glaciers of Greenland, 10 percent more ice melted last summer than any year for which we have records. This is bad news because, unlike sea ice, Greenland's vast frozen mass sits above rock, and when it melts, the oceans rise-potentially a lot. James Hansen, America's foremost climatologist, testified in court last year that we might see sea level increase as much as six meters-nearly 20 feet-in the course of this century. With that, the view from space looks very different indeed (not to mention the view from the office buildings of any coastal city on earth).
What do I mean by large? Already higher heat is causing drought in arid areas the world over. In Australia things have gotten so bad that agricultural output is falling fast in the continent's biggest river basin, and the nation's prime minister is urging his people to pray for rain. Aussie native Rupert Murdoch is so rattled he's announced plans to make his NewsCorp empire (think Fox News) carbon neutral. Australian voters ousted their old government last fall, largely because of concerns over climate.
What do I mean by large? If we'd tried we couldn't have figured out a more thorough way to make life miserable for the world's poor, who now must deal with the loss of the one thing they could always take for granted-the planet's basic physical stability. We've never figured out as efficient a method for obliterating other species. We've never figured out another way to so fully degrade the future for everyone who comes after us.
Or rather, we have figured out one other change that rises to this scale. That change is called all-out thermo-nuclear war, and so far, at least, we've decided not to have one. But we haven't called off global warming. Just the opposite: in the 20 years that we've known about this problem, we've steadily burned more coal and gas and oil, and hence steadily poured more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Instead of a few huge explosions, we've got billions of little ones every minute, as pistons fire inside engines and boilers burn coal.
Having put off real change, we've made our job steadily harder. But there are signs that we're finally ready to get to work. Congress is for the first time seriously considering legislation that would actually limit U.S. emissions. The bills won't be signed by President Bush, and they don't do everything that needs doing-but they're a start.
We need a movement. We need a political swell larger than the civil rights movement-as passionate and as willing to sacrifice. Without it, we're not going to best the fossil fuel companies and the automakers and the rest of the vested interests that are keeping us from change.
And the international community meeting in Bali in December overcame U.S. resistance and began the steps toward an international treaty that will be ready in 2009. The talks are going slowly, largely because of American intransigence, but George Bush won't be president forever, so there's at least a chance we'll re-engage with the rest of the world.
If we do, there are steps we can take. Because the problem is so big, and coming at us so fast, those steps will need to be large. And even so, they won't be enough to stop global warming-at best they will slow it down and give us some margin. But here's the deal:
We need to conserve energy. That's the cheapest way to reduce carbon. Screw in the energy-saving lightbulbs, but that's just the start. You have to blow in the new insulation-blow it in so thick that you can heat your home with a birthday candle. You have to plug in the new appliances-not the flat-screen TV, which uses way more power than the old set, but the new water-saving front-loading washer. And once you've got it plugged in, turn the dial so that you're using cold water. The dryer? You don't need a dryer-that's the sun's job.
We need to generate the power we use cleanly. Wind is the fastest growing source of electricity generation around the world-but it needs to grow much faster still. Solar panels are increasingly common-especially in Japan and Germany, which are richer in political will than they are in sunshine. Much of the technology is now available; we need innovation in financing and subsidizing more than we do in generating technology.
We need to change our habits-really, we need to change our sense of what we want from the world. Do we want enormous homes and enormous cars, all to ourselves? If we do, then we can't deal with global warming. Do we want to keep eating food that travels 1,500 miles to reach our lips? Or can we take the bus or ride a bike to the farmers' market? Does that sound romantic to you? Farmers' markets are the fastest growing part of the American food economy; their heaviest users may be urban-dwelling immigrants, recently enough arrived from the rest of the world that they can remember what actual food tastes like. Which leads to the next necessity:
We need to stop insisting that we've figured out the best way on Earth to live. For one thing, if it's wrecking the Earth then it's probably not all that great. But even by measures of life satisfaction and happiness, the Europeans have us beat-and they manage it on half the energy use per capita. We need to be pointing the Indians and the Chinese hard in the direction of London, not Los Angeles; Barcelona, not Boston.
Building a Movement Most of all, we need a movement. We need a political swell larger than the civil rights movement-as passionate and as willing to sacrifice. Without it, we're not going to best the fossil fuel companies and the auto-makers and the rest of the vested interests that are keeping us from change.
Some of us have spent the last couple of years trying to build that movement, and we've had some success. With no money and no organization, seven of us launched StepItUp in January 2007. Before the year was out, we'd helped organize 2,000 demonstrations in all 50 states-and helped take our once-radical demand for an 80 percent reduction in U.S. carbon emissions by mid-century into the halls of power.
We haven't won yet-but we're way beyond what we could have expected when we began. Last November, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood at a podium in front of 7,000 college students gathered from around the country at the University of Maryland and led them in a chant: "80 percent by 2050." I'm as cynical as the next guy, but it feels like our democracy is starting to work.
It will need to work much better, though. We'll need to see a whole new level of commitment-to nonviolent protest, to electioneering, to endless lobbying. We'll have to be committed to an environmentalism much broader and more diverse than we've known-younger, browner, and insistent that the people left out of the last economy won't be left out of the new one. And we'll need to see it not just here but around the world. Because they don't call it global warming for nothing. If we're going to have a fighting chance, we'll need every nation pitching in-which means, in turn, that we'll have to understand where we all stand right now.
What about China and India? Here's the political reality check, just as sobering as the data about sea ice and drought: China last year passed the United States as the biggest emitter of carbon on Earth. Now, that doesn't mean the Chinese are as much to blame as we are-per capita, we pour four times more CO2 into the atmosphere. And we've been doing it for a hundred years, which means it will be decades before they match us as a source of the problem. But they-and the Indians, and the rest of the developing world behind them-are growing so fast that there's no way to head off this crisis without their participation. And yet they don't want to participate, because they're using all that cheap coal not to pimp out an already lavish lifestyle, but to pull people straight out of deep poverty.
Which means that if we want them not to burn their coal, we're going to need to help them-we're going to need to supply the windmills, efficient boilers, and so on that let them build decent lives without building coal-fired power plants.
Which means, in turn, we're going to need to be generous, on a scale that passes even the Marshall Plan that helped rebuild post-World War II Europe. And it's not clear if we're capable of that any more-so far our politicians have preferred to scapegoat China, not come to its aid.
I said at the start that this was not just another problem on a list of problems. It's a whole new lens through which we look at the world. When we peer through it, foreign policy looks entirely different: the threats to our security can be met only by shipping China technology, not by shipping missiles to China's enemies.
When we peer through the climate lens, our economic life looks completely changed: we need to forget the endless expansion now adding to the cloud of carbon and concentrate on the kind of durability that will let us last out the troubles headed our way.
Another Way to be Human Our individual lives look very different through these glasses too. Less individual, for one thing. The kind of extreme independence that derived from cheap fossil fuel-the fact that we need our neighbors for nothing at all-can't last. Either we build real community, of the kind that lets us embrace mass transit and local food and co-housing and you name it, or we will go down clinging to the wreckage of our privatized society.
Which leaves us with the one piece of undeniably good news: we were built for community. Everything we know about human beings, from the state of our immune systems to the state of our psyches, testifies to our desire for real connection of just the kind that an advanced consumer society makes so difficult. We need that kind of community to slow down the environmental changes coming at us, and we need that kind of community to survive the changes we can't prevent. And we need that kind of community because it's what makes us fully human.
This is our final exam, and so far we're failing. But we don't have to put our pencils down quite yet. We'll see.
40 Comments so far
Show Allas with all complex problems, there are many potential solutions (but no single solution) which will help.
my personal realization is that people/ families have long term horizons. governments everywhere rarely do beyond there terms in office. So the solutions are unlikely to come from those in governance.
Kids tend to idealistic and see the forest(rather than the trees) easily. So education for what the future holds works better on them. Perhaps Mr Gates and Mr. Buffet could consider funding a multipronged educational plan aimed at them. I state with pride, that my fourth grader knows more about energy use and global warming than my head of state. (I still have to keep prodding him into conserving energy).
Personal efforts alone obviuosly will not help much.But if 1 million families can reduce energy consumption by 10% this year and next- that will take care of afghanistans/ kenyas total energy needs.Every drop helps fill the lake.speak to your kids.
1/3 of total energy usage go towards tranposrt and home temperature maintainence each. Land zoning has to change to permit high density housing everywhere that will permit mass transit. Consider if oil was 5 euros a gallon and personal annual fuel expenditure for 'my' 2 car family increased by 1000 euros a year.clearly my beautiful suburban house would be worth much less than today.
for personal transport at town and rural level in many parts of the world, a bi or tricycle with a 1 horsepower, dust and water resistant motor motor is sufficient. Far more efficient, affordable and energy conserving than the 2500 dollar car. (alas, although profitable for all of us- but not for the manufacturer)
Unfortunately, the "joy of getting stuff" is still the prevailing cultural habit and it's constantly reinforced -- shows like Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres every day give away expensive consumer goods up to and including cars, and the hysterical excitement the recipients demonstrate to their millions of viewers undercuts any hope of there being "another way of being human." The message is clear: gettings cars and expensive makeovers is the most wonderful thing that can happen to a person.
Unless someone comes up with a way to derail commercial consumer culture, things will keep on gettin' hot to we get to that not too far away point of no possible return.
Of course, as always, I hope I'm wrong.
This article is well written, the logic unfailing, the points dramatic and undeniably true. But, we are laughibly behind on this massive problem and it's a problem which keeps tripping other massive problems. Denial pervades just about everyone and everywhere, it's just too big a long range problem to even really comprehend (as an American try to really picture rising oceans, severe drought, food shortages, and mass migration, we can't) and as the author points out at the start "At any given moment we face as a society an enormous number of problems: there's the mortgage crisis, the health care crisis, the endless war in Iraq, and on and on." So the chances of us ever getting directly focused on this longe range underlying problem in a real way are slim to none. Politically it's a dead end, emotionally it's exhausting, and individualy the changes needed seem too intimidating and frankly, out of reach. The reality is the world is clearly peaking in just about all areas (fuels, economies, populations, growth, etc.), soon to be followed by massive contraction in all areas, it is this contraction which will be our best hope for dramatic changes in the way we live. This will be a very painful, random, isolating contraction though. Survival of the fittest indeed.
What if the Indians and the Chinese don't ultimately want to be "helped" by us Americans? What if they want ultimately to kick our tails economically, and think that they can do it?
Wind farms are bad for birds.
Many wind farms dont give a damn about this.
India and China have opted to emulate the worst lifestyle on the planet. Very sad for the planet.
Last thing we need is more cars and meat eaters.
Shame on you, American. Who do you think you are? Why are YOU telling this to ME? You lost moral authority on everything, including the green agenda, by allowing a war-profeteering oil-spilling war criminal to be your president. And why should we listen to the people who caused all this trouble in the first place? Shame on you, American! Shame on you! That's all I can say. Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!
Paranoid Pessimist: Oprah must have been channeling your thoughts, because this Sunday she's doing the first of 10 shows called "Oprah's Big Give" (instead of Gimme, Gimme), in which contestants vie for the "best" ways to help other people.
My problems with McKibben's article are twofold: he doesn't seem to recognize that the U.S. is virtually bankrupt, and suggests that we help China (!) which is our foremost creditor; and two, like so many other climate change activists, he makes it sound as if we have to give up modern life and struggle like poor folks did in 1890. This is NOT the way to energize Americans for change!
Suppose we looked at the problem this way: there are existing, proven technologies to make almost unlimited amounts of electricity from solar radiation, wind power, tidal power and geothermal power -- NONE of which contribute to global warming. Therefore, we should set our sights on the following: everything that we're BURNING at present to create motive or electrical power must be switched to electricity from renewables in a robust program such as the Apollo Alliance has suggested. Everything that CAN run on electricity (lighting/heating/cooling of all buildings; cars, light trucks, rail systems) SHOULD run on it. We should only burn fossil fuels when there's absolutely no alternative. (I recently saw a photo of a hybrid container ship that gets some of its power from sails.)
We don't have to go back to the Dark Ages -- we just have to remember how clever the human race is, and get going!
There is first of all the fundamental problem: that the theory of capitalism violates the second law of thermodynamics. It is impossible to extract labor from transactions that produce less labor as output than was input. Less labor means less value and the value extracted must come from victims. The number one victim of profit is the environment; it is without legal protection and its denizens of the animal kingdom do not vote.
Secondly there is the matter that investment for development goes to those innovations and that infrastructure that will produce the most immediate profits. As described in the book "Internal Combustion" by Edwin Black, in 1913 Ford and Edison combined ingenuities to produce a model for the home of tomorrow with an automobile and a home full of appliances run by batteries fueled by a home generator driven by a windmill. The technology used in this demonstration would be quaint by today's standards, but it would have been a tremendous leap forward for the long term health of the world had it been implemented and followed through with corresponding infrastructure. This did not happen because in 1914 American companies were offered huge orders for production of war materiel. Companies that had so far produced only 1500 automobiles per year had orders to complete 10,000 trucks as rapidly as possible. It was out of this initial investment in immediate war machinery that the industrial infrastructure all over the world grew.
Retail efforts to improve eco-friendly practices here and there will not perform adequately to redress the dangers the planet faces. We the public must take control of the process and reform infrastructure from top to bottom despite all the resistance from political and industrial interests that we will inevitably face. Are you listening, President Obama?
There is nothing per se wrong with the "American Way of Life". It is only a problem because there are so many imitators. Why don't we just tell these new would be kings and queens for a day to knock it off as there is not enough additional eco system resources to support them. If they refuse, let them reflect on how we deal with those who refuse our direction with regard to oil. THIS IS THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY
Bill:
Here is the challenge:
We have a society, culture, government, and economy based on Consumption. Consumption is the problem - Conservation is the solution.
How do we convince people to switch from a consumption lifestyle to a conservation lifestyle? That is the challenge.
The approaches that have been tried, based on planetary preservation, have so far failed to make any real difference. Books, movies, concerts, organizations, have been educating and informing the world for some time now. Not the Americans, Chinese, Indians, or anyone else for that matter, have changed their personal habits to any significant degree. On the contray, the consumption machine keeps grinding away at the earth, at an ever faster rate.
Polar Bears dying, Ice Caps melting, fish dissappearing, amongst many other indicators of a planet in crisis, have not motivated governments, societies, or individuals to significantly change.
A new approach is needed. The scare tactics aren't encouraging very many people to adopt a conservation lifestyle. The pleas for the planet are falling on deaf ears.
What if we tell people, and show people, how a conservation lifestyle will make them wealthier, healthier, and happier? What if people were encouraged to live a conservation lifestyle, out of self-interest, as opposed to global interest. It's a new approach, it may work, we know that the current approach is failing.
That is the approach that I'm taking. I'm trying to get people to retire. Retirement can dramatically reduce consumption, lower global warming, help save the planet. I show how living a conservation lifestyle, saves you hundreds of thousands of dollars, allows you to retire early, and provides a safe and secure retirement. My motivation is saving the planet, the person who adopts a green retirement, is motivated by self-interest.
It's a win-win, for the person, and the planet. Nothing scary. The person will happily make the sacrafices in consumption, that are required to save the planet, in order to save their retirement.
Let us show how conservation leads to personal wealth, personal health, and personal happiness. Let us change our message from fear to hope, from sacrafice to enrichment, from the global to the individual.
I can keep going, but this post is getting long (no one appreciates long posts), and I have a point to make about China and India. Everyday from my window in San Francisco, I watch container ships entering the Bay, to unload their cargo at the port of Oakland. Blaming India and China for our consumption problem, is like blaming Colombia, for our cocaine addiction.
The United States of America is 5% of the world's population, yet we consume 25% of the worlds resources, the problem and the solution lies within u.s.
Ramsay
The War on Cooperate
We made lot's of headway tin 2008
We declared war on cooperate
The green backs were floating on an ocean of slime
with non entity persons pushing their bottom line
We closed yellow ribbons and colored them green
so the war machine would never be lean
as debt's and the DOW rose above the mean
The dick of all dicks threatened the button of doom
while the have's and the have mores bunkered in tombs
The apple pie sky puffed like turds from on high
while the pursuit of happiness just said goodbye
Say ; 'Where did we come from
and when will we go?'
What shall we retire upon? We must eat; we must live somewhere; we must do something. It is not demand that fuels the machine, demand is the passive market force; it is supply, the active market force, that fuels the machine and determines its behavior. Supply is the exclusive prerogative of capital. Retiring workers will serve only to lower wages and reduce the prospects of retirement for workers retiring later. Capitalism is the problem and cures that do not address this disease only inflame the symptoms.
If the problem is not people, but their government, how can we expect to fix it by changing governments? The Swiss people took over their government and fixed it with the referendum. Our politicians won't mention the referendum because they don't want to lose their power. Mike Gravel did and was quickly ignored.
All We the People need is a website to start making the laws.
I just watched a program on History Channel -- it was about innovations in alternative energy. What struck me was that none of the innovations were being implemented in the US. Some of the ideas might have been seeded in this country -- like the use of mirrors to generate electricity via a heat exchange mechanism -- but when it came to applying the technologies, that was all being done in other countries (that particular one in Spain). I think it speaks volumes about the will (or lack of it) to implement innovations that will put Big Oil out of business. Corporate boards can't look beyond the next fiscal quarter. If it is a question of long-term investment in infrastructure, or a development curve that might take a decade, it will never win out over the need for dividends to shareholders this year. There is plenty of potential solutions out there, there just isn't any American initiative to get it done.
Bill- this screwing in light bulbs is never gonna work.
I need to explain something. Our poor beat up and abused earth is operated by an economic system called global capitalism. This system is insatiable. It requires INCREASED production and INCREASED consumption every year. Their need to show ever bigger gdps means they must necessarily chomp up more planet each year. So as long as that is the system we are doomed. There can be no conservation. the people must not be allowed to consume less. Capital demands that we consume more every year.
as long as environmentalism continues to be environmentalism, while allowing capital to be capital no real change can happen.
All of which means that the movement can no longer be a movement. it has got to become a revolution. Maybe global socialism. Maybe something else. But capitalism must go.
Buy, buy, buy...'til we die.
That's capitalism.
That's America !
The author says "we need a movement." I say we have one underway. The election of Obama to follow Bush, if we can get it done, is a political feat almost beyond imagination just a few short years ago as Congress then was so inane as to make Terry Schiavo its top priority.
No, Obama isn't running on a global warming platform. But that doesn't mean he'll ignore it once he is in office. Electing Obama and a Dem Congress on his coattails is the single most important thing American citizens can do for the earth this year. It will change the debate in this country, possibly forever.
I'd like invite you to read this account of an "overnight" change in attitude and lifestyle that occurred on Dec. 15, 2007, in Vietnam. I'm afraid it won't offer you any encouragement regarding the possibliity of such a radical change occurring in America. Also, you might be interested in reading my most recent post, in which I discuss the economics of our decision to abandon our jobs and our American lifestyle and move to Vietnam.
Class Act:
Retiring workers will serve only to lower wages and reduce the prospects of retirement for workers retiring later. Capitalism is the problem and cures that do not address this disease only inflame the symptoms.
Retiring workers, reduces the cost of labor, without a doubt a benefit to the capitalist system. So fine. Let it benefit the Capitalists as well. Win-Win-Win. Who cares? If lower wages, creates lower consumption, then the planet benefits.
The reduction of the "prospects" of workers retiring later, that you mention, is the prospect of a planet un-inhabitable. We must all, those retiring now and those retiring later, adjust to a world with less consumption.
You exemplify my greatest hurddle, switching the mind from consumption to conservation, and how it benefits the society and the individual.
We need a pardigm shift, away from consumption, towards conservation. When conservation benefits the individual, then it will benefit the society, and we and the planet will win.
Ramsay
I'm sorry--there was a problem with that second link in my 10:07 pm comment. Try this link instead: Steady Footsteps The article in question is entitled: "Opting Out".
Sorry again. It appears that the edit function and I are not getting along today. IF you want to read my article entitled, "Opting Out", just go directly to my website( www.steadyfootsteps.org ) and read the most recent post there.
abuelito,
Very good points!
I was very dismayed that Mr. McKibben seemed to talk so much about buying stuff. Under the current capitalist system, conservation only leads to increased usage of or greater numbers of, the energy-conserving device, so consumption continues to increase anyway. It must - under capitalism's own iron laws.
Under capitalism, energy-conserving cars just lead to greater exurban sprawl and more car usage, CF bulbs lead to just more brightly-lit houses, more efficient LCD TV screens just leads to bigger TV screens, etc...
The only way out of this will be revolutionary social change - including getting rid of capitalism.
if you are poor, you can make a decent living only if you use slaves. so you have kids. they work for food,clothing and a roof. then they grow up and each start a family with new slaves. The number of children must be large enough to pool together enough for a profit for the adults. So the number of people is always increasing, like a chain letter, and so production must increase to feed the extra pêople. GDP must grow because the population grows. This is not a function of capitalism, but of the way to survive and the desire to have children.
The truth of the matter is that everything is happening in secret. The oil companies have in their possession a variety of patents on devices that can reduce fuel consumption by 50% and emissions by up to 90%. One of these is a device that takes hydrogen produced by hydrolysis in an attached tank and injects it into the cylinder giving a complete combustion. While CO2 is still produced, it would be clean, and the increased mileage reduces oil consumption by half. These inventions will be very helpful and will become available when it becomes profitable for the owners to make it available. The oil companies will continue to buy out these patents and delay as long as possible and drive the world to the brink, before they charge the world huge money to be rescued. We are all being played.
try free public transit
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com
.
Planet too small.
Find bigger planet to support growing GNP.
It is not what we have that is important, it is the INCREASE in what we have that is vital. That is the rationale for an expanding economy. Grow or collapse is the iron law of economics.
I whole heartedly agree, we need a movement, some kind of organization that has to first, remove the connection of the power elite into our government. It also has to replace all of the elected officials who have been terminally corrupted. We would need a powerful 3rd party. It could be done. It would take some time. The hardest part of this would be to 'sell' the idea to the general population. Third parties always end up being nothing more than a protest vote. When the general population gets over it's drunken orgy of consumerism and killing the 'enemy of the month', maybe we could start talking sense to these people.
What we need first is to set up a subsidy or tax cut/rebate for the purchase and installation of solar roofing. This tax cut would stimulate a whole new industry and create jobs locally all across the country (read planet eventually). All roofs could be solar.
Every small town should have windmills etc. which could provide much of their needs and also provide emergency power if the grid fails again.
All new office buildings should be required to have a roof top windmill and solar skins.
With all due respect to Mr. McKibben but the WE ...as in WE should and WE need to and WE... isn't the problem. The collective we that is most effective is getting the rules changed. Corporations need to make their profits green. An example is compact flourescent light bulbs. If they are the standard available light bulbs found on store shelves then the WE have changed from the wasteful incandescents. But WE don't make them, WE only buy them.
It will only when corporations change will WE be doing things differently.
Telling an individual that he is responsible because his light bulbs were wasteful only changed things when the compact flourescents became widely available. Soon the old kind will disappear.
WE would drive energy efficient vehicles if WE could (like if they were available to buy and non-efficient vehicles weren't).
It is the BIG changes like that which WE need. Just a point...they once wanted to increase taxes on gasoline to discourage consumption and increase pressure for fuel efficiency. At $100 a barrel for oil... WE have seen first hand that does only so much. It is the corporations that need to change... people are already willing to buy green and conserve. Focusing on the little guy is an illusion.
It's like forgetting to change the fuel guzzling car and instead asking people to change their driving habits! Um...wait a minute... that's already us ain't it?
What WE need to do is focus on changing THEM... the source. Focus change on the source... the corporate decisions and lack of governmental regulations that would require all new cars to be what WE need. We'd happily drive them... who wouldn't want to? What Arizonan wouldn't want a solar roof to provide free air conditioning all day?
If WE could.
The only way is to focus on them and making THEM produce what WE need. Right now we buy what they sell us like we have any choice. Changing US is too slow and effects changes too slowly. Yes it helps for each of us to be greener but what will save us (if we would be saved) ... is changing THEM.
Global Warning:
McKibben's Single-Issue-Based Analysis Not Holistic
Right from the beginning of this article 'First, Step Up" Bill McKibben names the many serious problems facing Americans today: "there's the mortgage crisis, the health care crisis, the endless war in Iraq, and on and on." Then he goes on to distinguish global climate change as the issue of our time and as the issue that should come 'first' and is thus the most important because it is the only issue that we can see from outer space.
The problem, right from the beginning of the article, is McKibben doesn't analyze the interconnectivity of the enormous lists of problems that our planet is facing. In other words, his article would lead to a more holistic analysis and more holistic actions if, rather than try to convince me that global climate change is the most important issue we face as a planet today, he would ask:
What are the inter-relationships and common roots of the various crises the American people are faced with today including the mortgage crisis, the health care crisis, the endless war in Iraq and global warming?
Towards a People's History of Climate Change
Howard Zinn's approach to a People's History is useful in analyzing not just the past but the present and future:
"My viewpoint in telling the history of the United States, is different, that we must not accept the memory of states as our own. Nations are not communities and never have been. The history of any country presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners."
McKibben, in this piece asks, 'What about China and India?' and then proceeds to inter-exchange 'Chinese' and 'Indians' with China and India. So what? Who cares? Well, lets be clear and concise in our analysis and differentiate the institutions, forces, relationships and power holders in our understanding of problems. China has a government; China has powerful domestic capitalists and powerful foreign capitalists at work; China has wealthy and China has poor. Using 'Chinese' as a homongenous unit simply ignores differences such as class, power, and culture just as saying the 'Americans' are x, y, or z ignores conflict, class, race, and power differences here. Bill—you need to be more specific in your analysis of the webs of power that we are all engaging with that serve to uphold global warming.
Back to the Drawing Board Bill: Mapping Out the Webs of Power of Global Warming
In 1993, The Ecologist, before being purged of its radicals produced a book called, 'Whose Common Future: Reclaiming the Commons'. In the book they say:
"Today, economic and political power is entrenched in a network of interest groups whose influence on policy lies in the scope and intricacy of the mutually-beneficial, though often uneasy, alliances that hold them together. Such alliances now bind industrialists to government officials, politicians to individual companies, companies to the military, the military to the state, the state to aid agencies, aid agencies to corporations, corporations to academia, academia to regulatory agencies, and regulatory agencies to industry…The result is a web of interlocking interests that effectively ensures that what is deemed 'good' for those interests is deemed 'good' for society at large."
Then the authors clarify:
"Understanding these structures---how they work and who the major players are---is vital to the struggle to reclaim the commons. For it is such structures, rather than 'lack of political will' or 'insufficient knowledge', which are the major barriers to reclaiming the commons."
Bill, you have done great work to shine the light on enormous problem of global warming. However, you owe it to yourself and all the people you are attempting to educate and motivate to map out a clearer and more precise list of… "the web of interlocking interests that effectively ensures what is deemed 'good' for those interests is deemed 'good' for society at large." We can't afford to waste time you are right and thus we must diagnose problems correctly and holistically in order to develop effective antidotes.
You have it right—we do need a movement—but the movement can't afford to be a single-issue-based movement. Rather, it needs to be a movement of movements that clearly identifies the common root causes of the many social, ecological and economic crises that we must deal with now. Thus far it seems 'Step it Up' strategy demonstrates an over-reliance on moving people towards electoral politics, lobbying, and forms of government power, which leads me to think you might return to re-analyze the webs of powerful interests and actors upholding the current crises prone system.
Indeed, we must place demands on the system but we must do so as we build new systems. I hope that you can utilize your glowing popularity with mostly middle-upper class white America to truly encourage people towards a 'deep' understanding the webs of power we're up against, the inter-relationships between the crises we face, and the need for coordinated and networked movement building that doesn't fall into the traps of single-issue-based analysis of interconnected global problems.
Step it up yes but step it up towards a more holistic analysis with holistic solutions. Rather than putting your issue 'first' lets find the common roots of the many crises we face and work together to change the world together.
It's not "his" issue, it is the issue.
The war in Iraq is atrocious, and it has killed thousands if not millions. We're talking about billions.
The erosion of our civil liberties affects how our children and their children will live. The ability of this planet to sustain life affects WHETHER our great-grandchildren, or anyone else, will live.
The profiteering of the global megacorporations impoverishes uncounted millions. What we are doing to the environment threatens to kill them all.
If we don't solve this one problem, then all the others will disappear. There will be no war, no crony capitalism, no fascist control of government, no profiteering companies, and no right-wing Christianists - there will be no Wal*Mart, no Halliburton, no Clear Channel and no Exxon - when there is no life on earth.
Going back to Howard Zinn's quoted comment about the history of countries being presented as the history of families -- in fact the history of countries very much represents and is intricately enmeshed with the history of dynastic families -- and the histories of dynastic families DO conceal fierce conflicts of interest.
This goes way back, try reading about the 'family' feuds of the gods of the Greeks and Romans. Nasty stuff. I would argue that dynastic families are the templates on which the dynamics of countries are based. When we understand that, maybe we can make more progress towards true self-governance.
On a practical level, one of the worst things we have set our societies up to do is to use potable water for purposes it is not needed for in both industrial and home applications. Unfortunately, this is how our water supply and discharge systems are set up -- fresh water comes in and is used for everything, gray water and black water are mixed together and discharged. 'Sanitary' human waste
disposal has probably been the one single thing which has most improved our quality of life and reduced epidemic disease. But we need to rethink how we do it -- we could divert our waste to methane digesters which would then provide fuel. This technology would be such a blessing to the third world.
I think the future may be promising -- I can imagine people driving electric cars (at modest speeds since we will no longer be insanely running away from who knows what) along freeways which have become partly occupied by greenhouses, parks and small shops. Think of the food production potential of 'freeway greenhouses' !
New energy sources are imminent -- an experimenter in Florida has figured out how to separate the hydrogen out of salt water (usually splitting water is a very energy intensive process) using only the low-energy input of a specific radio frequency ! The water has to have salt in it, but it does not have to be 'salt' (as in ocean) water, the salt can be added in the right amounts.
We live in the far north. Maybe when we are old and too feeble to get firewood anymore, we'll be able to heat our cabin with frozen blocks of water which slowly thaw, are mixed with salt, split with radio waves, and the resulting hydrogen fed into an appropriate fuel burner. Cool !
"I think the future may be promising — I can imagine people driving electric cars (at modest speeds since we will no longer be insanely running away from who knows what) along freeways which have become partly occupied by greenhouses, parks and small shops."
Better yet, why not build, or really just re-build, communities where no car is needed at all? Most cities already have such "model" communities!
Unfortunately, right now, many in their current state are either dilapidated and undesirable or over gentrified and unaffordable. All they need is improved public transportation, and rehabilitation on one hand or a formula for greater income diversity to address gentrification, on the other.
The US government is bankrupt because of tax cuts to the extremely rich while spending too much on military and empire. Economic mismanagement has allowed destruction of our productive capability by outsourcing and misplaced infrastructure spending that pretends we will globally source everything and locally source nothing using entirely non sustainable energy sources.
As a nation we refuse to even conserve energy or reduce military spending.
The good news is we can change the causes of our problems. The bad news is it might be hell living through the effects.
Redstatelefty,
You missed my point entirely. I'm fully aware that the earth's systems are collapsing...
That said, we can't focus solely on global warming as the 'priority', but rather must find the intersections and common roots of the serious and dire ecological, social, and economic crises we face.
Saying it should come 'first' isn't what we need rather what we need is a new politics that is multi-issued and highly networked.
So, for example how do those fighting global warming network with those fighting for economic justice, against the imf, world bank, against enormous hydrodams, against gmos, against sweatshops, for universal healthcare, against the mortgage crisis...etc. Not be telling these people that the most important issue is global warming.
What are the common roots that run through all of these problems? How do we fight to tackle global warming at the same time that we strenghten and support the fight for universal health care rather than saying that it should come 'first' why not find ways to build the apprpriate holistic analysis and actions in order to tackle all the problems we face...
One suggestion is to get Bill McKibben to actually say the c-word...capitalism...lies at the root of many of these interconnected problems but he avoids the word because he either fears being deligitimized or he simply doesn't see the world we're living in today clearly.
A system that relies on unrestrained economic growth will tend towards favoring those who already hold tremendous amounts of wealth and power and are big...The modern multinational corporation is simply the product of this insane system and it has a strong hold over the political, social and ecological systems that are dieing everyday. The modern multinational corporation and its way of asserting itself through various social, economic and ecological systems is one of the key intersections that threads the different issues Bill mentions--mortgage crisis, war, health care, global warming, peak oil...
Bill needs to take the step towards an honest and more direct look at capitalism and the power of the multinational corporation on all systems including on the elected officials he spends so much time seeking legitimacy from.
This does not mean then that socialism is the only alternative...rather socialism is one alternative of many that we need to explore at new scales, with new instutions, and new forms of accountability and democratic participation.
Bill needs to be honest and truthful about the failures of modern global capitalism and the power of the multinational corporation and the multinational elites web of institutions to create profit over all else. We mustn't shy away from naming the problems we face.
Al Gore and Bill McKibben hold this in common--they dance around the reality that global capitalism needs to be entirely dismantled and remade into something very different in order to realistically address the magnitude of the interreltated ecological, social and economic problems we face.
directdemocracy,
Good points, we should also point out that:
1. Mckibben is writing this for "Yes!" a glossy, bourgeois-liberaloid magazine - whose focus is buying your way to environmental salvation, rather than changing life and livlihood.
2. Mckibben himself is pretty rich.
3. Mckibben lives in a fairly large house in the Adiriondacks and commutes all the way to Burlington every day - hardly responsible behavior for someone promoting personal action to limits one's carbon footprint.
4. A dismayingly large percentage of humans, when given the choice of standing by moral principle or retaining ones position of privelege and power, will opt for the privlege and power.
Capitalism and socialism can both be perverted by corruption. Corruption and lust for power are the problems we need to address. Sweden is capitalist and does very well. Canada also. Both have socialistic tendencies within a capitalist system. What's wrong with that? Doesn't this seem like a good path to follow: diminish wealth disparity, provide health care and a good education, don't leave anyone feeling abandoned, and, above all, don't get involved in imperial wars. Sweden is very good this way, Canada less so.
This reinforces some of what many of us heard Lester Brown say last week about the urgency of the Global Warming Situation (see his book "Plan B 3.0; Mobilizing To Save Civilization").
On the other hand, I'm going to fault McKibben for being light on meaningful solutions and perhaps heavy on political correctness.
I think he should have mentioned:
1. As Lester Brown stated, a government led mobilization to very quickly start producing and utilizing equipment to produce carbon free energy.
2. Population must be stabilized both in the United States and world wide. Perhaps ultimately reduced. The US doubles every 55 years - we must stop just pointing fingers overseas. Our growth further increases consumption and allows other nations to continue their growth. Population is a multiplier of everything else.
3. Our system of government and thinking must be changed to consider the longer term and sustainability by real campaign finance reform and lobbying/PAC legislation. We must return to a true democracy where the strategic viewpoint held by and for the people (including future people) prevails. The current two party system seems to have much of the advantages as Master Card versus Visa.
4. We are going to need at least some amount of globalization - not in the current sense where it is for the short term benefit of a few. We need real and visionary cooperation among nations and create a global authority with power, respect and teeth.
Environmentalists seem to be getting real on the seriousness of the situation. I think the must get real on the serious step required to perhaps solve or mitigate the solution and provide hope for the future.
The future is not so much to be predicted as it is to be selected - Donella Meadows
~Mike
For sure we need institutional solutions like massive clean energy projects. But we are also so piggish. This is the only country in the world in which you could have a long running TV series based on people purging their excessive acquisitions so they have room to live in their giant houses. This show turns my stomach.
In a rich country on a personal level we can simplify. It should become unfashionable to acquire more than one needs. Buy fewer clothes and gadgets. Buy unpackaged foods. Shun bloated houses, cars and appliances. Buy one fine toy made by well-paid workers rather than twenty lead painted toys.
The slogan of my old aunts should now become au courant:
Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without
Friends
The comments from people here are truly good. They come from people who have time or people who are in life with life rather than money. Bill Mckibbon is fine man and a noble thinker about human life, we were both sounding the alarm a long time a go. I did the first acid rain film in North America, which was squashed by big media and big business in Canada in 1978. That issue didn't go away it was superceded and fell off the curb to be choked by automobile exhausts but it never went away it morphed into the possibility of the extinction of the species.
It was through the eighties, McKibbon, and Hansen who I dialogue with, that we all got on the "stump" for global warming. The doors that slammed in all of our faces in those days are legend. In Canada they considered themselves pure, another sham, in the rest of the West we are now considered almost Holy excepting the American Enterprise Institute where we espouse the words of heretics.
Obama now talks of Global Warming; Hillary espouses the new change words to make certain there is a chance of coronation. Even McCain speaks of the subject but not too loudly and in passing. When any one of them receives the kingship their commitment to do something about climate change will modified with bringing jobs to Ohio. This is the world of reality! The truth is that the radical movement that bill asks for founders on the shoals of mortgage foreclosure and automobile repossession.
Most politicians come from the wealthy classes. They of course adore free trade because it allows the wealthy corporations from which they receive their campaign donations to help be reelected. These fools allow the multinationals to become further enriched on the backs of the masses. They also enjoy the further enrichment that comes to their close friends, the bankers, the financiers, munitions makers, and wealthy of the world which is the condition of the people from Congress who truly decide the change of direction no matter how committed the president may prove to be. He will be instructed about reality when the inauguration is over and if he refuses to face it than assassination is an option as a result of their policies that will continue no matter who occupies the White House. We are dealing with power not intelligence or love for humanity.
A special rich club might survive and perhaps their children but that will be the end of it!!! Their children's children will survive to face the results of their actions. I do not celebrate that this beautiful world will perish, I do not celebrate that life is so cheap. For those here who have not seen Africa and felt the disease or smelled the rot, you exist in the never, never land of Jackson's estate now up for sale that exemplifies the opulence of stupidity that is so much America. For those of us who believe in the sanctity of life itself that we will not have what we all wished a human race that could have built heaven on Earth. We who right here know intrinsically this could be a beautiful world for all to exist, but "the chickens will finally come home to roost"!!!!
If we were able we must understand, the time for a two-tiered world economy that incorporates the best features of democratic capitalism for all players and allows for penalties for those largest players in the game for polluting the global environment is in order but this possibility may be too late. The people of this globe are used to the self-interest of the powerful. The latest BP energy ad, the Chevron propaganda is a case in point of the cynicism at play at its lowest level. The corporate power elite who is protecting the rear from attack on the use of the last drops of oil on this globe
Let's forget about, the people owning the corporations, as it has been practiced over the last 50 years. We know this is deception. Humanity of this globe has played out their small striving lives for the benefits derived from the technology that is built to serve war as its first reason for existence; as it has been used throughout history. We cannot learn from history, we cannot learn from our mistakes.
The entire condition of life on the planet is skewed. The need forever larger and more of everything is based on a conception of economics that is out of touch with survival strategies for the human population. We are going down the road to extinction along with the systems we have created that have put us out of touch with all life including our own.
The end for Wall Street and its ideas of value and the reason for being which is endless growth cannot continue. There is no such thing as perpetual motion or growth. When we experience growth that is out of control in the human organism it is called cancer and we die. On that note since 1970 the incidence cancer has increased 100% in people over 60.
The idea of human valuation is based on money and thingness alone, is out of touch with human needs for survival. All systems are reaching critical mass. The giant human extinction process has begun. It may lead to the end of all life on this planet. Once there was a small window of opportunity in the development of humanity that could have led to a flowering of the human species. The great thinkers we revere have stated these concepts, but as always they fell to the desires of the masses inculcated with rubbish, led by the petty evil ones that foisted the lowest of human ideals and passions as the way to enlightenment. "The crowd is the untruth!" stated by Dr. Stockman in Ibsen's, Enemy of the People. They elect these fools to power!!
We now reap the rewards of the Bush and Clinton legacy of this world based on greed, corruption, self-absorption and stupidity. We debate the petty and inconsequential issues facing the world to the last, while the real issues go wanting. We have people here nit-picking Mckibbon's analysis and draw attention to his supposed inconsistencies, without looking at the basis for his writing and offering help thoughts to his ideas.
The end to this era's politically conservative anti-human, greed directed agenda is coming back to power if Clinton gains this election, hopefully she will lose. This is not to say that Obama will be able to win election. However, he has garnered the youth and it is they who deserve a chance to put into action the ideas that McKibbon recommends. Is there still people who still hope and believe in his ways as the approach to life? However, let those here not be fooled, yes there will be a defeat of his ideas in the USA that puts the Democratic party in power without a congress to enact those changes that are asked by the young people of America. Nothing will change whoever is elected without that happening. This is the only hope people like McKibbon, who have this belief have of a movement taking place.
Those here embrace the possibility of defeat of the policies that support the assault to life of the globe in contrast to the health of global humanity, who support the old ways to change, that want a democracy that should start first with the right of each human being to a decent life and hope for his or her family will only be advanced in the near future with a radical departure from the politics of the past. Obama, may not bring that but he is the only chance we have.
The war in Iraq will continue as will global conflict regardless of who attains the White House, the military are the final arbiters of this mess. The powerful nations will continue to block United Nations resolutions to end conflict and divert the resources to saving planet Earth and this must stop if we are to find the resources to affect change that will alter course.
The rule of corporate hegemony will continue, the congress and the corporations everywhere, will support the business agenda first rather than the necessary steps to save the Earth that would require that we redefine human meaning and values and change economic direction Albert Schweitzer
" We have lost the ability to for-see and for-stall we will end by destroying the Earth
Albert Schweitzer
May I suggest a viewing of the Story of Stuff, which you can find on the web--it's a 20-minute, very lively and concise documentary that pulls it all together.
I must say it's distressing to see so many denouncing McKibben's approach while wishfully thinking about total revolution that they will be unable to enlist the masses in. Folks, capitalism is a greased pig. No matter what you want to do with it, you gotta get ahold of some piece of it first. No, of course one person dropping out of the overconsuming rat race isn't enough, but the point is that people have to start somewhere, and if in the process they can develop support communities for less consumption, that will draw other joiners, because many many people are seeking community. Start somewhere, and use it as a connection to others to make the movement we need. The perfect is the enemy of the good.