When Senator Markey and Representative Ocasio Cortez first introduced their resolution calling on the U.S. to pass a “Green New Deal” (GND), I was enthused to realize that two members of the legislature could actually call upon their colleagues to take the nation in a whole new direction by directly confronting the growing climate crisis and its cause: us.
Of course, I was not enthusiastic about the prospects that much would come of it in terms of actual legislative climate action, given the powerful financial-industrial-fossil-fuel interests that control most of what the Congress does. However, as with so much of what is important, it is even more complicated than that. Now that Markey and AOC have reintroduced the GND, is there a difference? Yes, but it’s not so much about the GND as about the situation as it has evolved and about a deeper understanding of the worldview that prevents adequate societal action on the greatest predicament humanity has ever faced.
When is Green Really Green?
“Green” is a rather ambiguous term. That I why the term “greenwashing’ came into use. It suggests that not all that is touted as ‘green’ is really Green. Many commercial interests now recognize the value of appearing to conform to the standards of clean energy-use, minimizing pollution, etc., so they make noises to that effect while continuing their toxic behavior.
For most environmentalists, the Green New Deal was a bold if not politically viable step in the right direction—toward national climate action to stave off the effects of carbon pollution, heating of the planet, and diverse forms of ecological damage and extreme weather events. But what are the actual contents of that broad proposal? What is not green about the GND? Mostly, it is framed within the same industrial-consumer worldview that supports the economic growth and capital accumulation that is the source of the problem. It is a gesture more than an action.
Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) incorporates a number of provisions that support climate action. However, it is primarily oriented toward rebuilding decaying conventional infrastructure that supports the industrial-consumer economy, while including some incentives for investing in renewable energy and electric vehicles. The IRA, despite being a vast improvement over the existing failure to deal with extreme climate and ecological destabilization at all, does not even approach addressing what is actually necessary to have a chance for the Earth System to restabilize.
The severity of what by the facts we should call the climate emergency is evidenced increasingly by what climate scientist and communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “climate weirding.” The fact that the Fourth of July weekend saw temperatures higher than ever recorded in human history, and which meteorologists expect to continue in the coming days, is not just some fluke coincidence. Yet, the corporate controlled mass media continues to talk of ‘unusually warm weather,’ not unprecedented climate chaos.
The Great Earth-System Breakdown
As Roberta Boscolo once again demonstrates with a graphic that incites insight, that Earth System stability is already breaking down. Many other indicators confirm this conclusion. The cause is incontrovertibly the disruptive actions of the global corporate-driven industrial-consumer political economy.
I cannot imagine why anyone who has followed the growing destabilization of the whole Earth System could imagine the jet streams continuing along their familiar paths as if everything were ‘normal.’ Climate chaos makes for erratic patterns in multiple system dimensions, if patterns can even be discerned. Watch out for this currently emerging El Niño pattern.
Most likely, over time, new increasingly erratic weather patterns will emerge, but where will we all be by that point? That is not exactly predictable. However, the widespread disruption of food production, which has already begun, is quite certain to cause even more mass starvation, migration, and armed conflict than we now observe around the world.
In some ways, the increase in Earth-System unpredictability is, well, predictable…at scale if not in granular detail.
Only the radical transformation of the global corporate-driven industrial-consumer political economy, leading to local/regional ecological civilizations can produce a relatively predictable niche for human life on Earth. However, the complex societal action required for that to come about, our so-called ‘leaders’ do not even contemplate. And the chance for a great awakening of global elites decreases daily.
Can humanity rally and form a global movement to rapidly de-grow industrial civilization and replace it with ecological living? That may be unpredictable too, but the prospects are not improving measurably.
A Worldview for Survival
Charles Eisenstein published an essay reflecting on a film he recently made, called “The Fall.” I found it to be stunningly realistic, scary, and hopeful. As Eisenstein put it, “…there is indeed a way out of what seems like the inalterable ‘human condition.’ Not a way to transcend it, but a way to transform it, however hopeless it may seem. And further, that each of us has a role to play in that transformation.”
The dominant worldview, still clung to by the elites who dictate the public discourse, holds that human ingenuity and inventive technology are the saviors of humanity if only we let them run rampant–which is exactly what they have done. That is the delusion of endless progress by unlimited economic growth. Yet, the end of the industrial era is upon us, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.
Even the prominent environmental critic and writer for The Guardian, George Monbiot, advocates near-complete urbanization of the world’s populations with high-energy, industrially manufactured food production as a solution to our global crisis. Clearly, Monbiot remains trapped in the linear thinking of the industrial-consumer worldview, devoid of a grasp of the nature of Nature and the complex adaptive living systems that comprise the Earth System that is our home.
Chris Smaje, former academic, farmer and author of A Small Farm Future, has written a powerful critique of Monbiot’s urban-industrial misreading of Nature and our position within it. Smaje offers a strong counter argument that advocates a low-carbon agrarian localism, which would place power in the hands of local communities, not the high-tech extractive global corporations that have already destroyed most of the world’s arable topsoil. His new book comes out later this month (July, 2023) and is called, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future: The Case For an Ecological Food System and Against Manufactured Foods.
The worldview of humanity living in harmony with its habitat, the Earth System and its local/regional subsystems (ecosystems) is recognized by increasing numbers of scientists. The best complex systems science findings today align well with the wisdom of indigenous peoples, who lived and for some continue to live in harmony with Nature. Given the facts on the destabilizing Earth System, that is the only real alternative. Yet, we are so far from even realizing the necessity of moving from where we are to that source of human flourishing. Nevertheless, the New Great Transformation humans must create for society itself is the necessary source for salvaging at least some of the stability of the Earth System we have so severely damaged.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 