My thoughts here were stimulated by a ‘Letter from the Director’ by Beth Sawin, Director of the Multisolving Institute, which I read last month. In that letter, she rightfully struggled over the ‘bad news’ that six of the nine key planetary boundaries between Earth System health and systemic danger had by then been breached. That, of course, is an ominous sign of high risk to humans and others in the immediate future. She was struggling over the fact that she felt that she could not send such a compilation of such discouraging climate change indicators that are careening so far off the charts.
Well, I don’t remember when we have had any good news on the climate change front, aside from the false claims of the ‘eco-modernists.’ If I had to rely on good news to take action on climate, I would certainly be stifled. But Beth Sawin has a valid point. People who know the score want to act. And it is hard to act when we look into an abyss where any personal action may seem futile. The title of her letter was, “Everyone has to do something, but no one has to do everything.” What we must do is act in concert to force intransigent institutions to face reality.
Grounds for Action
Of course it is depressing to struggle hard to achieve an important goal, only to be unsure whether one’s action has had any significant effect. In the context of the climate emergency, no one individual’s action is likely to have any discernible effect on the global crisis. Yet, as Beth Sawin points out, we too often slip into our individualistic culture and take some comfort in such things as organic gardening or more vigorous recycling. We do that even in the knowledge that such individual actions will not “shrink the technosphere,” as Dmitri Orlov puts it.
We know that the ‘problem’ is a global one and each of us is just an individual. Yet, throughout history individuals have acted in concert to make big social change. Sometimes it has worked out well; sometimes it has not. The biggest obstacle is often a failure to organize.
In the modern context, the ‘Arab Spring’ demonstrated that collective action is possible, but that it is very hard to predict the outcome. The Ukrainian people are taking highly organized democratic action in their military struggle against Putin’s genocidal invasion of their nation. I say democratic action because from all accounts a very high level of popular consensus has mobilized the citizenry to exercise a remarkable degree of cooperation in fighting off a mutual enemy. Well, what is a mutual enemy other than the anthropogenic destabilization of the entire Earth System? Or, as Pogo is often quoted, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Climate action, if it is to have the intended effect, must have the same level of consensual validation that has arisen among the Ukrainian people and their institutions. In the U.S. and most of the industrialized world, no such unity of purpose yet exists. If we fail to mobilize to that extreme extent, then all is lost. That will take far more than individual action. If EVERYONE recycled, that would still not stop the Earth System destabilization, if only because that action does not get to the main problem: overproduction and overconsumption by too many people.
What about UNdoing?
I have noticed over the past few decades that just about every branch of the climate and ecological movements have focused on DOING something new and different—different in that the thing to be done is “green,” “renewable,” or seeks to achieve “net-zero” emissions. (Don’t get me started on the “net-zero” scam!) Everything we do, especially with new technology, involves more extraction of materials and energy and the consumption of both, which of course lead to more pollution and damage to the Earth’s living systems. Replacing all fossil-fueled power generation with solar and wind will not be very useful if we continue to extract, produce, and consumer at a level that overshoots the Earth System’s capacity to handle our waste.
Of course we must suffer some tradeoffs in transitioning from dirty fossil fuel energy to clean sources like solar and wind. But anyone who thinks that is ‘the solution’ is ignoring the bulk of the human predicament in the twenty-first century. “Downsizing” is not just about selling that 3000 square foot McMansion and buying a much smaller home. Real downsizing is about actually reducing the quantity of energy and materials we use not only in our everyday lives. However, even more importantly, we must radically change how we operate our economy.
Some obvious principles are so simple and inevitable (as well as uncomfortable to contemplate) that they are easy to miss. We don’t want to think about living a ‘lifestyle’ in which our consumer behavior is constrained by, say, seventy or eighty percent. Just think about every aspect of your life, from your work environment to your life at the big box or the mall, to your life at home.
How can we reduce the use of fossil fuel to near zero and do ANYTHING in the ways we do them now? Human survival in the twenty-first century will require downsizing almost everything we do, and doing it in very different ways. More accurately, we must eliminate a large portion of our consumption and transform the way we conduct our economy. Most of what we need to do to avoid the catastrophic consequences of our climate emergency is to UNDO what we have been doing for too long.
Hope is an Action!
Do you remember when Greta Thunberg said that to an assembly of United Nations delegates? Or, maybe it was in a speech to the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. I don’t remember now, but I will always remember that statement. The essence of climate-ecological action is that we must 1) stop doing what we have been doing; 2) undo what we have done; and 3) do something very different. Our only hope is to take very new actions by undoing what we have been doing far too long.
I think this captures the essence of what Beth Sawin was talking about in her letter. We must take direct action and we must take it together; no individual action however courageous or sacrificial will suffice to fully address the global climate-ecological emergency we face now. It is always good to touch base with Mother Earth, no matter what else is going on. The research has shown that just a walk in the park, no less a hike in the forest, does wonders for the soul. The same applies to gardening and other activities that connect you directly with the material world. But the technosphere (short for the global corporate political economy of endless growth that is killing our biosphere) is oddly a material abstraction detached from our Earth-bound reality. Face it. We are not going anywhere but somewhere nearby on terra firma.
Robert MacNeil Christie, Author 