The Final Curtain
January 2008
We are rapidly running out of time if we are to make a serious attempt to prevent irreversible climate change. Whether it is wise to put a specific number on the time we have available can be doubted. We could have five years, ten, twenty. Specifying the time we have could be counter-productive, given the human tendency to postpone action until the eleventh hour. Back in the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan was presented with a detailed report concerning the dangers of climate change. When will these effects start to have an impact? Reagan asked. In thirty years, he was told. Come back in thirty years, came Reagan’s grinning response. Well, Reagan is long gone, we’re still here, and the climate problem he sought to evade is looming larger than ever. The time for action is always now. We must begin where we are at and act now.
The danger of setting a timetable on environmental action is this: We are approaching the tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change. If we timetable this problem, there will be a temptation for many to postpone action until two minutes to midnight. And by then, it will be too late.
Given that the issue of climate change has been addressed via numerous models and scenarios, with even more numerous interpretations of these models and scenarios, it is worth beginning by stating the incontrovertible basics.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most prevalent greenhouse gas and is therefore subject to the closest scrutiny. There are other greenhouse gases, such as methane, and their effects are increasingly important (especially as the tundra melts). But attention focuses most on CO2. The current concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is the highest it has been for the past 650,000 years. In the 250 years since the coal-fired Industrial Revolution, with its attendant changes in land use through urbanisation, the felling of forests, and commercialisation of agriculture, some 1,800bn tonnes of CO2 have been released into the atmosphere. On the latest figures, approximately 1,000 tonnes of CO2 are released into the Earth's atmosphere every second. And this is as a result of human activity. Greenhouse gases get their name from the way that they trap incoming solar radiation, thus heating the atmosphere. Once these gases accumulate beyond a certain point, global heating will accelerate, potentially irreversibly, hence the phrase ‘runaway’ climate change.
In effect, we are suffocating in an atmosphere of our own making, a result of our burning of ancient waste products that the Earth in her wisdom had sealed up beneath her skin. Our civilisation is a necropolis built on ‘dead matter’. We need to move and move quickly to a mode of sustainable living which emphasises living organic qualities over the endless accumulation of material quantities.
At present, we are rapidly approaching the ‘tipping point’, beyond which positive feedback mechanisms will come into play and threaten to pull the life support systems from under human civilisation. Positive feedback loops serve to amplify warming via physical processes that both reinforce and accelerate at the same time. Following the initial warming, the increase in greenhouse gases feeds on itself, turning carbon sources into sinks, reinforcing warming and accelerating it. The melting of the ice sheets offers an example of this. As more ice cover is lost, so the Earth reflects less heat through the loss of white surfaces and, in turn, absorbs more heat, through an extension of darker surfaces, further warming the planet and causing more ice loss. The ability of oceans to absorb CO2 will be diminished as a result of higher wind strengths linked to climate change. Further, the oceans will become overloaded in absorbing too much CO2, leading to a rapid acidification, and turning what has worked as a carbon sink in the past into a carbon source in the future. This process has already been detailed in the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic, with the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere increasing, accelerating climate change.
What makes these positive feedbacks so important is their self-reinforcing character. The effects of these feedbacks on the planet are negative. Scientists use the term ‘tipping point’ to emphasise the critical nature of the problem. Runaway climate change is clearly a threat. With the passing of a critical greenhouse concentration threshold, global heating will be irresistible and inevitable, even if, by some miracle, we now choose to release no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Once we reach this tipping point, the Earth's climate will be beyond our influence. We will be in the realm of a dramatic climate shift, with different ocean circulation, wind and rainfall patterns, an altogether more unpredictable condition. Climate change ‘sceptics’ talk lazily of ‘adaptation’. Adaptation to what? What we have to do to deal with sea level rise of four feet is very different to what we have to do to deal with a sea level rise of two feet. Volatile conditions will escape foresight and planning, certainly at the scale we are talking about. All that we will have is a reactive approach, intervention as nothing more than a rescue squad. That’s not adaptation, that’s mere brute survival. Greens are frequently accused by critics of wanting to return us to the Stone Age. Not true. (And an insult to the Stone Age, too, which lived according to the contours of the natural environment much more wisely than we do). It is those who promote industrial progress through exploitative and polluting ways who will turn the clock back to the days of ruthless natural necessity, when human beings lived a hand-to-mouth existence. A Green industrial revolution will organise and utilise the new productive forces in a socially and environmentally just way, taking the world forwards to the ecological society.
Study for Eclogue VI 1879 Samuel Palmer
Philosophers of science refer to something which is called ‘confirmation bias’, the search for and selection of evidence that fits a pre-existing position, the evidence thus confirming what one already believes. It is relatively easy to assert that all swans are white, then set about counting every white swan out there as if that makes the statement true. In science, what matters most of all is contrary evidence, the black swan. With respect to claims of human induced climate change, we are looking for the black swan. The evidence for AGW is accumulating. We are not short of white swans. I’ve lost count of them. Hilariously we get climate change denier Benny Peiser still saying ‘we don’t know’ what causes climate change. Science works at the frontiers of knowledge and so deals with uncertainty. Peiser cannot falsify the case for AGW, and so hides behind uncertainty. And people fall for it, agreeing with Peiser that instead of switching to a low carbon economy we should be preparing for adverse weather. How? Once we are in the world of runaway climate change, it will be impossible to predict the weather and hence prepare for it. More nuclear reactors on the coastlines? What about rising sea levels? Sea defences? How high? Depends on how high the sea rises. These are the things we don’t know. The expense will be prohibitive, our preparations next to useless. All because we choose not to tackle the problem at the right end of the pipe – by cutting carbon emissions and by re-scaling our economic purposes. The message of the likes of Peiser is to carry on expanding the economy and carry on polluting the planet, and concentrate effort and expense at the wrong end of the pipe. And some people find it persuasive because it demands no change in behaviour. That’s goodbye to the species.
Peiser claims ‘we do not know’ what is causing climate change. At other times he denies that global heating is happening. The evidence pointing to AGW is mounting. The release of yet another study supporting AGW is ceasing to be newsworthy. The public are suffering from climate fatigue, and are prone to believe those who are falsely claiming that there is no problem. We are waiting for evidence which contradicts AGW, for an alternative explanation. Not a claim, not a hypothesis, not a guess, not a belief – an explanation backed by solid science and research. To date, we have not found the black swan. Benny Peiser hasn’t found it. With eco-catastrophe on the horizon, we cannot wait forever for an alternate explanation to AGW.
So, how much time do we have before we reach the tipping point?
A detailed comment on the method employed in determining that we have 100 months to deal with climate change can be downloaded from onehundredmonths.org. I shall summarise. Current greenhouse gas concentrations need to be combined with estimations for the rates of growth in emissions, the maximum concentration of greenhouse gases allowable if potentially irreversible changes to the climate system are to be prevented, and the effects of environmental feedbacks. Using the latest data and trends for carbon dioxide, allowances are made for all human interferences that influence temperatures, both in terms of warming and cooling effects. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) gives a clear indication of what is required to retain a good chance of not crossing the critical threshold of the Earth's average surface temperature rising by 2C above pre-industrial levels. The 2C threshold itself is a global average that may mask serious local problems. It may mask big problems that are triggered by a lower level of warming. For instance, the collapse of the Greenland ice sheet is more than likely to be triggered by a local warming of 2C, which could correspond to a global mean temperature increase of 2C or less. The disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet could correspond to a sea-level rise of up to 7 metres.
In estimating the time we have to play with, one can be conservative and use the lower end of threats so as to assess the impact of vanishing ice cover and other carbon-cycle feedbacks. The results are still worrying.
The conclusion is drawn that, if nothing changes, then 100 months from now (01.08.08) we will reach a concentration of greenhouse gases at which it is no longer "likely" that we will stay below the critical 2C temperature rise threshold. "Likely" here corresponds to the definition of risk used by the IPCC. However, there is still a one third chance of crossing the line even just before that point is reached.
There is nothing inevitable about any of this. Irreversible climate change is only an inevitability if we fail to take appropriate and effective action in time. The predictions are, therefore, conditional and a spur to taking the kind of action that brings about other, possible, outcomes. It is a challenge to the human race to respond to crisis, produce solutions to the problems set by the climate, and advance as a species. Doomsday predictions are intended to be falsified. They are a spur to action not a reason for paralysis.
It is important not to let the greed of businessmen, the impotence of politicians and the stupidities of certain journalists and newspapers develop into a cynicism that paralyses us all. The fact that government and media fail to respond appropriately does not mean that action as such is pointless. The situation is not hopeless, only politicians and (certain) newspapers. It is up to us to act in our and the planet's best interest. Governments subject to corporate capture and systemic imperatives are manifestly incapable of giving the lead. They are paralysed and their inertia threatens to paralyse us all. The only clock that politicians watch is the one counting down to the next election. There is a more important countdown now underway. We can despair of politicians and journalists, but not of ourselves. On the contrary, everything we do and say from now on in has an effect. Possibly for the first time ever, we can be the self-conscious makers of our own history, acting with a view to giving ourselves a future worth having. We can kiss goodbye to Munch’s red skies presaging eco-catastrophe.
March Hare Sheila Williams
Our actions and our thoughts have consequences with respect to the planet, and, what is more, we know it. Before the Great War, the composer Edward Elgar seemed to have a premonition of the nightmare to come. The times are cruel, he would say, ‘we walk like ghosts’. The world sleepwalked into a maelstrom of violence, destruction and murder and we have been living with the consequences since.
Well, governments, and the people who keep voting them in, are still walking like ghosts. How else can one explain the subsidies for fossil fuels, the inducements to oil companies, the third runway at Heathrow, the decision to build a new generation of coal-fired power stations? Such nonsense cannot even be justified as short-term measures designed to buy time as we take long-term measures. Fossil-fuel based infrastructure entails a long-term constraint in that it locks us into patterns of greenhouse gas emissions whose effects will be felt long into the future.
It’s all about the architecture, not the plumbing. We can all play a role in what is to be done but, ultimately, we need governments that govern, take the lead in bringing about a comprehensive re-engineering of our energy, food and transport systems, and thus set the framework for sustainable living. We, as citizens, need to join together to constitute government of that calibre. At present, governments are prisoners of the capital system and its accumulative dynamic.
The challenge before us is to achieve a rapid transition to the low-carbon economy, enabling us to live within our environmental means whilst at the same time preserving and even enhancing our general wellbeing. If we act accordingly, it is possible to turn the environmental crisis to our advantage, creating what may be called the well-being economy that puts sustainable living before an economic growth that emphasises quantity over and against quality. The challenge of climate change, therefore, is met by a response in which we come to utilise all our intelligence, moral as well as technical, so as to deliver the good life for all. In other words, as a matter of conscious choice and design, we achieve the very health, well-being and happiness that the capitalist economy only ever promises, never delivers. That’s a recovery of politics in its ancient Greek sense of creative self-realisation.
In the famous 1859 Preface, Karl Marx argued:
Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present or at least in the course of formation.
The problems that confront us, in other words, are well within our capacity to resolve. The material conditions for sustainable living are immanent but repressed within existing social relations. The challenge of climate change demands a response from us, in terms of mobilising our moral and technical capacity to produce a solution that takes us further on in our evolution. There is good scientific research coming out which shows that as the world becomes more complex, so human intelligence expands. The path before us is clear. We need to abandon, and quickly, failing and outdated modes of thought, organisation and action and embed the new forces of production within a regime of sustainable living. Behind us lies carboniferous capitalism, before us lies the good times of the low-carbon economy and well-being society.
We can begin the transition to the low carbon future by embracing the Green New Deal. Addressing problems of debt, peak oil and global warming, the Green New Deal develops a new regulatory framework that embeds financial institutions within the economy as a whole, all set within a social matrix that ensures economics serves the community. Decentralisation, renewable energy, energy efficiency, conservation and demand management all play key roles in the decarbonisation of our economy. The dependence on fossil fuel is ended, and unsustainable developments and infrastructures abandoned. Financial institutions are rewired to ensure the creation of sustainable transport, energy, and food systems.
Not only is the Green New Deal possible and desirable, it is necessary in order to deal with the environmental and economic crises besetting the world at the moment. There is no shortage of work to be done, and no shortage of people willing and able to do the work. There are tens of millions of individuals unemployed all over the world. All that stands in the way is the way that capital rations labour opportunities in order to keep up profit margins. It is time to decouple growth from abstract economic systems and instead fit our activity to the rhythms and contours of nature.
The Sower 1888 Vincent Van Gogh
At present, the economy is a congeries of unstable, unproductive, and parasitic financial instruments. Finance is a magic world in which money makes money, with no substantial product or value in between. There is no ‘real’ world or ‘real’ economy in finance. It comes as no surprise to learn, then, that as knowledge of the dangers of climate change increases, more and more money pours through the City into the oil companies. Governments with their ‘light-touch’ permissiveness have stood by and watched finance destroy economies and whole nations, allowing speculators, falsely called ‘wealth creators’, gamble their way out of economic and ecological reality, leaving the people of the world to pay the price when the bills for such dissolution come in. More fool the governments. But if we stand by and allow these characters destroy our natural life-support systems, then more fool us. To these companies, fossil-fuel reserves are "proven" or "probable" assets to make money out of. To inject a dose of ecological reality into the City, a new category of "unburnable" should be imposed. And rather than bailing out the banks with vast sums of public money, these banks should be broken up, reduced in size and made to serve identifiable economic and social needs. Impossible? It works well in Germany.
Overhauling the nation's heat-leaking building stock is also an integral feature of the Green New Deal. Not only will this cut emissions substantially, it will also address the issue of fuel poverty, creating better insulated and designed homes. The addiction to cars also needs to be tackled. We need to move away from the "one person, one car" journeys that jam the roads and develop a variety of clean reliable forms of public transport, ban cars from towns and cities and replace them with light transit systems, promote cycling, not only for better transit but also for better health. And it makes places look, sound and smell better. Green towns and cities are good for oral and visual stimulation, bringing people back to life.
A Green New Deal is a demand that government come to give real leadership, demonstrating by the power of example that what should be done and can be done, thus removing the excuses many may use not to act. Most of all, however, it will achieve security and sustainability in terms of the food and energy supplies, with a more robust economy, more grounded in realities and more able to withstand the economic and environmental crises that are sure to come. The know-how and the material resources to achieve any and all of this already exists, what is lacking is the political nerve and nous. That is a sad comment on governments, parties and politicians, certainly, but also on the rest of us for failing to reorganise politics in a manner more appropriate for the times. It is time for a biospheric politics.