Comments on: DISHONEST CAMPAIGNING FOR PALTRY SOLUTIONS

By: Chris Harries

Chris Harries — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:45:32 +0000

This whole debate is framed in terms of Armageddon. We either survive or we are all done for.

In reality, nothing can be done now to avert significant human trauma. It is too late to avert a certain level of climate chaos. While that may seem depressing, we can have a big hand in limiting the trauma and the numbers of casualties. And in creating an aftermath that is well worth aiming for.

We need to be brutally frank about the emergent crisis but, almost in the same breath, point to the challenge over which we do have power. What makes me tick is not the thought of civilisation’s collapse but the thought of what it can be. There will be a future, after all.

By: Anna

Anna — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:33:36 +0000

I disagree with the premise that we have a 5% chance of turning it around.

In 2005, we had a 5% chance of turning it around. Since April 2006 (Release of An Inconvenient Truth), the chances of us turning it around have increased DRAMATICALLY. Maybe even doubled to a 10% chance, in two years.

The UN negotiations in Bali, for example, the emergence of global carbon trading in the next few years, new start-up green companies, green investment, mainstream opinion saying ‘yes, we have to fight it.’ We had no chance of these things happening only 2 years ago. We have come a long way in the last two years, and will go at least that far in the next two. Maybe we’ll double our chances again by the UN Copenhagen Protocol in 2009.

2005/6 – 5% chance of stopping climate change
2007/8 – 10% chance (An Inconvenient Truth)
2009/10- 20% chance (UN Copenhagen, US election)
2011/12- 40% chance (Global Economic system set up)
2013/14- 80% chance (Industry subsidies transition)
2015 and we’ve done it. The year that the IPCC says that we have to level our our emissions by, 2015, that is the year that we will know, 100%, that we can solve climate change. Our emissions will decrease year by year after that until we reach 80/90%.

IN SUMMARY: Political will and economic realities about carbon emissions are currently changing faster than ever. Right now, you are right, we are 5-10% of the way around the bend – we will fail if we stop now. But if we maintain and escalate our efforts for the next 90% of the way, until 2015, then we will have turned the system the whole way around and set it on the right path. If we stop trying now we will still skid off into disaster.

It will take A LOT of effort, but we’ve got buckley’s chance if we cease our efforts now. Keep going!

By: Ann Moorhead

Ann Moorhead — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 09:31:29 +0000

Thank you, thank you, thank you Paul- for putting into words so many of the thoughts and feelings I struggle with myself on a daily basis. I am so with you! I am trying to figure out what my own response and path will be now that I know what is happening and what our “chances” of truly turning it around are. I see it similarly to what you have described, very, very unlikely. ( I have been reading voraciously to educate myself for about a year now). Shall I resist and fight, if so where and with whom? and for what stakes? To what degree shall I work at emotional acceptance of our inevitable demise and try to live a pleasant life in the face of it? Shall I push myself to constantly do the (what is for me) unpleasant work of trying to convince others of what I see? In the face of their maddening denial no less. And at what personal cost? Personally, I would feel MUCH MUCH better about everything if the elephant in the room were being named and called out. That would actually make me feel safer, and like there might be more of a chance to make a meaningful change. I would feel hope. But even if meaningful change came too late or not at all, at least more of us could go down knowing, being conscious, having named what is real and what could have been. This is important in and of itself. …. I have learned that I am different from most people. Most people are optimists at any cost. I am not an optimist, I tend toward pessimism. Unfortunately people assume this means one is unhappy or gloomy etc which is not the case at all- I am full of joy and life – it means I enjoy and have the ability to hold my mind and emotions OPEN to REALITY- what ever that is. It is very creative and free and enlivening. It is brave, it is being able to contain the whole of whatever I can see/discern (even if it is ugly or sad) within my joyful awareness. The challenge then is to act out of calmness in the face of what is. Most humans have a built in need for staying in a state of optimism – evolutionarily it has enhanced our chances of survival. It’s also been shown that it has helped our chances of survival to have some (at least a few) people in the tribe who are pessimistic (btw: research shows pessimists are far better/more accurate than optimists at predicting reality) People are hardwired differently along this optimist/pessimist scale (more optimists than pessimists in the population) and society needs both approaches, but we may be undone by the fact that a majority of the human population cannot tolerate anything other than optimism. I say yes, let’s start laying it out for real. We have nothing to lose by doing so since we are truly lost if we do not. Anyway, very refreshing to read your comments, a welcome call to a true sobering up. I will be on the look out for more thinking along these lines. …

Cheers to you and yours! May you walk in beauty.

By: Helen Miller

Helen Miller — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:06:44 +0000

I frequently feel very pessimistic that we can turn our whole social, economic and environmental priorities around quickly enough and yet I still want to try. I can remember some environmental successes, like getting CFCs out or aerosol propellants and refrigerants, and hope we can perform another miracle.

Another reason I have hope is that people have created huge changes in beleif in the past. We’ve moved from thinking human slavery is OK, we’ve moved from having signs outside accommodation saying ‘ No Dogs, No Irish, No Blacks’, sexual discrimination has reduced enormously. We’ve made massive changes in the past and so we can again. We may even find the internet helps with making this happen faster.

Should campaigners be forthright? I don’t know. Sometimes it is easier to start the conversation if we ask people to make small changes – if we ask for radical changes they will walk away. Do we have enough time if we do it all by many small changes – personally I think not. So, I agree that we’re in denial about how serious the problem is, and the speed of change needed, and yet we trying to keep the conversation going and begin the process of change. What would make it happen quicker? Possibly a charismatic leader, like Gandhi, or Martin Luther King because sdaly enough we seem to be living in the age of the celebrity.

By: Paul Kingsnorth

Paul Kingsnorth — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:57:39 +0000

You’re quite right. The disconnect between my head and my heart perhaps. Or my human instinct and my human brain. If only everything in life worked on rational lines. Then we probably wouldn’t have this problem in the first place.

By: Vernon Brechin

Vernon Brechin — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 05:26:16 +0000

The above article suggests that Paul Kingsnorth holds out little hope for the future.
On Friday, July 6, 2007, Paul posted, on his blog, an announcement that he would become a father in January 2007. On the blog he proudly posted a sonogram of the fetus. Many readers sent in their congratulations. I think I see a disconnect here. http://www.paulkingsnorth.net/blog.html

By: common cents

common cents — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 12:32:23 +0000

Underlying much of this, is a power trip of unbelievable dimensions borne of adolescent obsession with computer gaming and left over Power Rangers.

We are entering the age of the CLIMATE ENGINEER!…someone who can seed the oceans with iron filings so CO2 eating algae will bloom; or who will invent a car that runs on water and hydrogen inexpensively, or perfect a sustainable, closed loop household complete with microwaves and HDTV’s…

~flash up picture of Al Gore pontificating~

Face reality; despite five years of exceeding KYOTO goals temps have–as currently measured, continued to rise in Europe.

Controlling the weather and in turn climate is along sought dream often carried out by the CIA and USSR–with disasterous results in the case of cloud seeding, or even dam removal.

By making it a GLOBAL WARMING CRISIS, power hungry climate engineers can gain money and resources to engage in massive projects to halt the inevitable…maybe they will succeed, but if past is prologue they won’t and could make things even worse.

So with this caution; I leave you to your schemes and dreams…meanwhile I’m happily looking at a lower electric bill on the demand side and a higher charge on the supply side!

By: Jim Scott

Jim Scott — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:04:51 +0000

I think campaigning is not so much ‘dishonest’ as based on assumptions that have been fairly useful up to now, but no longer serve us:

1. that its methods are limited to political pressure based on scientific evidence;

2. that campaigning groups are largely working in isolation;

3. that the circumstances within which it works remain largely constant, thereby making linear predictions reliable.

Brief elaborations

1. I can only contrast this assumption with that we are developing with our proposed Movement for Survival, in which we claim that
behavioural change will not be sustained without changing the habits, attitudes,motives, priorities and values – that lie sequentially behind behaviour. These psychological elements, therefore, have necessarily to be incorporated within campaigning approaches and activities. This is true at all levels, from individuals to local involvements, nation states and international activities. In other words, we need to work on the habits, attitudes, motives, priorities and values of governments etc., whom we are trying to change, not just on their political behaviour.

2. Others are already working on and transforming these habits, attitudes, motives, priorities and values. There are signs of huge cultural shifts taking place, outside the arena of ‘campaigning’, whether you look in the direction of faith groups, deep ecology, new spirituality, astrology, personal development – even in education for sustainable development, from the classroom and eco-schools through to the UNESCO Decade for ESD or higher education. Even the arguments about intelligent design may play a part.

3. The climate crisis is intrinsically connected with one for our whole western civilisation, in which many other changes could and probably will occur, that will make any linear projections of ours erroneous pretty soon. We are familiar with complicating issues of Peak Oil, but major upsets in the the supply of other resources, the functioning of the global economy, migration etc., could herald the need for multiple concurrent recalculations among a whole range of different sectors. You can either regard this process as blind or as part of conscious evolution.

In order to engage with all of these perspectives, I think we urgently need to develop our own powers of flexibility, intuition, faith and endurance, and reveiw our philosophies of life.

Best wishes from Jim Scott

Sign up on-line to VALUE LIFE ITSELF ABOVE ALL ELSE !!!
and support the
NEW MOVEMENT FOR SURVIVAL
http://www.m-4-s.net & http://www.save-our-world.net

By: Nova

Nova — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:09:05 +0000

There is time to do something if we act now, I believe. I do not believe that we will do so. Like the Easter islanders who must have known they were felling the last trees on their island, we will carry on until it is much too late. Is this not the real reason for increased military spending, so that we rich westerners can hang on to our way of life while the rest of the world starves or drowns. The only fair solution is contraction and convergence to a sustainable way of life. As our present existence does not seem to be bringing much in the way of fulfillment this might seem attractive. However, selfishness will triumph. Private jet trip to go and watch a drowning island anyone?

By: Miriam

Miriam — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 16:24:21 +0000

While of course it is necessary to think about political solutions and to campaign at the political level, I think a big part of climate change campaigning has to happen at the grass-root, or rather individual level. I truly believe that people protect what they love, I do not think that fear or panic will induce the same kind of (necessary) behavioural changes. I think environmental campaigners have to at least partially rethink their approach in this respect. While “negative messages” and some sense of a threat will definitely bring us somewhere, fear is not the appropriate sentiment to make human beings embrace a project like preventing climate change. I think what we need more is positive messages – emphasizing the chances a more climate friendly behaviour offers, and encouraging an engagement with nature that helps people to reconnect with “the soil”. Thus, I also refuse to be completely pessimistic or maybe, someone would say, even realistic. If we stop believing that there is hope, there is really no point in talking about climate change anymore.