How to be a moral actor on climate change

Clear the air: Individual action in itself is not enough, corporate action or system-scale action to mitigate and adapt to climate change is needed. And yet, 'what is the ocean but a multitude of drops?' - every bit of energy left unused (Carbon left unreleased) is a gain, every bit wasted is a loss. 

Some people I know have complex relations with climate change action. They want to be 'good' about it, often for the sake of their own children, but also in a more general context, for the avoidance of harm to unknown others. (Are we all not siblings?)

There is no obligation for any given individual to act such as to reduce their carbon impact. This is and will always be a personal choice. It is essential that individuals are allowed to retain the right to their own opinions, regardless of our personal opinions of their opinions.

If you are one of those people who believe, or, more generally 'feel' that it is right for you to at least try to make an effort on the side of not making things worse than they already are, then you may, like the aforementioned friends, want to know what is a good way to act, what are the useful actions, and which the 'greenwash'. For you, here is a list of suggestions:

1.1  Buy less stuff.
1.2  Buy less plastic stuff.
1.3  Avoid buying c**p.
1.4  Educate yourself on which necessary products and goods are more or less environmentally sound. Product labels do not tell the whole story, but can sometimes help.
Summary: Be a mindful consumer.

2.1  Waste less stuff.
2.2  Try to get the full use out of a product, rather than replacing it for fashion, vanity or victim-consumer habits. Stuff does wear out, some quicker than others (see 1, above). It's okay to replace stuff, but a new computer, phone or tv every years or so is NOT necessary in most cases.
2.3  When you get stuff, if you spend wisely, you can the spend your time appreciating the stuff you have, rather than worrying about what you don't have. Example: I recently bought a classical guitar. I spent more on it that I possibly should. However, it will cherish it until my dying day, it will always be as good as any guitar I could have bought, and it will return its cost in both value and utility for as long as I could want. 
2.4  Instead of throwing away stuff you don't need or want any more, but which is still useable, try giving it away, or selling it. This allows the carbon cost of a product to be spread over a longer period, avoids material wastage, and allows other people to share the pleasure you once had when the thing was new to you.

Summary: waste is a state of mind, which is often careless, thoughtless. Be a mindful chucker-out of stuff.

3.1  Try to learn how to fix, repair, maintain or care for the stuff you have. Even keeping some things clean can extend their life by months, even years. Two generations ago, every poor bachelor or young woman was taught how to sew, stitch, make do and mend.

3.2  There are things which can no longer serve their original purpose. This does not mean they are useless. Some things can be repurposed, adapted, adjusted or slightly altered to suit another purpose. When something 'breaks', think about what alternative use it might have. Example: a Wellington boot with a hole in it is not much use as a Wellington boot, but makes a useful 'plant pot'.

Summary: the longer that stuff has an utility, the less waste there is, and the less need there is to use up even more resources. be creative.

4.1  Don't beat yourself up for what you can't change. 
4.2  If you do even a little bit of the stuff above, which is only a starter list, then you are 'doing good'. 
4.3  You have a carbon footprint. Get over it. It is commensurate with your lifestyle, occupation, the world around you as it is, and other things. You can't eliminate it completely, but you can make it earn its place.

Summary: You don't have to live in a cave to do something good. Every small effort is a net good in itself, and the avoidance of a net bad - a double-win.

Final thoughts: If you want to be a moral actor in a modern world, you mainly need to be more thoughtful and less lazy about your actions, choices and decisions. It's mostly a state of mind which needs to change to get into 'better' habits. Is it worth it? You are one of seven billion. If a small percentage of the people who say they want a change in attitude did some of the above, and other things, this would, in collective consequence, represent a revolution. It would change the markets, undermine the worst excesses of the corporate system, and cause a reconsideration of the relationship between people and stuff.

This is a taster. There's a million more things to be offered, but let's start easy.

Whistling at a different pitch

Having exorcised Mrs Merkl’s Swabian housewife, let’s get back to some more thinking.

I want to explore a sample explanation of why the Farmer and the Cowboy can’t be friends. Obviously, this is apropos of my concern over the effective communication of climate issues and environmental issues in general.

We recently discussed Truth – it’s easy to agree that this takes us in tricky directions. It can be hard to agree what makes a truth, and hard to agree the specific cases of whether something is true or not. So I’m going to move the focus on to the notion of Understanding, instead.

However and whatever forms of ‘knowledge’ we acquire (or, reducing it further, form of meaningful communication with which we agree), we tend to come to an understanding of reality, truth, fact, whatever, from two distinctive and often contradictory ways of understanding things. This is what Wikipedia says about Reason:

Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, for establishing and verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or existing information.^[1] It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a definitive characteristic of human nature.^[2] The concept of reason is sometimes referred to as rationality and sometimes as discursive reason, in opposition to intuitive reason.^[3]

Reason or "reasoning" is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect. Reason, like habit or intuition, is one of the ways by which thinking comes from one idea to a related idea. For example, it is the means by which rational beings understand themselves to think about cause and effect, truth and falsehood, and what is good or bad. It is also closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and institutions, and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination.^[4]

You’ll note that the article distinguishes between DISCURSIVE and INTUITIVE reason. This is what the Wiki says about Intuition:

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.^[1] The word intuition comes from Latin verb intueri which is usually translated as to look inside or to contemplate.^[2] Intuition is thus often conceived as a kind of inner perception, sometimes regarded as real lucidity or understanding. Cases of intuition are of a great diversity; however, processes by which they happen typically remain mostly unknown to the thinker, as opposed to the view of rational thinking.

Intuition provides views, understandings, judgements, or beliefs that we cannot in every case empirically verify or rationally justify. For this reason, it has been not only a subject of study in psychology, but also a topic of interest in various religions and esoteric domains, as well as a common subject of writings.^[3] The right brain is popularly associated with intuitive processes such as aesthetic or generally creative abilities.^[4][5][6] Some scientists have contended that intuition is associated with innovation in scientific discovery.^[7]

Both Reasoning and Intuition are legitimate ways of reaching understanding. Further, there is often reasoning embedded in intuition, and intuition likewise informs reasoning.

Science in general, say Mathematics as a paradigm, is basically rational; it has rules, structure, processes, precedents and checks. Without necessarily being complete or absolute, Mathematics is a profoundly rational activity. If you have learned the rules and the conventions, you can apply them to any number of problems of increasing complexity. It is largely consistent and logical. The ‘truths’ of Mathematics are results derived from within the syntax and semantics of the system, and their value is a function of their formulation, which is neither arbitrary nor contradictory. In other words, within Mathematics, 2 + 2 always = 4. The only way you can change this ‘truth’ is to change the rules or convention by which you understand the expression.

On the other hand, many people have an understanding of their world from an intuitive perspective, of which religion is an example. Let’s consider Buddhism as the paradigm. A person who ‘understands’ the underlying truths in Buddhism, the ‘Four Noble Truths’, does not necessarily understand them in a consciously rational manner. But this does not imply that her understanding is inferior to the understanding of a mathematician of the truth of the axioms of number or addition.

These are different ways of ‘understanding’. But they may not be quite so contradictory as you might think. For example, to reach a new solution or hypothesis, the mathematician may well start by having an intuition that something is wrong, that a certain type of procedure might correct the error, or have an insight into the nature of a problem which informs new possible resolutions. And the four noble truth of Buddhism can be laid out in a strictly formal logical ‘proof’, which suggest that, though understanding them may be intuitive, their meaning has a formal structure which allows them to make sense to our thoughts.

Religions have a long history of Reasoning associated with them in East and West. Some of the great thinkers in history were dealing with problems arriving not from science, but from a religious, intuitive source. But many religions also recognise, implicitly or explicitly, that understanding, or wisdom, about the world in the context of the religious system concerned, comes to the individual from a deep personal insight or understanding. Furthermore, this understanding is often opaque to communication; ‘The way that can be spoken of is not the true way’. Can we argue that wisdom is impossible under these conditions? Can we argue that the understanding of the Buddha is a false understanding? We can’t, for two reasons; firstly, because we have not nor can we ever strictly reach the same understanding that the Buddha has. Our insight must be our own, a personal understanding which might parallel what we have learned or experienced. Secondly, because the full detail of the nature of the understanding is beyond language (any language); it is a lived experience.

What am I getting on to? Well, obviously, people ‘understand’ Global Warming in different ways. A lot of people reach their understanding by reasoning, analysis, interpretation and evaluation of evidence, argument, and by testing the mechanisms and processes. Why would anyone look at it any other way?

I am speculating that one of the reasons why people might look for a different way of understanding Global warming is because they don’t trust what science is. Sometimes, the contradiction of the science is simply fuelled by ignorance – it is easy to distrust what you don’t understand, especially if you feel threatened by it. Sometimes a person can have such a strong negative prejudice about a message that they choose to contradict irrespective of understanding – this is why such behaviour is often labelled as ‘denial’.

But there are other people who are otherwise reasonable who turn away from the evidence and the arguments because they believe that science is something they cannot trust.

The problem is, Science is an institution as much as anything else. It works in relation to rules and conventions, exists within other institutions, is paid for by institutions. Science, it seems, has authority because it is an Authority – in this sense, it is a part of the ‘System’. More than this, Scientific argument is often derived from an apparent appeal to authority –precedence, existing assumptions, previous work, peer-review. It is an ‘Institution’ par excellence.

And a lot of people don’t trust Authority, They don’t trust Institutional models or processes, they see an underlying circularity in the self-justifications of scientific ideas, and they believe that, since Science is about authority, it suffers from the same weaknesses as other forms of authority.

This association is the problem. A person who is consistently ‘let down’ by a social or legal system, who is not protected but persecuted, who experiences injustice or repression at first hand by the hand of the System, learns in real experience that Authority and The System are inherently untrustworthy. This understanding is intuitive as well as evidential, so it has a strong force in the understanding. For such a person it is probably quite natural to mistrust and be cynical about anything which makes claims to authority. The natural default based in the understanding which exists is that first you assume the authority is either wrong or is lying, then you assume the authority has a self-serving intent and is indifferent to you, and is therefore fundamentally corrupt.

For young people, who often have an innate mistrust of the system in some form, or for those whose experience has led them to believe that no-one can be trusted, asking them to see things from a rational point of view has limited use. It is not the way their understanding has been formed. For ignorant people with strong prejudices it has no use, because they cannot even acknowledge the possibility that another understanding can exist at all. But it doesn’t mean that discussion is impossible.

Even the most intuitive person recognises the underlying formal structures which allow meaningful discourse to happen. They can accept the idea that an effect must have a cause, that if you add something to something you end up with something ‘more’. An ‘intuitive understander’ can be quite sophisticated, and even see the logical inconsistencies of their understanding. Simple logic and simple reasoning can work within a discourse to the point where a person can recognise contradictions and inconsistencies and acknowledge that these might undermine their understanding, so that, even if they sustain their understanding from intuition, they can agree that their understanding is irrational. It doesn’t mean, to them, that they are wrong.

So, can the Farmer and the Cowboy ever be friends? I would suggest yes, this is possible, but first they need to accept that what is already understood does not rest on mutually agreed conventions. But for a discourse to happen at all, there must be the possibility of logic. To start a discourse, to establish the conventions and terms of dialogue, the most important thing is to listen first, and avoid passing judgment based on your own conventions or understanding.

Possibly there will be more on this later, it depends.

The Morrow Project, Chapter 2: Is the World coming to an End?

Is the wrong question. It's too vague as it stands. One obvious answer is Yes, it is. That is, the World (as experienced by any individual component of it)is in a constant flux, changing by the day, hour, minute. Some of these changes are cyclical, and some linear, the difference being that cycles repeat patterns (if not exact details) and lines do not; there is no going back.

Let's try to be more precise then: Is the World as we (humans) presently experience it in the process of entering a state of change which is linear, not part of a 'natural' cycle, irreversible?  And let's be more detailed; here, we are talking about 'the World' as a shared experience of a large system or set of systems which currently persist, whether these are natural, social or commercial. Furthermore, does this imply that the World and its systems as we experience it/them are coming to an end?

According to many observers, the answer to this question is also Yes. There is no shortage of evidence that the Twenty-first Century World is different in substantial ways to what came before, and contains within itself the seeds of a transformation to yet more changes in the years to come. According to some, and within the underlying anxiety and guilt of many, these transformations will be sufficiently dramatic to mean that the World as it is to be experienced by our descendants is likely to be very different to the World we know. In this sense, quite possibly, we can say that the World that we know is coming to an end.

Are we ,  then, one of the 'last generations' of 'civilised' humankind? In terms with which some will be familiar, are we living at the 'End of Days', not necessarily in a religious or moral sense, but also perhaps in a practical one?

Well, let's be clear; every generation is the last of its kind, and the first of its kind. Certain key stages in human social development stand out - for example the Fourteenth Century, during which plague and famine possibly halved the global population (the Sixth to Eighth century is probably also, arguably, another such period). Was this the end of the World? It marks a watershed - before and after this period, the World as lived in by us changed. But the World did not, as such, come to an end. It became something new.

The Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries also stand out. The Agricultural, Industrial and Scientific revolutions combined to create a whole new set of conditions, in the residue of which we now live. Does the present period of human society stand out as such a period of radical change? Or, more extremely, are we now at a stage where we actually are threatening our collective survival, our present state of civilisation, and heading for a spectacular collapse, on a scale previously experienced in those earlier periods?

This final question, then, is probably the 'interesting' matter for us, as one generation struggling with its own expectations and responsibilites. For there is one way in which we 'modern' people differ from those which preceded us. Before the 1800s, it was clear that radical and dramatically negative large scale changes were the consequence of outside forces, the Deus ex Machina, Fate. Since then, living a a World of science, medicine and large-scale agriculture, we have been relatively immune, collectively, to these (so far). Since the 1940s, we have also lived in a World where we are uniquely conscious of a new phenomenon - our capacity to destroy ourselves and our world through our own actions and choices. And this is where the matter of responsibility comes in, for we now live lives which contain an awareness that the 'End of Days' is more likely to be in our hands than from any outside force. As such, we bear a responsibility for our decisions about how we live, and what we do, which did not previously exist on a global scale.

So, the next chapters of the Project will start addressing this last question: through our relationship with the World (our home), it's natural systems, the biosphere, the atmosphere, the oceans and land, are we setting the conditions for a new 'collapse' of human society? This is not a simple question, and will take a lot of working out. So, here's a spoiler; simple observation suggests that the World as we know it is due for another dramatic set of changes, probably stimulated by our own actions, but we still have choices about the nature of these changes...

The Morrow Project, chapter one

"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Santayana.

Which is my introduction to this morning's subject, the History of the Apocalypse. Hopefully, you can see the marker for what it is; the early parts of the Morrow project are to map out the context in which we consider the idea of impending doom, vis a vis Catastrophic Climate Change. Once we can make sense of why we might have an inclination towards apparent nihilism, it then becomes possible to place present-day concerns over the impacts of a changing climate into a space from where we can puzzle out an attitude, or approach to the future.

If you go to see (or just read the rubbish about) Russell Crowe and Noah, you're following a popular and enduring trend in human society to consider the possibility of the End of Days. It sits very deeply in the Western cultural consciousness. It is, of course, a theme in parts of the Bible and, through the thousand year social/intellectual dominance of this particular religion, informs our development consciousness as individuals, whether we are aware of it or not.

But it is also there embedded in the Viking/Nordic consciousness, as Ragnarok, in Millenialist cults from the tenth, fourteenth, eighteenth centuries, on into the modern era. From the early Twentieth century, influenced no doubt by the horrors of the global conflicts into which we were plunged, and by the Cold War and Post-Existentialist modern, it reaches us first through late-period sects (such as the Jehovah's Witnesses), through Science Fiction, in examples too numerous to mention, and in contemporary Fantasy fiction. The End of Days is a sufficiently common and enduring theme to be able to confidently claim that it exists within our cultural identity, and thus within our individuality, like a toothache.

And our attitude towards this apparent apocalypse is interesting, for it is a qualified doom, not an unequivocal one. In most versions, since neo-Platonic times, possibly since Aquinas, we, the recipients of the wisdom of the Revelation, are excluded from the ranks of the doomed - we are the chosen, the few, the blessed. In personal imaginings of the catastrophic realignment of human existence on Earth, the question of whether I will be one of the few does not arise, it is taken as a given. We are the witness to the new, the post-apocalyptic World. This is, of course, counter-rational, since by definition, if 90% or so of the World's population is to die, the odds against a personal survival is quite small..

There's probably also a link to one of the fundamental premises of Christianity (and, implicitly, in some versions of Buddhism), that the reward for suffering in the present is a better, purer 'life' in the future. The power of this particular promise is obvious - your life may be crap now, but there is always hope. But in the adult awareness of our individual inefficability, a deus ex machina, an mighty outside force, is required to bring about the transformation, at least on a timescale that signifies within the self-aware mortal frame of normal human life.

Neither is such irrational hope confined to religion - it persists in a huge proportion of the Advertising, Marketing, consumption and social human activities that constitute a significant proportion of our daily input, wherein it addresses and promises to answer our everyday existential anxieties about power, control, desire, significance, and solve these if only we buy this, bet that, own this, use that...

In a similar way, the idea of a Global Catastrophe allows us to hope, in the abstract, that the problems and worries which beset us as individuals and as a society entire, a species, on this planet, our home, are capable of a solution. This is a dramatic and exclusive solution, but we are, ipso facto, the survivors, the new wave, the pioneers of the better tomorrow... and so we come to welcome what is in rational terms an appalling holocaust.

So, we seem to exist in Developed Society as entities for whom the tendency to worry and wonder about our collective future is a mirror for our anxieties about our survival and flourishing as individuals. In this, we follow another familiar neo-Platonic meme, the doctrine of Microcosm-macrocosm (As above, so below).

Here is a suggestion, then. When we speculate about tomorrow in terms of the imminent collapse of civilization, or a sudden transition to a Brave New World, what we are doing is transferring our uncomfortable awareness of our own mortality and our wish to signify onto the larger scale. This form of abstraction allows us to separate out our terror of death from our dream of persistence, and exist in a form of hopefulness, or optimism, in which we can beat death itself. Our imagining of the Apocalypse is an imagining of our immortality.

Next time: Chapter two; Is the world coming to an end?

Be loved.

Don’t stop (thinking about tomorrow)

The outlook for the future of humanity is not great at the moment. In the several years since I started taking a serious interest in this, including extensive academic research, substantial reading and study and direct engagement in online debate and discussion, not much has improved.

We have been strongly conscious of our collective ability to shape, transform, and in particular, damage our world and our societies, for at least fifty years. For much of this time, the focus of academic attention has been on Environmental ‘issues’ and the relationship between human exploitation of resources and ecosystems’ capacity to absorb this. More recently, the focus has shifted to the questions which arise from recent observations of the global warming of the planet’s ‘system’.

Today, more than has been apparent before, we live in a time when people who think about the bigger issues and problems of society are aware that our Human world is at least partially dysfunctional. Though it is hard to place a number on this outside the realms of serious statistical (quantitative) research, and though observation bias is no doubt in play, since I tend to socialise with people who share my world-view, or at least my concerns, my best guess is that a substantial minority of Northern Europeans, and a slightly smaller but still significant minority of Americans, Canadians, Australians, Africans, Asians and Southern/Eastern Europeans, are both aware of at least some of the issues facing our species and others, and also concerned about them with respect to the future.

For some time I have been working to map out a vision of how the near future of Humanity might progress and so, given that there may be some interest, intend to present some of my guesses, along with the reasoning behind them, here over the next few posts. For my own reasons, I have named this the ‘Morrow Project’. It would be more than helpful, in this case, were some readers to offer contributions, in particular where they think my reasoning has gone astray, or where they are not clear about my meanings, so come on, folks, say your bit…

Coming up next on the blog, then, the Morrow Project, Episode 1…

Pick your own prison, or walk away; resolution

Let's think about the big things and our relationship with our world.

Things like Freedom. What does it mean to be free? Surely, if nothing else, it means maintaining the right to determine your own way of life, your own choices, and your own intentions. It also means being able to choose to walk a lone furrow or join hands with others and make the journey of life together. It also means not being constrained by the demands, commands or chains of other forces which you do not control.

So, who enjoys the greater Freedom? The Conservative, who is satisfied with a nominally free market, the opportunity to gain for self at the cost of others, the ability to have goods provided in response to demand, the liberty to labour and spend, indefinitely, irrespective of cost. Or the Radical, who refuses to listen to the clamour of advertisers and marketers to consume for the sake of it; who chooses to share and to give for the benefit of others, rather than take, use and dispose; who chooses to work, not for the increasing wealth of the already wealthy, but for a fair and sufficient exchange of needs.

Freedom means liberation from chains. In the twentieth century, many millions of people around the world were liberated from the chains of poverty and subsistence, from unfair exchange of labour for reward (Flavours of slavery), from mass genocidal paranoia, disease and epidemic, from a nasty, rough, brutish and short life. But not everyone.

But times change, and so do circumstances. And so we come to the point where some people argue that the better path to a better life for more people is to continue along the path already trodden, while others argue that, having discovered that there is, after all, a price to pay for greater wealth, the time has come to move away from the clamour for growth at any cost, and towards a way of being more attuned to the need to find a better balance between the hunger of human enrichment and the needs of the planet's natural systems.

For the coming year, I choose to be Free. Free to make a fair effort at worthwhile labour for a reasonable and proportional reward. Free to ignore the markets and refuse to play the consuming game, having enough to satisfy my needs. Free to share with others, in communication, in wealth, in caring to make the world a better place. Free from the chains of intimidation and fear thrown at me by governments, corporations, shills, cheats and liars. Free to live without constraint, been constrained from nothing but what I do not need. Free not to invest in companies who are irresponsible or immoral. Free not to use the product of other people's misery. Free to love others, myself, and the world.

I will not bow down to the demands of 'the system' and place myself in chains. I was free, I will be free again.

Happy New Year to all.

If I listened long enough to you...knowing what we don't know

(AKA The Rumsfeld Conundrum)

Following on from a discussion amongst a number of internet friends at Planet 3.0, The Usefulness of Knowing what we don't know , it occurs that, since I was educated in Philosophy (specifically Epistemology) by some of the players mentioned in the literature, and on the basis that some of their cleverness might actually have been absorbed, I might have something useful to say on the matter.

It's important not just as an intellectual exercise (of the type that causes non-philosophers to tear their hair out and kick things) but also because even a cursory exploration of some of the more modern ideas of knowledge, belief and justification can lead us down some revealing paths when we look at the expert/public interface in science and the media.

It's also revealing of something else - the motivations for 'skepticism' and the reasons why some people (without trying to judge them) are still not convinced by some arguments and conclusions arising from climate science and the policy implications of AGW.

In general, Epistemology is the Theory of Knowledge ; in other words, attempts to address or answer questions such as 'What do we mean when we make a claim to know something?' Immediately it is clear that this is relevant to climate science discourse, since many of the things which are traditionally associated with a 'common sense' understanding of what constitutes 'knowing' are challenged by 'skeptics'; from what fundamental 'facts' are to be accepted, to what counts as evidence in support of AGW, through to more sophisticated problems such as whether there is justification for certain policy decisions (such as the immediate mitigation of AGW via CO2 emissions management).

The first thing to observe is that much (most?) of the public discourse, though it sometimes appears to be about what is 'known', actually revolves around what different people believe, and the reasons why they believe these things (in epistemological terms, justification). One of the reasons for this is that Climate Science is not an easy thing to do or test, and most of the public discourse is amongst people with varying degrees of ignorance (with some notable exceptions, such as RealClimate). We frequently hear scientists voicing concern over the public interface and the difficulty of communicating effectively, but the problem won't go away easily, because a lot of the work done by 'skeptical' communicators is aimed (directly or indirectly) at reducing the epistemological status of the science, the scientists, and the milieu in which the science is undertaken. By this I mean that the justifiability of a certain scientific proposition is undermined, creating doubt amongst some of us who don't, or can't do the actual science, or even fully understand the methods.

We often find it hard to see another person's point of view if we disagree about the 'facts' or the 'conclusions' of a position, regardless of the reasoning either has undertaken to reach the conclusion. In other words, we start with a problem of Belief. There are many ways to reach a condition of believing in the truth of a proposition, some logical, some rational, some intuitive, some pre-conditioned. It can be revealing to ask a person who you disagree with, why they hold that particular belief. In the case of we ignorant masses (the 'non-climate-science community'), investigation leads down any number of paths, but often reduces down to a relatively small number of core, or foundational assumptions about ourselves, the world and how we interact with it. Sometimes, these fundamentals are derived from religious or spiritual beliefs, which hold a privileged status in our personal epistemological landscape, and are therefore highly resistant to challenges, not least because they are often self-consciously 'irrational' as well as being deeply embedded in our psyches.

So, how can we make progress, about what we can claim to 'know' about climate science, or about why emissions controls (regulation, taxation, limitation of freedom, of trade, of wealth) matter now?

One way is to shift the epistemological landscape to newer ground, from the 'traditional' or 'common-sense' notions of truth, knowledge, belief and justification, to more modern, 'hard' notions of knowledge and belief, such as Bayesian Confirmation Theory, or Bayesian Social Epistemology. Without going into the details here, since they are well expressed elsewhere, for example here), this can lead down tracks such as betting on climate change, a popular and readily understood activity which has the power of publicly testing both the credibility of a person's stated belief (how much they really believe it being measured by how much they are willing to bet on it), as well as the actual grounds on which two differing views are justified, in relatively simple and measurable terms.

For scientists, there is appeal in the betting meme, since it relates to some very interesting ideas about probability and statistics, exemplified by what are known as Dutch Book Arguments. This type of discourse - the climate bet - (see here, for example), is accessible and its results understandable, with the added piquancy that someone is going to get 'smacked down' by the result. For the public, it can work as an immediate measure of the sincerity of the exponent of a given belief, which in turn has an effect on the justification for believing in that person's stated belief (both in common-sense, and Bayesian terms).

Yes, it is essential to have a sense of 'what we don't know'. In climate science discourse, most of us are obliged to confess that our personal beliefs do not depend on first-hand science; we must depend on others to provide the evidence, so our beliefs are more or less justified by the weight, credibility and logic of others. But we also can have a sense of what we should be able to claim to know, without too much controversy, and it is important for the discourse that climate scientists understand that communicating this is still very important. But enough for now, so later I will look at trying to find the grounds (fundamental principles) for a claim to know that policy action is no longer avoidable.

It's amazing what we have in common; wanna live like common people?

Over at the warren, Eli makes mention of Gardiner's 'Perfect Moral Storm', a characterisation of the ethical complexities associated with climate change. Gardiner compares the moral dilemmas associated with climate change and the issues of mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and intergenerational equity to the 'triple storm' which forms the centrepiece of the original story by Junger.

One of the matters which arises during Gardiner's discussion, and in Peter Singer's 'response' paper of the same year (2006), is that of the 'Tragedy of the Commons'. This is Hardin's highly influential analysis going back to 1968 of the difficulties of dealing with ecological and environmental problems, particularly (in his case) to do with overpopulation.

When you look at the dialogues and arguments surrounding COP19 (and all other climate policy debates), it is easy to see the influence of Hardin (and perhaps Gardiner), in the underlying principles which are being discussed - who should take responsibility, who should pay, who should benefit, etc. Gardiner provides the basis for a moral framework which supports the notion that developed nations need to support developing nations to avoid a future destruction of the 'commons' of the global ecosystem. Singer goes beyond this to argue that, regardless of the moral basis chosen, the result (about who should take responsibility) always goes back to the same source, not just for ethical reasons, but also for practical ones.

It had been a few years since I first flirted with this material, during my brief period as a postgrad in Environmental Ethics, so I duly refreshed. Following this up with some further reading, I came across the work of the remarkable Elinor 'Lin' Ostrom, with whom I had not previously been acquainted.

And so, by a roundabout course, I came across some weekend reading for Eli to enjoy, which I am sure he will, since the very first example cited in the book refers to the maintenance and management of levees in the USA. I'm also recommending it to Roger Sr, since it relates to his team's work on (local) resource vulnerability and climate, and to Roger Jr, since it relates to the fundamentals of 'right policy making', which I know he is enthusiastic about, and has quite a lot about sports.

So, here is the (open access) 'Sustaining the Commons' by Anderies and Janssen. Grown ups and interested parties can revert, of course, to the original material by Ostrom et al., but this is about four hour's worth of undergrad level light weekend reading, and therefore suitable for busy bunnies. Why bother? Well, an awful lot of what has been going the rounds recently, for example in my chosen rag the Guardian, has been very depressing. There are times when one gets close to the 'we're f***@d' position. Reading this both cheered me up and gave me some more thoughts to work on in my search for a redefinition of our generational social dilemma.

Please, read and enjoy.

More out than in - outside physics, is it possible?

Yesterday in the Guardian, Tim Smedley reports on the forthcoming forum on Natural Capital Accounting. Link to the article here. 

It's an interesting feature, not least for the comments which follow it, which are clearly considered and sophisticated (so far!). Included among which is the response from the group setting up a 'counter forum, in the same city, Edinburgh, at the same time; 'Nature is not for sale'.

Lord Aaron's comment in the feed at the bottom of the article brings up one of the more significant problems in the area of Natural Capital Accounting: that it is placing a financial price on Natural Capital (the article cites the groundbreaking work done by Puma since 2010), and thereby making Nature marketable (in other words, natural assets can be traded, and 'environmental offsets' can become tradeable capital resources. If this were the direction that NCA goes into, it's easy to see that the Environment is likely to lose out again to vested interested/creative accounting, where it substitutes for accountability.

But it seems also that NCA can have a role to play. As the article shows, it becomes possible to place a relative price and cost against a return from exploitation. This in turn allows us to see where resources are being exploited rather than used Resourcefully- in other words, more is lost in the transition from the prime resource to the tradeable commodity, or product, than is gained in the short term. You can see where this could be of benefit, not just to the Corporates who now appear to be recognising that unsustainable exploitation means precisely that they cannot sustain, even in the mid-term, the end product which is the basis of their capital wealth and added value. And losing their core supply, even shifting the balance of Demand/supply, will hurt their businesses moving forward.

For a long time now, Many Environmentalists have been deeply suspicious of moves to subsume the World's natural resources into a discussion of Economy, of 'putting a price on Nature'. What the argument has often boiled down to is that the Value of a Natural Resource lies in more than the dollar signs against it - the price. And this in turn is driven by a division in the ways in which people view Nature and the World: whether it is something for us humans to use (you could call this the 'Genesis' perception), or is something to which we belong and for which we, as the species which can damage it, or unbalance it, have a duty of care (the 'Stewardship perception).

All of which relates to the principle of Resourcefulness. In particular, it serves to demonstrate why Resourcefulness must be about more than resources. It is good that someone is working hard to challenge the implicit presumptions or potential hazards embedded within Natural Capital Accounting, but sadly, for the organisation involved, the brute reality is that, whilst it can be argued that Nature should not be for sale, in fact, as a basis of the means of production, it is.

There is a temporal perspective to be considered here in relation to these matters - for climate debaters, the principle of 'trash now, pay later' is one of the monsters being strongly fought, consistently. Scientists try to tell politicians and the public what they are letting themselves in for, and then get berated for 'alarmism', because narrow focussed eyes don't look far enough down the line to account for the consequences of choosing net present profit over projected loss.

There is also a philosophical/existential principle, but this is a little harder to summarise briefly, so will have to wait for another post. It is about what it means to be human, in the World, with Others, and also about the concept of 'home' and its significance to us.

A parting thought. A while back, someone might have realised that Dodo represented a potentially valuable commodity as a foodstuff, like turkeys, for example, but to make it so, the supply chain would have needed preserving. Hungry sailors didn't tend to think that way.

Being Resourceful; can we fix it?

Recently I suggested that the idea of Sustainability, or Sustainable Development, contains an underlying negativity which can contribute to a resistance to change.

Instead, I suggested that it might be useful to adopt an alternative term; Resourcefulness. Though in retrospect I am tending towards the idea that Resourcefulness might be a subset of Sustainability; we shall see.

So, what do I mean by Resourcefulness?

First, and perhaps finally, this is a state of mind – an attitude towards the World and its component parts which is both responsible and creative – a predisposition towards the things of the World and Society. Resourcefulness explicitly implies that a response to a problem, demand, crisis, need or situation involves the application of intelligence, imagination and creativity. It also contains the assumption that the attitude to the case in point is one of seeking the opportunity in the situation (if there is one), and making the most of it (and the resources involved).

In itself, this is nothing especially original. Business and enterprise are full of examples of exactly this kind of approach (though often driven by necessity rather than disposition). Some commercial services are particularly focussed on this kind of thinking; others, driven by more immediate pressures on performance, seem to avoid it. In this sense, it looks like there could be a relationship between Resourcefulness and the management of Risk which points us towards something useful at a more sophisticated level of development.

One would expect Resourcefulness to include, specifically, an attitude to Resources. Examples of this might be Resource efficiency (making more from less), Natural Resource Economics, or more closely observed, the Circular Economy concept (I profess to admiration of the work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in this field). All of these, and other existing practises in Sustainability, such as Waste Management, can be included in the remit of the Resourceful Society, Business or Individual, but Resourcefulness should not be seen as being limited to an attitude to Resources alone.

This is because there are other kinds of Resources than simply the ‘stuff’ of the World. And there are approaches to all resource types which do not imply a relationship of use or exploitation; this is particularly important to understand, since Resourcefulness (the ‘creative’ predisposition) expects of us that we see the worth, or value of things and actions, not just in ‘net benefit’ or ‘utility’ terms, but also in terms of the ‘Goodness’ or ‘Rightness’ of these. This means that Resourcefulness goes beneath issues covered by Consequentialism, to the core Human Social values of Equity, Justice and (probably) Liberty.

This leads us to a fairly fundamental point of ‘Resourceful’ Action: it should be non-exploitative both in terms of resources, and also in terms of people. In other words, Resourceful Actions do not serve to take from one person or group in order to give to another. This runs counter to so much of modern Economic and Social theory that considerable effort must be spent to demonstrate that personal or commercial Wealth need not come at the cost of exploitation of Labour or Markets. For some, this will read as an impossibility, for others, akin to heresy (or Social Democracy), but it is the intention to undermine the model of ‘Competitive Advantage’ as best practice and seek, instead, a model of ‘Collaborative (Mutual) Advantage’.

One special strength of the concept of Resourcefulness is that it is Action-oriented, in other words, a Resourceful approach, instead of asking ‘what’s going wrong?’ or ‘who is to blame?’, asks ‘How do we make it better?’

It may seem to some experienced and knowledgeable observers that this appears to be a somewhat trivial and simplistic idea, but I believe that, in common with many important principles, Resourcefulness is both simple to grasp and put into action, but also deep and meaningful – the one does not exclude the other.

I’ll finish today with a reference to a childrens’ TV character. It is a statement of affirmation and intention, of predisposition to make things better:

“Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!”

Time to reconsider Sustainability and become more Resourceful instead?

Something is broken in our ability to communicate the problems and issues which beset our complex, struggling World. Well quite a few things, but in particular, we seem to have got lost in our efforts to express in simple terms the things which matter.

After '92 (maybe even before this) the meme of choice became 'Sustainability'; a useful catch-all which encapsulated the spirit of the messages coming out at the time - the need as a global society to live within our means.

But these days, it seems the term is losing its edge. Many commentators have pointed out that it has become cheapened by over-familiarity, that its many meanings and interpretations are so diverse, its marketing usage so overblown, that irrespective of the underlying values which the original usage implied, 'Sustainability' as a concept may itself no longer be sustainable.

The number of reasons why this has happened is legion, do not require reiteration here. But, for me, there is an issue which I have not seen much discussed, which is that the term and its conceptual underpinning are fundamentally negative.

In a nutshell, 'sustainable' implies a sense of 'survival', of making do, reduction, subsistence. For many of the developing nations this conception makes perfect sense, since survival in the face of adversity has been (though need not have been) a common theme in contemporary accounts of the 'needs' of these societies and their peoples. But the implicit hair-shirted self-sacrifice which so often is cited hand-in-hand with Sustainability has become, in the developed world, as much an albatross as a rallying-call.

Sustainable living as an fundamental idea still has its value and merit, that has not and should not change, but the time has come to put aside the hair shirt and try to find a new 'overriding' conception of what it is we need to do, individually, collectively, politically, economically. A conception which permits the best of humanity to shine and points forwards rather than backwards.

The time has come for us to be Resourceful. To apply Resourcefulness to our problems and issues and become "ingenious, capable, and full of initiative, especially in dealing with difficult situations" (Collins Dictionary) or develop, as Wiktionary describes resoucefulness:"  "the ability to cope with difficult situations, or unusual problems".

We can also be more aware of the resources we use - as, for example, via a circular economy. We can direct the best use of the resources available to us so that the most possible is made from them. We can apply our unique characteristic - ingenuity - to the multitude of environmental demons which beset us, whether we consider mitigation or adaptation or both, and apply well-found principles to seek imaginative solutions.

It is probably no coincidence that as a word 'Resourcefulness' is phonetically and structurally similar to the Buddhist concept of 'mindfulness', implying a constant and considered awareness of what is around us as we live, and the causal consequences of actions, inactions, decisions and desires. For me, there is a strong sense that this has the potential to be a truly powerful and worthwhile re-alignment of the language of future-building. 

Sit back for a few seconds and think about the idea, the message, the implications; I hope, like me, you find it positively stimulates the imagination and leaves you replete with the sense of possibility.

Resourcefulness is a fundamentally positive conception. It is pragmatic - it implies a process involving thought and decisions and action which is so necessary to the global environment. It is also a very Human concept - it applies to people in particular, but also to groups of people of all kinds. It also connects us more directly to the things of the planet, be they raw material, product, or finance, as things we are bound up with, rather than objects of our intercession.

As of this moment, for me it is an idea which requires more fleshing out, some further defining and limiting - otherwise it is in danger of suffering the same fate as 'Sustainability' - of meaning both too much and too little at the same time. This is work I and I hope others will be undertaking, to raise the bar, change the negative into a positive, and start actually working on these many problems of our World with Hope rather than Resignation.

This is the message: the time has come for us to be more Resourceful, and to use our Resourcefulness for the betterment of the human condition.

Side note: Similar usage of the term, relating to sustainable practice in the built environment, has been used recently in Architecture and design, for example, here.

What are we going to do now, Mr Milligan?

The initial source material and reporting of the presentation was described earlier, but now it's going more mainstream, I suppose it's time to consider:  http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/science-says-revolt .

Picked up also at Skeptical science weekly round-up.

The appeal, of course, is that a scientist, Brad Werner, had the nerve to stand up in front of peers on the back of a presentation entitled 'Is Earth F***ked?

And then answered the question. His answer was 'more or less'.

I spent some considerable time researching Climate Science before, during and after the IPCC AR4, the ICARP conference on the Cryopshere, and the Stern Report, a few years back now. At the time, the discussions were about the same as they are now, a few years down the line, but there are changes.

Read Ostberg et al, Mora et al, even Tol, or the Norwegian Met office report highlighted this week on RC (here). Read the AR5, insofar as it has yet been completed. There's almost immeasurably large amounts of really quite bad news, about oceans, global warming, sustainability budgets, water, heck, practically everything you might want to consider when looking at the Big Picture points inexorably towards Werner's conclusion.

For 20 years (arguably longer) every government and major financial institution and source of power (the large corporates, etc), has know the path we were walking down. We've all known it, though some step aside and disavow. And the heartbreak is that absolutely nothing of significance has changed. This is not because there has been a lack of effort - lots of people in lots of arenas and disciplines, even some governments, have tried to walk the narrow path of responsibility for stewardship. But these efforts have been overtaken by the relatively rapid growth in the global economy from the opening of new resource and market opportunities, amongst other things.

So, let's presume that, for the sake of argument, Earth is, more or less, F***ked. Whatever we decide collectively to do from now onwards will make some difference, and some important decisions on the larger scale will make a substantial difference, but in spite of this, in the next 100 years the world will change. (yes, this is a truism, but...)

If this is the case, then the BIG Question now, and the one which could be said to underlie all the stuff about mitigation and adaptation,  is 'What kind of World do we want to aim for?' The secondary, and no less significant questions, being: 'What are we willing to pay for it?' and 'What types of extreme nastiness are we able to tolerate, and what must we avoid regardless of other consequences?' Other fairly obvious questions spring to mind.

If you are unused to speculating on possible future human/earth scenarios, then you could do worse than read 'Earth Abides', 'The Sheep Look Up', Oryx & Crake (and the rest of the Atwood Trilogy), a range of 'cli-fi', or even George Orwell. You might rediscover Lovelock's tragic vision, or make your own up. It would be interesting to know if any of you readers come up with scenarios more positive than the ones I have imagined recently.

As things stand, whether or not global warming is the elephant in the room, the current political reality is that justifying any environmental policy or action on this basis is hard for governments to swallow right now. Maybe things will change for the better in the future (huh!). So, my first suggestion is that we look hard at the things which have an impact on global climate and environment from the point of view of the whole shebang, earth systems, and see what actions or policies can be made now, in this political environment, which would both improve the general state of the earth system and, coincidentally, help to mitigate severe adverse climate change.

Much more on this later.

I can't believe we're on the eve of destruction

Picking up on a couple of pieces of editorial in the Guardian recently, both by Adam Corner, gives me the opportunity to cover two matters which I think are important. The first concerns changing our World for the better here, "Morality is missing from the debate about sustainable behaviour" and the second, "Will the IPCC start a new conversation about climate change?", here .

Reading the comments to the latter piece it was interesting to note that many of the responses were about responsibility, crisis, protection, danger; familiar themes in climate change dialogue, and the common subject for accusations of alarmism. Here is my contribution to the comments thread:

Fear need not be the overriding 'necessary' response to climate change. To an extent it plays into the hands of those unwilling to face the reality of change; it's just too easy for them to cry 'alarmism' or simply go into denial.
The IPCC was formed to help all governments understand and address the risks which were first identified twenty years ago. What have governments managed to achieve in this time? Some are trying, most are failing.

The fact that our world is changing almost faster than we can comprehend should be recognised as a simple reality. But it is also an opportunity. We can see from countless bits of evidence that we have placed ourselves in jeopardy from the historic indifference not just to the climate but also the environment and ecology of the planet. We know the relationship between our past choices and present predicament.

So now, being able to see what has been and see what is likely to be, without decisive action, we have an opportunity. Our generation can (should?) shape the future that we choose; we can let the slide into the mire continue, or we can choose to envision a better way of living within our planet and get off our arses and do something about it.

Don't be afraid. Be determined.
The first Guardian piece is really about the reasons we have for making a change in our personal lives. Corner proposes that most lasting behavioural change comes from internalisation and decision based on ethical foundations. He also points to the ineffectiveness of purely 'money-as-value'- driven arguments for action. These are the ones which assume that we are stuck in the 'sixties presumption that all the Public cares about really is the 'pound in their pocket'.

It was interesting to note the creation in September of a new think tank,  The New Climate Economy. Read the 'about' section to get a sense of the undoubtedly valuable mission the organisation has. But the organisation suffers from the same fundamental problem shared with much of the Political debate on climate change - it presumes that the ultimate motivation for any future action must be self-interested, and (for politicians and corporations) that variations of cost-benefit and risk assessment analysis are the way forward, since their content is ostensibly measurable.

And so I think that the New Climate Economy is missing something - in sticking to the presumption of the pre-eminence of Economy over other elements of the sustainability circle, it will no doubt do much to counter the pseudo-Lomborgian 'Climate change mitigation is a waste of money' argument. But it won't stimulate sustained behavioural change without a heart. As Corner suggests, that heart needs to be fundamentally ethical, based on values other than economic ones. Then, the language, the communication and the call to action will have a more powerful response.

We should recognise that, in important ways, the way that modern human society works has resulted in disproportionate power being placed in the hands of the bean-counters and their lawyers. And whilst their role and contribution to development, change management and future-building is both important and valuable, I would leave you with the questions: Are these the (kind of) people who we want to shape our future World? If they are already just too powerful to replace, what can we do to restructure both climate and sustainability thinking in such a way that their role is less about the why and more about the how?

Because the why matters.

Not with a bang but with a whimper

Full of Good Intentions in response to helpful comments by Steve Bloom and William Connolley, I spent three hours this morning digesting Chapter 13 (draft) of the AR5 on Sea Level Rise.

What was most helpful about my critics' comments was that I had been reminded that if you want to say something useful, you have to stay up with the game. I've been out of the arena of GW and GW discussion for some time and have forgotten much and misremembered more. 

So, following my own personal interests and alert to my new-found ignorance, I chugged through the chapter with full intention of finding something to say and blogging it here. Which I probably will, later.

But in the interim I've been diverted by a sideline which I feel certainly deserves a mention. Thanks to dialogue on RealClimate (sidebar link) and via email, I got to thinking about one of the best books I have ever read. And I have read a lot of books.

It isn't a book about climate change or global warming. It isn't strictly science fiction, nor truly easily fitted into any particular genre, but it is profound, affecting, literate and relevant.

From his own website, I have borrowed the following:

Finalist, Nebula Award John Campbell Award Finalist BBC Critic's Choice (Best SF      Novel)

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS In 1995, George Paxton is an ordinary American living an ordinary life in an ordinary town. Content as a tombstone carver and family man, George lacks only one thing: a fashionable "scopas" survival suit--complete with sanitary facilities and a Colt.45--to protect his daughter in the event of nuclear war. Then, through a twist of fate, George secures the coveted suit, a deluxe golden model, for the price of a mere signature. Unfortunately, what he signs proves to be a diabolical pact affirming his complicity in the escalating arms race, and as the war that could never happen happens, George is whisked into the past and the future to face the consequences of his actions.

Morrow's own comment is most pertinent here:


At first blush, a critic might bracket This Is the Way the World Ends with other post-holocaust fiction. From Alas, Babylon through A Canticle for Leibowitz to Riddley Walker, this genre has commonly styled itself an avatar of hope. My goal lay elsewhere. I began with the assumption that most people would prefer to exercise hope before the warheads arrive. I wanted to speak for victims, not celebrate survivors.

Even the most elaborate nuclear exchange would probably fail to extinguish Homo sapiens. Some of us will muddle through. In This Is the Way the World Ends, though, I decided to use self-extinction as a metaphor for the legions who won't make it. It's all very well to valorize our species's undoubted resilience, but a mass grave is hardly a fit monument to such sentiments.

Reading Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth., I was particularly impressed by one line: "The right vantage point from which to view a holocaust is that of a corpse." It struck me that most nuclear-war fiction is really a kind of pornography, inviting us to identify with winners while the losers, the corpses, drop away. So how might a novelist assume the vantage point of the dead? Through recourse, I reasoned, to the tools of speculative fiction. Eventually I hit upon the conceit of "the unadmitted," the generations whose births were canceled by the extinction. I gave them flesh and a temporary lease on life.

Reprinted from SFWA Bulletin

How good is this book? Here are two critics' assessments:

"This Is the Way the World Ends begins where Dr. Strangelove ends. It is a tale told from the other side of the grave--quite literally from the point of view of the dead--and what makes it so wonderful is not merely that it is informed about how and why the world may end, but because throughout it remains a true tale, rich in narrative and moral complexity, magically inventive and comic ... This Is the Way the World Ends defies genre. It is science fiction the way Gulliver's Travels is science fiction, fantasy the way John Collier's Fancies and Goodnights is fantasy, satire in the way George Orwell's 1984 is satire. It is also profoundly and grimly comic in the way Thomas Berger's novels are comic. Which is only to say that This Is the Way the World Ends is a unique mix of science fiction, satire, fantasy, and comedy--a gorgeously crafted and insanely funny tale about mortal and ghostly matters. It is a fable for our times, yes, but (except in a few of the too-lengthy trial sections) rarely moralistic or heavy-handed ... James Morrow is an original--stylistically ingenious, savagely funny, always unpredictable. He has written a story of the way and the why of our dear and foolish world--its sources of life and of death--that is utterly dazzling and memorable."

Jay Neugeboren
Philadelphia Inquirer

"Add to this scenario great suspense, fast action, a complex and sympathetic protagonist, and unrestrained black comedy, and the result is a wonderfully surreal novel worthy of comparison with the best political satire of this century ... Everyone should read this book: pacifists, moderates, militarists, and especially the uncommitted."

John A. Zurlo
Forth Worth Star-Telegram


The relevance comes from transposition. Morrow places his protagonist in a position where he is judged by future generations, both living and never born (the 'future dead') for his shared complicity in failing to prevent disaster to befall the planet, for thinking of himself first and not considering the consequences of his choices.

I am sure an intelligent reader can draw the obvious comparisons for herself.

I don't need to advise you to read and digest. The process of reading alone will guarantee that you will think about lots of things, not least how brilliant Morrow is.Please, read the book.