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.

It just seemed like the right thing to do

Back in the chain Gang

I've never exactly been a Player in the online climate science field, though have dribbled around the edges for some time and have occasionally received encouraging noises from scientists whose opinions I respect.

But in previous iterations, my blogs have received a few tens of thousands of readers, and, more recently, I have a steady readership when I post on Quora.

So, though it may be a small constituency, yet there may be some people who appreciate what I try to do online and it is for them, as well as myself, that I have decided to reopen the blog.

Why now? Mainly, because it feels as if Truth is under attack. Prejudice and dishonesty abounds and is sometimes rewarded. Decency is not in vogue, and being human matters less than being noisy/young/pretty/opinionated/a cat.

Which leads to my second reason: for some time I have been concerned that there is a moral issue in respect to climate science and future-casting in general which is being steadily eroded. And this issue is our treatment of, and respect for, each other as humans. 

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. It exists because many people think it important to remember the evil which can and has been done in our names, or with our consent. It is important.

As I spend more time than is healthy considering, analysing and speculating about our collective future, I am reasonably confident that our society is changing, not for the better. There is an ongoing and future injustice which, if the projections play out, represents a human harm, a level of suffering, which is not just comparable to the suffering of the holocaust, but on a scale so vast as to be almost unthinkable.

Seventy five years ago, there were people who saw what was happening in Europe, in Nazi Germany and elsewhere, a more virulent continuation of historic persecutions going back centuries, and they turned away. Some did not.

And this is why I have returned. If a vast, unspeakable crime against humanity is to be committed, it will not be with my consent, not in my name, and I will not ignore it or simply let it happen. I am opening a dialogue to people who understand the stakes in climate, politics, environmental and social Justice and injustices, and who believe that such depravity should not go unchallenged.

All this is very serious, but please don't be put off - I'll still sometimes make a joke.

Emergent Properties of World Views

One of the strange things about politics is that a large proportion of the voting populus seem to make voting decisions based on intuition and 'broad understanding', which is like ignorance, but with a better accent. 

This doesn't make voters dumb - just (frequently) indifferent. Part of the reason for this, I believe, is that people learn fairly early on where their 'interests' lie, and where their own world view coincides with the range on offer in their local political spectrum and, having established whether they are more or less liberal or society-oriented, conservative or libertarian, in their morals, standards, ethics and norms, they then stick with their decisions and go for what works for them. On the assumption that the real differences between political ideologies play out in action terms as smallish differences, we tend to get lazy and, eventually, fixed in our ways.

Having an interest in being a bit more rational than this, relying on intuition to guide my choice of representative, I thought it would be worth laying down a few 'policy guidelines' and working out where my actual knowledge and understanding take me in terms of who to support. So, today's post lays out a couple of thoughts about each of a number of issues, then reaches a conclusion about what this implies about 'my' politics.

Energy: pro-renewables, anti-fossil, dubious about nukes and scathing about  fracking.

Climate change: mitigation and adaptation are real and present necessities for future well-being.

Wealth: Each of us should be able to enjoy the benefits of our labours and sustain ourselves and families on a living wage. Taxation should be proportional to earnings. Corporate welfare (profit) should be subservient to general welfare (health, well-being, pollution, etc.). 

Animals & Nature: The general principle is that all of Nature needs protection from exploitation, abuse or harm and that utilitarian measures of least harm should guide actions.

Health: universal healthcare for all, as much as possible free at point of need.

Transport: for local transport, support best local low-carbon solutions, personal or public systems, seek improved solutions for trade/goods transport & logistics.

Other matters:

Personal liberty: each individual retains all rights over their own body and how they choose to use it. Freedom of religion where it does not conflict with the above. Freedom of expression where it does not do harm to the above. Freedom to conduct trade where it does not harm the above or Nature. The right to own property (but land??)

Personal responsibility: inherent in each right of liberty is the responsibility to support or permit the rights and liberties of others and the duty to protect such liberties on the behalf of others as well as oneself.

Looking at these 'principles of a decent society', and then comparing them with the avowed policies and practices of various political parties, I found that the Party which came nearest to sharing my world-view in the UK was - the Green Party. This surprised me, since I am not a vegetarian or vegan, don't fight for animal rights, and though I try to live sustainably, I don't live 'morally'. Till I realised that my assumptions about Greens were based on my own, lazy habits of thinking. I used to be a liberal, have never been a conservative, don't like libertarians at all, and am dubious about socialism, less because of its intentions than its history.

So, by chance, I have discovered that I am, after all, in my tweed and Barbour, public school education, ethical and concerned 'gentle' liberalism, a closet hippie*. Which, on reflection, is fine by me.

The point here being, by actually comparing the values espoused by political groups rather than assuming their prejudices from habit, I have learned something useful about myself and the world. Next time, I'll be voting Green.
*note: spelling changed out of respect :)

Virtuous Circles – a trillion dollar business opportunity that might help save Society

I was quite surprised the other day when an American friend, who is quite active on climate and environment issues, responded to my references to the Circular Economy with 'what's that?'

Since a good proportion of this blog's readers (by the analytics) come from the USA, and since it is anyway a growing, rather than a well-understood concept/practice, I thought a quick introduction might be helpful.

Because the idea is, to my eyes, an important one. As Walter Stahel, the person accredited with first defining 'cradle-to-cradle' industrial process models describes it, this is a paradigm shift in the way we not only do business, but also in the way we understand our relationship with the world as an economically active society.

The basic ideas behind it are summarised on wikipedia, here. The idea is that products and services are designed from the outset to cycle back into their own production processes, creating a system which replicates Nature, by turning what was once called 'waste' into 'reusable material'. It is a long way, almost the opposite to, the idea of a Consumption Economy, which takes resources, makes products (with built in redundancy), then dumps the cast-off.

Not only is a Circular economy (and businesses operating on circular economy principles) hugely better for the planet (since finite resources are used much more efficiently, vastly reducing the dependence on new resource exploitation), but it is also potentially hugely profitable, to the tune of perhap a trillion dollars added to the value of the Global Economy. This alone makes it worth exploring more deeply.

One of the current champions and leaders in the field is a foundation with an implausible central figure, the gamine, 5'2" heroine of global sailing, Dame Ellen Macarthur. There is a nice article on her and her work on euronews, here.

In 2010, this extraordinary person, having conquered the World's oceans and broken numerous records along the way, and having become the youngest Dame in modern history and a Companion of the Legion d'Honneur, put competitive sailing to one side and launched the Ellen Macarthur Foundation (here), designed to promote a Circular economy.

So, some basic resources for you, if your interest is piqued:

 http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/circular-economy/the-circular-model-an-overview

 This provides a summary of the main ideas and links to other material.

http://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/business/reports is a core set of reports, compiled with McKinsey, giving detailed information and a considerable amount of inspiration - all three reports are free to download.

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/circular-economy is one example of a media outlet, The Guardian (UK), both supporting and informing on various initiatives and actions around the World.

The underlying principles are powerful enough that the EU, by 2012, announced that it would be looking at using these concepts to inform future policy decisions. Perhaps it is time in the USA for similar initiative and corporate engagement.

Why this, here, now? Because we are fairly clear that Business as Usual is a really, really, bad idea, for Nature, the environment, poor people, climate change, social order and the future of human society - and this is more than an idea, it is a considered and sophisticated new operating model for a sustainable and healthier society, which might help us turn the corner from what looks like an impending crisis, with real world examples, case histories, financial analysis and substantial corporate engagement.

Hopefully, this will have given you some reason to hope - yes, I think we do need an international agreement to mitigate CO2 emissions, but I also think that our resourcefulness and initiative will move us, step by step, towards the goal of a better kind of world, on the way.

This is not a review of 'The Bone Clocks' by David Mitchell

Because other writers, experienced reviewers and interested parties, like Ursula K Le Guin in the Guardian (here), will do a decent job of it; though I found the New Yorker's extended piece somewhat over the top, with too much in the way of spoiler, and possibly missing the point, though that's probably just me.

This is a blog about climate change, philosophy, and whatever I say it is about, so why the sudden urge to discuss literature? Like my previous discussion of the writing of James Morrow, the urge is because I think it is pertinent and useful to read David Mitchell (the author, not the comedian, though the comedian is my kind of amusing, too).

If you are reading this because you share my interest in the near future of humanity, read the book, with a focus on the last seventy or so pages, which paints a picture which is both credible and frightening; it contains what is for me the best description to date of what we might expect (included the fascinating but flawed vision offered by Kim Stanley Robinson in the recent '2312' (also worth a read).

The Bone Clocks is connected in a casual but conscious manner to some of Mitchell's previous writings, most notably for me, Cloud Atlas, but also Black Swan Green and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. In both novels he plays with time and narrative, and incorporates two themes dear to my heart - the Future in a world changed by a changing climate, social order and politics, and Human Nature, in particular, the struggle to do good in a difficult world.

A part of Mitchell's appeal is that he is covering these subjects in ways which match mine to a large degree, so that, on these matters we share a vision of the future and our role in leading to it. There are times during reading when I stop and find myself thinking 'I could have written this' (which is not a presumption of talent on my part, but a recognition of material). The last time I had similar, regular experience of this was in the 1980's and early 90's, when I read a considerable amount of Michael Moorcock's work, and kept finding myself uncovering a narrative which I had just finished writing in my head a few weeks before - so frequent was this occurrence that it was almost spooky. When I told Moorcock about this, I think it freaked him out slightly, too.

It is interesting to note that the two authors share other features, most particularly, the persistence across time and narrative of certain core characters - metacharacters, consciously so, like Moorcock's Eternal Champion or Jerry Cornelius, or Mitchell's Dr Marinus - and the idea of the persistence of narrative patterns (in this, both are post-modern, post-deconstructionist writers).

Most significant, for this blog, is Mitchell's fairly consistent imagining, glimpsed in the background in Song Mi's story in Cloud Atlas, more fully rounded here in the Bone Clocks, in the later two chapters, set in 2025 and 2042 respectively. It is clear to me that I share something with David Mitchell here - our research, understanding, interpretation of the near future is very closely paralleled. We both imagine a future of bleaker weather, vastly divided social groups, and a strong distinction between life in the remnants of 'civilisation' (drawn out in Mitchell's more distant Shanghai, more proximate Iceland), and the residue of the 'uncontrolled' world, a place of violence and lawlessness. Much of the detail is inferred, hinted at, slightly nebulous - this isn't the epic prose of a vast sci-fi style future vision, but a more subtle, more open-ended imagining.

The other area of interest, and what lift's Mitchell's work into the traditional concept of the literary, is his concern with human nature, and the nature of good and evil. There are touches of this in his earlier work, but in The Thousand Autumns and here, the Bone Clocks, this is a pretty transparent theme. We know this from the presence of the narratives of the Horologists and the Anchorites. We can see it in the moral choices made by all of the characters, to whom (without presuming the author's intention) we can attribute certain internal dynamics which shape our empathy and their moral compass. Holly could said to stand for love, in particular, the love of the family, Hugo for the Ego - he could so easily have stepped out of 'Atlas Shrugg'd' - Crispin as the somewhat detached, ivory-tower self-isolator; they all have moral ambiguities, but there is no question about who the good guys and the bad guys are.

Reviewers (apart from Le Guin) seem to have struggled with the 'fantasy' element of the novel, but few have observed that this is a core metaphor - and Mitchell's decision to spell it out as narrative rather than leave it embedded in the text for the reader to puzzle out, is also a very post-modern approach to the concept of meaning in Narrative, something also featuring in Moorcock's writing. The reader is presented with at least three (I'll be honest, I can't really fathom out Ed's moral position, yet) different human ways of being - the loving, the distant, the selfish - seen in the context of a battle between the non-authoritarian, laissez-faire little acts of salvation undertaken by the Horologists, and the Murderous, self-perpetuating selfishness of the vampiric Anchorites.

There are other interesting sub-metaphors in play here, too ; science/reason vs mysticism, the other vs the self, lives lived conscious of meaning and its absence, engaged in the being lived. There is anough content and suggestion in the story, as there is in Mitchell's other work, to justify (and more or less, in my case, guarantee) a second or third reading.

So, if you want to know where much of my posting is directing itself towards over the past several years, read the book, and get a better, more engaging description than I could ever manage for myself. Just don't expect a happy ending.

Whether the weather, whatever...

So it's back to a familiar pattern - the weather hits the news, and discussions arise about climate change, impacts, causes (blame), and so forth. In a sense this is good, because it brings climate to front and centre in the public consciousness, but I have a concern about it. I think it is leading us down a tricky path.

It's no surprise that weather extremes are used as tools to advocate for action on climate, since the impacts are immediately visible and present to the consciousness of the public in a way that no amount of good science or statistics can ever emulate. It's the time when people just 'get it' more readily. It's evidence by ostensive definition; 'Look!'.

The problems I have with this: first, the obvious one, that it perpetuates the language of 'cause' or 'blame'; the notion that any given weather extreme is caused by a changing climate, or evidence of a changing climate. No. It might be evidence of what happens when the weather systems of a globe or region don't do what they normally do. It might be cited as an example of what sort of damage and suffering might be expected if weather patterns change in particular places. But it is not the reason why scientists, working with long-term statistical averages, are worried about the direction we are going in. It's also, arguably, not a good precedent for future events.

The desire to get the message across, that changing climate has significant impacts which are likely to hurt us, is of course important. But a changing climate and the long-term consequences of this are much more than the sum of a series of damaging extremes in local or regional weather. So I feel that to work this particular meme, this message, is potentially dangerous. In our eagerness to get folks to pay attention, we might be skewing the real importance of what is happening to the planet and our role in this.

It will be interesting to see how the WG3 section of the AR5 copes with this apparent contradiction - that the urgency of action is demonstrable through known, visible impacts, but that the reason for concerted international effort goes beyond these impacts. Consistently, scientists have been at pains to point out that the likely consequence of AGW of more than 2 degrees is 'dangerous'; 'Dangerous Climate Changes'. 

But the dangers are not just about what happens to weather patterns in line with what we already know and can see, or measure. More worrying is the danger arising from our ignorance or uncertainty - in other words, runaway feedbacks, system-wide effects (what price a permanently accelerated jetstream, or a shutdown of the THC/AMOC?), and simply unknown effects which are only hinted at now, but would, if they happened, have really frightening consequences. I'm thinking here, for example, of what happens if, as a result of pollution and drought, insecticide and shifting wind patterns, we lose 95% of the Global honey bee population?

In simplest terms, the dangers we should be worrying about are those about which we are uncertain, but which have a logical relation to what has already been observed. To steal a phrase from a well-known Nobel scientist, what should draw our more serious attention is that the impacts of increasing atmospheric CO2, increasing deforestation, increasing black soot deposition and increasing abuse of natural ecosystems, will probably be more than we currently imagine, and different. 

Though I am reluctant to push this to the absolute extreme, the argument here is that, if the sum of the impacts of our present stewardship regime (bad joke) of the Earth are 'more and different' to what can happen within current parameters, then we really are setting ourselves up for a Global (social) transformation a couple of step-changes beyond what is currently being considered in 'mitigation and adaptation' scenarios. And we aren't in a position to anticipate these. Yet.

Which takes me at last back to my gripe. Focussing on weather extremes is short-term. Focussing on economic damage is short-term. Focussing on the evidence before our eyes is too narrow a view. If climate change is about anything, it's about the bigger picture. If sustainability is about anything, it's about the bigger picture. The value of a wood is greater than the sum of the value of each tree; the importance of finding a way to reduce our impact on our planet lies not in saving trees, or woods, it  lies in avoiding the awakening of the Kraken, of arousing Godzilla, of unleashing the rough monster that slouches towards Bethlehem to be born; it really is about keeping nightmares in the realm of the unreal.

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.

The COP-out; what a catalyst you turned out to be...

What is to be learned from the fiasco that is currently COP19? 

First, it appears that there is a sea-change in the rhetoric of certain developed nations. Where previously there had been some attempt to avoid being seen as a moral pariah, the examples of Australia, Canada, hosts Poland and other participants, show that the fear of domestic political damage is overriding the fear of international shame in responses to both mitigation and adaptation needs. Some folks are just flat out saying that they ain't gonna do nuthin' for mitigation, on the contrary, intend to follow domestic policies which run counter not just to climate change M&A but also pretty much all concepts of Sustainable Development. 

Their response indicates that rather than address the hugely complex ethical and practical difficulties of coping with Sustainability on a global as well as domestic scale, these players prefer to deny any relationship to responsibility past present or future, and express the intent to go down the short-term self-interested path. As a former teacher, this is reminiscent of certain schools which proclaim that 'bullying is nonexistent'. There is no such thing as an adolescent society devoid of an internal power/influence structure; it just takes subtly different forms. But in all (secondary) schools there are those who dominate and those who are dominated. Likewise, it is fair to say that there is no society which will escape the negative consequences of AGW down-the-line, and these players, in denying the reality, are simply deferring the problem to a period beyond their tenure (or even lifetime).

Second, the divide between have and have-not seems to be crystallising. Not just the rhetoric, but also the desires and intentions of the G20 (for example), are in conflict with those of the G77. One one side, the demand is: "you caused this problem, you ought to help fix it," on the other: "it isn't OUR problem, why should we?" 

It's difficult to be sure how this divide will develop over time, but the choices seem to be starkly twofold: 
1: Either we move towards a global society which is increasingly polarised on the basis of wealth (capacity to adapt), increasingly inequitable and unjust, and increasingly violent (what happens at metropolitan level when you have a strongly financially divided society?), in which scenarios of multiple-million deaths and permanent local/regional instability become the accepted 'necessary cost' (Collateral damage, anyone?), or 
2: We continue to struggle towards a generally more equitable and just society, where the distribution of the means of survival are managed and shared, according to the need of the recipient and the ability of the provider (Charity, anyone?), ie, seeking the win-win solution. (Yes, it can be argued that Australia is playing a particular variant of the zero-sum game, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and is opting to 'win' at the cost of the other).

The third (and probably most divisive) lesson is that Climate negotiations are going down an inexorable path to a blame-culture. This can be nothing but bad news. It's as if the developing nations ('victims') have decided that, since the 'noisy neighbours' won't play ball, they are going to proceed to litigation and counter-attack to achieve their objectives, in response to which the neighbours send out the rottweilers. This is very much a no-win game.

On the brighter side, I have a suggestion as to How to ensure that funds exist for fixing what's been broke, protecting what's at risk, and preparing for the unexpected.

The parallel is not exact, but more than 300 years ago, the largest need for investment, and the largest return on investment, came through international trade, conducted over the high seas. In response to market demand, and from pre-existing processes, Lloyd's of London was formed, to provide investors with greater security, and sailors with funds needed to set sail. Why can't we construct a similar organisation for Global Environmental (incl. climate) Capital? Existing entities such as the World Bank and the IMF, funds such as CCC or the corporate sustainability foundation trusts, can band together, with or without individual governments, as 'names', providing the capital to allow for underwriting of risks, for investment in M&A strategies, and for providing succour to the victims of disaster. This way, more would share the burdens, autonomy could be preserved, and what was needed could be provided where and when the need arose.

It's a thought.

For everything there is a season - tide and time

Over at the warren, Uncle Eli has posted about SLR, a subject I touched on last month, here, and here, including references to Grinsted's excellent material.

It occurs that the Average Josephine (IOW, most of the world) might look at the projections of sea level rise and, whilst registering that a change will have an impact, might reasonably ask why a meter or so of extra sea might be such a big deal. So here's an attempt to place this into a 'human' context.

On its own, a few centimetres of water 'added on' to the water level at any given beach or dockside is no big deal. This is because the other forces which have an effect on sea level at any given location are much stronger (they create more variability) than the underlying 'signal' of sea level.

First and most obvious is the effect of the tides. Whilst in some places sea level fluctuates by a few metres over the course of a day, in others the tidal range can top ten metres and more (up to around 15-16 m for some locations). In practical terms, coastal human habitation and business takes this into account, so in most places human activity takes places above the high tide level, for obvious reasons.

At certain times of year, specifically the Equinoctial Spring Tides, the various forces which interact to create tides and tidal ranges combine to create particularly high and low tides. It is not uncommon already for these to overreach the human adaptation level and to result in localised flooding, which is further worsened if these tidal periods occur in sync with strong weather conditions (in particular, depressions, often related to storms).

Now, the current range of projections for changes in sea level have to be considered in the context of historic tidal ranges and existing infrastructure and human-ocean interfaces.
For example, the 'averaged' sea level range globally hits around 79cm during Spring tides. This means that, overall, the shoreline would experience a few extra inches more or less. But in a local and regional context this 'average' is effectively meaningless, and is not reflected in the real experience of many coastal dwellers. For most people on coasts, the tides go up and down several metres.

If global average sea level rises by, say, half a metre, what does this mean for local impacts? And what effect does this have on local tidal ranges and, in particular, during the upper bound of the ranges (the Equinoctial Springs) and those occasions when these coincide with storm surges?

Well, it should not be difficult to work out that an extra 'average' SLR of 50cm is going to mean a rise of high tides, and of high springs, in the order of 2 - 5 metres of 'extra' sea. Given that a storm surge can increase sea levels (for example, in the Philippines) by another 4-5 metres, and you end up with places which are likely to experience regular (annual or more frequent) tidal surges in the range of 5 -10 metres. We have seen the horrific effects on one part of the world where a tidal surge of 5 metres, added to extreme weather conditions, has resulted in devastation and carnage. Now multiply this by all those places which are 'vulnerable' to such variability.

As an aside (because I'm not certain of the projected effects), it should be noted that a Spring tide normally produces currents twice as fast as Neap tides, but with eight times the power, or force. Anyone who has struggled to get out of the water onto a beach during an ebb in difficult conditions can have a sense of how much power is involved - it is, literally, an overwhelming force. 

It seems rational to presume that higher Springs will be associated with faster currents and therefore greater forces - resulting in more erosion, more localised damage and greater stress on infrastructure (including defences). So, the effect-multiplier of a few centimetres of extra sea level 'on average' produces impacts which can easily be seem to include, for example, the overwhelming of low-lying islands, or the inundation of coastal cites, oil refineries, nations (Bangladesh).

If all of this is the consequence of half a metre of sea level rise, what then is the consequence of a metre or more? Is it likely to be twice as bad? Or, given the 'effect multipiers, are we instead talking about a localised effect with a difference of an order of magnitude?

Finally, for the economically-minded amongst you, remember that an astonishing proportion of the world's trade is conducted across the oceans - around 90% of all trade goods is shipped at some point. Now, consider the impact on shipping of the changes outlined above. The cost of building tougher ships, the cost of building new, relocated shipping hubs (the World's three deepest 'ultratanker' and supercontainer ports are all vulnerable to rising sea level). The risks and losses, all to be paid for by someone.

A very high proportion of the Global population lives in the coastal strip - I think it's about 85% of the population. Not all of these people would be vulnerable in the way I outline above, but with sea level rise must come, inevitably, relocation and mass urban movement inland, fundamentally changing the dynamic geography of our society.

That's why sea level rise matters, and why a metre is more significant than half a metre.

NOTE also Simon Donner's eminently pragmatic contribution to the discussion of adaptation.

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.

Money talks, what is it saying?

Today's Guardian carries an interesting piece about the World Bank on moving forward on CC action. What is particularly interesting to me is that we are clearly thinking along similar lines, about communication, if nothing else. Here's what Rachel Kype says in the interview:

How important is getting the communications right?

We've started talking to behavioural psychologists and other disciplines about how to communicate so that you can convey urgency in a way that people can respond. There's a long history in the environment movement of fear-mongering and a) not providing alternatives or b) not having those fears realised. So we feel a responsibility to be able to communicate this in such a way that people can say: "OK, so what now?"

Extreme weather events is the place where the public and science and policy-makers seem to agree that they're prepared to accept the climate is having an impact. Obviously, that grabs people's attention and for a few weeks after superstorm Sandy you had everybody's attention, but then it starts to ebb away.

There is a particular problem in the US, which is the role of science in the society, which seems to be up for question, not just in the area of climate but elsewhere. Communicating science poses a set of challenges in the US that is not necessarily the case in other parts of the world.

Even more interesting is her take on the Language issue:

From your research, what have you learned about how to communicate more effectively?

The tendency with a lot of social movements is to talk to ourselves, so we develop language that we're comfortable with, that speaks to other environmentalists or other engineers but which means absolutely nothing to the lay public.

We're very reluctant or reticent to come up with language and idioms that will perhaps not express every little nuance in that one sentence, but which will actually resonate. We've known for a very long time that the phrase "sustainable development" is kind of clunky and we've never come up with anything better, and that's OK as long as we tell stories and build images and pictures about what we're really talking about.

There's lots of behavioural psychology that some of these words just land really cold: they don't mean anything and they don't speak to the emotional brain. What does "green" mean? It doesn't evoke very much.

Jim Kim feels very strongly that, if you're going to paint a picture of the future where it's sackcloth and ashes, don't be surprised if you don't have a long line of people following you. We have to paint a picture of opportunity.

It sounds to me like what they need is a little bit of Resourcefulness. 

The World Bank is a complex issue, but I know from personal experience that it has an important role to play in supporting Energy Development, security and poverty reduction in rising economies, so I'm happy to be counted as (at least in part) a fan, if not totally happy with everything it does.

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.