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.

Do I have Ebola Virus or a Hangover?

I feel hot. my head aches, I'm sweating, my muscles and joints ache, my throat is sore, and I can't seem to move. Am I sick?

The planet is warmer than it used to be, has heavily polluted oceans and atmosphere, is experiencing sea-level rise and Arctic sea-ice decline, is losing forests and biodiversity, seems to be experiencing more extremes of weather (in impact, if nothing else). Is it sick?

There are good reasons why doctors accumulate evidence before proceeding to diagnosis, even while sometimes treating symptoms. Two things are important: context and range of symptoms.

Why context? Take the first example. If I've been working as a nurse in a hospital in Liberia and I exhibit the symptoms described, one potential diagnosis which requires evaluation is the Ebola virus. Which would be bad.

On the other hand, if I played rugby yesterday in heavy rain, in the scrum, drank ten pints of beer afterwards during a lively singalong in the clubhouse, then walked home, and haven't been anywhere near West Africa or anyone who has been there recently, I might well describe the same symptoms to my doctor, but the diagnosis is most likely to be that a) I'm hung over, b) I'm too old to play serious rugby in the scrum and should know better - how do I expect my body to react? and c) Even if you are too drunk to feel it, walking home in just a shirt in forty degrees may have stimulated a reaction.

It is not just important to look for the context, it is essential. To answer the question 'why' requires proper investigation.

Why range? If I describe just one of those symptoms, say a sore throat, with none of the others, there could be several explanations or diagnoses, but hundreds can be eliminated because the symptom is not tied to any others. A sore throat and a headache might suggest a head cold. Add a temperature and aching muscles, perhaps influenza. Even with a large range of symptoms, placed into a context, a likely explanation is reasonably easy to find.

So, to Climate and the internet. There are very good reasons why it is important to gather evidence for a range of global conditions before attempting a diagnosis. Isolating one element is not very helpful, and cannot provide enough information on which to make any secure conclusions. One way to check out the 'records' is to use the IPCC assessment summaries, since they provide a reduction to readable size of a huge amount of very diverse information.

But you will very often see people arguing about, for example, whether the global temperature record is reliable, or if it is showing that the world is warming, or if the physics of AGW is a reasonable explanation. The reason that many of these people try to focus a reader's attention on any one of the possible 'problems' with the world and attempt to cast doubt on it's validity is because anyone who looks at the big picture cannot possibly be fooled.

As soon as anyone with a reasonable degree of intelligence looks at the range of evidence- the symptoms of the health of the world's natural and human systems - it becomes clear that there are a lot of bad signs in all sorts of places, that there are long-term persistent trends in many diverse measurements (the distribution of beetles, the volume of Arctic sea ice, global ocean temperatures, etc etc) -in other words, that the World is sick.

So it is extremely rare to see any genuine 'climate sceptic' looking at all the evidence. Or any of the evidence. Most often, what you will see is a recycled meme picked up second hand and spouted without thought as demonstration (as often as not) of a person's political or metaphysical world-view (okay, I'm being generous here).

So here is a suggestion. When you read a comment stream or argument on the web, ask yourself - is there more than one 'symptom' at question, or a 'single issue' focus? If someone is insisting on dealing with a specific 'fact' (often, these are actually false anyway), ask yourself (or them) whether they are seeing the big picture.

It's not about whether this year is warmer than last year in Alaska, or whether there is more or less ice than the long-term average this year in the Arctic, or whether any one scientist or another is correct. It is, and you know it is, much, much bigger than this.

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.

Backwards

Recent talks with certain folk have focussed on all the bad stuff which is (without argument) going on in lots of places, to lots of key systems, in the name of wealth.

Today's blinding insight is that this is getting us nowhere in particular.

A lot of bloggers and commenters are well-educated on the problems we face as a vulnerable species on a vulnerable planet, and are looking for, or asking for, leadership, guidance, ideas, ways forward to move us away from the MAD path we seem to be currently walking.

Here's a suggestion.

As a species, we are often destructive, selfish, greedy and stupid. But we are also creative, imaginative, brilliant and determined. While it does often appear on the surface that our leaders are either unwilling or unable to bring about the kind of changes we feel are necessary, and while it seems that many individuals who have the choice to behave in different ways persist in their old ones, both these appearances should be viewed with caution. There is another side to the coin.

Considerable resources are already being expended in attempts to find an optimal path through the mire into clear water beyond. Though a lot of these resources will produce little of value, they are necessary because they form the platform on which a sensible way forward will be found.

It is commonly observed that we are, in the first time in our history, in a position to overwhelm the natural world and damage it irreparably, thus threatening our own survival. But this power also exists in our ability to respond to risks on relevant scales and direct ourselves onto a pathway which could be, in part at least, of our choosing.

Collectively, we have the means to help shape the future. We have the motivation. What remains is the opportunity. The question is how long it will take for the right direction to be found, and whether our actions are timely enough to avoid appalling harm.

Science is very good at showing us what is, and reasonable good at showing us what is a likely consequence if we do x to y. Long may this continue. We need science more than ever, not least because it is fundamentally rational, and reason is what is needed as much as anything.

So, my suggestion is that we have been tending to look at this problem backwards. As well as seeing what we are doing wrong and trying to stop it, we should be paying attention to what we we can do which is more resourceful, constructive and productive to the natural environment. We should be looking at the climate, environment, ecology, oceans, atmosphere, industry, society, as systems which we can help make better.

This doesn't mean we can ignore the obvious. Screwing up the oceans of the world is a bad idea, and stopping screwing them up requires positive action to avoid doing certain things, like throwing all our shit in them, warming them up and acidifying them, and overexploiting the resources which come from them.

So here's a thought: we have the brains, the information and the opportunity; let's start worrying less about where we went wrong, and more about what we're going to do to fix it.