It is clear, it is odorless, it is tasteless, it is a total benefit, thousands of research papers that have been written on the benefits of additional carbon dioxide.
(Leighton Steward, lobbyist and retired Texas oil man)
We are not a very deep thinking population.
(Wally Broecker, Columbia University geochemistry professor)
Bill McKibben and the journalist Chris Hedges had a debate of sorts recently.
McKibben of course has turned the number (350) into a worldwide movement. He believes that getting carbon emissions below 350 parts per million should be our overriding priority.
Chris Hedges, while not disagreeing on the importance of reducing carbon emissions, thinks we must first defeat corporate power, otherwise nothing is really going to change, at least in a time frame where we might begin to slow down or reverse some of the damage.
It is, according to Hedges, our outmoded industrial infrastructure that is destroying the planet. The problem is that we probably don't have the luxury of endlessly debating the either-or at this point in time. So what is it going to take to see things differently?
In the U.S. we Americans may have developed an especially interesting form of national “schizophrenia.” I noticed with interest, as a resident of Missouri, that the Missouri Farm Bureau is asking farmers to vote against the climate and energy bill, even though Congress does not have a solid bill ready to debate let alone vote on.
Of course, farmers are well aware that heat waves hinder growth and yield, the quality of grazing land will decline, and weeds, disease, and insect pests benefit from warming.
And we haven't even mentioned the issue of water, especially important as we move westward across the country toward California. No, most of us really don't want to be inconvenienced, make significant changes or give up our “special” considerations.
I will from time to time turn to Wendell Berry's writings when I want to to find some understanding about what sustainable living means, in a world that is anything but sustainable.
It was an article Berry wrote in 2008, published in Harper's magazine, and entitled “Faustian Economics” that I recently read. It ended up being included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009.
In his article Berry speaks about our “assumed limitlessness,” which is of course a colossal human fantasy. In Berry's view Americans tend to mix up limits with the idea of confinement, especially unpalatable to even those who have never seen anything remotely resembling the “open spaces.” We are a people with a grand vision of what the world ought to look like, especially for us.
What we now need, in Berry's opinion, is a science and technology that develops something new, a methodology of limits, that will likely be both natural and human. We are about to reach the brick wall where we shall see the “end of our customary delusions of 'more'.” We ought to begin now; it will be less painful if we do.
We are really after the art of living, which is what we're going to have to put in place. Some of the components will likely come from a nearly forgotten past.
Speaking of delusions and how painful they may end up becoming in what we call the “real” world, I came across an article in businessGreen, about a joint US-Chinese venture that will construct a large wind farm in Governor Rick Perry's “we gonna secede” Texas.
The essential and critical question this article raises is who will be the world leaders in designing, manufacturing, and putting together the financing for the new energy technology? Drill-baby-drill is a nice slogan for smiling fifth graders but not a plan for a first world nation. See China to supply turbines and funding for $1.5bn Texas wind farm.
Of course our delusions may ultimately be just too difficult to overcome. But that is hardly a reason not to push hard to make the necessary and difficult changes.
It seems to me it will have to come down to the creation, in one form or another, of the development of resilient communities of various kinds, which is beginning right now across the planet.
I think Wendell Berry and others are probably right when they speak of “natural” ecosystems, and our ability to learn the “arts” of agriculture, animal husbandry, and forestry.
Of course much of this will be relearning and becoming part of the world around us, not separate from it. No, it is not the creation of some idealized hippie commune of the 1960s, but the development of viable and sustainable living for all of us.
Carolyn Steel, an architect and food urbanist, wants us to reconsider food as a “fundamental organizing principal.” She's pointed out that we are today as dependent on the natural world as our ancestors were, even though the connection may be hardly understood in the 21st century. Time is not on our side.
For some additional information see Introduction to Permaculture: Concepts and Resources.
And an article that was e-mailed to me, written by the co-founder and director of the Organic Consumers. See The Organic Revolution: How We Can Stop Global Warming.
