Long-term Solutions to Accelerated Global Warming

At right, below "What is a Wedge?," are links to three proposed solutions to our climate emergency, the top being my low-tech and conservation-oriented plan, the next being a tech-heavy plan of a prominent scientist/politician, and the third being the inept Obama Energy Plan. If technology-dependent plans are adopted, by the time it becomes painfully obvious that they won't work, that will be too late. I feel that solutions relying heavily on technology will allow our excessively consumptive ways to carry on, and therefore are doomed to failure because we cannot continue forever on a path of endless growth on a finite planet. Most of the posts on this site explain my ideas in further detail. I think the best solution is right here: Relocalization, not Militarization.

For New Visitors to this Blog
As this is a blog that displays posts reverse-chronologically, if you are interested in starting with my first post, see the Blog Archive at right and start with Climate Change Basics. If you wish to make a comment that disagrees with the causes, or trivializes the severity, of accelerated global warming, then this is not the cyber site for you. Such comments will not be posted. To post your actions, click here.


27 July 2009

Fertile Crescent 'will disappear this century'

So on the heels of that last post, I discovered this article. And it seems so appropriate to link to it here given what I just shared. The Cradle of Civilization will be uninhabitable by 2100. The irony of this is that it may also correlate to the collapse of civilization itself. As one of my favorite authors, Derrick Jensen, states, "Forests precede us and deserts dog our heels." If there is not a massive worldwide grassroots effort to gently dismantle all these unsustainable human systems, collapse is inevitable, and if the climate scientists are right, it'll be happening this century.

No more beating around the bush on this blog.

If I ever choose to make time for it, I'll be updating some of my early posts with regards to "solutions." Since most of what I proposed will never be accepted by the politicians, and much of that was already compromising on my part, I may as well propose (and clearly explain) solutions that I truly believe in.

Will that be an effective use of my time? Probably not, but it may help me further clarify my position, which will make it easier to discuss all this when the opportunity presents itself. And will expanding a few minds prevent climate catastrophe? Very likely not. But it is a relatively easy task amidst the millions we need, and we may as well do all we can.

Brien

Being Completely Blunt

I said in my last post that I’d come to the conclusion that I can have more effect doing local work than in trying to spread the word and encourage action via the internet. And that is what I intend to do. It may take a while to immerse myself into (or more likely create) a local action group, but once I have something to share, I intend to keep this blog alive (or start a different one) for that purpose, as well as for the previously mentioned intent of sharing action alerts and letter or petition campaigns.

But I’ve also reflected upon my desire for effectiveness and realize I am once again guilty of enculturation, this time the “need” for immediate results, that old instant gratification that industrial civilization has instilled in most of us. I reminded myself that, despite the urgency of accelerated climate change, what I really want will be a long battle lasting beyond my lifespan, if it ever happens at all. The results of my work may not be evident in my lifetime, and I have to come to peace with that. But it is quite difficult to come to peace with evidence that strongly suggests that more than half the life on this planet will perish within 90 years.

What is it I want? As to the title of this post, this is what I wish to make clear: A big part of why I want to be part of a movement that asks for genuinely sane climate policy is that such a movement would actually be asking for the planned dismantling of industrial civilization. And that is exactly what I want. I can’t be more blunt than that, can I?

In an earlier post, I put forward that we all need to redefine ourselves as we redefine our culture. Here is a snippet of one of my shifts: I now define my family much more broadly than I used to. It is not just my ancestral lineage and my siblings and my wife and in-laws and a few chosen friends, my family now includes oaks, willows, buckeyes, manzanitas, great horned owls, acorn woodpeckers, bushtits, quail, meadow larks, yampah, ookow, hound's tongue, needle grass, fence lizards, rattlesnakes, centipedes, millipedes and the hundreds of other species with whom I share this landbase. In fact, as I now see it, this land would not be this land without all those species, so the creek and hills and meadows and mountains are part of my family too. I'm not claiming to be evolved by saying this, but I feel I have been slowly reclaiming my humanity through this process. This is what I wish for all humans.

A number of books have helped me on this journey and for those interested in knowing what resources furthered my commitment to rejoining the community of life, I list a few favorites below. I also list a few movies that deeply moved me.


Books

The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff

According to Jean Liedloff, the continuum concept is the idea that in order to achieve optimal physical, mental and emotional development, human beings — especially babies — require the kind of experience to which our species adapted during the long process of our evolution. For an infant, these include such experiences as...

• constant physical contact with his/her mother (or another familiar caregiver as needed) from birth, and allowed to observe (or nurse, or sleep) while the person carrying him goes about his or her business—until the infant begins creeping, then crawling on his or her own impulse, usually at six to eight months;
• sleeping in her/his parents' bed, in constant physical contact, until s/he leaves of her/his own volition (often about two years);
• breastfeeding "on cue"—nursing in response to her/his own body's signals.

While it has been over a decade since I read this book, and I only read it once, it is still a book I recommend frequently. One story from the book completely changed my world view, from one of belief that humans were innately flawed to one where they were not. I had never read about or had a relationship with pre-civilized humans before. Thus began my journey to trying to understand what it means to be human. But I didn’t realize it at the time.


Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram

This one is an astonishing explanation of our past humanity. While one chapter is quite academic and almost lost me, the remainder of the book makes for one of the most fascinating reads I’ve ever had. Abrams shows the connections between gaining an alphabet and losing our sensual connection with our physical environment and its community of life. He makes it very clear that human languages rooted in the land resulted in human cultures incapable of destroying that land, while our symbolic and abstract language and views make it far too easy to kill what we most need.


My Name is Chellis and I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendenning

Another book pointing out where we came from, and that most of our personal and societal suffering result as a loss of that connection with the natural world. She’s also a fan of Jean Liedloff and shares the same story from Continuum Concept that changed my world.


A Language Older than Words by Derrick Jensen

A very personal and powerful book about abuse, about connection with nonhumans, about our potential as humans. And so much more. This is a hard book to describe, so I’ll share this quote about it from Frances Moore Lappe:
“If any book can help us break free of this culture of denial, this is it…a book that is simultaneously horrifying and uplifting, terrifying and beautiful. I could not put it down.”


Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen

This has to be one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read. It is primarily about hate. Jensen explains, with much historical evidence, that our culture teaches us to hate ourselves, our bodies, and the natural world. Tough to swallow, I know, but read the book. You too may find you agree that most of the hatred embedded in our culture doesn’t feel like hatred at all, it feels more like patriotism, loyalty, economic necessity, responsibility, tradition, habit, or progress. This book will likely cause you to reconsider some of your deeply held beliefs.


Endgame by Derrick Jensen

This is a two volume call to action. The first book explains some of the inherent flaws of civilization, and demonstrates that it is not redeemable. His analysis is thorough and articulate, and he shatters many illusions of would-be lifestyle activists. Throughout the book, he asks the reader to find his or her own answers, and the moral arguments made are very powerful. The second book is about resistance and dismantling industrial civilization. I’ve come to realize the paralyzing effects this book had on me. It brought me new friends and spurred lots of personal growth, but I had a false hope after reading this book that took nearly two years to uncover. Nonetheless, I think it is brilliant and inspiring.


Listening to the Land by Derrick Jensen

This was an early work of Jensen and it is a compilation of interviews he had with dozens of environmentalists and writers. It is a great introduction to the biocentric perspective.


Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson

This was another worldview expanding book. It is about the way the first people of California tended to the land, and gives a painful glimpse into the past. Painful because it isn’t the distant past and because so much has been destroyed so quickly. It gave me one of the answers I was looking for: how to live appropriately here on the land. It would have been a great follow-up to Becoming Native to This Place (see below), but I read that one 5 years earlier.


One Straw Revolution by Matsunobu Fukuoka

I don’t own this book, so I won’t quote it precisely, but one of my favorite themes from this treatise on natural farming is that the goal of a farm should be to grow healthy and beautiful people, which is best accomplished by disconnecting from the dominant culture mindset and work ethic.


Becoming Native to This Place by Wes Jackson

When I came to my new home to become a homesteader in 2003, I had visions of a permaculture-type food and herb forest, an olive-lined driveway, a couple acres of grains and cucurbits, a vineyard and five intensive gardens with rotated use. I came with a vision. This book helped me see how inappropriate that vision was. It started me down the path to seeing what was already here, to understanding that this land is not good agricultural land, but it has the potential to provide abundant food, just not the kind to which I was accustomed.
Jackson applies the notion of place to a rethinking of ecological and agricultural policy in hopes that the concept of place will seep deeply into our thoughts and change the way we inhabit the world. When we think of the whole Earth on a local level as a group of loved places rather than territory or resource pools, then we will be headed in the right direction.


Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

When I finished this book, I felt there was only one really important thing to do: defend pre-civilized indigenous cultures from civilization. Of course, that was years ago, and I didn’t do it. Now I know there is lots of important work to be done, but at the core of me, I still feel this as a deeply held belief. Those few humans embody hundreds of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom and connection with the land, they are a magnificent source of sane answers to most of our societal failures. In this book, Quinn indirectly shows that through a conversation between a gorilla and a human. A fun and thought-provoking read.


The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith

I started down the path to a mostly vegetarian diet when I was in my early 20’s when I learned about how veal is created. That lead to more reading about disgusting factory farming, unfair and ecologically devastating ranching policies, and so on. By the time I was 26 I rarely ate red meat any more. Once I understood how most shrimp were caught, I gave them up too. Then, as news of fish decline increased, I nearly phased out seafood.
But I never became a purist and felt that “If the meat consumers would just eat less, making it a treat, not a norm, we’d destroy less rain forest and fragile semi-desert and preserve fisheries.” So that is what I did. I knew that the agriculture that brought me the grains and legumes and most of the fresh fruit and veggies was responsible for species extinctions and the death of millions of warm-blooded and cold-blooded individuals every year. But I still felt that, given our bad choices, a mostly vegetarian diet was most appropriate for this era. I have to admit, given the size of the human population, and the fact that billions of acres of previously destroyed land is now farm land, I still think it is worthy of consideration. But like all other facets of my lifestyle choices, which I make for my own spiritual benefit, not to “save the world,” I have to ask this question: What is the best choice for the land? (Or, in other words, as Keith puts it, which choice benefits the soil? Or yet another way: Of all the options, if none is truly positive for biodiversity, which causes the least environmental damage?) For example, when I buy food, I try to minimize the amount of products that come from far away. I try to buy organic, and local organic is best. But I’m not fooled that most of these choices are actually ones that benefit the world. The Vegetarian Myth helped me synthesize all these thoughts, and made it very clear that I do have a better choice here where I live. I eat grass fed meat regularly now. This book dissects three standard reasons for vegetarianism, and has given me much to ponder. If what Keith has uncovered is true, we should all avoid soy products and minimize our grain consumption, in effect turning the USDA food pyramid on its head. The evidence she cites is convincing. Plus, this book is very anti-civ, so the perspective resonates with me. I’m curious to hear what others think!


Running on Emptiness by John Zerzan

Zerzan assumes a lot of his readers, and if you aren’t already somewhat anti-civ, this may be difficult to digest. This collection of essays succinctly captures the “pathology of civilization.” So what can you do with this information? Use it to free you mind, and in so doing, find a glimpse of a freedom that civilized people have long forgotten.


Burning All Illusions by David Edwards

This was a great wake-up for me, making clear that so many of my deeply held beliefs were all part of the illusions of civilization. Illusions? What is more real, a dollar bill or a tree? One is a concept carried out through faith in a human-made system, the other is an integrated and integral part of a living community sharing billions of connections. You won’t find this kind of discussion in this book, but reading it may make you have these kinds of thoughts! Thanks to Andrew for gifting me this book years ago!


Original Wisdom by Robert Wolff

If you are curious what I mean when I talk about regaining my humanity, this book provides a fantastic view into the world of pre-industrial people, who have no need for jobs or electricity or useless gadgetry like the the alphabet! Highly recommended!



Movies

What a Way to Go
Blind Spot
Koyanisqatsi
Earth and the American Dream