The Elephant in the Room

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the last few days reading and getting to grips with the articles and links generated by Paul Chefurka http://www.paulchefurka.ca/  It started with a piece I discovered when trying to find some data on rates of population growth relating to  food supply: The Elephant in the Room:”  http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html

It may seem strange to be delighted to find such a clear exposition of the disaster we are facing, but the delight was from the realisation that there were lots of other people out there who think in the same way as I do. Last year I wrote a short piece trying to sum up the problem as I saw it and put it on this blog - look for  "State of the World" in September 2011, or use this link: http://morningking.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/state-of-world.html .


I posted links on Twitter and Facebook but nobody was interested.  I had a fairly good idea why nobody was interested:  there is no evolutionary need to be concerned about anything which does not affect the period between birth and the sexual maturity of our offspring - about 12 years. Now I find there is a thing called “hyperbolic discount function” which shows how good we are at rapidly responding to an immediate threat but how our interest in anything long-term rapidly falls away: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Hyperbolic%20Discount%20Functions.html

I developed these ideas in another piece which I didn’t publish:

Why do I waste my time writing arguments for carbon reduction when so many others have written with much greater authority and done far more research?

Simply because after half a lifetime of reading and discussion, I think I have a clear view of the big picture.  The so called “Green” movement has amassed libraries full of statistics and polemic.  Their arguments are rational and well thought out, but the things they say which connect with the general public at an emotional level (which is where decisions are made) are not the important central truths. Many of us love the idea of “self sufficiency”, nature conservation, growing our own food, eco houses, sustainable transport, recycling etc. Yet those same people can say that Britain needs “economic growth” to avoid “recession”.

The unfortunate thing is that the big truths are so unpalatable to most of us that expressing them sounds not just eccentric but unhinged. Here are some of them:

• Following the laws of evolution, the biggest motivator of human action is whatever enables the largest number of our children to survive to breeding age. We have no instinctive desire to provide food and resources beyond that period.
• Our present “standard of living” is based on accelerating use of energy and resources (economic growth) and is not sustainable without them.
• Our present global population owes its existence to fossil fuels and cannot survive without them.
• We cannot cut carbon emissions to levels which will prevent catastrophe and maintain anything like western levels of consumption.

Sounds pretty hopeless doesn’t it, and we all know you can’t motivate people to take action without hope. Elected politicians just want to get re-elected and won’t look more than 5 years ahead, so it’s down to us, we who care about the future and can stare into the abyss without losing hope. These are some of the ideas I cling to:

• Things will get worse before they get better. History shows us that our most adaptive behaviour is in response to crisis.
• Human ingenuity is amazingly powerful. Up to now it has been used to deliver super-abundance of resources within the 20 year time span, but faced with crisis who know what we could achieve?

It should be evident to anyone who looks at the scale of energy consumption in Britain that thinking we can replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy and carry on living the good life is pie in the sky.

The only way we can hope to cut our carbon emissions to levels which will slow down global warming is by a massive cut in energy consumption. We owe our fantastic standard of living to the burning of fossil fuels, mainly coal and oil, at a steadily expanding rate. This has been going on for so long (hundreds of years) that we regard it as normal, and economists speak of "economic growth" as if it were some kind of natural process like grass growing. Now at last we are being presented with the bill, and our politicians are trying all sorts of ingenious ways to avoid paying it.

I’ve been on the fringes of Green politics for 40 years and until recently believed fervently that we could change people’s behaviour in time to prevent catastrophe. I now believe it is too late. Things are happening too quickly. This realisation drove Paul Chafurka into three years of depression. If you look at his recent writings you will see that he has turned to a various forms of spirituality to give some meaning to life.  I certainly believe there is a place for the spiritual in all our lives, but I always come back to Voltair’s maxim “Il faut cultiver notre jardin” – we must cultivate our garden. To me this means that we find meaning in life doing the ordinary physical tasks that sustain us, but also literally that gardening is one of the best healers of the soul because it puts us in touch with our most basic needs.

Being of a very practical nature has been a mixed blessing for me. Having drifted into earning my living with my hands - being a woodworker rather than an architect – has meant earning £16 an hour rather than £60. Now I am facing being unable to do the hard physical work I love. Still, despite all this, being able to do a whole range of practical things is a much better way of dealing with a depressing global future than sitting at a desk all day thinking about it, and far better than being locked into a nonsensical economic system which regards “growth”, “progress” and “development” as its main goals.

I’ve just been watching two jackdaws pulling bits of wool out of an uncomplaining sheep to line their nests with – that’s my kind of spirituality.