Climate change as – at best – a secondary issue

Posted on July 1, 2009 by Elizaphanian

Climate change (and Peak Oil) are two symptoms of a much deeper problem, the Limits to Growth. That problem can be simply stated: in a finite environment, the exponential growth of one element within that environment is unsustainable. Our western industrial capitalist system has been growing exponentially for some two hundred and fifty years – accelerating over the last sixty or so – and this is unsustainable; in other words, it will come to an end. I believe that it will come to an end over the next twenty or thirty years or so, not by our own conscious choice but because we have gone into ‘overshoot’ and we are presently crashing into the wall at 100mph.

The original Limits to Growth report outlined the various problems that would manifest themselves and cause the system to break down: resource limits, pollution, overpopulation etc. These can all be understood as symptoms of the underlying problem, the idolatry of growth. Peak Oil, for example, is only one example of a resource constraint; other fossil fuels (and uranium) also go through a peaking cycle, but there are also very significant issues related to the availability of potable water, fish stocks and many others. Climate change is one form of pollution, but again there are others, less global but no less significant for those affected by them.

With all of these single issues it is possible to address and solve that particular issue. The force of the Limits to Growth argument is that even when one is solved, the others then become more acute. In other words, there is a systemic issue to be addressed: we need to tackle the root problem of growth itself; we need to shift to a steady-state economy. If this is done then all the subsidiary problems will be dealt with. Even if climate change is true, and – marvellously! – action is taken to address the problem and it is “solved” – the underlying issue remains. The same applies to the problem of Peak Oil. All it would mean is that we have dodged one bullet; if we don’t address the root causes then we will simply have to keep dodging more and more as time goes on, until one day one hits us and kills us.

Sometimes, I have the sense those who advocate radical action to deal with climate change miss this bigger picture (that’s certainly true of any politician who talks about climate change whilst also talking about ‘growth’ for example). The risk is two-fold: first, that the wider issues fail to be addressed through an over-emphasis upon one subsidiary aspect; second, that if too much weight is placed on climate change as the dominant problem – and it turns out that the issue is either false or not as bad as presently thought – then not only will effort have been wasted but those who may have been persuaded to address important problems on the back of climate change will become disillusioned and sceptical about the wider issues as a whole.

More fundamentally, as a Christian, my concern is with the habits of life that are bound up with the ideology of growth; the systematic cultivation of deadly sins by the advertising industry, for example. The problem of growth is, at root, a spiritual problem; it is a dislocation of our values, a distortion of our human nature. That is what the church needs to address – our human sinfulness which gives rise to these problems. We must be wary of jumping on particular band-wagons, stick to what we know best, and do the job that Jesus commanded us to do, remembering that “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
(2 Chron 7.13-14)

A few thoughts about Climate Change and Peak Oil

Posted on June 30, 2009 by Elizaphanian

Al sent me a copy of the latest IPCC summary which includes this quote: “More importantly, the IPCC concluded that there is over 90% probability that this global warming is primarily caused by human activities”; Al asked me “Could you agree to that? How many % would you say?”

I initially said my answers were ‘No’ and ‘I don’t know’. However, on the latter, I would now suggest that the answer is ‘less than 30%’ (because of this and associated research).

Of course, I’m not a climate scientist so my opinion isn’t worth much. What I would say, however, is that – as an interested layman – the quality of the science related to climate change seems much less robust than the science related to the problem of Peak Oil.

With oil, for example, the core science related to the development of an oil-field is extremely well understood and has proven robust in oil-fields in various unrelated countries worldwide over many decades. It is, after all, the science that the oil companies use when considering what flow of resource might be generated from particular prospects. Moreover, the phenomenon of ‘peaking’ has proven universal at the individual well, wider field, regional and continental scales (the only one not yet proven is precisely the world-wide scale – hence the problem). There is no need to rely on ‘models’ in exploring the question of Peak Oil – historical data and common sense are sufficient.

None of this applies to the issue of climate change. Not only is there a large amount of guesstimating judgement necessary (= ‘computer models’ and the GIGO principle) but the observable data themselves don’t match up (eg the decline in temperatures over the last decade, vis-a-vis the increased output of carbon). Obviously the situation is ‘very complex’ – the atmosphere is a complex system – but that is precisely my point. The science is not yet hard enough to be robust, and therefore a dependable basis for public policy.

In addition to this, real world concerns render – to my mind – the climate change debate academic. Firstly, the IPCC reports hugely overestimate the amount of fossil fuels available; secondly, they ignore the negative feedback cycle that will kick in in terms of recession/depression. In other words, most of what the politicians and activists seek in terms of a rapid and drastic reduction in carbon emissions will be achieved no matter what, as a result of the peaking of fossil fuel production.

So in most cases (eg investment in windmills, changing lifestyles to pursue green transport options etc) the desirable way forward is the same for coping with Peak Oil as with climate change. The differences come at the margin, eg the costs of carbon capture (clean coal) which seems a bit pointless to me. Lomborg is very good on this – more lives will be saved by investing in clean water than scrubbing power station emissions. So, basically, I’m an agnostic-shading-to-sceptic on climate change, and I see it as a distraction from more urgent problems.

Does that answer your questions Al?

TBTM20090626

Posted on June 26, 2009 by Elizaphanian

The Long Descent (John Michael Greer)

Posted on June 21, 2009 by Elizaphanian

I bought this as soon as it was published, as I am a fan of Greer’s blog, but I hadn’t had the space to read it with any justice until last week. Summary impression: excellent, highly recommended, one of the best peak oil books, etc etc; it’s also one of the few books I’ve read on Peak Oil which starts to treat some of the spiritual aspects with any seriousness (indeed the book I hope to finish on my sabbatical is in some ways a Christian equivalent of this), and, other than a forgiveable equation of Christianity with it’s North American instantiation, he says a lot of good things on the spiritual side.

However, I do have some minor disagreements, the most important of which is that Greer holds out no hope for a high-technology future. To my mind, given the existing expenditure on infrastructure, there is no necessary reason why (in, obviously, a much reduced form) some sort of internet, for example, couldn’t be maintained indefinitely. I take the point that, eg, clean rooms for the manufacturing of chips will become virtually impossible to sustain, but I see no reason why, once the changed context is understood, the industry couldn’t make a laptop which would last for fifty or a hundred years without needing any maintenance. In other words, I think the sustainable point on the far side of Hubbert’s curve is higher up the technological scale than Greer anticipates. I suspect that there is a spiritual judgement hovering behind this; I think we’d agree that the true outcome would surprise us both.

How about this for the outline of a novel, a sort of cross between Canticle for Liebowitz and The Road (and could easily be Joseph-Campbellised): peasant boy with talent is commissioned by monastery for a task – take this book to the monks at [High Monastery in the Mountain]; boy goes through various adventures to get to High Monastery; arrives, is asked to accompany the monk into their ‘chapel’ – has to put on pure white robes – astonishingly bright white light – watches as his ‘book’ is repaired. Of course, the contemporary reader can understand that this is a laptop being repaired in the sole remaining ‘clean room’ in the entire US continent, but that needn’t be spelt out explicitly.