What Are Our Options?

Computational scientist Stephen Emmott's Humans: the real threat to life on Earth presents us with an exercise worth going through (reprinted at The Guardian, June 29, 2013).

Most of the essay supports the contention that human overshoot on this planet is creating some serious problems. There's lots of stuff like this—

We are going to have to triple – at least – energy production by the end of this century to meet expected demand. To meet that demand, we will need to build, roughly speaking, something like: 1,800 of the world's largest dams, or 23,000 nuclear power stations, 14m wind turbines, 36bn solar panels, or just keep going with predominantly oil, coal and gas – and build the 36,000 new power stations that means we will need. Our existing oil, coal and gas reserves alone are worth trillions of dollars. Are governments and the world's major oil, coal and gas companies – some of the most influential corporations on Earth – really going to decide to leave the money in the ground, as demand for energy increases relentlessly? I doubt it.

Although Emmott can not bring himself to say it, the only possible conclusion we can come to after reading this is that the "expected demand" will never come to pass because there are almost certainly limits to growth in energy production. As for leaving fossil fuels in the ground, that will not happen, but it doesn't matter either way if you're thinking we could triple energy production by 2100. That's not gonna happen.

So forget about that. The interesting part starts here, a little over halfway through.

Every which way you look at it, a planet of 10 billion looks like a nightmare.  

What, then, are our options?

Now the serious confusion begins.

The only solution left to us is to change our behaviour, radically and globally, on every level.

In short, we urgently need to consume less. A lot less. Radically less. And we need to conserve more. A lot more. To accomplish such a radical change in behaviour would also need radical government action. But as far as this kind of change is concerned, politicians are currently part of the problem, not part of the solution, because the decisions that need to be taken to implement significant behaviour change inevitably make politicians very unpopular – as they are all too aware.

So what politicians have opted for instead is failed diplomacy. For example: The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose job it has been for 20 years to ensure the stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere: Failed. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification, whose job it's been for 20 years to stop land degrading and becoming desert: Failed. The Convention on Biological Diversity, whose job it's been for 20 years to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss: Failed.

Those are only three examples of failed global initiatives. The list is a depressingly long one...

Emmott's premise—humans need to change their behavior at every level—is certainly correct. But now this computational scientist adds 2 + 2 and gets 5. He separates the politicians from The People and then blames the former.

And the way governments justify this level of inaction is by exploiting public opinion and scientific uncertainty. It used to be a case of, "We need to wait for science to prove climate change is happening". This is now beyond doubt. So now it's, "We need to wait for scientists to be able to tell us what the impact will be and the costs". And, "We need to wait for public opinion to get behind action". But climate models will never be free from uncertainties. And as for public opinion, politicians feel remarkably free to ignore it when it suits them – wars, bankers' bonuses and healthcare reforms, to give just three examples.

What politicians and governments say about their commitment to tackling climate change is completely different from what they are doing about it.

Let's sort this confusion out. On the one hand, Emmott says politicians don't make decisions to enforce behavioral changes because doing so would "inevitably make politicians very unpopular." Damn right, because ultimately, at bottom, politicians do not want to make significant changes in their own behavior and neither do The People. Thus the best policy is to do nothing. Wisely heeding the example of Marie Antoinette, politicans get to keep their heads. Win-win!

On the other hand, contradicting himself, Embeth says that "politicians feel remarkably free to ignore [popular opinion] when it suits them." This is also correct, but "wars, banker's bonuses and healthcare reforms" do not require The People (or the politicians whose palms have been greased) to change their behavior.

In short, there's nothing new about fucking other people over. What would be new, a genuine novelty, in the Human Condition would be if people stopped fucking other people over. "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun," said the unknown author of Ecclesiastes.

So, what's the key here? It's very simple. It's not that humans don't want to change their behavior. Emmott is confused on this point, and this muddle is ultimately the source of all his confusion. 

The behavioural changes that are required of us are so fundamental that no one wants to make them. What are they? We need to consume less. A lot less. Less food, less energy, less stuff. Fewer cars, electric cars, cotton T-shirts, laptops, mobile phone upgrades. Far fewer. And here it is worth pointing out that "we" refers to the people who live in the west and the north of the globe...

No, humans can not change their fundamental behaviors. I've made this simple point over and over again on DOTE but humans generally are not willing to acknowledge their animal (deterministic) nature. Neither is Emmott willing to face it head on. All wisdom starts there. Here is what I said recently on this point in Psychotherapy For Homo Sapiens.

Psychotherapy was an excellent idea—actually, the best idea humankind ever had—but generally it was a failure because humans simply can not or refuse to bring their characteristic behavior patterns (like 1,2,3 above) into consciousness, regardless of whether those behaviors are idiosyncratic or instinctual. Hell, humans can not or refuse to acknowledge the very existence of the unconscious mind. Humans think that tiny, feckless awareness of theirs (the overrated Ego) is running the show!

Viewed that way, DOTE can also be seen as psychotherapy for Homo sapiens. Again, that is not what I've been trying to do on this blog because that's an impossible task. I have described that impossibility generally by saying Homo sapiens is a species—what you see is what you get. That also implies that past human behavior is a reliable guide to future human behavior.

All of Emmott's confusion would disappear if he would acknowledge the painful, depressing fact that humans are what they are, and therefore are going to do what they do (and have always done) in these large, fundamental matters (e.g. growth and consumption). But if Emmott had acknowledged this painful fact, The Guardian would not have printed a summary of his recent book Ten Billion. So we get ridiculous stuff like this.

I confess I used to find it amusing, but I am now sick of reading in the weekend papers about some celebrity saying, "I gave up my 4×4 and now I've bought a Prius. Aren't I doing my bit for the environment?" They are not doing their bit for the environment.

But it's not their fault. The fact is that they – we – are not being well informed. And that's part of the problem. We're not getting the information we need. The scale and the nature of the problem is simply not being communicated to us. And when we are advised to do something, it barely makes a dent in the problem.

Oh, my! People are not making the necessary behavioral changes because they are not being well informed?

I hope you can see just how silly this diagnosis of our "problem" is in light of what Emmott himself and I have said here.

And by the way, DOTE readers are among the best informed people on Earth. That is an obligation I took on when I started this blog.

Now watch this short film on Homo sapiens. At least the Human Condition has entertainment value. That's something.

This splendid video starts after 16 seconds and continues until about the 3:15 mark.

 

Comments

[Ken Barrows]

Maintaining lifestyle is more important than avoiding eventual (near) extinction. It is so much more important that we'll deny we're headed toward collapse. After all, we humans are very special: we're rationalizers. Name me another species that can do that!