US abandons 2ºC target? No, but it's still almost impossible under current assumptions

UPDATE: It seems my original headline and intro jumped the gun, at least on official US policy, relying on a secondhand and partial reading of the speech in question. My apologies. The rest of the post still holds and the paralysis of the US political system remains one of the largest roadblocks to any reasonable climate outcome.

The Obama administration has now abandoned the one piece of significant agreement to have come out of seventeen rounds of international climate negotiations, namely, the idea that the world was committed to aiming to keep warming below 2ºC. This temperature rise refers to the global average surface temperature's rise above pre-industrial levels* and covers a wide range of actual average temperature changes (and an even wider range of changes in temperature extremes) in various locations.
*Some documents use other baselines, such as the "climatological period" i.e. 1950-80, or even more recent periods of three decades. It is important to note whether a given temperature rise is based on pre-industrial baseline or a more recent one. Since temperatures rose by around 0.5ºC between the pre-industrial period and 1950-80 (and more since then), then discussions of future rises need to be adjusted accordingly. International negotiations have generally used the pre-industrial period as a baseline, even though the precise global temperature figures are a little sketchier.

The idea that 2ºC is a "safe" guardrail has a complex history, but it is fair to say that more recent climate science has shifted our understanding of just how dangerous 2ºC is. The expected impacts that were thought to arrive at 2ºC back when it was first established as something of a de facto line in the sand between safe and dangerous climate change are now expected to arrive much sooner, at somewhere between 1 and 1.5ºC. So if the developing consensus ten or fifteen years ago was that impacts associated with 2ºC were a valid danger limit, then really, if we are going to be honest and keep our judgements about what is dangerous, we ought to think that anything much above 1ºC is dangerous.

Unfortunately, going well beyond 1ºC is already guaranteed due to inertia in the climate system. What the US has now publicly acknowledged is what has been widely known for years - that inertia in the political and economic system has rendered 2ºC impossible within current economic and political assumptions.**
**The extent to which decades of failure from US leadership on this issue has rendered such a target politically impossible ought not to be underestimated. Despite featuring prominently in his campaign and inauguration, since coming into office, Obama has barely mentioned it and now puts out ads in support of coal.

To this, I say, "so much the worse for those assumptions". But the status quo would not be the status quo if it didn't try to protect itself from having to change. Unfortunately, climate change by definition rules out the possibility of no change. Our current trajectory is inherently unsutainable, which doesn't mean that polar bears are threatened by it, it simply means it will be not be sustained. Something must give. I would rather that be our political and economic assumptions than the habitability of the planet for as many generations as we can imagine.

We are on track for 4ºC if all nations stick to their current aspirational targets, and something more like 6ºC on our current trajectory, according to the normally conservative IEA. Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change in Britain, says that a rise of four degrees would likely be "incompatible with organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems and has a high probability of not being stable (i.e. 4°C would be an interim temperature on the way to a much higher equilibrium level)." No one really knows what six degrees would mean, though sober-minder scientists start discussing human extinction as more than a theoretical possibility.

So, who's happy with six degrees? No takers? What about four degrees? Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Chair of the German Scientific Advisory Council, advisor to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) was quoted back in March 2009, saying that on a four degree world the planet’s "carrying capacity estimates [are] below one billion people." So, who's happy to retain our present political and economic assumptions that make 2ºC seem impossible?

Basically, even with our best efforts, on the most optimistic path possible, we are in serious trouble. Facing these realities means shock, grief, fear, anger, guilt and feelings of helplessness. But until we face our situation honestly, we're living a lie. So let us be honest, grieve and then find reasons to fight even a losing battle.

Why bother? On fighting a losing battle

"It is, perhaps, the greatest failure of collective leadership since the first world war. The Earth's living systems are collapsing, and the leaders of some of the most powerful nations – the United States, the UK, Germany, Russia – could not even be bothered to turn up and discuss it. Those who did attend the Earth summit in Rio last week solemnly agreed to keep stoking the destructive fires: sixteen times in their text they pledged to pursue "sustained growth", the primary cause of the biosphere's losses.

"The efforts of governments are concentrated not on defending the living Earth from destruction, but on defending the machine that is destroying it. Whenever consumer capitalism becomes snarled up by its own contradictions, governments scramble to mend the machine, to ensure – though it consumes the conditions that sustain our lives – that it runs faster than ever before.

"The thought that it might be the wrong machine, pursuing the wrong task, cannot even be voiced in mainstream politics."

- George Monbiot, After Rio, we know. Governments have given up on the planet.

George Monbiot reflects upon the outcomes of the recent Rio+20 conference, indeed upon the whole sweep of international negotiations since the first Rio conference, and reaches a healthy degree of pessimism. Our present political system is, apparently, incapable of performing the kind of deliberation required to implement policies consistent with its continuation beyond a fairly short timeframe. This much is not particularly news, though the failures at Rio only underscore the tragedy of our present situation.

However, I'd like to highlight the closing paragraphs of Monbiot's piece, where he turns to the question of giving up.

"Some people will respond by giving up, or at least withdrawing from political action. Why, they will ask, should we bother, if the inevitable destination is the loss of so much of what we hold dear: the forests, the brooks, the wetlands, the coral reefs, the sea ice, the glaciers, the birdsong and the night chorus, the soft and steady climate which has treated us kindly for so long? It seems to me that there are at least three reasons.

"The first is to draw out the losses over as long a period as possible, in order to allow our children and grandchildren to experience something of the wonder and delight in the natural world and of the peaceful, unharried lives with which we have been blessed. Is that not a worthy aim, even if there were no other?

"The second is to preserve what we can in the hope that conditions might change. I do not believe that the planet-eating machine, maintained by an army of mechanics, oiled by constant injections of public money, will collapse before the living systems on which it feeds. But I might be wrong. Would it not be a terrible waste to allow the tiger, the rhinoceros, the bluefin tuna, the queen's executioner beetle and the scabious cuckoo bee, the hotlips fungus and the fountain anenome to disappear without a fight if this period of intense exploitation turns out to be a brief one?

"The third is that, while we may have no influence over decisions made elsewhere, there is plenty that can be done within our own borders."

If we compare these reasons with the motivations of someone facing terminal illness, we find some parallels. Why continue any form of treatment when the result will still be death?

First, because sometimes, extending life is worth the effort. There are limits to how far this stretches, but particularly where there are still opportunities to bless and be blessed by others, then the pursuit of a longer life can be a faithful response. I think this is an important perspective, since, in the long run, a warming sun will see the end of all life on earth (perhaps in a few hundred more million years) and indeed entropy will ultimately see the heat death of the universe, making all efforts at sustainability ultimately contingent and temporary. Whether we manage to extend something like the present ecological order for another ten, hundred or thousand years can't hide the fact that change will come. But relative gains still matter. I may be certain of my own death within fewer decades than I have fingers, but I'm still willing to do things that make it more likely that I get onto my second hand, or even onto my second digit.

Second, because one never knows. Perhaps a miraculous remission may materialise after all and the terminal diagnosis turn out to be incorrect, despite all the odds. There are no guarantees of such an outcome, but the possibility remains open. If a cancer patient may hope for the sudden collapse of the tumour that threatens the life of the body, Monbiot is here hoping for the sudden collapse of the machine that threatens the natural world on which it relies. What would it look like for the machine of consumer capitalism to collapse before the collapse of natural systems? Is this an outcome that can be actively pursued or simply hoped for? Obviously, when talking about an politico-economic-cultural system, for it to collapse raises the question of what replaces it. Whether you think there are genuine alternatives that can be realistically implemented on pathways that maintain human flourishing without massive and violent disruption will largely determine whether you are a bright or dark green.

Third, because I might not be able to win the war, but battles can still be won or lost. I might be doomed to die, but symptoms can be treated. Monbiot goes on to speak of re-wilding as a strategy that can be feasibly pursued at a national or sub-national level even in the absence of international agreements. And perhaps there is value in such a move. But his three points leave me wondering: can these be extended? Are there more reasons to keep going, even when to all appearances it looks like a losing battle? I can think of three more.

a) It is the right thing to do. Even if unsuccessful in averting global tragedy, to live in ways that individually and communally show respect for the community of creation and acknowledge our finitude are simply to live in line with the truth about ourselves. Whatever the outcome, to live honestly is to live rightly.

b) The way of the cross is the way of light. Faced with suffering and difficulty, the Christian is called not to shrink back in self-protection, but to walk forward in obedient trust, seeking to love and care even where this comes at personal cost, based on a hope in the God who judges justly. We are not to conform to the pattern of the world - neither its hyper-consumption nor its catastrophist resentment - but to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. What does it look like to deny myself and take up my cross in a world threatened by converging ecological crises? The answer will be complex, though some of the first steps are clear enough.

c) We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Hope for the renewal of all things is not a get out of gaol free card that justifies a life of selfish indulgence, but a summons to live in the light of the future. If God refuses to abandon his good creation, neither can we.

UPDATE: Reposted at Ethos.

Confirmation bias: why I am suspicious of "good" news

The link between poverty and the dangers of our ecological predicament is an important one. Not only are those least responsible for causing the threat already (in general) suffering the early effects, they will (in general) be more vulnerable to worsening climate and ecological impacts. When we add in future generations and other species, then we have three groups who contribution is negligible or even zero but who are very likely to face the most severe effects. The temptation to motivated reasoning that justifies our present behaviours and cultural assumption needs to keep these groups firmly in mind if we are to assess our responsibilities honestly.

One important form of motivated reasoning in this context is confirmation bias, which is a well-established psychological pattern in which we evaluate new experiences and claims through our existing assumptions, preferences and convictions. We all tend to give greater weight to experiences and evidence that confirms what we already believe, rather than those things that disconfirm it, hence we all have a bias towards confirmation.

Particularly for those of us who are rich and comfortable (by global standards) or who hold a belief that we ought to be and/or can soon be, then we have a preference for things to stay as they are (more or less), or at least not to change too quickly. We don't want scientific results that imply doom and gloom to be true, particularly if they also imply our responsible for such outcomes and/or the possibility of mitigating the threat through modifying our habits and assumptions. We are likely to latch onto experiences and claims that help to confirm that preference and to pay less attention to experiences and claims that challenge it.

This is a moral temptation involving our perception of the world. If it is the case that gross injustices exist all around us, and that climate and ecological crises are very likely to contribute to exacerbating them in various ways, then we can be tempted to downplay the moral importance of this information. This might be by denying the science, by saying that we can't do anything about it, by saying that we should focus on a more narrowly defined set of moral concerns (e.g. purely national interest, or perhaps what is directly relevant for me and my family), by claiming that technology will rescue us from any bad consequences and so on. I would argue that part of Christian discipleship is learning to resist such temptations in order to keep having the horizon of our moral vision, to keep discovering that we are neighbours even to those who might not initially appear to be one of "us". The three groups I mentioned - the global poor, future generations and other species - each challenge us to expand the margins of our moral community, to discover neighbours we didn't realise we had. By focussing on what climate change and ecological degradation means and will mean for these groups, whose moral position is most devastatingly unfair, we can seek to foster a deeper and broader empathy and so nurture a richer moral imagination, capable of seeing more clearly the world through the eyes of others.

Asking "what's in it for me?" or "how am I threatened by climate change?" may, depending on one's ability and willingness to look carefully at the implications of the science, produce apathy, or fear and anxiety, or greed, opportunism and tokenism. But asking, "what are the implications for my neighbour, particularly those most vulnerable?" will lead in a very different direction, to a deep concern for others whose present and future flourishing is deeply dependent upon the choices we make yet whose ability to benefit us (at least in ways that generally enter into calculative reason of cost-benefit analyses) is severely limited.

In short, I believe that our climate and ecological crises are manifestations in the social and ecological realms of the visible and outward costs of the idolatry of consumerism and the hubris that sees humanity as exercising mastery over all things, rather than fulfilling the Genesis mandate in the pattern of Christ's rule: by being the servant of all. If this is true, then the temptation to read our predicament as something less than a spiritual crisis will be strong, since we don't like to confront evidence of our own moral failures. We want to believe that it is not as bad as all that, that the danger is still far off, that we are really helpless and bear no responsibility, that we'll find some techno-fix to ensure we don't need to look inside our hearts to see the pollution spreading within that is the root of the pollution without: the physical pollution we breathe and drink and eat and which is presently dissolving the bonds of the community of life.

Of course, it is possible that it is not as bad as all that, that the risk is less imminent than the science suggests, there we truly are impotent in the face of calamity, that a silver bullet (or silver buckshot) wonder technology (or suite of technologies and economic policies) will mean we can keep on going more or less as we are without challenging consumerism. But because we really *want* these things to be true, we ought to be especially suspicious of claims and experiences that encourage us to hold them, constantly testing whether we might be engaged in wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, confirmation bias. Instead, as Christians shaped by the knowledge that faithfulness means constant repentance (our daily bread is confession and reception of forgiveness as much as any wheat-based product), we ought to hold an epistemology that expects true knowledge of the world will frequently reveal us to be in the wrong and in need of repentance and forgiveness.

Of course, this is not an exhaustive account, and it is important to acknowledge that prior to fallenness comes divine blessing on human participation in naming and understanding a good world. I offer no council of epistemological despair or unending scepticism. The suspicion of which I speak serves a positive purpose in service of neighbour and represents a modulation of God's "yes" to the created order, not a displacement of it by a mistrustful "no".

Nonetheless, we walk in the path of one who warned that following him would mean denial of self and carrying a cross. Anything that suggests the path of faithfulness requires the defence of my material prosperity, ease and luxury needs to be double and triple checked. There is no route to resurrection that does not involve mortification.

I am therefore suspicious of pieces of "good news" that purport to minimise our responsibility or the gravity of our situation. Sometimes, they may well be true, but the good news is that following a crucified and risen Lord means being able to look at my and our failings honestly, confident in the knowledge that they are already forgiven, that I am already being empowered to walk a new path, one that is honest and life-giving.

Rowling on the fringe benefits of failure

“As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.”

- Seneca

J. K. Rowling recently delivered the commencement address at Harvard University to a group of new graduates. Even if you are not a Harry Potter fan, it may well be worth twenty minutes of your time.

“Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. [...] I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was. [...] I was set free because my greatest fear had been realised. [...] Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. [...] It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”

Rowling's reflections upon her failures are funny and insightful. She tries to avoid the trivialisation and triumphalism of much self-help discourse in which failures are turned into success-in-disguise. She is willing to learn from her mistakes, but doesn't feel the need to treat them as anything but mistakes.
H/T Lis.

Faithfulness is failure (or looks like it)

As the world sees it, action which is faithful to God will always fail, just as Jesus Christ necessarily went to the cross. Such action always leads to a dead end. It is always a fiasco from the standpoint of worldly power. But this should not worry us. It does not mean that our action is in truth ineffectual. Efficacy measured in terms of faithfulness cannot be compared at any point with efficacy measured in terms of success. [...] The action we attempt will always be regarded by the world as a failure, and the more so the more it is authentically faithful. We cannot be successful or show the church to be effective in the world unless we adopt the world's criterion of efficacy, which means adopting its means as well."

- Jacques Ellul, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man
(trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley; Eerdmans, 1972 [1966]), 140.

Is this a profound insight into an age of frustration, in which the church lives in hope of the promise, that is, by faith not by sight? Or is it an excuse for failure?
Ten points for the name of the bay.

Running from the past: Breakfast with Jesus IX

An Easter sermon from John 21: part IX
Conclusion
“We might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.” Perhaps you might feel a little like Simon. You started well, full of hope and promise. You wanted to follow Jesus wherever that path might have led. Maybe it was even exciting for a while, but after a failure, or a series of little disappointments, you’ve decided it makes more sense to return to ‘normal’ life, to focus on financial security or seeking a sense of personal fulfilment. Maybe you still come to church occasionally, or even fairly regularly, but inside you’re somewhere else.

In any case, your life that was once filled with hope and promise now feels compromised, complicated, tarnished and tangled. There are parts of it you’ve tried to jettison or hide, relationships you’ve attempted to abandon. You want to be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with you. What are you running from? What have you tried to sweep under the carpet?

Jesus waits on the shore, ready to provide abundantly. He will give us a new start, but not an easy amnesia. The only new start possible involves the scary necessity of learning to see ourselves as we truly are in all our brokenness, all our need, all our failures and squandered opportunities. Seeing ourselves as we are and finding that even that, no matter how bad, doesn’t stop the cleansing flow of Jesus’ love. He will not take away our pain, sorrow and guilt, but he will take it and re-make it into something beautiful. He will not simply accept us, but he will make us new, starting a lifelong process of renovation and healing. He will not throw out all the broken pieces of our lives, but slowly put them together again as they were always meant to be. He doesn’t need rock solid faithful followers who have purged their lives of all problems; he invites us to share all we are, to come with our frailty and sickness and sorrow.

So jump out of the boat. It begins this morning. We will confess our failures, our brokenness, our need. I acknowledge that my past is my past and hear God’s free acceptance. We receive Jesus’ gift, his body and blood given for us, with empty hands. We eat and share in his life.

And we are not left passive. No, the good shepherd invites us to join him in his own most important and delightful and difficult task: caring for one another. So jump out of the boat. Come and eat with the risen Jesus.

Jesus,
We are running and scared. Chase us with your love.
We are in denial and avoidance. Confront us with your truth.
We are hurt and broken. Heal us with your mercy.
We are hungry for life. Feed us with your body and blood.
Amen.

Series: I; II: III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX.

Running from the past: Breakfast with Jesus VII

An Easter sermon from John 21: part VII
In the presence of the gracious and risen Jesus, Simon Peter is able to recognise himself as betrayer and to acknowledge the past that he can’t escape. Jesus’ forgiveness takes the form of an invitation, a summons, to re-enter the life of loving service that he had fallen from. Not to just go back as if it never happened, but to learn from that past and grow into the ongoing purposes of God for his future.

“Simon has to recognise himself as betrayer: that is part of the past that makes him who he is. If he is to be called again, if he can again become a true apostle, the ‘Peter’ that he is in the purpose of Jesus rather than the Simon who runs back into the cosy obscurity of ‘ordinary’ life, his failure must be assimilated, lived through again and brought to good and not to destructive issue. [...] Simon is still, in the eyes of God, Peter. What he has to learn is that his betrayal does not make God betray, so that his calling as Peter, as rock of the apostolic faith, is still there, waiting to be lived out.”

- Rowan Williams, Resurrection, 28-29.

Jesus won’t let him return to the anaesthetised pain of being a failed apostle; instead, he calls him to move forward, to say “yes, I failed, but in God’s creative grace, that very failure can become something the start of something beautiful and worthwhile.”

“Peter’s fellowship with the Lord is not over, not ruined, it still exists and is alive because Jesus invites him to explore it further. […] To know that Jesus still invites is to know that he accepts, forgives, bears and absorbs the hurt done.”

- Rowan Williams, Resurrection, 30.

Peter’s personal story of initial hope and promise, followed by betrayal and emptiness, is to have a further chapter: a new and deeper calling as forgiven apostle; as a rock that has been broken and re-made. He is now able to be not simply Simon the failure nor Peter the unshakable apostle, but Simon Peter, the preacher of our second reading in Acts, the preacher of a forgiveness and divine love that takes us where we are and uses us and all of our history, if we will only bring it all before the loving scrutiny of Jesus. He will still make mistakes, even serious ones (you can read about one of them in Galatians 2), but the risen Jesus makes it possible for us to face failure.
Series: I; II: III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX.

Running from the past: Breakfast with Jesus VI

An Easter sermon from John 21: part VI
But let’s keep our attention on Simon Peter. The charcoal fire on the beach is a subtle reminder of a similar fire just weeks earlier, of the unfinished business between Jesus and the one who had denied him. After breakfast, Jesus takes him aside and gently but firmly gives him the words he couldn’t find for himself. Three times he had denied Jesus. Three times Jesus asks him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter the rock is being reminded that he is also Simon, the failure. He can’t keep running from his past. He has to face it. Jesus is allowing him to start again, but not by saying “forget about it; it doesn’t matter” or “let’s put it behind us”. This is not an erasure of the error, a burial of the past. It is a creative re-making of a new future. Each time Simon affirms his love, Jesus recommissions him: “feed my sheep”. Remember, Jesus is the good shepherd, and he includes Simon in that important task.

Simon is not earning forgiveness by his affirmations of love. No, Jesus is graciously showing him that Simon can still be Peter, that failure is not final, that his error neither disqualifies him nor needs to be hidden.
Series: I; II: III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX.

Christianity too abstract?

A few weeks ago I overheard a conversation in which Christianity was being criticised for being too 'abstract'. Compared to the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament can seem to have made both the problem and the solution abstract.

For the Israelites, failure and blessing were closely connected to the material conditions of their social and political order. For instance, the judgement of God upon their idolatry and failure to establish a just society was experienced as physical exile from the land, the downfall of the Davidic royal line and subjugation to foreign powers.

In contrast, the Christian message is often understood to diagnose an essentially internal, perhaps even individualistic, problem of 'sin' in the heart of each person, and to promise a purely 'spiritual' reward. Or even if a more orthodox hope for physical resurrection is held, Christian life today can appear to be primarily concerned with attitudes and 'inner' realities, rather than externals. Sometimes this is even put forward as the key difference between the New and the Old.

But this gets both testaments wrong.

The transformation of the world is not merely a change in attitude: if we see the world as gift, we see it as something to be given, as the call to give. The "transformation of the world of persons" discussed above must always take full account of the fact that personal relations have a straightforwardly material dimension. The oppression and violence, the chains of destructiveness, which we have been reflecting upon are embodied things; they occur socially, economically, and quite simply physically. They occur in connection with the possession of the world's resources. When material reality is taken, dominated and hoarded in order to become part of the order of meaning I construct for myself (and the "I" here is as much collective as individual), it is incapable of being inhabited by the "significant being" of Christ, because it cannot be a symbol of mutuality. Thus it locks Christ out, and constitutes a denial of Christ's Lordship: it is a sign of unbelief in the resurrection. When convertedness is embodied in a transforming of economic relationships, material reality will have become charged with the life of Christ risen: the world will be revealed as his.

- Rowan Williams, Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1982), 103.