Our climate challenge in three numbers

"When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math. For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds of environmental conferences and journals, but it hasn't yet broken through to the larger public. This analysis upends most of the conventional political thinking about climate change. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers."

- Bill McKibben, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math.

Apart from missing "s" in the title and a dodgy stat in the opening paragraph, McKibben's compelling 5-page piece is a good summary of some important elements of the challenge we face. The bottom line of his three numbers is that, according to our best understanding, if we want at least an 80% chance of staying under the internationally agreed (but still very dangerous) 2ºC limit we can only burn about 20% of our current fossil fuel reserves (not resources, but reserves, i.e. what is known and could be profitably brought to market under present conditions). This is the kind of statistic that can really serve to focus the attention. We need to leave four out of every five known and already profitable barrels of oil, tonnes of coal, cubic metres of natural gas underground.

Of course, the great difficulty is that no one country wants to do anything other than burn every last molecule of fossil hydrocarbon that can be brought to the surface unless all other countries agree to limit themselves also. And when some countries have far larger reserves (and so far more at stake economically in leaving 80% of them in the ground), then reaching such an agreement is basically impossible under present political assumptions. If you look at where the blockages in international negotiations are coming from, then it's no great surprise that these are also the countries with the largest reserves of fossil hydrocarbons: China, USA, Russia, Australia, Canada, various middle eastern states. Countries with tiny (or largely depleted) reserves are the ones at the forefront: small island nations, non-oil-based African nations and the EU (esp UK and Germany, which have historically had huge fossil carbon deposits, but have already burned most of their easily accessible stuff).

And so we are left with an international multi-player game of chicken, with no country wanting to blink first and lose market advantage, ensuring that all countries suffer horrendously as a result. The fact that those with least to contribute to the problem generally have greater vulnerability only serves to entrench both the injustice and the intractability of the issue.

The slim silver lining in recent extreme weather in the US is that it might bring home to US voters and policymakers that there are no winners in a game of chicken. Even if others are going to suffer more and sooner, the US is far from immune, especially to precisely these kinds of threats (droughts, wildfires, heatwaves, water stress). Russia is facing its own wildfires and floods. China has had large areas in drought almost constantly for the last five years and a flood this week has a death toll that could pass 100. Canada has simultaneously faced deadly floods and serious drought in the last couple of months. Middle Eastern petro-states are all too aware of their dire water situation as they rapidly go from grain exporters to zero wheat production within a decade (Saudi Arabia) after basically exhausting their fossil water. And Australia has all too quickly forgotten its own droughts, bushfires and floods just a couple of years ago.

Further complicating the picture is that it is not simply countries that are making these decisions. Apart from some nationalised oil companies, most of these reserves are held by for profit corporations with very, very deep pockets and who are generally not shy at throwing their weight around, spending up big on lobbying, misinformation and propaganda at every level in order to convince us all that without them we'd be living in caves and that they are struggling to get by in tough conditions.

Yet according to the most recent data, fifteen out of the thirty most profitable companies in the world are directly fossil fuel related (many of the remaining fifteen also have significant, if slightly less direct, links).

1. Gazprom: US$44.5b
2. Exxon Mobil: $41.1b
4. Royal Dutch Shell $30.9b
5. Chevron: $26.9b
8. BP: $25.7b
11. Vale: $22.9b
12. Petronas: $21.9b
13. VW: $21.4b
14. Ford: $20.2b
15. Petrobras: $20.1b
22. China National Petroleum: $16.3b
26. GE: $14.2b
27. Statoil: $14.1
29. Rosneft Oil: $12.5b
30. ConocoPhillips: $12.4b

The bottom line is that until a very wide audience grasps just how dire our situation is and starts to demand something different from our corporate and political leaders, then none of key climate numbers are likely to improve.

For me, the most telling number in McKibben's piece is the one that he doesn't mention. McKibben is an author with a string of respected publications about environmental and economic issues. He was the first popular writer to publish a book on climate change back in the 80s. Yet in the last three or four years he has re-invented himself as an activist after becoming convinced that writing alone is too slow to effect the changes that need to happen. He has built and become the public face of the world's largest climate movement, a movement named after and dedicated to a number: 350. His organisation, 350.org, refers to the highest concentration of CO₂ in parts per million considered "safe" by some of the world's leading climate scientists. We are currently over 390 ppm and rising rapidly. For most commentators, 350 ppm is seen as a pipe dream, an impossibility, well outside the realm of the thinkable, let alone the achievable. International negotiations talk about 550 and occasionally 450, but many commentators think we'll be lucky to stay below 650 and our current path is heading for 750 or significantly higher. In this context, McKibben and 350.org have served as a witness to how far from a just and sustainable world we are currently travelling. And yet here, in one of his highest profile pieces to date, he doesn't mention the number to which he has dedicated the last few years of his life and of which he is a relentless promoter. Is this because he has been so successful in publicising 350 ppm that he felt he could move on? Or because he decided that this idea is now so detached from reality that he needed to lower his sights?
Image by ALS.

Always look on the bright side of life?

This is the first in a five-part series (parts two, three, four, five) that addresses a topic close to my heart: the importance of bad news and the strategic mistake of attempting to focus purely on the "bright side" of the cultural and infrastructural changes demanded by ecological crises. While frequently pointing out the kinds of steps involved in a healthy response is important, as is reflecting on the opportunities to embrace a better life afforded by our dire situation, nonetheless, unless we honestly face up to how serious and well-developed the threats we're moving into are, then any positive response is likely to remain shallow, ever tempted by tokenism and distracting gestures, and ineffectively tardy, since the worst that can happen if we delay is that we reach our bright green paradise a little more slowly.

My own PhD work on ecological fears in Christian ethics argues along similar lines. Facing the truth of our predicament requires us to experience and process certain emotions - including fear, grief, guilt and the disappointment or despair associated with dispelling certain false hopes. Unless we can locate these experiences in productive and meaningful ways (and I argue that the Christian gospel offers a compelling narrative at this point) we'll remain stuck in paralysing modes of thought: denial, distraction, desperation and despair.

On track for 4ºC

At Copenhagen in 2009 and then once more in Cancún in 2010, the nations of the world agreed on the goal of limiting global warming (the most talked about part of climate change and a rough indication of the overall severity of change) to a rise in average surface temperature of no more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. We are already almost 0.8ºC up, with something like another 0.5ºC already committed due to the time lag between emissions and their effects. To have a 75% chance of keeping overall warming under 2ºC by 2100 would require us to emit no more than a trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 2000 and 2050. How much is a trillion tonnues? Well, simplifying matters somewhat, and given that we've already used a fair chunk of that, the bottom line is that it woud require us to leave more than half of the economically recoverable fossil fuels (oil, coal, gas) in the ground. That is: no more searching for new fields; no further exploitation of the non-conventional sources (shale gas, tar sands, methane hydrates); no inclusion of fields currently too expensive to exploit. And we leave more than half of what is already known and can already be removed profitably in the ground.
Those interested in the fine print of the numbers used in these calculations can consult this quite technical study.

Two degrees would still bring all kinds of very undesirable consequences. It would be likely to mean virtually no summer sea ice in the Arctic, the loss of most coral reefs around the world, potentially dramatic declines in total ocean productivity (at least as far as fish are concerned; jellyfish may do quite well), the eventual extinction of hundreds of thousands or even millions of species, significant suppression of total global crop yields (when total food demands are likely to double by 2050), sea level rises of 50-100 cm by 2100 and of many metres over the coming centuries, changes in precipitation patterns leading to both worse droughts and floods, a more fragile Amazon and already the possibility of passing thresholds that could precipitate sudden and irreversible changes. Two degrees is no walk in the park.

While the world agreed that 2ºC ought to be treated as an upper limit (except low-lying island nations, for whom 2ºC would already likely be a death-sentence), the pledges made as a result of these negotiations put us on track for a world that is more likely to be around 4ºC warmer by 2100, and more than 6ºC warmer during the following century. Note that these pledges are in some cases aspirational and lack any legislative framework to accompany them. In Australia's case, our pledge (lying quite firmly at the less ambitious end of the scale) is dependent upon the implementation and success of the Gillard government's proposed scheme to put a price on carbon. So even were we (and all other nations) to implement successfully our plans, we are still far more likely to be at 4ºC by 2100 than anywhere near 2ºC.

If a 2ºC world sees us suffering from a wide range of very difficult and worsening challenges that will stretch our ability to cope, a 4ºC world would be unrecognisable. A conference this week looking at the likely impacts on Australia of a four degrees rise suggested that Australia, the world's sixth largest food exporter, may no longer be able to feed itself. The difficulty of understanding just how different such a world would be is illustrated by the following quote from 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). In March 2009, Schellnhuber said that on a four degree world the planet’s “carrying capacity estimates [are] below one billion people.”*

Just let that sink in.

Or find ways to avoid thinking about it.
*Carrying capacity is a complex and contested notion and obviously depends on a range of assumptions about average standard of living. The point is not to suggest that one billion is a fixed limit, but simply to highlight how severely compromised the systems on which we rely for a world of seven billion people may be in a four degrees warmer world.

UPDATE: Kevin Anderson, until recently the director of the U.K.’s leading climate research institution, the Tyndall Energy Program, had this to say about four degrees: “a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an 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.”

Incompatible with an organised global community. Parse that how you will, it ain't pretty.

The bugs are winning

Antibiotics are one of the truly remarkable discoveries of the modern era.* By suppressing or eliminating infections, the widespread availability of relative cheap antibacterial drugs has contributed to significant reductions in the mortality rate and consequent increases in life spans. Antibiotics have thus serves as an enabling cause for the unprecedented global population boom of the last century or so.

However, microbes may now have us at checkmate, developing resistances and immunities to our antibiotics faster than we are producing new ones. Despite five decades of warnings from public health authorities, global response has been slow and poorly communicated. Resistant strands are spreading and some are immune to all contemporary drugs.

And it is largely our fault. The overuse and misuse of antibacterial drugs have enabled and encouraged these strains to gain a foothold and spread. Whenever their use is either unnecessary or discontinued prior to a complete course, the surviving bugs (who will be the ones least susceptible to the drug) are left to breed. Just as we have "helped" evolution in our animal husbandry for centuries, selecting the most productive livestock to preserve their genes, so we are helping the evolution of superbugs, selecting those who don't fall down at the first sight of an antimicrobial drug. We are killing off the weaklings and leaving the heroes to breed. And they are fearsome warriors, being perhaps the most effective and feared killers throughout the history of civilisation.

Being the son of a physician, important health lessons like avoiding the abuse of antibiotics were inculcated early. We used them only for bacterial problems that lacked other solutions and always finished our course of drugs. Yet personal responsibility is only effective when widespread. My vigilance seems wasted when others take a few pills as a precaution every time they feel under the weather.

This issue seems to suffer from some remarkable similarities with climate change: a dangerous by-product of a highly desirable human activity with an insidious effect over long periods of time requiring global regulative co-ordination and a personal culture of restraint. It is hard to see in either case how a response adequate to the scale of the problem can be mobilised in the timeframe required amidst the various competing interests and under the ponderous influence of cultural inertia.

Like many of our battles, we go into this one ill-prepared, with failing equipment and not always even sure who the real enemy is. What does it look like to lose well?
*More specifically, I am referring to antibacterial drugs, since there are other microbes than bacteria and other agents that suppress them than antibacterial drugs. However, in common usage, most people mean the latter when using the term antibiotics.

Disasterbation turns you blind

Why "disaster porn" films blur our moral vision
Our predicament is crucially different from, say, being ten minutes after the launch of mutually assured nuclear destruction, where human society really has only minutes or hours left and hugging loved ones is almost the only expression of humanity left. Instead, we are in the (in some ways worse) situation of having a disaster (or series of interlocking crises) that will unfold across decades and even centuries and millennia (the effects of our injection of CO₂ into the atmosphere will be felt for hundreds of thousands of years, species extinctions are forever and could well lead to ecosystems that are radically different - and for a very long time much simpler). What this means is while some shocks could be quite sudden (as we saw in 2008, banks can (almost) collapse within 24 hours if conditions are right, or rather, wrong), industrial civilisation will not go down in an afternoon (barring global nuclear exchange). Such an outcome is likely to take decades and a whole series of crises.

Many "catastrophe porn" films like 2012 (which I haven't seen) only further corrupt our moral imaginations by asking us to imagine ourselves in pure survival mode, which is a form of ethical laziness, since it is much more likely the real crises will bring moral challenges considerably more complex than "will I resort to cannibalism to stay alive?" (The Road). Neither Mad Max or Star Trek are particularly likely in the coming decades, but I expect something more in the ballpark of (the background scenes of) Children of Men.

In our contemporary situation, there are still plenty of good ends to pursue, even if it is increasingly unlikely that our actions are going to "save" civilisation as we know it. Whether we conceive ourselves as offering societal palliative care or building arks for the coming storm, there are more options than trying to plug the hole in the Titanic as it goes down (to mix three metaphors in as many lines). If we are offering palliative care for industrial society as a terminal patient, then perhaps that patient is a pregnant woman and our care may yet save the baby. That is, the choices we collectively make now will significantly influence the basic conditions under which any future society will exist, including (through the climate, health of biodiversity, soils, oceanic chemistry and so on) the carrying capacity of the planet and its regions. So it may actually now be impossible to keep things going as we've known them for the last few decades (let alone with continued growth) for too much longer, but it is certainly possible for us to bequeath a better or worse world to our children.

The perception of being "too late" will only increase in the next few years and this could well lead to all kinds of hopeless responses (nihilistic hedonism ("eat, drink and be merry..."); populist quick techno-fixes; authoritarian paternalism; scapegoating of outsiders). Our concern is not to say ahead of time what ought to be done (though many of the things that ought to be done now are more or less clear), but to focus on the formation of human beings who will not respond to such perceptions out of fear, guilt or impotence, but from faith, hope and love.
I took the title of this post from this helpful article. Other good posts on a similar theme include this reflection on the motives on doomers from one who has experienced them and this piece on collapse porn.

Does it have to be this way?

A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse,
   and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
   the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
   the spirit of counsel and might,
   the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
   or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
   and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
   and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
   and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
   the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
   and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
   their young shall lie down together;
   and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
   and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
   on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
   as the waters cover the sea.

- Isaiah 11.1-9 (NRSV).

The claim that it doesn't have to be this way, that the seeming inevitability of the status quo is an illusion, is one I have made many times over the last few months. Sometimes, it has been a more or less impotent protest appended to the end of some piece of bad news as a flimsy barrier against a rising sense of despair. Some readers (especially my most faithful and critical one) have pointed out that there is a disconnect between the scale of the problems I've highlighted and the glimpses of responses I've put forward (for example here and here). The threats are formidable; the remedies feeble. It may not have to be this way, but it certainly seems like it is highly likely that it will be.

Nonetheless, I repeat my assertion that it doesn't have to be this way. Ultimately, this claim is not grounded in empirical observation of alternative ways of living, though they can help to fire the imagination and break free from the shackles of the all-too-obvious we associate with business as usual. Ultimately, this is a theological claim, a messianic expectation that depends upon the promise of God. Even when we cannot see any way forward and all options seem like dead ends, even then we must treat all apparent political and economic necessities as only apparent. And when there seems to be only one way forward, we should remain sceptical of the reasoning that forces our hand. To believe in God's future is to remain free from such necessities, it is to refuse to grant ultimate relevance to the hand of fate, or the market, or of might.

This is one of the effects of Christian faith upon the vision of our immediate future. By placing our immediate future against the backdrop of a messianic promise for the renewal of all things, it is not that the present sufferings become irrelevant. Indeed, in some ways, they become worse, because we can never make our peace with them as merely "one of those things". Instead, a hope that does not arise from the possibilities already apparent in our situation means that the present predicament can be seen with fresh eyes. This doesn't necessarily mean that an escape route will open up for those with the eyes of faith, but that even a road ending in a cross may be seen as worth walking.

Scared yet?

Regular readers will have noted the increased frequency with which I’ve been posting links related to the various ecological and resource crises facing contemporary industrial civilisation. Examples can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Some readers have expressed in comments or in private some concern over these posts. They wonder whether (a) I have lost hope for the world (b) whether drawing attention to such information encourages others to lose hope (c) whether drawing attention to such information is a distraction from the good news about Jesus or its replacement with an ecological gospel. In short, am I scaring people unnecessarily? Have I become an alarmist or fear-mongerer?

I write about these things and provide links because this is the world in which we live and love, where feelings of fear, guilt and impotence are both common and have some basis in reality. To ignore this fact is to remain disconnected from where people are at (and from trends that I believe are only likely to increase as the years go on). There is no virtue in ignorance. Yet our situation and these feelings are not beyond the scope of God's redemptive action in Christ. Articulating why the good news of Christ is good news today amidst ecological and resource crises is a significant part of my purpose in writing this blog.

Does this mean I think we shouldn't be scared of the threats that face us? No and yes. Many of us need to be far more alarmed than we currently are, to wake up from our comforting illusions and be roused from our apathy and confront the bleak realities of our present situation. But for those who are already paralysed by fears and cannot bear to hear any more, we need to hear again the words of the risen Christ to his friends: fear not. We need our fears put to death, not so as to leave us unfeeling and untouchable, but so that they can rise as a deep loving concern that shoulders the burdens of our neighbour's fear out of compassion and joy.

And so anxiety is indeed a common response to taking these threats seriously, as are anger and despair. Indeed, I think that a healthy response to our situation involves (for many people) some intense grief. Recognition of the scale, complexity and intractability of our predicament often means the "death" of certain cherished images of the future. Grief over lost futures can be quite real, even if the futures imagined were never really ours to claim or expect in the first place.

While the particular shape and challenges of our situations are novel in various ways, the wisdom of relinquishing idealised futures is perennial: "And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?" (Matthew 6.27). This doesn't mean the silencing of the voice of concern or prudence, but the transformation of our fears from a paralysing contraction of the self in a fruitless quest for security to an expansive love for neighbour that seeks to preserve what can be kept, to grieve what will be lost, to discern what we ought to have abandoned long ago and to discover a treasure that does not fade.

How is such a transformation possible? This is where Jesus Christ has good news for us today.

Shades of green: how do we respond to ecological degradation?

Ecological concern is a broad movement, containing much diversity. In my previous post, I mentioned Northcott's account of three approaches to ecological ethics: ecocentric, anthropocentric and theocentric. These refer to the underlying logic of different approaches to ecological ethics.

But there are other ways of categorising the field that might supplement Northcott's suggestion. One categorisation I've also found helpful is to consider the different kinds of responses that are commonly seen. Following a taxonomy coined by Alex Steffen, let us call them light green, bright green and deep green. As with the previous categories, these are tendencies rather than mutually exclusive options. And as with the three approaches mentioned previously, I believe we require elements of all three in a healthy response, since each on its own is insufficient.

Light green
Light green ecological activism assumes that the most effective response begins by winning hearts and minds. Given sufficient information and perhaps some persuasion and attractive exemplars, individuals will understand the necessity and/or benefits of making lifestyle, behavioural and consumer changes. No large political change is required, simply a gradual raising of awareness. Where the people lead, the politicians will follow.

At its best, light green responses place an emphasis on personal responsibility and the necessity of a change of heart to sustain any change of life. The light shade of this green could be read as a reference to an optimism about the human capacity for change in the light of new knowledge, viz. the freedom to repent, or it might refer to the moral superiority of choosing light over darkness.

But the lightness of this shade could also be read as lightweight, lacking in seriousness. At its more fatuous end, consumer choice is the name of the game. If it has "eco" in the label, then buying it will help the planet (ignoring the fact that it might help things more if I were not to buy anything most of the time). As long as the consumers have good information about their personal ecological footprint and products are clearly labelled, then we can rely on the sensible lifestyle choices of individuals to transform the landscape. Light green actions may be susceptible to manipulation through corporate greenwash.

And so even earnest and well-intentioned light green activism may obscure the structural reasons why society develops the way it has, the deep and powerful economic and ideological vested interests in the status quo. It generally fails to question consumerism, merely replacing one kind of consumption for another, albeit one with a lighter footprint.

Bright green
Bright green was Alex Steffen's preferred mode. The focus here is on intelligent transformation of society through better design, technological development and more widely distributed social innovations. This approach assumes that it is possible to have your cake and eat it, that increasing human prosperity is highly compatible with ecological responsibility, that going green is not merely the lesser of two evils, but a chance to embrace a better life for all. The brightness of this green is intended to refer both to the focus on intelligent response and to the optimism concerning human ingenuity and flexibility espoused by many in this camp.

Much of the talk of "green jobs", "low-carbon economy" or "sustainable development" goes here, though these terms can and are, of course, used in government and corporate greenwash for policies pursued for other reasons. Politically, bright green activism advocates radical social and economic change. Bright greens are frequently passionate about redesigning cities (often with reference to new urbanism), transforming the economy to renewables and/or nuclear power, smart grids, electric cars (with vehicle-to-grid capabilities), techno-progressivism, closed loop materials cycles, bio and/or geo-engineering and, in general, the capacity of co-ordinated thoughtful human action to improve a situation.

At its best, bright green activism seeks constructive solutions rather than mere protest. Undoubtedly, it is possible to build a better mouse trap - to design systems, cities and even whole societies that waste less, produce more and more closely align with human and ecological well-being. Systems are indeed important; personal change is insufficient to avoid an ongoing and worsening ecological catastrophe.

Yet bright green thought can be blinded by the brilliance of its vision to two realities: human sinfulness and finitude. It is utopian, and like all utopian dreams, it can easily become a nightmare. We all have a tendency to go with the devil we know, to continue self-destructive habits, to put selfish interests before the interests of others. We are slaves to sin and without spiritual liberation, even the powers of intelligence and optimism are frustrated.

But there is perhaps an even deeper problem for bright green thought than sin, namely, the finitude of the earth and its living systems. That is, at its most euphoric, bright green thought forgets that finitude is a gift and control an illusion. Furthermore, not all human-caused damage is humanly reversible.

Deep green
This green is deep because it attempts to delve beneath the surface of which political party happens to be in power or which new technology is being developed, instead seeking after the underlying philosophical, economic and political causes of ecological degradation. The analysis of the problem is taken deeper than left vs right or the relative merits of nuclear or wind power. The problem lies not in lack of information or political co-ordination, but in industrialism, capitalism, or some foundational component of contemporary society. Like bright greens, deep greens seek radical political and social transformation, including (depending how deep they go) a rejection of consumerism, of contemporary hyper-capitalism, of the logic of the market in all its forms, of industrialism and even, in some cases, of agriculture.

Sometimes it is also called dark green, since it is frequently associated with pessimism about the possibility of sufficient change without massive disruption to human populations. Some dark greens seem to think that a major human die off is inevitable, desirable or both. Yet not all deep green thought is Malthusian, as it seems reasonable to include certain forms of steady state economics under this banner. Perhaps dark green deserves its own category.

Yet deep green is a better label for all approaches that view endless economic growth as ultimately inherently self-limiting. It echoes the term deep ecology, a philosophy that tries to avoid anthropocentrism in our understanding and appreciation of the complex community of life. Human flourishing is both entirely dependent upon and ultimately less important than the flourishing of ecosystems.

At its worst, deep green can be irresponsible or merely heartless in its embrace of the necessary misery associated with economic decline or collapse. It can be self-indulgent in a wholesale rejection of any partial solution or temporary improvement. It can be self-righteous in condemnation, futile in protest, acquiescent in despairing resignation, paralysed by apocalyptic nightmares.

Yet at its best, a deep green perspective refuses to grasp illegitimate hopes. Our all-too-human hopes must die. We need to feel how deep the roots of our predicament are: both within our own hearts (as light green affirms) and woven into the structures of society (as deep green reveals). While the life of Christian discipleship may have room for what Barth calls little hopes, these are only possible once we have crucified any other great hope outside Christ.

Brown
And of course, some people remain brown, perhaps sporting merely a fig leaf of greenwash to cover their advocacy of ongoing exploitation of the creation without serious limits. There are also various shades of brown, but they all smell bad.
First image by Brennan Jacoby.

What can philosophy say about ecological crises?

"The environmental dangers that now face [hu]mankind put the reflexive non-scientist in an awkward situation. He must acknowledge that he can have precisely nothing interesting to say on the two most important questions in the air, namely, 'What is going to happen to us?' and 'What should we do?' It is not from a philosopher that you stand to be enlightened.

"Which is not to invalidate the attempt to contemplate, rather than simply find a way out of, our ecological dilemmas. It remains valid to try to fathom what the idea of planetary abuse has done to our minds. We may ask what the awareness of the crisis has done to our inner landscape, how it has altered the human psyche.

"One should begin by observing that there is nothing new for mankind about confronting the possibility of its own destruction. The feeling that the present order – the neat fields, the ordered laundry cupboards, the full granaries – might soon disappear, would have been intensely familiar to any inhabitant of medieval Europe. One need only study the carvings on the sides of the cathedrals to see that our imaginations have for centuries been haunted by visions of Armageddon.

"However, we have grown used to conceiving of our present environmental situation as unparalleled, perhaps because we have learnt of it through the media and because for the daily paper, everything must, from an a priori position, be novel. There never was a Lisbon earthquake or a sack of Rome. No one has ever murdered their children or wasted their fortune. This isn’t to deny some intensely novel features behind our anxieties, just to insist that we must carefully separate out the familiar, long-standing morbidity of homo sapiens from the particular features of the current predicament."

- Alain de Botton, "Ecology" in the UN Chronicle.

Populist philosopher Alain de Botton can be somewhat hit and miss, but I think this piece is well worth reading in full (see right hand column).

Fears about our present situation are neither entirely novel nor merely a repetition of ancient patterns. Indeed, part of what I will be arguing in my project is that in certain important respects, we do face genuinely new challenges and fears in the various ecological and resource crises of our time. More on that in future posts, but if you want to get a gist of where I'm headed (at least insofar as the diagnosis of an historically novel issue), read the article.
H/T Stuart.

What if the BP oil disaster can't be fixed?

BP have started a new and riskier technique to stem the flow of oil from 1.5 km under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Called a "top kill", it basically involves pumping mud at high pressure into the hole to try to weigh down the oil pushing up. Although it has been used successfully on many wells before, it has never been done at this depth (there has never been a problem of this magnitude at this depth before). BP are giving it a 60-70% chance of success. What is not often mentioned is that there is also a chance it could make things worse. It may be a couple of days before it is clear which is the case.

While we're waiting, here are two interesting things to check out.
Read more

Thesis question articulation VIII: Possibility

Possibility: part one
Series begins back here.
Finally, we arrive at the beginning and find that it is the centre. The possibility of: these first words of the sub-title are critical, as they designate the sharp focus of this project, limiting its scope, directing its attention and making it, I believe, original research.

The project is not attempting to answer “what ought we (as Christians) to do now?” (i.e. under these modern conditions of perceiving a predicament of societal unsustainability), which is a much broader question of daunting scope and complexity, demanding careful and multifaceted answers. Its answers will develop and shift according to both the further development and understanding of our situation over time and according to our particular social location in the world with the opportunities and threats we find ourselves facing. It is also a question that has received much consideration from both within and without the Christian church.

This project is also not attempting to answer one subset of this broader question, namely “what ought we to think now?”. This too is critical and complex. An analysis of the cultural patterns of both behaviour and thought that have led us into this mess and suggestions for new conceptions or for the recycling of old ones are pressing needs of the hour. And once again, Christian and non-Christian thinkers are making interesting suggestions on these matters.

Instead, this project asks “under what theological conditions is moral thought even possible today?”. It will investigate the threats to reflection upon the question “what ought we to do (and think) now?”, the ways in which the process of attempting to answer it might be short-circuited or the moral landscape flattened out such that genuine moral though is attenuated. It is asking after the theological space that enables moral reflection to take its time without being hurried into an answer by the threat of contemporary or imminent crises. What is the character (rather than content) of moral thought during a predicament such as the one we presently face? How does the Christian gospel shape and provide for the moral self at this time? What is it about the good news that enables the possibility of moral attentiveness even (and perhaps especially) in today's adverse and apparently hopeless conditions?

Finally, the project is interested not only in the possibility of, but also the possibilities for Christian moral attentiveness. That is, not just about the preservation of Christian moral attentiveness against the various threats that may numb it, but also about how this predicament may even be a source of spiritual and moral renewal.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one

Thesis question articulation IV: Predicament

Predicament: part two
Series begins back here.
John Michel Greer in The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age usefully distinguishes between two kinds of threats, which he calls problems and predicaments. Problems have solutions, whereas predicaments do not. A problem has a path may be discovered and chosen that will effectively avoid, nullify, or significantly diminish the problematic aspect of the situation. A predicament lacks such options. It is a situation in which there are no strategies that will substantially avoid all the significant negative aspects of a threat.

Greer suggests that the archetypal human predicament is death. Facing death, humans have come up with a wide range of responses, some healthier than others: from denial or suppression to great works of art and a variety of ethical and spiritual impulses. Yet it is a mistake to treat our mortality as though it were a problem we are to solve.

I may correctly treat this or that threat to my life as a problem and seek a solution to stay alive. I am standing in the middle of a busy road; I will get out of the way (or perhaps I will campaign for more pedestrian areas and higher taxes on private automobiles). But while specific problems can be seen and solved, the fact that I am mortal is a basic condition of my life. No amount of wishing, campaigning, meditating, medicating or moralising will decisively remove the constant threat and ultimate inevitability of my own demise.

Staying alive is a good thing. And so medical research and (probably more significantly), public health initiatives such as sewers and effective garbage disposal that reduce mortality rates and increase life expectancies are generally instrumental goods worth pursuing. But it is possible to pursue one good thing in a way that undermines other good things and distort the proper ordering of goods. There is an often unspoken assumption behind much of the angst over healthcare funding (whether private or nationalised): that, given sufficient resources, we can endlessly defer the inevitable. But throwing more and more resources towards medical interventions that merely prolong the continuation of a pulse may well be mistakenly treating a predicament as a problem, and ironically, diverting attention from other problems that do have solutions.

Death is a personal predicament. Greer argues that the present ecological and resource crises are a social predicament, indicating the unavoidable end of the industrial age as we have known it. Although at one stage (he identifies the 1970s oil crises for instance) the unsustainability of contemporary industrial society was a problem that could have been confronted and solved through an ordered transition to more sustainable ways of living, it is now too late. The moment for solutions has passed and we are now in a predicament, where no amount of activism, technological advance or personal reform is remotely likely to succeed in maintaining the astonishing trajectory of growth that industrial nations have enjoyed for the last few generations. Indeed, nothing can avert widespread social decline and political instability. He claims that treating this as a problem distracts us from a healthy response in which the inevitability of this decline is accepted and we seek ways of cushioning the most likely quite rugged downslope that lies ahead.*

Of course, it is crucial to identify correctly which threats are problems and which are predicaments. Treating a predicament like a problem is pointless waste of energy. Treating a problem like a predicament is an irresponsible defeatism. But how can we tell the difference? How do we know if an issue is insoluble unless we resolutely attempt to solve it?

These are important questions, and in the case of whether our society has reached or is reaching various limits to growth, very important questions. However, I would like to plead some measure of ignorance on the precise global situation and instead pursue some subsequent questions: if Greer is correct and unsustainability is not simply a problem, but a predicament, what does a healthy response look like?
*Greer also claims that we face long-term decline, not sudden collapse (hence The Long Descent). But that is a post for another day.
UPDATE: I've also just discovered that the relevant section of The Long Descent was first posted here on JMG's blog some time ago.

This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one

Thesis question articulation III: Predicament

Predicament: part one
Series begins back here.
If the severity of these various problems is not being overstated, there are a variety of possible scenarios. Perhaps unforseen new technological breakthroughs will open up new vistas of growth and the dawn of an even more prosperous era. Or it may still be possible to make a more or less smooth transition to a more sustainable version of the present based on existing and prospective technologies. But for many, the future appears increasingly bleak and some version of Malthusian collapse or decline seems imminent.

This prediction may be based on a pessimistic estimate of the possibility of overcoming social and political inertia in the timeframe that may be available, or it may simply arise from a belief that industrial society has already passed a point of no return. Either way, the present situation is seen as not merely a problem, but a predicament.
This post is part of a series in which I am outlining my current research question. My present working title, which this series seeks to explain, is "Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability.
A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one

Articulating a thesis question

Recently I have been working on a more precise articulation and clarification of my thesis question. Since my topic is not the more straightforward "personality" based approach ("what does x think about y?"), but is more thematic in orientation, it threatens to become a project about everything, and so about nothing. In order to avoid this, and give me some chance of finishing within cooee of a respectable timeframe, I've been working out what the project does not aim to do, as well as what it does.

I thought I would post some of my thoughts here so that I can (a) get some valued feedback from trusted (and perhaps as yet unknown) sources; (b) have a record of where my thinking was up to by this point to give me a good laugh when I look back in another year's time and (c) give me somewhere to direct people when the inevitable party conversation stopper arises: "so, what is your thesis actually on?"...

Here is where the wording of my title is up to at this point and I will be explaining it in reverse over a series of posts.

"Anxious about tomorrow": The possibility of Christian moral attentiveness in the predicament of societal unsustainability

A. Societal unsustainability: part one; part two
B. Predicament: part one; part two
C. Moral attentiveness: part one; part two
D. Christian: part one
E. Possibility: part one
F. Summary: part one

Nicholas Stern: facing the future

On Thursday night I went to hear Nicholas Stern at the Edinburgh Book Festival. Lord Stern is the author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a 2006 publication of the Government Economic Service of the UK, which famously laid out an economic argument for a strong global response to climate change. The Review claimed that an annual investment of around 1% of global GDP is required to avoid the worst effects of climate change, which, if left unattended, could have a long term consequence of reducing global GDP by 20%.

Lord Stern has recently published another book, A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, in which he defends the necessity and content of a comprehensive global agreement that must be achieved at the Copenhagen conference on climate change later this year, an event which he calls "the most important gathering since WWII".

His talk at the Book Festival the other night consisted of readings from his new book as part of a summary of its argument. In it, he claims that poverty and climate change are inextricably linked in our context and one cannot be addressed without reference to the other, that these are the two great challenges of the present time. In order to minimise the risk of runaway climate change, he argues for a 50% reduction in carbon emissions (from the usual 1990 baseline) by 2050, with developed nations (who have been responsible for the vast majority of carbon already emitted) leading the way to demonstrate that low-carbon growth is possible and developing nations following according to a timetable he lays out in more detail in the book. But for developed nations, this involves a 20-40% reduction by 2020 and an 80-90% reduction by 2050 (the numbers vary for different nations, depending on their current and historical emissions). This timetable would see emissions peak around 2030 and reach a steady level by 2050 at around 2 tonnes per person per annum (currently, the UK average is about 10 tonnes per person, the US and Australian average is almost 20 tonnes).

In passing, he acknowledged that the numbers used in 2006 to estimate the extraordinary costs of continuing business as usual were hopelessly out of date. When more recent data is included, he now believes the real cost would be far higher than 20% and probably closer to 50% of global GDP.

Nonetheless, he was upbeat and positive and confidently assumed that a solution is possible that includes continued economic growth (low carbon growth). Noticely absent was any mention of peak oil or any references to other reminders of the impossibility of infinite growth in a finite system. As a member of the UK House of Lords, he was also unsurprisingly positive about the role of national governments and international agreements (despite admitting that no precedent exists for an agreement of the scope and nature that he is advocating). He also seemed to be at least partially banking on technologies that remain as yet unsuccessful, making reference to carbon sequestration and nuclear fusion.

However, what I found of most interest for my own research were a couple of telling points during the question time with audience members after his talk. First, he was asked what would happen if no agreement is reached in Copenhagen, or the conference is inconclusive. His answer was over five minutes long but he never answered the question. He merely repeated how important it was that the conference not fail and pointed to various indications that might give hope of success. Second, the final question of the evening came from the lady chairing the session. She pointed out that he had spoken of some terrifying possibilities and that he had told us we ought to be scared, but that he had still come across as a cheerful person. She asked how he managed this. After first joking that it was due to his chemistry (natural, not illegal!), he went on to say that if we believed that it was impossible we would never even try. Optimism by itself may not be sufficient (since it may be deluded), but it is necessary. Amongst his final words were ones something like this:

"If we don't think we can do it, we may as well buy a hat [presumably due to the hotter climate?] and write a letter of apology to our grandchildren."

In these two responses I felt there was something missing (and granted that Lord Stern is a very smart man and the format was brief and fairly popular). There seemed to be nothing between success and total failure, no possibility that we might fail to solve climate change (or that some of these problems might lack solutions) and yet still respond well. I am not talking about mitigation or adaption, though these will be elements of any scenario since much damage has already been done. I am talking instead about the possibility of faithful "failure". This is not to say that action on climate change is unimportant, nor to foster any kind of defeatism. However, I do feel sceptical that we can (in the words of his new book's subtitle) manage climate change and create a new era of progress and prosperity. What if despite our best efforts at responding to climate change (and the host of other issues) we end up poorer and more fractured as a result of the damage already done? What if cushioning social decline is all we can legitimately hope for?

To put it in more personal terms, imagine someone dying of a terminal illness for which there is no known cure. The doctors may say that optimism is necessary but not sufficient, they may wish to try new things and seek breakthroughs, and these may all be good things. But the fact remains that it appears likely the patient will die. Faced with such a situation, it is tempting to think that there are only two options: success (a miracle cure) or failure (death). And it is tempting to think that the highest calling is to devote every resource to avoiding death. But might there be a way of dying, of facing one's own imminent end, that is faithful and "successful" in some deeper sense than spending every scrap of remaining energy on seeking to escape death a little longer?

Of course, the parallel is far from perfect, since a society is not a single organism with a lifespan that faces biological death. Such terms are metaphorical when used of societies, which transition from one level of complexity to another, rather than suddenly dying. But the point is similar: that perhaps there are situations where the desperate search for a solution that gambles everything on maintaining the status quo is a worse path than grieving loss, accepting change, caring for others and preparating for a very different future. I am not necessarily saying that we have reached that point, but if we had, how would we know? And if we had, would we be willing to admit it? Can our social identity survive the realisation that the foreseeable future might be all downhill?