Today one of the biggest global campaigns in history launches a new phase – the 10/10/10 global work party. During 2009, in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference on climate change, COP15, the 350.org campaign organised the ‘most widespead day of political action’ on Saturday 24 October when 5,245 separate actions took place across 181 countries all calling for a commitment to a target of 350 parts per million (ppm) carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere. Present levels are above 385 ppm and rising. 
Despite general acceptance of the science presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the politicians meeting in Copenhagen seemed unable to give the leadership needed at this stage in history. The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report says that global warming is definitely happening and that this warming is more than 90% likely to be caused by the activity of humans increasing levels of greenhouse gasses such as CO2 into the atmosphere. On our present course we are looking at a future where more frequent extreme weather events cause crops to fail, rising sea levels and floods create millions of refugees, leading to a much greater potential for conflicts over scarce food resources.
Even if we don’t accept the science that humans are causing global warming, there are other compelling reasons to reduce our dependence on burning fossil fuels. Simply put – they are fast running out. We have already burned the best coal and tapped the easiest oil fields. The coal that remains in the ground is increasingly of lower energy value. The oil and gas reserves that remain untapped are harder to reach making them more expensive and with greater risks of environmental catastrophe when, for example, oil rigs explode. Rather than waiting until the last drop of oil is burned, we need to prepare quickly for a world where our energy needs are met by renewable resources.
Why do we find it so hard to change? In many ways we resemble an addict who continues in self-destructive behaviour habits, ignoring or denying all the rational arguments against this behaviour. I suspect that this is in fact the case. We are addicted to materialism.
In 1923, Martin Buber wrote his seminal work Ich und Du (I and Thou) in which he says that humans have two basic modes of relating with the world. One is the I–it mode and the other is the I–thou mode. In the first, the it is an object and the relating is one-way. The object does not relate back to us. In fact Buber says that the I–it mode is really I–I because the object only exists for us in so far as it fits our purpose and ideas. The it becomes an extension of ourselves, a projection of our own minds.
By contrast, in the I–thou mode the I becomes transformed by the relationship with the other. In fact there is no longer a single individual I but something bigger – we or us. In parts of Africa there is a concept of Ubuntu which has been translated in various ways. My favourite translation is “I am because we are”. It is a recognition that the individual self is an illusion. A person can only become fully realized, fully themselves, in relationship and community with many others, past and present. And as mystics have long understood, that transforming relationship does not have to be with another person. We can relate in this way to a place or a tree or even, as the poet William Blake discovered, to a grain of sand.
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour
Back in 1923, Buber realized that in the culture of the West that he was a part of, the I–it mode was taking over. Even in our dealings with other people we tend to treat them as objects existing only for our own purposes (whether those purposes are conscious or unconscious). Rarely do we allow ourselves to become wholly transformed by another. Most of the time, even among those we say we love, we are holding something back – some untransformed I that refuses to become a We.
Our addiction to materialism is a result of this. We cannot find fulfilment in the world of I–it because we are made to live in relationship – true, deep and transforming I–thou relationship. Countless studies have found that once people have their basic needs met, increasing wealth does not lead to an increase in happiness. Yet we still keep trying to spend our way to happiness, even though we are causing great harm to the planet and putting future generations at risk.
Today, as people gather in work parties around the globe, I hope that something profound may happen, with an impact way beyond the value of the actual work being done. My hope and prayer is that we may start a shift towards true relating. A shift away from I to We that can finally break our addiction to more and more stuff.
“Even if we don’t accept the science that humans are causing global warming, there are other compelling reasons to reduce our dependence on burning fossil fuels.”
Did it ever occur to you to ponder the cost ot us all individually if the IPCC should have its way with its CO2 emission reduction demands and wealth transfers?
As an economist, it is easy to see that a 57% CO2 emission reduction imposed quickly, (that is in less than maybe 50 years) will kill western economies.
What happens when an economy is killed?
Well no jobs, no production and no food. In otherwords we are likely to face starvation for ourselves, our families and communities.
If left to the market place and out of the hands of politicians, fossil fuels will gradually get more scarce and the price will rise comensurately. This will trigger increasing economy in their use, the use of alternatives and useful substitute technology without the need of tax payers money or political interference.
If we don’t accept the AGW science and it is a long way from being settled, lets not starve our children over an unproven hypothesis.
This guy has, quite independently, come to the same conclusions as I, but he says it better.
http://www.examiner.com/seminole-county-environmental-news-in-orlando/global-warming-scare-industry-suppresses-benefits-of-co2
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com
Roger, I don’t accept the argument that transitioning to a low-carbon world will ruin the economy. Quite the opposite – I think it will lead to economic re-generation. When Germany introduced a generous feed-in tariff for renewable electricity a few years back it spawned a huge industry and thousands of jobs. Right now China is taking the lead in the application of industry and technology to make these changes. There is a real risk for other countries who find it politically difficult to put a price on Carbon that we will be caught with our pants down when we do start to make the transition, because China will have such a lead in these technologies that nobody else can compete. From an economic point of view there is far more to lose by doing nothing (or little) than from putting our economies on a war-footing to tackle the twin challenges of climate change and peak oil & coal.
buberfan,
Every economist knows that examples such as you mention in Germany do not “make” jobs as you suggest, although the politicians will have you and the public think that.
It goes without saying that first of all (as renewable electricity is more expensive than current electricity) in order to encourage “renewable electricity” there would have been considerable government money spent. (If it was not more expensive, the government would not need to “encourage” it) First of all for the word “government money” read “taxpayers money”.
In other words, in order to “encourage” this “renewable” electricity, the german government had to take money from it’s other citizens. The typical result of this process, and Germany would be no exception, is to simply cause economic slow down in the rest of the economy, which causes more unemployment than the subsidised taxpayer project creates employment. This is a dilemma that all economies face.
If you doubt this, please read Milton Friedman’s book “Free to choose” (Friedman is probably the most respected economist of the 20th century and was a Nobel Prize winner in economics)
Anyway, if Friedman was still with us, he would agree that to try and substitute “green” technologies for the current technologies, over a relatively short time span and on a large scale,(Such as that suggested by the IPCC with their CO2 emission reduction and wealth transfer demands) will simply break western economies. It will not break third world economies because they will be recipients of the above mentioned wealth transfers.
There are of course no easy solutions, but to me it makes a lot of sense to make sure that the yet to be proven “Anthropogenic CO2 causes Global Warming) hypothesis is correct before we start starving ourselves and our families.
I have to say that is very worrying that politicians and even prominent economists tell us the opposite. From my own economic training I can see the falsehood of many of these reports and statement, as could any freshman economics student.
Why are we being told these mistruths? I do not know for sure, all I can suggest is that people use their own brains to judge which are mistruths and which are facts.
In my country, which admittedly is very small, we like to lead the world, (pathetic because of our size I agree), but we are leading the world by taking to court our National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) over their reporting of national temperatures.
They have recently disowned their own reporting, effectively admitting they are erroneous (lies). Why would they want to try and mislead the public and the world (the data goes into international statistics that measure temperature change) I wonder?
Cheers
Roger
http://www.rogerfromnewzealand.wordpress.com