Overcoming climate doomism/doomerism

[Ilan Kelman]

My current three-point plan on overcoming climate doomism/doomerism:

 

1. Highlight science.

2. Avoid buzzwordy rhetoric.

3. Act to inspire, inspire for action.

 

Details are below and discussion would be welcome for improvement.

 

Ilan

 

1. Twitter @ILANKELMAN https://twitter.com/ilankelman

2. Instagram @ILANKELMAN https://www.instagram.com/ilankelman

3. Researchgate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ilan_Kelman

 

---------------

 

1. Highlight science

 

Much (not all) of the doomism/doomerism regarding climate change is not scientifically supportable:

1. Weather, and disasters https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/climate-change-weather-disasters-ilan-kelman

2. Conflict and disasters https://theconversation.com/ipcc-report-how-politics-not-climate-change-is-responsible-for-disasters-and-conflict-178071

3. Islands https://doi.org/10.24043/isj.52 (especially Table 2).

4. Migration https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci8050131 (paper) and https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202007/can-climate-refugees-have-hope (blog).

Some of the possible exceptions are noted in this material.

 

The terrifying one happening now is heat-humidity and it will get much worse.

Certainly, there is no scenario I have seen in which humanity goes extinct, so calling climate change an existential threat for humanity is not supportable.

 

2. Avoid buzzwordy rhetoric

 

Rhetoric and buzzphrases distract from climate change's real causes and responses https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202102/the-causes-climate-change

Key ones to avoid:

 

Climate breakdown / climate chaos / climate disruption

 

Climate, by definition, is average weather over decades. It is a statistical construct which does not have a word or meaning in many languages. As such, it cannot breakdown or be disrupted per se. Where the statistical construct of climate is accepted, it always exists, rather than being broken or non-functional.

 

Given that climate is a statistical construct, we can test for properties of mathematical chaos and the climate has always exhibited them. As such, climate chaos is the norm, not a new, strange, or worrisome observation. With an ever-evolving trajectory displaying significant uncertainties and unknowns, it is unclear what climate could be disrupted from.

 

Climate crisis

 

Contemporary climate change is fundamentally due to human values, attitudes, behaviour, and actions. If we stopped human-caused climate change immediately, then the same values, attitudes, behaviour, and actions would still be leading to numerous other societal ills, from human trafficking and slavery to overfishing and forest destruction. Human-caused climate change is one symptom among many, not a specific cause, of the crisis of human values, attitudes, behaviour, and actions. Highlighting a climate crisis or climate change crisis serves to distract from the real crisis.

 

Climate emergency / Earthquake emergency / Hazard emergencies

 

Because human actions cause contemporary climate change and cause vulnerabilities, situations where we cannot deal with hazards (e.g. earthquakes) or hazard influencers (e.g. climate change) are people emergencies, societal emergencies, and vulnerability emergencies, not hazard emergencies.

 

Climate smart / Climate informed / Hazard smart / Hazard informed

 

By definition, all disaster-related work should be people-smart which means being climate-smart, weather-smart, earthquake-smart, landslide-smart, all-hazard-smart, all-vulnerability-smart, all-resilience smart, and more. By definition, all disaster-related work should factor in all potential hazards, all vulnerabilities, and their possible influencers, including but not limited to climate. The result should be informed by all potential hazards, all vulnerabilities, and their potential influencers, again including but not limited to climate. Being only climate-smart” or only climate-informed is not being disaster-smart, disaster-informed, people-smart, or people-informed.

 

3. Act to inspire, inspire for action.

 

Pursue eco-inspiration https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/disaster-choice/202110/how-reduce-eco-anxiety-and-make-positive-change

Support children https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220315-how-eco-anxiety-affects-childrens-minds

[Richard Rosen]

Frankly Ilan, I find most of your material very superficial.  While humans create all sorts of problems for themselves and the environment, and probably always will, if we don't convince people all around the world that we are now facing a climate emergency, there is no hope of sufficient action being taken to deal with the climate change problem, not to speak of other problems.  The time is over not to scare people, as you propose.  Your material does not describe the hard and expensive things that the world needs to do in the next two decades.  People don't do anything if they don't feel urgency.   --- Rich Rosen

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[Ilan Kelman]

Dear Rich,

Your constructive, professional, and mature comments are always a pleasure to read and very much contribute to helpful discussion for moving forward together. Thank you for being so involved. If I may, I would be curious if you might have any science to offer in order to back up your statements? In particular:

(i) Might there be evidence that calling it a 'climate emergency' galvanises us to action? The material I provide below provides explanations for the counterargument.

(ii) Might there be evidence for or against the statement "People don't do anything if they don't feel urgency"? How might any such evidence match with societies who continually plan ahead, from preserving famine foods through to considering impacts on several coming generations? Would scientific citations on these two points be helpful?

(iii) Why might the numerous contributions from many members of this list not already "describe the hard and expensive things that the world needs to do in the next two decades"? One small subset:

1. Circular economy (Stahel and Reday-Mulvey, 1977/1981)

2. Deglobalization (Bello 2008)

3. Degrowth (Lefèvre 2004)

4. Doughnut economics (Raworth 2017) despite its mistake of focusing on planetary boundaries.

5. Essential exponential (Bartlett 2004)

6. Overshoot / Homo colossus (Catton, Jr. 1982)

7. Steady state economy (Daly 1977)

See previous messages for many more.

I look forward to more polite and respectful exchanges through this email list, so that we could all improve. With thanks and best wishes,

Ilan

[Richard Rosen]

Iilan,

You have to respect the fact that we disagree on many of these issues, but I am not about to write an essay in response to your email. I have been working on the issue of climate change on and off for 40 years, and I have seen little action when most environmentalists were afraid to scare people.  In my view, that postponed action until now when it is almost too late to protect billions of people on the planet who are already being subject to more severe floods (as in Bangladesh today), tornados (as in Canada and Germany and Kentucky recently), stronger hurricanes (as along the Gulf Coast and the Philippines), and more severe droughts  like in most of the Western US and Australia, to list just a few. The entire Mediterranean area is now so hot in summer that tourists are hesitating to go. Sorry, but my prime focus is not worrying about the mental health of young people by not scaring them.  Maybe their mental health would improve if they act and not just worry.   -- Rich

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[Ilan Kelman]

I am sorry to learn that scientific references would not be available for the views discussed. On the new points, some scientific summaries which I think should be accessible to everyone:

a) Flooding in Bangladesh is not new and many flood-related impacts have declined over decades http://news.trust.org/item/20161013115243-3s6eq through constructive action. We also need to consider the barrages built by India near the border with Bangladesh which completely change river flood characteristics across Bangladesh, undermining many established flood risk reduction abilities.

b) Tornadoes and climate change https://www.sparrow.science/is-climate-change-bringing-more-tornadoes

c) Stronger hurricanes, yes, but likely declining frequency https://www.radixonline.org/blog/neyijvw2iwg7pjr38wbxhm0fr5vr0x among other parameter changes, not all for the better.

d) Droughts are influenced as much by water (mis)management and (over)use as by precipitation and snowmelt variations https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/when-is-drought-drought

These hazards do not need to mean disasters irrespective of human-caused climate change 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202005/does-climate-change-cause-disasters which contrasts with:

e) Heat - along with humidity, absolutely the terrifying killer happening now and it can only get worse, being directly attributable to human-caused climate change. My original material said so.

I change my viewpoints based on the science, always aiming for constructive evidence-based action. I do not avoid or insult science because it contradicts my pre-existing thinking, since that leads to harmful action as long witnessed in many attempts within environmentalism. If exchanging evidence and providing scientific material would not be of interest, then no obligation exists to respond or to be involved in these discussions. I fully welcome anyone providing science which I have missed in order to update how I approach policy and action on our future. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so much to helping me learn to improve--and I can assure you that I still have much more improvement to make.

Ilan

[Jean Boucher]

Hi Ilan,

    I don't see anything about affirming people's doomism or doomism as process. Namely, like the Kubler-Ross style of stages of grief. I think that if my mother is diagnosed with a serious illness then it is normal and even healthy for me to grieve, get angry, deny it, get sad, and then, over time, move to a place of acceptance, which can include things like greater action. 

But for someone to deny me my grief seems counterproductive. As one example (n=1, not very scientific of course), I have a niece who is super intelligent and educated for her age, she's in high school, and her conclusion about climate change is that "I give humanity about 200 more years."  Meanwhile, she goes about living her life, engagingly, getting good grades, etc.  So, I wonder, is she a doomer?

I don't think that doomism is a monolith and I feel some of these discussions trying to contain it and crush it at all cost (perhaps I exaggerate). I wonder, though, if people are trying to unconsciously guard themselves against it?     

In one of the psych pieces you cite, something I think is true, that we should 'reassuring children that many people are working on the problem.' I think this is dangerous as I think many more people, society, mass human behavior as you might call it, 'civilization', institutional inertia, are part of the problem

I suspect you've seen this image of the Keeling curve below (nearly a straight monotonic line) with the timeline of COP agreements superimposed. I also know that you know all things and I'm contributing to the cordial discussion. - Jean 

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[Ashley Colby]

If I may, I run a podcast called Doomer Optimism. The idea being that one must indeed accept the reality of some of the crises we are facing, but to then use it as a springboard for positive action. I find there is in fact a pathological social movement that almost cultivates doomerism, without providing much concrete optimism. This has indeed been devastating for many young people especially. You have all read the stories about doomer/climate related mental health issues among youth. I am on some social media platforms populated by doomerism, and there are dozens of posts daily by people questioning the will to live. 

This is why I have created Doomer Optimism, with a plethora of concrete, already proven examples to be incredibly optimistic about.

I am especially proud of the ecological depth in a recent conversation I had with an ecologist and regenerative farmer in Wisconsin, Peter Allen. You might even feel optimistic about the possibility of healing much ecological damage after listening! Would love to hear your thoughts:

https://youtu.be/9asNC9eniKQ

Ashley

P.S. Ilan I very much appreciate your perspective here, especially the suggestion that focusing on the doom can be actively harmful in promoting action. 

Ashley Colby Fitzgerald

ash...@rizomafieldschool.com

PhD, Environmental Sociology

Executive Director Rizoma Foundation, Loconomy Project

Co-founder Rizoma Field School

My book: Subsistence Agriculture in the US

Twitter @RizomaSchool @RizomaFound @LoconomyNow

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[Tom Walker]

On a positive note, if everyone in the world would just take one day a week to completely rest, not only the climate crisis but the plethora of industrial overshoot would be solved. No working, no shopping, no media, no transport.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

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[Manisha Anantharaman]

Dear Friends,

This Scientific American opinion piece by Sarah Jaquette Ray offers some insight into some of the ways in which climate anxiety and climate doomerism can be counter-productive and dangerous, leading to xenophobia, racism and zealotory- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unbearable-whiteness-of-climate-anxiety/

I was particularly struck by this line- "And climate panic can be as dangerous as it is galvanizing. Dealing with feelings of climate anxiety will require the existential tools I provided in A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, but it will also require careful attention to extremism and climate zealotry. We can’t fight climate change with more racism. Climate anxiety must be directed toward addressing the ways that racism manifests as environmental trauma and vice versa—how environmentalism manifests as racialized violence. We need to channel grief toward collective liberation."

So, perhaps the key here is not to resort to individualized ways of dealing with grief, doomerism and anxiety, but to seek opportunities for collective organizing and action organized around principles of solidarity and justice. And in this collective work, recognize that frontline communities (in the US and across the world), have long lived and coped with life-denuding environments, will bear the brunt of a changing climate, and thus should lead these collective movements. 

When I teach about climate, I include writing by Black Feminist and Indigenous voices, because for these communities, persistence, resilience and fight for change and justice has never been optional, it has always been necessary for survival. I would also recommend "All we can save", a wonderful collection of short texts and poems by women leaders at the forefront of the climate movement. 

very best,

Manisha 

Manisha Anantharaman, PhD

(she/her/hers)

Associate Professor, Justice, Community & Leadership

Saint Mary's College of CA, USA

http://www.manishaanantharaman.com/  

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[Richard Rosen]

How could that be true, Tom, since you have not changed the energy system so it burns no fossil fuels?  --- Rich Rosen

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[Tom Walker]

"...if everyone in the world would just take one day a week to completely rest..."

 

How could that be true, Tom, since you have not changed the energy system so it burns no fossil fuels?  --- Rich Rosen

The easy answer would be an appeal to authority: tradition holds that the messiah would come if ever Israel (the people, not the state) obeyed the fourth commandment. Erich Fromm wrote:

Thus, it is promised in the Talmud that the Messiah will come only if Israel would for once fully protect the Sabbath. The
Talmud simply gives fitting expression here to its conceptions of the Sabbath’s special character of fulfillment: the prophets see in the Messianic Age a state in which the struggle between man and nature has found an end.

I don't subscribe to easy answers though. A much more complex answer is that the Sabbath symbolizes a non-destructive relationship to the earth. It symbolizes giving the earth time to heal from the damage human intervention has caused to it. If people do not realize that industry damages nature and only time can heal, there is little point talking about "science" or "public policy." When I say "realize" I mean practicing the knowledge -- even if only symbolically -- not simply knowing it.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Lifset, Reid]

On the topic of taking a day/week to rest, this new TED talk about a 4 day work week may be of interest.

 

 

 

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[Lifset, Reid]

Dear all,

 

I neglected to indicate that the Julie Schor is the speaker in the TED talk.

 

~ Reid

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[Lifset, Reid]

One more time, this time with a link to the TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/juliet_schor_the_case_for_a_4_day_work_week

[Tom Walker]

On Tue, May 24, 2022 at 1:42 PM Lifset, Reid <reid....@yale.edu> wrote:

One more time, this time with a link to the TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/juliet_schor_the_case_for_a_4_day_work_week

I watched Juliet Schor's TED talk. I agree with what she says at the micro level insofar as it deals with the productivity of labour. I am afraid I am going to have to be a doomer and object that at the macro level, as determined by government fiscal and monetary policy, better workplace arrangements are irrelevant, if not toxic.

The overarching goal at the macro level, since the 1920s and especially since the 1950s has not been to get people to produce more efficiently but to get them to consume more inefficiently. Long hours of work contributes to that goal by keeping people stressed and in a time famine. This is something Marx predicted in the late 1850s and Kenneth Burke satirized in the early 1930s.

I have been an advocate of shorter working time for three decades and have closely studied the economics of working time. For a long time it puzzled me why economists ignored their disciplines theoretical findings and empirical confirmations until it dawned on me that there was diminished career advancement for economists who strayed from an ideological account of working time. So a few good economists at small liberal arts colleges v. Big Names at M.I.T. publishing rubbish in high impact journals.

Who are Democrat administrations going to listen to -- a Juliet Schor or a Larry Summers? The question answers itself.

[Ilan Kelman]

Many thanks to everyone who contributed thoughts and reactions to this earlier thread on "Overcoming climate doomism/doomerism". I reshaped my initial text into an article "Against climate doomerism" https://medium.com/disruptive-voices/against-climate-doomerism-48aa32b89041 The discussions and refining must continue, so further responses and critiques would be welcome.

Thank you!

Ilan

[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

This article may be of interest

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/climate-change-scarcity-chip-away-degrowth-taboo-2022-08-08/

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

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[Tom Walker]

In the same vein, 

How a four-day workweek could be better for the climate

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/08/08/4-day-workweek-environment/

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

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[Halina Brown]

There is a fundamental difference  between statistical correlation and causal association. The statements in this article imply that there is a causal association b between working week and carbon footprint, but these are in fact only indirect statistical  correlations. The Europeans not only have much longer  vacations but they also live in smaller houses located in greater density areas, generally have much greater access to public transit, waste less food, and own much less stuff. Any study that does not control for these key variables is indefensible.

Halina Brown

 

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Tom Walker

Sent: Monday, August 8, 2022 12:53 PM
To: Joseph Zammit-Lucia <jo...@me.com>
Cc: SCORAI Group <sco...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [EXT] Re: [SCORAI] De-growth

 

In the same vein, 

How a four-day workweek could be better for the climate

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/08/08/4-day-workweek-environment/

 

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

 

 

On Mon, Aug 8, 2022 at 8:27 AM 'Joe Zammit-Lucia' via SCORAI <sco...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

This article may be of interest

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/climate-change-scarcity-chip-away-degrowth-taboo-2022-08-08/

 

 

 

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[Tom Walker]

As someone who researches and teaches about the politics of working time, I find it rather condescending to be scolded about the distinction between correlation and causality. I have been quite critical of studies that fail to make that distinction and of studies that inadvertently confound variables when they ineptly attempt to control for them. This was a newspaper article I forwarded, not a research paper. I happen to be intimately familiar with the literature on the topic and with the multitude of variables and the various ways that the research seeks to control for those variables. 

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Halina Brown]

My apology, Tom. I did not mean to take on a condescending tone to the sender of the article. My argument is with the article itself. The article quotes some fine scholars. But when I read the  article, the  factual material presented to support the main hypothesis (shorter work week -> smaller footprint) reads as no more than statistical correlations. That is misleading to a reader who does not know the difference between correlation and causality.

 

I would be very interested to know if this correlation has been explained through further research. As you are intimately familiar with this literature, it would be great if you shed some light on it. It is an important topic.

 

Again, my apology to you personally.

Halina

[Tom Walker]

In response to your question, Halina, first it is important to note that the title of the article qualifies the hypothesis with "could" and the subtitle follows up with specifying a "potential." And the first sentence of the article: "Reducing the workweek to four days could have a climate benefit, advocates say. In addition to improving the well-being of workers, they say slashing working hours may reduce carbon emissions."

Whether this potential is realized is not something that could be demonstrated by analysis of the empirical data. At least two members of this list, Juliet Schor and Peter Victor, have been involved with empirical and economic modelling studies of the relationship between working time and environment. Juliet's work is prominently featured in the Washington Post article. I suspect Juliet and Peter would be the first to admit that their findings can only be indicative and not conclusive. A third member of this list, Giorgos Kallis, supervised the doctoral thesis of Qinglong Shao, whose empirical work challenged the assumption that reductions of working time necessarily will result in reductions in carbon emissions. Here is a meta analysis that lists and critiques the empirical literature.

The problem with ALL empirical study of the relationship between work hours and the environment is that there has never been a deliberate government policy to encourage work-time reduction as an alternative to economic growth. For there to be a genuine causal relationship between hours of work and emission -- not just a casual one -- there would have to be decisive action, based on a precise awareness of the present moment to bring that cause and its effect about. One may presume that policies aimed at fostering economic growth have been more or less successful at doing just that. One could empirically study the relationship between, say, government investment or interest rates and economic growth. Meanwhile economic growth increases material throughput.

My own research has focused on the relationship between working time and employment and has been deeply critical of the conventional empirical treatment of that issue by economists. What the conventional research has consistently ignored are the feedback effects that are embedded in any change in the working-time environment. Another flaw in the conventional research is that it consistently "controls for variables" by adopting assumptions. In short, they control for variables by admitting that the data are not comprehensive enough to actually do that. Too often, the standard assumptions they adopt contain other assumptions that have been baked in 70 or 80 years ago.  

My research on the relationship between working time and employment has taught me that the hostility from economists toward work time reduction as a policy direction is bottomless. There is a simple explanation for that. Their definition of what it means to be an economist has a laser focus on economic growth. What doesn't contribute to growth is not economics, in their (reductionist) view. What economic data is collected by governments is largely determined by what information economists and policymakers need to analyze and foster economic growth. It is, of course, impossible to analyze that data that isn't collected. One of the pioneers of growth accounting, Edward Denison, lamented back in the 1960s about the inadequacy of data on working time. In a sense, the aggregate numbers are baskets of oranges, apples, bananas, watermelons, onions, peanuts, and pineapples. That situation hasn't changed.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Tom Abeles]

Hi Tom W/all

Unilever has selectively gone to a 4 day work week without a loss in productivity. how many others have also done this selectively? and what has this meant for the workers, the company and its profitability? maybe the issue of degrowth and work time are non-commensurate?

As I have noted, the "alt-protein" industry is forecast to reduce all environmental parameters, land, water, air from the start in the value chain to the fork. Already there are indications that the alt protein products will equal or beat price parity for the corresponding protein products. Are we seeing a paradigm shift of the same type proposed by Carlota Perez for technological shifts of the more engineering type? what does this say from the perspective of degrowth when compared with productivity?

Perez's detailed technical model can be coupled with Land's similar model which also proposes a hysterisis loop or back to the future and is this a flaw in the degrowth analysis particularly in the alt protein arena. Perhaps the model changes when we get a redefining of the frame in which this is being cast.

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[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Maybe there are a couple of things worth discussing. 

Not all economic growth is equal in terms of environmental harms. Increasing use of services for instance will result in less environmental damage than increased consumption of goods. Don’t know what literature there is on that. Quite a bit I suspect. 

If people start spending a significant amount of time and money in the various metaverses  - for instance buying virtual real estate rather than physical real estate - that will also make a difference. 

It also highlights the problem with pure empiricism which, by definition, has to be backward looking (we have no ‘data’ about the future - and especially about a sort of future we can’t even begin to imagine). 

Finally, to Tom’s point, developments such as alt-protein and convincing people to switch depends on two things - technological development and industrial investment in that, in production, and in advertising to persuade people to switch. The abhorrence by some of industry and advertising is counter-productive as we cannot achieve change without them. 

Unless of course one prefers the authoritarian route of regulating every aspect of everyone’s lives. 

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

 

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

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[Tom Walker]

Increasing use of services for instance will result in less environmental damage than increased consumption of goods. Don’t know what literature there is on that. Quite a bit I suspect.

Massive, actually. Just going back at least to Costanza's 1980 "Embodied energy and economic valuation," which has 946 cites listed on Google Scholar (some of which may be duplicates). The problems with assuming that "increasing use of services will result in less environmental damage" are 1. that services need infrastructure, which increases material throughput and 2. services workers get paid and spend their wages on many things other than services. 3. a shitload of "services" in, e.g., the U.S. economy over the last 30 or so years have been financial services. Now a coherent accounting of net product would not include all these financial services because essentially all they do is make assets more expensive. These "services" transform housing, which is for people, into "investments," which is for money.

Costanza's seminal study was flawed for the same reason that any input-ouput analysis must be flawed. The inputs and outputs go on "infinitely" and ultimately exceed the time frame of any analysis. But the intuition was still correct. No economy activity is an island unto itself. 

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Tom Walker]

Unilever has selectively gone to a 4 day work week without a loss in productivity.

Therein lies the dilemma for any study of the relationship between hours of work and the environment and hours of work and employment. If there is no loss in productivity, that means production, consumption and the throughput of materials are not reduced. The only savings then would be from reduced commuting which might be offset by increased leisure travel. 

The problem arises from a capital-biased concept of "productivity." in which p1 means producing more commodities. It doesn't mean freeing more leisure time. Actually, a four-day work week "without a loss in p1 productivity" is an increase in productivity if p2 is redefined as including the value of the leisure time freed up. To arrive at a genuine equality of p2, the hours would have to be reduced to around 24, not 32. You would then have slightly less output of commodities but significantly more freed up leisure time.

Again, we run into the conceptual input-output problem of infinite regress. The question then is are measurements to be our helpers or our masters?

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Halina Brown]

Thank you, Tom Walker, for providing the link to the literature on the relationship between WT and carbon footprint, especially the meta analysis by Antal et al. The authors’ conclusion that the relationship is inconclusive is at this point in  time the most sensible one: we do not know, and finding the answer through empirical studies will be very hard, if at all. So it seems to me that any public statements on this subject, with all the caveats you cite in  the Washington Post article – may, could – is going to be misinterpreted by the general public, which is not attuned to these nuanced caveats. I therefore stick to my criticism of the article and the fine scholars cited in it who let their names to be associated with that misinterpretation.

 

On the other hand, if we stay in the realm of hypotheses, I can think of many reasons why worktime reduction is likely to increase the carbon footprint if it is  not associated with reduction in wages. I can also think of reasons why WTR could decrease carbon footprint, but not as many.

 

I acknowledge though that working time  reduction has various other important social benefits, which should be stressed.

 

Halina

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[Tom Walker]

I certainly agree, Halina, that "finding the answer through empirical studies will be very hard" -- especially given the kind of predominantly quantitative empirical studies that we are currently limited to. Empiricism is good, math is useful, so please don't misunderstand when I say that it is also narrow and ideological. Numbers have an inherent bias for the status quo. It's not the numbers fault that the ONLY data we have is for events that have happened, and that have happened often enough to escape being a mere anecdote.

What the "inconclusive" studies show is the possibility of achieving a desired outcome if a given course of action is undertaken. They don't show more than that and I would argue that they can't show more than that. I would go out on a limb and say that caveat also pertains to any and all policy options that may be offered to mitigate climate change or any other environmental damage. In short, THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO THAT IS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN TO SUCCEED! No worries. That just brings us back to the "could" and the "potential" realm where the possibility of human action must dwell.

My research is predominantly qualitative. It is no less empirical than quantitative research is. Often it is more empirical, when one understands the swamp of stylized facts and standard assumptions built on assumptions built on assumptions that riddle quantitative analysis. To the best of my knowledge, there is no credible cross-section study of the collapse of civilizations that can determine the contributions of different variables in bringing about those events. There are, however, texts, narratives, myths, and practices that can offer insight into those events if we simply trust that humans who were dealing with the events were not just a bunch of superstitious fools.

Stanford economist John Pencavel tells a very revealing story about the study of working time. Prior to 1957, there was widespread acknowledgment that a reduction of hours often resulted in an improvement of productivity sufficient to provide higher wages. It was also understood that employers resisted reductions in working time that were rational for the individual employer but irrational for the economy as a whole -- basically a "tragedy" of common-pool goods similar to the prisoner's dilemma. But all this local knowledge was no good for quantitative analysis, so H. Greg Lewis simply assumed that over time workers preferences for income versus leisure changed and that change could be read off the time series. Voila! Now the hours of work could be inserted into quantitative studies as a variable whose actions were consistent with the historical trend. But then another economist -- whose name I forget -- came along and decided that the trend labor leisure choice model could be applied to individuals. Even better for quantitative studies!

As Pencavel has shown, there is no empirical support for the individualized labor-leisure trade-off model but there is clear empirical refutation. Of course the trend that Greg Lewis identified 65 years ago has subsequently vanished, so even that model is invalid. No matter! Economists have an assumption that they can plug into the models that gets them around the inconvenient truth that the relationship between working time, employment and productivity cannot be easily predicted quantitatively.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Tom Abeles]

Hi Joe

I strongly recommend looking at the extensive materials published by the Good Foods Institute, GFI.org

The gov't of Singapore is the first to certified cellular production of chicken which shows the global commitment of governments to Precision Fermentation/Cellular Ag  PF/CA. The presence of JBS, the world's largest processor of meat now has alt protein products in the global market just as an example. Burger King in Belgium (I believe) has a full vegan menu. One can buy ice cream which has a matching non-dairy and dairy versions.....

There are a number of newsletter and other materials that track the entire industry from manufacturing to venture financing to the growth of products in the marketplace. GFI is the best entry point.  This is not a fringe industry.

tom

[Jean Boucher]

I've appreciated this work-time thread. Thx, Tom W. & Halina; it picks at some questions I've had about popular assumptions on shorter work weeks (without reduced pay). 

I'm also suspect of the idea that working from home reduces environmental impact, and that reducing income inequality also does so.

Jean

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[Tom Bowerman]

I think TW's observation of the problem of  "the conceptual input-output
problem of infinite regress", is worthy of special attention. Likewise,
the assumption that not all economic activity is equal in environmental
impact seems to make intuitive sense until we consider that no economic
activity is a single point transaction. But single economic activity is
viewed in context of prior and post chain of ripples in the  economic
pond, it looks more like an river of human squirrels,  hustling to hide
away as many as ten times as many nuts as necessary, just in case,
genetically predisposed from ancient survival instinct.

This reminds me of a conversation I had thirty years ago with my ten
year old son about how to measure environmental impact. After
considerable discussion we hypothesized a simple theorem: one dollar
equals one environmental consumption unit, period! Neither of us are
economists, rather just lay observers of the cultural burden humanity
enacts on our ecological systems. And while it need not be specifically
"dollars" but rather dollars symbolizing a generalized global fungible
monetary system, what if mastery of  environmental impact was degrowth,
and as simple as recessionary rather than inflationary economic policy?

Of course, such a paradigm shift is probably harder than asking people
to change their belief in a supreme God, if not one and the same.

On 8/9/2022 3:02 PM, Tom Walker wrote:
> we run into the conceptual input-output problem of infinite regress

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[Ruben Anderson]

Hi all, here is a deeper dive into lab “meat”.

https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/

"Humbird likened the process of researching the report to encountering an impenetrable “Wall of No”—his term for the barriers in thermodynamics, cell metabolism, bioreactor design, ingredient costs, facility construction, and other factors that will need to be overcome before cultivated protein can be produced cheaply enough to displace traditional meat. 

“And it’s a fractal no,” he told me. “You see the big no, but every big no is made up of a hundred little nos.”

Ruben (not Nelson)

On Aug 9, 2022, at 6:31 PM, Tom Abeles <tab...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Joe

I strongly recommend looking at the extensive materials published by the Good Foods Institute, GFI.org

The gov't of Singapore is the first to certified cellular production of chicken which shows the global commitment of governments to Precision Fermentation/Cellular Ag  PF/CA. The presence of JBS, the world's largest processor of meat now has alt protein products in the global market just as an example. Burger King in Belgium (I believe) has a full vegan menu. One can buy ice cream which has a matching non-dairy and dairy versions.....

There are a number of newsletter and other materials that track the entire industry from manufacturing to venture financing to the growth of products in the marketplace. GFI is the best entry point.  This is not a fringe industry.

tom

On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 3:36 PM Joe Zammit-Lucia <jo...@me.com> wrote:

Maybe there are a couple of things worth discussing. 

Not all economic growth is equal in terms of environmental harms. Increasing use of services for instance will result in less environmental damage than increased consumption of goods. Don’t know what literature there is on that. Quite a bit I suspect. 

If people start spending a significant amount of time and money in the various metaverses  - for instance buying virtual real estate rather than physical real estate - that will also make a difference. 

It also highlights the problem with pure empiricism which, by definition, has to be backward looking (we have no ‘data’ about the future - and especially about a sort of future we can’t even begin to imagine). 

Finally, to Tom’s point, developments such as alt-protein and convincing people to switch depends on two things - technological development and industrial investment in that, in production, and in advertising to persuade people to switch. The abhorrence by some of industry and advertising is counter-productive as we cannot achieve change without them. 

Unless of course one prefers the authoritarian route of regulating every aspect of everyone’s lives. 

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

<noname.jpeg>

<noname.jpeg>

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[Tom Walker]

Tom B hits on something -- perhaps by accident -- that I left unsaid in my previous email:

Of course, such a paradigm shift is probably harder than asking people
to change their belief in a supreme God, if not one and the same.

The issues that we are dealing with are fundamentally theological, whether or not one believes in a supreme God. Too many people who profess a deep religious faith act as though they have zero understanding of what that entails, while many atheists do. I consider myself a philosophical deist because it is difficult to talk about some crucial issues without reference to a God-term. In my current project, I am investigating the evolution of a proto-ecological discourse from the Old Testament to its most coherent secular form. The latter is not the academic research study, incidentally.

I can demonstrate philologically that the historical impetus for a shorter work week and limitation of the working day evolved from seventeenth century Sabbatarianism, which in turn was a revival of Old Testament scripture regarding the Sabbath. This does not mean, however, that working less is the same as resting more. There is a fundamental spiritual difference that Erich Fromm captured beautifully in his writing on the Sabbath that I have mentioned previously.

A shorter work week WOULD (not may or could or potentially) have environmental benefits, provided the additional time off work was devoted to remembering that what we receive from nature is a gift that we must show gratitude for in all our interactions with "the creation." I don't need any cross-sectional or time series statistical inference or input-output razzamatazz to persuade me of that.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Ashley Colby]

Just one point of contention. JBS has one of the worst records in the entire world in animal cruelty, illegal environmental destruction including pollution, deforestation, operating on protected indigenous land and more. This is not a company anyone who cares about the environment should be looking toward for a sustainable food solution. I personally denounce this corporation in the strongest possible terms and would think twice about positively discussing such an organization on a sustainable consumption group. 

Ashley Colby Fitzgerald

ash...@rizomafieldschool.com

PhD, Environmental Sociology

Executive Director Rizoma Foundation, Loconomy Project

Co-founder Rizoma Field School

My book: Subsistence Agriculture in the US

Twitter @RizomaSchool @RizomaFound @LoconomyNow

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Confidentiality Notice: This document is confidential and contains proprietary information and intellectual property of Ashley Colby. Neither this document nor any of the information contained herein may be reproduced or disclosed under any circumstances without the express written permission of Ashley Colby. Please be aware that disclosure, copying, distribution or use of this document and the information contained therein is strictly prohibited.

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[Ortrud Leßmann]

Ingrid Robeyns has written a piece on what to do about climate change.
Consumption is number 4 with the caveat that political action is should
be prioritized over changing individual private consumption patterns.
What do you think?

https://crookedtimber.org/2022/08/09/what-to-do-about-climate-change-2-a-citizens-action-plan/

Best

Ortrud

--
Dr. Ortrud Leßmann
Forschungsverbund Standards guter Arbeit
c/o Institut für Personal und Arbeit
Holstenhofweg 85
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[Philip Vergragt]

I like the conciseness of her 10 points, and I also agree with her priorities.
The caveat in the title was not necessary; if you prioritize 10 points, it follows automatically from the order.
Here I copy-paste her #4:
4. Let's look critically at our consumption, but prioritize political action
Yes, we must adapt our consumption patterns: move towards vegetarianism and veganism, use public transport or bicycles and share cars, insulate houses, put solar panels on roofs, repair and recycle, and think three times before flying. However, consumption patterns change most robustly following price changes or government regulation. That's why political action and climate activism are more important: recall that we need politicians who introduce a set of regulations, public investment and taxes that are needed to move towards a sustainable way of living, and do what it takes to move other countries that must do the same. Yet despite that political action is more urgent and potentially more powerful than merely changing our own consumption, this should not be used as an excuse to not look critically at our own consumption patterns. Because in some areas our consumption can make a difference. There is low-hanging fruit, such as moving away from meat and diary consumption, that all of us, can start with tomorrow (except the vegans, who I salute).

-----Original Message-----
From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ortrud Leßmann
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2022 7:30 AM
To: sco...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [SCORAI] Ingrid Robeyns' citizens' action plan on climate change

Ingrid Robeyns has written a piece on what to do about climate change.
Consumption is number 4 with the caveat that political action is should be prioritized over changing individual private consumption patterns.
What do you think?

https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcrookedtimber.org%2F2022%2F08%2F09%2Fwhat-to-do-about-climate-change-2-a-citizens-action-plan%2F&amp;data=05%7C01%7C%7Cb7e99069a1f84663813e08da7b5a96dc%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637957926249854285%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=aMFbeIEeXBSZ6%2BK545hHV20Cy24OefKy9icVMO%2FtcRM%3D&amp;reserved=0

Best

Ortrud

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D-22043 Hamburg

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[Tom Abeles]

thought this would complement:

https://tinyurl.com/396hwh8v

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[Rees, William E.]

Here's the problem as I see it:  

1) Robeyns' actions, while potentially helpful, are all addressed at climate change but climate change is not the real problem. Ecological overshoot is the major environmental existential treat facing humanity.  (There  are too many people consuming and polluting too much.)  

2) Climate change is an excessive waste problem and just one symptom of overshoot. 

3) Politically acceptable 'solutions' to climate change will not fix the climate and tend to exacerbate overshoot. (Education about climate change -- her first point -- would reveal this to critical observers.)

4) The only effective way to reduce overshoot and address its major symptoms (climate change, plunging biodiversity, ocean acidification, tropical deforestation, land/soil degradation, pollution of everything, etc., etc.) is through significant reductions in energy and material throughput (consumption and waste discharge) and human population.

5) One could argue that society's simplistic focus on climate change is a distraction from the real issue of overshoot and as such is a form of denial. 

6) In short, Robeyns' solutions do not go nearly far enough.

Bill

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Subject: RE: [SCORAI] Ingrid Robeyns' citizens' action plan on climate change

 

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[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear William,

The only effective way to reduce overshoot and address its major symptoms… is through significant reductions in energy and material throughput (consumption and waste discharge) and human population.

Might you share with us how, in your view, this might be achieved?

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

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[Dimitris Stevis]

Bill,

I agree with you that climate change is a symptom of our broader political economy. But I would suggest that overshoot is also a symptom of it. It is worth noting that the overshoot argument (population cum overuse) gained traction in recent human history (and particularly during the 20th century and more so after WWII), i.e., with the rise of the political contestations associated with  industrialism/capitalism/colonialism/global geopolitics or whatever one may call it? I would agree with you that we should pay as much attention to the causes (as well as to their symptoms - whether climate or overshoot). 

D

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[Tom Walker]

In my opinion we need 'a precise awareness of the present moment' as a guide to decisive action. 

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Tom Abeles]

Hi Joe

In response to your question to William, I have posted references to the transformational work in the area of alternative protein or alt. protein, noting the studies of RethinkingX and the extensive materials housed on the Good Foods Institute. The rise of the alt. protein efforts, globally appear to be tracking projections that RethinkX has forecast for developed countries, specifically the US and elsewhere which supports McAfee's claims of "More from Less" with significant reduction in land, water and other inputs and not considering the claimed health benefits from a vegan diet. These do not consider the other reductions of equipment manufacturing along the value chain from mine to fork so to speak.

While one hates to default to technology, including ideas around microgrids, nuclear, etc, thinking along these lines tends to dissolve the "hair shirt" which has been donned by the green movement to add pain to the guilt of the consumption driven humans. Perhaps a more logical approach is to deal with the problems created by a financialized economy which couples capital growth with material growth. There are solutions here which can be done if government would break its relationship with the 99% and get its fist out of the financial cookie jar.

tom A

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[Rees, William E.]

 

 Hi Tom, Joe et al. --

First, to Tom's point:  For a book-full of reasons, I'm inclined to be skeptical of 'alternative protein', cultivated meat and many of the other potential techno-miracles advocated by the RethinkX folks.  Many of their ideas have yet to meet the test of 'scaling up' and will be challenged by energy and materials bottlenecks among other things. Even if the RethinkX revolution were possible, it would serve mainly to enable "business-as-usual-by-alternative-means", i.e., it would not address (indeed, it would worsen) overshoot and the depletion of the planet.   

The URL below is a detailed account of the technical and material roadblocks on the path to lab-grown animal protein.  On such grounds, my advice to local food producers is not to sell off your broiler hens and feeder steers just yet.  We are a long way away from seeing commercial cultivated meat production on a scale sufficient to significantly challenge conventional meat at competitive prices.  Check out: 

https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/

Lab-grown meat is supposed to be inevitable. The science tells a different story. thecounter.org Headlines have overshadowed inconvenient truths about biology and cost. Now, new research suggests the industry may be on a crash course with reality.

 

Joe asks how society might achieve significantly reduced production/consumption and  population. I.e., what should we be doing  to reduce overshoot and stave off extreme climate change. Here is a just small sample of policies that should be familiar to SCORAI followers. 

First, on the conceptual level governments should:

• Formally acknowledge the end of material growth and the need to reduce the total human ecological footprint by about 40%.  (We should long ago have planned to achieve half this goal by 2030 and complete it by 2050, but we have now essentially lost the opportunity to limit the mean global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C and likely even 2 C degrees).  
• Acknowledge that, as long as we remain in overshoot, sustainable production/consumption means less production/consumption.
• Admit the theoretical and practical difficulties/impossibility of an all-green quantitatively equivalent energy transition.
• Establish programs to assist communities, families and individuals to facilitate the adoption of sustainable lifestyles (even North Americans lived happily on half the energy per capita in the 1960s than we use today).
• Implement education/training strategies to retrain the workforce for new forms of employment that result from reduced energy budgets.
• Recognize that a just sustainability requires reallocation of wealth and income. Strategies (e.g., taxes, fines) to eliminate unnecessary fossil fuel use and reduce energy waste (half or more of energy “consumed” is wasted  through inefficiencies and carelessness)

More specific policies would require that governments/society:  

• Phase out non-essential and frivolous uses of FF.  (e.g., private vehicles including EVs, ATVs, jet-skis, leaf-blowers, non-essential air travel, etc.)
• Allocate any remaining FF budget to essential uses (e.g., agriculture/food processing, inter-urban truck and marine transportation, high-temperature industrial applications.) There are no substitutes for many uses of  FF in the short-term.
• Implement carbon taxes, resource depletion taxes, allocation quotas, etc. I.e, internalize social and eco-externalities through full social-cost pricing.  This would significantly raise the prices of almost everything to better reflect the full costs of production and thus reduce unnecessary consumption.
• Since the relatively poor would be adversely affectedby full-cost pricing, this program should be accompanied by elevated minimum wage schedules and a guaranteed minimum income where necessary.
• Implement fair income and corporate tax systems so that high-income earners pay a fair share of the costs of eco-damage and regeneration.
• Re-localize essential manufacturing and food production.
  (i.e., reduce dependence on unreliable global supply chains)
• Reorganize settlements into more self-reliant, steady-state, urban-centred bioregions integrated into local ecosystems.
• Downsize housing (new house = 1000 sq ft, down from 2500 sq ft)
• All new construction to passive house standards (~80% more energy efficient).
• Invest in restoring essential ecosystems and life-support services.
• Implement a global non-coercive family planning/population program starting with better education and economic independence for women.

In short, there is little doubt that we know many of the things that should be done to engineer “significant reductions in energy and material throughput (consumption and waste discharge) and human population”.  However, the problem is not what should be done but rather how to convince the world to take the kinds of decisive action necessary.  Global society's continued worshipping at the alter technology-abetted perpetual growth is a cognitive barrier that is only beginning to be challenged in the mainstream.  The dominant growth-based cultural narrative is obsolete and  If it does not evolve rapidly then some sort of chaotic implosion is inevitable. 

On the upside, societal beliefs, values and assumptions (narrative or paradigm) are subject to erosion if the flood of evidence continues to surge. At some point we reach a social tipping point when acceptance of the need for rapid change goes mainstream.  The barrier  comes down. 

Cheers, 

Bill

---

From: Tom Abeles <tab...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2022 2:10 PM
To: jo...@me.com
Cc: Rees, William E.; sco...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Ingrid Robeyns' citizens' action plan on climate change

 

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Dear All,

may I come back to Ingrid Robeyns' piece on what citizens can do about climate change? We may have to add overshoot (as Bill pointed out). For sure, a "precise awareness of the present moment" would be good (as Tom stated).

The problem I have with this thread is that it lost the focus on what an ordinary citizen can do. The proposals by Ingrid Robeyns may not go far enough, but they are not thought of or presented as "solutions", but rather as a starting point. The aim is to get into action.

Reading all your inputs makes me feel helpless and makes me refrain from action. The ideas you bring up are not ideas on the level of what ordinary people can do, but rather address governments or "the society".

Could you refocus on what all this means in your view for ordinary citizens?

Best

Ortrud

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/19f0192106de44fd8fe35f10fd720b44%40mail.ubc.ca.

-- 
Dr. Ortrud Leßmann
Forschungsverbund Standards guter Arbeit
c/o Institut für Personal und Arbeit
Holstenhofweg 85
D-22043 Hamburg

https://www.sga.uni-hamburg.de/der-verbund/mitglieder/lessmann.html

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[Ruben Anderson]

Ortrud, the problem I have with Robeyns’ points is that they are exactly what we have been doing for nearly five decades, while the world loses species, gets hotter, and more crowded. 

There is not a thing on her list less than twenty years old. 

At some point we need to admit that something doesn’t work, and doing it bigger, faster and harder won’t help—because it doesn’t work. 

In this case, half of her list does not mesh with the reality of human behaviour, and the other half doesn’t mesh with the reality of power. 

So to answer your question, there are a lot of things ordinary citizens can do. Some are more esoteric, like cultural conservation or community grief rituals.

But I always say Local Food, Walkable Communities, and Insulated Homes. Grab on to any part of one of those three issues, and start pulling. 

Take care, 

Ruben.

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Ruben,

thanks for this! Local food, walkable communities and insulated homes address ordinary citizens. However, I wonder if you propose not to do all the (other) things on Robeyns' list?

Best

Ortrud

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[Ilan Kelman]

Well-said that "society's simplistic focus on climate change is a distraction from the real issue of overshoot and as such is a form of denial"! A different approach producing the same conclusion:

1. Blog https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202102/the-causes-climate-change

2. Paper https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-015-0038-5

With a proposal to place climate change in context:

1. Blog https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/disaster-choice/202101/connecting-climate-change-disaster-risk-and-sustainability

2. Paper https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-02-2017-0043

3. Handbook https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Disaster-Risk-Reduction-Including-Climate-Change/Kelman-Mercer-Gaillard/p/book/9781138924567

Let's continue working together to emphasise how human-caused climate change is a symptom, not a cause.

Ilan

https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/fdda25926a69409393aad4a4b39507bc%40mail.ubc.ca

.

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Hi Ilan,

focusing on climate change may be simplistic, negelecting a lot of context, but do you really think it is a distraction from the real issue however that is named?

I completely agree that we should not focus solely on climate change and that politically all the efforts on SDGs, climate change and disaster-related action have to be connected. Yet, I can't see much benefit in blaming approaches such as Robeyns' citizens' action plan as simplistic.

What guidance can you give ordinary citizens? Ruben (Anderson) has narrowed it down to walkable communities, local food and insulated homes. This may be another simplification, but a helpful rule of thumb.

Best

Ortrud

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/1688509646.810368.1660288578074%40mail.yahoo.com.

-- 
Dr. Ortrud Leßmann
Forschungsverbund Standards guter Arbeit
c/o Institut für Personal und Arbeit
Holstenhofweg 85
D-22043 Hamburg

https://www.sga.uni-hamburg.de/der-verbund/mitglieder/lessmann.html

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[Ilan Kelman]

Hi Ortrud,

Thank you and these are the important questions! How good are the answers? This is why we are on this email list. For me,

1. Yes, I see human-caused climate change (a major and worrying symptom) distracting from the causes. See the links provided in my previous message for specific examples. As another story along these lines, see https://www.radixonline.org/blog/neyijvw2iwg7pjr38wbxhm0fr5vr0x

2. In terms of Robeyns and guidance, see Bill's message which had excellent summaries of specifics, as well as the other discussion on this thread--both before and after Bill's message below--which answers aspects of these key points from many perspectives. Part of this is not blaming Robeyns nor obviating these approaches for being simplistic. Instead, it is seeking wider and deeper contexts; not tossing away everything from Robeyns or others, instead trying to expand, deepen, and focus as much as possible on the fundaments.

To add, two starting agendas for achieving sustainability:

1. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8959-2_2

2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imic.2015.04.001

Hope this helps a bit? What are your thoughts? How would you answer your questions? Thank you and looking forward to critiques of the material I provide,

Ilan

1. Twitter @ILANKELMAN https://twitter.com/ilankelman

2. Instagram @ILANKELMAN https://www.instagram.com/ilankelman

3. ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ilan_Kelman

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/7caf4a86-3283-73f7-6e0a-dcba913fc693%40hsu-hh.de.

[Jean Boucher]

I am a sociologist, perhaps a dark discipline, but if darkness it is then I think it is darkness we must face.

Individuals need to organize as our 'enemies' are highly organized and they consist of everything from fossil fuel companies to consumer marketers (just think of what our children get pummeled with) to political parties.

It also takes a lot of time and energy to organize as participation and consensus building seem to be more prevalent in grassroots movements ( more than in these large dark institutions). I speak from experience, organizing is exhausting and little to no pay, but I still work in grassroots campaigns for nearly 'its own sake' as I'm not sure what is more effective while I'm also not sure what it accomplishes. I just refuse to be part of what I see as the problem.

We do know that veganism has jumped markedly in the last 10 years, but that's been at least a 50-year and very diverse campaign (including health, animal rights, environmental groups). It's a big but small little victory and it's not nearly enough. We don't have time for this slow stuff, and some people who know this get radical and then the media bashes on them too.

I read Robeyns list and I thought, I'm doing all this stuff (it's a really nice list) and I'm trying to hold a job too and eat and sleep at night also. I personally, need to try something else, but I'm at capacity and still, I feel that my part-time activism is most important for organizing a resistance-to-BAU movement, and even this takes years of acquired skill that is not learned at our beloved but highly co-opted universities.

I am not resigned to apathy, I fight for its own sake, and also for some rational and non-rational reasons, but it still won't be enough, I am still just one person against, for example, a fossil fuel or marketing industry that pays hypnotic liveable, or higher, salaries.

Jean 

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[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear Bill,

Thanks for this.

As one politician once put it, we may know what we maybe should be doing, but we don't know how to get re-elected if we try to do it. And an unelected politician is not a particularly useful one.

Your list contains many good suggestions. The next step is to work out which of these policies can reasonably be implemented and which, if anybody attempted to implement them (or maybe even talk about them), would fuel the rise of reactionary political forces and end up with governments that could set the climate change agenda back by decades.

To an extent, we are fortunate that climate-friendly politicians act as a filter for suggested approaches that would be politically counter-productive.

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

Joe

[Jean Boucher]

Thanks, Joe, I think you've detailed well a quote I like from Les Brown - "We are in a race between political tipping points and natural tipping points."

Jean

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[Ortrud Leßmann]

Hi Ilan, Bill, Jean and Zoe,

thanks for clarifying your position! I'm glad to hear that the main point is to broaden the context and dig deeper into the causes of climate change and environmental problems. Still, it seems to me that you are speaking to the SCORAI-community of experts and researchers and do not directly address ordinary citizens in your "starting agendas for achieving sustainability". But I see that you argue for inter- and transdisciplinary research, including not only other researchers but practitioners, too.

Concerning my questions: I don't see the focus on climate change as a distraction as long as there are so many people who deny climate change. It's a valid starting point. And it's important to keep things simple in order to be able to act. This is not to stop you and others informing the broader public on climate change misinformation and in your effort to put it in context.

As guidance for ordinary citizens who are not working full-time on these issues (and I count myself in this group since I mainly work on social policy, people's well-being and inequality) I like Robeyns list. (@ Jean: thanks for giving insights into how you are combining work and activism!) I think Robeyns is right in highlighting that individual consumption is important, but that political measures are more important. Concerning what measures should be prioritized, Bill's key points may help assessing policies and politicians. Thanks to all of you who have pointed out that Bill's list may looked at in this way as well. Not as something citizens can do by themselves but try to support and keep in mind in elections.

Robeyns' list is not a solution, it is not enough, but it gives guidance to those who say: "We can't do anything." She sets a positive example. Her list is easy to remember. And if you are already doing all those things, you can dig deeper. But I would ask you to be careful with stating that the focus on climate change is a distraction. That may well be an excuse not to start at all.

Best

Ortrud

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/1463230947.826276.1660291609904%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Ashley Colby]

Dear Ortrud,

I have begun putting together a very informal list of "good ideas" that are very accessible and comprehensible. Admittedly less scientific than Ilan's papers, but I hope helpful in wrapping one's head around the various places to place our optimism.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1552794130878808064.html

Ashley

Ashley Colby Fitzgerald

ash...@rizomafieldschool.com

PhD, Environmental Sociology

Executive Director Rizoma Foundation, Loconomy Project

Co-founder Rizoma Field School

My book: Subsistence Agriculture in the US

Twitter @RizomaSchool @RizomaFound @LoconomyNow

-------------------------------

Confidentiality Notice: This document is confidential and contains proprietary information and intellectual property of Ashley Colby. Neither this document nor any of the information contained herein may be reproduced or disclosed under any circumstances without the express written permission of Ashley Colby. Please be aware that disclosure, copying, distribution or use of this document and the information contained therein is strictly prohibited.

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[Rees, William E.]

I sympathize with your anxiety about what ordinary citizens can do.  I suspect the answer is that they can do very little that directly affects overshoot or climate change.  Overshoot is a collective problem that demands collective solutions. Ordinary citizens cannot implement the necessary tax and incentive regimes, ration FF supplies, implement public transit, etc.  In fact, many of these things are  required to support people in taking personal action such as using transit.

In this light, perhaps the most important action for ordinary citizens is to organize in special interest groups and mass protest activities to push politicians into doing the right thing.  

There is still a problem, of  course.  I wonder if the majority of people would be willing to participate/protest/revolt if they realized that significant action at the top would mean economic disruption, reduced energy supplies/consistency, job losses, possible relocation, etc., before things re-stabilize, if they  ever do. 

Bill

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From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ortrud Leßmann <o.les...@hsu-hh.de>
Sent: Thursday, August 11, 2022 9:52:39 PM
To: sco...@googlegroups.com

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[Tom Walker]

Bill Rees wrote: 

In this light, perhaps the most important action for ordinary citizens is to organize in special interest groups and mass protest activities to push politicians into doing the right thing.  

At the risk of repeating myself from another thread, to be effective those mass protest activities Bill refers to would have to take the form of a general strike. We here on this list probably have little to know comprehension of what a general strike even means. There is also a paradox: a general strike must be both spontaneous and well prepared for. Think of improvisational jazz. 

It seems to me that the way the recent literature talks about the general strike relies on Walter Benjamin's image of activating the emergency brake. My apologies for dropping a metaphor into this discussion. But it is a compelling image or it wouldn't come up so much in Google Scholar searches. 

How does one "activate the emergency brake." Where, even, is the emergency brake on this train? The answer lies in the production function, which combines labour and capital. Production stops happening if there are no labour inputs. Stop working and the "train" stops racing toward the cliff. Remember Covid lockdown? That was just a tentative rehearsal.

"Oh, that was just the totalitarian state taking away people's freedom." No, it was a voluntary, popular response to a public health emergency. I am not talking about China. People voluntarily (often enthusiastically) complied with the government directives. Of course in a general strike there will be no government directive unless it is to return to work. 

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear Tom,

These are all good points.

There are some other points that might be worth bearing in mind:

- the vast majority of citizens don't give a damn about climate change. It is an abstract concept that is placed in a mental box very far back in their list of priorities. Priorities that include putting food on the table for those at the precarious end of the spectrum and accumulating more financial wealth for those better off. Not to mention crime, gun violence, immigration, health care coverage, housing, and, and, and....

We seem tempted to keep believing that everyone cares about climate as much as the people on this list - or that the whole citizenry is appallingly stupid if they don't. Recently speaking to some community organisers in the UK, they say that bringing up climate is a sure way of turning people off. They want to talk about other things. The other thing they found is that disruptive climate protests such as those organised by Extinction Rebellion turn ever more people against climate action. They have stories about people in financially precarious situations losing their job because they could not get to work due to the transport disruption by XR protests. This is no way to win over hearts and minds.

- mass actions like general strikes (if they could ever be organised successfully - which is almost impossible these days in most countries given the legislation around strikes and the exorbitant cost of mounting them) would likely feed political forces opposed to climate action. It would be like manna from the heavens for them. 

That is why climate action is such a delicate subject. If citizens en masse were fired up enough about it, we wouldn't need protests and other disruptions. It would already have made it to the top of the political agenda as the only way to get elected.

We need to internalise that the reason that political action is slow and halting is that for the vast majority of people they only care about climate change when asked about it in surveys, not in their real lives.

It might give us comfort to delude ourselves that it's all due to politicians being weak or incompetent. Or conveniently to blame it all on the lobbying power of fossil fuel companies. But none of that gets to the fundamental issues.

Now, that's not to say that progress has not been made and will not continue to be made. But we have to get real when we suggest actions that might help. 

And, I suggest, we need to switch from the long term apocalypse to a narrative that says "your life is going to be better today if you take these actions because....". Again, I see quite a bit of progress on that front too. But it's slow because it's hard.

The same community organisers mentioned above have also made progress on this aspect. They convince communities to take action that benefits the climate because they are framed as actions that improve their lives today.

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

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[Kate Olson]

Dear All,

I have been very appreciative of this thread. In my own corner of the world (Maine), I have found that a wide range of folks seem to respond to, 1) connecting climate impacts to places they love and depend on for their livelihoods and well-being and, 2) combining this with easy ideas for how to incorporate action into all the spheres of their own lives. I've also found that building community through action, and making it fun, works. For example, I host climate action happy hours and climate action coffee hours (guess which ones are more lively!). It may not be enough, but at the very least it's building more community resilience to the coming storm. I've attached a handout I use for these events in case it's helpful for others.

All best,

Kate

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/f0NMX2OACt5eWpbIOI11ATpmeewMUk4QU1mZgrCjAJ0DLrcN3k0RC5AnrKpFbkSp%40ip-10-0-4-59.cloze.com.

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[Jean Boucher]

Thanks for this, Joe, 

I agree with all your insights, but I think your evidence that social movements like XR are counterproductive is exceptional. I've heard these stories and I believe them and I believe there are people getting upset and areas that are counterproductive, but I don't think the big picture effects--behaviorally, politically, and temporally--can be scientifically assessed. 

I would argue that the same issues occurred when women decide they wanted to vote, or during the civil rights movement in the US, lunch-counter protests, and bus boycotts: "You're just pissing people off and being counterproductive."

Finally, the US seems to be passing something political on climate/clean-energy/inflation, probably too little too late, but we don't know to what degree media attention from extreme environmental actions contributed to this.

There may be nothing, but how can we know?

Jean  

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[Tom Walker]

Joe,

Thanks. A lot to think about here!

- the vast majority of citizens don't give a damn about climate change. 

That may be an overstatement. May be more prudent to say it isn't a high priority for most? many? people. But people do have the sense that they are "being robbed" and in those circumstances are more likely to identify tangible, concrete culprits than more abstract ones. 

We seem tempted to keep believing that everyone cares about climate as much as the people on this list -

I don't assume the people on this list care more about climate change than "everyone," which is kind of the opposite.

That is why climate action is such a delicate subject. If citizens en masse were fired up enough about it, we wouldn't need protests and other disruptions. It would already have made it to the top of the political agenda as the only way to get elected.

This is what I am saying in the long form. My short summaries leave that part out because it is a slow process developing the argument. I will try to give a glimpse: There is a saying in the Talmud that "If all of Israel observed the Sabbath fully only once, the Messiah would be here." What I am trying to do is give a secular midrash on that saying. 

And, I suggest, we need to switch from the long term apocalypse to a narrative that says "your life is going to be better today if you take these actions because....". 

Absolutely. How is "your" life going to be better? In Geoff Mann's review essay, he mentioned the idea of a "reduction function" as the counterpart to the economists' production function. Now there are only two factors in a production function, labour and capital. There are three factors in my reduction function: labour, leisure and material consumption (income). This is a mathematical model with variables and equations all explained with reference to the literature, not just some vague idea. Cutting to the chase, what the model shows is that people can have an "equivalent" standard of living with moderately less material consumption, MUCH less work and MUCH more leisure.

The catch, though, is what are people going to do with all that leisure? This is where calculations are not going to help and this is why I start with the concept of the Sabbath and particularly Erich Fromm's (and Abraham Heschel's and Samson Hirsch's) interpretation of the Sabbath as giving the natural world a rest. 

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Tom Walker]

Cutting to the chase, what the model shows is that people can have an "equivalent" standard of living with moderately less material consumption, MUCH less work and MUCH more leisure.

I should qualify that this conclusion is for most people. For billionaires and the rentier class in general, the model would imply MUCH less material consumption. Sorrry, plutocrats.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Ruben Anderson]

Hi Ortud—yes, I largely propose to not do the other things on Robeyn’s list. 

As I explained in the post I linked, it is important that we not be wasteful. 

That should be warmly recieved in this group—but we need a broader focus than simply not wasting consumer objects. There are finite limits on resources of course, but also on money, social capital, time, and attention. 

The activist model of raising awareness about issues hides a dagger in the velvet glove. Since attention is finite, if we pay attention to one issue, that means we cannot pay attention to a different issue. The attention is used up, there is no more until our tiny supply is replenished. 

I think our physical cognitive limits, and therefore the hard limits on our attention and action, are the biggest missed factor going right now. You can look at a proposal, and if it relies on a large amount of focussed attention you can ignore it with a high level of confidence. It is designed for a non-existent human, not for the real humans we live with. 

So as I said, it would be great if we could avoid entombing incredibly valuable resources and energy in dead-end projects. The “hydrogen highway” is a mournful example, but there are many more—ideas that have little chance of enduring, but that sequester precious cargo like a shipwreck with a hold full of brandy, lying on the seafloor two miles down. 

So, about the ten points:

#1 is education, and as I said, can be ignored with a high degree of confidence. This has been the dominant model for centuries now, and is deeply flawed due to an over reliance on attention and mistaken beliefs about what flows after attention. 

#2

Voting only politicians who protect the earth is comical. Who would you vote for? Our political power structures are built with very different goals than protecting the earth. Is there a single politician alive who could be said to be actually protecting the earth, as opposed to, at best, trying to do less harm to the earth?

#3 

I think you should support the climate justice movement, but I am worried about the connection to reality indicated in "very effective way for citizens to do something about climate change”.

Where is the evidence for that? If climate justice was very effective, would we not expect some slowing in climate change? 

#4 

So you should be an engaged consumer, even though it is not practicable with our cognitive limits. But you should prioritize political action, even though it is not practicable with our political systems. 

Again, where is the evidence of success? Material and energy extraction only continue to increase, despite decades of activism. 

And the result of the successful political action? More material and energy throughput as we rebuild all our systems to provide the same services we enjoy except “green"

I would note that someone who writes ten points and mentions veganism twice is someone that does not seem to have a very complex grasp of sustainability, biology or agriculture. 

#5 

Support media that are part of the solution. 

Well, I never think we should support media that are part of the problem, but again, what is the theory of change? It is that if “truth” is shared, people will learn, that will change their values, which will change their behaviour, and then they will probably pressure those earth-protecting politicians, and the world will rejoice!

This is the same broken model that has not worked for decades. I am underwhelmed to find it on a list in 2022. 

#6 

Give money

Let’s just say this is relevant to a vanishingly small number of people. The fact that this is on the list speaks pretty clearly to the demographic the list is meant for, and says a lot about why the list is so status quo and ineffectual. 

#7 

Debunk denialists. 

This is another well-trod path to failure. Not only does it fail to motivate allies, it strengthens enemies. 

#8 

Motivate each other. 

This point is a bit of a mess. It starts with the popular but lightly supported idea that blame is bad, moves to a good call for creating herd behaviour, and then falls back on a call to share knowledge, as if, once again, a lack of knowledge is the problem. 

Lack of knowledge is NOT the problem. 

#9

Work together to pressure politicians and companies. 

This is absolute standard operating procedure for decades and more and yet we are worse off. This is so numbingly obvious that its place on this list should really spur deep reflection on where we are at. 

#10

Self care. 

This is great. As I said, community grief rituals are going to be a necessary part of survival in the future. 

So, Robeyns has an absolutely non-functional model of human behaviour, and Stockholm Syndrome about the political process. No, I am not going to do much from Robeyns’ list. 

This is very hard. We are desperate to cling to our old ways of life and the world that seems familiar to us—even as the baselines shift under our very feet we insist that we must rescue what is already gone. 

This is exactly what I wrote about in the linked post. These ten points are ineffective, but does not mean there is nothing to do. 

It is critical to admit that our way of life is dying. This social arrangement cannot be saved. We should not pound fruitlessly on the chest of the dead person. 

This is the time for grief. When somebody dies, you have to truly mourn, you have to accept their absence. Only after the tears, after truly embodying that nothing will ever be the same again, can you move forward with a new life. 

Joanna Macy describes three pillars of action, the first of which is Holding Actions. We can look at this list generously, and if we squint a bit, say these are holding actions—though really some of them are just more sunk costs forever burning time, energy, and material that can never be recovered. 

But bless Robeyns for trying to hold the line. It is important work, and the people who do it are amazing. 

But that is not my work, and this list is not my list. I am interested in building capacity in the world that is coming to be. 

Warmly,

Ruben.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/e7d16988-31d6-9205-9258-bf3f2a6d9f44%40hsu-hh.de.

[Jean Boucher]

Here you go, Tom W. - we'll see how it goes!   - Jean

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/FD8B202D-CA42-418D-9EB0-B114B39A8A84%40gmail.com.

[Ashwani Vasishth]

i think this is a statement by Joe, pulled out by Tom W.  (Caveat...I am in a place where I cannot follow this discussion closely, so this is a comment on a single--likely side-bar--point.  Forgive me.)

the vast majority of citizens don't give a damn about climate change

I have a hunch.  Just a hunch.  That this is likely not strictly true.  At least,

• I am confident that most undergraduate students ARE completely disengaged with climate action
• I am confident that the MAIN OBSTACLE is simply not ignorance or the lack of caring.

I am confident that the reason many people shrug at climate action is because it is simply too overwhelming to think about in any instrumental way.  People can't see what can be done BY THEM to change this sorry state of things entire, and so think,

if there is nothing that can be done to change the outcome, my own life is good enough so I don't really have to fret about this.

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/CANz%2BBQxyNXxEN%2BKGMcpV7qVNPnf6FOQD%2BHfi97DPvZOX%2Bf8fqw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Helen Lawson Williams]

All,

Putting my head above the parapet: we are trying to solve a systems problem. Individual actions are therefore necessary but not sufficient.

Robeyn’s list is useful as a starting point for people who’ve just realised they need to do something and genuinely don’t know what that should be. I’m not convinced that’s the strongest point of leverage in changing the system, but every contribution is useful if it drives to action. We can’t know where that action might lead.

To build momentum we need to be careful about the standard we apply: ‘is it perfect?’ just discourages action. A better standard would be, ‘is it better than not contributing at all?’.

If so, how can we improve it?

My suggestions to improve Robeyn’s list: it needs to be more specific, particularly about how we organise. Systems change will come (has only ever come) from people organising to change rules and incentives in ways that benefit them personally - materially or emotionally.

The sweet spot in organising is the overlap between what we know is good for the planet, and what we know is good for our well-being as social creatures: connecting with each other, and with place.

Both Kate and Ashley have posted very useful, specific and actionable examples of this sweet spot in action.

Organising of this kind, as Kate has said, has dual advantage: it does move people to action, however slowly; and it builds resilience for the disruption we’re facing into.

Helen

Sent from my mobile device

On 13 Aug 2022, at 5:51 am, Ruben Anderson <anderso...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Ortud—yes, I largely propose to not do the other things on Robeyn’s list. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/FD8B202D-CA42-418D-9EB0-B114B39A8A84%40gmail.com.

[Ashley Colby]

I don't remember who asked about electric agricultural machinery but here is some anecdotal data from the ground on that topic 

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1557800868967092224.html

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/E88DB3AD-A121-4524-8403-B09DCF96BB3D%40gmail.com.

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Thanks for this, Ashley!

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Dear Tom, Joe, Kate and Jean,

thanks for turning the attention to more positive narratives what might be actually done in one's own life. I like the circles of change in Kate's handout.

I also think that the crises of today: the pandemic, the war in Ukraine with its impact on food supply, the drought in Europe, ... make much more people realize that our way of life is not the best and has to be changed. We may be far away from a general strike, but I see a change in awareness and attitude.

I completely agree that individual action is not enough and I see the difficulties in organizing collective answers. Yet, I think that usually all members of a collective need to agree on their collective aim - hence the individual level must not be neglected. But being part of a collective can be rewarding in itself - althoug it is also exhausting  as Jean told us.

Best

Ortrud

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/CANz%2BBQxyNXxEN%2BKGMcpV7qVNPnf6FOQD%2BHfi97DPvZOX%2Bf8fqw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Hi Ashwani,

thanks for this. This is the reason why I haven't found it helpful to start the discussion with: the points on Robeyns' list are not enough. Highlighting the shortcoming of traditional political action strengthens the feeling that on the individual level you can't do anything anyway. Looking at what sustainability takes IS overwhelming.

I'm glad the thread turned to other narratives.

Best

Ortrud

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/11dfc692-be4d-28b8-e117-9b8fc648aea0%40gmail.com.

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Hi Ruben,

thanks for clarifying your position further. I'm a bit torn how to react. Your position is thought-provoking! 

Yet, I also see some incongruence in your blaming education and political involvement as a waste of time and engergy while taking so much time to educate us about this ...

Best

Ortrud

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/FD8B202D-CA42-418D-9EB0-B114B39A8A84%40gmail.com.

[Benyamin Lichtenstein]

Yes, but the issue is about leverage. 

As individuals, adults running around in our professional and personal worlds, 

If asked: What am I personally doing about Climate Change, I may be Composting, and Recycling -- thanks to the city's free pick-up services.  ...and maybe I'm not watering my lawn. 

But as an individual, we can see that composting, however duitiful and valuable, is not a Solution. Not even close.  So not close it feels stupid almost to take on anything else.  

And that's the lack of motivation, I believe. 

As an Individual, what REALLY can I do that would make a dent in this growing climate crisis? 

Personally, I have some ideas about that, but I'm simply responding to the WHY question. 

{:=>)

On Sat, Aug 13, 2022 at 4:50 AM Ortrud Leßmann <o.les...@hsu-hh.de> wrote:

Hi Ashwani,

thanks for this. This is the reason why I haven't found it helpful to start the discussion with: the points on Robeyns' list are not enough. Highlighting the shortcoming of traditional political action strengthens the feeling that on the individual level you can't do anything anyway. Looking at what sustainability takes IS overwhelming.

I'm glad the thread turned to other narratives.

Best

Ortrud

Am 12.08.2022 um 23:35 schrieb Ashwani Vasishth:

i think this is a statement by Joe, pulled out by Tom W.  (Caveat...I am in a place where I cannot follow this discussion closely, so this is a comment on a single--likely side-bar--point.  Forgive me.)

the vast majority of citizens don't give a damn about climate change

I have a hunch.  Just a hunch.  That this is likely not strictly true.  At least,

• I am confident that most undergraduate students ARE completely disengaged with climate action
• I am confident that the MAIN OBSTACLE is simply not ignorance or the lack of caring.

I am confident that the reason many people shrug at climate action is because it is simply too overwhelming to think about in any instrumental way.  People can't see what can be done BY THEM to change this sorry state of things entire, and so think,

if there is nothing that can be done to change the outcome, my own life is good enough so I don't really have to fret about this.

-- 

     

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[dvskasper]

Hello all,

Exchanges like this are interesting, but generally also disappointing because they tend not to get us anywhere.There's a common pattern, which this one more or less follows. It's useful to spot because it points to some places where well-meaning and somewhat likeminded folks often end up talking past each other from the respective circles they're running in, rather than moving forward together.

1. Hopeful suggestion. In the interest of offering some relief and encouraging guidance, someone says “don’t lose heart, here are some things YOU can do to be part of the solution.”

2. Initial responses. Reactions range from yay to nay to meh. For example, “yay veganism,” “nay, the politics are hopeless,” “meh, nothing new here.” Even if certain rallying points are debatable, there's value in the clarity of these reactions. But any one of them can also be a dead end. 

3. Respectful objections. For instance, the focus is in the wrong place. “it’s about overshoot,” “it’s about values,” “the problem is not what to do, but how.” These points, well taken, can advance the conversation. 

4. Objections to objections. But, others say, “the things you mention are off the political table,” “most people have other more pressing concerns.” “people need hope, they need to feel they can do something.” 

5. Winding down. Such conversations can conclude in any number of ways--they can get tense or even volatile, end on a conciliatory note, or just peter out. In these cases, not much is accomplished, but on a good day, some of us are prompted to think in new ways. 

The conclusion to this conversation reflects some points worth highlighting.

One is that empathy is a good place to start. Acknowledging the anxiety, impotence, fear, anger, apathy, denial, overwhelm, and other things we and others feel is crucial, and wanting to relieve that is a good thing indeed. But in this case, it's a terrible place to stop. The desire to promote "feeling good" at the expense of genuine efficacy is not only pointless, it's part of the problem.

Our insistence on feeling good, whether conscious or unconscious, at all costs is one of the main obstacles to understanding and addressing our predicament (and in some ways its cause). It keeps us from facing facts which are challenging, unsettling, or upsetting. Even if partly a matter of innate cognitive biases, it's also a matter of conditioning in MIT cultures which encourage and reinforce it. The irony is, this insistence keeps us trapped in cycles which contribute to our feeling very very bad in the long term.

Another theme in this thread is the many entry points (albeit of varying leverage) for addressing our crises. There's so much work to be done at different levels for different reasons and with different time scales in mind. Yes to mobilizing for sensible policies, helping usher in different technologies, increasing household and community resilience, and laying the groundwork for deeper cultural changes that serve all these and more. Nobody can do it all, but our different skills and inclinations can be put to good use in these different arenas. (My interests happen to lie with the last two.)

BUT to be most effective, I would argue, each type of work ideally needs to know and more clearly show where it fits in the bigger picture. 

With regard to the function of "what YOU can do" lists, improving them means: 1) crafting lists informed by a more solid grasp of the facts, 2) contextualizing them within the bigger picture, and based on that, 3) being transparent about the limits and opportunities for what people can achieve. 

Wherever our work lies, for most of us this approach would require some learning, among other things. So, "education" turns out to be important after all. But we're not just talking about learning facts. Although knowledge is part of it, Ruben A. and 60 years of research helpfully remind us that it usually doesn't lead to action or behavioral change. 

What kind of education do we need? For starters, we/citizens desperately need to learn how to see and understand reality more clearly (i.e., how to zoom out to see the bigger picture, identify the roots of problems, understand the likely outcomes of a given scenario, zoom back in to discern what all that means for us in our particular contexts) and ultimately how to face and live more gracefully in reality as it is. In Norbert Elias' terms, we need to shift the current balance of involvement and detachment--the proportional influences on our reactions/responses of immediate concerns and emotional involvements versus the capacity for a more dispassionate view of the larger situation. 

Such things can be learned in many ways from countless sources. Some of you already play a role in this more holistic type of education; it's long been a goal in my various types of work. There's no reason more schools, families, community leaders, scholars, and social commentators can't start contributing more to these forms of learning right now. 

Clearly, this sort of learning is a big and generations-long task. I don't mean to imply that, even if it were to happen immediately on a larger scale, it would “solve” our current problems. It would, however, create the basis for the development of a culture better equipped than ours to craft happier, more meaningful lives within the reality that is AND increase the chances that more of us would take actions that matter. A two-for-one deal that could help move things forward in the ways needed.

Debbie

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/495a70c7-9638-bd13-5a74-08c9456e0919%40hsu-hh.de.

[Jean Boucher]

There's another list recently out, reader's digest, 'essential guide to sustainable living'

https://www.rd.com/article/sustainable-living/

There's also a nice article out there, 'The Myth of Apathy' by Renee Lertzman - in short, people aren't apathetic, they are overwhelmed, but we've been through this before, I believe.

Jean

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/CAHHGf5J_742qL14369xpX720ENuCeQJ1mp-GTCo%2BDdWxp3vKfw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Ashwani Vasishth]

Thank you, Debbie--that's "rich depiction" as it ought to be.  And appreciated as such.

VERY trivially, you say (perhaps with different intent?):

-- 

     Ashwani
        Vasishth         vasi...@ramapo.edu          (201) 684-6616 (Jabber-enabled)
                   http://phobos.ramapo.edu/~vasishth
          --------------------------------------------------------
                      Professor of Sustainability
                  Convener, Sustainability Program (BA)
              Convenor, Environmental Studies Program (BA)
                    Director, Center for Sustainability
                      http://ramapo.edu/ramapo-green
                     http://ramapo.edu/sustainability

You can ALWAYS set up an Appointment with me, without negotiation, seven days a week,
              at: https://calendly.com/vasishth/webex-meeting

                       Ramapo College of New Jersey
              505 Ramapo Valley Road, SSHS, Mahwah, NJ 07430
         --------------------------------------------------------

I respectfully acknowledge that Ramapo College is located on the ancestral and traditional Indigenous territory of the Ramapough Lenape Nation.

Our insistence on feeling good

Well, its just that the obverse can clearly be shown to be counter-productive, don't you think?  Honey and vinegar sort of thing?

Unless you mean making people feel good meaninglessly and in principle, like insisting every kindergartner gets a gold star to avoid hurting feelings?

--

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[vikis]

Love this!  I find myself at times frustrated and annoyed with the overwhelmingly left-brained responses these discussions evoke as if there were some "right" answer.  Debbie has captured the limitations of such arguments well and provided a useful rubric ("each type of work ideally needs to know and more clearly show where it fits in the bigger picture") for grounding both individual and collective efforts.  So appreciated!  

Viki, a degrowth practitioner

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[dvskasper]

You’re right, Ashwani. I did not intend to trivialize wanting to feel good. The basic desire to be happy is fundamental to the human condition, so pretty important stuff. 

The key words in my statement are “at all costs.” At cost, for example, of the truth, others’ well being, long-term health and survival, and sources of genuine lasting happiness (as opposed to illusions and temporary fixes). Does that help?

On Sat, Aug 13, 2022 at 11:59 AM Ashwani Vasishth <ashwani....@gmail.com> wrote:

Thank you, Debbie--that's "rich depiction" as it ought to be.  And appreciated as such.

VERY trivially, you say (perhaps with different intent?):

Our insistence on feeling good

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/2266ec64-bb1c-e03d-f40e-5413abac4b1e%40gmail.com.

[Jean Boucher]

Thanks for this, Debbie.  

I sometimes find myself needing to celebrate everything and anything, there's so much to do, and maybe too late, but when something shifts into what seems like a better direction, I think that's great! Even like celebrating the 2015 Paris Accord: an ahistorical moment, and great, though still not enough.

And a listserv (especially tending toward academic) is probably not the best platform for expressing empathy, affirming struggle, and then encouraging action. There's a lot going on there and these little 'sound bites' are probably not built for it.

Cheers!

Jean

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[Ruben Anderson]

Hi Ortrud 

It is not incongruent—but as with the root of this discussion, what is possible at the time may still not fulfill our desires. 

I didn’t say education is a waste of time. I did say "our physical cognitive limits, and... the hard limits on our attention and action, are the biggest missed factor going right now. You can look at a proposal, and if it relies on a large amount of focussed attention you can ignore it with a high level of confidence”

Michael Gazzaniga once said 99.999% of behaviour is unconscious. He was joking at the time, but then he said that was actually probably about right. 

So, very little of our behaviour is the product of conscious attention. By far the greatest influencer of our behaviour is the physical environment we live in. If a road is straight, flat and wide, you will drive faster. If a road is twisty and narrow, with poor visibility, you will drive slower. Most of our behaviour is simply responsive to our environment. 

The next substantial chunk of influence comes from our social context. If our environment does not shape our behaviour, we use flocking behaviour. 

There are a few big rubrics here, like “That is how we have always done this” (with the subtext, “and it worked out okay, so let’s do it that way again.”)

Another one is “This is what everyone around me is doing” (with the subtext, “and everything seems to be fine, so I am going to do that too.”)

We use these systems because our high-attention cognitive system is so costly. It was very late to evolve, and it uses a massive share of our brain’s energy despite doing just a small fraction of the work. We make just a tiny fraction of our decisions using this system, and we can only physically do it for a few hours a day. 

When our high-attention cognitive system is tired, we revert to the physical and social responses. 

And, in order to keep our brain fresh in case it is needed to fight off a sabre-tooth tiger, we have defense mechanisms that discourage expensive conscious thought. Perhaps we saw that in your response, where instead of discussing the though-provoking aspects, you mentioned incongruence. Incongruence can then be easily dismissed, which conserves brain resources. 

So, education is obviously a high-attention activity that is very cognitively demanding. We can’t do it for very long each day, and there are a lot of competing demands for those cognitive resources so we naturally prefer to defend the resources rather than consume them. 

As much as I would love to visit you in Europe, I am unable to change your physical context to shape your behaviour. 

Great social influence comes from those you are in proximity with, so again, I cannot shape behaviour that way. 

What is left, over this listserve, is the high-attention, cognitively demanding route of education and discussion. 

Sadly, just because that is all we have does not mean it will work. It still must face the competition from all the other demands of work, school, relationships, finances, friendships, etc etc. We will be lucky if there are a few crumbs left over here for SCORAI.

Warmly, 

Ruben.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/495a70c7-9638-bd13-5a74-08c9456e0919%40hsu-hh.de.

[Tom Bowerman]

Why do we disagree about whether individual actions or collective actions are preferable or more effective?  Why argue over whether we should treat the symptom or the cause of the problem? Rapid social change requires both.

To use a medical metaphor, when treating a patient's disease, best practice is frequently to treat both symptom and cause simultaneously.  For example, sciatic back pain caused by compressed spinal disk which is caused by humans living longer, lifting and shifting in ways our evolutionary biology has not kept up with; symptomatic inflammation and accompanying pain  if not treated with an anti-inflammatent results in a negative feedback loop, itself untreated causes permanent injury. 

Both individual action AND public policy are critical components of addressing overshoot. I have some sympathy to the argument that public policy (regulations, mandates, laws) is the only viable path because every individual is just a grain of sand in the desert.  On the other hand, Malcolm Gladwell wrote the series of essays turned into the book Tipping Point; he argues  individual actions grow a tipping point, sometimes as early as 10% of a population.  Anthropologist Margaret Mead commented that "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

A challenge we confront with either/or individual (behavior) and collective action (policy) is that when all is said and done, more is said than done. Al Gore's enormous personal carbon footprint during his electioneering probably cost him enough credibility to lose a razor margin. Peer reviewed research funds that citizens and policymakers are both more likely to be receptive to change when an individual walks their talk.

Public figures cannot expect the public to sacrifice convenience or comfort if they, themselves, do not “walk the walk.” Our prior work indicated that communicators’ carbon footprints massively affect their credibility and the likelihood that their audience will conserve energy.  Our new research showed that the carbon footprints of those communicating the science not only affects their credibility, but also affects audience support for the public policies for which the communicators advocated. < https://acee.princeton.edu/acee-news/andlinger-center-speaks-why-the-messenger-matters-in-climate-action/>

I know from personal experience that I can live a 2 ton CO@e per capita annual emission budget and today buy two tons of permanent verified emission reduction which would not have occurred otherwise for under $100/year.  Achieving true sustainability can take decades of slow incremental change or radically dramatic full course-correction.  I know that I will  also work on political campaigns of policymakers willing to take the most meaningful policy actions, and contribute to the NGO's similarly committed to rapid and dramatic reversal of planetary degradation.  Both are not only feasible but necessary 

TomB  

On 8/12/2022 1:06 AM, 'Ilan Kelman' via SCORAI wrote:

Hi Ortrud,

Thank you and these are the important questions! How good are the answers? This is why we are on this email list. For me,

1. Yes, I see human-caused climate change (a major and worrying symptom) distracting from the causes. See the links provided in my previous message for specific examples. As another story along these lines, see https://www.radixonline.org/blog/neyijvw2iwg7pjr38wbxhm0fr5vr0x

2. In terms of Robeyns and guidance, see Bill's message which had excellent summaries of specifics, as well as the other discussion on this thread--both before and after Bill's message below--which answers aspects of these key points from many perspectives. Part of this is not blaming Robeyns nor obviating these approaches for being simplistic. Instead, it is seeking wider and deeper contexts; not tossing away everything from Robeyns or others, instead trying to expand, deepen, and focus as much as possible on the fundaments.

To add, two starting agendas for achieving sustainability:

1. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8959-2_2

2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imic.2015.04.001

Hope this helps a bit? What are your thoughts? How would you answer your questions? Thank you and looking forward to critiques of the material I provide,

Ilan

1. Twitter @ILANKELMAN https://twitter.com/ilankelman

2. Instagram @ILANKELMAN https://www.instagram.com/ilankelman

3. ResearchGate https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ilan_Kelman

On Friday, 12 August 2022 at 08:43:40 BST, Ortrud Leßmann <o.les...@hsu-hh.de> wrote:

Hi Ilan,

focusing on climate change may be simplistic, negelecting a lot of context, but do you really think it is a distraction from the real issue however that is named?

I completely agree that we should not focus solely on climate change and that politically all the efforts on SDGs, climate change and disaster-related action have to be connected. Yet, I can't see much benefit in blaming approaches such as Robeyns' citizens' action plan as simplistic.

What guidance can you give ordinary citizens? Ruben (Anderson) has narrowed it down to walkable communities, local food and insulated homes. This may be another simplification, but a helpful rule of thumb.

Best

Ortrud

Am 12.08.2022 um 09:16 schrieb 'Ilan Kelman' via SCORAI:

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[Tom Abeles]

The article from The Counter on alt. protein is focused on the ultimate goal of cell cultured meat, at this time, the equivalent of the carrot hanging before the horse, always just out of reach. There are several issues: 

1) cell culture is not vegan as it's base is animal cells

2) the majority of the alt.protein products in the marketplace, now and in the foreseeable future are plant based which needs further discussion 

3) as article notes, separate from the speculative, flashy VC funds for cellular agriculture (PF vs CA or precision fermentation vs Cell ag) There is some very smart money and large firms including Cargill and, particularly JBS, the world's largest processor of meat (based in Brazil) which already has plant based "meat" products in the retail markets. Several of these corps are in the process of building substantive factories for plant based products.

4) a large population is in the developing countries and which are heavily, if not primarily, plant based historically, philosophically and economically. Alt. Protein is not a path by choice or by seeing this as an entry into middle class.

5) Singapore is the one gov't that has approved a cell based product, chicken. Globally, there are regulatory barriers from problems well documented in the article.

The cellular products seen in the literature are like those of any industry, they are proto products with market potential; but as with such products, the final outcomes may be substantively different.

-----------

Plant based alt. protein can accomplish, to a large extent, what ReseachX and others predict. In any case, such products have the potential to reduce the environmental impact from rain forest destruction forward. It is not a cure-all and should not defocus on alternative solutions

Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Ingrid Robeyns' citizens' action plan on climate change

 

[CAUTION: Non-UBC Email]

Hi Joe

In response to your question to William, I have posted references to the transformational work in the area of alternative protein or alt. protein, noting the studies of RethinkingX and the extensive materials housed on the Good Foods Institute. The rise of the alt. protein efforts, globally appear to be tracking projections that RethinkX has forecast for developed countries, specifically the US and elsewhere which supports McAfee's claims of "More from Less" with significant reduction in land, water and other inputs and not considering the claimed health benefits from a vegan diet. These do not consider the other reductions of equipment manufacturing along the value chain from mine to fork so to speak.

While one hates to default to technology, including ideas around microgrids, nuclear, etc, thinking along these lines tends to dissolve the "hair shirt" which has been donned by the green movement to add pain to the guilt of the consumption driven humans. Perhaps a more logical approach is to deal with the problems created by a financialized economy which couples capital growth with material growth. There are solutions here which can be done if government would break its relationship with the 99% and get its fist out of the financial cookie jar.

tom A

On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 12:19 PM 'Joe Zammit-Lucia' via SCORAI <sco...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear William,

The only effective way to reduce overshoot and address its major symptoms… is through significant reductions in energy and material throughput (consumption and waste discharge) and human population.

Might you share with us how, in your view, this might be achieved?

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/f0NMX2OACt5eWpbIOI11ASmH2rbcuJRawqAXFaPk1w9WXvo0pWM9G9-M0V43kkPG%40ip-10-0-4-124.cloze.com.

[Ortrud Leßmann]

Debbie, thanks a lot for this analysis of how the exchange evolved. And thanks for suggesting to point out how the various acitivities of people from this group fit together, how they fit into the broader picture. This is also a way to acknoledge that we all have limited knowledge and cannot on our own think up THE solution for sustainability and even less implement it.

I think Ingrid Robeyns' list contributes to encourage those who are aware of climate change and environmental pollution to start doing something rather than resigning. She also answers their concern - or excuse - that changing individual consumption has only a marginal effect by highlighting that apart from sustainable consumption in the narrow sense there is a lot of environmental friendly behavior and political activism that helps to overcome the limits of individual action by moving into the direction of collective action. As Tom Bowerman has written we need both.

Best

Ortrud

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/CAPVm41fxTnMzDm8v1GhpD9PPmRjgMG%2BePfLArF%3DFb8jKrPz-6g%40mail.gmail.com.

[Philip Vergragt]

Dear Debbie, Ortrud, and all,

Thank you very much for this fascinating discussion; and especially to Ortrud, who started it with Ingrid Robeyn’s “list of actions’, and Debbie, for her deep and thoughtful analysis of this discussion. I would like to make two points.

1. Citing Debbie:

What kind of education do we need? For starters, we/citizens desperately need to learn how to see and understand reality more clearly (i.e., how to zoom out to see the bigger picture, identify the roots of problems, understand the likely outcomes of a given scenario, zoom back in to discern what all that means for us in our particular contexts) and ultimately how to face and live more gracefully in reality as it is. In Norbert Elias' terms, we need to shift the current balance of involvement and detachment--the proportional influences on our reactions/responses of immediate concerns and emotional involvements versus the capacity for a more dispassionate view of the larger situation. 

I think there is a lot of wisdom here. I guess my question to Debbie is: how do you operationalize this? I imagine learning environments (schools, courses, retreats) where teachers like you are working with activists like me to help us reflect on the bigger picture (zooming out); and then zooming in into daily practices of activism and experimentation to work with a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of it all: the long and short term; the local and the global, the individual and the larger scale of humanity. Have these courses been developed? Is there an opportunity for SCORAI members like you and many others to explore this?

2. I am always interested in the “A” of SCORAI. One way of framing this is to ask ourselves how the results of our research can be applied in real life. A better framing is probably how we can design action research in such a way that learning occurs and at the same time real change happens, on whatever level: individual, group, society. However, in my own practice of both researcher and activist I see a deep divide between the two that is hard to bridge. In my activist daily practices we talk about legislation, support for certain proposals; mobilizing support for these proposals, creating sources of funding, access to power brokers, etc. This is very disconnected from the language of sustainable consumption and lifestyles, degrowth, sufficiency, transitions, etc. I think that Debbie in her contribution shows a way how to bridge these two separate realms and languages, but I would like to see more concreteness in how to do that.

I guess my two points are basically the same.

It would be great to know if educational and activist activities like this are already going on in SCORAI circles; and to know more about it.

We are now thinking of developing a series of webinars on this issue, or maybe a series of podcasts.

If you have an idea but do not want to write to the entire listserv, just write to me personally pver...@outlook.com

Best regards,

Philip

 

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ortrud Leßmann
Sent: Monday, August 15, 2022 9:23 AM
To: sco...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [SCORAI] Ingrid Robeyns' citizens' action plan on climate change

 

Debbie, thanks a lot for this analysis of how the exchange evolved. And thanks for suggesting to point out how the various acitivities of people from this group fit together, how they fit into the broader picture. This is also a way to acknoledge that we all have limited knowledge and cannot on our own think up THE solution for sustainability and even less implement it.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/e4be2317-db34-917e-ae1f-3b8cb1869631%40hsu-hh.de.

[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear Philip,

You say:

my activist daily practices we talk about legislation, support for certain proposals; mobilizing support for these proposals, creating sources of funding, access to power brokers, etc

Are there reasons why research activities cannot be directed towards these issues seeing as they are the real world issues? 

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/PH0PR06MB89385A85A5C2BA5F800CB87EAA689%40PH0PR06MB8938.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

[Philip Vergragt]

Good point, Joe. I am sure there is a lot of research in political sciences that are doing just that.

What I meant however is not so much research but learning.

Thanks,

Philip

[dvskasper]

Dear Philip,

You ask how to operationalize the teaching and learning of the perspectives I advocate (i.e., supporting the development of a more accurate understanding of reality--how the world works, what/who we are in relation to it and other beings, and the consequences of human activities--and fostering the ability to take a more big picture dispassionate view).  That's an astute question, and one I've been exploring in earnest for the past 15 years or so. 

It would take a book to fully answer, but for now, suffice it to say that, as I see it, how we think and see the world* is at the root of the socio-environmental (and many other) ills that concern us here. There are so many other good places to work, as you all remind us, but my main interest lies at this root. 

*This should not be equated with conscious rational thought. It refers rather to the values, beliefs, assumptions, mental models (aka the paradigms) at the basis of our cultural narratives, social systems, ways of being in the world, and the nature of the activities and material surroundings that emerge from all that and together generate "normal."

Thus far, I've been: 1) experimenting with strategies for cultivating these capacities in students, 2) offering alternative mental models for making sense of the world, 3) developing the socio-environmental synthesis framework to provide common ground from which to understand and study long-term socio-environmental processes and social change and to be better able to identify entry points for meaningful action, 4) working on the ground (figuratively and literally) to contribute to increasing the resilience of our community. I'm also beginning work that outlines holistic education (not just for schools) that shows why the learning we need must attend to whole people--"body, mind, and spirit" in individual and collective senses--and suggests some ways to do that. So, modest as my efforts are, these are a few possibilities for operationalization. I'm sure others on this list could offer much more. 

In sum, although there's much I could be doing better, I am confident that this stuff can be operationalized and even scaled up considerably in collaboration with others (the tricky part). I have, however, very little confidence that this will be done on a scale that would make a meaningful difference in our overall predicament on a time scale relevant to us. It's conceivable that it could, but its improbability does not dissuade me from doing the work in one form or another (just as the certainty of my death does not dissuade me from enjoying life and trying to live as well and learn and love as much as I can).

Either way, it's good work. To my mind, achieving better understanding is never a wasted effort. And even if it won't stop impending collapse, it offers many potential benefits for individuals, communities, and more right now, and just possibly for future generations. 

Debbie

debbievskasper.com

[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear Philip,

Thanks re learning v research

Not being an academic myself I don't have answers, just questions.

My question is what does academia see itself as being for and what learning is it trying to impart? Is it trying to impart subject mater learning on how things are or have been? Or is it trying to impart learning on how to help solve real world issues? In other words is it primarily descriptive based on research about the past? Or is it action oriented based on helping students develop the skills to look to the future and how they can contribute to creating a better world (assuming anyone can agree on what constitutes better)?

Taking the latter view implies blowing apart subject and discipline-based teaching and structuring curricula to start with a set of real world issues one would like to address and then creating an environment that brings in all the different streams of knowledge and practical expertise (ie people trying to do these things in the real world) in a problem-solving environment. Students are assessed not on how much subject matter knowledge they know but on how well they have learned to approach tackling real world issues and their ability to access subject-matter knowledge on an a la carte basis (very easy these days) as and when needed to solve practical problems.

I have no idea where academia is on that spectrum - and doubtless it's far from uniform. And I also understand that the action-oriented approach is more challenging to deliver.

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

Philip Vergragt

pver...@outlook.com

Mon 10:30 AM

EMAIL jo...@me.com

To: Joe Zammit-Lucia

Cc: sco...@googlegroups.com

Good point, Joe. I am sure there is a lot of research in political sciences that are doing just that.

What I meant however is not so much research but learning.

Thanks,

Philip

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/CAPVm41dw3VuRfN8XWHgSo5Sgc0ns8rFQGqHL9K4XLgF3VO5CBA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Halina Brown]

Dear Debbie,

I want to share a small anecdote from a recent experience, so show you the challenge before you.

Recently, I participated in a zoom call about reducing GHG emissions from residential homes. The main speaker leads a program on that issue, withing a larger environment  organization. The call took place last week, during the heat wave, with temperatures approaching 100 degrees in Washington D.C, where the speaker was located. When we all appeared on the screen, it was noticeable that the speaker was wearing a heavy sweater buttoned up to her neck. One participant asked her about this apparent incongruity between the weather and her clothing. The answer: “this is how I deal with a heatwave. I set the thermostat on a very low temperature and put on warm clothes. It helps me deal with the heatwave.” The, she proceeded with her presentation on reducing emissions from residential homes.

 

Do you need a better example of the disconnect between the larger picture, the individual values, and lifestyles?

 

Halina

 

From: sco...@googlegroups.com <sco...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of dvskasper
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 8:46 AM
To: Philip Vergragt <pver...@outlook.com>

 

Virenfrei.www.avast.com

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[Tom Walker]

“this is how I deal with a heatwave. I set the thermostat on a very low temperature and put on warm clothes. It helps me deal with the heatwave.”

After all, Jimmy Carter told us to save energy by turning down the thermostat and putting on a sweater.

Cheers,

Tom Walker (Sandwichman)

[Ruben Anderson]

Debbie, thank you for your thoughtful and detailed responses and guidance here. 

I have two quibbles and then a big question:

we need to shift...the proportional influences on our reactions/responses of immediate concerns and emotional involvements versus the capacity for a more dispassionate view of the larger situation. 

This seems to run contrary to our evolution. It sounds nice, but wouldn’t it be better to plan for the animals we are, instead of shaming us for being inadequate? We don’t shame the dolphin for not being able to fly. 

achieving better understanding is never a wasted effort. 

I think better understanding can easily be wasted effort—part of the reason for that is part of the Big Question, following next. 

But the crux of it is that we have extremely limited resources of time, energy and attention, and when they are used up they are gone. So, sadly, with many issues it would often be better to do nothing than to rob resources from an issue that has a chance. There are many, many things that better understanding cannot change, and so it would be more useful to direct our understanding to things that can be changed. 

So, the Big Question:

It would take a book to fully answer, but for now, suffice it to say that, as I see it, how we think and see the world* is at the root of the socio-environmental (and many other) ills that concern us here. There are so many other good places to work, as you all remind us, but my main interest lies at this root. 

*This should not be equated with conscious rational thought. It refers rather to the values, beliefs, assumptions, mental models (aka the paradigms) at the basis of our cultural narratives, social systems, ways of being in the world, and the nature of the activities and material surroundings that emerge from all that and together generate "normal."

What kind of education do we need? For starters, we/citizens desperately need to learn how to see and understand reality more clearly (i.e., how to zoom out to see the bigger picture, identify the roots of problems, understand the likely outcomes of a given scenario, zoom back in to discern what all that means for us in our particular contexts) and ultimately how to face and live more gracefully in reality as it is.

So, it sounds like the implication is that if we learned how to see and understand reality more clearly, we could change our paradigms, and thus could eliminate the roots of many ills. 

There are two parts of this that I would love to hear your thoughts on:

1.

“if we learned how to see and understand reality more clearly”

As I said above, this runs contrary to our evolution. We have a brain, evolved over a couple of million years, that was built to enhance our day to day survival, facing hunger, thirst, weather, predators, and conflicts. 

We can’t ask our eyes to see in ultraviolet, nor our ears to hear in subsonic. How is our brain going to comprehend the “reality” of this world we have built? 

And how is it going to do it with our few hours of conscious analytical attention each day—a few hours minus all the other demands we have on our cognitive capacity. This may leave us with scant minutes to try to understand reality, or even in cognitive debt, with a foggy brain. 

2.

"how we think and see the world* is at the root of the socio-environmental (and many other) ills”

There is an implicit theory of change here—if we could see the world more clearly, we could dig up the root of socio-environmental ills. 

I am not so sure that is true. 

Have you heard the apocryphal story about how the International Space Station was constrained by the space shuttle booster rocket size, which was constrained by railroad capacity, which matched the wheelbase of Roman chariots? So a highly technical and modern spacecraft was limited by the width of horses’ asses in the Roman Empire. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/k4x1gq/the_connection_between_horses_asses_and_space/

We could change a lot of paradigms and still be stuck with the same inefficient and dirty energy infrastructure, the same poorly built and barely insulated homes, and the same sprawling urban arrangements—these wasteful systems are major drivers of climate change and even if we did change our paradigms they would endure for decades or centuries more. 

So, I agree our Enlightenment paradigm of separation from nature and rational analysis is a strong root of our ills. 

But there are so many environmentalists that fly off for vacation, or as Halina described, crank up the AC. 

These are people that are educated, aware, invested—and probably think they are part of a new paradigm. But they are citizens of this social group, living in countries with this infrastructure. We are locked in, in very meaningful ways. 

So I would love to hear your further thoughts on paradigms. 

Is the power of changing paradigms just another comfortable thought we have not challenged?

Warmly,

Ruben (not Nelson)

[Richard Rosen]

Dear Halina,

That is a great story, but even more to the point, I am here in Germany where the government, as with many EU governments, is trying to reduce the amount of Russian natural gas used.  But as far as I know, there is still no mass German government program to install electric heat pumps in residential buildings, even though the war broke out in February and it is now August. This is especially crazy because the EU has a climate change action plan which calls for 3% of all residential dwellings to be converted to electric heating each year, and as far as I know no EU country has a plan in place to accomplish that.

--- Rich Rosen

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/MN2PR03MB5152FBC4EACB44310975B6A1AC6B9%40MN2PR03MB5152.namprd03.prod.outlook.com.

[Jean Boucher]

In defense of the sweater person (yes, maybe there's no defense), there is evidence that not everyone who has their environmental-Jesus moment will then turn around and have all the same 'green' behaviors. Some may ride bikes, others take the bus, some get politically involved and others ramp up recycling or stop flying, and others put on or take off sweaters.

Fun fun

Jean

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/scorai/CAMZghTabStv--G6o9PhhKirWScaJz1YqPS0r%3DQP28_A_35OxRQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[dvskasper]

Dear Ruben A,

First, I want to let you know how much I appreciate your perspective and admire your work. I am with you on the limited attention/time argument (which is one reason I rarely get involved in these discussions) and on the importance of changing the default as the fastest way to get certain desired results. As I've said, there are many ways to accomplish that (e.g., policy, planning, design, technology, etc.) and I fully support using whatever makes sense.

The thing is, I see paradigms as the ultimate default. I'm with Meadows in seeing paradigm change as "a leverage point that totally transforms systems."

There are countless historical examples of this in politics, science, medicine, industries, and more, The ones I'm most interested in have to do with fundamental ways of perceiving--especially moving away from the dualistic unhelpful sense of individual vs society and humans vs nature. Being an "environmentalist" certainly does not exempt one from this erroneous modern worldview. Just look at the still dominant visual representation of the "human-environment" relationship. Two separate sides with a few arrows thrown in to "connect" them (see Chapter 4 of Beyond the Knowledge Crisis for elaboration). These mental pictures are a problem. 

And I'm not alone in thinking so. I could list endless quotes from reputable scholars (many of whom are on this list) arguing basically that:

"Confronting [ecological overshoot] demands at least a conscious transformational paradigm shift …replacement with a framework that better reflects biophysical reality” (Rees 2021, "Growth Through Contraction"  pp. 109-110, emphasis mine).

So, if this is just a comfortable thought that needs to be challenged, that is a much bigger conversation.

As many of us have experienced for ourselves, such shifts can happen very quickly for a person. Broader societal-level changes tend to take much looonger, if they happen at all, given the massive resistance they usually provoke. Therein lies the challenge, and the great question and test for those of us interested.

Fortunately, as Meadows points out, there's an even higher leverage point: our ability to change/transcend existing paradigms (I think of this more as the fulcrum, but that's a different essay). This capacity goes hand in hand with the concept of "detachment," both of which are products of evolution, so not contrary to it at all. Forgive me if I was unclear in explaining it, probably best to go straight to Elias (either his 1956 paper, attached, or his posthumously published book of the same title--brilliant).

The concept of "involvement and detachment" refers to a fluctuating balance in the degrees to which immediate emotional reactions vs a more clear-headed, self-aware, far-sighted view govern our actions and responses. To advocate for an increased capacity for detachment is not to shame anyone. It's merely to recognize the dangers of actions and interactions strongly based in near-term self-serving wishes and fears and to see the benefits of developing and exercising our (evolved) ability for self-reflexive awareness and to think about consequences farther down the road. This capacity was instrumental in past societies who were able to sustain themselves over long periods of time and in the development of science, for example. It can be encouraged or suppressed within a culture, develops unevenly both in time and across populations, and is never total. I stand by the argument that we need more of it.

I'll end with someone else's words, far more eloquent than my own:

Jonas Salk, Anatomy of Reality

I hope this answers at least some of your quibbles and questions. (?) Thanks for the good conversation,

Debbie

[dvskasper]

Maybe this image will come through?

[Joe Zammit-Lucia]

Dear Halina

A great story indeed which I shall use in the future if I may.

One suggestion is that there is a tension in how to present dealing with environmental issues.

By and large, the main narrative is that this is a collective issue that needs to be dealt with through government policy and through global coordination at the government level. All of which is true.

Of course, one side-effect of that is that people believe that individual action is largely irrelevant or, at best, marginal because the number of people willing to modify their lifestyles significantly is vanishingly small and we can all find reasons why what we do is perfectly justifiable in our own individual circumstances. And, of course, there is truth to that - which is what makes it an appealing narrative for us all to avoid the inconvenience of changing what we do.

From an activist perspective, it begs the question of where best to put limited resources - influencing policy or trying to influence the lifestyles of billions of people. My personal bias is the former because, in spite of the frustrations, one is likely to get more (much more) bang for the buck and is less likely to alienate people from the environmental cause by making them feel guilty about their lifestyles (would it have really helped the environment meaningfully by taking the person in your Zoom call to task about the contradictions?).

The standard riposte to that is that we need to do both. The reality is that time and resources are always limited and trying to do everything usually results in achieving little - and especially so if different approaches are perceived to be giving somewhat different messages.

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

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[Ruben Anderson]

Debbie, thank you again. And as my friend Duane says—conversation is like two rocks in your pocket; they become polished together. This helps me see where I need to be more articulate or precise. 

I am glad we have so much to agree on—and perhaps we need to return again to the theory of change. 

if we could see the world more clearly, we could dig up the root of socio-environmental ills—and therefore we need a new education in order to learn how to see reality more clearly. 

Actually, let me leave that for a minute, and talk about involvement and detachment. What if it is not detachment we are lacking, but involvement?

Did indigenous cultures sustain themselves by being de-tached, or a-ttached?

Thinking seven generations ahead seems to be to be something that people who are deeply involved in their ecosystem do, people who are attached to their place. 

This reminds me of another thing I think is often inverted—community building. There are often calls to “build community”, with the implicit theory of change that after we build community, we will do more good activist stuff together. 

I think community arises from doing stuff together. Community follows, not leads. 

So does detachment from the immediate, human concerns follow or lead?

I can easily imagine situations in which human detachment comes first, but follows a path of nihilism. 

Whereas if involvement, attachment, to our ecosphere comes first, then detachment may arise as a natural consequence.

So yes, I also hold Meadows in high esteem, and I know I am playing with fire to question this. But, let’s try to articulate the ideas more precisely. 

Back to education... I don’t think we need more education, I think we need more attachment. And I don’t think we can educate our way to attachment, and in fact there are countless examples of well-educated people not being attached. 

Now, paradigm shifts…

I agree that we need a paradigm shift, I just don’t think we are going to get a paradigm shift. 

And I also want to be really clear about who needs a paradigm shift. 

Let’s be even more clear:

IF we are to continue this intensive population of high-consuming humans on this finite planet, we will need a paradigm shift. 

So two things arise: One, if we  DON’T continue this arrangement, then we don’t need a paradigm shift. And two, if we CAN’T make a paradigm shift, then we won’t continue this arrangement. 

I am betting on the latter. 

Now, say we detach. Say we have a paradigm shift. Say we transform all eight billion of us. 

We still have the same infrastructure, pumping carbon into the atmosphere. 

Rebuilding the infrastructure is a separate task, a separate behaviour. It does not necessarily depend on a paradigm shift, and it does not necessarily flow from a paradigm shift. 

This is probably one of the biggest things I have been banging on about for the last fifteen years. 

99.99% of us do not care how our toast is made. We just want breakfast, and if the toaster works, that is great. 

And when I say “do not care” that does not mean the theory of change is “make people care”.

I mean we can not care, and so we should stop trying to make people care. 

On the whole planet there are probably a hundred people, maybe a couple of thousand at most, that would actually be the movers of transforming the electrical paradigm. What sounds more possible—transforming two thousand people, or eight billion?

There was a massive paradigm shift, from the Earth as the centre of the solar system, to the sun. This was huge. 

But it really only affected a few people. For the rest of us, who cares? Lots of us still believe in horoscopes. Our life is untouched by this fascinating new paradigm. The sun goes up, the sun goes down. 

So, to sum up… :-D

Perhaps we need attachment, not detachment, and we can’t educate our way to that. 

If we do need a paradigm shift, we also can’t educate everyone to create that.

If we do need a paradigm shift, there are very few people needed to make that shift. 

But even if they make the shift, we may not be able to shift our infrastructure, and the atmosphere doesn’t care about our paradigms, only tonnes of carbon. 

And so if we are not going to make that shift and transform our pollutants, then we need to plan and work for a very different future. 

Okay, I need to run. Thank you for the essay, it looks very interesting. And thank you for helping polish my thoughts. 

Warmly,

Ruben.

On Aug 17, 2022, at 5:36 AM, dvskasper <dvsk...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Ruben A,

First, I want to let you know how much I appreciate your perspective and admire your work. I am with you on the limited attention/time argument (which is one reason I rarely get involved in these discussions) and on the importance of changing the default as the fastest way to get certain desired results. As I've said, there are many ways to accomplish that (e.g., policy, planning, design, technology, etc.) and I fully support using whatever makes sense.

The thing is, I see paradigms as the ultimate default. I'm with Meadows in seeing paradigm change as "a leverage point that totally transforms systems."

There are countless historical examples of this in politics, science, medicine, industries, and more, The ones I'm most interested in have to do with fundamental ways of perceiving--especially moving away from the dualistic unhelpful sense of individual vs society and humans vs nature. Being an "environmentalist" certainly does not exempt one from this erroneous modern worldview. Just look at the still dominant visual representation of the "human-environment" relationship. Two separate sides with a few arrows thrown in to "connect" them (see Chapter 4 of Beyond the Knowledge Crisis for elaboration). These mental pictures are a problem. 

And I'm not alone in thinking so. I could list endless quotes from reputable scholars (many of whom are on this list) arguing basically that:

"Confronting [ecological overshoot] demands at least a conscious transformational paradigm shift …replacement with a framework that better reflects biophysical reality” (Rees 2021, "Growth Through Contraction"  pp. 109-110, emphasis mine).

So, if this is just a comfortable thought that needs to be challenged, that is a much bigger conversation.

As many of us have experienced for ourselves, such shifts can happen very quickly for a person. Broader societal-level changes tend to take much looonger, if they happen at all, given the massive resistance they usually provoke. Therein lies the challenge, and the great question and test for those of us interested.

Fortunately, as Meadows points out, there's an even higher leverage point: our ability to change/transcend existing paradigms (I think of this more as the fulcrum, but that's a different essay). This capacity goes hand in hand with the concept of "detachment," both of which are products of evolution, so not contrary to it at all. Forgive me if I was unclear in explaining it, probably best to go straight to Elias (either his 1956 paper, attached, or his posthumously published book of the same title--brilliant).

The concept of "involvement and detachment" refers to a fluctuating balance in the degrees to which immediate emotional reactions vs a more clear-headed, self-aware, far-sighted view govern our actions and responses. To advocate for an increased capacity for detachment is not to shame anyone. It's merely to recognize the dangers of actions and interactions strongly based in near-term self-serving wishes and fears and to see the benefits of developing and exercising our (evolved) ability for self-reflexive awareness and to think about consequences farther down the road. This capacity was instrumental in past societies who were able to sustain themselves over long periods of time and in the development of science, for example. It can be encouraged or suppressed within a culture, develops unevenly both in time and across populations, and is never total. I stand by the argument that we need more of it.

I'll end with someone else's words, far more eloquent than my own:

Jonas Salk, Anatomy of Reality

I hope this answers at least some of your quibbles and questions. (?) Thanks for the good conversation,

Debbie

y brain. 

2.

"how we think and see the world* is at the root of the socio-environmental (and many other) ills”

There is an implicit theory of change here—if we could see the world more clearly, we could dig up the root of socio-environmental ills. 

I am not so sure that is true. 

Have you heard the apocryphal story about how the International Space Station was constrained by the space shuttle booster rocket size, which was constrained by railroad capacity, which matched the wheelbase of Roman chariots? So a highly technical and modern spacecraft was limited by the width of horses’ asses in the Roman Empire. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/k4x1gq/the_connection_between_horses_asses_and_space/

We could change a lot of paradigms and still be stuck with the same inefficient and dirty energy infrastructure, the same poorly built and barely insulated homes, and the same sprawling urban arrangements—these wasteful systems are major drivers of climate change and even if we did change our paradigms they would endure for decades or centuries more. 

So, I agree our Enlightenment paradigm of separation from nature and rational analysis is a strong root of our ills. 

But there are so many environmentalists that fly off for vacation, or as Halina described, crank up the AC. 

These are people that are educated, aware, invested—and probably think they are part of a new paradigm. But they are citizens of this social group, living in countries with this infrastructure. We are locked in, in very meaningful ways. 

So I would love to hear your further thoughts on paradigms. 

Is the power of changing paradigms just another comfortable thought we have not challenged?

Warmly,

Ruben (not Nelson)

<1956 Elias I and D.pdf>

[Halina Brown]

As it often happens with our listserv, this very interesting exchange trends toward generalizations, i.e. “government”, “human beings”, “society”, “activists”, “low hanging fruit”, and so on.  I have two points to make it more specific and more useful for policy makers:

 

1. Culture matters a great deal. In the opening statement, Ortrud Leßmann calls switching to veganism as low hanging fruit. I understand her meaning: that is entirely dependent on individual decisions making and does not require government action or new infrastructure or costly technology. But that does not necessarily mean that it is easy or even feasible. Take for example, the Netherlands. Dairy products are the core of people’s diet and part of the national cultural identity. I think that it would be easier to  convince the Dutch to stop flying or driving than to stop eating cheese and drink milk. My guess (based on limited knowledge) is that you may succeed with this transition in the Mediterranean countries, but not in the Netherlands or France. This is why actions – policies, campaigns, incentives -- must evolve within the context of culture.

 

2. In countries with strong traditions of non-urban dispersed populations and land ownership, such as the U.S., Canada, French countryside and others (with which I am not familiar), changing lifestyles toward lower carbon footprint requires radical changes: more dense conglomerations, different modes of mobility, different housing construction. Cultural traditions and national identity are powerful barriers to such lifestyle changes.

 

National government can help facilitate this change through targeted taxation and incentives (and disincentives). But the engine of change must be on the local level: policies regarding land use, zoning, housing, local taxes, etc. And this is the level at which political action may actually make a difference because people know each other or of each other, accountability is high, trust is greater, fora for debate among all parties are easier to create, and persuasion is a viable option.

 

I have been working at that level, and we are making meaningful progress. I only wish that more academics would get involved in this type of activism: they understand the big picture, they have theoretical framework for understanding human and institutional behaviors, they have tools for technical analysis. Alas, I meet very few academics who choose that path.

 

Halina

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[dvskasper]

Hi again, Ruben,

You raise many interesting points. I think we actually don't disagree on much, but mainly we're talking about different scales and time horizons. Although I would add that involvement is very different from attachment of the kind you describe, and detachment of the kind I describe does not exclude it. In fact, they can reinforce each other.

Really getting clear on all this with each other is probably beyond the scope of an email exchange (at least it is for me at this moment when other deadlines and obligations are weighing heavily).

If you're really interested, I can't recommend Elias' work highly enough. You could also check out my book which highlights some ways his work applies to socio-environmental studies, synthesizes a lot of work in this area, and offers both an alternative framework for understanding biophysical reality and a theory of change, among other things. I think it has much to offer (in spite of the flaws I wish I could go back and fix). It would certainly give us much to talk about!

And you've given me much to think about. I will go on letting your and everyone's words continue to polish my thoughts. Perhaps our paths will cross one day and we'll get to do more of this in person. 

In the meantime, take care,

Debbie

[Tom Bowerman]

Halina and Jean's responses are interesting and instructive as to the challenges we face with agency and efficacy on super wicked problems (I think it was Tim Jackson who applied this term to climate change).. 

I've been ruminating on this thread about Ingrid Robeyn's action plan, thinking about the viability of individual actions vs broad policy argument. As I noted in a prior response, I am a believer in both; I do admit that any individual's actions are measurably so infinitesimal to be non-existent, there is conversely the sum of the parts and tipping point of movement which eventually reverberates into broad sea-change. Moreover, we collectively profit when we have working examples instead of hypothetical abstractions to motivate the broad collective.  

Several responders to this thread have spoke toward wanting more actionable specifics. I will offer mine here, based on fifty years of practicing frugal, comparatively low impact living. One particular beauty of individual action is that is where each of us commonly have the most agency for action, and the actions are instructive if done with research and awareness. This equips us with better insights as we scale our actions to broad sectors.

1.  Measurement:  It is really helpful to become familiar with the analytics of environmental footprint.  Rees was a pioneer in this and influenced my thinking about ten years ago.  There are various analytic measures, scaled to world-wide, country-wide, state-wide, household or individual.  Rather than spend a chapter on these pathways, I'll jump right to my personal preference for individual or household measurement: Cool Climate Calculator (CCC), built and operationalized and maintained at UC Berkeley. There are two versions: short form and long form. I have some quibbles with the CCC  but after testing about ten available on-line footprint calculators it is my opinion that this is currently the best of the lot and used by both Oregon and California in helping citizens become familiar with their lifestyle and consumptive behaviors.  The Berkeley calculator uses the unit of "tons CO2e" per household.  This presumes a conventional vision of one individual or a familial type consumption unit. I my case, if i want my individual footprint of carbon type emissions, I divide my household by 2; that's imperfect especially if you have minors in the house who don't make household decisions, but you get the idea. A lot of my assumptions and decisions are founded on a two year study of this topic in 2014 when five researchers in my group tested calculators and assessed the validity of the measurement process.

2.  Thank about goals:  CO2e is the internationally recognized unit of measurement for climate impact. You can easily look up per capital carbon equivalency for most any scale you chose.  Statistica computes the world's per capita emission at 4.5 tons CO2e.  Qatar is listed as the highest per capita emission country at over 30 tons. Using different sources for this data will reveal a range.  For example, in the USA, some sources are as low as 16 tons or as high as 25 tons. Don't discard the value of knowing your culture's norm just because it seems vague, an economist will say its preferred to be approximately close than to have no information at all.  I tend to think most attribution sources tend to under compute, for example, the cool climate calculator does not add-in my collective share of our governmental (city+county+state+nation) provisioning in carbon emissions; on ones that do, they tend to add approximately 4 tons per capita for the US.  Me, I think my goal should be 2 tons per capita, that is about twice that of a low income African resident and half that of the world average.  My cool climate calculator computation year-on-year comes close to 4 tons for our household of two. I take that figure and add four tons for each of the two of us.

3.  Set your goal:  As an individual, my goal for personal behavioral efficacy toward climate change is 2 tons.  I have little personal efficacy for my collective share of governmental emissions. I say "little" because I do work with policymakers to do what I can to improve our collective climate response. Much of my communication involves versions of:  "climate change is not 'the problem', it is a symptom of the problem, the problem is CONSUMPTION X POPULATION, and thereafter it goes into the nuances. I have contributed in small part among thousands of advocates to advance state and federal goals to be "zero CO2e emission" collectively by 2050, although most of us push as hard as we can for much more rapid draw-down. I don't flaunt my personal emission but I do mention it if/when appropriate. I also say that I've been at this for a long time and I don't expect most people to get there quickly.  But, I do think that many people earning above $50K per year can cut their emissions by 50% within three years or less, and thereafter, continue to cut their emissions incrementally by 50% again and again until they land at 2 tons as individuals. My first major shift was year 2000, I sold my Subaru 4x4 (24-30mpg) car and bought a 3 cylinder Geo Metro (45-53mpg), relocated my work office from downtown to home, and stopped flying in airplanes.

4.  Learn from the calculator and hone component reductions:  The Cool Climate Calculator will give interactive feedback about your behavioral emissions regarding house, vehicle, diet, and other consumption choices.  It's not perfect, the administrators make decisions balancing simplicity and nuance.

5.  Give thought- then action - toward big ticket lifestyle changes.  Some which can make a big difference are:  live within walking distance of where you work, stop flying for business or pleasure, buy in-season and eat relatively basic foods grown close by, downsize or reorganize living space to compartmentalize comfort zones instead of thousands of SF uniformly tempered. i have a lot more to say about the supposed environmentalist who obtains comfort by refrigerating her house so she can wear winter cloths when it's hot outside - something terribly wrong here.

6.  Get in the habit of evaluating little daily decisions through the lens of climate impact.  Every permanent 10% or 50% reduction in a consumption habit is an accomplishment. 

7.  Carbon offsets:   I feel all the people I have met who discount the validity of carbon offsets have not delved into the topic sufficiently. Evaluation of people discounting carbon offsets (or equating them to Catholic indulgences of the middle ages) seem motivated by unease about how it relates to their own priorities.

This approach might seem burdensome although after a few hours of investment of time, it certainly takes less time than one generally gives to an automobile.  

I am open to critique on any of these points, when grounded in empirical evidence. 

Tom B.

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[Rami Kaplan]

Thank you all for this stimulating conversation. I wish to add some political economic perspective on the issues at stake.

I agree that policy change is essential, for one, because you need inter/national leadership and serious policy moves in order to ever change lifestyles on a grand scale, which is meaningful for systemic change. But leadership and bold policies are scarce. Fundamentally, in my opinion, this is because in today’s hyper capitalist societies profit maximization, unlimited growth, and accelerated consumption are the dominant ideals and habits. Environmental protection is acceptable insofar as it does not contradict the master economic ideals. This resilient dominance of the economic over the environmental explains the stark failure of humanity to ever tame the global emissions curve (and fellow processes of degradation), notwithstanding three decades of global intergovernmental mobilization designed to achieve just that. The mobilization failed and shamelessly continues to fail because the elites that call the shots—first and foremost the major corporate and financial elites—fiercely and consistently resist constrains on the global economy, which constitutes their advantage. They have the power to define the common sense in policy circles. AT the same time, the masses support the system because it allows them accelerated consumption. As individuals most of them would not be inclined to give up the convenience and excitement they derive from consumer goods and high energy, highly polluting lifestyles. The one thing that can disrupt this happy consensus among the elites and the citizens-consumers is crisis—heatwaves, food shortages, etc.—which are serious enough to get elites and people to reconsider their strategies and priorities, In that regard, the increasing sense of alarm in recent years fueled by the such of XR, Greta, the IPCC, journalists, academics, and politicians worldwide who have taken alarmist, radical stands is a good sign for a forthcoming awakening in the face of closing danger. The broadening of this trend is key for cracking the wall of deflection and inaction (often camouflaged as action) currently in place. 

cheers

Rami

    

Rami Kaplan, PhD 
Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Department of Labor Studies 
Tel Aviv University, Israel, 69978

+972-3-6409986
ramik...@tauex.tau.ac.il

On Aug 17, 2022, at 3:16 PM, 'Joe Zammit-Lucia' via SCORAI <sco...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear Halina

A great story indeed which I shall use in the future if I may.

One suggestion is that there is a tension in how to present dealing with environmental issues.

By and large, the main narrative is that this is a collective issue that needs to be dealt with through government policy and through global coordination at the government level. All of which is true.

Of course, one side-effect of that is that people believe that individual action is largely irrelevant or, at best, marginal because the number of people willing to modify their lifestyles significantly is vanishingly small and we can all find reasons why what we do is perfectly justifiable in our own individual circumstances. And, of course, there is truth to that - which is what makes it an appealing narrative for us all to avoid the inconvenience of changing what we do.

From an activist perspective, it begs the question of where best to put limited resources - influencing policy or trying to influence the lifestyles of billions of people. My personal bias is the former because, in spite of the frustrations, one is likely to get more (much more) bang for the buck and is less likely to alienate people from the environmental cause by making them feel guilty about their lifestyles (would it have really helped the environment meaningfully by taking the person in your Zoom call to task about the contradictions?).

The standard riposte to that is that we need to do both. The reality is that time and resources are always limited and trying to do everything usually results in achieving little - and especially so if different approaches are perceived to be giving somewhat different messages.

Best

Joe

Dr Joe Zammit-Lucia

+44 7398 353 404

jo...@me.com

newpoliticalcapitalism.com ⎮ get on Amazon

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[Philip Vergragt]

Dear Joe,

It is hard to generalize about “academia”. Universities are institutions and institutions have a certain inertia, are guiding by existing rules and procedures, which perpetuate the disciplinary approach. It is true that new approaches to teaching and learning are tried out in many places, but we all have experiences in how difficult it is to establish interdisciplinary, action-oriented, wicked problem-solving programs at universities (at least I have quite some).

Quality control is an issue with this type of research.

Philip

 

From: Joe Zammit-Lucia <jo...@me.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2022 4:02 PM
To: Philip Vergragt <pver...@outlook.com>