Fwd: Global Warming: Mitigate, Adapt... or Reverse?
0 views
Skip to first unread message
Steven Moyer
Sep 23, 2013, 8:55:27 PM9/23/13
to Peace Democracy, synergynation, synerg...@groups.facebook.com
Global Warming: Mitigate, Adapt... or Reverse?
by Dave Ewoldt
September, 2013
Climate Smart Southwest: Ready or Hot
A Public Health and Climate Adaptation Conference
Sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility
Sept. 21, 2013
Mental and Spiritual Health and Well-being panel
Good afternoon. Since our panelist remarks are time limited, you're not going to
get any stories from me today; just the facts--along with an occasional rhetorical
flourish to drive a point home. My name is Dave Ewoldt, and I'm a co-founder and
Sr. Analyst for Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor, a non-profit based here in Tucson
that focuses on sustainability from a natural systems perspective by building
multi-issue coalitions to create the critical mass necessary for systemic change.
I'm a systems scientist and researcher and practitioner in ecopsychology. What
I'm "about" is connecting the dots, examining the relationships, and I'm much
more interested in stopping the causes of global warming than in trying to find
ways to adapt to its disastrous consequences--as if that's our only or even our
best alternative. The basic ecological/geophysical science behind 6 degrees of
warming makes a mockery of the forlorn hopes of adapting to a planet with no
oxygen--or a climate inhospitable to providing adequate amounts of healthy food
for a population in the overshoot range of planetary carrying capacity.
Let's start by getting our terminology straight. There are two important reasons to
use the term global warming and not climate change--one political, and one
scientific.
First, the term "climate change" was _specifically_ added to the framing used by
the global warming denialist camp and the Republican Party by strategist Frank
Luntz because it sounded less harmful and threatening; it could even be spun as
benign were one to blindly accept certain unfounded assumptions and ignore the
preponderance of evidence showing the planet is warming, that the majority of the
warming is currently due to human actions, and that the overall effects are
devastating to individuals, communities, economies, and life itself.
The desire of some Democrats/liberals to use "climate change" in an effort to
appease the right and demonstrate they're willing to work across the aisle and find
common ground with those willing to destroy our life support system and exploit
species and resources to further consolidate wealth and power in the hands of a
minuscule elite is not an example of political skill or even a particularly moral
stance; it is an example of a brain-dead weakness that is suicidal. This is not an
area where capitulation is necessary, nor is it even warranted. Let's have the
courage to accurately name what it is we're dealing with. Which leads to...
The second reason is that the climate is changing because the globe is warming.
Climate change, as well as ocean acidification, are emergent attributes
(symptoms) of global warming (the root cause) and depend on it as a feedback
loop. People who are concerned about life-affirming change will need to address
root causes rather than slap band-aids on its symptoms (mitigation), although
some adaptation will be required for current and forthcoming climate changes as
well as degradation and loss in ecosystem services in various bioregions. If we
just focus on the climate changes, e.g. building higher seawalls, we'll just be
spinning our wheels and the climate will continue changing for the worse as the
world continues getting warmer.
This leads to an ongoing argument in the global warming literature concerning the
best use of our activist energy: mitigation or adaptation. It's not uncommon to see
mitigate used as if it's synonymous with stop or desist. But mitigate simply means
to make less severe. Its synonyms are all associated with alleviating symptoms,
not addressing root causes. What we actually must do is directly stop the causes,
which are an interacting combination of greenhouse gases, deforestation, ocean
acidification, and major changes in land use patterns--which is a code-phrase for
sprawl. Once stopped, we must then mitigate the damage, begin restoration and
hope we can deploy feedback loops to begin reversing the warming trend, and
start adapting to the consequences of our previous actions.
These life-threatening crises are all the direct result of Industrialism. This
paradigm sustains itself through infinite growth, which requires debt, enclosure of
the commons (piratization, although the politically correct term is privatization),
and imperialism. On a finite planet, this is why global corporatization can be very
accurately referred to as economic cannibalism.
Even in regard to mitigation, right off the bat we can eliminate
geoengineering--which has been referred to as crackpot capitalism. This is the
attempt to save markets without doing anything about the root causes of global
warming. Our current system of free-market mechanisms only benefits the few,
and shows that only capitalism can turn self-extinction into a profit center.
Plus, today we're facing a number of rapidly converging global crises--not just
global warming, but energy and other resource depletion, collapse of biodiversity
and the food web (no food chain, no food), an increasingly toxic world which
creates our increasingly toxic bodies, economic collapse, growing poverty, and
other social ills such as the loss of our sense of community and connection to all
that makes life worthwhile. We are not isolated, rugged individuals, and this is why
activism or civic engagement is so necessary for wholeness--for personal, social
and planetary health and well-being.
The latter is what I'll concentrate on today to build a framework to effectively
address the causes of global warming and begin the transition to a sustainable
future.
Ecology is the study of relationships, of connecting the dots, and ecopsychology is
about redefining sanity as if the whole Earth matters. After all, intentionally
destroying our life support system provides a textbook case of insanity. Western
culture's disconnection from the natural world and all that is naturally fulfilling also
leads to a pathological sense of the other. Fortunately, we have a viable, systemic
alternative to draw from.
Science shows that nature, all by itself, is healing. Recovery from surgery occurs
more quickly if the patient simply has a window to look out; green space in cities
reduces crime; being in nature lowers stress, depression, angst, and despair.
The reconnecting activities of applied ecopsychology through the Natural Systems
Thinking Process (NSTP) provide a direct method for reconnecting all of our
senses--physical, chemical, emotional, intuitive, and spiritual--to their roots in the
natural world--which includes each other and our communities. Rebuilding this
innate connection is a priority, as people won't fight to save what they don't love.
Our cultural disconnection from the source of life leads to a cultural post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD)--it is the original untenable trauma that causes us to so
actively seek addictive substitutes for our natural expectations of fulfillment.
Disconnection is a loss of who we truly are and a loss of the potential to be who
we could be. It is also a traumatic event to discover that your life and sense of
identity are based on a lie. In an interconnected and interdependent world, we also
have a felt sense of the trauma of our destruction of the living world and
exploitation of all her species--which we normally deny or medicate into oblivion.
The NSTP can not only heal this disconnection, but can empower us to engage in
the changes and actions to stop global warming, ecosystem degradation, and
social injustice and inequity. Combined with relocalization--a pragmatic process to
begin creating a sustainable future--it can improve quality of life firmly based in
natural systems principles. We can remember how to survive and thrive under
changing conditions by building resilience. And this can occur rather rapidly,
based on much evidence in fields ranging from neuroscience to social science to
the positive feedback loops of systems science. Plus tens of thousands of years of
Earth-centered indigenous wisdom.
We can stop the harm by first being honest about what it actually is, the paradigm
that has caused it, and build the alternative that is an inextricably intertwined core
aspect of who we really are. Humans emerged from the principles of life on Earth.
And the prime activity of living organisms is the tendency to self-organize into
networks of mutually supportive relationships that support the web of life.
I'll be more than happy to show you how to regain this innate natural ability, and
how to put non-hierarchical processes to work in building critical mass by creating
multi-issue coalitions that have a shared set of values that contribute to the
common goal of a sustainable future. Because these processes work with the
creative, nurturing direction of life, they require less time, less energy, and embody
more joy.
To wrap up, thank you all for your time and attention today--to your willingness to
become better informed and participate in the necessary change in whatever area
you're most naturally attracted to--personal, social, or environmental--not only for
your own health, but the well-being of life itself.
For
Earth and Life...
_dave_(this entire message is composed of recycled electrons)
Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor
Building critical mass for critical sustainable change
see also:
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages