Laudato Sí — the papal encyclical

It’s high time I wrote about Pope Francis’ eloquent encyclical Laudato Si. When I read it I was both appreciative at the depth of research, and astonished to read sentiments I have rarely seen expressed elsewhere but which accord so closely with my own thoughts. It’s felt a little daunting to take this on, just because there is so very much to talk about — but I will try to organize my thoughts, and at least quote a few passages I found exemplary...
*(note: the reference numbers refer to the numbered paragraphs, not page numbers)

What I found most exceptional, because it is so rare in most discussions, is the way Pope Francis speaks of non-human creatures and the natural world. When even environmentalists talk about the importance of preserving biodiversity, it is often couched in terms of the value to humans (“just imagine if some rainforest plant which may have held the cure for cancer was wiped out before we ever discovered it”). This anthropocentric view, presupposing that all other living beings are here just for their value to humans, is offensive to me — this human hubris is a huge part of how we arrived at this crisis to begin with. But this human-centric view is close to impossible to escape, as it seems nearly everyone thinks that way. So I was delighted to find Pope Francis stating that “the ultimate purpose of other creatures is not to be found in us.” (p. 83)

The encyclical goes so far beyond most environmental writers regarding our relation to non-human animals and the rest of the natural world... In the very opening, he invokes the canticle of Saint Francis of Assisi to remind us that “our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.” (p. 1) He goes on to say that Saint Francis’ calling fellow creatures by the name of brother and sister “cannot be written off as naive romanticism, for it affects the choices which determine our behaviour. If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, if we no longer speak the language of fraternity and beauty in our relationship with the world, our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.” (p. 11) Even more striking: “It is not enough... to think of different species merely as potential ‘resources’ to be exploited, while overlooking the fact that they have value in themselves. Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plant and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost for ever. The great majority become extinct for reasons related to human activity. Because of us, thousands of species will no longer give glory to God by their very existence, nor convey their message to us. We have no such right.” (my emphasis) (p. 33) This reminds me of a statement from Daniel Wildcat (himself quoting Oren Lyons), “it makes a crucial difference whether humankind thinks of the natural world as consisting of resources or relatives.” (Red Alert) Unfortunately humankind has so lost our relation to the natural world that, in Francis’ words, “the harmony between the Creator, humanity and creation as a whole was disrupted by our presuming to take the place of God and refusing to acknowledge our creaturely limitations.” (p. 66)

This human arrogance can be called anthropocentrism — a word I have rarely heard spoken except by animal rights activists, yet Pope Francis mentions it twice, when he states that “modernity has been marked by an excessive anthropocentrism which... continues to stand in the way of shared understanding” (p. 116); and then that “a misguided anthropocentrism leads to a misguided lifestyle... when human beings place themselves at the centre, they give absolute priority to immediate convenience and all else becomes relative.” (p. 122) In connection with this anthropocentrism, the Pope speaks of the implications of how we treat non-human animals: “our indifference or cruelty towards fellow creatures of this world sooner or later affects the treatment we mete out to other human beings. We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is contrary to human dignity.” (p. 92)

This leads me to another exceptional aspect of Pope Francis’ writings, his recognition of “the intimate relationship between the poor and the fragility of the planet, the conviction that everything in the world is connected.” (p. 16)  There often seems to be a disconnect between the violence we do to the planet and the violence we do to our fellow humans — in fact, it is often assumed that if one cares about animals or the environment then one must care insufficiently about other people (the old trope that someone “cares more about animals than people”). The Pope puts the lie to this notion as he connects the environment and poverty in his 12-paragraph section on global inequality. He says that “the same mindset which stands in the way of making radical decisions to reverse the trend of global warming also stands in the way of achieving the goal of eliminating poverty“ (p. 175); and that “a true ecological approach always becomes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor..” (p. 49) He speaks of how the global South is exploited to create wealth for the capitalists in the global North: “developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future” (p. 52); and he links this exploitation to the mindless greed of the rich: “some are mired in desperate and degrading poverty, with no way out, while others have not the faintest idea of what to do with their possessions, vainly showing off their supposed superiority and leaving behind them so much waste which, if it were the case everywhere, would destroy the planet.” (p. 90)

Upon reading the encyclical I was immediately impressed with the depth of research and knowledge brought to it — knowledge of the urgency of the crisis we are in, and the need for radical change in the way we live. Pope Francis speaks repeatedly of the dire emergency to which we have brought ourselves: “doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth” (p. 161); and “it is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress. Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster. Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress.” (p. 194)

Perhaps because of his focus on poverty and inequality, the Pope far surpasses most writers in his elucidation of the only true solution to the crisis. I hear over and over, from “green” groups and environmental leaders, assurances that we already have the technology for “sustainable energy” and “green growth”... No one, it seems, wants to be the grown-up and tell us that we can’t have our cake and eat it too — that is, we can’t keep our profligate lifestyle and keep a habitable planet, no matter how many windmills and solar panels we put up. Almost no one, that is — Pope Francis is unafraid to talk about the folly of “sustainable growth”: “talk of sustainable growth usually becomes a way of distracting attention and offering excuses” (p. 194); and to go beyond into speaking of de-growth, especially in the first world: “we need to grow in the conviction that a decrease in the pace of production and consumption can at times give rise to another form of progress and development.” (p. 191) He relates our obsession with growth to our disconnect from the natural world, and forthrightly calls our notions of sustainable growth a lie: “human beings and material objects no longer extend a friendly hand to one another; the relationship has become confrontational. This has made it easy to accept the idea of infinite or unlimited growth, which proves so attractive to economists, financiers and experts in technology. It is based on the lie that there is an infinite supply of the earth’s goods, and this leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit. “ (p. 106) And he urges us to relinquish our fixation with growth to heal our value systems as well as the planet: “nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.” (p. 114)

I also appreciate the Pope’s attention to personal responsibilities in this crisis. So much of the discourse among activists devolves into simply blaming corporate villains. Of course the fossil fuel corporations bear much responsibility, but this blaming ignores the fact that we are the ones keeping them in business by buying their products — and every step we take to decrease our dependence on their products both lessens their bottom lines and saves us from hypocrisy. Pope Francis urges us to look to our habits of consumerism, beginning with our “throwaway culture which affects the excluded just as it quickly reduces things to rubbish.” (p. 22) He maintains that this culture persists even while we profess environmental awareness: “people may well have a growing ecological sensitivity but it has not succeeded in changing their harmful habits of consumption which, rather than decreasing, appear to be growing all the more.” (p. 55) He ties this lifestyle to the inequalities in our economic systems: “obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.” (p. 204) He exposes the hollow core at the heart of the growth economy: “since the market tends to promote extreme consumerism in an effort to sell its products, people can easily get caught up in a whirlwind of needless buying and spending... people believe that they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume.” (p. 203)

Contrary to many who argue that “my personal consumption won’t make a difference,” the pope calls out the importance of our own individual actions: “only by cultivating sound virtues will people be able to make a selfless ecological commitment... We must not think that these efforts are not going to change the world. They benefit society, often unbeknown to us, for they call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread.” (p. 211-212) He exhorts us to “take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more... It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack.” (p. 222) And he eloquently challenges the notion that a simple life free of materialism and consumerism is deprivation: “such sobriety, when lived freely and consciously, is liberating. It is not a lesser life or one lived with less intensity. On the contrary, it is a way of living life to the full...  Happiness means knowing how to limit some needs which only diminish us, and being open to the many different possibilities which life can offer." (p. 223)

This leads me to the value of such a revered and powerful religious figure speaking out so strongly — only someone with the moral authority of the Pope or the Dalai Lama could speak so authoritatively of this as the moral issue it is. Pope Francis rejects the solipsism so prevalent today: “disinterested concern for others, and the rejection of every form of self-centeredness and self-absorption, are essential if we truly wish to care for our brothers and sisters and for the natural environment” (p. 208);  and “We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it.” (p. 229) Invoking Mary, he mourns the ruins of the world that our profligate culture has brought: “Just as her pierced heart mourned the death of Jesus, so now she grieves for the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the creatures of this world laid waste by human power.” (p. 241) And he condemns the myriad evils our misguided culture has wrought, as he denounces the futility of political solutions within such a culture: “In the absence of objective truths or sound principles other than the satisfaction of our own desires and immediate needs, what limits can be placed on human trafficking, organized crime, the drug trade, commerce in blood diamonds and the fur of endangered species?... This same 'use and throw away' logic generates so much waste, because of the disordered desire to consume more than what is really necessary. We should not think that political efforts or the force of law will be sufficient to prevent actions which affect the environment because, when the culture itself is corrupt and objective truth and universally valid principles are no longer upheld, then laws can only be seen as arbitrary impositions or obstacles to be avoided.’ (p. 123)

It is this spiritual poverty of our solipsistic culture which is the deep taproot of our current crisis, as we acquire more and more "things" — consumer goods, travel — to fill empty lives devoid of beauty: “the emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume.” (p. 204) The Pope expresses anger at the ruin that we have wrought: “the degree of human intervention... is actually making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey... We seem to think that we can substitute an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves.” (p. 34); and “if someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple.” (p. 215) It is through recognizing and appreciating the beauty of the world that the Pope urges us to find “a new way of thinking about human beings, life, society and our relationship with nature.” (p. 215)

Which brings us back to where we began, with the Franciscan values that Pope Francis espouses. He tells us that “in union with all creatures, we journey through this land seeking God” (p. 244), and invokes the prayer of Saint Francis:

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord! All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To You, alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your name. 

Praised be you, my Lord, with all your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day and through whom you give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendour; and bears a likeness of you, Most High. 

Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful. 

Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Wind, and through the air, cloudy and serene, and every kind of weather through whom you give sustenance to your creatures. 

Praised be you, my Lord, through Sister Water, who is very useful and humble and precious and chaste. 

Praised be you, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you light the night, and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong. 

Praised be you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs. 

Praised be you, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of You; through those who endure sickness and trial. 

Happy those who endure in peace, for by You, Most High, they will be crowned. 

Praised be you, my Lord, through our sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing Your most holy will. The second death can do no harm to them. 

Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks, and serve Him with great humility.

a "World War II-scale mobilization" in context

Yesterday, on the occasion of the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, I heard an interview with an author writing about the Manhattan Project. At one point, he mentioned the major problems besetting the world today, and that we could use another mobilization on the scale of the Manhattan Project to combat climate change (or words to that effect).

It struck me that this is another manifestation of our denialism regarding the climate emergency. While there is a World War II analogy for this emergency, it is emphatically not the Manhattan Project — rather, it is the entire idea of shared sacrifice that was so prevalent in the war years. Here in Richmond, at the Rosie the Riveter museum, you can see war-era posters exhorting citizens to "use it up, wear it out, make it do" and ration cards for meat, butter and sugar.

If we were to take on this ethic of shared sacrifice, it could at least start us on the road toward conquering the overconsumption which is at the root of the crisis (yes, we would have to re-organize our economy to deal with no-growth — something that will have to be done to live on a finite planet)... But instead, we've been told so often that we have the know-how to fix this without having to give up anything, the first WWII image that comes to mind for so many people is the Manhattan Project and a quick technological fix. Unfortunately, any techno-fixes out there are either pipe-dreams, or simply defy the laws of thermodynamics (or both). We keep waiting for that mobilization around the "green economy" because no one wants to be the grown-up and declare that we can't have our cake and eat it, too — that is, we can't keep our lifestyles and a habitable planet.

growth vs. steady-state — a few quotes

I haven't yet seriously delved into the issue of the growth economy — that is, my third precept, "don't buy any new stuff you don't absolutely need"... This is a tough nut to crack because our society is so totally dependent upon consumerism it seems nearly insurmountable to imagine a way out. Good and well-meaning friends, who do profess to care about the environment and climate change, have reminded me that their jobs, or their loved ones' jobs, depend on people continuing to buy nice things; and that if everyone thought the way I do (and acted on it) the economy would collapse and complete chaos would result.

And yet I can only return to the fact that infinite growth is simply not possible on a finite planet, and any "fix" that allows us to keep growing indefinitely without harming the environment is as imaginary as a perpetual motion machine or a free lunch. As far as I can see, we can choose to follow the made-up dictates of our own made-up system (the economy), or we can follow the rules of the real world... or, as Herman Daly put it, "when faced with the unhappy dilemma of choosing between a physical or political impossibility, it is better to attempt the politically 'impossible.'"

Right now I do not have a concrete solution — as I say, our society is so bound up in this there seems to be no way out of it; I only know there must be alternatives. I'm sure there are traditional cultures who have inhabited the same territory since time immemorial without ruining the land, and perhaps we need to learn from them... I have been reading a bit of Herman Daly — Ecological Economics — on the principles of a steady-state economy. I can't speak with any kind of authority on how to get there from here; but until I have more solid ideas, here are a few quotes from my reading:

"As this is written, there are news reports of a group of economics students in French and British universities who are rebelling against what they are being taught. They have formed a Society for Post-Autistic Economics. Their implicit diagnosis is apt, since autism, like conventional economics, is characterized by 'abnormal subjectivity; and acceptance of fantasy rather than reality.' ... Current 'canonical assumptions' of insatiable wants and infinite resources, leading to growth forever, are simply not grounded in reality." - p. xxi

"We define growth as an increase in throughput, which is the flow of natural resources from the environment, through the economy, and back to the environment as waste. This kind of growth, of course, cannot continue indefinitely, as the Earth and its resources are not infinite. While growth must end, this in no way implies an end to development, which we define as qualitative change, realization of potential, evolution toward an improved, but larger, structure or system — an increase in the quality of goods and services (where quality is measured by the ability to increase human well-being)."  - p.6

"Unfortunately, our ability to increase consumption while depleting our resource base has led people to believe that humans and the economy that sustains us have transcended nature. "  - p. 10

"Does the system generate wastes? Does the system require new inputs of matter and energy? If not, then the system is a perpetual motion machine, a contradiction of the Second Law of Thermodynamics... Since there is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine, the economic system cannot be the whole. It must be a subsystem of a larger system, the Earth-ecosystem."  - p.29

"The circular low vision [of standard economic models] is analogous to a biologist describing an animal only in terms of its circulatory system, without ever mentioning its digestive tract. Surely the circulatory system is important, but unless the animal also has a digestive tract that connects it to its environment at both ends, it will soon die either of starvation or constipation."  - p. 29

I do have a few quibbles with Daly: in common with most conventional economists, in thinking natural ecosystems strictly in terms of resources for humans and measuring quality by the ability to increase human well-being, he falls into the common trap of thinking the entire world was created for our use — which is exactly the thinking that got us to this point. (I always keep in mind the quote from indigenous rights activist Oren Lyons, "it makes a crucial difference whether humankind thinks of the natural world as consisting of resources or relatives"). But it is useful to get some solid economic thinking on the issue. I will post further as I get further along...

Cowspiracy

We recently watched an absolutely vital film called "Cowspiracy: the Sustainability Secret" — about how most big "green" organizations won't touch the connections between animal agriculture and environmental destruction. It details the connections between beef and climate change, water, and deforestation, and also addresses fisheries and the destruction of ocean life... all done in a gonzo documentary style reminiscent of Michael Moore (although somehow I can't imagine Moore touching this issue either). There's a scene with the California Department of Water Resources in which the filmmaker asks why they don't put out the word about how much water is wasted to raise beef cattle... and they reply with something like "we're a government agency, we deal with water management, and what you're talking about is changing behavior" — as if pushing everyone to take shorter showers and turn off the water while brushing your teeth isn't about changing behavior! The website for the film also has a very helpful graphic with lots of statistics — here are a few tidbits:

Animal agriculture is responsible for 91% of Amazon destruction
110 animal and insect species are lost every day from rainforest destruction
Livestock cover 45% of earth's total land mass
The meat and dairy industry use 1/3 of the earth's fresh water
5% of US water use is domestic; 55% is animal agriculture
A plant-based diet cuts your carbon footprint by 50%

I would definitely class this as one of those movies everyone should see. As it happens, the filmmakers have a campaign for Earth Day this year: anyone can watch Cowspiracy online for just a dollar, starting on the real Earth Day (Wednesday, April 22nd, not whatever weekend day organizations tend to pick for events)... Highly recommended!

Chris Hedges on the case for going vegan

Chris Hedges has gone vegan as a response to climate change, saying that "becoming vegan is the most important and direct change we can immediately make to save the planet and its species." In his column explaining his decision (Saving the Planet, One Meal at a Time) he lays out a treasure trove of statistics. Here are just a few (I've left out the sources, but they are easily found in his footnotes):

• A person who is vegan will save 1,100 gallons of water, 20 pounds CO2 equivalent, 30 square feet of forested land, 45 pounds of grain and one sentient animal’s life every day.
• Crops grown for livestock feed consume 56 percent of the water used in the United States.
• In the United States 70 percent of the grain we grow goes to feed livestock raised for consumption.
• Land devoted exclusively to raising livestock now represents 45 percent of the earth’s land mass.

If you have yet to be convinced, please read the full article!

the climate march and "green energy" wishful thinking

Well, it's been way too long since I've posted here, for a few reasons… For one, I've been pretty preoccupied advocating for, then starting, a new high school dance program (another story for another blog); for another, I've been meaning to take up and expand on that third precept (not buying any new stuff you don't absolutely need) but felt I needed to do a lot more research first to be able to put my thoughts in any authoritative order — and got stuck with that same time crunch (but I have been reading some Herman Daly and will post some tidbits soon).

But — it would feel negligent not to take some notice of the big, highly-touted climate demonstrations over the weekend… Unfortunately, my main impression is disappointment over the rhetoric I've heard leading up to the rally. Every time I hear some activist interviewed, I invariably hear plenty of happy talk about how "we already have the technology" to run the economy "sustainably"… It seems that no one, from Bill McKibben on down, is ready to be the grownup and tell us the real truth — that we can't hope to save a habitable planet without radically changing the way we live. We are so obsessed with finding a magic techno-fix for the climate crisis — one that will let us continue to self-identify as "consumers" — that even our environmental leaders can't bring themselves to talk about just plain using less (a lot less). Yes, renewables are important — but only when coupled with a serious program of energy austerity; otherwise, all those renewables only make it possible for everything to keep growing even more.

I keep hearing mention of Germany as an example of scaling up solar power — how on some days, Germany gets as much as 75% of its electricity from solar! What is not mentioned so much is that Germany's GHG emissions have kept right on increasing over the past few years, even while it was adding all that solar capacity. Others have pointed to Spain as a leader in wind power — while glossing over the fact that Spain's GHG emissions keep rising as well, right along with all those wind turbines. Not long ago, the San Francisco Chronicle printed an article about the giant Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave desert: not only does the facility incinerate every bird, butterfly, or other flying creature who strays into the path of its beams; but a UC Riverside study found that the emissions savings from the plant are minimal at best, and may even be negative because of the lost carbon sinks in the pristine desert habitat that was destroyed to make room for all those mirrors. Yet we keep building (and subsidizing) these monstrosities because we just can't face the fact that we cannot keep growing indefinitely on a finite planet. A "green" energy source that will allow us to keep using all the energy we want (rather than what we actually need) without harming the environment is as fictional as a free lunch or a perpetual motion machine.

The one activist I have recently heard mention the necessity of austerity is Naomi Klein: in her recent book, she writes about how much time (and, just by the way, how much GHG emissions) it would take to scale up to replace our fossil fuel-based economy with one based on renewables. And she says that the only thing that "doesn't require a technological and infrastructure revolution is to consume less, right away." Yet so many seem so reluctant to think about that part of the equation… Making the fossil fuel companies the only villain in this lets us all off the hook.

readings on the change needed and the Anthropocene

I’m afraid I have been writing rather sporadically here… but this was originally intended to be a place to expand on the ideas in my original long missive more than a daily or weekly diary… so there it is. I have written more about my first two precepts – that is, not eating meat and not flying on airplanes; I hope to write more about that last one – not buying stuff you don’t need – as soon as I can, but I feel I need to spend a little more time studying the idea of a steady-state economy before I can write with any assurance. I will say that I have had friends respond to my first letter by saying that if we stopped buying, the economy would collapse; my response at this point would be to paraphrase Herman Daly: we can choose to follow the dictates of the imaginary system that we ourselves created (the economy), or we can follow the dictates of the very real systems that we live in and depend upon (physics and the environment).

In the meantime, there are a couple of articles that I read recently that I would like to share:

The first is The Change Within by the always-dependable and always-interesting Naomi Klein. In this one, she lays out some interesting sociological reasons as to why responding to climate change in any sort of adequate fashion is so difficult, if not nearly impossible (hint: it’s not just because of the rapacious oil barons) – a big one being, of course, consumerism: “The problem is not ‘human nature,’ as we’re often told. We weren’t born having to shop this much…”

The second is The Anthropocene: It’s Not All About Us by Richard Heinberg (who is less well-known than Naomi Klein, but no less interesting). The title essentially says it – we have increasingly cut ourselves off from wild nature, and “as is usually the case in discussions about humans-and-wild-nature, the conversation is all about us.” He somewhat disagrees with Klein’s point about “human nature” and not being born having to shop this much – as Heinberg states, “every species maximizes population size and energy consumption within nature’s limits” – which is one of the major problems in any attempts to voluntarily limit our consumption (before we reach nature’s limits in the form of a massive and catastrophic ecosystem collapse). He also focuses on how we have always re-engineered the world and taken over ecosystems: “paleoanthropologists can date the arrival of humans to Europe, Asia, Australia, the Pacific islands, and the Americas by noting the timing of the extinctions of large prey species.” But the main point of the essay is our anthropocentrism our alienation from nature which is leading to environmental disaster – “when individual human self-absorption becomes blatantly destructive we call it narcissism… Our planetary-scale narcissism is just the latest method for justifying our actions as we bulldoze, deforest, overfish, and deplete our way to world domination.” For someone like me, who fully believes in Daniel Wildcat’s axiom that we began to lose our way when we stopped thinking of other species as relatives and began thinking of them as resources, hearing this idea from another writer is powerful indeed.

meat-eating and the drought

Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle included a front-page, above-the-fold story titled "Farmers forced to change ways during drought." It profiled one Central Valley farmer who is going to abandon growing alfalfa, among other things, because of the loss of water deliveries from the Central Valley Project. The part that jumped out at me was far down in the article — it quotes "environmentalists" accusing farmers of exporting water in the form of crops such as alfalfa and almonds, and mentioned that alfalfa's water use far exceeds that of other crops in the state… Then in nearly the next paragraph, it cites the farmer saying that his alfalfa "isn't some thirsty boutique crop — it's vital to San Joaquin ranchers and dairies that put meat and milk in the refrigerators of millions of Californians" — so matter-of-factly, as if there isn't even the slightest question that meat and milk are absolutely necessary to have in our refrigerators!

So — yes, it is true that all that water going to all that alfalfa is used overwhelmingly to produce meat, milk, and cheese... and if lots more of us were vegetarians we probably would have plenty of water in California (even this year!). Of course, as a local columnist pointed out, any attempt by the government to promote vegetarianism would be met with fierce resistance (not that that is in any way possible, given that our current political system is completely beholden to corporate agriculture).

But official promotion is beside the point, all that is needed is to stop the subsidies and water deliveries — if all the corn, soy, and alfalfa farmers had to pay anything like the true cost of all that water, then meat would be so expensive as to become a rare luxury rather than the mainstay of the typical fast-food diet (much as, if carbon were priced at anything like its cost to the environment, flying would be a big deal again instead of a convenient commute option). If that were to happen, we would see a lot more vegetarians and near-vegetarians — with attendant improvements to general health and well-being, as well as the savings in water and carbon...

the carbon cost of eating meat

So, on to the next of those three precepts: vegetarianism, or the huge carbon cost of eating meat. From what I have seen, this is too often ignored in discussions about solutions to the global warming crisis, for whatever reasons — too personal, too threatening? Or, more cynically, because of the influence of Big Agriculture — or that there is little profit to be made from a wholesale transition to giving up meat (as opposed to, for instance, pushing "green" products like electric cars or solar panels).

When I first began looking up "personal carbon footprint" calculators a few years back, they almost completely ignored the issue of diet, focusing exclusively on how much you drive, what kind of energy you use in your home, how efficient your appliances are, etc. The Sierra Club (as recently as 2008), in its listing of things you can do to lessen your carbon footprint, included small actions such as hanging your clothes out to dry, but did not include eating less (or no) meat.  Until pretty recently, Al Gore had never so much as mentioned the environmental impact of meat (according to Ben Adler). I heard only last month that Gore has now adopted a vegan diet (about time, I'd say); and when I looked again at carbon calculators, I found some that were much improved, taking vegan diets and local food into account — but still diet is given very little attention considering the outsized impact it could have on the crisis.

Whatever the reason for neglect in most discourse, switching to a vegetarian/vegan diet is surely the single most effective thing any individual can do to lower demand for fossil fuels and decrease GHG emissions — and some experts believe that a massive reversion to vegetarianism, coupled with re-forestation of lands now devoted to livestock, is our only hope of being able to drastically reduce emissions as rapidly as necessary in our constantly-worsening emergency.

More on that later; first — meat is essentially grain, water, and land, greatly concentrated. Here are a few specifics:

1. Grain: I have often read arguments that it is cereal monocrops — with their profligate use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers — that are most intensively contributing to environmental degradation. Those who point this out often argue that people should stop eating bread and pasta, not meat. This completely ignores the huge proportions of cereal crops that are fed directly to livestock — according to the World Bank, 65% of world corn production is used for animal feed, with only 15% used for feeding humans. In the US the numbers are even more striking: about 80% of the corn crop goes to feed livestock, and 98% of soybean meal is destined to feed animals, not human tofu-eaters! Meat is essentially grain, greatly concentrated. Estimates vary, but even for chicken (the least carbon-intensive meat) it takes about 2 pounds of grain to produce one pound of live weight gain (which presumably includes the bones, beak, feathers, and all the other "waste" parts that get thrown out). Beef is much worse — I've seen estimates ranging from 3 - 16 pounds, but most sources put the ratio at 7 or 8 pounds of grain to produce one pound of live weight gain. Most certainly, we could get much more food much more efficiently from those vast amounts of corn and soybeans if we just fed them directly to humans!

2. Water: Water use may not have a direct effect on climate change — but it is certainly a consideration, given the increased potential for drought (as we Californians are realizing right now). It takes 29 gallons of water to produce a pound of tomatoes, 219 gallons to produce a pound of tofu, and 2,464 gallons to produce a pound of hamburger (Water Education Foundation). Enough said.

3. Land use: Of course, it takes lots of land to grow not only all those cereal crops, but also to graze vast herds of cattle. The total land area of the US is about 2.3 billion acres; the lower 48 states (excluding a lot of ice and tundra in Alaska) totals about 1.9 billion acres. Of that, the USDA lists 614 million acres of pasture and rangeland, or nearly one-third of the total. Even that is a low estimate, as it does not include so-called "cropland used for pasture" — other estimates have put the total as high as 788 million acres, or 41% of total land area in the lower 48! Add to that the 200-plus million acres used to plant feed corn, soy, and alfalfa hay used for feeding livestock, and we can see that approximately half of the total land area in the contiguous United States goes to growing and feeding animals destined to be eaten (dwarfing the 3% that is urban land). On a global scale, "livestock systems" are estimated to occupy 45% of all land on earth — a pretty astounding figure, I'd say.

The carbon cost of meat is truly enormous — even the UN FAO's extremely conservative estimate is that 18% of global GHG emissions can be traced to meat, more than the entire transportation sector; and WorldWatch's Goodland and Anhang, taking into account all of the factors the FAO missed, calculated that an astonishing 51% of worldwide emissions are attributable to meat production. But it is because of that land use that, according to Goodland, switching to vegetarian/vegan diets may be the only hope for pulling back from the brink of our climate catastrophe. James Hansen recently recommended immediate decreases in carbon consumption of 6% a year, coupled with massive reforestation, as the only way to stay below a 2°C rise in global temperatures (subsequent developments have shown that that challenging figure is not enough — we need to cut back something more like 10% per year, starting now — but the principle still stands). But where is it possible for that massive reforestation to happen? Some of us may fantasize about turning shopping malls, parking lots, and golf courses back into forested land — but even if that were possible, the acreage wouldn't be nearly sufficient (remember, we're talking about massive reforestation here). But remember that approximately half of the total land area in the contiguous US, and 45% in the world, is devoted to grazing and feeding livestock, and the solution becomes obvious. According to Goodland, only by taking meat out of our diets and taking these vast rangelands and feedlots out of production could we find enough land for the reforestation that might — just might — give us a chance of averting catastrophe.

I want to be really clear, here — I am not proposing vegetarianism as a solution by itself. There is only so much that reforestation can do, and it could only work if accompanied by those massive cuts to consumption (10% per year until we reach zero), which entail serious changes in the way we do everything we do (another subject for a long post yet to come…). But in terms of what an individual can do, going vegan is undoubtedly the single most effective way to decrease emissions… And aside from the numbers, there is the consideration that going vegetarian is one of the simplest ways to affect climate change as an individual — as Adler says, "consumers may not have a say in whether or not another coal power plant will be built, but they do have control over how much meat they personally eat." Or, in other words, it is probably a lot more feasible to give up eating meat than it is to stop driving to work or to completely turn off the heater in the winter (plus there is the added benefit of better health... not to mention the massive cruelty of factory farming — but that could be an entire subject in itself...).

Kevin Anderson on flying

I'm still working on the next long post, about the carbon cost of eating meat (I work pretty slowly during the school year, I'm afraid)… in the meantime, I recently heard an interview on Democracy Now with Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the COP 19 climate conference. They had a lot of things to say about many aspects of the climate crisis, and you can read (or watch) the whole interview here; but in light of my last post, I was especially interested in the part about why they took a 23-hour train ride to the conference instead of flying. His basic point is about hyper-mobility — here's a bit of an excerpt, in response to a question about using a train and using a plane, in terms of energy consumption:

"Well, a lot of people just ask me that question: Is the train that much better than the plane? Actually, it doesn’t really matter, in terms of the journey, whether it’s better or not, because what happens if you go by train is you don’t go very often. So you immediately curtail about how much you travel. And also, you plan when you get there to spend longer there. So I went to China, and I spent two weeks doing a lecture tour in China, as many of my colleagues flew there to give 20-minute talks and then flew back the following day, and then probably the following week were flying to another venue. So, it’s not the actual emissions from the journey that matter; it’s how it makes you change your life.

"Virtually everyone that I’ve spoken to who’s flown here say, "Oh, I flew here and then got a taxi into Warsaw." So people who fly already do not then use public transport to, say, travel back into the town. It normalizes a whole load of high-carbon activities, that we then—that then become what we do every single day…

"You know, we manage to engage with scientists around the world using all of the forms of communication that we’re all using here... We do not have to keep flying around the world in a sort of old-fashioned, colonial style. You know, here’s the great white hope, the great white males from the rich parts of the world, flying around to the poor parts of the world, telling them how they should be living their lives. So I think that we really need to be stepping away from thinking about the world like that."

the climate cost of flying

Okay, it's far past time to get into some more detail about those three main precepts I set for myself and specified in my opening missive — those were, of course: 1. don't fly on airplanes; 2. don't eat meat (or even better, go vegan); and 3. don't buy new stuff you don't absolutely need.

Before I start on details, though, I should add a little disclaimer: of course, I know and believe that individual actions are not enough to solve this dire crisis we have brought on (not even close) — but I also believe that our so-called political leaders are not going to do anything at all to solve it, given that they are nearly all concerned with supporting the corporate empire. So for the time being I am focusing on what we can do as individuals to get the world off of fossil fuels — that is, coming at the problem from the demand side… inspired from a reply to my first post: "I also believe that any radical change worth making has to start with one person which leads to another person which leads to another person…"

So, as to the issue of air travel — I guess we need to start with some numbers. Unfortunately, accurate numbers are a little hard to chase down, but I've seen figures showing the per-passenger cost of air travel in CO2 equivalents as anywhere from 0.4 to 0.64 lbs/mile, where passenger cars are figured at about one lb/mile. However, the real carbon cost for flying is actually much higher, because of the high-altitude climatic forcing effect — the IPCC's commonly cited estimate is 2.7x — so the cost does come out to be greater than for travel by car.

Still doesn't really sound so bad though, does it? Only a little more carbon than driving… But of course, the per-passenger cost is not anywhere near the whole story. To get at the destructive nature of air travel, we need to consider a couple of aspects to this. First, think about how many times you would pack up and travel from (for instance) Los Angeles to New York if you had to get in your car and take a few days to drive there. Maybe once, it could make an interesting family vacation, with stops along the way… but you'd hardly go cross-country for a quick weekend getaway — and those frequent-flyers who work three days on one coast and two days on the other just couldn't do it at all. And there are undoubtedly relatively few people who would choose to vacation overseas if they had to sail those seas on a ship.

The concept at work here is hypermobility — people just move around, at incredibly long distances, a lot more than they used to before air travel was ubiquitous (and cheap). It's nearly impossible to find total miles traveled using various forms of transportation throughout history (believe me, I tried); I doubt they kept statistics on that sort of thing back in the horse-and-buggy days. But the difference must be astronomical (no pun intended, I think) from the days when traveling across the country meant an arduous journey on horseback and covered wagon; or even the middle of the last century, when traveling by air was a rare luxury. Now there are hundreds of international airports in the world (three of what the FAA calls "large primary hubs" in the SF bay area alone); and each one of them has hundreds of airplanes flying in and out every day — even thousands at the busiest. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of miles per flight, and by dozens of passengers on each plane, and the numbers begin to get truly dizzying.

We've become so accustomed to air travel that most of us don't even think twice about flying across the country for a conference, or hopping over to Europe or Asia for vacation, or even just flying a few hundred miles to visit family… while if we had to travel by older, slower methods (cars, trains, or ships) we might think about whether we really needed to take that trip.

Another aspect of this is our global carbon budget — how much carbon we, collectively in the world, can burn up and still have a hope of averting total climate disaster. According to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), in order to stay under the commonly-cited 2°C of warming we'd need to decrease global emissions to 2 metric tons of carbon per capita annually, right now; and even further, to 0.45 tons, in the near future — all from the current global average of 4 tons.
To do that fairly* means that those of us in the industrial west must cut our own emissions down to two tons per year now, and to less than a half-ton per year very soon. So here's the problem — one roundtrip flight between LA and New York creates nearly two tons of emissions per passenger (715 kilos of CO2, multiplied by 2.7 for the high altitude forcing, equals 1,930 kilos or almost two metric tons). In any sane, fair, and just world, in which we all burn no more carbon than is sustainable, in just one plane trip across the country you would blow through your entire year's allotment in one shot — or exceed it many times over.

*(Of course, our current global average is not distributed at all fairly — we citizens of the US on average spew about 17 tons per year —Australians even more, with a few tiny countries like Kuwait, the Netherlands, and Qatar emitting up into the 30s and 40s of tons — while citizens of Mozambique, Nepal, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Chad, Mali, and Afghanistan (among others) each emit a tenth of a ton or less. And naturally, there's a wide range within those nations as well — the famous 1%, with their 5,000-square-foot McMansions, conspicuous consumption, and frequent flyer miles, obviously contribute a lot more to the problem than my students in East Oakland who live in apartments or little old bungalows, never travel, and have no money to buy much more than what they need to get by. In order to get down to a (relatively) sustainable level of emissions per capita, we can't very well ask those who already get by without using much to cut back as much as those who already use much more than their share… Well, actually we could, and given the appalling political situation here and around the world, I fully expect it — but I'd rather pretend for the moment that we would at least make some attempt to be fair.)

I have heard back from some correspondents that massive changes in the way we live (including giving up flying) would risk making our present lives intolerable for the slender chance of preserving our future. But I see it differently: to quote Yotam Marom, "Climate Armageddon isn’t a Will Smith movie about what happens in 10 years when all hell breaks loose. Climate change is already here." There are people losing their livelihoods, homes, and very lives to droughts, fires, floods, hurricanes… If we widen the circle of concern (which we must — this is not just about humans), plant and animal species are already going extinct at an alarming rate (no, not all because of climate change, but it is exacerbating the situation). So, yes, the chances of preserving a livable future are vanishingly slim — but plants, animals, and humans are being hurt, and are dying, right now; and every gram of carbon we add to the atmosphere, for the sake of the convenience of being able to travel around the world whenever and wherever we want, makes it even worse.

The situation the world is in gives true meaning to the term "existential crisis." In this emergency, we can't afford to wait for governments. Many activists talk about fighting the power of the fossil fuel companies, but relatively few mention the time-honored tactic of the boycott. Granted, it is difficult to completely boycott fossil fuels while living in our fossil fuel-dependent society, but we can radically decrease the amounts we use — and one of the two or three most effective ways for an individual to do that is to stop flying.

ignoring the truth

I recently heard an interview with Clive Hamilton, one of whose books is subtitled "Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change" — and it occurred to me that I disagree with that on only one word: for most of the people I know, folks do not so much resist the truth about climate change as ignore it. Frustratingly, this applies to people who profess to be very concerned about global warming… but when it comes to deciding whether to get on an airplane for a weekend trip, it simply doesn't even enter their thinking.

After I sent my original missive out to friends and family, I got back a few beautiful and encouraging responses — "I, too, have nightmares about this"… "I will do all I can to support your ideas"… But then life goes on, including those flights around the world. My husband and I are literally (and yes, I do mean literally — the rampant misuse of that word is one of my pet peeves) the only people I know personally who will not set foot on an airplane because of the huge climate implications... I hardly even know anyone else who hangs clothes on a clothesline instead of throwing them into an electric dryer. Perhaps I'm expecting too much, but it seems as if even among those who profess to be concerned about global warming, so few are ready to make any serious changes in their own lives, much less take on any advocacy. It's as if everyone is waiting for our elected "leaders" to do something to fix the situation — once again, not realizing (or perhaps ignoring) the monumental scale of the emergency. As always, I feel we have to keep trying — we can't prevent catastrophe whatever we do, but maybe we can prevent catastrophe from being even worse… But it is hard not to give in to despair.

On another note — it's about time for me to start adding some detail to my original "big three" precepts (the three biggest things an individual can do)… so I will try to get to some specifics regarding air travel next week. Coming soon!

two brief tidbits — on how far we have to go...

The other day, after I filled up my bottle with bulk olive oil at my local natural foods store and brought it up to the checkout, I got into a bit of conversation with the checker/buyer — when I sighed that I wished I could get the California olive oil in bulk, he asked "Oh — do you like the taste better?" I said no, I prefer not to get my food shipped from halfway across the planet. His reply was "Oh, that carbon footprint thing… I guess it's a matter of your priorities — for me it's all about the taste... I guess I'm part of the problem, huh?" I really couldn't think of a way to answer without being incredibly rude, but of course what I was thinking was "I have a hard time prioritizing slightly better-tasting olive oil over a habitable planet…"

Then two days ago, in an SF Chronicle article about siting huge wind and solar energy plants in pristine southern California deserts, a spokesman for the developer of one of the projects was quoted saying "Those who sincerely care about the birds and the wildlife know that climate change is their greatest threat… and if you want to mitigate climate change while keeping the lights on [my emphasis], responsibly sited wind and solar power is your best answer." Of course, we could never consider just turning off some of those lights! This attitude is so pervasive — we can't even think of changing the way we live, so we must pave over pristine deserts to build more "energy capacity" (however "renewable" it may be). If we were seriously sacrificing and paring down to just what is absolutely necessary to survive, then it might — just barely might — be defensible to think about building energy plants in the desert… But as long as we are using energy to power Las Vegas and pro sports night games (among many other quintessentially nonessential pursuits), even considering this should be beyond the pale. Unfortunately, in our society, this thinking is the norm — there is no greater good than keeping those lights on, keeping up our lifestyles... and preserving life on the planet just has to take a backseat.

Obama's climate speech

Well, I seem to have been pretty well MIA from this blog for the last couple of months — that's what comes of teaching (and dashing between) two schools while trying to look for a new position, I guess… Oh well, now that it's summer break, I should be able to catch up a bit — perhaps even throw some more details onto my big three issues (eating meat, flying, buying stuff)… And I figure that when the so-called leader of the free world finally gets around to recognizing the global warming emergency with more than just a couple of sentences in a state of the union speech, it's as good a time as any for me to jump back in (even if I'm already about a week late — I'm afraid I'm a pretty slow and painstaking writer).

By now I've read plenty of mainstream environmental organizations praising the speech for actually describing the problem in fairly accurate scientific terms, for dissing the deniers ("the Flat Earth Society") for shouting out the divestment movement (just by speaking the word "divest" exactly once)… And it's true that the opening and closing included some beautiful language about the crisis we face.

BUT… the President also boasted — three times (!) — about how we are producing more oil than ever ("produced more oil than we have in 15 years"… "even as we're producing more domestic oil"…), and more natural gas "than anybody else." I guess he at least knew better than to brag about producing coal… but in a speech ostensibly about the climate emergency, this is unconscionable.

He twice referenced that China has passed the US as the world's largest emitter, and made congratulatory mentions of how much the US has "reduced" emissions. Of course, saying that China is the world's largest emitter works only if you start with three givens: 1. you are counting total emissions, not emissions per capita; 2. you are counting the carbon being emitted right now, not cumulatively — even though it is cumulative emissions that matter to the climate (and by that standard, it will take China or anyone else a very long time to catch up); and (and this is the big one) 3. you are counting emissions from the production end, not the consumption end. A big proportion of China's emissions comes from manufacturing for the American market — they are burning all that coal just to make all the stuff that we incessantly shop for...in other words, a huge part of the reason we can boast that "no country on earth has reduced its total carbon pollution by as much as the United States of America" is that we have off-shored our emissions, right along with all those manufacturing jobs going to low-wage countries! Not exactly something to be proud of.

Another theme, revisited four times, was economic growth — "there's no contradiction between a sound environment and strong economic growth." The growth economy is a huge topic that I will take up in another post, but this focus on growth, at the very least, betrays complete ignorance of the extent and scope of the problem. At worst, it betrays something more like indifference — a mindset that nothing (not even a habitable planet) is more important than a growth economy, keeping Wall Street happy while the common people (not to mention the natural world) are left to deal with the crisis the best we can…

As to the Climate Action Plan itself, it could be called a decent start (and could have actually been a decent start, 40 years ago) — but again, the tiny baby steps approach betrays either ignorance of or indifference to the urgency of the situation. The plan prominently recommits to cutting US emissions 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 (which is only a 4% cut from 1990 levels). As a local columnist said, "Here's the bigger issue: Emitting less carbon dioxide isn't a solution to climate change. It beats increases, but by using fossil fuels at all, we're adding to rather than subtracting from the problem. It takes hundreds of years for CO2 to fully leave the atmosphere, and we're already at dangerously high levels."  I can't say it better, but maybe a little shorter: the climate doesn't care how fast we put that carbon up in the atmosphere, it only cares about the total amount — so slowing down the rate at which we spew it out does nothing!

But the fatal flaw in the plan — the one which makes it not just too little too late, but actually worse than doing nothing — is its enthusiastic promotion of natural gas (especially fracked natural gas) as a "cleaner-burning" "transition" fuel. Even at best, natural gas is only marginally better than other fossil fuels, only serves to somewhat reduce emissions, when what's needed is to come as close as possible to getting off all fossil fuels, cold turkey, tomorrow… But because of methane leakage at the well, fracked natural gas is actually — please pardon me, but I do feel the need to shout here — WORSE THAN COAL! Methane doesn't hang around in the atmosphere as long as CO2, but over the first 20 years methane is 80 - 105 times more potent as a greenhouse gas (Obama's climate plan calls it 20 times more powerful, but that assumes a 100-year timeframe — and remember, we don't have 100 years!) This means that fracked natural gas is worse for the atmosphere than coal if those "fugitive emissions" are as low as 2%; and the most extensive and credible studies have found up to nearly 8% leakage (other studies have found as much as 17%). Yet this is what Obama is pushing as a way to "reduce our carbon emissions."

And even worse, the plan rests not only upon increasing natural gas production in the US (and exporting that oh-so-dirty fracked gas, which adds even more emissions for transport), but also pushing fracking technology on the rest of the world (through applying "private sector knowhow in countries that transition to natural gas"). This is truly a recipe for disaster… and yes, I am using "pushing" intentionally, because this is also a recipe for keeping the world addicted to fossil fuels — by avoiding any thought of more effective strategies like conservation, or even (perish the thought!) truly changing the way we live our lives...

The plan is at best mistaken — and at worst outright mendacious — on two fronts: first, that natural gas will reduce emissions; and second, that simply reducing emissions is in any way a solution to the emergency we face. I cannot imagine that the President's energy and environment advisors have not informed him about the climate impacts of fracked natural gas — so I'm afraid the only conclusion I can draw is that keeping our economy humming and our energy sector profitable is a higher priority to our leadership than preserving a habitable planet.

I cannot say that this speech was a disappointment, as I did not expect much to begin with; but did I find it to be amazingly frustrating, as the first part really was an eloquent statement of the effects of climate change — and then the rest proceeded to propose policies that will only serve to worsen those effects.

"moral authority" and personal choices

I've been thinking more about one of those dichotomies I wrote about a little while back (aaargh! Has it really been over a month since the last time I wrote here?? There's so much I want to write about, and so little time… sigh… a lot, I'm afraid, will wait until summer break) — personal consumption vs. systemic change. Of course, as far as I'm concerned there is no real dichotomy, we absolutely need both — the climate emergency is so urgent we need everything we can do, as fast as we can do it — but there is another aspect to this one, and that is carrying the moral authority to even advocate for changing the systems we live under… or, in other words, simply not opening oneself up to being seen as a hypocrite.

It occurred to me that this is something those in the animal rights community take for granted. Imagine the sneers if animal activists showed up at demonstrations wearing leather shoes and munching cheeseburgers — but it doesn't happen because I have never met any animal rights folks who were not committed ethical vegans (and yes, that does mean eschewing all animal products, including leather and wool). Of course animal activists' main concern is that they do not themselves cause any unnecessary suffering if they can possibly help it (even though individual actions are trivial in the face of the massive suffering of billions of animals); but avoiding hypocrisy is also important to any political movement.

On a similar note, after a recent anti-Keystone XL protest in San Francisco, someone wrote a letter to the Chronicle decrying the protesters for hypocrisy, as (he said) he watched them get into their gasoline-powered cars and drive away… Now this is pretty hard to believe in any case — if you know anything about the parking situation around SF's civic center, you know it would be well-nigh impossible to follow more than one or two people back to a parking spaces (which would be blocks away in various directions), and anyone coming to protest would have been crazy not to simply hop on BART (so much easier for getting to that part of town, even if principles were not an issue). But still these stories crop up, because the opposition is so intent on finding hypocrisy…

… So why let them? Granted, one person's consumption choices are not going to by themselves save the planet; and granted, no one is perfect (certainly not me)… But while we advocate for the end of industrial capitalism, or whatever systemic change might actually have a chance of making a difference, we need to do the absolute best we can to carry that moral authority in ourselves, to walk our talk. Of course, this is nuanced — while it is possible (though difficult) to completely avoid animal products, it is nearly impossible to live in today's society without burning some fossil fuels. But we can certainly try to at least stop doing the big things: eating meat, flying on airplanes, just being part of the consumer culture. Take a hint from the animal rights folks — you can't effectively protest at the slaughterhouse wearing leather shoes and munching cheeseburgers, and you can't effectively protest the fossil fuel industry by using their products (and that does mean flying cross-country to the protest — and munching cheeseburgers, even artisan, grass-fed ones). And it is incumbent on all of us to do as much as we can to avoid causing suffering by our actions, whether that means being an ethical vegan to avoid causing animal cruelty, or not buying any new stuff because it might, just might, help avoid the extinction of one little species somewhere down the line...

"de-extinction"

Yesterday there was a story in the San Francisco Chronicle about researchers involved in some gee-whiz "de-extinction" experiments to clone long- (or not-so-long)-lost species. It mentioned, in breathless terms, that "the possibility of billions of passenger pigeons once again clouding city skies or the sound of thunder from the hooves of woolly mammoths trampling the Arctic's tundra may be speculation no more."

Gosh — I can hardly wait for the spectacle of "woolly mammoths trampling the Arctic tundra" — only to see it melt away beneath their feet! Or perhaps they might share the fate of the gray wolf and other recently "de-listed" species, shot at will as soon as their numbers barely rise above the threshold for endangered status.

Stewart Brand (referred to as "'environmental visionary' Stewart Brand") appears to be pushing this idea through his Long Now Foundation. In the article, he is quoted crowing that  "re-wilding is storming ahead everywhere." This idea is not "re-wilding" — according to The Rewilding Institute, rewilding involves "restoring big wilderness based on the regulatory roles of large predators.” The features needed for true rewilding are large, strictly protected core reserves; connections between reserves so that animals are able to travel; and, most importantly, the reintroduction and recovery of keystone carnivorous species. None of this is fulfilled in any way by cloning a few extinct animals — to quote cinematographer Lois Crisler, who spent years filming wolves in the Arctic, "animals without wilderness are a closed book.”

This is rather the ultimate vanity project, designed to assuage our consciences for wiping so many species from the face of the earth (It's okay! Look — we can bring them back!) It is the same sort of thinking that justifies keeping endangered species captive in zoos, to "preserve" the species as their habitats disappear — it certainly does those individual animals no good to be held behind bars, but we don't like to think we've destroyed another species so we keep the last few "specimens" breeding in cages for eternity. The article mentioned one recently extinct species, the bucardo or Pyrenian ibex, as being "very close to 'de-extinction' even now" as "many implantations" resulted in the birth of a "living bucardo clone" — which died ten minutes after birth! Again, cloning animals so feeble as to survive just for a short time does no good for those individual animals, and serves only to make us feel a little less monstrous.

Meanwhile, we are busily driving more species into extinction at the rate of one every five minutes, as we slaughter them for bling, exterminate them to keep them away from our endless herds of livestock, or pave over their habitats in our insatiable need for more space for our ever-increasing billions. Before we in our arrogance start to clone sickly versions of species we have exterminated, I think we would do better to figure out how to stop annihilating those that still manage to survive.

the urgency of the problem — either / or vs. both / and

In some of the online forums I peruse from time to time, there is often a lot of "either/or" talk — endless arguments about which of two problems (or solutions) is most pressing, important, necessary, possible…
Population versus consumption is a frequent theme; also renewables versus consumption — that is, whether renewables can supply all of our energy "needs" or whether we need to reduce consumption; a third common dichotomy is systemic change versus personal consumption — "the problem is capitalism… industrial civilization… big oil… big coal… the corporations… the military-industrial complex…"

What all of these "either/or" arguments miss, of course, is that this is a multiplication problem — debating whether population or consumption is more destructive, or whether developing renewables or reducing consumption is more effective, really makes just as much sense as debating whether height or width is more important in finding the area of a rectangle!

But beyond that, these dualities betray a misunderstanding of the scale and urgency of the problem. Climate scientist Kevin Anderson has determined that we need to cut our emissions 10% per year — and drop emissions to ZERO within ten years — just to have an outside chance of holding warming to the longstanding target of 2°C (and we know what effects we are already seeing from just 0.8°C, with more in the pipeline from what we've already emitted — the 4-6° we are heading for is nearly unimaginable). So our emissions have to essentially drop off the proverbial cliff — and that is not going to happen by reducing either consumption or population, or by either effecting systemic change or changing our own lifestyles (as if one could happen without the other); and certainly not by developing renewables without radically reducing consumption as well. This is an all-hands-on-deck, do everything we possibly can as fast as we can situation, and it feels as if very few people I run into really, truly get that.

There seems to be an idea out there that if we begin to reduce our emissions somewhat, then things will start to get better... and little awareness of the cumulative nature of the problem — that what matters to the climate system is the total amount of carbon we add to the atmosphere, not how fast we put it up there. David Roberts, writing in Grist, attributes this in part to thinking about global warming the same way we think of other environmental problems like air or water pollution: if we quit putting particulates into the air, the smog dissipates within a few days (witness the dramatic improvement in air quality in LA when city officials instituted traffic controls during the 1984 Olympics); and if a factory stops dumping its wastes into a river, the water will run cleaner pretty quickly as well. But the CO2 we emit stays up there in the atmosphere for up to a century, and carbon emissions accumulate (sort of like lead posioning in your body) — and that is the piece of this that people seem to have trouble getting their heads around. Our habits of thinking are too ingrained, ironically from past successes.

So a lot of concerned, well-meaning folks (including many of my friends and relations) don't really feel the urgency, and continue to go about their lives thinking that something will come along to fix this — after all, we sent a man to the moon, didn't we?...Or debate which of various dual options is the most realistic, with little recognition that the only way to do what really needs to be done — that is, bring emissions down to ZERO, as soon as possible — is to radically reduce both population and consumption, to both develop renewables and reduce consumption; and to (yes) change our capitalist-industrial-corporate system and look to our own wasteful lifestyles that support that system.

More about all three of these in future posts, soon I hope (sorry I am not as prolific as I would like to be, I'm a bit painstaking in my writing)…

the dilemma

Last week, we (my husband and I) ran into a couple of friends/acquaintances/colleagues we hadn't seen in a while; and in the course of the usual "so, what have you been up to lately" talk, they told us all about their recent travels to Asia and Europe… And I found myself confronting my usual dilemma in these situations: do I bite my tongue, nod and listen politely (thus implying that I think flying around the world is not incredibly destructive), or do I let myself blurt out something like "do you know how much a flight to Europe actually costs in terms of atmospheric carbon?"

After all, one reason I wrote that long letter (and then started this blog) in the first place was to explain to my friends why I can't share their joy in flying off to distant lands, but tend to sit in uncomfortable silence when talk turns to foreign travel… And another (probably the main) reason was that I do feel the political situation is hopeless, and the only way to turn this thing around is to change people's behavior, persuade others to live as low-carbon as possible, one friend at a time if need be…

But when it comes right down to it, it's very hard to go beyond that uncomfortable silence stage and actually evangelize for a livable planet — not without alienating all of my friends and colleagues, which is not a good way to change anyone's behavior in any case. So when I wrote my letter, I carefully worded it to avoid insulting and driving away those that I sent it to, hoping against hope that it might give someone enough food for thought to begin to change some habits...

I desperately wish for a sane world, a world where travel mavens like Rick Steves (not to mention feedlot operators) were looked on as the social parasites they are, and where hopping on a plane for vacation and all forms of conspicuous consumption were as socially unacceptable as smoking in a roomful of children… But we need a huge shift in perceptions to get there, and in the meantime I guess I'm not a very good evangelist. I wish I knew how to do this better…

another example of the sickness of our society...

This may not be immediately obvious as global warming-related quote, but... In an article after Hugo Chavez' passing, entitled "Little Reaction In Oil Market To Chavez Death," an AP reporter wrote:

"Chavez invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world's tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi."

Of course, one can argue how huge a problem it is that Venezuela gets the majority of its wealth from oil in the first place... but when I heard this quote it jumped right out at me as another measure of the sickness of our society — that the Chavez government could be criticized, not for pulling all that oil out of the ground, but for not using the proceeds to build glittering construction projects and tall buildings! This one shocked even me — as Lily Tomlin said, no matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up...

worthwhile conversation...

... I just recently read an conversation between Leanne Simpson, a Canadian First Nations author, poet, and Idle No More activist, and Naomi Klein. Very well worth reading... I especially appreciated the concept of (and coining of the term) "extractivism" — so descriptive of our (western, capitalist) culture. The complete interview is available at Yes! magazine — in the meantime, a few vital passages:

(Leanne) "We’re running out of time. We’re losing the opportunity to turn this thing around. We don’t have time for this massive slow transformation into something that’s sustainable and alternative. I do feel like I’m getting pushed up against the wall... I think that the impetus to act and to change and to transform, for me, exists whether or not this is the end of the world. If a river is threatened, it’s the end of the world for those fish. It’s been the end of the world for somebody all along."

(Leanne) "One of the stories I tell in my book is of working with an elder who’s passed on now, Robin Greene from Shoal Lake in Winnipeg, in an environmental education program with First Nations youth. And we were talking about sustainable development, and I was explaining that term from the Western perspective to the students. And I asked him if there was a similar concept in Anishinaabeg philosophy that would be the same as sustainable development. And he thought for a very long time. And he said no. And I was sort of shocked at the “no” because I was expecting there to be something similar. And he said the concept is backwards. You don’t develop as much as Mother Earth can handle. For us it’s the opposite. You think about how much you can give up to promote more life. Every decision that you make is based on: Do you really need to be doing that?" (my emphasis)

(Leanne) "If I look at my ancestors even 200 years ago... they didn’t rely on material wealth for their well-being and economic stability. They put energy into meaningful and authentic relationships... I think that extended to how they found meaning in life. It was the quality of those relationships—not how much they had, not how much they consumed—that was the basis of their happiness."

(Leanne) "In order to make these changes, in order to make this punctuated transformation, it means lower standards of living, for that 1 percent and for the middle class... And I think in the absence of having a meaningful life outside of capital and outside of material wealth, that’s really scary."
(Naomi) "If you have a rich community life, if your relationships feed you, if you have a meaningful relationship with the natural world, then I think contraction isn’t as terrifying. But if your life is almost exclusively consumption, which I think is what it is for a great many people in this culture, then we need to understand the depth of the threat this crisis represents. That’s why the transformation that we have to make is so profound—we have to relearn how to derive happiness and satisfaction from other things than shopping, or we’re all screwed."