• This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time.
  
• Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movement of small green pieces of paper, which was odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they’d all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.
• In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects: first, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. (Introduction to Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)

 

It’s old news by now. The global climate change conference in Cancun in December was a failure, just like the Copenhagen climate change conference in December 2009. In contrast to Copenhagen, Cancun rated hardly any mention in the mainstream  media. As if failure was a foregone conclusion. Sadly, as each successive climate summit ends in disaster, hopes for an international climate treaty diminish substantially.

The governments that attended Cancun all know, by now, that to prevent catastrophic climate change (around 2050) developed countries must cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2030 – while developing countries limit emissions growth to comparable targets. Achieving these targets will require ending all auto and plane transport, closing all coal-fired power plants and insulating all homes and businesses.

US Responsibility in the Disaster at Cancun

The climate treaty the world hoped for didn’t happen, largely owing to the refusal of the Obama administration to buy into the major cuts he must know are needed. Partly because the US, like all developed and developing countries, is largely controlled by multinational corporations that make immense profits off car and plane travel – and war – one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions. But also because American voters are deeply attached to cars, plane travel, and energy guzzling home and electronic appliances that create demand for coal fired power plants.

My personal view is that our current attachment to cars and air travel is a bad habit bordering on addiction. Even climate change activists who ought to know better have difficulty cutting back their car and plane trips. I’m trying to start a 12-step program, similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Overeaters Anonymous, but it doesn’t seem to be catching on. Owing to the absence of affordable, reliable public transport alternatives, people who need cars for work or to access basic services can’t give them up. More importantly, one million individuals giving up their cars isn’t going to prevent catastrophic climate change – given that auto emissions only constitute 1/3 of greenhouse gasses. There has to be a simultaneous agreement to eliminate air travel and coal fired plants, as well as ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the US nuclear program and closing 1,000 foreign bases. If the Pentagon were a country, it would rate as the second largest producer of carbon emissions (see http://www.iacenter.org/o/world/climatesummit_pentagon121809/).

Such large scale changes require buy-in from the federal government. And despite all his campaign rhetoric, the best Obama can commit to is a 20% cut by 2020.

Are We Focused on the Wrong Crisis?

Richard Heinberg, Rob Hopkins (founder of the Transition Towns movement) and others believe we should be much more worried about resource scarcity (oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, water, top soil) than climate change – that this will cause an end to the world as we know it long before catastrophic climate change does. Because our modern system of industrial agriculture is only possible with plentiful, cheap oil (for farm machinery, transportation and shipping) and cheap natural gas (used to manufacture synthetic fertilizers), the end of cheap fossils fuels translates into a big increase into the cost off food production and a reduction in the amount of food produced. In fact, this is already starting to play out with the UN and relief agencies describing December 2010 as the worst month on record for global food insecurity (a record number of people unable to afford food). This was in part due to extreme weather events in Russia, Pakistan, Australia, China and elsewhere that drastically reduced grain production.

Eventually, Heinberg predicts, fossil fuels and synthetic fertilizers will become so expensive, world food production will decline to pre-industrial levels long before catastrophic climate change kicks in. Pre-industrial agricultural methods can only support a world population of 2 billion people. According to my math, this means we are looking at a potential die-off (famine, war, disease) of 5 billion (with current global population of 7 billion), unless we think of something fast.

To be continued, with a discussion of how sustainability activists are attempting to confront this dilemma. Remember, DON’T PANIC.

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