"We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective." - Kurt Vonnegut
I like the graphs that show us talking about things superimposed on rising CO2 levels. It's the bottom-up way of admitting facts by just observing them: You don't have to understand humanity's malfunction to correctly identify the problem. The proof is in the pudding. All you have to do is look.
But even that is hard, and so we move on to figuring out why all humans live in their own realities. Above the philosophical level of observing and explaining this, is, I do believe, the scientific level.
According to How Minds Change by David McRaney, science shows how we disambiguate ambiguous facts (right down to what colour the famous dress was in 2015) based on our priors, ie. the experiences we have each been exposed to in our lives. Our subjective realities seem objective to each of us.
And so, the ability to live with intellectual curiosity and honesty and to change one's mind when presented with gainsaying evidence would be a wonderful thing for everyone to excel in. Clearly, that has never been and will never be the case, and so we must resort instead to "people skills" in order to change people's minds.
Obviously there is no easy way to stay close to +1.5C, as it won‘t be easy to implement global climate compensation. But it must be possible! At least I don’t see an alternative to this initiative at all. (Let us) go for it!
Interesting ideas that seem rational and reasonable.
Yet we remain stuck, as with other reasonable ideas, with the predicament that governments and corporations refuse to do such things. That leaves the question of HOW to implement them, especially in the very short time we have left before numerous climate and tipping points are reached.
Since genuine institutional action appears so extremely unlikely in the near-term--that is, the term within which extreme actions to transform the economy MUST be taken--I have begun to look in another direction.
In complex systems, change can occur exponentially due to positive feedback loops, if they are not counterbalanced by compensating negative feedback loops. That is the basis for Ugo Bardi's theory of societal collapse due to "the Seneca effect." That is, as Seneca said, progress is slow but ruin is rapid. That, unfortunately seems to be the situation in which we find ourselves with reference to the climate chaos the global corporate industrial economy of growth on a finite planet has put us in. Destabilization and collapse can, and likely will, happen exponentially.
However, exponential growth can also happen in other dimensions than the current exponential growth in Earth-System exploitation.
In particular, social movements with the right message and organization have transformed societies in the past. In the present instance, we have some promising mass movments--Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and Sunrise Movement, for example--but they remain focused on mass protests and non-violent civil disobedience. They do pressure governments and corporations to change, but most of the change is "greenwashing," and we have no time for that.
However, recent findings in Social Network Science reveal that contrary to traditional assumptions about influence over beliefs and behavior, the most powerful forces for change are embeddd in the relations of change agents to the social networks in which they are members, This has been borne out, often in quite negative ways, by social media contagion.
Damon Centola, University of Pennsylvania, reports on this research much of which he has conducted. Far more effective and rapid change can occur in highly connected social networks, especially if they are strongly connected with other such networks, than any massive marketing campaign or mass protest movement can achieve.
I have concluded that the most hopeful strategy for rapid and broad climate action is for such youthful movements as mentioned above to re-focus their attention to forming local/regional social networks for direct action to restore/regenerate ecosystems and organize for community change that abandons the "technoshere" (Dmitry Orlov). (local/regional food production, non-fossil fueled energy production and conservation, and minimized consumerism, etc.)
The only way I can see schemes such as Global Climate Compensation being implemented is if globally networked local/regional social networks coordinate to force such radical change on governments and corporations.
Hi Robert. It won't be easy, but I believe that it is possible. One advantage with this idea is that it creates a well-defined target. The goal is to force fossil fuel companies to agree to become tax collectors. This is a reasonable demand, given all the damage they have done in the past. The ones that refuse will feel the wrath of society: politicians, lawyers, activists, NGOs will go after them. To begin with, the will realize that it will be impossible for the to recruit good employees and do business. Regards, Henrik
"We'll go down in history as the first society that wouldn't save itself because it wasn't cost-effective." - Kurt Vonnegut
I like the graphs that show us talking about things superimposed on rising CO2 levels. It's the bottom-up way of admitting facts by just observing them: You don't have to understand humanity's malfunction to correctly identify the problem. The proof is in the pudding. All you have to do is look.
But even that is hard, and so we move on to figuring out why all humans live in their own realities. Above the philosophical level of observing and explaining this, is, I do believe, the scientific level.
According to How Minds Change by David McRaney, science shows how we disambiguate ambiguous facts (right down to what colour the famous dress was in 2015) based on our priors, ie. the experiences we have each been exposed to in our lives. Our subjective realities seem objective to each of us.
And so, the ability to live with intellectual curiosity and honesty and to change one's mind when presented with gainsaying evidence would be a wonderful thing for everyone to excel in. Clearly, that has never been and will never be the case, and so we must resort instead to "people skills" in order to change people's minds.
Obviously there is no easy way to stay close to +1.5C, as it won‘t be easy to implement global climate compensation. But it must be possible! At least I don’t see an alternative to this initiative at all. (Let us) go for it!
Interesting ideas that seem rational and reasonable.
Yet we remain stuck, as with other reasonable ideas, with the predicament that governments and corporations refuse to do such things. That leaves the question of HOW to implement them, especially in the very short time we have left before numerous climate and tipping points are reached.
Since genuine institutional action appears so extremely unlikely in the near-term--that is, the term within which extreme actions to transform the economy MUST be taken--I have begun to look in another direction.
In complex systems, change can occur exponentially due to positive feedback loops, if they are not counterbalanced by compensating negative feedback loops. That is the basis for Ugo Bardi's theory of societal collapse due to "the Seneca effect." That is, as Seneca said, progress is slow but ruin is rapid. That, unfortunately seems to be the situation in which we find ourselves with reference to the climate chaos the global corporate industrial economy of growth on a finite planet has put us in. Destabilization and collapse can, and likely will, happen exponentially.
However, exponential growth can also happen in other dimensions than the current exponential growth in Earth-System exploitation.
In particular, social movements with the right message and organization have transformed societies in the past. In the present instance, we have some promising mass movments--Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and Sunrise Movement, for example--but they remain focused on mass protests and non-violent civil disobedience. They do pressure governments and corporations to change, but most of the change is "greenwashing," and we have no time for that.
However, recent findings in Social Network Science reveal that contrary to traditional assumptions about influence over beliefs and behavior, the most powerful forces for change are embeddd in the relations of change agents to the social networks in which they are members, This has been borne out, often in quite negative ways, by social media contagion.
Damon Centola, University of Pennsylvania, reports on this research much of which he has conducted. Far more effective and rapid change can occur in highly connected social networks, especially if they are strongly connected with other such networks, than any massive marketing campaign or mass protest movement can achieve.
I have concluded that the most hopeful strategy for rapid and broad climate action is for such youthful movements as mentioned above to re-focus their attention to forming local/regional social networks for direct action to restore/regenerate ecosystems and organize for community change that abandons the "technoshere" (Dmitry Orlov). (local/regional food production, non-fossil fueled energy production and conservation, and minimized consumerism, etc.)
The only way I can see schemes such as Global Climate Compensation being implemented is if globally networked local/regional social networks coordinate to force such radical change on governments and corporations.
So much to be done, so little time.
Hi Robert. It won't be easy, but I believe that it is possible. One advantage with this idea is that it creates a well-defined target. The goal is to force fossil fuel companies to agree to become tax collectors. This is a reasonable demand, given all the damage they have done in the past. The ones that refuse will feel the wrath of society: politicians, lawyers, activists, NGOs will go after them. To begin with, the will realize that it will be impossible for the to recruit good employees and do business. Regards, Henrik
You need a real answer to the question How to "stop climate change"? that is not ignorant of our timeline to death by overheating.