I think it is a fine presentation detailing the many factors involved in global warming, especially the impact of marketplace economics on our culture. At the same time, I found my interest was flagging by the end — the pacing is too uniform, and there is not enough emphasis on how to institute priorities. Nor is there an emphasis on rapid mobilization of political will.
I suggest that we need massive cooperation amongst all parties who are attempting to influence global warming. It seems to me that the agency doing this best, and thus in the position of such coordination, is The Climate Mobilization. Perhaps this is my own bias speaking, but I have looked at a lot of agencies over the past eight years, and am most impressed with TCM.
I have taken their Pledge (International) and invite others to look at their work. TCM advocates a war-time mobilization of political will, and once established, that we then begin the work on cultural modification. It is not an either/or proposition, but priorities are needed.
As indicated previously, I am now promoting The Climate Mobilization — largely because my take on the climate issues is that we are no longer near the edge of disaster — we are starting to fall over the edge!
Here are a few recent articles that are very pertinent for me:
Over the past seven or eight years, I have found that every major scientific report indicated that the previous report underestimated the dangers. These reports continue that theme.
As well, National Geographic is reported as about to launch a landmark climate series just before the American election: A Murdoch-Owned TV Channel Will Air A Landmark Climate Series Before The Election — Years of Living Dangerously (the trailer on the webpage looks very informative). Given that the Murdock empire has had a reputation of climate disinformation, surprisingly this series promises to be very blunt as to the dangers of global warming, again emphasizing how serious the issues are.
Such programs provide leadership, but as I have been saying recently, change is created by followers — the leaders provide the direction, but the work is done by followers. We need to mobilize the followers, and it seems to me that The Climate Mobilization is doing that.
So what are the factors that block engagement in global warming?
In a recent podcast The Big Man Can’t Shoot, journalist Malcolm Gladwell identifies the need for social approval as a major factor in effective choice. Gladwell tells the story of a legendary basketball player with only one flaw: his success rate at free throws from the foul line was only about 40%. He was coached by a colleague whose success rate was 93%, and was able to improve himself to 87% — a huge advance and one that could make him almost unstoppable. The catch: he had to make “granny shots” — underhand throws rather than overhead shots, that are the standard of the league. And he wouldn’t do so — because he would look “silly.” Nor would other players, again because they would be breaking the unspoken norms of play — even though they would be better players!
What Gladwell identified was what I call the threshold of anxiety that must be overcome when one’s behavior does not match the common deportment of the peer group, the so-called peer pressure that exists within any group, even when unspoken. The threshold level varies from person to person, but always is a factor in the decision to act. This means that for any individual, a certain number of their trusted peers have to act in a certain way before they themselves will undertake the action.
Translating this to the need for massive mobilization in response to global warming, there is potentially a large body of the public waiting for others to act before they themselves will engage significantly. Many of these people will be those I identified in my last post as those people who are chronically overwhelmed by too much stuff. Salamon in Living In Climate Truth goes into more depth as to how individuals use intellectual denial, emotional denial, and tokenism to avoid action to maintain the Climate Lie that all is well, and someone else will resolve the issues. Or the individual believes that nothing can be done, and settles into low-grade cynicism, contaminating others in major ways.
Potentially when enough others have shifted into effective action, there could then be a snowball effect in response. But when? Will it occur soon enough to forestall disastrous effect?
I suspect not. To use myself as example, I started hearing about environmental issues in the 1960s and 1970s, and had enough background in science (degrees in physics and biophysics by that point) to know that we humans were doing significant damage to the environment. But I was “too busy with other issues” in my life. Fast forward to the 1990s when I had a small acreage in Ontario, land that I actually regarded as sacred — I knew “activists” who were challenging government regulations, but “I wasn’t an activist.” Then in 2009 when I finally got it, I was in deep despair for months, and only in the past year did my resolve crystallize. So if it has taken me this long, what chance do we have as a species?
Yet, if I accept this line of reasoning, it is likely that nothing effective will happen. I must act into the assumption that many are waiting in the wings simply for the snowball effect.
There is no question in my own mind that I am angry at the complexity and frequent ineffectiveness of my culture. I am not angry at individuals; I am angry at the systemic morass we have created — but if I allow my anger to take over, I will burnout. It’s a no-win situation. I’m very good at anger management, including my own. So, often I fall back on simple affirmations such as “Let Go; Let God,” or “High Intention, Low Attachment.”
What I don’t know how to do is how to get people to engage. Currently, I am reading Joe Romm’s Language Intelligence: Lessons on Persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga for some hints. Many days I’m convinced I am a slow learner.
Have you ever asked yourself how we have ended up with the problems of global warming? Or what stops us from solving these issues? We have avoided resolution of the issues for more than 50 year now. The superficial issue of global warming is technological, but what keeps us stuck is emotional?
First of all, the issues are incredibly complex; they overwhelm our political, economic and ethical systems (see Reason In A Dark Time: Why The Struggle Against Climate Change Failed — And What It Means To Our Future) — witness the repeated failures or only limited success of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change COP meetings, most recently in Paris, December 2015 — a non-binding agreement to limit global warming to 2°C, hopefully to 1.5°C. Scientific American in April 2016 indicated “The average global temperature change for the first three months of 2016 was 1.48°C” — and that does not include normal overshoot as the system stabilizes (see here for excellent visual representations of how all this has occurred since 1880).
But it’s only 1.5 degrees — so what. Well, look around at the superstorms and the changing weather patterns. They are only the beginning of potential “natural” disasters, at a temperature increase of less than 1.5 degrees. The earth is a very finely balanced ecosystem, with many feedback mechanisms to ensure stability, and we are exceeding the limits of these systems. It is likely that, by 2°C, we will have irreversible changes, including loss of at least 33% of all species on the planet (not yet us, though). By 3°, we could well be into run-away feedback loops that are not reversible, with almost certain loss of civilization for thousands of years, and perhaps our extinction.
But why? I know the issues are complex, and the propensity of modern life is to leave it to the experts. But why have we gotten to this dilemma in the first place? And why are we so passive about global warming? The scientific community is in agreement (at least 97% consensus), but the political morass wages on. Given all this, why do we not stand up and demand change? We actually do, in small ways: witness the Occupy movement, Avaaz, the many activists, but there is not the overwhelming process that we really need. Nor do the many small ways seem to be coming together in coordinated fashion.
So for the next few postings, I am going to be exploring what I believe is blocking us. Essentially I will propose that various features of acedia have been a major part of the problem.
It is possible that in the next few postings I will seem to be critical of almost every human being (including myself) in Western civilization. That is not my intention, but I do want to identify processes that affect almost everyone. Perhaps what I am identifying could be called “the elephants in the room that nobody talks about.” If you feel criticized, please understand that I have the deepest compassion for the struggles of living in the modern era.
The vast majority of people I know are good people — they do many good actions, but they are simply overwhelmed with too much stuff: too much information, too many demands, et cetera. In my book Acedia, I referred to a TED talk on apathy, and also suggested that the numerous subtle difficulties of modern life have become a form of trauma, constantly wearing us down. And in all this, to pay attention to the demands of global warming has just become another demand, especially when confused by the dis-information regarding climate change.
I believe that these people get on with their lives hoping that somehow the “experts” will eventually fix the problem, but I remain doubtful. Over time, I have moved to the stance advocated by The Climate Mobilization as noted in my previous post: the personal costs will be high, but the risks are simply too great.
I suggest there are three mechanisms at play:
collective behaviour of groups: in order to act (and overcome fear of criticism), human beings need to exceed a certain threshold of anxiety
acedia: a human characteristic is the risk of laziness, fearfulness, and/or self-righteousness as a way to avoid painful experience
evil: a more important human characteristic is that which deliberately sabotages movement towards health
In some fashion, acedia is part of all three. I will be commenting on each of these in the next few posts.
Coming next: The threshold of overcoming anxiety
Jamieson, D. (2014). Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed — and What It Means for Our Future. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
I get a lot of information about global warming on a weekly basis; I’ve been doing so since sometime in 2009. I remember sitting in a lecture hall listening to a speaker talk about global warming when the speaker mentioned the impact on permafrost (permanently frozen ground in the Arctic regions). Recall that I have degrees in physics and biophysics (with a lot of maths and chemistry), and that I have worked in the Arctic — I know a little about permafrost! My PhD dissertation explores the relationships of acedia and global warming — I know how resistant we humans are to changing our patterns. At that moment, I got it! If we do not quickly manage global warming, we will go extinct. Not maybe — will! Simple physics; simple biology. I am not interested in “doom and gloom” — but I am very pragmatic when it comes to risk management.
Since that time I have been following the reports of the consequences of global warming, and the attempts to assess the risks. Every major report has said: “The previous report underestimated the risks. It is worse than we thought!” (The actual wording varied; the message was the same.)
First, the current CO2 level as of 2016 July 10 is 405.59 ppm, with the average June level of 406.81, both figures up ~4 ppm over the same dates of 2015, and overall ~125 ppm above pre-industrial levels of ~275 ppm. Even with maximal effort, the levels will still rise somewhat simply due to delays in the feedback systems. Notice where this puts us on the following chart (summarized from Six Degrees: Our Future On A Hotter Planet): between 2°C and 3°C.
All of this is bad news. Anything about 2°C risks uncertain run-away feedback mechanisms that could well destroy our civilization for thousands of years, if not simply that of human extinction. A very good summary is available as “A degree by degree explanation of what will happen when the earth warms.” It is not good news.
As I am sure people are aware, our international governments have struggled with reaching agreement on how to respond to global warming, and last fall in Paris finally reached a non-binding agreement to limit planetary warming to under 2°C (a commitment, but not a guarantee). And global warming is only one of the issues.
In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Diamond notes:
People often ask, “What is the single most important environmental-population problem facing the world today?” A flip answer would be, “The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!” . . . We have to solve them all.
[B]ecause we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustaining course, the world’s environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. (p. 498)
A technological dinosaur, inappropriate to global warming
Hi folks. It is my intention to engage in the issues of climate change, especially those related to the emotional maturity of our culture. One of my struggles in retirement has been that of what do I do with my skills, my proficiencies gained over 25 years of being a therapist. We are so badly in need of maturing as a culture — frequently I feel powerless in the face of the cultural pressures that keep us trapped in the obvious duplicity.
Many people are focused on moving us to health; I want to be one of them. My skill set is that of encouraging emotional growth. So …
Once I get better organized, on most days I will make a comment or two. Sometimes I will link to articles I believe to be important. Here is one: “Off-shore fracking will have no significant impact …” What insanity to disturb the earth’s crust in an area where the risk of earthquakes is high! And even if the risk is not significant, why ignite such controversy in a world that must become carbon neutral?
This post was originally on my Facebook of 20160601
Two important posts summarize for me that we are moving towards much more efficient energy utilization:
David Suzuki’s summary of feed-in tariffs, which make small scale, local production both feasible and cost-effective, and
ThinkProgress’s summary on lithium-ion battery technology, somewhat speculative but still very likely to develop, making energy storage much cheaper and feasible.
Both are important indicators that we will likely stabilize global warming within the next century.
My questions remain as to the quality of life for my grand-children. There are still many uncertainties as to whether or not we have passed major tipping points (and the usual difficulty of finding trust-worthy data).
Hi. I am re-evaluating how I use this blog, and have decided to resume it in a variety of ways.
I stopped posting (in every way) about two years ago, largely because I did not have a focus in my life as to how to proceed. However, I have remained deeply concerned about the issues of climate change, especially the emotional issues that underlie how we have created this problem, a super-wicked problem that may well lead to our extinction as a species. We must undertake the arduous work of maturing as a species — I do not believe we have much choice in this (the option remains extinction).
That said, in the past month, I have started working with a marketing consultant who believes (as I do) that my work is an important contribution to this process of maturation. I am therefore now re-establishing my workshops on emotional issues (see my website www.aplacetwobe.ca for details), and I am submitting regular postings both on Facebook (Dave MacQuarrie and Blowing Out the Darkness) and on LinkedIn (Dave MacQuarrie) — often duplicate postings in multiple sites. You can also watch a short video of me on my website, under “Who is Dave.”
Because these postings are difficult to search, and because many people simply do not want the hassle represented by such as Facebook, I want a primary location where my posts can be accessed. I believe this blog, as an independent site, will serve this purpose.
This site will therefore contain a wide variety of content:
my thoughts on the issues of climate change (please see my original home page).
my struggles and explorations as to how to respond to these issues.
my reactions to current issues — I read a lot, and when I encounter something that I believe important to the underlying issues, I will comment.
my responses to questions on an emotional nature — my experience is that the average person is overwhelmed with issues; when people ask me for assistance, their questions are likely of interest to many.
In the next few weeks, I will be adding copies of the recent posts I have submitted to other sites, mainly for consistency of content.
Thanks. I hope you enjoy this blog, and take value from my comments.
This post is part of what I am calling the core posts for understanding what I am attempting by this blog. For other core posts, click here.
I recently completed my PhD (Wisdom University, 2012), my dissertation being Acedia and its Transformation. I came to believe that acedia — an ancient word, almost obsolete in our culture — accurately describes our difficulty in dealing with global warming. For those who want to fast-track many (but not all) of the ideas of this blog, I suggest my book Acedia: The Darkness Within, and the darkness of Climate Change.
So what is acedia? In the fourth century C.E., a desert monk Evagrius described the eight thought patterns with which his fellow monks struggled in their attempts to live their relationship with God; these patterns later became the Seven Capital Sins of Christianity. Consistent with the writings of Evagrius and because of my therapy background, I have formulated modern acedia as a combination of laziness, fearfulness, and self-righteousness — the patterns that stop clients from doing the work needed for emotional maturity. Subsequently, I came to believe that acedia is the emotional existential-spiritual pattern that blocks us from dealing with global warming (as well as many of the other problems of our modern civilization).
As part of the research, I explored the determinants of acedia, highlighting them similar to the Force Field of Change mentioned in Part 1.
I also explored how acedia develops in any given instance.
As illustration: Something painful happens to me (or you). If I have enough wisdom (as possibility: the Greek word is sophia), I then act to resolve the issue by action — practical wisdom (the Greek word is phronesis). If I am not wise enough, likely I will have an internal conflict: I want resolution, and I want to avoid the pain. If I am disciplined (discipline), I may again move into resolution, possibly complaining about how much work it requires. If I am still caught, and I have authentic hope of a good outcome, the hope may motivate me to more effort, and I again move to resolution. If none of this works for me, I move to acedia as a way to avoid the pain, and likely cycle back into more pain eventually. In all of this, my ability to relax and play (playfulness) is vital — a friend of mine once said: “There is much evidence that life is painful; there is no evidence that it is serious.”
Given the above, it is then a simple step to outline the directions of this blog, and the needs of our civilization — IF we are to become a more mature civilization. I hope we have this capability as a species. (Part of my own entry into acedia is that I am not convinced that we are so capable — but for me to act into the ensuing despair is unacceptable.)
The transformation will be massive for our culture. For probably 30,000 years, we have principably been a dominator culture, a culture characterized by the seeking of power. In 1947, C. S. Lewis wrote: “What we call man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by.” As such, for thousands of years, we have traumatized each other (and ourselves), the most extreme example being war. And many/most of us are at war with ourselves, in how we push ourselves to “succeed,” and how we fight with our neighbours.
Yet we are also a great species. Throughout history, there have been numerous examples of our ability to cooperate. Cooperation, in fact, may have been the factor that allowed us to survive as a species.
Are we capable of the next step? I hope so.
Thus, the categories of this blog are explorations of:
how we got here: the features of a dominator society.
where we want to go: an effective vision of what kind of culture we want. (Vision is what provides the energy for us to move into the future — effective vision activates both conscious and unconscious forces. A ship needs both rudder and sails.)
the oppressive forces (acedia): its patterns and mechanisms. Especially we need to understand, and stop, the processes whereby we traumatize ourselves and each other; we need to build cooperation into every aspect of living.
the motivating processes, the processes of practical wisdom (phronesis), especially wisdom (sophia), discipline, hope, and playfulness. (Each one of these factors is disparaged in our society.)
Subsequent posts will explore each of these in turn.
In this post, I am going to cover some basic ideas as to the nature of global warming and the terminology I am using. First of all, global warming is a technological issue. The earth is being heated, largely because of human activity, and largely due to the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide and methane production resulting from the utilization of fossil fuels in the past two hundred years, especially the past fifty years.
The consequences of this process have been discussed in many forums, and for the most part, the results are understood enough to know with certainty that we are gradually moving to the possibility of a mass extinction of the living species of our planet, possibly including ourselves as one of those species. Gradually is a relative term; we are perhaps only talking about a hundred years or so — that means that my grand-children will be very aware of the changes.
Personally, I do not like this possibility.
In this blog, I am going to assume that the reader has enough knowledge that I do not need to repeat information related to the mechanism or consequences of such global warming. If you want more information, please contact me, and I will be happy to give you appropriate details.
So all we need to do is stop this production, and switch to alternate sources of energy. Then the earth will start to return to more efficacious temperature. Right?
Yes, in a sense. But we are not doing so with ease — although there are major advances in technology, the political issues are immense. And we are moving towards irreversible tipping points, such that technological resolution may no longer be effective.
So why are we not resolving this issue? I maintain that the problem is not technological, but existential-spiritual — we are overwhelmed with the immensity of the problem. Global warming is what is known as a super-wicked problem (see the enclosed chart modified from my book Acedia, The Darkness Within, based on the Wikipedia article Wicked Problem). Here, I contrast three types of problems:
tame (generally easy to solve),
wicked (difficult to solve, especially since no known solutions), and
super-wicked (limited time for resolution, no central authority for decision-making, and the problem being caused by the very people seeking the resolution).
But the process of being overwhelmed is not unique to global warming. In the abstract to my PhD dissertation, I noted:
This dissertation reports the results of an investigation into the ancient concept of acedia, the human pattern of avoidance of the effort necessary to live authentically, and the processes that impact its transformation (playfulness, wisdom, hope, and discipline). It is proposed that modern acedia occurs because we are biological pain avoiders, and our scientific materialism and technology have resulted in subtle but massive trauma to our humanness, psychologically and spiritually. Our modern culture is orientated to the short term “quick fix,” and circumvents healthy long-term choice, especially that associated with playfulness and wisdom. Acedia underlies the major problems of our species, specifically the current dilemma of climate change. If we do not succeed in transforming our individual and cultural acedia, we may be able to forestall climate change with technology, but we will not succeed in the long-term survival of our species — other problems will plague us, and eventually overcome us.
The question then becomes how to respond. For the purpose of this blog, I suggest that the issues are best considered by a Lewin Force Field, as noted in this second diagram.
In this diagram, the present state (of any event) is a balance of forces, some positive (motivational and exciting) and some negative (oppressive and painful). A future state is desired, and experienced as a vision of the future state.
For improvement to occur, either or both of an augmentation of the positive and/or a diminution of the negative must occur. It is, however, a truism of therapy (my career before retirement) that reducing the oppressive is more powerful than increasing the positive. Effective therapy forces the individual to develop skills that are transferable to many areas of living, rather than simply be enthusiastic about features of living that one desires.
In my next post, I will apply the concepts of this post to the specific issues of global warming. (I don’t want to make the posts so long that they become oppressive to read!)
I’ve just watched a YouTube presentation The Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi – The Four Noble Truths of the Climate Crisis. I strongly recommend it (25 minutes).
