No to Climate Change, But No Time for System Change

We attended a lecture (we had to leave early, so missed the "public forum" part) the other night by Professor Richard Smith, Rutgers University lecturer, economic historian, member of the System Change Not Climate Change network in the U.S. and author of articles like "Green Capitalism: The God That Failed" and "Capitalism and the Destruction of Life on Earth: Six Theses on Saving the Humans."

Professor Smith's visit was sponsored by the Social Environmental Alliance and the Vancouver Eco-Socialist Group, organizations that see capitalism as a root cause of the climate change crisis and who are calling for "system change" as the crisis deepens.

"Ecosocialists see this ecological crisis as a symptom of the underlying economic and social system called capitalism, whose basic operating features include: (1) the imperative of profit and competition-driven expansion without limit, (2) the treatment of human labour and the natural world as commodities for sale rather than having value for human well-being and ecological stability; (3) benefits to a small and privileged social class wielding inordinate political power, (4) deformed social priorities amongst humans, including in our relationship to the rest of nature."

The title of Smith's talk was No to Climate Change - Yes to System Change. It was interesting and in many ways, spot on. He sure understands the climate change emergency. He is calling for a revolution away from capitalism -- or at least the worst forms of our Western, industrial, globalized, capitalist economy (the pillaging sort of capitalism that doesn't give a damn about the consequences of habitat destruction, resource loss, pollution or climate change). 

The problem is, we don't have time for an economic revolution. We need to get going on what we can be doing now. And that's simple. Economists keep telling us that the market can solve our ills. The time has come for them to prove it. Let's see what that "invisible hand" does with the market once we've set the following in place. My guess is that investments will swing briskly toward renewables!

1. Stop all direct and indirect subsidies for fossil fuels.**

2. Tax carbon. Really tax carbon.

3. Charge for pollution. Let companies pay for the social (health) and environmental costs of their businesses, damn it. Seriously, why should taxpayers have to cough up when corporations should be paying these costs before calculating their profits and paying dividends to shareholders?

4. And what of the banks? Don't they have just a teeny weeny bit too much power ("credit capitalism")? With none of the responsibilities?


** Some people worry that removing all fossil fuel subsidies will be unjust for poorer people. In the short term, this could well be true. But long term, fossil fuels are going to kill all of us, whether we're rich or poor. However -- and I welcome your thoughts on this, as mine aren't fully formed yet -- I think that winning an international race to zero carbon will actually be easier for the least developed nations, as they have come late to the fossil fuel party. Climate justice is for future generations as much as for today's less fortunate.

Economic Solutions to Climate Change — A Boxing Day Round-up

Boxing Day. December 26. The day after Christmas. Day of consumer frenzy. It's as good a time as any to look back on the year and summarize all the great economic solutions we've suggested that no one has implemented — yet. So, grab a vegan eggnog, sit back, and replace those post-Christmas blues with some post-Cancun we-still-haven't-done-a-freaking-thing-about-climate-change blues.

There are lots of common sense ideas for fixing our economic system that no government has had the audacity to take on. For example:

1. Let's end subsidies to fossil fuels and the meat industry. Wham! Huge impact, practically overnight. Every parent and teacher knows ... if you keep rewarding negative, inappropriate behaviour, that behaviour will continue. Let's extinguish the two greatest causes of greenhouse gas emissions by not rewarding them anymore with subsidies.

2. We need to start subsidizing perpetual (renewable minus biofuels [no more burning] = perpetual) energy technologies. Rewarding good behaviour is one way to ensure it continues. (And since governments will be saving billions by no longer subsidizing the oil, gas, coal and livestock industries, why not re-invest that money where it will do some good?) Wham! The very next day, investment in green industries sky rockets!

3. We have got to start taxing carbon. Period. Wham! Overnight change in our relationship to carbon-based fuels and lifestyles. And none of this lily-livered 2¢ per litre of gasoline. A tax on carbon has got to hurt. (Remember, we have to stop rewarding destructive behaviours.)

4. We have to change the corporate charter. Let's just make it illegal (around the globe and across the board, to ensure a level playing field) for companies to externalize social and environmental costs. Period. Wham! Huge difference practically overnight. The law would be simple: Pay social and environmental costs before determining your profits. You'd better believe that shareholders would force companies to pay attention to lessening these costs.

5. Let's outlaw grotesquely, obscenely, insultingly huge incomes. Really, has the world become a better place as the wealth of the top seven richest people in the world has reached around $250 billion? No. As the rich get richer, the future looks bleaker. So, let's threaten to cap incomes and Wham! that would bring back tithing, charity and compassion in a hurry. You know, make them cool again. Bill Gates has made a good start ... but he's not even the richest guy in the world anymore.

6. It's time for a Global Green Fund. All the money we churn into militarism needs to be churned into a global fund for helping the most climate-change-vulnerable nations. After all, we're all in this together (the atmosphere knows no borders), and any coming wars will be climate/water/food security related — and held at bay by financial compassion on the part of those nations who are hit by climate catastrophe last.

Anyway, there's a few talking points for your New Year's Eve party this Friday night. The more we talk about these things, the more we turn them into possibilities!

Talk to you next in 2011. Here's hoping for a new year filled with compassionate climate change solutions!

46 Days - How Can We Afford the Conversion to a Veg World?

Someone wrote yesterday to say that aiming for everyone to go vegetarian or vegan would be too extreme and probably impossible. Yes, and ....

Extreme is good, because it's only extreme measures right now that will give us a chance at safeguarding the future. There are a lot of people out there who either don't realize this, don't want to realize this, or realize this and don't have it in their hearts to go ahead and take extreme measures.

If people truly understood that "extreme" measures could save the future for their children and grandchildren, would they not take them? Would they not make the "sacrifice" of giving up meat to give their progeny a chance at a safe climate? Maybe they wouldn't. But let's tell them the truth about the urgency of the climate change emergency so they can at least choose whether to fry their children or not.

The other point this commentator made was that making the switch away from livestock farming would be quite costly for farmers, and therefore politicians would balk.

Here are some ideas. Did you know that the livestock industry is only responsible for less about 3% of global GDP? So there aren't that many people to worry about (relatively). It's true that the conversion could be costly, however:

1. It's cheap compared to killing the future.

2. The industry is already highly subsidized in many developed nations. Quit subsidizing and farmers might switch to more sustainable farming practices on their own.

3. The environmental and health impacts of the livestock industry are huge! If those in the business had to internalize the costs (of water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, for example, and the health care costs of obesity, cancer and cardiovascular disease), then meat would become so expensive that most people wouldn't buy it (at least not often) and farmers would turn to growing something more lucrative.

4. A carbon tax applied to the livestock industry (it's responsible for a HUGE proportion of the greenhouse gases that are dooming the future) would also make meat too expensive for every day consumption, again helping farmers decide to move into another type of farming.

5. And finally, you remember those huge bank bailouts? Bailouts for the automotive industry? Why not for the meat industry? But on the condition that they make the switch. (Just like bailouts for the car companies should have been dependent on them retooling to make wind turbines and solar panels.)

6. You know how much countries like the US and Canada are spending on their useless invasions of foreign countries? Take some of that money and redirect it to the livestock producers instead, getting them to switch to sustainable organic agricultural practices (or retire early). If we're going to go into debt for stupid reasons, why not go into debt for a reason that will give our children a chance at a future — I bet that's a debt they'd be happy to pay off, just like today's Brits have just recently paid off their debt from the Second World War.

I'm no economist, but I can recognize a fighting chance when I see one. Getting off the meat habit (Gandhi called it a superstition of the British) could drop anthropogenic methane emissions 37%! That's huge! Methane is so scary as a greenhouse gas that lowering it at all will be great, but almost 40%, wow, that would be a true gift to all future generations, of all species.

Industries come and go. Lots of jobs that existed a hundred years ago no longer exist. The livestock industry's time is up, and those workers will surely be assimilated into new, more sustainable employment (or, ahem, put out to pasture). It's a win-win all round.

47 Days - The Future is in Your Hands, and on Your Plate

The climate work we've been doing lately has a decidely "can-do" upbeat aspect to it.

We have to get to zero carbon as rapidly as possible. Methane from industrial food production and the livestock industry accounts for about 40 percent of human methane emissions. Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, so if we reduce our methane fast, that might give us a fighting chance of getting some other global warming solutions in place before it's too late.

We can eliminate the emissions of a huge amount of the most warming intense greenhouse gases by a revolution in our food production and by adopting the healthiest diet possible — for us and for the planet.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chair of United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has said that greenhouse gases are emitted during virtually every step of the meat producing process.

Zero carbon = zero meat. I know a lot of people who balk at this idea, but imagine if practically everyone in the world gave up meat? (I'm not going to ask the Inuit to give up meat, although the way things are going, they might soon find it easier to grow grain than to find animals.)

We could retrain those farmers and ranchers and fishers in more benign forms of agriculture or renewable energy (ooh, now there's a win-win). And we'd be giving today's children a chance at a future.

It's easier for me. I'm already vegetarian. Have been for ... counting ... yikes, almost 30 years (am I that old?). So I can assure you that there's life after meat — in more ways than one.

The future, folks, is quite literally in our hands, in our shopping baskets, on our stoves and on our plates. We don't have to wait for any government decrees or taxes (though taxing the carbon in meat would ensure it's expensive enough to make tofu look good).

Enjoy the bounty of the Earth without killing (and without killing the future). C'est tout. It's that simple. Let's just choose to stop eating our grandchildren.

(Photo from Liaison College Lakeshore Campus)

79 Days - Why Does It Seem So Simple from Here?

There are lots of rumblings these days that the December climate talks in Copenhagen are not going to yield the needed agreement. Indeed, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in an interview with Environment & Energy Publishing, seems to have lowered his expectations considerably, outlining what he sees as the four "essentials" for an international agreement in Copenhagen (Yvo de Boer is one of my climate change super-heroes, but I fear his super powers are fading):

1. How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases? [Me: With all due respect, putting "industrialized" and "willing" in the same question is begging for climate catastrophe.]

2. How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions? [Me: There can be no more growth in GHG emissions! Those days are gone. We must aim for zero. For the sake of all the children in China and India, too.]

3. How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed? [Me: I've got that one figured out below.]

4. How is that money going to be managed? [Me: Ditto. It's called a Global Green Fund. See below.]

“If Copenhagen can deliver on those four points, I’d be happy,” says Yvo de Boer. [Me: Happiness is not a destination, but a way of travel. Please, Sir, don't give up now.]

*********

Well, Mr. de Boer has been trying heartily to make something of the new international agreement, but he's not asking for enough. Here's how simple it could be:

1. Every nation on Earth must — and is going to — get to zero carbon emissions as rapidly as possible, and certainly within a timeframe of years, not decades (which we don't have). That's it. No questions asked. Abiding by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (which almost 192 nations signed onto, including the USA, and ratified) demands it. Our collective duty is to avoid "dangerous interference with the climate system." We've already failed the millions of human beings already impacted, but that in no way lessens our ethical responsibility.

2. This is not a competition (unless friendly competition will serve to make you work harder and move faster). This is an international — call it universal — cooperative venture on behalf of all future generations, of all species, but especially our own.

3. Oil, coal and natural gas are dead. Grieve their demise if necessary (don't be too sad, those fossil fuels aren't going anywhere — well, unless Kuwait pulls that nasty slant drilling stunt again) and get on with the rapid and radical global transformation to a renewable-energy-based economy.... an economy that is safer, cleaner, healthier, more equitable and more peaceful. Go, go, go!

4. Several developing nations are amongst the largest populations on Earth. Think China, India, Indonesia, Brazil. Now picture how many geniuses, innovators, entrepreneurs and whiz kids live in each of those countries. THAT'S where our funding should go (not to nations, who will squander it pandering to the fossil fuel corporations who haven't read #3 above).

5. With fossil fuels out of the picture (the appropriate carbon tax — one that truly pays for the environmental and social devastation of carbon emissions — should do the trick), the new economy should naturally put its money where it's needed (isn't that what economists are always trying to tell us?). But if that doesn't happen, then all the carbon tax money could go directly into a Global Green Fund to finance the transformation.

Please, Mr. de Boer, don't stop posing the right questions or asking for what we need if, as I know is your goal, we're to leave our grandchildren a future.

101 Days - Where Should We Focus Our Action - and Compassion?

Our actions, as one species (and, frankly, as one dominating culture), are foreclosing on the future. We know we are doing it. We are marvelling, incredulously, at the fact that we are doing it. We are tracking and recording, in ever-increasing detail, how we are doing it. We are gnashing our teeth about why we are doing it.

Wouldn't it be easier to just stop doing it? To get a grip as the dominator culture and come together as a species?

No, for innumerable psychosocial reasons, which I hope to some day understand, we ... must ... perpetuate ... the ... status ... quo ... even ... if ... it ... kills ... us.

Is that karma? Pride? The height of hubris? Addiction? Or just plain stupidity?

At this point, it doesn't matter! Those of us who are serious about safeguarding the future must get on with it!

There are so few of us that we have to focus our efforts and our compassionate action. What focus will give us the most "traction" as I've heard it called ... the most "bang for our buck"?

(Indeed, I wish we had some "bucks" for saving the world. It seems almost all the money is still to be made by those ruining the planet - and those invested in ruining the planet and who do so without lifting a finger.)

Here is a list of possible targets:

• investors
• climate scientists
• media
• government leaders
• general public
• educators
• faith groups
• children and youth
• CEOs of corporations that are destroying the future

Any to add? Where should we focus?

Let's have a look at the role compassion could play:

• investors - People are pretty attached to their money, and don't understand the connection between how they make and spend their money, what they invest in and what's happening to the planet. Do we have time to gently explain to people (with enough money to invest) that investing in the transition to a renewable energy economy would be the greatest gift they could ever leave their children and grandchildren?


• climate scientists - People don't become scientists because they are brave, outspoken or community-minded. But today, climate scientists must start telling the truth - which is something they are trained to do. Do we have time to evoke the hearts of climate scientists and encourage them to become the heroes of our age?


• media - Most media, at least those that don't pride themselves on being fundamentally rightwing, "get it" and are increasingly reporting on climate change. Do we have the time to write to the heads of media who need a nudge? What about a campaign of letters to editors expressing our concern for the future? How about writing thank you notes to the reporters who are covering this scary issue well?


• government leaders - Courage hasn't been a criterion of political service to one's country for a long time. Our politicians do not have the courage to do the right thing and risk losing the next election. How can we encourage them to become heroes for the future? Do we have time to create non-partisan or multi-party coalitions that will promise not to punish a government that does the right thing (for example, bringing in a carbon tax)?


• general public - There are a lot of people in the world. What kind of campaign would convince billions of parents that they have the power to safeguard their children's future?


• educators - They make movies about brave teachers. The rest of us did not go into teaching because of our courage. So what will convince educators that they have the right, as well as the means, to stand up for their students and demand a climate-safe future for them?


• faith groups - Religious organizations around the world have been making progress on the climate front. But again, courage seems to come into it. How could we encourage those who lead or belong to faith groups to take a stand and protect Creation from destruction?


• CEOs of corporations that are destroying the future - CEOs of banks and oil companies etc. are people, too, although they certainly have been hiding their humanity under a bushel basket (that's an old expression). Can we form circles of compassion around them, explaining that we know their predicament, while encouraging them to break the rules of their corporate charter, put life before money, and do it all for their children and grandchildren?


• children and youth - You know how I feel about this, but my mind is changing. With deep honour for their right to a childhood, I am starting to believe that only a radical revolution by the young people of the world will melt the ice in the hearts of their elders.

160 Days - Climate Change in the Land of Ironies

Okay, this one is going to be sort of weird and esoteric.

I've been noticing several ironies lately. Here they are:

1. This hope thing. It drives me crazy. Everybody's into "hope" — as though hope is all of a sudden going to melt the ice in the hearts of greedy CEOs of rich fossil fuel corporations.

But (and here's the irony), even though hope is not getting us anywhere (as in, hope versus a $300 per ton carbon tax), and there is practically no hope left that we can avoid climate chaos (especially for the most hopeless in the world), I do this work because I hold hope in my heart. As Paul Hawken said recently in his now famous 2009 convocation address: "Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn't make sense to be hopeful." Ironic, eh?

2. Recently I wrote that we have to start loving others as ourselves, and valuing the lives of others as our own. The irony here is that one of our big problems as climate activists is that we're too nice. We have to stop being so blinkin' nice! So on the one hand, we need to spread the message that loving your fellow human beings is part of the solution to the climate change emergency, while on the other hand, we need to start getting brutal (or least brutally honest) with and about those who are standing in the way of doing the right thing for future generations. How do we hold those two extremes in our hearts?

3. I complained on a listserve recently that we are too ready, too willing to criticize fellow climate activists if they make the least little mistake or go out on a limb to make a point. It shocks me sometimes how quick we are to jump on someone who is on our side (the side of safeguarding the future for all species).

It's ironic, then, that one of the biggest problems we have in the fight for climate justice is that climate change scientists and environmental organizations aren't speaking the full truth — yet no one is criticizing their reticence and cowardice!

4. And finally, there's fear. Most climate activists say we can't scare the public because fear will immobilize them. But folks, the public is already immobilized! By Hollywood and TV and advertising and boring jobs and long commutes and family problems and getting ahead. If we don't frighten them with the truth of the seriousness and urgency of the climate change crisis, how will we ever get them on board?

Conundrums, eh?