Discuss: When Words Fail

My comment comes in the form of a song—anybody want a lead sheet?

CO2 is getting higher
Together we’ll turn down the fire
Gotta get down
Gotta get down
To three-fifty

Three-fifty parts per million
Whether you’re Texan or Brazilian
Gotta get down
Gotta get down
To three-fifty.

Three-fifty, that’s the number
Three-fifty, no time to slumber
Gotta get down
Gotta get down
To three-fifty.

  Too much fuel to fly the plane
  See the country, take the train,
  If you go I’m gonna grieve,
  Turn the light out when you leave

It’s the new low-carbon diet,
Gonna save us if we try it
Gotta get down
Gotta get down
To three-fifty.
Gonna get down
Gonna get down
To three-fifty.

You mean “CO2eq” I think as methane and other gasses also act as heat blankets.

What length is a soccer pitch? 100m?

I live in a town of 450 people, and can hardly wait for the price of gas to get these people out of their cars.  They are still driving like gas was 39cents.  There is however no public transportation.  There was a little train, the Doodlebug (yes) that ran from Coffeyville to Wichita once a day roundtrip.  It stopped in the 50s.  Doodlebugs were all over the country, serving rural and small town folk.  Trains need to make a comeback, with new technology.  You can’t be for small farms and against corporate farms without supporting rural people, even if those rural people need to have the concept of CO2 critical mass, shoved down their meat eating throats.  That being said, I need easily digested clearly explained materials to distribute in the least condescending way.  You can’t get anywhere with an attitude here.  These folks know all about hard work, and the perception is that city folks are great at pushing papers.  We have a funny situation here, too.  The low production oil wells which were not being pumped at 20 a barrel, are now pumping and more are being drilled. Some families are doing right well for themselves….

I actually don’t quite get this idea.  Given the number of variables in play, given the sheer complexity of the climate systems in question, etc. etc. etc., how can anyone believe that picking a number like 350 ppm makes any real scientific or policy sense?  Scientists can’t even agree on something far simpler—say the level of cholesterol that is safe or dangerous in one’s blood—much less on what level of C02 is sane or not.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m convinced that global warming is a reality, that high CO2 levels are significantly to blame and that continuing to consume fossil fuels as we do is just nuts, but by slapping a number on the issue we do nothing to promote understanding.  We encourage people to repeat slogans.

It reminds me of all the canvassers who come to my door asking for money for various causes.  Few know anything about the issues beyond the facts in the brochures they try to give me.

I think we can do better.

As much as I respect Bill McKibben, and his ‘transparent’ writing, I have to wonder about some things he has to say.

But first one thing with which I agree with: this is a dilemma of metaphor, of image, of ‘story’ even more than it is of fact or process. We convince ourselves, and we trick ourselves, on the strength of the story we listen to.

So how about another number, and not the 350 McKibben proposes? This other number is right there in his article, too: 25 feet.

Yes, 25 feet, the rise in sea level that he presents. (Not only he, of course.)

And - so what?

How many OTHER ‘numbers’ would descend from that 25 feet figure? How many thousand - million square miles flooded? Billions displaced? Trillions indebted?

Maybe we should start saving…

I applaud Bill McKibben’s attempts at “getting the words right.”  Maybe, a number will help.  At this point, I know that when his article came up on my slow telephone modem, I didn’t read a word while I tried to understand the photo.  What I saw was a backward “E” and then “SO.”  For a minute or so, I wondered about it.  It was only when I read the article that I understood the photo.  In this case, the picture was a total bust without the accompanying words.

For me, it is best to approach this from the perspective of addiction.  George Bush said more that he knew (or meant) when he said that we are addicted to oil because as Anne Wilson Schaef wrote over 20 years ago, society has become an addict. Thus, for me, it is clear, the most important response for me in engaging this issue is honesty.  Dishonesty is at the root of all addiction.  Knowledge cannot save us; only perservering wisdom can.

I think the freight train is roaring downhill out of control. 

Words or numbers won’t make it. 

It’s still too easy to intellectualize and wander around in our heads.  Actual experience is what will make the difference, but by then it’s too late. 

The people having the actual experiences are those in the third world who aren’t even responsible for the disaster.  This is what we in the industrialized west have done to Earth with our life styles, as if Earth belongs only to us.  And all we can do is wring our hands and try to buy the latest green technology. 

I’m sorry, but technology is not going to save the Earth.  We have become a cancerous tumor and Earth’s immune system will have to eradicate the tumor in order to survive. 

Think about it:  We haven’t accorded Nature any rights to existence.  Many people try to advocate for Nature but Nature has no legal rights in our frameworks of jurisprudence or even in our collective consciousness.  Humans are the only creatures accorded rights—and even that is not universal.

In the meantime, officials are still flying around to world meetings on global warming or academics to international conferences on the latest scientific evidence, or just merely vacations.  Even Sierra Club still promotes outdoor tours, world treks, etc.  What should they be saying?

What 350 (or above) means is that W E   H A V E   T O   S T O P   N O W!  Flying does even more damage than putting all those people on the ground in cars, buses, or trains, and we know how bad those are. We need to let the air out of our cars’ tires and start walking, biking, or riding in whatever mass transit still exists, and don’t forget horses and mules.

We need to change in ways we can’t even imagine, but within Nature’s convulsive attempts to heal herself, we will be forced to adapt or die—and there will be lots of dying.  We, the privileged, will feel the effects last.

We’re living in a consensus trance.

“.. and even Hansen says the number is at best the upper bound of safety, but still. Some kind of future. Some kind of hope.” I’m not sure what McKibben means here.  Is it that beyond 350 there still is hope, snow-capped peaks, etc., or that beyond 350 we are going down inexorably? 

In any case, I believe that human life will survive, but that our great-grandchildren will live in a horribly degraded, ugly environment. We will not be able to take corrective action on global warming in time or at a proper scale.  I think there is evidence that the primitive parts of the human brain, which stongly influence emotion and behavior, are evolved to operate with a short-term perspective.  The dominant psychic objectives are for power, security, and comfort. Long-term, “modern brain,” cerebral considerations of over-the-horizon threats to these basic goals do not rise to the level of taking action.  Action to avoid danger is only taken if it threatens our power and security in the present. And even then, incredibly, people are still building houses on the beach!

It is hard to imagine what kind of force will be able to accelerate the pace of human evolution in time to avoid our savaging the biosphere. Our technical abilities have simply overwhelmed our evolved mental capabilities to control them.