Andrew Welch's Blog

I recently wrote a multi-part series about Turning Climate Change On Its Head.  In this post, I will try to reduce the essence of that series to 30 statements, and a controversial conclusion.  I am dispassionately following the facts where they lead.  You tell me where the logic might be questioned.

The Aanimad Assertion on Climate Change

1. Climate Change is the process whereby the climate of the Earth is warming up due to the greenhouse effect, which is caused by megatons of greenhouse gases (primarily CO2) being released into the atmosphere at rates where natural processes are unable to re-assimilate them.

2. The vast majority of current CO2 production is caused by the burning of fossil fuels, which has exponentially increased because of civilization’s exponentially increased use of fossil fuels to provide energy.

3. The energy from fossil fuels has been used to power massive leaps in human technology, survival, and standards of living, including the ability to live in relatively inhospitable climates and to provide food for a hugely growing population.

4. All living things are characterized by a drive for growth and propagation.  Without such imperatives, any species would soon disappear from the biosphere.  Humans are no different.

5. The natural control for unfettered exponential growth of any one species is negative feedback.  It is a necessity for sustainable systems.

6. Negative feedback occurs in two forms: kind and unkind.  Kind negative feedback includes concepts of sufficiency, where the organism chooses to alter a behaviour.  Unkind negative feedback includes impacts such as resource shortages, disease, and conflict, which almost invariably arise as a direct result of the growth itself.

7. While physiological concepts of sufficiency (as applied to food, sleep, warmth, etc.) have not changed for humans, our knowledge and understanding of science have progressed to the point where, combined with the awesome energy of fossil fuels, we are able to circumvent many of nature’s unkind negative feedback mechanisms, such as disease and food scarcity.

8. Having apparently bypassed nature’s unkind negative feedback for population control, humans have followed the natural drives of any species for growth, propagation, and maximal use of all available resources.

9. The rise of agriculture transformed our required food inputs from things found in nature to things managed (and therefore ‘owned’) by humans.

10. Since humans no longer felt totally vulnerable to the influence of nature, and saw its resources as boundless, they developed human-centric economic paradigms consisting predominantly of producers and consumers, where nature’s bounty was simply a given.

11. That evolution of agriculture, trade, and ownership led to increasingly sophisticated numeracy skills, and societies where numbers were used to measure wealth.  For example, trade led to the introduction of some form of money, and ownership led to counting what is owned.

12. Number-based values are measures where more is always worth more.  Since numbers are limitless, wealth measured by number is such that More is Always Better, and the negative feedback concept of sufficiency does not apply in such calculations.

13. Having removed the concept of sufficiency from our predominant measure of wealth, humans eventually created entities (business corporations) who embodied number-based values exclusively, leveraging the intrinsic positive feedback loops of numbers, without being subject to the mortal filters of human qualitative values or even the limitations of human life spans.

14. Adopting value systems which have no concept of sufficiency, while bypassing nature’s unkind negative feedback, results in an unsustainable way of life for our species.  (See 5.)

15. Exponential growth of human population and technology meant that nature did not have the typical time to evolve adaptations for the changes or processes to deal with the inevitable waste products of exponentially increasing economic activity.

16. As civilization is something that happens with physiological beings who must live within nature’s complexity on a finite planet, any economic model that does not account for nature’s inputs and waste management is fatally flawed.

17. The greatest need of economic activity and human survival is energy.  Fossil fuels continue to provide the vast majority of cheap energy, so their exponential consumption is tied to exponentially growing economic activity.

18. One impact of relentless economic activity expansion and population growth is (1) anthropogenic climate change.  Other direct impacts include (2) freshwater withdrawals, (3) nitrogen/phosphorus loading, (4) land conversion, and (5) biodiversity loss.

19. Being disconnected from nature, the neoliberal economic models did not effectively address waste management, resulting in (6) chemical pollution, (7) ocean acidification, (8) air pollution, and (9) ozone layer depletion.

20. The nine impacts listed above are collectively known as Ecological Overshoot.  Climate Change is only one of these serious threats to human civilization and the continuance of our species.  This combination of multiple looming disasters is where the term “polycrisis” originates.

21. We got here because we adopted a measure of wealth that had no concept of sufficiency (reducing the influence of natural kind negative feedback on our consumptive behaviours), and we circumvented nature’s typical unkind negative feedback (which controls population growth).

22. Our current economic model of More is Always Better, combined with the absence of integration with concepts of finite resource and waste management, can be directly tied to all nine components of Ecological Overshoot.  This Value Crisis – a single common cause of a polycrisis – is where the term “metacrisis” originates.

23. Given that we are in a polycrisis, solving, mitigating, or adapting to Climate Change will likely have minimal impact on any of the other major threats of Ecological Overshoot.

24. However, addressing the metacrisis and correcting the basis of our economic values will mitigate and potentially reverse all of these threats.

25. We will not voluntarily correct our current way of life and the economic values that underpin that.  We are unable to solve the metacrisis on our own.

26. Any serious attempt to correct our flawed economic values will be vigorously opposed by the massive forces that derive their wealth from those values.

27. Still, Climate Change poses a serious threat to our current way of life.  It is the most pressing (and increasingly visible) threat to our economic activity.

28. Climate Change therefore constitutes nature’s negative feedback to the economic values that caused it.

29. The other aspects of Ecological Overshoot will not be far behind, and will have similarly disastrous consequences for human civilization.

30. Unkind negative feedback is never desirable to the targeted species.  We are therefore highly motivated to resist it.  However, the negative outcomes of our poly/metacrisis for the human race are similar, whether Climate Change is ‘solved’ or not.

Concluding Assertion:

a)         Theimpulse to demand action on mitigating the effects of Climate Change is inevitablefor human nature, but that action will not dramatically change the prospectsfor civilization and our species.   (See26, 29, 22, 24, 25 and 28.)

b)         Onthe contrary, given that Climate Change could be the force needed to breakhumanity out of its flawed economic values, the sooner that happens the better,before the effects of the other aspects of Ecological Overshoot becomeirreversibly fatal.   (See 24, 27, 21,23, and 28.)

c)         Climate Change could well be a major part of the solution to our metacrisis.  Our primary focus should be on the values to be adopted after the old values are no longer working for us, and how to minimize the damage from that transition.

d)         Rejecting the unquestioned precedence of number-based values, acknowledging our interrelationships with nature, and rethinking the definition and role of commercial corporations could be enough to redirect civilization towards a sustainable model.   (See 21, 16, 13, and 5.)

Disclaimer:

?- Am I opposed to citizens demanding action on Climate Change?

No,but only so long as there is a realization that the real challenge is thecausal value system underpinning Climate Change.  Our compassionate instincts insist that we doour best to combat the destructive impact of fossil fuel burning, however, I do not accept that anysignificant gains will be made in the attempt.

Ifexplicit by-products of any climate change action include an increasedawareness of the root cause of our multi-part polycrisis (that being a flawed value system), and greater acceptance of our truerole within the biosphere, then I have to support that.

If,on the other hand, the proposal is that we can somehow continue our currentbehaviours and economic model simply under an alternative energy source, then Ioppose such delusional thinking.

I also oppose the demonization of the fossil fuel industry.  Those corporations, like all commercial corporations, are acting precisely in the manner that society programmed them and continues to demand them to.

The sequel to The Value Crisis (titled Our Second Chance) ended up being a lot more optimistic than it started out to be.  The original working title was "Trumping Our Survival", and although it was referring to how number-based values trump natural values, the reference to the chaos in American politics was implicit.  Perhaps that harsher message still needs to be disseminated.  I will be more explicit:

We are all Donald Trump.

What do I mean by that?  I don't mean that we are individually like Trump.  I refer instead to humanity collectively.  Here are some statements that few people would argue with:

Donald Trump started off with some powerful advantages over other people and now believes himself superior to them.  He also believes that the rules that govern other people do not apply to him, so he is above society's laws.  He declares himself wealthy, but, in reality, Trump has a habit of not paying his debts to other people and society, and what he has is less valuable than he thinks.  He will say and do anything to increase his wealth and power because, to him, More is Always Better.  By declaring himself superior to other people, Trump ignores the reality of his situation and his dependence on them for his survival.  Even though support for his behaviours is massive, enlightened observers can see that, from his position of power, Trump inflicts catastrophic damage on society.

Now read what happens when we simply replace "Trump" with "humans", "society" with "nature", and "people" with "species":

Humans started off with some powerful advantages over other species and now believe ourselves superior to them.  We also believe that the rules that govern other species do not apply to us, so we are above natural laws.  We declare ourselves wealthy, but, in reality, humans have a habit of not paying our debts to other species and nature, and what we have is less valuable than we think.  We will say and do anything to increase our wealth and power because, to us, More is Always Better.  By declaring ourselves superior to other species, humans ignore the reality of our situation and our dependence on them for our survival.  Even though support for our behaviours is massive, enlightened observers can see that, from our position of power, humans inflict catastrophic damage on nature.

To be kind, Donald Trump is not intentionally evil.  He is simply a lethal combination of financial power placed in the hands of someone who suffers from psychopathic narcissism.  To be equally generous to humans, the same might be said of humanity - a lethal combination of evolutionary power placed in the hands of a species whose collective self-aggrandizement now blinds us to the needs and value of everything around us.

What natural laws do I accuse humans of breaking - and can I prove it?

The Core of Natural Values

Philosophers have debated for centuries what constitute natural values.  I am going to audaciously propose a core principle of natural values - made all the more tricky by the fact that it incorporates a negative:

There is no value in nature where More is ALWAYS Better.

By "value", I refer to any intrinsically desirable quality - demonstrated either by an operational attribute or choices made (excluding number-based values which exist only in recent human cognition).  By "nature", I refer to the physical universe, including all forms of life.  By "always", I mean in every situation, regardless of circumstances.  By "better", I mean: that results in a higher measure of value (i.e. more desirable state) for whatever natural value you are exploring.

While it is impossible to prove a negative, we can make this principle a good working proposition by examining its derivatives.  For example, consider food, shelter, territory, and energy – there are plenty of instances in the natural world where more is better, but it is never always better. To absolutely everything, there is a beneficial sufficiency – a peak value, after which more is no longer a good thing, and often becomes a bad thing. More is not always better.

It is only when value is measured exclusive by number (for example, monetary value) that more is always worth more, by definition.  With virtual wealth, More is Always Better.

Furthermore, material resources - things that we need to survive - are subject to long-accepted rules like the Laws of Thermodynamics. Neither matter nor energy (nor real value) can be created from nothing, and every transaction is subject to the value-decrementing principle of entropy. Virtual wealth, on the other hand, is not subject to those laws.  We create value from nothing all the time – well over 90% of the planet’s monetary wealth exists only as debt. Meanwhile, if you spend $100 on food, the food degrades over time, but the $100 will always be $100 - entropy does not apply to numbers.

Guilty As Charged

So, when our society adopts number-based values like monetary wealth and economic growth as the values that will trump all others, we adopt a More is Always Better approach to managing our lives and our limited resources on this planet.  We think nature's laws don't apply to us and that we are superior to everything in the environment that we live in.  Our decisions become entirely incompatible with the reality of the physical world around us, and, slowly but surely, we bring an extraordinary range of disasters down upon ourselves.

How do we fix this?

I propose some tantalizing options in other posts, but the key thing to challenge is the More is Always Better philosophy.  Individually, we can do this by introducing concepts of sufficiency into our lives.  For example, instead of letting your income determine your standard of living, try selecting the minimal standard of living that you are comfortable with, and then figuring out what income that requires.  Instead of wealth maximization, focus on joy maximization.  A colleague puts it very nicely: "More Fun, Less Stuff".

No doubt, Donald Trump/humanity is insufficiently aware of these flaws.  That may only change when society/nature punches back with sufficient force.  The question is whether or not that reality is going to assert itself before all is lost...

 Here's a twist on a psychology classic: the Stanford Marshmallow experiment - a study on delayed gratification.  In the original experiment, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward (a marshmallow), or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time alone in a room, staring at the marshmallow but not eating it.  In follow-up studies, the researchers found that children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes, as measured by SAT scores, educational attainment, body mass index, and other life measures.

A blog post from an old applied improv conference colleague brought this study to mind.  She spoke of what she referred to as Marshmallow Test 2.0, in which you conduct the experiment on kids living in the shelter system.  In that experiment, each trial is more a test of privilege.  The kids have to believe and trust that the original and second treat will be there if they wait.  It turns out, many under-privileged kids have learned to eat when the treat is available - not to wait for someone else to maybe take it first.  So naturally, their scores in later life are already skewed, not based on will-power but on their survival-oriented upbringing.
That's an interesting thought.
What came to mind for me, though, was the three Value Personae that I suggest operate within all of us.  (An idea from Robert Reich that I expanded on.)  I now theorize that the Consumer value persona - the one which values immediate gratification and looks after present needs - might be the earliest value persona, from an evolutionary perspective.  We see lots of plants and animals exhibit this approach to resources, and it's not surprising that younger kids will express this tendency as well.  There's a marshmallow.  I like marshmallows.  Munch!
The Marshmallow Test is kind of checking for the presence of our Investor value persona.  Are we willing to wait, resist consumption now, and reap some benefits in the future?  As animals evolve, some species seem to become more aware of future needs and have learned to set food aside for leaner times.  That Investor behaviour might be considered a sign of evolutionary progress (or a predictor of better life outcomes in children).
Given that perspective, I naturally had to ask myself where the third value persona - the Citizen - might fit in.  The Citizen is our value set that looks after the needs of others or the collective.  Perhaps a test could be easily devised with two kids, where, if the first child resists the temptation to eat the  marshmallow, then they both get one.  Surely that says something about the first kid's ability to co-operate, share, and show empathy for their fellow human being.  Since (I believe) we only tend to see such behaviours in collective-oriented or cognitively-advanced species, I recently posited that perhaps the Citizen value persona is yet another step up on the evolutionary ladder.
My Value Personae theory proposes that each one of us has all three values sets available to us at any time, and that they are exclusive.  If I give you $50, you can either spend it (Consumer), save it (Investor), or give it away (Citizen).  All three actions can give us joy, but you can only do one of those choices.
A Fourth Value Persona?So, if you're wondering how humanity might evolve to the next level, what might that be?  Increasingly, I believe that the fourth value persona might encompass some kind of realization that we are all connected to our environment and every other living thing in complex and inextricable ways.  I'm still trying to figure this out and express it as a value.  One thing I'm sure of is that the fourth value persona would not be based on any kind of zero-sum game, but rather one where there is no game.
One of the real-world expressions of this fourth value persona is a Guaranteed Universal Basic Income.  I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that a Basic Income is humanity's way of severing the connection between the imperative of a job and basic survival.  That game-changing concept could be the first step to solving what I call the Value Change Conundrum , and escape the paradigm of "More is Always Better" that I suggest is at the core of civilization's ecological overshoot, sociological shortfall, and all major global disasters.
I guess in that study, we just give every child a marshmallow when they need one, and we move on to other life priorities.

 In October of 2023, I gave a Zoom talk to the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR).  The requested topic was an overview of my sequel to "The Value Crisis", that being "Our Second Chance - Changing Course and Solving the Value Crisis".  Months later, the CACOR site curator sent me a copy of the Zoom Chat conversation from that talk.  It turns out that the most frequent contributor to the chat was Dr. William E. Rees, FRSC.  Bill Rees is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, and well-known as the originator of the "ecological footprint" concept.

Following the CACOR Zoom talk tradition, many of the chat room questions and comments will have been raised after the presentation, and some will be heard on the actual video.  Still, knowing that I have a huge amount to learn from this leader in ecological economics (and one of my heroes), I decided to devote a post to his comments and my more-considered reflections on them.
(It would obviously help a great deal if you watch the presentation first, but I'll try to craft this post in such a way that it's not entirely necessary.)

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 1:42 PM
What if the More is Better strategy is an innate adaptive strategy that worked in paleolithic times but is catastrophic today, when technology makes it possible?

Firstly, there is a very important distinction to be made here.  The value system that I claim to be flawed and unnatural is "More is ALWAYS Better".  Generally speaking, there are many times in nature when More is Better.  But more is never always better - everything in nature has sufficiency.  That's why, when more does happen to be better, it could indeed be seen as an innate adaptive strategy that worked in paleolithic times.  It is only when you have values measured by number (such as monetary wealth) that More is Always Better.  Having a limitless value, with no definition of sufficiency is where the trouble begins.  Add in technology that gives exponential growth, and that trouble does indeed become catastrophic.  This is not a value that has changed over time, because More is Always Better did not exist in paleolithic times.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 1:50 PM
We have to be careful about 'first nations' values.  The paleoecological evidence suggests that the spread of humanity over the Earth was followed by the depletion and often extinction of megafauna of all kinds.  Only after massive destruction, or at least alteration of their ecosystems, did indigenous peoples culturally evolve a stable relationship with their much diminished habitats.  That is what we see today.  

When you consider "the spread of humanity", you are really talking about a species of primate that was successful enough to produce a thriving population - one that did really well at adapting to other environments as well.  So whenever humans spread into an area where they had not existed before, they were essentially an invasive species.  We all know that any successful invasive species will invariably redefine the ecological balance of its new territory - sometimes wiping out previously existing species.  (This is easier to do when you are at or near the top of the food chain.)
I think another thing we obviously have to be careful about is generalizing "first nations".  There were/are hundreds of First Nations.  Some evolved into empires who adopted and applied a More is Always Better value system to territory, riches, slaves, and temple heights.  (Perhaps their demise was correspondingly predictable.)  Others are still living in relative isolation and in harmony with their original environment.
Still, I think your general heuristic applies.  When our First Nations people first came upon plains teeming with bison, they did not worry about the wastefulness of driving hundreds of them over a cliff, just to butcher a few for their needs.  And they did indeed alter their ecosystems - it would have been almost impossible not to.  However, for the First Nations that did not adopt a More is Always Better philosophy, they noticed the changes to their ecosystems and made various conscious choices to alter their behaviours.  The values that we associate today with indigenous wisdom are distinctly different and decidedly superior in terms of ecological economics.

BtW, modern techno industrial society is going the same way.  We will destroy our habitat to the point that it pushes back and forces an adaptive strategy onto the survivors of the great contraction.

This is my conclusion as well.  I believe climate change is one of the negative feedbacks that our habitat is going to push back on us.  The question of whether or not we will recognize our essential problem as a value crisis is still to be answered.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 1:56 PM
Overshoot is a function of population at any material standard.  Three billion over-consumers can be in overshoot: Ten billion people in poverty can be in overshoot.

This is very true.  Since ecological overshoot is based on available planetary resources, that quantity available doesn't change with population or lifestyle, but the amount lost to consumption does.  Right now, we have simultaneous examples of both kinds of overshoot (from overconsumption and overpopulation).

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:36 PM
Where does the wealth or money come from to fund the basic income?  Doesn't this require a complete reorganization of the income/tax/economic value system.  And what if the basic income destroys any incentive to fend for oneself?

These are three common concerns with a Guaranteed Basic Income.  The simplest answer to the first question is that the money is already there - it is simply redirected.  For a full explanation of this, see a previous blog post.  Money is not like material resources - this is simply a math issue, not a show-stopper.
The introduction of a Basic Income does not require a complete reorganization of the income/tax/economic value system - we saw that when we implemented the CERB program almost overnight during the pandemic. However, it could eventually lead to such a reorganization - and that's the whole point.  We need a complete reorganization of the income/tax/economic value system as part of our rebalancing of qualitative and quantitative values.  A Guaranteed Basic Income program is perhaps the best and most powerful tool for easing society into that paradigm shift.
Finally, Basic Income pilot programs have consistently demonstrated that such schemes do not destroy any incentive to fend for oneself - although current social safety nets often do just that.  Humans want to be productive, to contribute to society, and to better their lot.  Basic Income facilitates and encourages those activities.  See my explanation in an earlier post.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:41 PM
I don't see much new in the notion that natural systems tend toward more complexity.  In any case, this assumes a continuous supply of energy.  Reduce the energy flow and the system simplifies. Remove available energy and the systems ceases to function and moves toward maximum entropy or disorder.

I agree entirely.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:50 PM
The value of human life changes with the availability of vital resources.  Lots of resources, we share; land and resources get scarce with overcrowding and overshoot, then we devalue live, particularly other peoples' lives.

This is also fairly obvious.  However, I believe that there is a more important factor in how we value human life, which is defined by our relationship to that human.  Yes, we all know that we care more about the life of a friend or family member than we do about some stranger on the other side of the planet, but sometimes we just need a connecting narrative for our perception to change.  Think of how a simple photo of a drowned toddler washed up on a beach completely altered the way millions of people thought about the Syrian refugee crisis.
This introduction of compassion works both for and against us.  You might think me awful for saying this (which would in fact prove my point), but when we start to think of every child as our own, then we start to believe that every life is worth saving, regardless of the cost or quality of life being saved.  That may be all very well, but few people who aggressively pursue disease eradication and lifespan extension consider what the ultimate effect on our planet might be if we were wildly successful in those endeavours.  (Imagine what would happen if all mosquitoes born survived to adulthood.)  If you are going to cure everything and have people living decades longer, there will HAVE to be other changes.  Single lives are valuable because they become qualitative.  At the same time, we can kill thousands in war, because those people are simply numbers.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:53 PM
Stasis implies a steady-state economy, an idea that has been around for 50 years or more and rejected by mainstream economists and techno-optimists. (Steady-state implies a constant level of economic throughput compatible with nature's productivity and waste assimilation capacity.)

A steady-state economy also includes minimal fluctuations in population.  It is not the only possibility for a sustainable economy - which could also be achieved by an economy the fluctuates up and down in relatively bounded cycles.  I'm not sure why mainstream economists and techno-optimists reject the idea of a steady-state economy, unless it's because they feel it is impossible to achieve.  I would think it's a lot easier to prove the impossibility of an ever-growing economy on the finite resources of a single planet.  It may also be a case of them being NIMPLEs - leaving the consequences of continuous growth to future generations.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:56 PM
There are lots of studies on how many people -- even a book called "How Many People can Earth Support?"

Determining the number of people that the planet can support is based on many variables.  The whole exercise seems more academic than policy-based.  I think it safe to say that, in terms of environmental impact, there are too many humans, regardless of our adopted lifestyle.  Yes, the planet could possibly support more, but at what cost?
I believe our focus would be better directed towards more sustainable and qualitative lifestyles.  The population decline will likely follow.  If it does not, then nature will address our numbers in her own way, as she inevitably does for all species that get out of control.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:58 PM
Ray's financial insecurity is the modern expression of our innate need to acquire the means to live.

[This was in reference to an earlier comment from Raymond Leury: "When I was much younger, being poor, my anxiety about the need to have money to survive was so big that it blinded me to just about anything else.  It also drove my strong desire to build up wealth so that I would have financial security."]
Actually, I don't entirely agree with the implications of this one.  All animals have an innate drive to survive.  For that they need the basics of life: oxygen, water, shelter (or appropriate environment), food, etc.  However, "financial security" is not focused on our immediate needs - rather, it is intended to address our future needs.  I theorize that conscious concern for future needs is a higher stage of evolution - perhaps even in a grey area between instinct and learned behaviour.
What strikes me as the most important takeaway from this is how financial wealth takes over our lives when we must struggle to have enough to survive.  Imagine how much collective anxiety there is in society right now, arising from this singular stress, and how a Basic Income would change their lives - and yours!

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 3:16 PM
Great discussion. Thanks Andrew for providing the catalyst.

I hope my content will eventually prove to be more than just a catalyst.  Anyway, I think this made for a good blog post exploration.  Thanks Bill for providing the catalyst!

 In October of 2023, I gave a Zoom talk to the Canadian Association for the Club of Rome (CACOR).  The requested topic was an overview of my sequel to "The Value Crisis", that being "Our Second Chance - Changing Course and Solving the Value Crisis".  Months later, the CACOR site curator sent me a copy of the Zoom Chat conversation from that talk.  It turns out that the most frequent contributor to the chat was Dr. William E. Rees, FRSC.  Bill Rees is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia, and well-known as the originator of the "ecological footprint" concept.

Following the CACOR Zoom talk tradition, many of the chat room questions and comments will have been raised after the presentation, and some will be heard on the actual video.  Still, knowing that I have a huge amount to learn from this leader in ecological economics (and one of my heroes), I decided to devote a post to his comments and my more-considered reflections on them.
(It would obviously help a great deal if you watch the presentation first, but I'll try to craft this post in such a way that it's not entirely necessary.)

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 1:42 PM
What if the More is Better strategy is an innate adaptive strategy that worked in paleolithic times but is catastrophic today, when technology makes it possible?

Firstly, there is a very important distinction to be made here.  The value system that I claim to be flawed and unnatural is "More is ALWAYS Better".  Generally speaking, there are many times in nature when More is Better.  But more is never always better - everything in nature has sufficiency.  That's why, when more does happen to be better, it could indeed be seen as an innate adaptive strategy that worked in paleolithic times.  It is only when you have values measured by number (such as monetary wealth) that More is Always Better.  Having a limitless value, with no definition of sufficiency is where the trouble begins.  Add in technology that gives exponential growth, and that trouble does indeed become catastrophic.  This is not a value that has changed over time, because More is Always Better did not exist in paleolithic times.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 1:50 PM
We have to be careful about 'first nations' values.  The paleoecological evidence suggests that the spread of humanity over the Earth was followed by the depletion and often extinction of megafauna of all kinds.  Only after massive destruction, or at least alteration of their ecosystems, did indigenous peoples culturally evolve a stable relationship with their much diminished habitats.  That is what we see today.  

When you consider "the spread of humanity", you are really talking about a species of primate that was successful enough to produce a thriving population - one that did really well at adapting to other environments as well.  So whenever humans spread into an area where they had not existed before, they were essentially an invasive species.  We all know that any successful invasive species will invariably redefine the ecological balance of its new territory - sometimes wiping out previously existing species.  (This is easier to do when you are at or near the top of the food chain.)
I think another thing we obviously have to be careful about is generalizing "first nations".  There were/are hundreds of First Nations.  Some evolved into empires who adopted and applied a More is Always Better value system to territory, riches, slaves, and temple heights.  (Perhaps their demise was correspondingly predictable.)  Others are still living in relative isolation and in harmony with their original environment.
Still, I think your general heuristic applies.  When our First Nations people first came upon plains teeming with bison, they did not worry about the wastefulness of driving hundreds of them over a cliff, just to butcher a few for their needs.  And they did indeed alter their ecosystems - it would have been almost impossible not to.  However, for the First Nations that did not adopt a More is Always Better philosophy, they noticed the changes to their ecosystems and made various conscious choices to alter their behaviours.  The values that we associate today with indigenous wisdom are distinctly different and decidedly superior in terms of ecological economics.

BtW, modern techno industrial society is going the same way.  We will destroy our habitat to the point that it pushes back and forces an adaptive strategy onto the survivors of the great contraction.

This is my conclusion as well.  I believe climate change is one of the negative feedbacks that our habitat is going to push back on us.  The question of whether or not we will recognize our essential problem as a value crisis is still to be answered.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 1:56 PM
Overshoot is a function of population at any material standard.  Three billion over-consumers can be in overshoot: Ten billion people in poverty can be in overshoot.

This is very true.  Since ecological overshoot is based on available planetary resources, that quantity available doesn't change with population or lifestyle, but the amount lost to consumption does.  Right now, we have simultaneous examples of both kinds of overshoot (from overconsumption and overpopulation).

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:36 PM
Where does the wealth or money come from to fund the basic income?  Doesn't this require a complete reorganization of the income/tax/economic value system.  And what if the basic income destroys any incentive to fend for oneself?

These are three common concerns with Basic Income.  The simplest answer to the first question is that the money is already there - it is simply redirected.  For a full explanation of this, see a previous blog post.  Money is not like material resources - this is simply a math issue, not a show-stopper.
The introduction of a Basic Income does not require a complete reorganization of the income/tax/economic value system - we saw that when we implemented the CERB program almost overnight during the pandemic. However, it could indeed eventually lead to such a reorganization - and that's the whole point.  We need a complete reorganization of the income/tax/economic value system as part of our rebalancing of qualitative and quantitative values.  A Basic Income program is perhaps the best and most powerful tool for easing society into that paradigm shift.
Finally, Basic Income pilot programs have consistently demonstrated that such schemes do not destroy any incentive to fend for oneself - although current social safety nets often do just that.  Humans want to be productive, to contribute to society, and to better their lot.  Basic Income facilitates and encourages those activities.  See my explanation in an earlier post.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:41 PM
I don't see much new in the notion that natural systems tend toward more complexity.  In any case, this assumes a continuous supply of energy.  Reduce the energy flow and the system simplifies. Remove available energy and the systems ceases to function and moves toward maximum entropy or disorder.

I agree entirely.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:50 PM
The value of human life changes with the availability of vital resources.  Lots of resources, we share; land and resources get scarce with overcrowding and overshoot, then we devalue live, particularly other peoples' lives.

This is also fairly obvious.  However, I believe that there is a more important factor in how we value human life, which is defined by our relationship to that human.  Yes, we all know that we care more about the life of a friend or family member than we do about some stranger on the other side of the planet, but sometimes we just need a connecting narrative for our perception to change.  Think of how a simple photo of a drowned toddler washed up on a beach completely altered the way millions of people thought about the Syrian refugee crisis.
This introduction of compassion works both for and against us.  You might think me awful for saying this (which would in fact prove my point), but when we start to think of every child as our own, then we start to believe that every life is worth saving, regardless of the cost or quality of life being saved.  That may be all very well, but few people who aggressively pursue disease eradication and lifespan extension consider what the ultimate effect on our planet might be if we were wildly successful in those endeavours.  If you are going to cure everything and have people living decades longer, there will HAVE to be other changes.  Single lives are valuable because they become qualitative.  At the same time, we can kill thousands in war, because those people are simply numbers.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:53 PM
Stasis implies a steady-state economy, an idea that has been around for 50 years or more and rejected by mainstream economists and techno-optimists. (Steady-state implies a constant level of economic throughput compatible with nature's productivity and waste assimilation capacity.)

A steady-state economy also includes minimal fluctuations in population.  It is not the only possibility for a sustainable economy - which could also be achieved by an economy the fluctuates up and down in relatively bounded cycles.  I'm not sure why mainstream economists and techno-optimists reject the idea of a steady-state economy, unless it's because they feel it is impossible to achieve.  I would think it's a lot easier to prove the impossibility of an ever-growing economy on the finite resources of a single planet.  It may also be a case of them being NIMPLEs - leaving the consequences of continuous growth to future generations.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:56 PM
There are lots of studies on how many people -- even a book called "How Many People can Earth Support?"

Determining the number of people that the planet can support is based on many variables.  The whole exercise seems more academic than policy-based.  I think it safe to say that, in terms of environmental impact, there are too many humans, regardless of our adopted lifestyle.  Yes, the planet could possibly support more, but at what cost?
I believe our focus would be better directed towards more sustainable and qualitative lifestyles.  The population decline will likely follow.  If it does not, then nature will address our numbers in her own way, as she inevitably does for all species that get out of control.

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 2:58 PM
Ray's financial insecurity is the modern expression of our innate need to acquire the means to live.

[This was in reference to an earlier comment from Raymond Leury: "When I was much younger, being poor, my anxiety about the need to have money to survive was so big that it blinded me to just about anything else.  It also drove my strong desire to build up wealth so that I would have financial security."]
Actually, I don't entirely agree with the implications of this one.  All animals have an innate drive to survive.  For that they need the basics of life: oxygen, water, shelter (or appropriate environment), food, etc.  However, "financial security" is not focused on our immediate needs - rather, it is intended to address our future needs.  I theorize that conscious concern for future needs is a higher stage of evolution - perhaps even in a grey area between instinct and learned behaviour.
What strikes me as the most important takeaway from this is how financial wealth takes over our lives when we must struggle to have enough to survive.  Imagine how much collective anxiety there is in society right now, arising from this singular stress, and how a Basic Income would change their lives - and yours!

William Rees Oct 18, 2023, 3:16 PM
Great discussion. Thanks Andrew for providing the catalyst.

I hope my content will eventually prove to be more than just a catalyst.  Anyway, I think this made for a good blog post exploration.  Thanks Bill for providing the catalyst!

In September, 2023, a group of authors, led by Joseph Merz, put out a peer-reviewed paper that captured significant interest in the world of ecological economics.  The paper is titled “World scientists’ warning: The behavioural crisis driving ecological overshoot”.

It immediately caught my attention because, in line with my own thinking, the paper proposed that looming disasters like climate change and the loss of biodiversity were just symptoms of a bigger problem.  Instead of trying to fix symptoms, a far more effective strategy for humanity is to track down the causes and explore solutions to those.  I hope that, by now, we can all accept that human behaviours are behind our most serious threats to species continuance.  This particular group of authors suggested that this human behaviour crisis was driven by the intentional manipulation of innate adaptive behaviours.  Specifically, Economic Growth, Marketing, and Pronatalism (encouraging population growth) were being used to exploit populations into behaving in ways that were ultimately not in humanity's best long-term interest.

[If you are curious about the details, I encourage to read the paper for yourself.  For an academic work, it is a fairly easy read.  It also proposes a solution, which I found intriguing but less compelling.]

This short reactive exploration builds on the content ofthat paper, which asserts:

“While human behaviours wereimplicit in the various world scientists’ warnings, we believe they needexplicit attention and concerted emergency action in order to avoid a ghastlyfuture.”

I believe this is absolutely correct.  For decades, world scientists have statedthat human behaviours had to change, but they insufficiently examined thedriving source of the maladaptive behaviours in the first place.  My graphic image above summarizes the premise nicely.  I want to now take this exploration one step deeper.

Who is holding the hammer?

This post asks:  Who (or what) is behind thatexploitation?  Why have those behavioursbeen exploited?  Obviously, a selectfraction of the population profited from it, but can we really assume that somekind of all-trumping wealth-maximization motivation is innate in all humans?  Answers such as “greed”, “wealth”, or “power”might be implicitly assumed, however, I fear they are untested.  For all the same reasons behind theidentification of a human behavioural crisis, the perpetrators andvalues driving that exploitation need explicit attention, and that may welllead to a different concerted emergency action.

The paper hints very slightly at a factor where my own personalresearch began:

“Like other species, H.sapiens is capable of exponential population growth (positive feedback) butuntil recently, major expansions of the human enterprise, including increasesin consumption and waste, were held in check by negative feedback – e.g.resource shortages, competition and disease – which naturally curbed continuedpopulation growth.”

I accept that each and every species has an innate drive toincrease their population and expand into as much territory as possible – togrow, occupy, and consume.  In a systemof negative feedback where each life form is ultimately consumed by others, adrive to increase population is necessary to offset risk factors and ensure acontinuance of presence.  (Any speciesthat lacked sufficient capability for that would have disappeared longago.)  The drive to occupy territorycorresponds with the needs for an increased population.  As for consumption, it is one of the basicconditions (if not definitions) of life.

The critical element in all of this is the concept ofsufficiency.  There are peak values forgrowth, territory, and consumption, after which benefits to the individual lifeform invariably cease, to be replaced by negative outcomes.  I suggest that there is nothing in the‘natural’ world where More is ALWAYS Better.  There are peaks and limits.  Furthermore, it could be argued that energyis the ultimate expression of value, but energy cannot be created from nothing,and entropy takes its cut of every transaction. We exist in a world subject to the laws of thermodynamics, on a planetof finite resources.  A never-endinglyincreasing value does not exist anywhere in nature.

The measure of any resource value to any life form thereforeexpresses a qualitative value – one that depends on context and marginalutility.  More is not alwaysbetter.

And yet, what if a higher species created another kind ofvalue for itself – one measured by number, where (within that value system)more is always better. Such a quantitative value system has no concept of sufficiency.  This is what I propose humanity has done,with the creation of the concept of virtual (monetary) wealth.  Within a monetary system, more money isalways worth more than less.  In 1926,Nobel-laureate chemist Frederick Soddy (in Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt)pointed out that money is not subject to the laws of thermodynamics, eventhough all of the material things exchanged for it are.  Monetary wealth can be created from absolutelynothing (and is – as debt), and does not lose numeric value intransactions.  Being just a number, thepotential value expressed is theoretically limitless, and it can existvirtually – it does not require material objects to back up that value.

This takes us back to the two significant questions that thepaper raised for me:

a)     Who (or what) is behind thatexploitation of behaviours?

b)     Why have those behaviours beenexploited?

I suggest that the driving forces behind this exploitation would not be possible, or at least anywhere near as influential, without humanity’s adoption of an overwhelming precedence of number-based (quantitative) values.  The predominant overarching goal of the entities (be they individuals or corporations) is an increase in monetary wealth.  This is not a ‘natural’ value.

Contrast this goal, for example, with the human impulseslisted in the paper – the ones that those entities are leveraging for their owngain:

seek pleasure and avoid pain; acquire, amass and defend resources from competitors; display dominance, status or sex appeal through size, beauty, physicality, aggression and/or ornamentation; procrastinate rather than act whenever action does not have an immediate survival benefit particularly for ourselves, close relatives and our home territories (humans are innate temporal, social and spatial discounters).

I suggest that all of these are qualitative values, subjectto peaks, sufficiency, and negative feedback loops.  Also consider the simple imperative ofprocreation.  The mathematics ofpopulation growth often produces exponential curves, but that is never thewhole story.  Steep curves are broughtdown with equal speed by overcrowding, disease, food shortages, and increasedpredatory populations.  In nature, explosivegrowth always creates the circumstances required for that growth to collapse.  The same mathematics can be applied tounfettered economic growth – the major differences being that there is no limitto the potential monetary wealth, and there is no inherent negative feedbackbuilt-in to that growth.  (Most importantly, what if climate change is the negative feedback that has been inevitable from the beginning?)

According to the paper:

“Fossil fuels enabled us toreduce negative feedback (e.g. food shortages) and thus delay and evade theconsequences of surpassing natural limits.”

This is quite true, and there is no question that the ModernTechno-Industrial (MTI) civilization that followed has been a major contributor toour exponential population growth and the resulting ecological overshoot.  However, I propose that our ability to reekhavoc upon our environment is due to more than just the capability of ourtechnology to outpace human evolution. Something is still amplifying the incentives for that technology anddefining the destructive principles used for its implementation.  Moreover, humans are not alone at thepinnacle of the pyramid.  There isanother significant player in this narrative that hardly gets a mention in thepaper – corporations.

I propose that, from economic, ecological, and sociologicalperspectives, corporations must be considered as a separate species and treatedas such for the kind of work that we do. They have full status as legal persons and increasingly claim rightscreated for humans, and they operate indepen­dently of their creators in almostall respects.  Furthermore, this is aspecies that is not subject to any natural laws of sufficiency, that can growto any size, and has a theoretically unlimited lifespan.  Most importantly, this species is entirelybased on a quantitative value system that is not subject to the laws ofthermodynamics, so they can create ‘tangible’ value from nothing.  And even though this value system is man-made,it is unhindered by human morals or ethics. We programmed them this way! This, I believe, is an accurate description of the public-tradedcommercial corporation.

It is impossible to state with certainty that thetechnologies that we have today would have eventually appeared, regardless ofthe participation of corporations in an MTI society.  Still, I argue that the pace of technology,the uses of technology, and the impact of technology on our ecological overshootis inextricably tied to the singular quantitative value systems of commercialcorporations.  To push civilization tothe brink that we currently teeter on, it is necessary to have blinders to agreat deal of evidence of self-destructive behaviours – evidence and warningsthat go back hundreds of years.  Theability of monetary wealth to trump all other human and ethical values is thejust the thing to provide those blinders. After all, “it’s nothing personal – it’s just business”.

This is why, 20 years ago, when I asked the same “Why?”questions as did the researchers for this human behaviour crisis paper,I concluded that human behaviours were based on values, and what civilizationwas experiencing is a value crisis.

Human Behaviour Crisis or Value Crisis?

This is not just a rewording of exactly the same concept.  Good and bad behaviours can be difficult toempirically identify, but the difference between measuring success by qualityor measuring it by quantity (where more is always worth more) is crystalclear.  It is not that one value systemis good and the other is bad.  The pointis that if society gives number-based values practically unlimited power totrump every qualitative human value, we are headed for a guaranteed disaster –and ecological overshoot.

For example, when you can translate limited resources into alimitless value, impervious to decay, and do so in such a way that theresulting scarcity drives the value of additional consumption even higher, thatis a positive feedback recipe for resource annihilation.  If we’re looking for clues as to howhumans circumvented natural negative feedback mechanisms, it seems to me thatbasing much of society on value systems that freely create and leverageexponential curves without any hindrance from natural laws and limitations wouldbe a great place to start.

In addition, it is imperative that the role of corporations be included as an integral part of any search for solutions to the human behavioural crisis.  This is not just because of their phenomenal impact, but because, in the words of Yuval Noah Harari, public corporations are myths – they exist only on paper, and operate under arbitrary values and laws that we established in their entirety.  That proves that theoretically we could change any of those factors, and thus change those entities overnight. Such changes might not seem practical or likely right now, but those probabilities will change if/when we accept that civilization, as we know it, might be on the line.

Yes, I agree that human behaviour has been meticulously, psychologically (and mathematically) exploited.  This has been so effective and well-established that we are not only dealing with entrenched flawed perspectives – we also have gross examples of hedonic adaptation on a cultural scale.  Despite unprecedented population numbers, a large portion of the planet also consumes more energy, more materials, and more residential square footage per capita than ever before.  How can generations of people living this lifestyle ever be expected to voluntarily scale back?

I used to believe that the only mechanism possible to provide a paradigm shift of sufficient significance would be some kind of catastrophic system collapse.  I now believe that there is great potential in (re-)emerging policies like a Universal Basic Income, which severs the umbilical that our MTI society instituted between survival and the job-imperative, allowing people to view money, time, and lives in an altered light.

 (This is the seventh of a nine-part installment, offering a fresh new perspective on Climate Change.  For the big picture summary, see Turning Climate Change on its Head.)

Either effective action to halt or mitigate climate change is possible, or it’s not.  We've already considered the second option - the impossibility of effective climate change action.  Now let’s consider the first.

It’s even more interesting when we explore what happens if halting or mitigating climate change IS possible - and we do it.  Yes, the effort would be huge beyond belief, but imagine we could actually do it.  So what about the other complex crises currently looming over us?  Even if effective action on Climate Change were possible, we are still subject to all the other crises.  Indeed, while solving Climate Change would probably help with some of them (e.g. the Sixth mass extinction and food insecurity), it would merely allow every other complex crisis - the ones without the present stature and focus of Climate Change - to worsen.  We'd be putting society back on track to its own destruction!

We already touched on this dilemma in part 5 (The Complex Crises of Current Reality).  Let's say we managed to get the entire world on board with reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, using some solution that did not require a massive spike in manufacturing for energy alternatives.  We further convinced everyone to reduce energy usage and resource consumption.  We re-structured our societies to use guaranteed basic income models as an alternative to full employment as the general survival imperative.  We took more drastic measures to bring down the birth rate globally.  Yes, all of this is theoretically possible.

What does all of that do for the current rise in viral epidemics (or even another pandemic)?  Will we set aside our growing reliance on artificial intelligence?  Will social media no longer be used to spread misinformation or divide people into oppositional camps of thought?  Will the threat of global conflict (perhaps involving nuclear arms) go away?  Once rampant consumption is brought under control, will such lifestyle changes be applied equally or equitably?

Given the massive effort and focus required to make even a dent in climate change, would we still have the energy and resolve to address all of the other crises tugging at the fabric of civilization?  OR would removing the threat of climate change actually make the other situations worse?

I suggest that if we could remove the climate-related floods, fires, mega-storms, sea-rise, heatwaves, crop failures, etc. then there is a danger that we are simply removing the alarm from the alarm clock, and the other global challenges will catch us totally unawares.  Or worse...

Consider what is now happening as the threat of CoViD-19 decimating whole populations fades away from our collective radar screens.  The greatest push is for our economies to come roaring back to make up for all of the losses.  Economic growth is the only measure of success that we know.  If we were to somehow discover a technological solution for the mitigation of climate change, would our economy not go surging forward again, even less restrained than before?  Such a reaction would spell doom for civilization even more assuredly than climate change.  Why?  Because we would be removing yet another component of nature's negative feedback.

Every species needs some kind of negative feedback, and humans are no exception.

So, if I'm right, does that mean we are damned if we DO take climate change action and damned if we DON'T?

No.

I don't consider myself a doomsayer.  Indeed, I see all of this as a source of great optimism and hope.  In order to understand that, you have to understand the conclusion that all of this has been leading up to.

(Continue to part 8 of 9)

 (This is the seventh of a nine-part installment, offering a fresh new perspective on Climate Change.  For the big picture summary, see Turning Climate Change on its Head.)

Either effective action to halt or mitigate climate change is possible, or it’s not.  We've already considered the second option - the impossibility of effective climate change action.  Now let’s consider the first.

It’s even more interesting when we explore what happens if halting or mitigating climate change IS possible - and we do it.  Yes, the effort would be huge beyond belief, but imagine we could actually do it.  So what about the other complex crises currently looming over us?  Even if effective action on Climate Change were possible, we are still subject to all the other crises.  Indeed, while solving Climate Change would probably help with some of them (e.g. the Sixth mass extinction and food insecurity), it would merely allow every other complex crisis - the ones without the present stature and focus of Climate Change - to worsen.  We'd be putting society back on track to its own destruction!

We already touched on this dilemma in part 5.  Let's say we managed to get the entire world on board with reducing our dependence on fossil fuels, using some solution that did not require a massive spike in manufacturing for energy alternatives.  We further convinced everyone to reduce energy usage and resource consumption.  We re-structured our societies to use guaranteed basic income models as an alternative to full employment as the general survival imperative.  We took more drastic measures to bring down the birth rate globally.  Yes, all of this is theoretically possible.

What does all of that do for the current rise in viral epidemics (or even another pandemic)?  Will we set aside our growing reliance on artificial intelligence?  Will social media no longer be used to spread misinformation or divide people into oppositional camps of thought?  Will the threat of global conflict (perhaps involving nuclear arms) go away?  Once rampant consumption is brought under control, will such lifestyle changes be applied equally or equitably?

Given the massive effort and focus required to make even a dent in climate change, would we still have the energy and resolve to address all of the other crises tugging at the fabric of civilization?  OR would removing the threat of climate change actually make the other situations worse?

I suggest that if we could remove the climate-related floods, fires, mega-storms, sea-rise, heatwaves, crop failures, etc. then there is a danger that we are simply removing the alarm from the alarm clock, and the other global challenges will catch us totally unawares.  Or worse...

Consider what is now happening as the threat of CoViD-19 decimating whole populations fades away from our collective radar screens.  The greatest push is for our economies to come roaring back to make up for all of the losses.  Economic growth is the only measure of success that we know.  If we were to somehow discover a technological solution for the mitigation of climate change, would our economy not go surging forward again, even less restrained than before?  Such a reaction would spell doom for civilization even more assuredly than climate change.  Why?  Because we would be removing yet another component of nature's negative feedback.

Every species needs some kind of negative feedback, and humans are no exception.

So, if I'm right, does that mean we are damned if we DO take climate change action and damned if we DON'T?

No.

I don't consider myself a doomsayer.  Indeed, I see all of this as a source of great optimism and hope.  In order to understand that, you have to understand the conclusion that all of this has been leading up to.

(Continue to part 8 of 9)

(This is the sixth of a nine-part installment, offering a fresh new perspective on Climate Change.  For the big picture summary, see Turning Climate Change on its Head.)

Either effective action to halt or mitigate climate change is possible, or it’s not.  Let’s consider both options, starting with the second.

Climate Change is already well underway.  There’s a belief that what’s needed is serious political or corporate will, but I suggest the reality is that our predominant societal value system simply cannot accommodate the required actions.  If we also accept the inevitability of the law of consumption, and the fact that immunity from consequences is a myth, climate change WILL be in our future.

COP1 happened in the middle (1995),
followed by COP2 through COP27.
Note the absence of any change to trajectory.

I'm not going to hide my bias on the question of whether or not humankind is going to have any kind of significant impact on climate change.  This post is intentionally one-sided, because I will argue the opposite case in the next part.

History and Scope

Let's look at the history here.  We just wrapped up COP27.  COP stands for Conference of the Parties and will be attended by countries which signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - a treaty agreed in 1994.  28 years ago.  We have had 27 annual meetings to implement some actions since then.  And nothing meaningful has happened.  Nothing.  No one is even close to on track for promised targets, and the best outcomes just reached this year were some adaptation measures and an agreement to pay for some of the damage.  In other words, it looks like the participants are sort of assuming that climate change is now a done deal.  And the science tends to agree with that.

The scope of what would have to be undertaken now in order to make the slightest dent in climate change impacts is staggering.  And we recently got proof.  The best movement towards UNFCCC targets happened during the worldwide lockdowns inspired by the CoViD-19 pandemic.  Those changes to the level of economic activity are good illustrations of the tip of the actions-required iceberg.  And how well did we do with those?  Effective mitigation would likely require many more years of a similar scope of change.  Only bigger and lasting much longer.

Follow the Money

There are some who believe that this is a simple case of having the political and corporate will to make the changes necessary.  The actual driving forces in those two sectors are simple and widely recognized - stay in power and make a profit, respectively.  For the politicians, it is not just the case of waiting until enough people demand effective action - they also know that the electorate is not going to like the side effects of those actions.  Everyone wanted the pandemic to go away, but very few were long-term supporters of the measures required.  As a result, the governments bounced back and forth between healthcare and economic priorities - a strategy that helped create the multiple waves of pandemic surges.

My personal guess is that climate change action will follow the markets, just as it does now.  Up until this point, the money has been on climate change denial and ignorance (as in "ignoring"), because economies running at full speed is where the profit is.  As the world's population begins to get behind the climate action movement, a great deal of money will be made by corporations selling 'solutions' that are not really going to do much.  The temptation will be to apply economic solutions to a problem for which economic activity is the problem.  It won't work.

The Value Change Conundrum

Truly effective climate change action, in my books, calls for changes to which value systems take precedence in society.  Changes to the priority of value systems are tricky because people have to get past what I call the Value Change Conundrum.  It works like this:

You won't change your predominant value system until you see the benefits for doing so.
And yet the benefits may only be apparent after you have made the change. 

For example, if someone suggests that you should put more emphasis on organic eating, but you are presently focused on money, then you might never grasp the benefits of organic eating because the price of organic food is a significant downside under your current value system.  If the money is presently the most important thing, why would you choose to switch to a set of values where you will lose money?

In terms of climate change action, the costs of mitigation attempts will likely be significant in jobs, convenience, standard of living (quantity of stuff), GDP, etc.  Many people will suffer great hardships.  Who would choose this?  Especially, when many of the decision-makers are what I call NIMPLEs (Not In My Personal Life Expectancy).  They figure they may never see the benefits of their 'sacrifice' (as seen from their existing value system), so why do it?

The Facts

Here are the facts, as I see them:

The global population will continue to rise, unless taken out by catastrophe.The lifestyle changes needed to reduce consumption and energy will not happen voluntarily.Economic forces will oppose effective climate change action at every turn (because they have to).Even the richest nations cannot duck the climate change forces coming in ever-increasing strength.At best, COP28 through 40+ will continue to look at simply paying off the most climate-vulnerable.

In short, I don't think our civilization will achieve effective action against (or to seriously mitigate) climate change in time to avoid the most serious consequences.  I suggest that there are much better things we could be doing with our time and energy right now, in order to ensure the best possible outcomes for our species.

Admittedly, many would consider that a harsh reality, so if you disagree with that prognosis, let's consider the opposite one in the next part.

(Continue to part 7 of 9)

(This is the sixth of a nine-part installment, offering a fresh new perspective on Climate Change.  For the big picture summary, see Turning Climate Change on its Head.)

Either effective action to halt or mitigate climate change is possible, or it’s not.  Let’s consider both options, starting with the second.

Climate Change is already well underway.  There’s a belief that what’s needed is serious political or corporate will, but I suggest the reality is that our predominant societal value system simply cannot accommodate the required actions.  If we also accept the inevitability of the law of consumption, and the fact that immunity from consequences is a myth, climate change WILL be in our future.

COP1 happened in the middle (1995),
followed by COP2 through COP27.
Note the absence of any change to trajectory.

I'm not going to hide my bias on the question of whether or not humankind is going to have any kind of significant impact on climate change.  This post is intentionally one-sided, because I will argue the opposite case in the next part.

History and Scope

Let's look at the history here.  We just wrapped up COP27.  COP stands for Conference of the Parties and will be attended by countries which signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) - a treaty agreed in 1994.  28 years ago.  We have had 27 annual meetings to implement some actions since then.  And nothing meaningful has happened.  Nothing.  No one is even close to on track for promised targets, and the best outcomes just reached this year were some adaptation measures and an agreement to pay for some of the damage.  In other words, it looks like the participants are sort of assuming that climate change is now a done deal.  And the science tends to agree with that.

The scope of what would have to be undertaken now in order to make the slightest dent in climate change impacts is staggering.  And we recently got proof.  The best movement towards UNFCCC targets happened during the worldwide lockdowns inspired by the CoViD-19 pandemic.  Those changes to the level of economic activity are good illustrations of the tip of the actions-required iceberg.  And how well did we do with those?  Effective mitigation would likely require many more years of a similar scope of change.  Only bigger.

Follow the Money

There are some who believe that this is a simple case of having the political and corporate will to make the changes necessary.  The actual driving forces in those two sectors are simple and widely recognized - stay in power and make a profit, respectively.  For the politicians, it is not just the case of waiting until enough people demand effective action - they also know that the electorate is not going to like the side effects of those actions.  Everyone wanted the pandemic to go away, but very few were long-term supporters of the measures required.  As a result, the governments bounced back and forth between healthcare and economic priorities - a strategy that helped create the multiple waves of pandemic surges.

My personal guess is that climate change action will follow the markets, just as it does now.  Up until this point, the money has been on climate change denial and ignorance (as in "ignoring"), because economies running at full speed is where the profit is.  As the world's population begins to get behind the climate action movement, a great deal of money will be made by corporations selling 'solutions' that are not really going to do much.  The temptation will be to apply economic solutions to a problem for which economic activity is the problem.  It won't work.

The Value Change Conundrum

Truly effective climate change action, in my books, calls for changes to which value systems take precedence in society.  Changes to the priority of value systems are tricky because people have to get past what I call the Value Change Conundrum.  It works like this:

You won't change your predominant value system until you see the benefits for doing so.
And yet the benefits may only be apparent after you have made the change. 

For example, if someone suggests that you should put more emphasis on organic eating, but you are presently focused on money, then you might never grasp the benefits of organic eating because the price of organic food is a significant downside under your current value system.  If the money is presently the most important thing, why would you choose to switch to a set of values where you will lose money?

In terms of climate change action, the costs of mitigation attempts will likely be significant in jobs, convenience, standard of living (quantity of stuff), GDP, etc.  Many people will suffer great hardships.  Who would choose this?  Especially, when many of the decision-makers are what I call NIMPLEs (Not In My Personal Life Expectancy).  They figure they may never see the benefits of their 'sacrifice' (as seen from their existing value system), so why do it?

The Facts

Here are the facts, as I see them:

The global population will continue to rise, unless taken out by catastrophe.The lifestyle changes needed to reduce consumption and energy will not happen voluntarily.Economic forces will oppose effective climate change action at every turn (because they have to).Even the richest nations cannot duck the climate change forces coming in ever-increasing strength.At best, COP28 through 40+ will continue to look at simply paying off the most climate-vulnerable.

In short, I don't think our civilization will achieve effective action against (or to seriously mitigate) climate change in time to avoid the most serious consequences.  I suggest that there are much better things we could be doing with our time and energy right now, in order to ensure the best possible outcomes for our species.

Admittedly, many would consider that a harsh reality, so if you disagree with that prognosis, let's consider the opposite one in the next part.

(Continue to part 7 of 9)