Radical Noesis - Thinking outside the box

I urge you to read two reports side by side. One was just released by the British Treasury Department and is the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. The other was released in February of 2005 and is called the Hirsch Report. Its actual title is "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management." It is an SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation) and was sponsored by the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the Department of Energy.

Both of these issues are problems that pose immense challenges to humans and nations. The impacts of both can be moderated with immediate and significant action. Those actions require economic investments, political will, and significant changes in the way that "rich" nations live their lives. Both issues are global in scope, and neither are being successfully addressed at this point in time, and time is running out.

The global environment is being directed by hegemonic capitalism (corporate forces and an elite class) which dramatically exploits both the environment and peoples of "poor" nations while enforcing massive overconsumption as a way of life in rich nations. The structural controls of a manufactured dependency have trapped most nations into a mobius strip of environmental destruction. The "competition" in place keeps rich nations from significantly turning away from the lifestyles and societal forms which are running the world perilously close to disaster. Meanwhile poor nations are locked into exploitation of their resources and their people or face total collapse. The current system is effectively immobilizing any significant action.

Just thinking about it makes one's head hurt. We have to act, but we can't act. Nations are afraid to cooperate because they might lose their "competitive edge." In desperation, plans are put forward to try and make reducing global warming gas emissions, or rain forest destruction, "profitable." Carbon taxes .. emissions trading ... and other such "strategies" ... are trying to work within a profit-based capitalist market without "jostling" the existing system "too much." This seems patently insane to me. The current system is dependent upon an endless growth (hence endless resource) environment. However, we live in a closed system with limited resources. We live in an environment which can neither maintain or support endless growth. Therefore, efforts to continue on the current path in a "friendlier" manner only slightly slows down the destruction - at best. Ultimately, the path itself is unsustainable.

My favorite quote in this era is Albert Einstein's "The significant problems we face can not be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. " In other words, we cannot solve the problems generated by a model based on constant growth and ever increasing consumption by finding ways to keep that system in place. Following this path is ultimately fatal. That doesn't mean that there are not solutions. It does mean that those solutions will be found on a different path based on a different system.

Changing paths is scary and fraught with the potential for chaos. Changing paths requires a change of mind (we need to think and conceptualize differently), and a change of heart (we need to value things differently). Changing paths takes far more courage than doggedly fighting to an end we know is doomed. Staying on our current path encourages false hope on the surface and fatalism in our heart of hearts. Keeping that in place apparently requires increasing amounts of pharmaceuticals and "circuses." The pharmaceuticals to keep us numb and functioning, and the circuses to keep us distracted from the reality in front of our noses.

It is clear that our "leaders" are not going to "lead" us out of this morass. As usual when great change is needed, it must be we the people who lead. In this case, that "we, the people" must be the inhabitants of the planet. "We" will either meet these challenges and save the planet and ourselves, or "we" will be another layer of bones and pottery lost in the dust of time.