Problems

• Food production is declining (while fossil fuel use is rising)
• CO2 and grains–more CO2, less nutrients
• Heat and labor productivity
• Water . . .
  • 70% for irrigation
  • 40% of food from irrigated lands
• Insects, pests in a warmer world
• More oil to grow less food
• Risk
  • Monocultures
  • Food safety
  • Chemical dependence
• Energy
• Consumption

What is happening?

It isn’t as if we don’t know what to do. Humans are ingenious that way. But we have an economic system that is disconnected from the environment, and a political system driven by an economic system dominated by large, well-organized corporations mandated to generate sustained, legal and increasing profits for their shareholders.

What’s a species to do? McKibben lays out some of the many things that are happening, which suggests humans can halt and possibly reverse some of the trends that have created the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

• Topsoil
  • composting
  • food waste
  • green manure, double digging, etc.
• Seed
  • evolutionary processes vs genetic engineering and fossil fuels
  • Local
• Seasons
  • Greenhouses (where they’re still needed, anyway) to extend seasons
• Polyculture
  • agroforestry (and fish!)
  • Melding of tradition and science
  • crop rotation
• Permaculture
• Scale of farming (i.e., smaller)
• Capital vs labor
• Diet
• Price of food and welfare of farmers
• Land use
  • Recolonizing suburbia (less asphalt, more gardens)
  • Local food (local seems to be a recurring theme … why?)
• Consumption?
• Energy
  • renewables–solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, biomass, tidal action
  • Conservation–greater efficiency, lighting, insulation
  • Smart growth–less car miles traveled (carpooling, public transit, fuel efficiency, bicycles . . . . . more local economy)
  • distributed generation (closer to home–transporting electrons is expensive)

That’s quite a list. Combined those measures in their myriad forms and locales suggest the potential for real change, but mostly from the bottom. Change from the bottom often implies two likelihoods:

• First, slow pace. Beneficiaries of existing power structures don’t give of themselves freely to the enterprise of change. It could happen, though, in the future that shifts in public opinion that don’t require physical geography (social media) to spread could do so more quickly, even virulently (350.org–with McKibben at the spiritual head–tries to do this, in fact).
• Second, structural transformation. Because the changes occur at a pretty elemental level–the level of actual individuals in the society or social group–sudden reversals, even a leveling off, are rare occurrences. For instance, policies trying to change trends in marriage and divorce seem destined to fail from this perspective. Changing consumption patterns, transportation systems, are difficult under the best of situations, where lobbying and campaign financing are heavily restricted.

Obstacles

• People’s consumption patterns — we’re not just ‘novelty junkies,’ as McKibben says, we’re consumption junkies
• Politics — corporate capture of government, regulatory agencies–can governments respond to on-the-ground realities, even if it portends the end of ‘too big to fail’ companies?
• Economics — Can markets incorporate environmental values? Can profit be considered in the same breath as sustainability, and can an economic system be re-tooled to reward sustainable business models, rather than short-term profiteering?
• Information — if all of the sudden people need to learn how to grow food, how to do things for themselves, will the information network/system required to make that happen be available, sustainable, and up to the challenge (or driven by, yes, short-term commercial interests)?

Elizabeth Kolbert quotes a couple of scientists in a New Yorker piece, discussing the CO2 atmospheric concentration passing the 400 ppm milestone at Mauna Loa, first, Charles Keeling’s son, then a marine geologist:

• (Ralph Keeling, geochemist) “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds.”
• (Maureen Raymo, marine geologist) “It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster.”
• Then there was former Prime Minister of Canada Stephen Harper (commenting on the proposed extension of the Keystone Pipeline), “All the facts are overwhelmingly on the side of approval, I know the (Obama) Administration will do a thorough analysis before arriving at the right decision.”

E.O. Wilson–Biodiversity and the support mechanisms needed to preserve it

• Industrial society has made he says ‘mistakes in capital investment.’ This is similar to what E.F. Schumacher was saying four decades ago–industrial economies treat natural capital like pure income, which affects how it is valued, and whether it is managed for sustainability in the long-term.
• Some measures:
  • First, step away from dogma, from ethnocentric views (similar to how we’ve discussed technology, ‘human exemptionalism’)
  • Second, disarm. Warmaking and weapons and military expenditures not only cause great environmental harm, they are used to support countries’ economic interests, rather than the species’ need to preserve enough of the planet to sustain its numbers in large proportions
  • Separate real issues from politics–the ‘sides’ to this debate distract from what’s happening to the environment, to living systems, to the climate system. These are not partisan issues that will affect conservatives differently than liberals.
  • Religious movements toward stewardship–Wilson believes that there is hope that many organized religions will get on board, and bring their adherents with them.
• Specific actions
  • Save biodiversity hotspots–there is some urgency here, especially with respect to the tropics, and old-growth forests;
  • Concentrate on water, lakes and river systems, and marine ecosystems;
  • Find ways to make conservation profitable, to more accurately valuate biodiversity
  • Population planning
  • Support the institutional capacity of Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Says McKibben (p 212): ‘Eaarth represents the deepest of human failures. But we must live on the world we’ve created–lightly, carefully, gracefully.’