Comments on: Don’t sweat the small stuff, Copenhagen is just a training exercise.

By: Ricardo Pinto

Ricardo Pinto — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 11:03:01 +0000

I agree. It seems to me that what we now have is the the whole world admitting publicly that we this threat is real. The developed nations tried to force their usual kind of solution and the rest of the world wasn’t having it. So the failure of business as usual to deal with this problem has been clearly demonstrated not to work. Considering where things began, this seems to me to be quite good progress…

By: David Stout

David Stout — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:12:41 +0000

I share McGrath’s frustration with (simply) smell the roses and wait for the big boys to wake up.

I believe that the problem is a generational and psychological one. Mr Micawber rules, because, politically, we “elders” (who presently have the potential to take difficult and pressing collective decisions) have not evolved to respond to, and to anticipate and preempt events that are set well beyond our own life spans. We may be able to crawl out of short-termism into the medium-term, but not into the necessary long term. Most of us are congenitally unable to process the fact that – as a Chinese philosopher pointed out – if a tree is to reach maturity in one hundred years, then it has to be planted today.

The SALT treaties were possible because the nuclear holocaust was well within the timeline of the leaders. What a difference it would make if the creeping threat to the Florida coastline was within the next five years, not the next thirty to fifty.

It is difficult, perhaps too difficult, for the powerful elders to make sacrifices to save their children’s children, when they are neither absolutely convinced of it, nor feel imminent danger to themselves. Even the relatively young Barak Obama is more a time-server, than a time-lord. The Chinese leaders fall back on the convenient cop-out: “we didn’t cause it. You, who did, must solve it.”

If, with the same predictive certainty as a future eclipse, the world’s astronomers announced that an annihilating comet was on a collision path with the earth on July 30, 2050, we just might not sit around and smell the roses. Even if it took all the world’s scientific and technological resources, there is a good chance that they would somehow be mobilised with little delay, to seek to find a way to divert it from its path or to destroy it. That case is different: the event would be certain beyond peradventure; the timetable would be exactly known; and it could not be said to have been anybody’s fault or unique responsibility.

The challenge is to keep working so fast and hard on the science, on the geo-politics and on global outreach that cataclysmic global warming is universally understood to be quite a lot like that comet on its earthbound track.

David.

By: Diane Atkinson

Diane Atkinson — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 03:39:42 +0000

Of course activists still need be active as this will drive the solutions but I also sense that the whole debate will move dramatically as humanity comes to grips with this problem. This has happened amongst the engaged few but it feels like critical mass is being reached and the debate and responses will accelerate from this point. Individuals have difficulty changing, and societies even more so, but there are some indicators out there of the shift that is underway.

Last week I read in the financial review that power companies are struggling to refinance loans for the continued operation of their coal-fired plants. The world of finance is reading the writing on the wall, and this has implications for future investment decisions. This has happened even though Labor is only proposing the weakest of targets with compensation to polluters.

So while activism will still be incredibly important, why not smell the roses with the confidence that the battle can be won?

By: Tony

Tony — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 13:54:01 +0000

Superb stuff Paul, you are hitting the nail on the head with this article and your RN piece. As a climate activist myself, I’ve been pondering these questions for a while and it’s good to have some confirmation on what I suspected were the real answers.

By: doug

doug — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 07:20:25 +0000

Paul i enjoyed your talk on radio national this morning,i think you are one of a very small group of people in the world who are aware of what is really happening .on the question of forests it gives me great hope,when i observe the bushland in the central victorian area that has been totally devastated by mining and farming over many years ,it is now regenerating naturally with out help from anyone.if we just give nature half a chance i am sure we can survive in this world

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:40:16 +0000

Delighted to hear your reasoned (relatively) optimistic scenario (WW2 analogy is OK: after all, we won) but curious about your reasons for such confirmed pessimism on the science on which I have done a lot of reading including stuff about cloud formation, precipitation, evaporation and long term ocean movements which are allegedly inadeqately modeled by the “consensus” scientists. Given that we are in a generally warming phase and that CO2 contributes something to it, how come the confident modelers can’t retropredict such events during the Holocene such as the drying up of the Great Lakes and falls of the Indus and Egyptian Old Kingdom civiilisations?
***
Also, why shouldn’t Australia make itself as rich as possible from the burning and exporting of coal and then, instead of using the wealth in the style of English speaking consumerism, build up a find as Norway has from oil revenue, so we can look after ourselves, and others, come what may (plus fund research not being done elsewhere on a much larger scale than we can afford)? And what about population? True it has its own momentum but small pensions to women of child-bearing age who are being educated instead of bearing and rearing children would go some way to solve a number of the world’s problems.

By: Marie Sullivan

Marie Sullivan — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 04:59:20 +0000

Paul I heard you speak for the first time on ABC News Radio this morning – Sunday 14 June and just delighted to hear you talk openly, positively and with good humour. Not that the present and future issues we are facing are humorous but your approach is to describing the approaches to life by humans is very amusing and real. There are too many of us in the world, using far too many resources and wanting more than we need. I have just returned from a trip to the Flinders Ranges and Lake Eyre and even this landscape is testament to the folly of how important grazing and making money is even though the landscape is not able to support this any longer. I just loved listening to you and would welcome a discussion and debate any time around an outside fire where I live on Yorke Peninsula. The more we encourage discussions and debates, especially involving the younger members of our communities, the more likely you and I and others in our age group will see more positive and realistic changes in individuals and community groups. I have lived and worked remotely too in Cape York, Queensland and the aboriginal elders helped me to understand the power of how younger members of communities are more likely to change the actions and attitudes of their families than politicians or enforced rules made by people they don’t know. This is an area of work I would welcome more opportunities to work in. Look forward to receiving your chronicles and hearing more from you. Perhaps you could recommend articles, books, publications etc. which would be useful for us all to digest. Cheers.

By: Ian

Ian — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 03:49:36 +0000

If you think science and facts based on past experiences is the only way to change, don’t read any further, you will only think I’m a dreamer and not aware of the hard road we need to take to solve any of this. It still appears that any solution, while recognising that reductions everywhere are necessary, is still missing a vital point – that is one of connection to ourselves first. One that allows recognition not reaction. While I wholeheartedly agree with a ‘cradle to cradle’ full cycle approach to ‘commerce’, unless we as a world community of people first recognise our own separation from who we are in-truth, the energy we emit through reaction (anger to, greed, need, denial of, defence of etc) will continue to add to global warming. Huh, another crack-pot here? Science can record heat emissions from a person, multiplied by how many billions of people on earth, is it feasible that it would create a momentum of energy? Do we actually believe that ‘our energy’ and reaction to matters doesn’t contribute at all, whether it’s one persons anger, or a full scale war between countries? There is no consequence here?

Be individual for sure, but if we don’t first meet each other by expressing from our truth and stop doing what we’re doing and start doing what is needed, our planet will never respond positively to any energy of reaction – the pattern of misuse will continue as before and the doubters will say, see I told you it wouldn’t change anything.
It (just) takes a collective shift in consciousness first, so the greater good is honoured and there are individually, more people interested in good than bad – we just need to connect.

By: Anne

Anne — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 13:01:52 +0000

hmmm. Unfortunately judging by the version of human history that I’m reading in Clive Ponting’s “A new green history of the world”, I find the conviction that “it is inevitable that humanity will one day soon wake up” rather optimistic. We’ve woken up to these issues in the past precisely never, leading to the collapse of many past civilizations, and much irreversible destruction; I’m not sure why you believe we’ll act differently this time. And all that is assuming it is not already too late, what with those pesky feedback mechanisms…

By: Gail

Gail — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:31:32 +0000

How can I say the forests are all doomed? First of all, to specifically address the CO2 is good for plants, go to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFGU6qvkmTI&feature=channel_page

And then more generally, go to my blog witsendnj.blogspot.com and find the post titled Effects of Climate Change in the archives. Then write me if you still don’t understand.