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Change

In the first of his four maxims on habit, philosopher William James writes that “in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible” (1890). Climate scientist Michael Mann suggests such an approach should be applied more broadly :

“Climate action requires a fundamental transition in our new global economy and massive new infrastructure, but there is no reason to think we can’t accomplish it – and accomplish it rapidly – with the right market incentives… [that] must involve both supply-side and demand-side measures” (2021, p. 120).

Mann cautions that clear messaging is critical to climate action. Referencing activist and author Naomi Klein’s more inclusive approach, that “climate change can’t be separated from other pressing social problems, each a symptom of neoliberalism; income inequality, corporate surveillance, misogyny and white supremacy”, Mann suggests “such framing fans the flames of the conservative fever swamps, reinforcing the right-wing trope that environmentalists are ‘watermelons’ (green on the outside, red on the inside) who secretly want to use environmental sustainability as an excuse for overthrowing capitalism and ending economic growth” (2021, p. 95).

Whether cutting emissions or considering riskier geoengineering approaches in climate action, the critical factor is consensus, according to physicist David Keith, and such decision-making

“demands an extension of our moral compass to include beings distant from our day-to-day world: future generations, the distant poor, and the natural world. No basket of technical fixes will solve the carbon-climate problem if humanity cannot reach some rough social consensus about shared values that drive action” (2013, p. 173).

In building consensus, are we to agree with author of the counter-cultural “Whole Earth Catalogue” (1968), Stewart Brand, who states that climate change is everyone’s problem, “because it was brought about by damn near everyone, and unintentionally”? (2009, p. 293). What of the systems underlying carbon emissions and how do they square with climate action if, as activist Clive Hamilton claims, “the root cause of environmental ills is over-consumption driven by industrial capitalism”? Do solutions demand “fundamental social reforms, not new technologies that merely buy us more breathing space”? (2013, p. 127).

Brand, S. (2009) Whole Earth Discipline. New York, United States: Penguin Books

James, W. (1890), Habit, in The Principles of Psychology, Volume I, Chapter IV, (pp. 122 – 127). New York, United States: Henry Holt and Co. [HTML document] retrieved April 2022 from https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin4.htm

Keith, D. (2013) A Case for Climate Engineering. Cambridge, United States: Boston Review – The MIT Press

Mann, M. (2021) The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back the Planet. New York, United States: PublicAffairs – Hachette Book Group

 

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Climate

Our culture of individuated, managed climates and our desire for absolute control over personal comfort, only recently exacerbated by pandemic circumstances, has us sequestered in homes, cars, and workplaces, even creating artificial worlds within these, and in which our children grow ever more content.

In his exploration of the effects of refrigerants, air-conditioning, and our growing need for constant comfort in his book, “After Cooling” (2021), author Eric Dean Wilson observes that the production of world-altering chlorofluorocarbon and hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants encouraged environments of “constant work, constant comfort, and individual safety within a small, enclosed space, an unwavering investment in personal, individual choice at the expense of the long-term comfort and safety of the general public” (2021, p. 293).

Apart from the greenhouse gases created by the outlawed CFC and newer HFC refrigerant variants, with “a global warming potential 1300 times that of carbon dioxide” (2021, p. 291), Wilson states our air-conditioned lifestyles mirror more deeply a corresponding social upheaval from communal street neighbourhoods and front porch socializing to withdrawn self-pursuit and privacy. Does this in turn spell a waning concern for Nature; seeing her either as some fearsome, fickle, unpredictable other, or, as akin to our closed spaces themselves, capable of easy technological adjustment ?

Climate “inactivists” according to climate scientist Michael Mann in his book, “The New Climate Wars” (2021), tout “reassuring, plausible-sounding alternative solutions that do not pose a threat to the fossil fuel juggernaut” (2021 p. 146). These include “clean coal”, “bridge fuels”, and “geoengineering”. One example of the latter; injecting sulfates into the stratosphere to induce restorative climate change, despite its promises, according to proponent David Keith in his book, “A Case for Climate Engineering” (2013), will nonetheless “contribute to air pollution”, “likely increase damage to the ozone layer”, and even in the best case “will make some regions worse off, perhaps by increasing drought” (p. 10, 11). Given the recent increase in extreme weather associated with climate change, does such an approach not carry even greater risk, given what we are now learning about the implications of perturbing vast, complex natural systems?

In terms of meaningful action on climate change, Mann argues that both individual efforts as well as top-down regulation and policy are needed. However, he states that we should not think “our duty is done when you recycle your bottles or ride your bike to work. We cannot solve this problem without deep, systemic change” (2021, p. 97):

“Personal actions, from going vegan to avoiding flying, are increasingly touted as the primary solution to the climate crisis. Though these actions are worth taking, a fixation on voluntary action alone takes the pressure off the push for governmental policies to hold corporate polluters responsible. In fact, one recent study suggests that an emphasis on small personal actions can actually undermine support for the substantive climate policies needed” (2021, p. 3).

Keith, D. (2013) A Case for Climate Engineering. Cambridge, United States: Boston Review – The MIT Press

Mann, M. (2021) The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back the Planet. New York, United States: PublicAffairs – Hachette Book Group

Wilson, E. D. (2021) After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort. New York, United States: Simon & Schuster

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Wholeness

According to Wiktionary, the first recorded uses of the word holy are a literal translation of “wholly”, as healthy and whole, in both Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Indo-European languages. This use predates more recent Old and Middle English ecclesiastical meanings of the word.

Physicist David Bohm points to scientific evidence for the wholeness of the universe as lying in two theoretical frameworks. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity whose key tenet that the universe is a continuous, dynamic space-time field, out of which particles emerge as singular, strong regions and whose stable pulses gradually merge with other particles, describes an underlying unity where space and time are themselves relative aspects of the whole. The second framework, Quantum Theory, describes three particular characteristics of wholeness. First, its processes, such as electricity and magnetism, are themselves whole and indivisible; second is the wave-particle duality which, dependent on the observational context, describes a wholeness from different perspectives; and third is the notion of non-locality, where particles exhibit properties of interconnection, hence wholeness, despite being physically apart.

These two broad frameworks run counter to classical Newtonian physics, if only in the sense that the latter highlights the study of the part, whereas Relativity and Quantum theory look instead at the primacy of the whole. Bohm illustrated this difference by equating a description of Newtonian physics to the apparent random behaviour of particle-like people at a busy downtown intersection, each moving under their individual directives; as compared to the fluid, quantum-mechanical motion of dancers in a ballet, where the whole is given salience, and thus points to pattern and process as integral to larger systems.

Philosophers Baruch Spinoza and Alfred North Whitehead, each a naturalist in their respective times, described a wholeness, a God, in nature, and vice versa in their Panpsychic worldviews. Big-thinking renegade biologist Rupert Sheldrake extends this notion all the way up to Space, arguing that celestial bodies and stars, including our own sun, possess a form of consciousness. Such speculation suggests large, self-organizing space-time systems as exemplary of an even greater unity, not unlike James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis of planet Earth as a large, self-regulating system.

Despite our best intentions in attempting to perceive things from broader Systems Theory perspectives, a tendency to fragment and compartmentalize can arise due to an incomplete recognition of the wholeness, which is often hidden beneath layers of complexity and interdependence. When complicated challenges such as anthropogenic climate change are faced, Nobel laureate economist William Nordhaus describes the vexing issue of comparing present and future costs and benefits of climate change mitigation strategies, and a tendency to discount “the benefits of the societal value of reduced damages in the future” (2013, p. 182). In key environmental spheres of thought, meaningful opportunities at climate change mitigation are said to be nearly lost, with some suggesting the most cost-effective approach at this point is one of societal adaptation to its effects.

Bohm believes that a central incoherence which arises from failing to properly recognize wholeness, in all of its forms, is due to communication. The nature of language, according to Bohm, is that it has been developed to emphasize the part over the whole. Regardless, language can be used differently, as in the case of poetry, not to mention all of the various potentials held by new communication technologies. If we then draw parallels between naturally occurring systems and larger, more complex ones, does Bohm’s random crowd versus ballet metaphor not have particular relevance today? As a society, are we exercising our potential to behave quantum-mechanically, as coordinated dancers in a ballet, or rather as objects in a Newtonian space; each on our own separate path?

Nordhaus, W. (2013) The Climate Casino. New Haven, United States: Yale University Press