Plan C

This is the show, and it's not going to get any better, any time soon, without you. SO STOP WATCHING THE TV AND GET ON BOARD!

Nick Kettles and Pat Thomas

Have you become a natural disaster junkie?  It makes compelling viewing doesn't it?

Check the body count for a few days after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Monitor news daily to see if the fourth nuclear reactor has blown up in Japan, after the recent tsunami.

Did you keep track of how many flights were grounded last year, when the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland erupted?  Shake your head as the Haiti earthquake death toll rose to 250,000 plus. Hold your breath over last year’s Sumatran earthquake and the resulting tsunami; would it be as devastating as the 2004 Indian Ocean quake/tsunami the force of which was helpfully measured by the scientists as being the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, claiming at least 225,000 lives? And what about those Chilean miners and their two months underground?

Be honest, are you secretly pleased by every new distraction that our earth is offering up with increasing frequency?

These are devastating acts of nature – for which we believe there are no explanations and over which we have no control. In many ways it is easier to live with the cold quantification of these disasters, the body counts, millisieverts leaked, the tonnes of wreckage, the cubic litres of ash, hours of oxygen left than it is to feel anything real.

Yet, perhaps, this is to be expected. The natural human tendency to stand like a deer in the headlights, in front of a truck rushing towards us does seem to beggar belief, but should we really wonder?

Afterall, Hollywood has done such a fine job of anaesthetising us to the reality of significant weather and earth based phenomena, with an endless stream of disaster movies, dating back beyond Towering Inferno from the 70s, that we are left unable to distinguish the difference between a tsunami in the film 2012, and the tsunami that destroyed so much of Sendai last week.

Emotionally numb we may at best be moved by one event – but dare we connect the dots and not just consider whether they are related, but whether we are culpable; whether human-created climate change is driving these disasters?

But how could they be?  A volcano in Iceland, surely can't be connected to an earthquake in Japan, or a flood in Australia?  We can relate, perhaps to a hurricane being linked to climate change, but a causal chain including earthquakes, and or volcanoes is harder to grasp and more often the domain of people who knock at your door and invite you into a discussion about the Old Testament.

And yet the possibility that the greenhouse effect causes the earth's tectonic plates to shift is something that serious scientists are now willing to speculate on, see here and, here.

It’s possible – but hey, why wait for the data before deciding what to do?

You know the moment it comes in someone's going to dispute it, and even if they don't, it won't lead to anything more than incremental change on a governmental level, so why not do something completely different as the basis for making your own mind up.

Granted, this something isn't that easy when your head's full of the latest news reportage, so you may want to switch off your TV set before you try it.

What we're proposing is that you listen to your intuition.  That's right.

Undervalued and at best recognised as a so called soft skill in the business world, intuition, or our gut instinct or sixth sense, is probably the most powerful barometer of what to do that we have today.

It takes courage to say, y'know, I don't care whether the idea that Climate Change is man-made is disputed, or whether there are in fact cyclical patterns of extreme weather historically, I'm still going to change my behaviour in relationship to the earth, because that's what my intuition tells me to do.

Today, our hearts tell us that humanity has a reciprocal and interdependent relationship with the earth, and that if we all acted in harmony with Her we would experience a fundamentally different world.

We'd cling less to dramatic headlines and the comfort of our TV experts, we wouldn’t blur the lines between natural disaster and man-made catastrophe, we'd sync into natural cycles and JUST KNOW what our place in all this was.

Humans are the only living things that compulsively live and work against their own natural cycles, and as such against their own well being. Homosapien is an entire race of Homer Simpsons sticking its fingers into a light socket over and over again to see if maybe THIS TIME we get a different result. Intuition cuts through this crazy behaviour.

Our hearts tell us that living simply and closer to the land is not just common sense but ultimately the key to lasting happiness and a fulfilled life.

That individual rights and social responsibility are not mutually exclusive, and that in fact loving service of others is the key to Self discovery.

Our intuition tells us to reject the idea that we are all helpless victims of life. And most importantly that we don't need another extreme weather event to verify our intuition to live in harmony with the earth.

As the earthquake rocked Japan and split open her nuclear reactors, Nick arranged a barter with his neighbour, to acquire his first Bee hive that will soon help to pollinate his family's vegetable plot and increase its yield.

Pat planted seeds. Just three windowsills and some pots – but in the middle of the city this is her Eden, her way of staying grounded and putting something back.

What does your intuition tell you to do?

 

 

 

What do you do when the hand of fate presses pause?

Nick Kettles

It’s a rainy day at a fete in beautiful, rural South West France, near the Pyrenees.  The tannoy system is being manned by a jovial man in his fifties, tasked with the job of announcing the next event, prize winners and parking problems over the crackly microphone.   

He’s doing a Stirling job, not only with his key announcements, but also his charming, running commentary about local history, the minutiae of a typical French village celebration, and what it was like last year when it wasn’t raining.    

One suspects he may be filling the spaces between his key announcements, to keep people interested in spite of the rain, in the same way DJ’s waffle on in between records, or simply to avoid the whine and whistle caused by turning a tannoy on and off, too often.  But then something happens which reveals there may be a different reason for his bubbling banter.   

The generator which has been keeping the tannoy system running, runs out of petrol without warning, and leaves our announcer suddenly severed from his audience. 

Without his banter, the contrast is stark.  It is uncomfortable. We don’t know what to do. Everyone suddenly stops moving and talking, like marionettes without an animator. <

The awkward silence stretches on, people shuffle disorientated, heave and sigh, talk in muffled voices, avoid each other’s gaze, before finally, like a clarion call that life has once more commenced, the generator roars into life and after a long whining noise signalling the tannoy is back in action, the announcer reanimates us, and we shuffle on to resume our pre-interruption tour of the fete.

Could it be that even in rural France, where many still rise in the morning to the sound of the cock crowing people have become so conditioned to aural blight through different media from an early age, that they need a constant stream of background noise, in order to feel comfortable with themselves?

Or, more likely, that they are just like nearly every other human being in the Western world, who feels naked, exposed and vulnerable, when the system they have invested so much faith in temporarily breaks down?

I would venture that this is exactly how the many thousands of people left stranded by the grounding of thousands of air flights across Europe felt.

I wonder if any of them, saw it as an opportunity to reconsider their place in the world, and whether another way of living in relation to the earth and each other, is possible?   

How many will have considered what their lives might be like without the pineapple chunks form Ghana or baby sweetcorn from Thailand or cut flowers from Africa, which arrive on their supermarket shelves via air cargo freight plane?    

If some of them had stepped out of the airport waiting lounge, for a while will they have noticed that in the sky free of contrails, the birds were singing louder – no doubt appreciating the opportunity to call for a mate in daylight.   

Previous reports suggest that  London birds had taken to singing at night, because they couldn’t get a tweet in edgewise above the noise pollution to which air flights contribute significantly.

Or, might they have taken the opportunity to be curious about the people sitting next to them, beyond the fact they were waiting for the same flight.  If they had struck up conversation, how many would have reached the same conclusions Corrina Gordon-Barnes explores in her incredibly prescient blog post “When All The Planes Are Grounded.”?    

Or will people have simply associated these moments of quiet reflection as synonymous with boredom, lassitude, lack of choice and, more worryingly, the fear of being out of touch with what the next ‘new thing’ is? 

Always on, comfortably numb by degree, and completely oblivious of our place in the world, until the hand that turns the wheel of fate presses the pause button momentarily and we are forced to reconsider our raison d’etre for existing?   

We don’t need to wait for further Nature inspired interruptions, such as Iceland’s volcanic eruption, to wake us from our stupor, and knock us from our Hamster wheels, but that may be the only way we learn to reconnect with the web of life, where our inter-dependence is self evident in every choice we make.

If they do come, the first step will be to recognize that our fear and sense of vulnerability is not a sign of impending doom, but instead a powerful emotion which can be used to raise our awareness of not just how to deal with contingency, but to also consider a new way of being and relating with one and other.

Breeders of the world unite..

Nick Kettles

Statistics damn statistics. 

Without them they’re would be no environment debate. 

They set the parameters of where we’re at, and where we’re heading, and, at the same time, their ability to objectify the beauty of human relationships as a series of mathematical formula is simply spectacular.

At no time has this been more clearly illustrated, than in the environment movement’s very own bête noire, the debate about population growth and its impact on climate change.

The facts are in. 

Today, there are nearly 7 billion people and rising. It's estimated by 2050, there will be upwards of  9 billion. The UK's Optimum Population Trust estimates the world's sustainable population is 5 billion. 

According to the Earth Policy Institute's Lester Brown, Population growth, "contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil, and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives."

Join the dots: More people equals more carbon CONSUMPTION.  Less babies less carbon CONSUMPTION.  People who have them are selfish, so stop having them.  

Indeed, a recent study at Oregon State University has concluded that in the US, the carbon footprint of having an extra child, is almost 20 times more important than any other actions a couple might take in their entire lives: things like driving a high mileage car, recycling, or using energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs. Moreover, they conclude, the long term carbon footprint of a every child born  - along with all its descendants – is likely to have more than 160 times the impact of a child born in Bangladesh.

So, there you have it. 

Children, like commodities, carry their own carbon rating, and therefore parents should, where possible, think before they make their purchase decision.

However, based on logic like this, for those of us who are already parents, there’s little place to go.   

The chances of breeders like me ever achieving the same moral high ground as eco-heroes such as Cameron Diaz, who claims she may never have children, on the grounds the planet doesn’t need anymore, or the woman who actually decided to have herself sterilised to ensure she would not overburden the planet any further, are slim indeed.

My partner and my carbon rating will remain lumped alongside Hummer drivers, Lear Jet riders, and other eco-criminals, while my daughters, and in particular my second daughter, will inherit the carbon debt burden our hasty decision to expand our circle of love has created.

Who ever said mathematics wasn’t an emotional subject?

But, is this narrow view truly representative? 

This debate is possibly wider and more complex still. 

Of course, it’s is true that the world cannot sustain a larger population at business as usual levels of consumption and waste, but by the same token, taking a ‘Round Up Ready’ approach to population control does nothing to address the economic system which impoverishes the third world in the first place.

One reason why people in the developing world may have more children is that a lack of sanitation and general healthcare means they die in greater numbers.  Children are part of the workforce in some countries and not to have them means not to have enough hands on the farm.  In short it’s cash not copulation we should be controlling. 

Of course, Oregon University’s statisticians neglect to say what happens if someone in a Western country adopts a homeless Bangladeshi child, to help them relieve the burden of over-population.  Presumably, some kind of carbon credit or trading scheme will be on offer to assuage the impact of bringing up this child in the bosom of the capitalist West.

Like I said, it’s complex.

And, while not having children to save the planet is a noble act, it assumes, that we are already doomed.  There is little we can do, because that’s what climate science tells us. 

Based on what we know about human potential, this is a fair assessment, however, based on what we don’t yet know about human potential, it risks condemning the current and future generation of children hopeless to effect change. Thankfully human potential is not like oil: it doesn’t have a peak point where it starts to run out.  We may not have found the resilience, courage, creativity, and resourcefulness to create the world anew, but future generations might, if we are willing to instil these qualities in them. 

Maybe developed countries actually needs more parents who conceive children, for the purpose of instilling strong values in a new generation who may yet, change the world,  and not those who have children because they forgot to use contraception, got drunk, wanted a house from the government, or to please their parents eager to be grandparents.

Oh, yes, and then there’s those countries like France who are not ashamed to say children are our future.  Compared with the rest of the developed world, they recognise their declining birth-rate means they will soon face problems paying for the pensions and care of their ageing population.  France’s unofficial ‘third child policy’, implicit in their tax system, guarantees exponential tax breaks for larger families. 

Shoring up a system doomed to bust anyway, or ensuring a big enough labour pool to take over all those beloved but at risk, artisanale Boulangeries, Charcuteries, and Cafés which lovers of sustainability believe should be at the heart of every community?

And while it may appear that adoption is the middle way solution, excluding our right to procreate, also denies fundamental choices, which remain intrinsically political.

I applaud Cameron Diaz, for speaking out about her choice possibly not to have children, and right that she should, but she has no less moral fibre in my mind, than my wife’s decision to have our children awake and naturally, because she wished to affirm her ability, which she shares with every other woman on the planet, to give birth free of the control of male dominated obstetrics. 

Which is greater?  Neither.  Both rightly assert a woman’s right to choose – the same choice that has been suppressed by the same forces of progress which delivered this sorry mess we’re in, in the first place.

While statistics often paint a bleaker picture of what’s possible, the human spirit is far stronger and deserves a chance to fully show itself.  This can only truly happen if we recognise that the continuity of our race is really about human connection, and especially the sharing of wisdom and love from one generation to another.  This more than anything needs to be at the heart of a sustainable society.

And for those who rightfully assert your right not to be parents, on environmental grounds, feel free to step in and enjoy the role of being extended family to some children in your community. 

Anything but normal

John Naish

Hooray, we are going to get back to ‘normal’. That’s what the UK’s political leaders are promising us in the run-up to the general election: a return to economic normality after the global crisis. But I don’t want normal. I want anything but normal.

A sniff of panic does funny things to humans. Thanks to the credit crunch, broad debate about alternative social futures has all but disappeared. Fear has instilled mass amnesia, forgetting how our constant-growth economy is not sustainable physically; forgetting that our constant-striving lifestyle is not sustainable emotionally (hence our spiralling rates of depression, anxiety and related ills such as hypertension).

Politicians are eager to help us to forget. They do not want to imperil votes by declaring that the normal system they lead is kaput, that our consumerist model keeps crashing itself and burning our planet. Instead, we get confident reassurance. Early in the global financial crisis, the Bank of England declared: “This is just a transitory period of subdued growth. We will get through the other side and the growth will resume to more normal levels.”

Normal levels? Despite the financial meltdown, carbon emissions from fossil fuels rose by 2 per cent last year to an all-time high, reported scientists in Nature Geoscience in November. This leaves us on a worst-scenario track for global warming, says the Global Carbon Project (GCP), a collaboration of more than 30 climate specialists. It also says that the capacity of the world’s oceans and forests to absorb greenhouse gases is fading.

But still we want to return to normal. Western-led culture might benefit instead from attending some kind of Econ-Anon meeting. It’s stuck in a destructive, addictive cycle of repeating the same behaviour over and over, thinking that the behaviour will get it out of the problems that the behaviour creates. This bears remarkable similarities to individual human addictions to things such as alcohol or bad relationships.

There is some emerging evidence of consumer cycle-breaking. A newly published report, A Darwinian Gale, by the influential marketing forecaster, The Futures Company, says we are moving from an “era of indulgence” to an “era of consequences”. Instead of never worrying about credit, consumers will increasingly take economic risk into account when buying things, it predicts. “Even if consumers don’t make different choices, the process of arriving at those choices will be different,” it adds.

That’s hardly a revolution, though. It’s still the unsustainable norm. John Maynard Keynes, the great 20th-century economist, would be sorely disappointed. He thought that we would have learnt enough by now to realise that fundamental social change is needed. In a 1930s essay, “On the Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren”, he predicted that in three generations’ time (i.e., about now) we would have solved the “economic problem” – the problem of allocating scarce resources so that everyone has enough to satisfy their needs and basic desires. Once past that point, he thought that we would dump growth and instead evolve intellectually, to explore the greater potentials of humankind. And how we’d flourish, into the arts, into culture, into perfecting the ultimate refinements of beauty and friendship.

But our culture is stuck in consumer addiction. It lacks the insight needed for us to break the cycle. I believe that much of the fault for this lies in the present state of religion and spirituality, which effectively encourage us to feel disengaged from each other and from our planet. Organised religion obsesses about dogma and about splits over dogma (Anglican Catholicism versus Anglican Evangelism being the latest example). This leaves many feeling alienated and unmoved. More and more people explore their spirituality as individuals – as in, “I’m not religious, but I am spiritual”. This denies them the shared communality of human transcendent experience and often leaves them prey to consumerist bauble-selling – magic crystals and “how to be happy” guides.

Without any strong alternative voice, consumer culture is free to prey on isolated people’s fears, to tell them constantly that they are alienated, atomised individuals whose identity lies in competing with each other to achieve self-realisation (remember Mrs Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as society”?)

The radical alternative is to embrace our human commonality, to be encouraged to look into the eyes of strangers and see someone astonishingly like ourselves staring back. This sense of interconnectedness spreads wider, to a sense of “interbeing”, which embraces all living things, all dynamic systems and ecosystems, all pasts and futures. It makes us realise that we are not alone, that our every action is part of a universal web of consequences. It’s the sort of higher human potential, of true spiritual awareness, that Maynard Keynes describes.

This may not do great things for the global economy. But we don’t know. The developed world’s leaders have poured around £1000bn into propping up our current system, but not a cent on getting some of the world’s best economic brains to design sustainable global alternatives from a blank sheet. Whatever emerged from such a fundamental redesign might not, I freely admit, look normal. But right now, our normal is in fact an aberration.

 

John Naish is a journalist and author of Enough: Breaking Free from the World of More (Hodder & Stoughton)