The first is Scientific legend James Lovelock, who is in his 90s now and awesomely is going to be one of the first people to head into space on a commercial space flight, has commented humanity is ‘too stupid to prevent climate change’, which is sort of insulting but one can’t help but feel that we are showing a remarkable inability to rationally change our behavior in the face of overwhelming evidence.

“I don’t think we’re yet evolved to the point where we’re clever enough to handle a complex a situation as climate change. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.”

“One of the main obstructions to meaningful action is “modern democracy”, he added. “Even the best democracies agree that when a major war approaches, democracy must be put on hold for the time being. I have a feeling that climate change may be an issue as severe as a war. It may be necessary to put democracy on hold for a while.”

This point seems worthy of discussion.  If the imperfect political democratic processes we use are too slow to deal with a crises, then how to we assure that the temporary seizure of the power is done reasonably.  The example of war that Lovelock is a depressing precedent for how executive power is often abused, think Iraq, Vietnam, Falklands etc.  This also raises the strange prospect that China iron grip over its large populous and industry maybe the one thing that can safe us from ourselves.

One of the more ridiculous statements made by Climate Change sceptics is that scientists are riding a gravy train of funding which encourages them to support CG.  Given the awesome power of Industrial and Corporate lobbyist and the clear examples of two-bit CG scientist skeptics getting flown around the world to promote the skeptic view this always struck me as a mis-directed charge.  Greenpeace has just released a report that gets in behind the lobbyists and shows the vast money that goes into supporting the corporate position.  Report identifies Koch Industries giving $73m to climate sceptic groups ‘spreading inaccurate and misleading information’

The obvious line to draw between these two articles is that its not so much humanity that is too stupid to deal with this crises, but that we are allowing ourselves to be held ransom by powerful self interested groups that to acknowledge a reality which might threaten their power or their modes of existence.

The question is, given limited time, how to we get out of this bind?

1. A word, phrase, verse, or sentence that reads the same backward or forward. For example: A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!
2. A segment of double-stranded DNA in which the nucleotide sequence of one strand reads in reverse order to that of the complementary strand.

The dictionary definition aligning  language with DNA makes for a convenient metaphor. Words are after all much like the building blocks of our whole whatchamacallit matrix.

In the video below, the words make the opposite of a palindrome. Instead of reading the same  both forwards and backwards, the message is the exact opposite when read in reverse, reclaiming the pessimistic view that there’s just no hope in our generation. It’s likely to warm the cockles of your heart.

The video has been youtube’s version of an Avatar blockbuster. It was made for a competition with AARP – American Association of Retired Persons – that strange “NGO”/insurance provider for people over 50. Even stranger, it was inspired by this political advertisement from Argentina.

All this word magic makes me think of policies, constitutions, law, all those language based institutions we’ve built to create order in our world. And since I did just watch Avatar (and officially want to move to Pandora), and have spent the past couple of months keeping up with the politics of a carbon credit initiative known as REDD – reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (in developing countries) -  I can’t help but think back to this comment from reddmonitor.org that served as my own little reminder about the big black hole between language and reality.

Chris Lang, who runs the site, wrote an article titled “US Sabotages Draft REDD Text” with a link to the draft about REDD from COP15. A reader left a comment calling him a “negative nelly” and pointing out that the draft is full of references to the “inclusion of indigenous people” in the REDD schemes. But once you start dissecting the word “inclusion” you quickly find little more than letters. And what does indigenous mean anymore anyway? Hm hm hmmm. Apparently it’s all a matter of tense. And check out how “respect” is distanced by “[promote][and][support],” those convenient champion words:

“Yes, Indigenous Peoples are mentioned in the REDD text. But Indigenous People are asking for a lot more than their “inclusion”. There is nothing in the text guaranteeing that their rights will not be abused. Instead, the text states that governments “should” [promote] [and] [support] “Respect for the knowledge and rights of indigenous peoples and members of local communities”. The Indigenous Environmental Network described the REDD text as “a slap in the face of indigenous peoples”.

True, the text about conversion of natural forests is in the text. But, like the text on Indigenous Peoples it is safely behind the word “should”, thus providing a certain amount of wiggle room that would not be there if the word “should” was replaced by the word “shall.”

*See the draft here for an example of language and grammar stretched beyond their limits.

“That which is unsustainable cannot go on. Unsustainable things that are propped up too long snap and collapse suddenly. Our way of life is unsustainable. The sooner we transform our economy into one that can generate sustainable prosperity, the better off we’ll be, and with every passing day, the risks of catastrophe grow larger and more certain. We need change now.

These shouldn’t be radical statements; they’re all demonstrably true. Yet they cleave right down the middle of what is fast becoming the largest generation gap in at least 40 years, a growing split between people under 30 and people over 60.

When confronted with generational conflict, we naturally tend to see the elders as seasoned and realistic, and the youth as passionate and ethical, and to seek a middle ground of tempered realism. Middle ground is going to become increasingly hard to find in this debate, though. That’s because realism now means very different, incompatible things to the two generations.

And this is what most older observers seem to refuse to understand: The world looks dramatically different if the year 2050 is one you’re likely to be alive to see. To younger people, Copenhagen isn’t some do-gooder meeting; it’s the first major battle in a war for the future. Their future. I’m in my middle years, in between the two groups, yet even I can see that this war is about to get a lot more heated—far more heated than anything we’ve seen in half a century. To younger people, this isn’t just policy, it’s personal.

To be young and aware today is to see your elders burning our civilization down around our ears. To hear scientists tell us we’re in the final countdown, with the risk of runaway climate change (along with the ecosystem collapses and horrific human suffering it will bring) mounting with every day we run business as usual. To hear nearly a chorus of credible voices—from doctors and scientists to retired generals and former bankers— warning that to lose this fight is to lose everything that makes our world livable and gives the future hope.

You wouldn’t think a war could start over such simple ideas.

To be young and aware is to see old people—from the U.S. Senate to Wall Street, from newspaper editorial desks to corporate boardrooms—stalling action on every front, spouting platitudes about “balance,” committing themselves wholeheartedly to actions to be undertaken long after they’ve retired and died. To be told that the world’s scientists are participating in a giant hoax; to be chided for not understanding how the real world works; to be warned that doing the right thing will bankrupt us; to be told that not wanting to melt the ice caps and circle the equator in deserts makes you too radical to take seriously.

To be young and aware is to know you’re being lied to; to know that a bright green future is possible; to know that we can reimagine the world, rebuild our cities, redesign our lives, retool our factories, distribute innovation and creativity and all live in a world that is not only better than the alternative, but much better than the world we have now.

To be young and aware is to suspect that, in the end, the debate about climate action isn’t about substance, but about rich old men trying to squeeze every last dollar, euro, and yen from their investments in outdated industries. It is to agree with the environmentalist Paul Hawken that we have an economy that steals the future, sells it in the present, and calls it GDP. It is to begin to see your elders as cannibals with golf clubs.”

…continue here for more,

but what are your thoughts?

Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.”

At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”.

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

“The Climate Camp is a place for anyone who wants to take action on climate change; for anyone who’s fed up with empty government rhetoric and corporate spin; for anyone who’s worried that the small steps they’re taking aren’t enough to match the scale of the problem; and for anyone who’s worried about our future and wants to do something about it.“

I’ve been wondering in the past few years why humanity was so will to make significant sacrifices in the 20th Century for causes such as gender equality, ending apartheid, anti-nuclear campaigns, gay rights to name a few, yet when we face what is arguably the most significant and likely threat to our survival on the planet as it is today we are timid, unsure and uncommitted.   As the younger generation we have some cause to be angry with the powers that have been ignoring  climate science for 3o or years,  but if we don’t take action now to alter our cause then we are equally responsible for the damaging centuries to come.   We can complain about the short-sightness of politicians all we want, we can be dismayed at the mis direction of economists, and we can be angry with the baby boomers for blowing the greatest generation of wealth we may ever know, but if we don’t take take responsibility to act when the time is called for then we are merely a silent part of the problem.

So when grass roots events like the NZ Climate Camp come along it is a great chance to educate ourselves and direct our actions positively.  Have a look at the nice website, and contact them if you have anything to offer.

Camp for Climate Action Aotearoa

Over at the Guardian, George Manbiot has taken aim at one of the commonly cited complaints from Climate Change deniers that they are being censored. “One of the allegations made repeatedly by climate change deniers is that they are being censored. There’s just one problem with this claim: they have yet to produce a single valid example. On the other hand, there are hundreds of examples of direct attempts to censor climate scientists.”

Read the Guardian Article here.

I’m still dismayed by the popular response to the dangers coming our way.  We were more than willing to fight for Civil rights, Womens liberations, end to wars, and even saving the whales…

Why now when the biggest danger we have known is staring us in the face we are unable to muster a good strong response? Is it because there is no easy enemy apart from ourselves?

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