Global Warming: Mitigate, Adapt... or Reverse?

[proud patriot]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Global-Warming-Mitigate--by-Dave-Ewoldt-Adaptation-To-Climate-Change_Coalitions_Community_Ecology-130922-774.html



Climate Smart Southwest: Ready or Hot

A Public Health and Climate Adaptation Conference
Sponsored by Physicians for Social Responsibility, Sept. 21, 2013
Mental and Spiritual Health and Well-being working group.
Good afternoon. Since our panelist remarks are time limited, you're not going to get any stories from me today; just the facts--along with an occasional rhetorical flourish to drive a point home. My name is Dave Ewoldt, and I'm a co-founder and Sr. Analyst for Coalitions of Mutual Endeavor, a non-profit based here in Tucson that focuses on sustainability from a natural systems perspective by building multi-issue coalitions to create the critical mass necessary for systemic change. I'm a systems scientist and researcher and practitioner in eco-psychology. What I'm "about" is connecting the dots, examining the relationships, and I'm much more interested in stopping the causes of global warming than in trying to find ways to adapt to its disastrous consequences--as if that's our only or even our best alternative.

[pscot]

1. Reversal ain't gonna happen

as long as we keep increasing our carbon burn rate every year.

[kestrel91316]

2. Aggressive mitigation by slashing CO2 emissions, PLUS adaptation.

Reversal will happen when we die off, which we will do in spite of our response. We aren't in the driver's seat anymore, we just have our foot on the accelerator.

[GliderGuider]

3. Someone else who doesn't grok the scale issue.

Or the fundamental drivers. Drivers that have nothing to do with politics or economics or greed - those are just human-scale enablers of the process.

We're looking at a global collision of:

1. Our evolved psychology that is just trying to satisfy our natural living urges to survive and procreate;
   
2. Our risk-detection circuitry that evolved to recognize threats that have teeth and eyes, not creeping threats from invisible gases or radiation;
   
3. Our problem-solving, limit-removing intelligence that mainly cares about growth opportunities, and didn't evolve to deal with consequences or accept limits; and
   
4. A planet full of thermal fuels: wood, charcoal, coal, oil, natural gas and now fracked natural gas.

As a species we don't do mitigation, certainly not in these circumstances., and we don't do adaptation until we perceive that there is some change to adapt to.

Reversal? Don't make me laugh.

For more on this topic: The Evolutionary Psychology of Fukushima.

[proud patriot]

4. thanks for the link