The following are extracts from a much longer assessment of the failure of COP15 published on Monday. It's worth reading the whole thing because Heinberg paints such a detailed and coherent picture of where we are today.
The Meaning of CopenhagenIt was the pivotal international conference of the new century. Tens of thousands showed up, including heads of state, officials at all levels of government, representatives of environmental organizations, and ordinary citizens from nearly 200 countries. Scientists had warned that, without a strong agreement to reduce carbon emissions, the consequences for civilization and the world’s ecosystems would be cataclysmic.
On the sidelines sat powerful forces (including pro-growth business interests and fossil fuel companies) that preferred a weak agreement or none at all. Their strategic public relations efforts (“by far and away the biggest public relations campaign that I’ve ever seen,” according to PR veteran James Hoggan, cofounder of DeSmogBlog.com and author of Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming) paid off when, only days before the meeting, thousands of private emails between climate scientists were hacked and released to the public; during the next few days, prominent right-wing commentators assured one and all that “climategate” completely undercut any scientific basis for thinking that human actions cause global warming. While nothing in the emails did in fact call established climate science into question, the desired and actual effect of the exercise was to destabilize public support for a strong agreement in Copenhagen.
The battle to rescue the planet from climate calamity has been waged uphill from the start. That’s essentially because
we humans tend to discount future events (GG: my emphasis), whether they’re perceived favorably or unfavorably: immediate profits are worth more to companies than similar profits ten years hence; similarly, the immediate cost of averting climate change looms large compared to the estimated cost of dealing with its consequences decades from now. This attitude was exemplified, for example, in the comment of U.S. House of Representatives member Joe Barton, who told Reuters on the sidelines of the Copenhagen conference, “We’re not going to let jobs be destroyed in America for some esoteric environmental benefit 100 years from now.”
Climate change is just one of several enormous interrelated dilemmas that will sink civilization unless all are somehow addressed. These include at least five long-range problems:
* topsoil loss (25 billion tons per year),
* worsening fresh water scarcity,
* the death of the oceans (currently forecast for around 2050 based on current trends),
* overpopulation and continued population growth, and
* the accelerating, catastrophic loss of biodiversity.
In summary, the discussions in Denmark took place in a conceptual fantasy world in which climate change is the only global crisis that matters much; in which rapid economic growth is still an option; in which fossil fuels are practically limitless; in which a western middle class staring at the prospect of penury can be persuaded voluntarily to transfer a significant portion of its rapidly evaporating wealth to other nations; in which subsistence farmers in poor nations should all aspire to become middle-class urbanites; and in which the subject of human overpopulation can barely be mentioned.
Meanwhile, given the amount of carbon emissions already in the atmosphere, climate impacts are in store no matter what happens at the U.N. negotiations in Mexico City. Something similar could be said with regard to all the other problems mentioned: even if strong policies could somehow be forged tomorrow, serious challenges will arise in the years ahead with regard to water, food, energy, and the economy.
If such impacts are unquestionably coming, then we should be doing something to prepare. Since we don’t know exactly what the impacts will be, or when or where they will land, the most sensible strategy is simply to build resilience throughout the system. Resilience implies dispersed control points and dispersed inventories, and hence regional self-sufficiency—the opposite of economic efficiency, the central rationale for globalization—and so it needs to be organized primarily at the local level.
To summarize: three factors—the need for resilience, the lack of effective policy at national and global levels, and the tendency of the best responses to emerge regionally and at a small scale—argue for dealing with the crushing crises of the new century locally, even though there is still undeniable need for larger-scale, global solutions.
Does this mean we should give up even trying to work at the national and global levels? Each person will have to make up her or his own mind on that one. To my thinking, Copenhagen is something of a last straw. I have no interest in trying to discourage anyone from undertaking national or global activism. Indeed, there is a danger in taking attention away from national and international affairs: policy could get hijacked not just by parties even less competent than those currently in command, but by ones that are just plain evil. Nevertheless, this writer is finally convinced that, with whatever energies for positive change may be available to us, we are likely to accomplish the most by working locally and on a small scale, while sharing information about successes and failures as widely as possible.
(More at the link) Heinberg appears to have given up all hope that the necessary global action will be possible, and is turning his attention towards local adaptation efforts. Needless to say, I agree with his assessment. It's time to look around ourselves and figure out what we, our families, friends and local communities can do to prepare for the coming changes.
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