Are recent events dire enough for the majority of people to recognize that this global industrial civilization is being painted into a corner by Mother Nature? If so, are we collectively desperate enough to contemplate lifestyle changes?
"Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable."
~ John F. Kennedy
Solving climate change is conceptually simple. We can cool our planet and
restore a stable climate by replenishing the forests and native ecosystems
that were destroyed for animal agriculture. As I explain in this short
video, the underlying facts show this to be true, while that truth is being
obscured by the UN IPCC greenhouse gas accounting conventions.
Solving climate change begins with changing our intention from plundering
the planet to healing the planet. If our intention is to continue plundering
the planet, then the rhetoric on climate change will also getting
increasingly heated up, even as global temperatures spike up. For instance,
the UN Secretary General, Antonio Gutierrez just announced,
“Climate change is here, it is terrifying and it is just the beginning. The
era of global warming has ended, the era of global boiling has arrived. The
air is unbreathable, the heat is unbearable and the level of fossil fuel
profits and climate inaction is unacceptable.”
Notice two things he did. Firstly, he declared the end of the “global
warming” era and the arrival of the “global boiling” era, seemingly
indicating that the warming of our planet has reached some irreversible,
runaway condition.
Has it, really?
It’s true that we have most likely endured the hottest summer ever in the
Northern Hemisphere in recorded history, with wildfires in Canada and Europe
reaching apocalyptic proportions.
Melting Himalayan glaciers are threatening to flood 7 million people in
Pakistan, causing widespread migration pressures.
Vast quantities of methane are bubbling up in the Arctic Ocean, in addition
to the methane bubbling up in the Siberian permafrost.
I keep receiving emails asking if these events indicate that we have passed
the point of no return on a stable climate.
A new scientific article pegged the end of the Atlantic Meridional
Overturning Circulation (AMOC) between 2025 and 2095. If AMOC shuts down,
Europe will paradoxically get much colder, even as the earth warms.
Notice how the lower end of the range estimate is just 2 years from now,
while the upper end is 72 years from now!? There is such a vast gulf in this
range estimate because nonlinear feedback systems are notoriously difficult
to model.
Therefore, my response to these emails has always been and always will be,
“I don’t know!” All I know is that we need to change our intention and
change our game of money correspondingly in order to keep living.
In my professional opinion, it is not worthwhile to analyze how fast the
nonlinear feedback loops in the climate system can run away and cause our
near-term extinction, if we continue on our plundering spree, burning down
30 million acres of tropical forests each year for more dairy and meat
production, bottom trawling the ocean even in so-called “marine protected”
areas, while killing trillions of animals each year for our so-called
“protein needs”.
It is much more worthwhile to work on reversing the key indicators of the
planetary boundaries that are within our control – effective radiative
forcing for climate change, nitrogen and phosphorus loading, chemical
pollution, land use change, freshwater use, tropical deforestation and
biodiversity loss. This requires us to shut down the Killing Machine as soon
as possible and dial down the Burning Machine over time as the Climate
Bathtub model indicates.
If the Arctic and permafrost methane release, glacier melts, wildfires,
floods, extreme temperatures, etc. respond in the right direction when we
shut down the Killing Machine and dial down the Burning Machine, then we can
breathe a sigh of relief that we haven’t yet triggered these nonlinear
feedback loops beyond the point of no return. Otherwise, we have to model
each problem situation in a healing modality, not a plundering modality and
deal with it as best we can.
Secondly, the UN Secretary General singled out the fossil fuel industry as
the sector to blame for the heated climate. While this framing has been used
to perpetuate our planetary plundering spree for the past three decades, it
is not particularly helpful and likely even suicidal in the current
circumstances. Due to the co-emitted sulfur dioxide when we burn fossil
fuels, which cools the atmosphere, an abrupt shutdown of the Burning Machine
will overheat the planet, possibly triggering Mr. Gutierrez’s “global
boiling” phase in earnest.
At Climate Healers, we have used the tag line, “Transform Yourself;
Transform our World,” placing personal transformation at the core of our
solution to climate change. We have noted that the same is true at a species
level: Homo Sapiens Sapiens must transform into “Homo Ahimsa” in order to
solve climate change.
From our understanding, the science is clear that mere changes to how we
harness energy, while continuing with “civilization as we know it,” is an
inadequate response to the environmental predicaments we face.
Are recent events dire enough for the majority of people to recognize that
this global industrial civilization is being painted into a corner by Mother
Nature? If so, are we collectively desperate enough to contemplate lifestyle
changes?
Heal the planet.
Eat plants.
Love animals.
Plant trees.
It’s that simple.