Diamond-Cut Life

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced there will be no climate change bill this year. Many of us are disappointed, and outrage better describes the reaction of many who’d let themselves hold hope of responsible leadership concerning climate. I just read the Grist article and comments on this topic.

I respect those willing to keep working with the system on climate change (Congress, the EPA, etc.). I want them to keep working within the system, and even outside of it with civil disobedience, challenging the status quo and pushing for change. My own day job in transportation options pushes for change (carbon emission reduction), by helping people bike, walk, use transit and carpools rather than drive alone.

I have a different perspective. I think humankind, particularly the U.S., isn’t mature enough, or willing on any level, to face up to climate change. The solutions involve too much change on our parts, from the structure and scale of our economy and energy grids, to our personal lifestyles and rates of consumption. We don’t have the aggregate inner strength to pull it off. But please read to the end, because I have a different kind of hope.

When I started this blog in late 2007 I thought and hoped we (humans in general) might deal effectively with climate change. I saw reduced consumption, especially reduced energy consumption, as pivotal to controlling climate change, along with renewable energy sources like wind and solar replacing most fossil fuel use. Now, in mid 2010, there’s so much scientific evidence that temperatures are rising faster than earlier thought (prime example: the new sea lanes opened by the melting Arctic ice) that I think we’re on a runaway train. The feedback loops of climactic warming are too dramatic and self-perpetuating. The blanket of atmospheric warmth started with the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1800′s. We can’t unweave that blanket fast enough to avert flooded coastlines and other startling disruptions. I’d love to be wrong about that. But I don’t think I am.

About my hope: everything we can keep alive for future generations makes a difference. Skills like knowing how to grow food, make and repair clothes, use water and energy sparingly, ride and fix bicycles, build and maintain good relationships and especially how to behave civilly under stress and constrained resources will, in my view, define the world of the mid- and distant future. It will make the difference between civilized communities rising from the ashes of our own current, hyperconsumptive society, or situations much more chaotic and compromised than that.

I would write more, but I have to head out, via light rail, to lead a meeting on expanding the transportation options program in my fair state. Wish me luck. I wish all of us not just luck, but strength and hope.

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