Scattered Climate Thoughts

My brain isn't organized enough right now to put these into any kind of extended post, so this is just an update - scattered ponderings...

I'm feeling much better since I last wrote, though I did have a dream about petroleum monsters: I'm in the middle of a pristine place, which I think of as a forest, but it is all white. I am trying to move through it undetected, but these hands keep touching me through the air - as though they're from another dimension. I try to run the edge of the forest, but there are these really tall, black, tree-like creatures with what look like cobwebs - big sticky strings - hanging down from them. At their feet is a fleet of black shiny vehicles. I find out somehow that every night they move their fleet forward, encroaching on the forest with their sleek cars. They use their shine and advertising slogans to distract people from their behavior. I try to attack them but get stuck the black cobwebs and flung back into the forest. Weird!

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I've been thinking lately about what a narrow frame "climate change" is. Climate change is really only one aspect of a much, much larger, systemic problem, that we don't even have the vocabulary to address. When I say I'm depressed about climate change, that's only part of the story. I'm depressed about the cyclone in Burma and the terrible dictatorship there, about the rising poverty, the economy, food prices...and these things all seem interrelated in a way that I'm not yet capable of articulating. They all seem interrelated because they seem like fractures in an egg shell, each a separate crack, all emanating from the same cause, all leading to the same fate.

In fact, that's a great way to think about it! A fractured eggshell. That is what this blog is about. The shell is cracking and it's scary as hell, but it holds the promise of new life - transformation (as discussed in an earlier post). But we need a new language to discuss this - a new frame that doesn't just look at each crack in isolation.

After my friend's recent thesis defense on climate solutions, the audience was practically climbing out of their seats, clamoring to ask questions, pose points of view. We need more public fora for discussing this issue. But we also need a new public language to capture the complexity - to allow us to see things afresh. Perhaps we should call it "the cracking." Other suggestions?

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It seems like we're past the point of no return. Mitigation is still important, but adaptation is increasingly on my mind. How will we cope? Not just to climate change, but to "the cracking." We need resilient communities prepared for a new kind of self-sufficient existence. It seems there is untested opportunity in the idea of adaptation, however. What if we prepare low-income communities for high energy prices by equipping them with solar hot water or solar pv? We not only address issues of economic justice and help prepare communities for what lies ahead, but we also help reduce GHG emissions. And somehow it seems more politically palatable. Much of politics and policy is about playing with perception (see Deborah Stone). Policies that have concentrated benefits and diffused costs are much more likely to be successful than those that have concentrated costs and diffused benefits. Hence, the climate problem - concentrated costs, diffused benefits = inaction. But if we start thinking more about adaptation - improving resiliency - we might be able to change people's perceptions of benefits. When you start talking about equipping a community to survive economic/ecological disaster, suddenly the benefits seem much more concentrated than when you talk about "reducing carbon footprints."

Environmentalists have been hesitant to focus on adaptation because they fear that it will distract from mitigation. But, at this point, we need both. And the two can go hand in hand. We can call it "adigation," or perhaps just "action."