Fast forward to the End of the Earth?

I enjoyed reading an article by Martin Wolf in the FT (Wednesday 22/5/2013) entitled 'Climate sceptics have already won'.

Not content with just complaining about it Mr Wolf went so far as to offer a number of solutions with a view to buying time so that humanity can get its act together and so avoid catastrophe.

So far so good.

The solutions proposed were, in a nutshell:

• Tax carbon emissions
• Go nuclear
• Impose really tough emissions standards on cars
• Create secure global trading regime in lower-carbon fuels
• Develop ways to finance technology transfer
• Invest in research
• Invest in adaptation
• Think through geo-engineering.

You can be for or against any of these proposals, each of which has its merits.

Cars makers are already doing a lot to reduce emissions from their vehicles, for example. Geo-engineering seems a bit risky to me. Well-managed nuclear energy goes a long way to decarbonising the economy. Etcetera.

Many, or in fact all of the solutions, involve government action, not just regionally but globally. This is no doubt the greatest obstacle to any meaningful action being possible.

Our governments do not appear to be capable of formulating effective policies liable to affect GHG emissions, let alone habitat loss, mass extinction and other threats to the Earth System, Gaia or however you wish to call or planetary home.

The feeble way in which they are managing the depression/recession illustrates how incapable they seem to be.

The mantra of our leaders sounds like 'markets and the economy cannot be managed or controlled, we are helpless and will just have to wait for growth or whatever to come along'.

Woe betide us if climate change is viewed in the same way.

You can do only so much on a personal level (live an a low energy home, use public transport or stay put, grow your own food, recycle everything, only acquire things which have been recycled, support local businesses and produce etc).

What does it take for a governments to do something similar on a national, regional, global level?

The stark fact remains that it may already be far too late to avoid cataclysmic climate change induced by human activity. The only solution will be the sort of adaptation proposed by James Lovelock in order to preserve what can be preserved.

Things, such as Greenland or Antarctic ice sheets, are moving faster than we can imagine.

The New Curriculum

School books ?

I read recently that someone gaining an A grade at A Level today would have achieved a D a number of years ago. There has been much debate surrounding the phenomenon of grade inflation in recent times, and it does seem to have become easier to stand out in exams today than it used to be in the past. This is not surprising, given the improvement in teaching standards (or perhaps more precisely the concentration on teaching for results), the plethora of resources available to pupils to research their subjects, specialised coaching and a myriad other things never available to students in times gone by. All we had when I was at school were the text books such as they were and any other background matter one could dig out in a library or come by with an enquiring mind. Well done to all those who can achieve excellent grades in today's A Levels; they will need all the help they can get when they start looking for a job or finding a place in university.

Rather than fearing this debasement of grading, I am more concerned by the subjects taught in schools - or rather the subjects not taught, or taught sufficiently or with enough force. Is any time given to James Lovelock's work and inventions, or even Charles Darwin, beyond a cursory mention ? Evolution and its true meaning and significance ? The Gaia theory ? Or the Medean hypothesis ? Or the inexorable rise of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, or the origin and evolution of life, the soil and their future ? Are humans placed in their context - one species among many, gifted with intelligence and self reflection perhaps, but no more equal or worthy than earthworms or plants. What books are studied other than the same tired 'classics' ? In this country, we are not exposed to a wide range of knowledge during our education and many subjects are ignored unless one makes a conscious decision to study them. Hence generations of young people (and I was one a long time ago) who have little knowledge of science, history and many other areas of learning, ill prepared for the grave challenges facing our world.

I myself, after stumbling beginnings many years ago when I dabbled in protests and being at least mildly radical and vaguely realising that all was not well with the world have finally seen the light as it were. I have at long last rejected the silly notions that economic growth ad infinitum is either possible or desirable, and the notion that humans are somehow on the Earth but not of the Earth, divorced from the natural world. I have read the works of Lovelock and made the effort to understand Darwin, learned about the soil, the biology of plants, been impressed by Tim Flannery, been a subscriber to the Ecologist, grow food, don't fly any more etc. I want desperately to learn more about this planet and our duty to it. But how many people are exposed to these wonders and given this same hunger for knowledge unless they have had the good fortune to have come across, say, Lovelock in the course of their reading. Very few I would say.

Everyone should be given the chance to learn about our planet. Youngsters should be given the opportunity to travel to the poles and to the tropics and to the different habitats of our own country, to see and feel for themselves, to realise that science is liberating. Education can save us and all the species we share the world with. A New Curriculum is needed to do this in which the works of the great scientists and ecologists are to the fore; a massive investment in education. What is not needed is 'academies' financed through PPP extortion schemes, grade inflation, league tables and the division of children into those who can access a good (i.e. in this country private) education and those who can not. Before you vote again ask your prospective candidate if he or she or their party are prepared to do the right thing; and take a keen interest in what your children are being taught in school. If they are not being taught about the real world, make sure you fill in the blanks yourself. There is hope.

The Great Debasement

It seems that with a lot of things nowadays you get less and less good stuff and more dross which you do not want. Take the BBC for example. The BBC symbolises or used to symbolise all that was good and solid and permanent about the world. Many moons ago it would have been possible to have nearly an hour of viewing for every hour of television. The only interruptions were the credits and between-programme announcements. Pretty good value. Watch any programme now and you will find that it invariably starts late because we are treated to tiresome in-house 'advertising' for other tedious programmes on other Beeb channels with the sound turned up full blast for good measure in case you didn't hear. Once you've got through all this, both at the beginning and end of the programme you want to view, you find you've only had 50 minutes instead of an hour. I am convinced that they are currently working toward 45 minutes so that their actual content matches other 'commercial' channels. The cost of a programme to us is thus increased by about a quarter, for absolutely no extra value.

Everywhere we turn it seems that there is more and more 'content' and less and less meaning. This is one of the disadvantages of instant mass communication by anyone and everyone, including me. Is it a bad thing ? Possibly. We are overwhelmed by so-called 'information' which in fact is simply noise, and loud at that, when we should be seeking out meaning, information that will help us live our lives, be happier, healthier, wiser. James Lovelock proposes that all essential human knowledge should be gathered together in one place - perhaps even in one book, as a repository of wisdom for the remnants of humanity trying to preserve civilisation in the event of catastrophic climate change. What a book this might be. But what to put in it ? Should it be limited to science and technology, or should it also contain all the great works of human literature ? Should it also remind the survivors of how many species their unconscious actions have wiped out, showing them in all their great beauty ?

Difficult questions and no answers. Some would say that the Internet already serves Lovelock's purpose. I suppose it does, up to a point, but it is too dependent on fragile electronics and data storage systems. Better as a Great Book, I think.

Swifts

Swifts against the clouds

I love to hear the shrill cries of swifts in the summer. It is familiar and recurring and serves to remind us of the great cycle of nature, its mystery and wonder. So when they become rarer or are not heard at all what are we to make of it ? Is it that the swifts have gone elsewhere in search of their prey, or that they have not made it from their winter stations ? Whatever the reason it is a worry. What is the world coming to ? Can anything be done ?

So many questions and not many answers. If for some reason we, as a species, are at fault it is unlikely that we will be able to repair the damage we have done because we can have no real idea of how we did it in the first place. The great changes to the atmosphere and in fact to the whole ecosystem which we have unknowingly set in train are now irreversible and must play out. Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are now inexorably heading towards twice the preindustrial level. The writing, as they say, is on the wall.

Even if humanity were to disappear overnight, our legacy would not be a pristine Earth but a planet undergoing great, perhaps fatal changes to many species and environments. The seas would continue to warm up and acidify, the great ice masses of Greenland would launch fleets of glaciers into the ocean and finally melt altogether, the great expanses of permafrost towards the northern poles would no longer be icy but would turn to bog, releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere, dry regions would become ever drier turning eventually to desert, and a vast warming and drying would grip the Earth. Lovelock's scenario of a small band of habitable regions around the northern hemisphere's temperate regions would come to pass. The British isles would be a refuge for those creatures needing the relatively benign temperatures to survive. Some regions might perhaps revert to the vast jungles of 50 million years ago, gigantic trees thriving on the increased CO2 concentrations with new species evolving to live there.

The likelihood is that humanity will not disappear overnight. There will be more and more of us on the Earth for many years to come desperate to live like us here in 'developed' countries, desperate for fuel, food and any other necessary resource. There will not be enough coal or oil in the world, for ever more will be needed; there will be enough food but at what price to the natural environment (not only for other creatures but for us as well) ? Will life again become 'nasty brutish and short' and numbers of humans be reduced by the consequences of this.

Let us enjoy the swifts while we can.