The climate has often changed during the Earth’s history, sometimes very dramatically. Volcanoes, meteorites, changes in solar activity, geomagnetic excursions and reversals. The Earth has gone in a out of ice ages and warm periods. This time, when the Earth went into the current inter glacial period, a certain mammal decided to change how it lived and is now so numerous and so busy with it’s industries and newly invented agriculture that it is having a profound effect on certain climatic parameters. This we know and have had few doubts about for several decades.
Alarm bells have been ringing a while now and more and more people are getting nervous or angry about the climatic changes we have induced. Which isn’t surprising, nor is the fact that we quickly found something to blame, carbon dioxide. We have since added in some other gases like methane and nitrous oxides.
And the cries go up. Climate crisis! Plant trees! Decarbonise our economies! Go green! Business as usual just with lower emissions (of some things).
We have to decide what is a symptom and what is a cause.
The climate is changing and it is a critical problem, it is also a symptom. The gases Co2, Ch4, N2O, water vapour etc etc are involved in the greenhouse effect. The increased emissions of these gases are causing climate change, yet they are not the cause, they are, if you like, the messengers.
There isn’t a “climate crisis” there is a social-economic-industrial-agricultural crisis and one of it’s symptoms is global heating and all the myriad catastrophic climate problems that go with it. This confusion means that we get fed the idea that we can continue business as usual, we just have to decarbonise the global economy. It also means that we are encouraged to adopt simplistic ‘solutions’ and that we spend a lot of time and energy organising protests demanding ‘climate change action’ from recalcitrant governments.
Decarbonising the global economy sounds great except :
The seesaw principle :
Every time we have introduced a technological solution for environmental problems we have created new problems. Like … Bisphenol A is bad for us so let’s use bisphenol B, F or S instead. Ok so far .. except they are probably just as toxic. According to ANSES, bisphenol B is probably worse for humans and the environment than A. More and more studies are saying the same thing for R and S.
The Jeavons paradox (rebound effect) :
Gains in efficiency leads to higher demand.
The Law of Unforeseen Consequences
These can be an unexpected benefit or setback. Or a consequence that is the opposite of the original intention.
And so on and so on.
What we have been doing for 10,000 years is staggering from one disaster to another. It is time to stop. Humanity is in crisis, that is clear and it’s not new. Wars, famines, crime, inequality, hatred, violence, misery, these are symptoms of a deep malaise in our societies. How many kings/queens, rulers, leaders, tyrants, governments have we had? Thousands? Millions? Have things got better? Are there fewer wars today? Are there fewer people malnourished? The answers to these questions show us that we need to change things in a much more profound way than just greening the economy.
I’m a Permaculture designer with 30+ years of experience in my backpack. As with many of the things we do a lot in life, Permaculture has a capacity to give one a certain point of view, specifically a very strong tendency to view things in a holistic and systemic way. Permaculture designers such as myself are convinced that the only way forward is that the general public and policy makers adopt this way of thinking. If not we will simply continue to try and treat symptoms whilst leaving the underlying causes untouched.
Some examples of what happens when we don’t think is a systemic and holistic way about “solutions”.
Keep on flying off on holiday and for business trips but run the jets on agrofuels.
This ignores the massive contribution made by condensation trails to climate change.
Runways, airports .. building and maintaining them means heavy environmental consequences
Land is put to agrofuel production rather than food production. Forests are cut to open up more land to produce agrofuels.
Passengers traveling to and from the airport have a heavy environmental impact.
Keep on driving but switch to electric cars.
Mining the materials needed for the batteries etc has a big negative ecological impact
Producing cars ..big negative ecological impact
Building and maintaining roads, big negative ecological impact
Hundreds of tonnes of micro-particles shed by tires and brakes, big negative ecological and health impact
Recycling the existing petrol and diesel cars, big negative ecological impact and a high energy cost.
And finally, as the subject is all over the news, wildfires. About 40,000 hectares have burnt in France, in July, which isn’t usually the hottest month. The French government has decided to put 850 million Euros to buying more firefighting aircraft. They have also promised 1 billion Euros for replanting the burnt forests.
These measures, as is too often the case, simply address the symptoms and not the causes. The politicians continue to repeat the facile polemic ‘business as usual, just greener’.
Yes, higher temperatures and lower rainfall increase the risk of wildfires. Yet when we look at how the forests are managed we can see that this has changed over recent decades. The major problem is that traditional forest use involving running animals in the woodlands has all but disappeared.
Complex solutions.
Projects in several European countries and the UK are reintroducing, or expanding their native bison population. These projects are often privately funded or through crowdfunding,
Some countries are encouraging shepherds and goat herders to run their animals in the forests.
At the moment holistic landscape management/keyline is slowly catching on. This type of land management looks at how the landscape can best be designed and managed to :
To increase rainfall infiltration/soil humidity.
To minimise the risks of flooding
To minimise the risks of wildfires
To increase productivity.
Holistic and systemic approaches also help us connect the dots :
Your local community encourages some of its members to run their animals in the woods: sheep, goats, bison... The local community makes an engagement to buy the meat, milk and cheese from these producers. There may be a slightly higher price when compared to similar but lower quality supermarket products. This is compensated for as the local area is better protected from wildfires. The animals can also be pastured on the lawns of those people who haven’t turned them into vgetable beds, yet! Wool from the sheep goes directly to the local community and is used to improve the insulation of the houses, schools etc. When that job is finished the wool can be used for textile production and help us move away from the plastic clothes we all tend to wear: polyester, nylon, acrylic etc. No seriously do we really want to wear plastic bags? Ok maybe a bin liner at Glastonbury music festival because of the rain !
A recent poll done in France revealed that 75% of people wanted to change how they live and their job. These people want to transition away from the ‘rat race’, they want more leisure time, less competition and a simpler lifestyle.
Maybe quite a few can become digital nomad shepherds, tending their flock and running their digital business from the shepherds shelters!