Retake has reiterated the need for new systems that will facilitate a just transition to a no-growth economy. This guest blog by Julia Adeney Thomas lays out clearly how a new innovation or technological solution is not going to address the complexity of impacts from human misuse and overuse of resources. This article is not uplifting, but it very clarifying. A must read.
After a brief Roundhouse Roundup, one of the most important guest blogs Retake has offered, followed by an equally compelling five minute video. Both point to how we are apt to oversimplify the challenge we face in the early 21st century. It is not just climate change, but mankind’s multi-faceted impact on the earth, the air and the water. And as the guest blog and video make clear, this requires far more than a simple innovation or technological tricks, they require a fundamental change in how we live and how we address the multiplicity of our challenges and this involves new systems and new assumptions. If you find this as instructive as I did, please share it with friends.
Roundhouse Roundup
SB 489 Moves to the House. After an absurd, rambling 3 1/2 hour filibuster talk by Sen. Sharer, the Senate voted 32-9 to pass SB 489 with all its warts in tact. The truth is that long ago a political calculation was made that to get a bill through the Senate that would provide any kind of movement toward a transition from fossil fuels, it would have to move through Senate Corporations and Transportation. This is a committee essentially controlled by Senators Clemente Sanchez and Mary Kay Papen who by joining their GOP colleagues can effectively block any progressive legislation. Given this, SB 489 needed to be crafted to achieve their approval and that meant a bill that may achieve some important environmental advances and send economic and worker relief to San Juan–both very important outcomes–but at an enormous cost to ratepayers and by carving away at PRC authority to oversee future PNM decisions. Only time will tell just how costly this politically-driven compromise will be, but it is clear that Democratic Party leadership is committed to getting this done.
Paid Legislature? HJR 5 would create a state ballot initiative asking voters to amend the constitution, ban stipends for lawmakers and establish an appropriate salary. Presumably with a salary would come an expanded legislative session where work could be done in a more thoughtful manner. This is something for which Retake has long advocated. Under current law, legislators receive only a stipend and for those who live a distance from the Roundhouse, are only afforded mileage reimbursement for one trip home during a session. With only $161 a day for a stipend, your hotel room will consume much of that stipend. The result? Quite obviously legislators must either have another source of very flexible income, be retired or be wealthy. Guess who that leaves out of the Roiundhouse? Most of us. “Tradition has left many of our communities out,” said Rep. Angelica Rubio, a Democrat from Las Cruces who is co-sponsoring the resolution. “This isn’t about getting paid. This isn’t about benefits and retirement. … This is about who is being left out of this system, who is being left out of this conversation.” We strongly support HJR-5, but historically the voters have not looked favorably on paying their legislators. But it is time for this state to move out of a 19th century approach to governance. The complexity of our climate, economic, educational, criminal justice, health and infrastructure challenges requires a far more deliberate approach to making law.
SB 328 Passes Senate. SB 328, sponsored by Sen. Joe Cervantes, D-Las Cruces, which would take guns from domestic abusers and stalkers. Both Republicans and Democrats introduced a pile of amendments, nine of which were passed. That bill finally passed 27-15. Frankly, it is remarkable the degree to which gun violence prevention bills are sailing through the Roundhouse and on to the Governor.
Why the “Anthropocene” Is Not “Climate Change”Slowing climate change is crucial but navigating its challenges is possible only if it is understood as one facet of planetary overshoot
By Julia Adeney Thomas, Published on Thursday, February 28, 2019 by Common Dreams
“Anthropocene” is a widely proposed name for the geological epoch that covers human impact on our planet. But it is not synonymous with “climate change,” nor can it covered by “environmental problems.” Bigger and more shocking, the Anthropocene encapsulates the evidence that human pressures became so profound around the middle of the 20th century that we blew a planetary gasket. Hello…new Earth System. Hello…Anthropocene.
The phrase “Earth System” refers to the entirety of our planet’s interacting physical, chemical, biological, and human processes. Enabled by new data-collecting technologies like satellites and ever more powerful computer modeling, Earth System science reframes how we understand our planet. Climate is just one element of this system; if we focus on that alone, we will misunderstand the complexity of the danger. The term “environment” helps us understand ourselves as part of ecosystems, but fails to capture the newness of our current situation. We have always lived in the environment; only very recently, just as Asia began its skyrocketing development, did we begin living in the altered Earth System of the Anthropocene.
Anthropocene Requires a New Way of Thinking The Anthropocene is a multidimensional challenge. Our future is more unpredictable than ever, with new phenomena like Category 5 mega-storms, rapid species extinction, and the loss of polar ice. This change is irreversible. NASA says that levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) are higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years—well before our species evolved—causing the atmosphere to warm. The climate has certainly changed, but so too have other aspects of the planetary system. Take the lithosphere: 193,000 human-made “inorganic crystalline compounds,” or what you and I might call “rocks,” now vastly outnumber Earth’s ~5,000 natural minerals, while 8.3 billion tons of plastics coat the land, water, and our internal organs. Due to modern agribusiness techniques, so much topsoil is washing away that England has only about 60 more harvests left.
The biosphere is equally altered. Never has the planet been so crowded with human beings. In 1900, there were around 1.5 billion of us; in the 1960s, around 3 billion; today there are upwards of 7.4 billion. Human beings and our domesticated animals comprise an astounding 97% of the total zoomass of terrestrial mammals, meaning that wild creatures make up a miserly 3%. Humans and our companion species occupy considerably more than half of the planet’s habitable land surface. Concerning the hydrosphere, fresh water renews itself at the rate of 1% a year, but currently 21 out of 37 of the world’s major aquifers are being drawn down faster—in some cases much faster—than they can be replenished.
Alarming as each factor is on its own, the concept of the Anthropocene brings all these factors and others together. The planet’s chemistry has changed too. Warmer oceans interfere with the production of oxygen by phytoplankton, and some scientists predict that with a rise of 6oC—which could happen as soon as 2100—this oxygen production could cease. Our production of fixed nitrogen is five times higher than it was 60 years ago; in fact, Earth has never had so much fixed nitrogen in its entire ~4.5-billion-year history. Since World War II, synthetic chemical production has increased more than thirtyfold. Of the more than 80,000 new chemicals, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has tested only about 200 for human health risks. Alarming as each factor is on its own, the concept of the Anthropocene brings all these factors and others together. This is the only way that we can understand Earth as a single reverberating system with feedback loops and tipping points that we can’t yet predict.
The Anthropocene’s interrelated systematicity (new term) presents not a problem, but a multidimensional predicament. A problem might be solved, often with a single technological tool produced by experts in a single field, but a predicament presents a challenging condition requiring resources and ideas of many kinds. We don’t solve predicaments; instead, we navigate through them. Collaboration among scientists, policymakers, social scientists, humanists, and community leaders is key to contending with the Anthropocene. Technology is important, but the hardest challenges will be about how to alter our political and economic systems. Even the United Nations’ US$24 million Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005) concluded that our current systems are not up to the task: We need “significant changes in policies, institutions and practices that are not currently under way.” [Emphasis mine.]
The Danger of the One-Dimensional Thinking of Climate Change So…are the techno-optimists, who believe most world problems can be solved by innovation, wrong? The answer to this question is that they are not so much wrong as misguided, addressing a narrow issue in the narrowest terms. Most begin by gesturing toward the totality of environmental problems, but end by focusing on climate change alone. Sometimes climate change is further reduced to CO2 emissions to the exclusion of all other greenhouse gases, such as methane.
A favorite example of techno-optimists like economist Jeffrey Sachs is substituting wind power for fossil fuels. Like others, he speaks in confident tones about “decoupling” economic growth from natural resources, contending that “growth can continue while pressures on key resources (water, air, land, habitats of other species) and pollution are significantly reduced rather than increased,” by means of new technologies and market pricing. In short, he says we can provide for the growing human population (expected to hit 8 billion in 2023) without destroying the ecosystem, without impoverishing future generations, and without bothering to transform our political and economic systems. The status quo is fine if we tighten a few nuts and bolts. Let us look at this techno-optimism from the Anthropocene perspective.
Most industrial-scale wind turbines require rare earth metals sourced from China, which supplies about 90% of the world’s demand and has a monopoly on some elements. Not only are the mines of China’s primary production site, the southeastern province of Jiangxi, being rapidly depleted, but such mining entails shocking environmental and social costs. According to investigative journalist Liu Hongqiao, “Research has found that producing one ton of rare earth ore (in terms of rare earth oxides) produces 200 cubic meters of acidic wastewater. The production of the rare earths needed to meet China’s demand for wind turbines up to 2050 … will result in the release of 80 million cubic meters of wastewater.” Once obtained, this ore must be transported and processed to make turbines. These turbines, once positioned, require maintenance, using more resources. Ultimately, though, they will end up as refuse, more trash on our trash-filled planet. There is nothing dematerialized or carbon-free about wind turbines if we look at the total picture. Reducing our problem to climate change, then to CO2, and finally to measuring emissions only at the point of energy production is a dramatic misrepresentation of our dilemma. An Anthropocene perspective helps us keep the totality of the predicament in view.
Slowing climate change is crucial but navigating its challenges is only possible if it is understood as one facet of planetary overshoot. The challenges of our altered, unpredictable Earth System cannot be met by technological tinkering within the very systems that pushed it over the edge in the first place. There’s no cure for it but to roll up our sleeves and begin the hard work of transforming our political and economic systems with the aims of decency and resilience. [Emphasis the author’s.]
In solidarity,
Paul & Roxanne
Categories: Climate Change, Agriculture, Land Use and Wildlife
Solar and wind have been around since the seventies, of course they have improved them with new technology. We are not seeing any real innovation, instead we have a truncated technology that relies on gimmicks and hype. They Gas Lighted people with catchy things like recycling and innovation. Other than slight tweaks of technology we already have, clever hype, and a lot of deceptive marketing propaganda, there is nothing really new.
I look around Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Espanola, and all I see is denial. Aimless people wandering the streets that can’t afford a roof over their heads, at the same time expensive developments encroaching on the few green open spaces left. There is lot of signage for End TImes religious sects, and barren wastelands of parking lots. Not one of these so called innovators has mentioned transportation, nothing about trains or how the lack of transportation coupled with more cars has destroyed our way of life. All the while our media amplifies misinformation and nonsense.
It is even worse than we think. I do an excessive where i visualize what an area looked like 30 years ago, and then compare it to now. It is kind of terrifying, different trees, grass species and shrubs. Santa Fe used to have beautiful cottonwoods, they are gone. They were hacked down, no consideration at all to conservation or replacement. Down South they grow Pecans, where they would not have survived 30 years ago. The mesquite continues to move North, it was once a southern species. If you really want perspective just read the accounts of the earliest European explorers, “The cottonwoods blocked out the stars,” or “The grass reached to the horses bellies.”
The fragile riparian areas along the Rio Grande, are developed or overrun by invasive species, and channeled for irrigation. So many species don’t belong here, yet not many people even notice the environmental devastation. Our state advertises our outdoors, yet the areas where people have access are either worn out and degraded or filled with plastic garbage. There are shooting ranges, where trash like old computers and constrcution debris is used for target practice. There is no telling what has leached out and into the water. The same people who hype the tourism and economic advatages of our wild places, also cry about “big government” as positions were targeted and done way with.
In New Mexico, just like in Applachia, each little town now has at least one dollar store, stiffling any other business. At the same time they talk about “Wellness” people are forced to buy their shelf stable, processed food, with the soda conveniently stacked. At the check out stand they see the various tabloids peddling dangerous”‘Diets” silly ideas and propaganda. Our politicians have subsidized these exploitaive businesses, as they extract any wealth left in these communities. These corporations lobbied against the minimum wage, as they profit from despair. Stepping out of your vehicle, it is not hard to spot the occasional syringe, or condom in the parking lot.
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/vbwpdb/the-climate-change-paper-so-depressing-its-sending-people-to-therapy
Remember Zero Population Growth? Still fighting about that one too. I read the following in college and it’s still all true: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.221741/page/n3
Hello Paul and Roxanne. Thanks for the expanded primer on the human predicament so very well written and researched by Ms. Thomas. As with any massively complex subject,, the ability to adequately describe this predicament in a thousand words or so simply cannot be done. But Thomas really begins to scratch vigorously at the scab covering the deeply diseased tissue that supports all biological life on this Earth.
Her delineation between ‘a problem’ and ‘a predicament’ and the orders of magnitude between the strategies needed to cope with each concept moves the reader far forward. But regarding the contrast between ‘climate change and the ‘Anthropoecene’ as a new and workable branding misses at least half the dynamic of the conumdrum humanity and all of biology finds itself in right now.
Anthropoecene is a very recent term meant to keynote the dramatic shift in the ‘causal relationships’ between humanity and the entire rest of biology and the supporting ‘Earth Systems’ that Thomas correctly draws attention to. The current geologic epoch that contains the bulk of human occupancy is known as the Holocene, and begins around 12k years ago, after the end of the last major Ice Age. Any Anthropegenic characterization must somehow be linked to a dramatic alteration in behavior and any ensuing consequences of said ‘anthro’ (hominid) activities. We could pick any number of dates, based upon this behavioral shift in humanoids, but the use of fire, the discovery of metalcraft, the advent of larger scale agriculture practices and the psychological fabrication of subjective dieties and their potencies concerning human behavior come to my mind.
But all of this, and ‘all the rest’ of Earth-based reality will not be successfully articulated by using Anthropoecene as a moniker to hang our future comprehension on. Based upon Latin it is, but as a useful word to define the umbrella branding needed for humans to grasp the totality of the handbasket we all find ourselves in, it fails badly. No offense to Ms. Thomas, who had to grab something that accurately encompasses the human interaction with the much larger and intricate reality.
Additionally, and posing as both the elephant in the room and the Indian in the cupboard, is the how and the why of this human descent into madness Ms. Thomas describes as a ‘predicament.’
As a field ecologist, with decades of work, research, philosophical pondering and personal lifestyle alterations based on all of these, I would characterize the current ‘predicament’ in this way:
A COSMICALLY STUPID, ETHICALLY SADISTIC, SELF-INFLICTED ASS KICKING.
As to the how and why, only the discovery of answers to these two questions will lead homo sapiens sapiens (the wise human) to a catharsis capable of answering one last question:
IF WE CANNOT DETERMINE WHY WE ARE HERE, SHOULD WE BE HERE AT ALL?
Mick Nickel
For perspective, you MUST read “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari.
I remember a day when I had time to read books. Or at least I think I can remember the day I could do so . Maybe after March 16!!!