Posts Tagged ‘Gaia Vince’
global warming or climate change? Does it matter? More importantly, how are we going in dealing with it?
…climate change (now interchangeably, albeit inaccurately, called global warming)….
Vaclav Smil, How the world really works, pp 168-9
Man-0-man-o-man-o-man-o-man-o-man….
I was a bit miffed by this slight put-down, because for some time I’ve been insisting (as if anybody noticed) on using the term ‘global warming’ in the face of what I’ve considered a move towards the ‘climate change’ term. In other words my subjective impression has been that ‘global warming’ is being replaced by ‘climate change’, a less urgent term to my way of thinking. I suspect this impression has come from my listening to expert podcasts and videos from New Scientist and other scientific sources, and it seems to me that some agreed-upon descriptor has come down from the Scientists on High, which of course stirs my anti-authoritarian blood.
My semi-informed view is that, yes, the climate is changing due to ‘greenhouse’ gases, by-products of our industries, particularly carbon dioxide, methane and water vapour, accumulating in the atmosphere, creating a greenhouse effect which is essentially a warming effect. And heat is energy, creating volatility and unpredictability. And the water vapour in particular, evaporating from the oceans, is broadening the tropical belt, causing storms, floods, lightning and fire. Of course there are countervailing factors – ice melt from the poles cools the oceans, adding to the volatility.
So I’ll go online to explore this rather minuscule issue, in my minuscule way. The US Geological Survey (USGS) has this to say:
Although people tend to use these terms interchangeably, global warming is just one aspect of climate change. “Global warming” refers to the rise in global temperatures due mainly to the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. “Climate change” refers to the increasing changes in the measures of climate over a long period of time – including precipitation, temperature, and wind patterns.
That tells me it’s all much of a muchness, and the climate change we’re concerned about today is a product of greenhouse gas concentrations and the warming this is creating. So I’ll continue to use the global warming term, which isn’t at all inaccurate, because for me at least, it’s clear that the climate changes we’re experiencing stem from this warming, which is why experts like to connect our planetary future to 1.5 degrees, or 2, or 3 degrees, etc. Having said that, I’m more than impressed by Vaclav Smil’s analytical approach to the Big Issues of our modern world, and by his work ethic, which of course puts me to shame (he has written 36 books on energy, food, technology and other key aspects of human civilisation). He can be pedantic, but in a useful way, for example in pointing out that the ‘greenhouse effect’ isn’t really about how greenhouses work:
Labelling this natural phenomenon as the ‘greenhouse effect’ is a misleading analogy, because the heat inside a greenhouse is there not only because the glass enclosure prevents the escape of some infrared radiation but also because it cuts off air circulation. In contrast, the natural ‘greenhouse effect’ is caused solely by the interception of a small share of outgoing infrared radiation by trace gases [water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide].
V Smil, How the world really works, p178
Yeah, we kind of knew that, Vaclav, but thanks for the detail. What’s more interesting in his book is the detail of the challenges we face, and how we’re actually facing them. And one of the critiques he makes, what with all these COP meet-ups and IPCC projections, is the lack of detail and realism in dealing with these enormously complex issues faced by diverse states at varying levels of development, with competing needs, resources, issues and challenges. Our environmental footprint is embiggening, though its embiggening rate is reducing, in much the same way as our global population is, and our continued reliance on the Big Four, cement, steel, plastics and ammonia, to maintain our civilisations, means that fossil fuel emissions and global temperatures will continue to rise in coming decades. Moreover, as Smil points out, predictions about the growth in EV sales haven’t panned out in the last decade or so, and many other prognostications, especially about the future, have fallen flat, such as global supersonic flight, the population bomb, peak oil (I once read a book on that one), nuclear energy (for air travel and for uncovering natural gas fields, and some even nuttier schemes, such as creating ‘instant harbours’!), synthetic life forms (good-looking, hopefully), the 2000 tech-meltdown, and so on.
We seem often to underestimate our genius for surviving – and to overestimate our tendency to fuck things up. Which isn’t to say that we always get things right, or foresee the results of our manipulations of the so-called natural world. Smil is undoubtedly a good skeptic in this area, although I do find him something of an aloof overseer, unlike, for example, Gaia Vince, an intrepid traveller, moving from coal-front to coal-front, befriending and interviewing movers and shakers in the field, from the Sahel to the Columbian mines and the disappearing Himalayan glaciers. Both individual types help us to view the world richly, from individual and global perspectives (and it’s interesting, and unsurprising, that the overseer is male, and the engager is female).
Another problem preventing us from facing the real issues is the petty but mass-murderous ambition of the Putins and Xi Jinpings of the world and their horrific concepts of nationalism and power. The WEIRD world needs to reach out to the suffering peoples of these countries – especially the Chinese, a smart, industrious, ambitious and forward-thinking people who would thrive under a democratic regime (the Russians, by contrast, seem more cowed by their centuries of horror). This raises the question of how we deal with a country like China. My approach would be to maintain relations as much as possible while promoting better, more inclusive forms of government. Raise again and again the lack of women in government. Ask why this is so. What is the justification for an all-male politburo? How can they (the tiny governing minority) pretend that women in power is ‘Western’ and anti-Chinese? Isn’t the generally more collaborative approach of women a boon at a time when we face global crises needing global, collaborative solutions? Doesn’t the drumbeat of war, in these times, sound jarring and out of tune?
A greater internationalism is upon us, and more of it will be forced upon us as we face a global warming issue that will worsen in coming decades, without any doubt. Nationalism tends to get in the way of responses to international crises, as happened with the recent global pandemic. We tend to live in the moment, an eternal present, and we don’t realise, most of us, that if we were born a couple of centuries ago, we could travel throughout much of the world without crossing a border, without having to produce a passport or a visa, and without having to prove our ‘legality’. And we certainly can’t predict what systems will pertain in a couple of centuries from now, but they’re surely more likely to promote communication, co-ordination and exchange rather than isolation. I can only thank the writers and communicators that I’m able to plug into for helping me to focus on the future – my own and beyond – with as much realism and positivity as can reasonably be mustered.
References
How the World Really Works: A Scientist’s Guide to Our Past, Present and Future, by Vaclav Smil, 2022
Adventures in the Anthropocene; Transcendence; Nomad Century, by Gaia Vince, 2018 – 2021
bonobos and humans – immanence and transcendence?
the struggle against scumbaggery
Canto: So, having heard recently that Indonesia is passing laws to criminalise sex outside of marriage, and that Uganda is passing laws to criminalise anyone who identifies as homosexual, I’m feeling a touch of despair about the future bonobo society with human characteristics that I intended to impose upon the globe in the next few weeks.
Jacinta: Well it’s interesting to note that Indonesia is a predominantly Moslem country, and Uganda is overwhelmingly Christian, but there’s no doubt that religious ideology is behind both of these developments.
Canto: Yes, the WEIRD world, which neither of these countries belong to, is becoming increasingly secular, so much so that S should be fitted into the acronym – a world of WEIRDS, perhaps? So I suppose I should limit my ambition to the WEIRDS of the world. But that not’s what I want to talk about today, though it is related, sort of. Remember Ferdinand Mount’s The subversive family, an attempt to argue that the family unit, and so monogamy, has always been the norm, and has managed to subvert all attempts to replace or diminish it? I’ve been thinking a bit about this lately, and wondering about the unknown history of Homo sapiens and their antecedents, and their socio-sexual relations and child-rearing, given that our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimps, are quite different from each other in these traits.
Jacinta: Yes, and neither of them are monogamous. It’s interesting, but hardly surprising, that we’re inordinately interested in the human side of the divide between us and the so-called HC-LCA (the Human-Chimpanzee Last Common Ancestor), but not so much in the chimp-bonobo side.
Canto: Well of course, and even with that inordinate interest we’re very far from working out our human ancestry going back any more than two million years or so, let alone their socio-sexual arrangements. Anyway we’re not as monogamous as we pretend to be, and no amount of government regulation, or religious devotion, is going to change that.
Jacinta: But it’s interesting that we hold to a monogamous child-rearing ideal, and I’m wondering if that’s always been the case, or how long it has been, or whether there’s a worthwhile alternative, as arguably suggested by our bonobo heroines.
Canto: Well I know that single parent families are on the rise in Australia, and no doubt throughout the WEIRDS world, and any stigma associated with this is waning, but I’m not sure that this is exactly a movement in the direction of human bonoboism. It seems to me that the key to bonobos’ attraction is a kind of multiple-parenting system – not so compartmentalised. Sharing the love.
Jacinta: Bonobo and chimp dads likely don’t know for sure who their kids are – I just can’t imagine that being okay for humans any time soon, or even longer than soon.
Canto: Good point, though it’d be great if we could nurture and delight in kids just for being kids, rather than our kids. And I can well imagine that being the case when we lived together in caves rather than wee domestic units. It takes me back to the kibbutzim idea that I learned about as a teenager, after years of feeling trapped in my parents’ loveless marriage. Communal parenting…
Jacinta: But without the socialism? Or the Jewishness for that matter…
Canto: Well most kibbutzim today are secular, and they’re still very much with us – well not exactly with us, as they’re on the other side of the world, but I’m not sure about the socialism. Is bonobo society socialist?
Jacinta: Well, that’s the thing. Kibbutzim are, I presume, rules-based, top-down forms of communal living, whereas bonobo society just happened, a relaxed, happy-seeming culture, with females bonding and looking out for each other and their offspring in a way that the males, over time, acceded to. Nothing forced or regulated about it. I’m done, frankly, with labels like socialism and capitalism. I mean, we’re the most socially constructed mammalian species on the planet, the key to our success if you like, and you can call that socialism I suppose. And we’re more thoroughly capitalist than any other species, capitalising on a massive number of other living resources to survive and thrive, not just through pure consumption but domestication and other manipulative practices.
Canto: Well said. But I still have a soft spot for the kibbutz idea, without Yom Kippur or Christmas, a thoroughly sciencey, sexy, smiley celebration of smart, sassy, sisterly communal living…
Jacinta: Not quite the bonobo world though, is it? Sounds more like dropping out. The original kibbutzim were based on land, and agriculture. And what would the bonobo world be without its forest lands and their simple resources? The world of WEIRDS wants so much more, a kind of eternal transcendence. To be more, to have more, to make more, to do more, to live more, as if it’s more satisfying to never be satisfied.
Canto: Hmmm. Thought-provoking, but I just wanted to focus on monogamy and child-rearing, and now you’ve given me a headache. I’m wondering though – because it niggles at the back of my mind, if the bonobo world would really work for us. Our success, if you want to call it that, is due to our endless ambition – caused presumably by those big brains of ours. To paraphrase Marx, those big brains have made us want to not just understand the world, but to change it. And boy have we ever fucking changed it.
Jacinta: Yeah, just ask those aurochs and quaggas and moas and dodos and passenger pigeons… oh but – we can’t.
Canto: Not to mention the millions of humans we slaughtered in wars, worked to death in mines and factories, and fucked to death for our entertainment, but then again, what a piece of work is a man, in apprehension how like a god! But a woman – maybe a woman is more than just a quintessence of dust. And if she is, maybe that little soupçon is just what humanity needs to flavour its thinking about the biosphere and its endless exploitation.
Jacinta: Yes well, don’t put all the responsibility onto us mate. And yet – we need plenty of adventurous spirit as well as a sense of ‘nobody left behind’ to navigate ourselves out of self-created disasters such as global warming, toxic work environments (both physical and mental), and species depletion. And I’m not saying this from some simplistic perspective of male traits admixed with female ones.
Canto: No because we’re already getting mixed up, in a good way. The WEIRDS are taking over the world – have taken over the world…
Jacinta: Yes, China is so western now, and so democratic…
Canto: Well, that’s actually half true. The term ‘western’ is surely the weakest link in the WEIRDS chain. I mean China’s difficult to analyse with its vast population, which means tons of poverty as well as tons of richesse. It has urbanised very rapidly, yet its rural and mostly poor population is still greater than the entire population of most countries. But if you take the rapidly educating and enriching and industrialising urban elites, you’ve got a pretty strong candidate for something equivalent to WEIRDness.
Jacinta: And then of course there’s the urban poor. But you’re right, the term ‘western’ has never made a lot of sense to me. EIRDS perhaps?
Canto: Not the most cromulent of acronyms. RIDES is at least a word, but… I think we’re stuck with WEIRD/S for the foreseeable. Anyway, I think we need to unshackle ourselves from patriarchal religion – I know the WEIRD world largely has, but I’m impatient. Doing so I think will enable more women to be part of the solutions to the problems we face, and the problems other species face because of us.
Jacinta: China and Japan are pretty secular these days, but how many female leaders have they had in the last century or so?
Canto: Yes it’s taking its time – China has now achieved female literacy and education levels that are pretty well equivalent to those of males, but perhaps education isn’t entirely equivalent to empowerment.
Jacinta: Under Xi’s dictatorship female empowerment has clearly gone backwards. Hopefully he’ll be dead soon, but he’s probably already trying to ensure another macho thug succeeds him. Women have absolutely zero power in today’s China. As for Japan, they were ranked 110th in the world for gender equality in 2019, and the sexism there is really stark, in spite of 70% of women being in the workforce. You’ll remember our semi-serious piece about bonobos not wearing stupid shoes, meaning stilettos? There was a ruckus just a few years ago (2019) about that fucked-up footwear, which went semi-viral worldwide, as reported in The Guardian:
Meanwhile, even something as apparently straightforward as being allowed to wear whatever shoes you like continues to prove tricky. In response to the #KuToo petition [the hash-tag puns on ‘shoes’ and ‘pain’], Japan’s minister of labour, Takumi Nemoto, told parliament that requiring high heels in the workplace was perfectly acceptable – sparking further outrage at the government of Shinzo Abe, whose “Womenomics” policy is supposedly attempting to bring more women into the workforce.
Canto: Presumably Mr Nemoto wasn’t wearing high heels when he said this, so WTF.
Jacinta: At least there was blowback, but not nearly enough. Sigh, the arc of progress is long, but it bends towards beating sense into blokey blokes, ou quelque chose comme ça.
Canto: Transcendence may not be imminent, but it’s eminently desirable, for the benefit and beautification of our immanent being…
References
Ferdinand Mount, The subversive family, 1982
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibbutz
Gaia Vince, Adventures in the Anthropocene, 2014
Gaia Vince, Transcendence, 2019
Click to access shsconf_sschd2023_02001.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/22/where-are-the-women-at-the-top-of-chinese-politics
a bonobo world 33: they don’t wear stillettos