The Climate Change Rut

Dec. 2021

The difficulty with preventing CC is no one has done it before. The procedure, the way forward is not easily and widely understood and available. We will be on a sharp learning curve. While we know a lot there is also lots of uncertainty and everyone is not on the same page. Sure, we have technologies and machines / equipment to do a job, but there is no consensus in detail about how to proceed. It is complex, multi-faceted and there are many competing interests.

Societies are habitual. For that reason climate change will not be halted any time soon. We find ourselves in a climate change rut. But while habit helps to explain this dilemma there is a whole lot more involved. Invested and vested interests will prevent the prevention of climate change prevention. Indeed, successfully turning climate change around will require major societal adjustments on many levels and unfortunately the turn around will not happen soon enough to meet the Paris Agreement targets. If a start, a real start had been initiated decades ago when the problem of CC had been determined, then we would not now be facing existential crises.

Societies are big complicated entities consisting of many common and varied interests. Those interests will prove to be a strong glue maintaining the status quo by erecting numerous and significant barriers preventing necessary adjustments. Even though changes were initiated quickly to combat Covid-19, the road has proven bumpy with much of the world’s population still unvaccinated (December 2021). Climate change is on a more serious level of complication and consequence.

Broadly two sets of interests have great presence in and influence upon our lives, investments and vested frameworks and while related the underlying concepts are quite different. Vested involves protection through an over-arching legal framework, such as a constitution including laws established under it and with commensurate expectations for fulfilling responsibilities and obligations. Investments generally occur within a legal framework, although not necessarily, and involve various forms of effort to achieve favourable gain. Both vested and investment interests render solutions for the CC crisis difficult to dowse. 

Generally speaking, if we have a heart beat, then simultaneously we have both vested and investment interests. The legal framework provides the rules and regulations within which our investment interests are executed. You might be questioning what this has to do with stopping CC. All boiled down, I am referring to ‘expectations’ emanating from our values, attitudes, beliefs which reflect and are derived from our experiences in vested societies. To be clear some back-story is required.

The legal framework, for all intents and purposes, touches every aspect of our lives and shapes our societies. As members of a legally created society we gradually learn about it, our responsibilities in it and in turn form our own expectations about what the society will do for us. So, in a very real sense societies are designed on a quid pro quo (something for something) basis. They are also habit forming. The structure and systems formed tend to require repeated actions in compliance with regulations as per our intents and purposes in everyday living, play, work, travel and so on. Just for a moment stop reading, sit back, close your eyes and consider all the things you do or have done in your society. Now consider more deeply how all of those activities are regulated by your society’s legal framework. On the one hand the framework compels by regulating how we do what we do, but on the other our expectations, privileges, maybe even our sense of societal entitlements born of a regulated society, instills in us confidence in and reliance upon the way things should proceed. In short everyone is responsible and has a role to play, societal architects and managers, the judiciary, the sectoral players, movers and shakers and the constituents, us. Day in day out we do what we do in the way we do it because, hopefully, we want to, because we receive some degree of satisfaction from our actions and because we follow the guidance set out in the legal framework. By conducting these actions we invest in ourselves and our societies and do so with an expectation our investments will have a fair chance of being fulfilled. For all this to happen stable societal frameworks are essential. Where and when stability breaks down anxiety ramps up because the rules are not or cannot be followed. Suddenly our expectations are threatened along with habits and a sense of fairness. Suddenly the stable society is wrenched out from under our life’s experience and we lose our way. Generally, we are not comfortable when too much uncertainty and chaos prevails.

So, stability is important to us and we work hard in many ways to ensure it. This is the precise reason why making rapid overarching societal change is a difficult task and not one we easily choose to be involved with unless there are clear and attainable benefits to be had. Currently and more so as the years pass, CC will have greater impacts on our vested societies and on the investments we have made. The risks are mounting, but without a clear and present danger, a crisis, there is reluctance to do the unwarranted. Why rock the boat, threaten stability, if there is no obvious need to do so? Our society will take care of the problem and we can just get on with our busy lives.

This is wishful thinking as more and more, almost by the year, extreme conditions arise. Anticipating dates and times with certainty for the next weather related disaster event is just not part of our tool kit. Certainly over compared decades an upward trend in extremes has become obvious, but what we have been witnessing on the ground in existential events of devastation illustrates so clearly the changes. The incremental is tolerated, but abrupt change gets our attention. 

Science has been documenting a whole range of CC adjustments in our environments, but until recently their findings have been largely ignored or explained away by alternative beliefs or resisted outright to protect investments and associated wealth and those vested interests from which we obtain privilege and the good life. Continuing on that path is coming to an end, indeed for many millions of vulnerable people around the world their circumstances have been quite serious for many years giving rise to the whole new phenomenon of forced climate change migrants. So, how do we overcome the resistance to CC prevention? How do we overcome the resistance to change emanating from our expectations associated with investments in a vested world of privilege? It will not be easy. So far the changes required have proven to be quite difficult to achieve despite it would seem the many efforts of a growing number of change advocates. We need to try to prevent. The following will help to achieve that end.

Convince About Necessity

Achieving this will be complicated, controversial and steeped in ethics. Usually a soft approach is best, offering a carrot instead of using a hammer, but it is not always possible or effective. Yearly now extreme weather events occur, frequently with direct and demonstrable influence from CC. Every effort needs to be made at all levels and in all sectors to illustrate with supporting evidence the fact of CC and how it will play out over the decades to come. Further, with adjustments to rules and regulations reduced emissions change will need to be mandated. (more on this below) Forced change will need to be implemented because there is a major disconnect between being convinced action is required and doing actions to prevent CC. (more on this below) 

Move on Opportunities

With change opportunities arise at all levels and in all sectors of a society. Simply, while some are grasping this, the great majority of us remain remote to the possibilities. This has to change. Looking outside the box of habit and complacency is now more so than ever before essential. Of course there are lists available, suggestions identifying what we could and should be doing, but often I read them without community context. Generally in a broad brush approach there are two options, top down and bottom up. We need to do both as neither the top nor the bottom can go this alone. Everyone must be involved in the fix. Identifying opportunities and making them possible with funding, changed regulations and community initiative is all essential now. So, those lists need to be applied to community contexts to understand what is and is not possible, to identify opportunities to reduce our carbon footprints, to avoid leaving people behind and vulnerable, to maintain healthy environments and to prevent the worst modelling scenarios. Politicians and community groups alike need to be in supported dialogue and action.

Ensure Zero Emissions

As long as societies continue to emit green house gases (GHGs) the carbon dioxide (equivalent parts per million) levels will rise and CC will bring worsening conditions. We have wasted so much time in tackling the CC issue that now to be saying 2030 or 2050 or later is our goal for net zero emissions is to totally misunderstand the urgency, the risks and what we actually have to achieve. One thing for sure, the word ‘net’ has to be dropped and the notion of ‘mitigation’ has to be replaced by the much more robust and necessary concept of ‘prevention’. To achieve zero emissions four global actions need to be accomplished immediately: wean societies completely off fossil fuels; install alternative non-carbon energy sources and conduct the retraining necessary to accomplish this; encourage and support home grown manufacturing and servicing; and downsize our technologies, expectations and acquisitions all in a very short time frame. Our societies are super-dependent upon fossil fuels and it is the use of that energy source from which the CC problems emanate. There are no other readily available viable choices.  

Vested Framework Adjustment

As I explained above, our societies are formed and shaped by a legal framework and by the responses to it in political, social, economic, environmental, health and so on contexts. In order to make the necessary changes to prevent the worst of CC, the framework context, guidance and programming will need to be re-visited and adjusted to make possible CC preventive actions. This will be a huge and expensive task requiring a great deal of investment and coordination. It will be no good and will be non-sensical if on the one hand we achieve carbon reductions only to negate those reductions by other actions. All hands and thinking needs to be going in the same direction. Inevitably, some change will have to be mandated to ensure actions comply with requirements. This may inconvenience, it may eliminate activities, but if done well and comprehensively then the rules, regulations and necessary support structures can be designed to work. Again inevitably adjustments will be required as the necessary template framework has to date never been drawn up. We will be on a very steep learning curve and transparency and full explanations will be essential. The key in this regard will be to allow CC preventive changes while simultaneously preventing actions exacerbating CO2e emissions.

Directed Investments

Investments in a no carbon future will be essential to successfully preventing excessive CC. The alternative of waiting for the crisis events to occur and then picking up the pieces will be far more costly than preventing them in the first place. Directed investments to sectors, programmes and specific actions designed to lower and eliminate CO2e emissions should be a high priority. This must include efforts to increase community resilience in all aspects. But, those investment requirements and opportunities should not be attracting open chequebooks and further, appropriate safeguards such as bond requirements should be implemented. We cannot afford to allow abandoned oil wells and the like any more. With directed investments real results will be essential.

VABs

Values, attitudes and beliefs will prove to be, collectively, the keystone in any and all efforts to rein in CO2e emissions and consequential CC. To date our VABs largely reflect and follow on from past thinking. Growth has been the mantra and fossil fuels, to a very large extent, have provided the means. This thinking and the associated actions cannot be sustained. For decades warnings have been issued indicating humanity is living beyond the means of the earth to provide. Apart from increasing raw material shortages, a very large amount of CO2e emissions have been absorbed in what have been identified as carbon sinks. Science is now finding some of these sinks are becoming CO2e emitters. Further, ancient sinks (permafrost, forests, soils) are also becoming emitters of CO2e. As long as past VABs remain dominant the trajectory of CO2e emissions will remain on an upward curve. As long as wealth and gain dominate our future is destined to become progressively worse in terms of viable and sustainable environments. To achieve the necessary turn-around our VABs require major overhauls. Now personal gain will have to take a backseat to community stewardship and mutual aid.

Conclusion

Vested societies represent the VABs upon which they were created. Constitutions, Bills of Rights and the underlying framework of laws and regulations define societies in conjunction with the broad aspect of social / cultural responses. Today we are at a crossroad, a transition threshold whereby our past is not a suitable template for our future. Because of CC and all we have done to bring it on, a major framework adjustment is required to stop, to prevent the worst case scenarios. There are appropriate ways forward, but they will take time and a great deal of investment to achieve. Unfortunately time and carbon budgets are both in short supply. Spinning the rhetoric and permitting more delay is not an option. We have to act now decisively and if necessary forcefully. Allowing vested and investment interests based upon past VABs is not an option.