Monbiot vs Kingsnorth

[UndercoverElephant]

Last month a short exchange between two environmentalists was published.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/aug/17/environment-climate-change

I have deliberately posted this under religion and philosophy and not under science or politics. The reason for this is that there is no major scientific dispute between the two protagonists: both are keenly aware of the environmental/ecological situation they are discussing. I have absolutely no interest in re-hashing the debate about whether humans are causing climate change, and neither do they. For the purposes of this discussion, anything where the level of scientific consensus is as great as that to support the belief that climate change is real is not up for discussion here. If you're a climate-change denier, please just go away. Your input is not relevant.

What they are really discussing is human psychology, political reality, history and ethics. It's about how a human being should react once they have concluded that there is little or no hope of saving modern industrialised society. Kingsnorth believes we must face the harsh reality that that society cannot be saved, and that, as realists, the environmental movement has to stop pretending that it can. Monbiot accuses Kingsnorth of secretly wanting the collapse...


I draw the trifling issue of a few billion fatalities to your attention not to make you look like a heartless fascist but because it's a reality with which you refuse to engage. You don't see it because to do so would be to accept the need for action. But of course you aren't doing nothing. You propose to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and, er … "get some perspective on the root cause of this crisis". Fine: we could all do with some perspective. But without action – informed, focused and immediate – the crisis will happen. I agree that the chances of success are small. But they are non-existent if we give up before we have started. You mock this impulse as a "craving for control". I see it as an attempt at survival.

What could you do? You know the answer as well as I do. Join up, protest, propose, create. It's messy, endless and uncertain of success. Perhaps you see yourself as above this futility, but it's all we've got and all we've ever had. And sometimes it works.

The curious outcome of this debate is that while I began as the optimist and you the pessimist, our roles have reversed. You appear to believe that though it is impossible to tame the global economy, it is possible to change our founding myths, some of which predate industrial civilisation by several thousand years. You also believe that good can come of a collapse that deprives most of the population of its means of survival. This strikes me as something more than optimism: a millenarian fantasy, perhaps, of Redemption after the Fall. Perhaps it is the perfect foil to my apocalyptic vision.


Their short debate provoked more than 500 responses from the public. Please read it (will only take 5 or 10 minutes) before voting.

[UndercoverElephant]

bump....hoping for some more votes or a comment or two...

[Eyeron]

I just can't agree that there will be a social collapse due to global warming. I do believe that when it happens it will have an effect on society, but it will be disruptive as opposed to complete collapse.

I hope that it helps people to realize that they just can't consume everything in sight assuming that all resources are limitless and hope that it will finally be the last lesson that teaches people to be more conservationalists. (the spellchecker doesn't recognize this word for some reason).

So as I've never heard of these two before, with who would this position agree with?

And yes, I am a believer in GW and that it is being caused by humans.

[UndercoverElephant]

I just can't agree that there will be a social collapse due to global warming. I do believe that when it happens it will have an effect on society, but it will be disruptive as opposed to complete collapse.


They aren't just talking about climate change. They are talking about the whole problem: climate change, peak oil, deforestation/erosion, habit destruction and loss of biodiversity, loss of viable fisheries, etc... Any single problem might be solvable, taken all together, and with the population limits of this planet also considered, then the situation looks hopeless. Even Monbiot knows this to be true, but appears to be unwilling to actually say so.


I hope that it helps people to realize that they just can't consume everything in sight assuming that all resources are limitless and hope that it will finally be the last lesson that teaches people to be more conservationalists. (the spellchecker doesn't recognize this word for some reason).


"conservationists".



So as I've never heard of these two before, with who would this position agree with?

And yes, I am a believer in GW and that it is being caused by humans.

I'm with Kingsnorth. I believe that whilst the problems aren't physically or logically unsolvable, they become so when you take into account history, human psychology and political reality. We could avoid an environmental acopalypse. But by the same token, we could also have already eliminated both war and poverty. We just haven't, and aren't going to, because it requires us to behave in ways which contradict both our own natural psychology and our ideological heritage. We have enough trouble stopping the general population from lying and stealing and coveting their neighbour's wives. We have little chance of convincing them to stop reproducing and eating meat and zero chance of convincing politicians and economists that zero economic growth is a good thing.

[UndercoverElephant]

The human race has a long history of overcoming hardship when the odds were stacked against us. We used our ingenuity and generation after generation of our ancestors tamed the wild world, eliminated our predators (from wolves to the smallpox virus), overcame technological obstacles, fought for political freedom, recovered from two devastating world wars, eliminated pain, invented antibiotics, worked out how to use oil to feed billions of people.... The underlying problem we face now is different to all of these obstacles and hardships we have previously defeated because this time the enemy is ourselves. It is our own great success at dominating our environment that is causing the problem and the only solution requires us to do a 180 degree turn and start voluntarily controlling our numbers and reducing our standard of living. The record of human civilisations of overcoming this problem when it has occured on a local level is very poor. When faced with a problem of this sort, nearly all civilisations went the way of the Mayans and the Easter Islanders. As a species, we are psychologically unprepared for this sort of challenge. It goes against everything evolution has programmed us to do. I say it is not logically or physically impossible because I believe humans have the capacity for free will. We are not biological robots. Free will, in this case, refers to the capacity to overcome our evolutionary programming. This we can do, but it takes a near super-human amount of effort to do so, and most of us fail most of the time. It's hard enough trying to get the populace to stop stealing, lying and coveting their neighbour's wife. These are examples of overcoming evolved behaviour which have been enshrined in our religions, our social codes and our laws. But the problems we face now actually require us to do something similar with other things, like, for example, having more than one child. In a case like this, we not only have to overcome the evolved behavior, but also the fact that things like "go forth and multiply" and "economic growth is desirable" are enshrined in our religious, socio-political and legal systems. We are fighting both our own natural psychology and our ideological heritage. And this time the problem isn't local. It's global and it's on an industrialised scale. If the evidence of the past 30 years is anything to go by, we are going to lose this fight. The system can't be fixed. It has to collapse and be replaced by something else, but it is impossible to reconcile this conclusion with political, social and economic reality. Most people are too busy struggling with their own lives to stare these hard truths squarely in the face and accept them for what they are. It is psychologically impossible for them to do so, but this in turn leads to it being politically impossible to solve the problems.

THIS is what these two are really arguing about. It is not possible to both confront the cold, hard scientific/ecological truth and accept what normally goes for political and economic reality. What is required to avoid disaster is an ideological change of the most radical sort imaginable. Or rather...that ideological change is coming whether we like it or not and the question is how much control we have over the way it happens and what comes out the other end. What is for sure is that if we sit around denying that it is going to happen, we'll have no control at all. Monbiot is arguing that if we talk openly about the scale and imminence of the problems, people will simply give up hope and give up caring. And maybe he's right...

[!Kaggen]

Yeah its an interesting debate.
Reminds me of the book on climate change by Mike Hulme "Why we disagree about climate change".
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Disagree-About-Climate-Change-Understanding/dp/0521727324

Hulme proposes examining climate change as an idea of the imagination rather than as a problem to be solved.
He suggests four ways of talking about climate change as specific "myths".
He means "myths" in the anthropological sense of stories that 'embody fundamental truths underlying our assumptions about everday or scientific reality'.
These four myths are rooted in human instincts for nostalgia, fear, pride and justice.
He calls the "myths"

Lamenting Eden
Presaging Apocalypse
Constructing Babel
Celebrating Jubilee

A little imagination will help decipher the mythological category from which various authors including Monbiot and Kingsnorth argue.

Hulme summarizes his thesis thus:

"The function of climate change I suggest, then is not as a lower-case environmental phenomenon to be solved. Solving climate change should not be the focus of our efforts any more than we should be 'solving' the idea of human rights or liberal democracy. It really is not about stopping climate chaos. Instead, we need to see how we can use the idea of climate change-the matrix of ecological functions, power relationships, cultural discourses and material flows that climate change reveals- to rethink how we take forward our political, economic and personal projects over the decades to come."

I would vote for Hulme.

[godless dave]

They aren't just talking about climate change. They are talking about the whole problem: climate change, peak oil, deforestation/erosion, habit destruction and loss of biodiversity, loss of viable fisheries, etc... Any single problem might be solvable, taken all together, and with the population limits of this planet also considered, then the situation looks hopeless.

I don't see it that way. I don't agree with either of them. It's certainly possible that we might not start doing anything to solve the problems until it's too late, but I see no reason to think it's inevitable.

[Beerina]

It's highly appropriate this is posted in the religious forum.


Last month a short exchange between two environmentalists was published.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/aug/17/environment-climate-change

I have deliberately posted this under religion and philosophy and not under science or politics. The reason for this is that there is no major scientific dispute between the two protagonists: both are keenly aware of the environmental/ecological situation they are discussing. I have absolutely no interest in re-hashing the debate about whether humans are causing climate change, and neither do they.

Ironically, irrelevant.


...For the purposes of this discussion, anything where the level of scientific consensus is as great as that to support the belief that climate change is real is not up for discussion here.

Fine. Good to get the ground rules out of the way.


...If you're a climate-change denier, please just go away. Your input is not relevant.

What they are really discussing is human psychology, political reality, history and ethics. It's about how a human being should react once they have concluded that there is little or no hope of saving modern industrialised society.


Ahh, here's where they overextend themselves.

How humanity works is an economic issue, not an environmental one, aside from some massive, virtually instantaneous environmental change, like an ice age onsetting in 1-3 years, which is not the case here.


Julian Simon (http://juliansimon.org/writings/) eviscerated this overeaching by natural scientists over and over and over again.

He and they made predictions according to his theory. These predictions were often at odds. Julian's came true, theirs did not.

Like good religious apologists or people who fail a dowsing test, they hemmed and hawed and goalpost shifted and whined that the presence of skeptics where queering the astral plane waves and so on.

Yet onward marched Simon's basic theory. Capitalism in a free society that promotes rule of law and protects property ownership produces developments that compensate for problems. The net effect is actual, objective measurements, agreed upon beforehand <-- key to science, go up in the long run and medium run as long as nobody (read: government) gets in the way.

The opponents' theories were all "gloom and doom unless government gets in the way". Gets in the way, somehow, of this railroad car careening out of control that everybody "knows" is gonna blow up in our face.

Sadly, "Common Sense" didn't measure up to real science.


The Ultimate Resource II (http://juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/)

He tackles it all: Oil, energy, pollution, overpopulation, you name it.

When a skeptic says, "Ok, prove it!" he does.


Like Randi does, he said, "Ok, here are measurements we both (he and the environmentalists) agree on before hand. Here are the predictions we both make. We shall now wait 10 years [his minimum granularity] and see what happens, Ok?"

"Ok," they say.



He had a "difficult time getting this" idea across, though. The incorrect conclusion of enviornmental scientists is in saying, "This is happening to the environment, and therefore this will happen to the population, and therefore politicians should do this thing."


Everything past the first item is outside the realm of the natural scientists. Disagree? Fine. You are akin to a religious apologist yammering on about the Earth being 6000 years old 20 years+ after Simon proved it (Note: no quotes on "prove" -- Theory + prediction + wait for outcome which is verified, you know, stuff skeptics kind of like?)


Oh, and "peak oil" is a fraud, too, for the exact same reasons. See, as prices go up, people want alternatives, and capitalist will satisfy that. Simon even devotes an entire chapter (http://juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR11.txt) to just this fraud. The whole concept of "Peak Oil" is deliberately taken out of its economic context for the purpose of being a scare tactic. It is identical to many '70s scares, all of which Simon shot down.


I fully expect to receive, as usual, the typical apoplectic responses. I expect no less in the religious forum.

[!Kaggen]

It's highly appropriate this is posted in the religious forum.




Ironically, irrelevant.




Fine. Good to get the ground rules out of the way.





Ahh, here's where they overextend themselves.

How humanity works is an economic issue, not an environmental one, aside from some massive, virtually instantaneous environmental change, like an ice age onsetting in 1-3 years, which is not the case here.


Julian Simon (http://juliansimon.org/writings/) eviscerated this overeaching by natural scientists over and over and over again.

He and they made predictions according to his theory. These predictions were often at odds. Julian's came true, theirs did not.

Like good religious apologists or people who fail a dowsing test, they hemmed and hawed and goalpost shifted and whined that the presence of skeptics where queering the astral plane waves and so on.

Yet onward marched Simon's basic theory. Capitalism in a free society that promotes rule of law and protects property ownership produces developments that compensate for problems. The net effect is actual, objective measurements, agreed upon beforehand <-- key to science, go up in the long run and medium run as long as nobody (read: government) gets in the way.

The opponents' theories were all "gloom and doom unless government gets in the way". Gets in the way, somehow, of this railroad car careening out of control that everybody "knows" is gonna blow up in our face.

Sadly, "Common Sense" didn't measure up to real science.


The Ultimate Resource II (http://juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/)

He tackles it all: Oil, energy, pollution, overpopulation, you name it.

When a skeptic says, "Ok, prove it!" he does.


Like Randi does, he said, "Ok, here are measurements we both (he and the environmentalists) agree on before hand. Here are the predictions we both make. We shall now wait 10 years [his minimum granularity] and see what happens, Ok?"

"Ok," they say.



He had a "difficult time getting this" idea across, though. The incorrect conclusion of enviornmental scientists is in saying, "This is happening to the environment, and therefore this will happen to the population, and therefore politicians should do this thing."


Everything past the first item is outside the realm of the natural scientists. Disagree? Fine. You are akin to a religious apologist yammering on about the Earth being 6000 years old 20 years+ after Simon proved it (Note: no quotes on "prove" -- Theory + prediction + wait for outcome which is verified, you know, stuff skeptics kind of like?)


Oh, and "peak oil" is a fraud, too, for the exact same reasons. See, as prices go up, people want alternatives, and capitalist will satisfy that. Simon even devotes an entire chapter (http://juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR11.txt) to just this fraud. The whole concept of "Peak Oil" is deliberately taken out of its economic context for the purpose of being a scare tactic. It is identical to many '70s scares, all of which Simon shot down.


I fully expect to receive, as usual, the typical apoplectic responses. I expect no less in the religious forum.

Constructing Babel

[UndercoverElephant]

It's highly appropriate this is posted in the religious forum.




Ironically, irrelevant.




Fine. Good to get the ground rules out of the way.





Ahh, here's where they overextend themselves.

How humanity works is an economic issue, not an environmental one, aside from some massive, virtually instantaneous environmental change, like an ice age onsetting in 1-3 years, which is not the case here.


Julian Simon (http://juliansimon.org/writings/) eviscerated this overeaching by natural scientists over and over and over again.

He and they made predictions according to his theory. These predictions were often at odds. Julian's came true, theirs did not.

Like good religious apologists or people who fail a dowsing test, they hemmed and hawed and goalpost shifted and whined that the presence of skeptics where queering the astral plane waves and so on.

Yet onward marched Simon's basic theory. Capitalism in a free society that promotes rule of law and protects property ownership produces developments that compensate for problems. The net effect is actual, objective measurements, agreed upon beforehand <-- key to science, go up in the long run and medium run as long as nobody (read: government) gets in the way.

The opponents' theories were all "gloom and doom unless government gets in the way". Gets in the way, somehow, of this railroad car careening out of control that everybody "knows" is gonna blow up in our face.

Sadly, "Common Sense" didn't measure up to real science.


The Ultimate Resource II (http://juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/)

He tackles it all: Oil, energy, pollution, overpopulation, you name it.

When a skeptic says, "Ok, prove it!" he does.


Like Randi does, he said, "Ok, here are measurements we both (he and the environmentalists) agree on before hand. Here are the predictions we both make. We shall now wait 10 years [his minimum granularity] and see what happens, Ok?"

"Ok," they say.



He had a "difficult time getting this" idea across, though. The incorrect conclusion of enviornmental scientists is in saying, "This is happening to the environment, and therefore this will happen to the population, and therefore politicians should do this thing."


Everything past the first item is outside the realm of the natural scientists. Disagree? Fine. You are akin to a religious apologist yammering on about the Earth being 6000 years old 20 years+ after Simon proved it (Note: no quotes on "prove" -- Theory + prediction + wait for outcome which is verified, you know, stuff skeptics kind of like?)


Oh, and "peak oil" is a fraud, too, for the exact same reasons. See, as prices go up, people want alternatives, and capitalist will satisfy that. Simon even devotes an entire chapter (http://juliansimon.org/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR11.txt) to just this fraud. The whole concept of "Peak Oil" is deliberately taken out of its economic context for the purpose of being a scare tactic. It is identical to many '70s scares, all of which Simon shot down.


I fully expect to receive, as usual, the typical apoplectic responses. I expect no less in the religious forum.

Wow. Not sure what else to say...

[!Kaggen]

"Finally, unlike many of his opponents, Julian was a traditionalist. He did not work on the Sabbath, and the Friday Sabbath dinner at the Simon house was always a gentle and joyous celebration." http://juliansimon.org/appreciation.html

The long line of American Apologists just got longer with a clever boy.

http://homepage.newschool.edu/het//schools/apologist.htm