Steve Savage has written a very interesting analysis, complete with very helpful charts and tables and such, explaining clearly Why Most Food Could Never Be “Local”. This should scare the hell out of anyone aware of peak oil concerns and everyone who likes to eat. Let me briefly and grossly oversimplify Steve’s analysis:

• Most areas cannot grow everything locally; this applies not only to avocados and oranges, which require a certain climate, but also to wheat and many other crops for various reasons. (Read Steve’s article.)

Let me add the peak oil problem:

• Given that much food cannot be grown locally, an advanced transportation system is required to bring prairie wheat, Florida oranges, and California-everything-else to New York.
• Our entire transportation system runs on oil. All of it. We have no electric trains or trucks, no hydrogen-powered tractors and combines.
• Given that we appear to be in or very near peak oil, how exactly is food getting from farm to table?

Some will say, No problem, as the price of oil goes up alternative transportation methods will be devised. I say, How’s that working so far? The price of oil has gone up, considerably, including a very worrisome spike last year to $147 per barrel, and still no push to rebuild the rail system, no serious effort to figure out how to move essentials like food without diesel-powered trucks.

Perhaps the price of oil has not gone up enough? The price per barrel is now somewhere north of USD $80; it was around $20 only a few years ago. If a quadrupling isn’t enough incentive, what will be?

The problem is that so many government subsidies to so many things are masking the price of oil, from the U.S. military presence in the Middle East to Canadian subsides to the tar sands (CDN$ 1.6B per year) to ‘free’ roads for trucks to roll on…and so on. Farmers get subsidies, too, of course. This is ridiculous because they are providing something we all need, so of all people farmers should be able to make a handsome living without tax dollar support. And no doubt farm subsidies will increase as oil prices increase, in order to keep food costs down.

However, these subsidies reduce the perceived need to get our transportation system off oil, so we just keep digging ourselves in deeper until the government no longer can or will provide enough subsidy to keep food prices low.

Then people will rapidly discover that de-carbonising the transportation system will take a great deal of money, energy, and time. And during all that time, food prices are going to jump, meaning less money in the economy for everything else, what with food being a necessity and all, meaning a recession.

What this means for the 100-mile diet, and therefore everyone’s diet

Steve’s findings plus very costly transportation means the 100-mile diet is going to become the norm, because once transportation costs become a factor, the more oil required to bring food to you, the higher the price of that food. And right now, we have a very inefficient transportation system.

To be realistic, 100-milers should be pushing hard to restore our rail system and upgrade it to electric. If we do that, then we can easily enough ship fruits and vegetables around North America. Rather than airfreighting tomatoes from California to Ontario in the winter, we can put them on high-speed electric train.

If we don’t do that, if people can only eat what grows locally (unless they’re wealthy), then everyone’s dietary choices are going to get a lot more limited.

What this means for vegetarians

Many vegetarians are so for compassionate reasons; they don’t want to contribute to the suffering of animals. Others are vegetarians to reduce their impact on the planet, as raising beef, for example, requires ten times as much land and vastly more energy than growing the equivalent amount of calories in vegetables. These are two of the primary reasons people go veg.

However, those of us who are vegetarian recognise that it is a choice, and that choice is going to get much more difficult for people in cold climates. It is much easier to grow hay and feed it to a cow during the winter – and slaughter the cow when needed – than to grow tomatoes in January in Alberta.

It is possible we could grow them in solar greenhouses, and I am part of a group designing a solar greenhouse for market, but realistically we’re a long way from greenhouse tomatoes in Alberta. Without an affordable transportation system between the warmer parts of the country/continent and the colder parts, it’s going to get much more difficult to be vegetarian in the latter.

So, guess who else should be pushing hard to rebuild and electrify the rail system….

Suggested books if you want to learn more

The books below discuss in much more detail some of the ideas mentioned in this post.

The first book (from left-to-right) is Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet – something the authors found a tremendous challenge. And they live in Vancouver, where far more can be grown than anywhere else in the country. They found certain foods were simply no longer available. Here’s a telling quote from the book:

Call me naive, but I never knew that flour would be struck from our 100-Mile Diet. Wheat products are just so ubiquitous, “the staff of life,” that I had hazily imagined the stuff must be grown everywhere. But of course: I had never seen a field of wheat anywhere close to Vancouver, and my mental images of late-afternoon light falling on golden fields of grain were all from my childhood on the Canadian prairies. What I was able to find was Anita’s Organic Grain & Flour Mill, about 60 miles up the Fraser River valley. I called, and learned that Anita’s nearest grain suppliers were at least 800 miles away by road. She sounded sorry for me. Would it be a year until I tasted a pie?

The next book is James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. Kunstler explains why peak oil is imminent and a problem.

The next two books are growing your own vegetables year-round in a solar greenhouse, something we might all want to look into. The second also has “recipes for soaps, teas and things like that which can be made from greenhouse-grown items” which sounds fun.

Some years ago, the famous scientist James Lovelock proposed the Gaia Theory, which states that the Earth acts as a single organism, maintaining temperatures, oxygen levels, and so on within limits that support life – that allow life to flourish, in fact. He said that Earth acts as any living organism does to maintain homeostasis. This has caused considerable controversy, as how can the Earth ‘do’ anything? Many people claimed Lovelock was suggesting that a god of some sort existed to provide this control.

However, Lovelock used a very simple example to show that, whether or not God exists, s/he is not necessary to maintain Earth’s homeostasis: Daisyworld.

Daisyworld

Imagine an Earth with only two species of plants and no other life: Black Daisies and White Daisies. There is another key assumption: life occurs best within a certain temperature range. Warmer temperatures favour the white daisies, as they reflect heat away, while cooler weather favours the black daisies which absorb heat and thus stay warmer.

As the Earth orbits the sun, the distance between the two varies; the orbit is elliptical, not circular. As the Earth gets further from the sun, temperatures drop – and the black daises are favoured and spread, while the white daisies cede ground.

This change in balance also changes the amount of heat the Earth absorbs; more black daisies keep the Earth warmer, despite the decreasing heat from the sun. As the Earth’s orbit brings it closer to the sun, the reverse process occurs as white daisies spread and reflect more heat away from the Earth.

The key point here is not that certain conditions favour certain plants, a fact we know well. It is that life alters its environment to maintain the conditions for life. God doesn’t do it; that’s just the way life seems to work.

Lovelock pointed out that at some point in the Earth’s past, levels of oxygen stabilised at 21%, temperature fluctuations remained within tolerable limits, and so on. If life was simply random, this would never have happened.

The New Normal (You’re not in it)

Lovelock does not claim that life will maintain Earth’s current homoeostasis indefinitely for our benefit. In fact, he has spoken out strongly that we must act on climate change or we will push the Earth to a new homoeostasis that will not support most of the current life forms. What we are doing, in effect, is pushing the Reset button on Planet Earth; the system will reboot and most high-level lifeforms will be deleted permanently. Only some base lifeforms will survive; we will have reverted supercomputer Earth to a game of Pong.

While Earth’s life works powerfully (if unconsciously) to maintain comfortable  living conditions for all, we are overpowering Earth’s other lifeforms. We should be more respectful; if not for them, we would not have enough oxygen to breathe, crops would not grow, temperatures would be deadly, and so on. The difference between Mars and Earth is Life.

Life may not be God, but we should consider it sacred nonetheless, for without life in general, human life in particular would not be possible.

James Lovelock’s Library

Lovelock has written numerous books about Gaia, and all are worth reading. He has become quite convinced that humanity is doomed, not because we cannot respond to the climate crisis, but because we will not.

A final note: Lovelock is an independent scientist. He has funded his work through various means for decades – including corporate funding – and does not rely on government grants and university funding. He has been highly critical of the overspecialisation that occurs among scientists. Despite that, he is 100% in agreement with the worst-case scenarios for climate change, as he believes the science is unequivocal. (Note: The fourth book listed below is not Lovelock’s. He wrote the foreword and recommends the book.)

In a previous post, I listed mostly illegal things that individuals are likely to do unless serious action is taken on climate change – very soon. The actions listed here are things we all need to be doing to prevent getting to the stage where people are desperate or angry enough to become destructive or dangerous.

Here are useful, worthwhile things you can do right now to be the difference we need.

1. Set an example

Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” and “My life is my message.” Both are still true, and this is the most important thing you can do. We are social animals, and your example will push us toward a social tipping point.

Before the tipping point, there is much resistance and it seems change is impossible, or at best far away. Afterward, when everyone is doing it and a new social norm has been set, it seems impossible we would ever go back to the old way. Think recycling: Now it is shameful not to recycle in Canada and some parts of the United States. Or single-payer health care: there is enormous and well-funded resistance to it in the United States, yet nobody in their right mind in Canada or Europe would consider moving to a U.S.-style private-only system.

When it comes to setting an example, go as far as you can within your circumstances – then push a bit further.  Use some of the ideas below to expand yourself and be a better example.

2.  Get to know climate change and Peak Everything

Many people simply are not aware of how dangerous – and real – climate change and other threats are. Once you know, anyone with a grain of a conscience (this excludes those with the predator morality) will feel compelled to take action.

I have listed some sources to educate yourself on these issues under Resources, which describes the stages I went through and the books, movies, websites, and people who helped me. Most newspapers, television, and radio are not trustworthy. There is some reliable information there, but there is also disinformation. The Guardian has an excellent Environment section, and the BBC is also decent.

3. Go meatless on Mondays

It doesn’t have to be Mondays, but one of the best things you can do for the planet right now is eat less meat. The meat industry generates anywhere from 18% (more than the entire transportation sector) to 51% of greenhouse gases. Excess consumption of animal products is also blamed for most heart disease, so do yourself and the planet a favour and learn a few good vegetarian dishes. I recommend How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet and The Vegetarian Kitchen.

Note: If your meat is venison or free-range, hormone and antibiotic-free, and local, then it may actually be greenhouse gas-neutral. Unfortunately, very little meat meets these criteria.

4. Take an Earth Institute course

The Canadian Earth Institute and the Northwest Earth Institute (U.S.) offer several excellent and simple courses, including: Choices for Sustainable Living, Voluntary Simplicity, Discovering a Sense of Place, Exploring Deep Ecology, Globalization and its Critics, Healthy Children, Healthy Planet and Global Warming: Changing CO2urse. If you’re not sure about global warming, take the last course.

All courses are done in small groups and self-paced. There are no tests, and the only cost is for the workbook. It’s the best way to gain knowledge.

5. Organize an Earth Institute course

Host a course in your house with family or friends. Talk to your minister/preacher/rabbi/religious leader about the church/temple/whatever hosting the courses. Religious leaders are like you: they want to do something constructive but are often not sure what. The Earth Institute courses are a great idea, simple to do, and religious leaders generally love ‘em. You could also start a meetup to get people together for a course. Run a singles course.

6. Host a documentary

Organize a showing of An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car?, or one of the other great documentaries related to our current crises. Many are available from local libraries.

7. Arrange a live presentation of An Inconvenient Truth

These presentations are free, and most presenters have updated the original Gore slideshow to include the latest science, local impacts of climate change, and more solutions. The presenters are ordinary people doing an extraordinary thing. Canada, U.S., Australia, India, Spain, or the U.K. All presenters are volunteers, including me. I also have a presentation entitled The Way Home, not free, which describes how to get back to living sanely.

8. Arrange a speaker

There are many other speakers/presenters who are well worth bringing to your town if you have the wherewithal to organize it. Beware, though; the deniers also go around speaking. Some speakers I recommend (the books noted are also well worth reading):

• James Howard Kunstler (author of The Long Emergency
  The Geography of Nowhere, and more) on Peak Oil
• Ray Anderson (CEO of Interface Carpets and author of Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose–Doing Business by Respecting the Earth) and speaker on Sustainable Development
• Paul Hawken (author of The Ecology of Commerce, Natural Capitalism and, Blessed Unrest) on ecology/economy
• David Korten (author of The Great Turning, When Corporations Rule the World, and more) on the end of empire

9. Get active

If any of the speakers listed above comes anywhere near you, go see them! If a local group is bringing a speaker to town or organizing a showing of a documentary, GO! I saw David Korten thanks to a local business group, and the premiere of The Age of Stupid thanks to a local eco-group.

Note: I have not recommended joining eco-groups like The Sierra Club, World Wildlife Fund, or Greenpeace.  Although some of these groups do great things, right now they are all working in silos. There is no synergy among them; they all have their own agendas, and often egos keep them isolated. United we stand, divided we fall is as true as it ever was, and I cannot recommend joining these groups until they start acting in concert on climate change. In addition, many people join a group, send off a cheque, and think they’ve done enough. Anyone can do more and better.

10. Go to local vegetarian potlucks

Most cities have a vegetarian group, and most of those groups have monthly or even weekly potlucks. It is worth going at least once or twice; most are populated by very nice people and you’ll get to try some great food. They are generally very gentle with newbies, so you can take a salad to the first one to see what it’s all about. Raw food groups and potlucks are booming, and are often organized by the veggie group.

11. Listen to real scientists

There are a lot of disreputable people claiming to be climate experts. Tim Ball, for example, is often welcomed as a speaker at Chambers of Commerce because he tells the local business people there is nothing to worry about, the world is actually cooling, and business-as-usual can continue. None of these are true, but all are very tempting to believe.

Scientists are speaking out more frequently now as the urgency of the danger becomes more obvious. Go listen to your local university scientists if you can. Many people wake up when they hear from a real person with real experience.

12. Support the sinking countries

The Maldives, Tuvalu, and other Pacific nations will cease to exist due to rising seas and stronger storms, probably this century. China, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam and many other countries will have to relocate millions of their citizens inland for the same reasons. The least you can do is sign the petition saying you support strong action on climate change, including charging Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil and long-time funder of climate denial PR groups, with crimes against humanity. That will get his attention.

If you want to participate in rallies, candlelight vigils, and so forth, go ahead. People like Rex Tillerson and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper are not paying attention to them, but if it makes you feel good…just make sure you are doing something constructive, too, like the other actions listed here.

I am also not recommending civil disobedience unless it is en masse. Divided we fall, so individuals or small groups make easy targets – and are easily discredited. If there is a march of millions – legal or illegal – get in there. If there is a national strike – strike.  But small actions allow you to be picked off by the authorities and discredited on the news as a lone nut.

13. Sharpen the saw

This expression comes from Stephen Covey, famous for his excellent books and courses entitled The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.  It means that once you have a new and better  habit, keep it sharp by exercising it constantly. Get in the habit of raising your awareness on climate change. Find reliable sources of information.

14. Torch a Hummer

I’m kidding. One of the reasons for this list of useful things to do is to prevent things like Hummers being torched. If climate change is not addressed – soon – then desperate and angry people are going to do desperate and angry things. Fat-cats and their Hummers will become targets unless we take other actions, soon.

Disclaimer: If you purchase a book or video by clicking one of the links above, Amazon pays me a small commission. I do not make any money from the speakers, courses, or other resources listed.

And one more thing…

And, of course, you can donate to support what I do.

UPDATE – I am pleased to report that this post will be featured in the All Things Eco Blog Carnival.

I have had it with groups that supposedly want to save the planet. They are run by highly intelligent, clueless idiots. Perhaps the best indictment of their effectiveness is simply to look at the state of the planet they are allegedly trying to save: No honest person could say the Earth is in better shape now than it was when the eco-groups started more than 30 years ago.

The planet is more polluted, populated, deforested, desertified, fished-out, and generally raped and pillaged than ever, to the point that we are on the verge of civilisational collapse. Climate change is near terminal, and if that doesn’t get us (it will) we are running into Peak Everything.

And you want me to send you a cheque for how much? Don’t call me, and I won’t call you. The only group I am now part of is the BCSEA (British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association, but everyone knows it by its acronym), where I am a Director. The BCSEA focuses on energy solutions, which we will desperately wish we had developed sooner as oil prices creep up.

Not only are eco-groups wasting money on Executive Directors who are not getting the job done, they exist only on the backs of volunteer labour. It’s the new slavery, as a friend put it. Save-the-Planet groups take well-meaning people and burn them out in useless campaigns. They turn off even more people hungry for change when they urge them to come out to meaningless rallies. Candlelight vigils against global warming? What the fuck is that supposed to do?

In business…well, I was going to say these Executive Directors would have been fired, but these days they are more likely to be bailed out and give themselves massive bonuses for their screw-ups.

The environmental movement gets nothing more from me – no money, no time, no air time on my radio show, no space in my blog – until they wake up. You have failed. Utterly. Maybe, just a thought, consider changing your strategy? Maybe re-evaluate what works and what doesn’t? Because the facts speak for themselves: most of what you do is not working.

The time is long overdue for environmental and social justice groups to work together with climate change at the top of everyone’s agenda. If we don’t stop climate change, there will be a lot fewer starving babies in Africa – because they’ll be dead. There will be no need to Save the Whales, because either they’ll be dead or we will. Quite possibly both. And if we do actually come up with a realistic plan to fight climate change, that will do more to save babies and whales then anything else we’ve done in the last 30-plus years.

Every person I know who has faced the reality of our climate crisis battles with feelings of despair, some or all of the time. When you pull the pieces together and take what the scientists are saying and combine it with our foreseeable political reality, it is hard not to believe we are doomed. Meaning, the collapse of civilization and a massive dieback of humanity is inevitable, and the only question is when.

But wait, there’s worse. The more you look into it, the more you realize this collapse and dieback will certainly affect you personally quite negatively, and is likely to happen sooner than later. And you also see such powerful vested interests who have corrupted our economic and political systems to their short-term benefit standing in the way of change, that you really cannot see the needed change as possible.

From James Lovelock saying it’s all over but the crying and dying, to James Hansen saying we are already over the safe threshold and have 5 years to get our carbon under control; or John Holdren saying we are now dealing with climate change and what we are fighting to avoid is catastrophic climate change, to mainstream scientific views that climate change is happening more quickly than they thought…well, it can lead to despair.

Despair can come with the realization that we have no hope of saving the current beauty and wonder of the planet, or saving humanity and the ongoing quest for civilization, or the very real possibility that this climate catastrophe will occur in your lifetime and take your family. I can now say this without worrying about the age of most readers. Look around you: If you’re in a crowd, at least half will likely die from this disaster. If there are two of you, one of you isn’t going to make it. And if it’s just you: 50/50. Good luck.

Let’s take one small facet of the crisis: rising sea levels. Let’s not concern ourselves with desertification, the collapse of the fisheries, ocean dead zones, ocean acidification, the collapse of the marine food chain, stronger and longer storms and fires, the spread of plagues and pests, or any other climate change-related disaster. Sea levels are predicted to rise over 1 metre (3’3”) by 2100. That will displace approximately 100 million people. (A more recent report suggests one billion people will become climate refugees by 2050.) More accurately, it will drive 100 million people onto already crowded and claimed land, and conflict will ensue. Many of those people will be very angry at the countries primarily responsible both for causing their dispossession and for stalling action on it, primarily Canada and the United States. A few may become terrorists. Many more may call for sanctions, reparations, an end to global capitalism, war, that sort of thing.

But…2100, you think. That’s far enough away yet not to worry now. Well, think about that. First, that’s still 25 million climate refugees by 2030ish. From Shanghai to Vancouver, people will be flooded out of homes and businesses; where are they going? Who is paying to give them new land, homes, livelihoods? 2030 is not so far away – only 20 years now.

And second, awareness of their impending fate will come to many people well before then. And then all hell will break loose, because there will be panic and rage. There are already calls from nations that are scheduled to be drowned for a new territory. The President of Maldives has said his people “will not die quietly.” Who is going to give up a chunk of their country to provide a new one for these climate refugees? China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and other countries will have to relocate millions into already crowded areas.  It would seem fair that the countries that caused the problem accept many of these millions, but…will Canada, population 34M, accept 17M climate refugees from Bangladesh? Unlikely.

Mass awareness may come at any time before 2030; it is a social tipping point. Another Katrina might do it, for example. Or charging deniers with crimes against humanity, or ‘leaders’ with treason. Or simply the constantly rising tide of reality which is slowly but surely showing that the deniers can’t swim.

However, even if things totter along without major catastrophe until 2030, I must say I was hoping for a longer life and leaving a better one for my children and grandchildren. The thought of leaving them a world in the middle of the collapse of our civilization and a massive dieback of humanity – of living in this world myself – is dread-inducing. This is not just death, it is the death of life as we know it. The fact that I can’t do anything about it causes despair. ecoDespair™.

There are various ways to cope with this loss of hope. Alcohol and drugs, for example. Writing letters to the editor. Joining rallies. Everything is temporary. Once you know, you cannot unknow. Ultimately, I have to think it will lead to violence. Not everyone is going to go gently, especially when those who caused and concealed the problem are getting a plush ride. Knowing that the world is going to hell is going to cause moral values to regress in some people.

During a collapse, there will be many people with nothing left to lose. Much of their family wiped out, their remaining childrens’ future a bleak and short hell, their own life consisting of scraping to get by…some people are going to seek revenge. Others will simply try to get by however necessary, and if that means stealing and murdering, they will do so.

Maybe me at some point. I don’t think anyone knows until they are at that point. I still have things to live for and hope that we can still make it. We have to get radical, but I do think we still have a chance to save ourselves. Failing that, and so far we are failing badly, I’m simply hoping to save myself and my family for as long as possible.

The only cure for despair is the knowledge that the obstacles are political, and therefore can be overcome very quickly if the people so will it. So far, there is very little progress, and near-zero acceptance of climate reality. But that does not mean that it will not happen; tipping points are visible only in hindsight – and there is a groundswell building.

Four hundred years ago, the Catholic Church found Galileo Galilei “vehemently suspect of heresy” and sentenced him to house arrest for the remainder of his life. His offending thoughts and book were banned, as were all future books he might consider writing. His crime? Suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the universe.

Today’s scientists are modern-day Galileos, viciously attacked at every turn by deniers with half-truths and outright falsehoods. Today’s Inquisitors are the Deniers, their church Market Fundamentalism, and they worship the Almighty Dollar. Ultimately, their true religion is the same as it was 400 years ago for the Roman Catholic Church: Power, Privilege, Prestige. And, now as then, the Inquisitors are terrified by the implications of a scientific discovery because it threatens their position.

Today’s Catholic Church has come a long way and now embraces the views of scientists, at least in the area of the hard sciences. The Catholic Church has an annual “Save Creation Day” and speaks of global warming as a catastrophe that will destroy humanity and much of God’s creation, and therefore sees it as a moral as well as scientific issue. Most major Christian religions take this view, because they see no conflict between science and religion.

Science and Spirituality are attempts to understand the universe

We feeble humans attempt to understand the universe through science and through spirituality, and each is valuable and necessary in its own way. Science has nothing to say about morality or the grand question of “Why?” As my high school physics teacher put it to the class many years ago, science cannot answer the question, “Why is a duck?” Meaning, why does anything, including the universe itself, exist? Science does, however, get better and better at describing and understanding the universe and how it works, including all that is in it – including us.

Spirituality, on the other hand, does provide a foundation for morality. Many religions take the view that morality is “because the Bible says so,” but in reality it is not necessary to invoke God or ancient texts to decide what is moral and what is not.

Philosophy, as practised by the ancient Greeks like Aristotle, was once the intersection of science and spirituality. The Greeks attempted to discover the meaning of life, or what it meant to live a good life. Today’s philosophers have abandoned this quest – and therefore morality – to the self-help authors.

Whether one is a ‘believer’ or not, whether one is Christian or not, there is ancient wisdom in the Bible and other spiritual texts that we have ignored to our peril: The Seven Deadly Sins, for example, really are deadly. Greed is not good, and this is why the Deniers are terrified.

Much of the propaganda from Deniers focuses on the economic aspects of climate change; their fallback argument, after years of outright lies and attempts to confuse people about the science, is constantly that it is “too expensive” to change, that the world economy would crash, that poor people would suffer, and so on. None of this is true, and all of it serves only to mask the Deniers’ true desire, which is to preserve their position. Deniers don’t give a damn about the poor of the planet, nor about you and I. Like the Catholic Church of 400 years ago, they care only about maintaining their power, privilege, and prestige, and they see the scientific evidence on global warming as a threat to that.

That is why deniers talk of agreements to reduce greenhouse gases as “socialist schemes”; they are petrified that someone is going to take away their ill-gotten gains, will see them for the predators they are, and will change the economic system to a fairer one more in line with reality.

In fact, even Market Fundamentalism is a cover for keeping power and wealth. While many Deniers claim to be Libertarians or free marketers, in reality they have aligned themselves with vested interests such as Big Oil – because oil companies fund denial campaigns. They have adopted the doctrine, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” even though it means perverting their supposed values and humanity. The last thing either the fundies or major corporations want is “polluter-pay,” as that would mean the end of fossil industries like coal and oil, gas guzzling cars, and corporatised industrial-scale farming. It would mean a return to small-scale and local, and there’s not much power, prestige, and privilege in that.

We cannot wait 400 years for the Fundamentalists and their corporate backers to be discredited. Long before that time – within a few years – we will have passed climate tipping points of no return and humanity will begin a rapid downward slide into the abyss. We must stop this Inquisition of our scientists and accept the reality of global warming, inconvenient as it may be to the Church of the Market and their false idol the Almighty Dollar. We must move to an economy and way of being that is built not on sin, but on honouring People, Planet, and Prosperity.

To some, this seems ridiculous. To others, however, it is eminently reasonable. Let me explain why the charges are justified, and why Rex Tillerson.

The Case for Prosecution

In a post on Celsias.com, I laid out the case:

If climate change can reasonably be expected to cause severe consequences, including large-scale loss of material goods, wealth, land, livelihood, and life; and

Given that there is considerable evidence in favour of climate change occurring, that it is dangerous and will only get more so, that Exxon has given substantial contributions to organizations and individuals whose job it is to obscure the truth about climate change, and that Rex Tillerson has been the responsible person at Exxon during the time of the contributions, I believe there is sufficient evidence to charge Rex Tillerson with crimes against humanity.

The prosecution could call virtually any climate scientist working in the field today.

Mr. Tillerson’s richly compensated defence team could only counter with paid shills possessing highly dubious credentials. Some previously worked with the tobacco companies to conceal the truth about the danger of cigarette smoking. Many still do.

Why Rex Tillerson

As cited above, Tillerson was and is the man in charge at ExxonMobil, the responsible party. Tillerson has also made no secret of his opposition to doing anything about global warming.

Still, why him in particular? Why not go after Steve McIntyre or Fred Singer, who are do the actual denying?

The reason is simple: to kill the beast you must cut off its head. The individual deniers have the power they do only because they have been backed by large corporations like ExxonMobil. Cut the funding and the beast will wither. Cut down a denier and another will sprout in his place.

While other corporations have funded denial – see the excellent Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by Jim Hoggan for a more complete accounting – many stopped their funding a few years ago. ExxonMobil continues to fund denial, and continues to lie about doing so.

To set an example, you don’t go after the small fry, you fry the big fish. Then all the other big and little fish are warned. Tillerson is the biggest fish in the denial cesspool. Putting him on trial would likely dry up almost all funding and support for deniers; a conviction surely would.

Who Should Bring the Charges Against Tillerson

In an honest world, the American government would have done so a long time ago. In reality, the U.S. government is heavily influenced, one might say “bought,” by monied interests, with Big Oil among the most monied and influential.

The other developed nations could do so, but I think everyone is afraid of going after the CEOs. They are too influential in the media, campaign donations, country clubs, and so forth. Many Western politicians expect to walk out of politics and into a plum corporate gig someday, so are unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them.

That leaves the poor countries. I suggested Maldives, which certainly has reason to do so – Maldives will cease to exist thanks to rising seas – but any developing nation could do so. Better, the G77 group of developing nations should do so, whether the United Nations agrees or not. If the United States can invade Iraq without UN approval  to secure its oil supply, then surely Bangladesh, Maldives, or the whole G77 can charge Rex Tillerson with crimes against humanity for sinking them.

* I realise that the charge of crimes against humanity applies only to “a government or a de facto authority,” but this is the other end of the stick that corporate leaders picked up when they decided to make it their business to “influence” governments. Corporate CEOs become the “de facto authority.” Welcome to being responsible for your actions.

In a previous and apparently somewhat controversial article, I laid out what individuals are likely to do as despair and anger rise over climate inaction. I was not recommending these actions, but some readers interpreted it that way and seemed very threatened by what desperate individuals will do. We must also consider what nations are liable to do, especially those right on the front lines of climate change. Many nations will be desperate – they are literally in a life-or-death situation – and some are certain to take drastic action.

Useless Actions

Also known as symbolic actions, these have on effect on someone who really doesn’t care what you think of him. I have previously described the actions of the developed nations as predatory, in that they will still be talking long after the poor countries have devolved into climate chaos.

• Hold an underwater session of Parliament. The Maldives recently did this; Canada and the United States did not change direction noticeably.
• Entreat, appeal to reason, point out the advantages to acting now, etc. The developed countries are locked on their current path by powerful corporate interests, so reason is irrelevant.
• Participate in international conferences, including trusting that the rich nations are sincere and will be honourable. See: Danish text.

Likely Actions: Potentially Harmful to All

Desperate people are likely to take desperate action. Don’t expect them to die quietly for our benefit.

• Make an example of an individual denier. I have suggested charging Rex Tillerson with crimes against humanity. Tillerson is the CEO of ExxonMobil, which has funded climate denial liars for years, and continues to do so. This action would strike at the head of the beast, and may be one of the only ways to move the rich to action. It is also the safest for all of us, though embarrassing that someone else had to take out our trash.
• Make an example of a denier country. Boot Canada out of the Commonwealth, for example. Efforts to do this are already underway. Or, for that matter, charge Canada’s PM Stephen with crimes against humanity. Or fund an effort in his own country to charge him with treason and terrorism.
• Stall. Buy land in other nations in order to grow crops to feed your people. China and Saudi Arabia are doing this in Africa, and it seems certain to lead to conflict.
• Demand that rich nations give land to sunken countries for a new home. Much like was done for Israel but this time willingly by the people who caused the countries to sink. The Maldives are going to disappear and countries like Canada and the US are largely responsible; why shouldn’t the US give Kauai to the people they dispossessed? If Bangladesh must relocate 17 million climate refugees by the end of the century, why shouldn’t Canada accept them as refugees?
• Geo-engineering. Yes, it could destroy much human life on the planet if it goes wrong, but if your country is dead anyway…. And if we don’t stop climate change we’re all dead, so certainly some desperate nation will try. It may not work, but it would cost very little for Bangladesh or an African nation to dump a shipload of iron filings into the ocean to try and cool the planet. Or for China and India to inject sulphur into the atmosphere.
• Steal. Divert water for your own nation’s use. The Himalayan glaciers provide water to 40% of the world’s population in Asia, and they are melting fast. When they are gone, someone is not going to get sufficient water.
• Reduce population any way possible. Wars work, as does starvation if you can prevent rioting. Lenin and Stalin starved millions to death, as did Mao. Some sort of influenza would do the trick, assuming a vaccine was developed in advance and given to the favoured few.
• Go to war. China could invade Russia to get more land. Or Canada. Unlikely? At the moment, yes. If the Chinese government is facing revolution and economic collapse as millions of residents of Shanghai are drive from their homes by rising sea levels, then the scenario becomes much more plausible. Or India could nuke Bangladesh if refugees from that country are overwhelming India.

Some of these scenarios will seem more plausible as time goes by, even with concerted action on climate. This is because we have already set in motion climate changes that will result in, for example, significant sea level rise. Gwynne Dyer covers this well in his excellent book Climate Wars, which used research from the U.S. Pentagon. The Pentagon considers climate change a much greater threat than terrorism, and for good reason: the United States shares a very long border with Mexico, population 111 million. Mexico is rapidly running out of oil and is predicted to suffer badly due to desertification as the tropics warm.

I would much prefer that we get serious about climate change now, before millions are starving, migrating, and warring – before people and nations are backed into a corner with their life on the line. Getting serious means to stop doing things that don’t work, like candlelight vigils or expecting rich nations to act honourably, and to take actual action. Step 1 should be to stab a dagger through the heart of the denier Medusa by charging Rex Tillerson, the lead funder of climate denial.

And while any one country could (and may) do this, it would be far more powerful to have the G77 band together to do it.

The economies of the developed countries are built on waste and cheap energy. The waste takes many forms, including pollution, greenhouses gases, resources used once and then buried, topsoil loss, planned obsolescence, and the diversion of capital to wasteful businesses in the form of subsidies. The cheap energy, of course, has largely been coal and oil, and those days are coming to an end. China, India, and the other developing nations cannot afford this waste-based economy, and must leapfrog us straight to the new green economy.

Saying the economy of the developed world is enormously wasteful is another way of saying that it is grossly inefficient. Any country that eliminates this waste and inefficiency gains a significant competitive advantage. This will become exponentially more true as carbon pollution is priced into goods one-way-or-another, and as the cost of transportation and manufacturing increases with the price of oil. Such a country will also be cleaner and her citizens healthier – both of which also translate to competitive advantage.

China, India, and other developing countries can build coal plants and highways, and they can model their buildings, cities, infrastructure, and economy after our own, but that would be a huge mistake. Most people have pulled their heads out of wherever they had them stuck and realise that the price of oil is going to go up, and that oil is going to become progressively more difficult to come by for reasons both geological and political. Even ignoring pollution and global warming, there simply is not enough oil for the billions in the developing world to own gas-powered cars.

A Day in the Life

Really, just an hour in the morning:

Electric alarm (with battery for backup) goes off, and Mr. Westerner rolls reluctantly out of bed to take a shower.

1. The electricity travels hundreds of kilometres through high-voltage transmission lines from a coal-fired generating station. A very large percentage of the energy contained in that coal is lost somewhere along the way and never makes it to the house, and of course the mining operation itself requires huge energy inputs.
2. The battery (likely long-since dead) will be thrown ‘away’ when Mr. W realizes its state. All the energy used to extract the materials for the battery, and to manufacture and distribute it, is lost when the battery is thrown into the garbage. So are all the valuable metals and chemicals, which now become toxic waste in the landfill. The landfill itself is a huge cost to create and maintain, and eventually to attempt to stop the toxins leaking from it.
3. Mr. W’s shower uses lots more wastefully generated and transmitted energy, of course, and W thinks nothing of the energy contained in the hot water swirling down the drain. The water is heated one-way-or-another by fossil fuel, and stored in a poorly insulated tank. The shower stall is fibreglass, a temporary use of oil before it too becomes toxic landfill.
4. At some point W uses the toilet, flushing away many litres of expensively purified water suitable for drinking. If today is washing day, the sheets on the bed go into the laundry, using more drinking water and polluting cleaning chemicals. Some day, the washing machine and dryer will join everything else in the dump, the metals they contain once again buried.
5. W’s food comes from all over the world: lettuce from California, oranges from Florida, kiwis flown in from New Zealand. The eggs are almost local, but all the food is produced on industrial-scale farms which would collapse without massive fossil fuel inputs; nitrogen fertilizer comes from natural gas, and most pesticides are petroleum-based.

At this point, Mr. W is only up to breakfast and it should be clear that billions of Chinese and Indians are not going to be air-freighting kiwis from New Zealand or lettuce from California. There isn’t enough land or oil, and they won’t have enough money to outbid rich Westerners. And certainly billions of Chinese and Indians are not going to be hopping in their shiny new 320-hp SUVs to commute to work every day on eight-lane highways.

There just isn’t enough for everyone to live that way. There isn’t enough land to grow all the food needed, for example, even if we clear the rainforests and virtually every other speck of land on the planet, which we are doing. There isn’t enough oil for all those cars and factory farms. Long before the last Chinese or Indian gets his sirloin steak flown in from Australia, the ecology that supports all this will have collapsed and the resources run out.

The only sensible thing for the developing countries to do is to leapfrog us, both economically and technologically. They cannot develop as we did without destroying themselves and the planet – and there simply isn’t enough anyway. The further and faster they go down the Western dead end, the bigger the impact when they hit the limits.

Discredited Economics

American-style capitalism is not a viable economic solution, as clearly evidenced by the ongoing disasters it produces and the corruption it brings to politics. Capitalism inevitably devolves to Crony Capitalism, where the wealthiest increasingly pervert the economic and political system to serve themselves at the expense of everyone else. When the government attempts to prevent these abuses, the wealthy turn their sights on the government, and the U.S. Congress is now the most corrupt democratically-elected body on the planet.

Marxist-Leninist-style communism is also not viable; it has turned into murderous dictatorships wherever it has been tried. And, to be fair, it also is massively wasteful and polluting; vast areas of the former Soviet Union are polluted beyond human use and China is fighting desertification and skyrocketing cancer rates due to industrial pollution.

Both economic systems place man apart from and above nature; the assumption is that we can do what we want with nature and gain only benefit, forever. Reality has caught up with this belief and is in the process of correcting it.

The New Green Economy

China, India, and other developing countries must learn from the failed experiments of capitalism and communism. These countries must chart their own path to an extent to a new green economy. I will explain the green economy in more detail in another post; suffice it to say here that it is:

• Zero waste; everything is an input for something else, exactly the way nature works. That could mean that washing machines are returned to the manufacturer, as Germany requires, which then reuses the materials. It could also mean that ‘plastic’ shopping bags are actually biodegradable, for example. The new green economy is a Cradle to Cradle economy, meaning there is no such thing as pollution.
• Sustainable; economic activities do not degrade the environment, people’s health, or the political system. An industrial or farming activity can be carried on indefinitely with no harm – in fact, with benefit – to the environment that is the foundation of the economy.

The New Green Technology

There are countless ‘green’ solutions; we don’t implement them primarily because vested interests prevent it. These blocks to innovation and greater efficiency come in many forms, but the largest are subsidies and favourable laws. Canada’s tar sands are ‘cheaper’ than wind and solar because the pollution the tar miners are largely free to pollute and because we provide very large subsidies and tax breaks. The Canadian federal government alone gives $1.6B annually to tar miners. The British Columbia government this year will give oil and gas companies $320M.

The Chinese and Indians can only afford these kinds of subsidies if they divert valuable foreign currency. This would be foolish and unnecessary.

The West was supposed to develop green technology and transfer it to the developing countries, but vested interests and crooked politicians have kept us on the same dirty, dead-end road, so the developing countries will have to do it largely on their own.

Waste Not, Want Not

The first solution is simply conservation. For example, build houses that require no net input of energy for heating or cooling. Such houses exist already. Make these houses out of local, largely free materials. Adobe and earthen houses have been around for over a thousand years, they last literally forever if maintained, they provide excellent thermal mass for passive solar heating, and are built out of the dirt excavated for the foundation. Solutions like this actually save money.

Developing nations typically have lots of manpower but little money. Building earthen houses is one way to put people to work and chop energy use for house building and heating to near-zero.

We used to reuse things like glass bottles, but for the most part we now throw them ‘away’ and make new ones out of plastic – which is, of course, oil. The developing countries would be wise to do what we used to do: reuse bottles and jars. If people are going to the supermarket to buy groceries, they can take back the empties. Or, we can replace garbage trucks with resource recovery trucks. Imagine all those very valuable containers and metals that can be recovered at curbside, rather than mined and processed at great expense of energy and money.

The potential energy and cost savings from conservation are truly enormous. For example, recycling aluminium uses 5% of the energy required to extract and form mined material. Houses can be net contributors to the grid. Reusing glass containers slashes energy requirements.

Walkable Communities

More astronomical savings are possible simply by making communities walkable. If people can walk to work, shopping, recreation, school, and so on, the need for a personal vehicle is eliminated. When you consider that many Canadians and Americans could work a four-day week if they were not supporting a car or two, that is a tremendous burden to bear. Add in the health costs due to engine pollution (asthma rates among children are now nearly 30% in Canada, for example, largely attributed to diesel engines and soot), the health costs due to accidents, policing costs, road costs, and so on, and the savings add up to much lower taxes.

Furthermore, if walking is supplemented by mass transit and covered downtowns (also called “malls”), then cars can be eliminated entirely. If China and India each forgo 1,000,000,000 cars (the US averages 765 cars per 1,000 people), all the money that would have been spent on cars, roads, trauma centres, police, etc is freed up for productive purposes. It also drastically reduces China’s and India’s need for the energy and raw materials to make those cars, and the oil to power them. When you consider that 95% of a car’s energy is to move the car, and only 5% for the human inside, this is a great reduction in waste.

Renewable Energy

Once the energy requirements have been slashed to a minimum, then determine the amount of energy required – and generate that energy renewably. You don’t want to end up dependent upon foreign energy in any form; look where that led the United States.

Self-reliance for Necessities

Thanks to free-market fanatics, the idea of a nation being self-sufficient for necessities has become passé. However, it is foolish to rely upon foreign countries for the necessities of life. Nothing starts a revolution faster than hungry bellies. And as mentioned just previously, being dependent upon other countries for something your country must have leads to attempts to ‘secure national interests,’ a euphemism for ‘take by force.’

Don’t Do What We Say or Do

China and India cannot industrialize and develop the same way the developed nations did. There are not enough resources of all kinds, from energy to land to various raw materials. On top of that, the environment upon which any economy must be based will not sustain even one more United States-sized wastrel, never mind two the size of China and India.

Developing countries must chart their own path. The developed countries should have been leading the way to greater prosperity and security for all, by developing clean and green technologies and passing them along to the developing countries. However, due to corruption in our corporate-political system, we have not even developed these things for ourselves.

Our foolishness does not justify another nation making the same mistakes. If anything, you should be learning from our errors and crafting a sustainable and stable economy that uses minimal energy and generates zero waste and pollution.

Yesterday morning, somewhere around 4:00,  the electricity went off. The temperature outside was freezing: 0C (32F); the temperature inside dropped to 16C (61F) within two hours, at which point the electricity was restored. It was a gentle reminder of how vulnerable and energy-dependent we are.

Sixteen degrees Celsius is certainly easily survivable. Had the power remained off for a few more hours, however, the inside temperature would have taken as little as 8 hours to reach the outside temperature of 0C. That’s not so easy to live in, especially with no electric lights, stove, or refrigerator, never mind television or computer. At least we wouldn’t have had to worry about the contents of the freezer.

A few years ago my parents did live through a very unpleasant and potentially dangerous power outage: the Canadian ice storm of 1998. They went over one week without electricity in temperatures hovering about the freezing mark, and that event was a motivating factor behind them deciding to sell their farm and move into the city. For hundreds of thousands of people, pipes had to be drained, cooking was by BBQ and campstove, and 600,000 people had to leave their homes.

There are various problems with a system that makes us so dependent upon centrally-generated power and long supply lines, and it is inevitable that such outages will occur again.  Peak Oil students suggest that this world is coming for the developed countries sooner rather than later. We interviewed James Howard Kunstler on our radio show, and his prognosis is bleak.  Climate change will also disrupt energy supplies for various reasons, from stronger and therefore more destructive storms, to countries hoarding energy.

Some people will be in much better shape; those who live in a PassivHaus, for example, which drops in temperature at the rate of 0.5C per day without energy. Compare that to my townhouse, which drops 2C per hour. And it’s not an old house; it was built in 1992. If my parents had been living in a house built to PassivHaus standards, the interior temperature would have dropped from 21C (70F) to 17.5C (63.5F) over the course of one week with no power, assuming no other attempt was made to heat the house.

Unfortunately, we don’t build houses that way here, in one of the coldest countries on the planet, even though the cost difference is minimal upfront and there are big savings long-term – heating and air-conditioning costs are near-zero. Some PassivHaus owners make money by selling back to the grid. France and the U.K. have mandated this quality of construction for 2020 and 2016, respectively.

What would be your situation if the electricity went off and stayed off for an extended time? Most Canadians and Americans would be in desperate shape very quickly, regardless of the weather outside, but throw in winter and things could get ugly. The 600,000 people driven from their homes in Ontario and Quebec had somewhere to go: perhaps relatives in a nearby city, or a hotel paid for by an insurance company. And good luck working or sending the kids to school! If power outages are more widespread, more frequent, or longer, civilisation as we know it will end very quickly if everyone is scrambling to survive.

Building codes should have been revised decades ago to mandate passive solar gain for all buildings, and thermal mass and good insulation to retain the heat gained. Instead, we are totally dependent upon central generating stations and long power lines, a system both inefficient and insecure.

What am I doing? I’m working toward my own PassivHaus.