Knowing what we know now, what can we do, what should we do?

It’s time for me to change my focus, and target a simple and direct approach.

The starting point is that our universe–as we experience it as animals–has its own coherence.  In other words, our biosphere, our planet, our star, our universe exists on no uncertain terms–and these terms are its own.  We can, and do, know something of those terms, and we can strive to live by them, coherently; or we can fail to know what we know, and live in hubris, looking in the mirror (or monitor) and enjoying our fantasy.

We are animals who flow out of the universe, from the supernovae whose gravity formed the elements of our bodies to the energy gradients and chemical signals that we comprise, as living creatures.  Our neuroanatomy–our words, emotions, perceptions–are an adaptation by one particular mammalian, hominid species that brought us advantages in a moment in time–currently expressed by you and me.

We are a young species, compared to most of the life around us.  We are, like all of life’s adaptations, an experiment, a trial.  Our hominid ancestors spoke, and played with fire, perhaps a half-million to a million years ago.  The experiment developed gradually.  Our close relatives controlled fire and expanded language 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.  It was an ongoing experiment in talking and burning.

Our relatives lived in a broad–initially shallow–but expanding ecological niche.  From this broad base of global hunters, gatherers and forest farmers we began a take-off about 10,000 years ago with the development of increasingly intensive agriculture.  By 1800 or so, relying on agriculture, our species attained a level of approximately one billion individuals.  At that point, our ability to burn started to grow exponentially.  We began to burn past sunlight–the concentrated, unimaginable energy of fossil fuels.

As a result, our population of one billion in 1800 or so grew to two billion by the late 1920s, when many of the parents of American baby boomers were born.  Our population reached three billion by around 1960, toward the tail end of the U.S. baby boom, and a bit over thirty years after the second billion appeared.  As with all things exponential, the next billion in total human population was reached more quickly, fourteen years later, by 1974 or so; followed by an additional billion people added over the following thirteen years, by about 1987.  After that, our population grew by an additional billion individuals over the next twelve years, by about 1999; and then added another billion over the next thirteen years, reaching the current approximate level of seven billion in 2012.  As currently projected, the next fifteen years will see another billion people added, as we reach eight billion in the late 2020s.  Heading into the middle of this century, estimates are that we may slow down a bit, and add the ninth billion people over a little less than twenty years.  Phew!   Only twenty years for that ninth billion.

Looking ahead, from these past thirteen years during which we added the seventh billion, what do you think the odds are that we will methodically keep adding a billion human individuals to our world’s population each fifteen or twenty years ahead?  Look around–that’s where we are today.

As of today, July 29, 2012, we are drawing down the planet’s reserves as fast as we are able, and raking in as much of its annual biomass as we can lay hands on.  Do you think this is a good experiment?

As best I can observe, our species is at a turning point.  American baby boomers will live to see the curtain begin to rise.  Their children will be hit hard.  Their grandchildren will face the full fury.  One way or another, we will live within the coherent balancing–the rules, so to speak–set by our biosphere.  Exponential growth–endless burning–is unlikely to continue much longer.  Positive feedback loops (in population and resource use) are beginning to yield to negative feedback loops.

Rather than focus on the negative feedback loops, I am going to live and speak coherently in the context of our predicament.  This will be a series of heuristics–rules, shorthand, context–for living and seeing coherently within the biosphere.

Gail Tverberg’s blog, Our Finite World, is a marvelous companion to Tom Murphy’s blog Do the Math.  What each of these bloggers knows now has led them to ask the really fundamental questions about human ‘species life’, and to seek coherent answers.

They are difficult to read precisely because they pose such fundamental questions and have no interest in singing a lullaby to put our addled minds at ease.

You can start almost anywhere on either blog, and after a few minutes you will start to see things in a very different light.

In this week’s post, Gail Tverberg asks what declining fossil fuels mean for economic growth.  It’s not a pretty picture.  Just work your way through this or almost any of her posts, and you will wonder, knowing what we know now, is there anything we can really do?

From 2009, a great book review in The New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert.

She reviews the book Superfreakonomics along with some of the recent Freeman Dyson delusions.

Her essay is a wonderful description of how we collectively work to not know what we know now–i.e. a slice of agnotology (‘the study of culturally induced ignorance or doubt, particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data’) –the ubiquitous social creation of ignorance.  Kolbert’s piece shows agnotology in full force.

Her concluding words are especially sharp:

• All of which goes to show that, while some forms of horseshit are no longer a problem, others will always be with us.

Knowing what we know now, we face a massive cultural effort to deny it all.

Bill McKibben has a piece in Rolling Stone that lays out some simple numbers.

• The First Number: 2° Celsius, is the ceiling limit.  The current level of global warming is just below 0.8 degrees C.  The common estimate is that 2 degrees C increase will spell global disaster.  Some think 2 degrees is too generous.
• The second number is 565 gigatons.  This is the amount of carbon we can add to the atmosphere, and still have a chance of limiting global warming to 2 degrees C.
• The third number is 2,795 gigatons.  This is the amount of carbon stored in known oil and coal reserves.  It is five times the 565 gigaton limit.  We are on track to burn every ounce of these hydrocarbon fuels.

There it is:  knowing what we know now, we will create a planet on which only a small fraction of the current human population can survive, and a great extinction of other species will occur.

Nice piece in The New Republic.  David A. Bell reflects on libraries.  Although the title is a little overstated (i.e. as long as there is copyright, there will be libraries and books)–he makes some great points, among them:

• Somewhat paradoxically, by drawing millions more people into serious reading and learning, the digital revolution has in fact created the need for more spaces of physical interaction.
• Now, even as books and periodicals are increasingly available elsewhere, there is more and more public demand for other forms of interaction: lectures and seminars, tied to online courses and readings; authors’ appearances; book groups; exhibitions of art works and films; study centers hosting fellows who contribute to public discussions . . . While librarians were once known for telling readers to hush, now they need to invite them to speak.
• Ultimately, to survive, libraries will need to become part of the new, partly digital public sphere, attentive to its needs and rhythms, as well as to those of traditional learning and scholarship.

Well said!  Knowing what we know now, let’s invite everyone into that wondrous library space–a place of many rooms–and encourage them to speak up!

Picking up on the theme of responding to what we know now, it’s clear that radical behavior change is needed.

In the wake of Australia’s recently introduced carbon tax scheme, an Australian blog offers some good reflections on the relation between everyday habits and radical behavior change.

The blog raises a good question:

• A fundamental question for the federal government as it strives to realise its carbon targets through both business and individual behaviour is whether the introduction of the carbon tax can cause sufficient reflection on behaviour to change habits. In other words, does its introduction represent a teachable moment?

The post also links to what might be a very important group, BehaviourWorks Australia, and its approach to changing habits and behaviors consistent with human survival and coherent adaptation to the biosphere, to limits.  It’s nice to see a group working to light a candle rather than curse the darkness.

Stephen Emmott is a professor of computing at Oxford University (and head of Microsoft’s Computational Science Laboratory). His lab also looks at the carbon cycle; this involves a team of plant biologists and marine ecologists.

He co-wrote and will star in a one-person show opening July 18 at London’s Royal Court Theatre.  The show will discuss what life on earth will look like when we reach 10 billion people–a conservative estimate, and most Americans born during the next twenty years or so will see that day.

Emmott was recently interviewed by The Guardian.  Here are some of his comments:

“We made a great deal of fuss about the discovery of the Higgs boson. It has been described as the greatest scientific experiment of all time. But it is nothing compared with the experiment humanity is now carrying out on our own planet.”

“We are in a desperate situation and I don’t think people realise that.”

“I suspect it may be too late now. Indeed, the show will end with my admitting to the audience that I think we are fucked.”

Knowing what we know now, should we even attempt what Emmott says (“Radical behaviour change is what is really needed.”) or should we just wait helplessly for the tragedy to unfold, engulfing today’s children and their children?