Change whirling all around us
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
If you’re paying attention to the news, you’ve seen reports from the Madeira Islands, Portugal – the massive floods, the torrential rains that caused torrents of water to wash away hillsides, homes, whole communities. This morning’s figures: 42 dead, 120 injured, many unaccounted for.
Then this morning, I read this, in this week’s Earthweek update:
Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division say they have discovered that Australia’s recent crippling droughts have been caused by a shift in precipitation southward into Antarctica.
Ice core samples reveal snowfall during recent decades in eastern parts of the frozen continent has been higher than at any other time in the past 750 years.
The increase corresponds to the onset of parching and prolonged drought in Australia.
Tas van Ommen and Vin Morgan wrote in Nature Geoscience that the shift was brought on by drier air blowing over southwestern Australia from the Southern Ocean, redirecting moist air southward into Antarctica.
The researchers say there is no evidence that the shift is due to “climate change,” but such a shift in rainfall patterns represents a change in climate itself.
That last sentence mystifies me. This shift is not caused by climate change but IS climate change. Well, however one wraps the term ‘climate change’ in a sentence, the report is not good news for Australia.
Two stories that add to the weirdness of the weather lately, and getting weirder with every passing year.
How ’bout what’s going on across the Pacific Ocean – Philippines ‘Bracing for the Worst’ in Drought. The Philippines cannot afford a disaster like this.
Well, add your own weird weather story. There are thousands of them. The world is changing all around us.
Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics
In economics as well. I’ve written this before – our economic crisis which has led to our crisis of jobs, millions of people falling into poverty, barely held together by our badly frayed social safety net (from which our politicians continue to pull out threads), is not temporary; it is a permanent restructuring of global capitalism, which no longer needs so many human beings to produce its products and make its profits. The post-World War II ‘way of life,’ built as it was upon manufacturing – the making of stuff by workers who because of a vibrant union movement could achieve a middle class lifestyle in factories, and then in white collar jobs programming computers, in high-tech industries, etc, and now even folks who worked in bank and investment firms, Ph.Ds and lawyers – that era is coming to a depressing and gloomy end for the majority of US Americans.
I found this long NY Times article, The New Poor: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs, a very good analysis of the dynamic behind this shedding of jobs, bad loans, overexposed consumers, from the economy. The recession is ending because the shedding has been done, and now global capital can get back to its money-making enterprises, leaner – and meaner.
We are shedding jobs, decent pay, benefits, and the social safety net all at the same time. Now Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are also on the chopping block. Get ready for some prolonged hard times.
Most of these disappeared jobs are not coming back. And, as we have also said, unless we begin to create a new economy as this one throws off the majority of human beings, while destroying the ecology of the planet, the future looks pretty grim.
But the point I want to make here is this: we live in a time of tumultuous change, yes, change whirling all around us – and within us as we begin to lose our familiar moorings. Now, there are all sorts of ways to deal with tumultuous change, from head-in-the-sand/hands over the ears (“la! la! la! la! – I can’t hear you!!”), to assigning enemies and fomenting fear (front page of the local section of our Milwaukee paper today, a photo of two women wearing guns on their hips to assert their right to open carry – god help us all!), or like the guy my brother and I watched last night at a restaurant trying to walk from the bar to the restroom (his weaving made me feel nauseous, and I wasn’t the one drunk!).
Fear, denial, guns, our drugs of choice, assigning blame to someone we can then target with our wrath – these are all possible and occurring.
Another trajectory is to peer into the crisis with courage to see what is going on behind it, to realize what is broken, what has brought it about, see what it has to teach us, and then begin to set out on a new path – because this one hasn’t worked out very well.
Why this matters
Some call it a paradigm shift (I have a couple friends, thinking that word quite overdone, who always reach into their pocket for change whenever they hear the word), or call it a seismic shift in consciousness, or the collapse of the old familiar version of capitalism, or the end of the US empire with its assumed role as superior nation of the world, or ecological overshoot – literally overshooting the planet’s biocapacity to support the human presence – whatever you call it, there is a threshold being crossed here from one way of life, one era in human history, to another.
It is crisis and tragedy, or crisis and opportunity. I look around at what this era produced in the way of war, violence, ecological destruction, alienation of the human, loss of meaning and the retreat into old religious orthodoxies or New Age escapism, drawing line after line in the sand between “us” and “the other,” and I want to say, good riddance – yes, please, let’s find another way.
But I know there will be great pain involved in this transition – because we are very late in getting to it. So as we chart our new path through the whirlwind of change, I know for certain that we must be rooted in compassion, deep, bottomless wells of compassion, which starting point is our recognition that we all helped create this crisis, we are all in it together, and only together can we find the path-of-least-suffering as we give birth to the new.
Thin blue line - NASA photo
February 24th, 2010 at 4:20 pm
It gets even wackier in the north, apparently, where climate change is even more pronounced.
Heard on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. radio last night. An Inuit (Eskimo) hunter claiming that the “sky has changed”. Elders remember the sun rising in a slightly different place (!!!) and at the winter solstice instead of 1 hour of solar twilight, there are now TWO (!!) The old folks concluded that “the earth had tilted”.
Apparently, not so crazy as it sounds (just the interpretation is wrong). The effects are due to changes in the light bending quality of the atmosphere as the temperature, thickness, etc of layers of air are modified by global warming.
In the north there are now invasive species for which northerners have no name (despite the fact their ancestors have been living there for thousands of years in some cases):
- biting bugs where there were none
- robins
- blue jays
- gray squirrels (as opposed to theblack arctic squirrel. I’ve seen ‘em: one species cannot be mistaken for the other)
- red fox (replacing the more specialized white arctic fox as the reds move north)
In parts of southern Québec province:
- the disappearance of an utterly magnificent bright red arctic dragonfly. It is retreating north to it’s native habitat as the province warms.
- vultures have become an invasive species, moving north from the U.S.
In the far north, arctic circle, a new summertime sport: outdoor swimming. Used to be too cold, isn’t any more.
February 24th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
You wrote “The researchers say there is no evidence that the shift is due to “climate change,” but such a shift in rainfall patterns represents a change in climate itself.”
Ah! The psychology of the dear deniers! Lord, bless ‘em (no one else will)..
I recently watched a short video with a financial type from the Netherlands, who goes around “debunking” the Peak Oil Crisis thesis. His argument:
- there is still plenty of oil in the ground
- it is just getting “more complicated” and “costly” to get at it.
THEREFORE: THERE IS NO PEAK OIL CRISIS.
The hick of course is that the advocates of the Peak Oil hypothesis argue:
- there is still plenty of oil in the ground
- it is just getting “more complicated” and “costly” to get at it.
Sheesh! gimmee a valium..
February 24th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
More breaking news on the invasive northern species front, from a link sent by a friend a few minutes ago:
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Grizzly_Bears_Move_Into_Polar_Bear_Habitat_In_Canada_999.html
Grizzly bears move north into polar bear territory. Formerly the two species did not mix (confirmed by historical records for fur trapping in the north kept by the Hudson Bay Company)
February 25th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Your comments just keep reinforcing the experience of change happening all around us. I continue to be amazed that our heads trump our actual experience. Wanting to believe that our old world, our old reality, will remain intact is a more powerful psychological force than the experience that that old world is already changing in ways that are irreversible.
By the end of the century, sugar maples may have migrated north out of New England and the Vermont maple syrup culture may be no more. In the mountain west, bark beetles reproduce by the gabillions because the winters are no longer cold enough to kill them off. As in the mountain west of Canada, we are losing the vast majority of our lodgepole and ponderosa pine forests to the critter.
We could go on. But when you are citified, sitting in front of plasma screens all day, or hooked up to smart phones and other gadgets, really, how would you even notice what is going on all around you?
We have lost the ability to experience our own biological instincts telling us that we are in trouble, our habitats endangered, catastrophe in front of us. Hello?
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Your comments are so right on. The psychologists call this phenomeno of radical denial of reality in the face of reality, “cognitive dissonance”. I read L. Festinger’s classic study of an apocalyptic UFO cult, “When Prohecy Fails”, back in the 70s and it’s remained imprinted on my mind ever since:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails
According to the good doctor, when people are committed to a wrongheaded view, especially in a group or “cult” context, they will make enormous efforts to defend the view despite contradicting evidence from the environment. Contradiction assumes many forms, rationalizations, for example. One has only to think of the use of ad hominem attacks against pro-Global Warming (GW) scientists. One avoids the facing the real dangers and costs of GW by deflecting attention and pent-up frustration / fear against the “bearers of bad news”. “They” – IPCC climatologists, ecologists and even proponents of green energy and sustainable development – are portrayed as “Evil Greedies” who foist “the GW scam” on the innocent public in order to “make trillions from carbon trading”. The Oil lobby’s professional GW “debunkers” urge us to “follow the money” to discover the “hidden agenda” of the IPCC thus – incredibly and brazenly – inverting reality. It is actually the fossil fuel companies who are defending THEIR monetary interests with their anti-IPCC “junk science” “debunking campaign” (which goes as far as setting up phony on line “citizens forums” for the “defense of scientific integrity” to propagate anti-IPCC propaganda).
The earth is truly in need of a Great Cleansing..
I personally believe that much of the pathology – individual and collective – of modern societies is due to our inability to confront reality:
- drug addictions (legal and illegal),
- extreme sports, thrill seeking (including juvenile criminality);
- cultism and religious, political or racial fanaticisms;
- violent / brutalizing entertainment,
- foreign military adventures;
- cynicism, despair, mental illness;
- scapegoating..
These are all forms of escape or flight from a reality which has become too frightening to deal with. Scapegoating is especially dangerous: it provides a quick adreneline “fix” or “high” and deflects attention away from real villians / problems onto the backs of “expendable” victims. Unfortuantely, scapegoating appears to be hardwired into our nervous system: even pigeons and rats suffering repeated electric shocks engage in scapegoating as a stress reducer..
The worst is that the mass media are controlled by the fossil fuel / big business lobbies. Robert McChesney is a valuable source of info as is Noam Chomsky on media control / democracy isssues.
http://www.robertmcchesney.com/
As you point out, the citified “masses” are out of contact with physical reality and their own instincts (which are on red alert!). Observe the popularity of “disaster” themes in pop “culture” /”culturetainment”..
Because we have been brainwashed and rendered incapable of dealing with the alarms raised by our instincts we must necessarily engage in escapism and scapegoating as stress reducers: unresolved chronic stress reactions can kill (ulcers, cardiovascular disease, glandular dysfunction, depression, neuroses and, at the limit, psychoses..) Dangerous times these..
For those who read French,
http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/societe/la-tempete-aurait-elle-pu-etre-moins-meurtriere_852056.html
the above article denounces the laxity of zoning codes which permitted residential construction in coastal floodplains. Result: the great storm which recently whipped the coast with hurricane force winds (160 kph / 100 mile per hour), killed 62 (at latest count) and caused massive property damage. One builds in insane places because the Boomers must have their “view” of the sea. Indeed, they did. Talk about a disconnect from reality!
On the positive side, I am happier now than in many years. Beyond the personal sense of vindication that “I was right after all: the world is going to hell in a handbasket”, there is the recognition that “things are coming to a head”: the abcess can be lanced, at last..
The failure of the Old System conceals an invitation to create a new one. Only fools would turn away from this opportunity! But until recently this opportunity was obscured by the superficial glitz and apparent success of “Boomernomics”. Today that ideological delusional systems is rapidly becoming untenable to more and more people and new movements exporing new forms of social and economic life are emerging: Transition Towns is one interesting example.
However, things will have to get worse before they can get better (and they may not get better – we can only try though..).
There is even an opportunity today for spiritual rebirth: in truth, there must be spiritual rebirth before any SERIOUS political, social, economic, technological or environmental rethinking can occur. I am amazed at how the dominant vices of bourgeois culture – Hypocrisy and Inequity – are targeted in the New Testament. I don’t find such emphasis in reading the I Ching or the Upanishads. Christianity perhaps needs new wineskins for old wine which improves with age..