Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash
If you’ve spent any length of time on the internet discussing climate change, you’ve probably gotten a sense of the central debate. Not between whether climate change is happening or not, or human-caused or not — forget that nonsense for a moment — but the new division.
Only degrowth can save us versus renewables to the rescue.
(Another way to sum up the latter side, perhaps, is technological solutions.)
In their book An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen seem to come down on the degrowth side of the argument. According to the authors, we are inevitably headed for wholesale collapse in terms of both human systems and ecosystems unless we make a radical change now. So far, that’s not divisive. But Jackson and Jensen see the way forward as dramatically cutting human consumption by reverting to a pre-technological or even pre-industrial lifestyle. No more global capitalism and imperialism. No more frivolous consumption of any kind. And, ideally, a human population at a quarter of current levels.
In the book (and in an excerpt published here on Medium), the authors consider these four questions as essential ciphers to unlocking the way forward:
What is the sustainable size of the human population? What is the appropriate scale of a human community? What is the scope of human competence to manage our interventions into the larger living world? At what speed must we move toward different living arrangements if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences?
Really, these are rhetorical questions. And while the authors spend much of their time in the book explaining how we need a reduced population, they don’t offer any ideas as to how this would be accomplished. The other questions are also obvious: we need to scale way down, to essentially reduce the whole geopolitical system to village-sized self-regulating communities. The “scope” of human competence really means wherewithal for this change, and the speed with which we must move is with the utmost urgency — of course.
Meanwhile, on the technological solutions side, we have people proposing that humans can actually live with many of the same amenities and qualities of life in the developed world today, albeit having switched over to renewables. Collated by Stanford University, a collection of 47 peer-reviewed research papers by 91 authors analyzed different scenarios to examine whether individual countries or entire regions could get by solely relying on renewables. The answer, Stanford concluded, is yes, but contingent upon the support of policymakers, investors, and “other relevant organizations.”
Both sides seem like a tough sell. On degrowth: how do we convince millions of people to live with so much less? (And I say millions because it’s really billions that are already living with far less than the millions who have much. How do we then convince those billions they can’t have the growth and security they’ve seen the western world enjoying for decades?)
On renewables: how do we affect policy when modern governance is so much the legislative wing of big business? How can we incentivize sustainability when it's typically anathema to profitability? What about all the embedded emissions in growing renewables — electric cars are filled with petroleum-based plastics, may use electricity derived from coal, etc., etc.?
And how does pollution fit into the whole thing? When aerosols from coal, for instance, actually help increase albedo and reflect warming rays back into space, might clean energy renewables actually end up exacerbating the problem?
But here’s the thing.
While we’re figuring all of this out, we’ve got major problems in the offing. A certain amount of warming is already baked into the situation from decades of industrial growth. If we don’t act now, we could see runaway ice melt and sea level rise in the near future. We could lose our coastal cities — whole countries, such as Thailand, could wind up underwater before long. Not only are we talking about unconscionable suffering, but the loss of civilizational infrastructure in the majorly populated (and growing) coastal areas of the world. In short: the end of the world as we know it.
From what I’ve seen, the degrowth side of the argument doesn’t come with emergency stopgap measures. Perhaps any attempt to ameliorate the situation through technological solutions is considered a surefire way to exacerbate the problem.
But what if we separate these things — what if we distinguish between emergency measures and long-term solutions? Then marine cloud brightening to increase albedo at the poles and slow the runaway warming there is not necessarily anathema to degrowth.
Because, regardless of what you feel makes the most sense down the road, shouldn’t we try to do everything we can to buy ourselves some time, to prevent as much suffering as possible?
If we fold our arms and set our chins and say, “Hmmph! It’s degrowth or nothing!” are we condemning millions if not billions of people to a more terrible fate?
Degrowth may also have a problem similar to technological solutions, and that is runaway regulatory capture, the rise of the billionaire class, and big-business-controlled office — how do we become a globally democratic, egalitarian society that dramatically adjusts (and more evenly distributes) the means and methods of consumption, drastically and rapidly scaling down in all areas, when selling people stuff to buy has become the very essence of our modern global society?
Again, while we’re figuring out how to either implement degrowth or switch to renewables or some combination of both, it seems there are emergencies to attend, such as passing a phase-transition boundary that gives way to runaway ice melt and sea level rise, plus major climate tipping points from permafrost melt to low-latitude coral reef die off and more.
So perhaps where we need to be while arguing degrowth versus renewables, is figuring out what items on the climate change list are truly must-dos. As in, their net gain outweighs any possible negative consequence when it comes to emergency stopgap measures via technological solutions or geoengineering.
That doesn’t mean every possible solution has to be perfect. We need to talk about it, we need to heed the science, and we need to listen to the experts. Is marine cloud brightening really viable? Is there enough of a chance it will slow warming at the poles and stabilize sea level so that we can buy some time? What about regrowing coral reefs from coral transplants and seawater electrolysis?
Whether you’re a degrowth type or a renewables person, what we can all* agree upon is that we’re racing toward catastrophe. More aptly: we’re already in it, and it’s just going to get worse.
So I’m truly wondering — is it possible we can come together around the idea that we should be deploying our best efforts to do at least some things while we figure out the best path forward?
I’d love to hear from you in the comments.
Epilogue (relating to that asterisk just above):
I went downhill skiing last weekend. Though I spent most of the time on the lower mountain with my kids, I took two trips to the top. The first lift I shared alone with a young man about 20 or so. He was a student at a local college, studying wildlife management and fisheries. Learning this, I said, tongue-in-cheek, “So have you heard about climate change?”
We spent the rest of the trip to the summit talking about how bad it was. I was so impressed with his understanding, I came away feeling a twinge of hope for humanity.
But on the NEXT ride, a man about my age or perhaps a little bit older shared the space with me. We talked about the joy of skiing early in the season, with hardly anyone around. I said, “And we need to enjoy this now because according to the environmental scientists in the region, our winters are shortening.”
A silence followed. Uh-oh, I thought. And then the man said, “It’s all cyclical.”
Hmm.
He proceeded to explain that, in his line of work — which involved agriculture, cattle, and heavy machinery — everything moves in ten-year cycles. His outlook brought to mind a quote from Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
We’re all motivated, in one way or another, to believe what we do. If we’re motivated by science, if we’re not beholden to financial incentives, hopefully, we are closer to objectivity and truth.
Millions of people, unfortunately, think like this man, motivated by their salary, their culture, or some other implicit bias.
Probably something on the order of 40% of the United States thinks like this man, and many in the rest of the world, too. So while they’re ignoring, denying, or actively suppressing the science and necessary actions, there are the rest of us. And while we should have robust discussions about the best way forward, it is my hope that we do it together, and we very much keep in mind the immediate threats we’re facing, the potential suffering that will be visited upon millions, and that we truly think of these people, these future generations, when we do our calculus.
