Climate goals we most hear about are the need to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions and the need to keep global warming to 1.5oC above pre-industrial levels. Admirable and necessary as those goals may be, the simple fact is that we are not on track to achieve either. Scientists project that “Business as Usual” is a fast track to global warming of 2.7oC or more (UNEP, Emissions Gap Report 2023) which would be catastrophic.
Ecological thinkers, like Prof. Emeritus William Rees of UBC, tend to perceive global warming as a symptom of the larger problem that humanity uses nature’s resource capacity and its capability to absorb waste at rates that are not sustainable. Rees’s solution is for humanity to use its intelligence and planning ability to return to living the way we did when we were still in sync with nature. The last time that was so was the 1960s when we left no global ecological footprint, atmospheric concentration of CO2 was only 350 parts per million and the earth radiated out more or less the same energy as the sun radiated in.
The purpose of this note is to hypothesize in a simple way what living conditions might be 1) if we carried on with “business as usual” until the world warms to 2.7oC or 2) if we turned back the human enterprise clock to the 1960s.
So, walk with me to a world where average temperature has reached 2.7oC above pre-industrial levels, unprecedented in humanity’s history. It’s hot! We can barely remember a time when we were not afraid to go outside. We must go out, mostly in the cooler, but still hot, dark hours, because we have to grow or otherwise secure food. Our parents tell us about an earlier time when there was no “off” season because the whole world was our garden. California, Chile and Asian countries, from whence we used to source our food, now are battered with storms and unreliable weather and depleted water sources just as we are. Now, with the heat, if we’re lucky enough to get sufficient rainfall, crop yields and nutrition content of grains and vegetables is reduced. All the “just-in-time’ logistical systems that once kept shelves of food and consumer goods fully stocked became too complex to administer. Individuals are now singularly focused on self-preservation. We have no surplus resources beyond meeting personal and family immediate needs. Without such surpluses, we can’t pay taxes and, so, democratic governments have pretty much ceased to function. Policing is now done through private armies. Universities are mainly gone and universal childhood education has reverted to simplistic home-schooling. Barter is now our main system of exchange. Years ago, because of shortages of basic commodities, runaway inflation was the final nail in our economic system’s coffin. If there was any joy in that, it was that hyper-inflation reduced to nothing the fortunes of the once-billionaires who, like the rest of us, now have to think consciously about food and water supply. No one is safe from the storms and fires that continually besiege us. Nor do we anymore have the governmental systems and integrity to control population migration escaping northward from equatorial heat. Not just people, but tropical diseases have migrated and are taking their toll.
Back when earth warming was still at 1.5oC, we were warned about pending earth systems tipping points and possible collapse of civilization. We stood by as those tipping points, which we hoped were a theoretical possibility, have toppled like real-time dominoes. Just as predicted, Arctic permafrost, once intact for millions of years, is now largely melted and the microbes and organic material it held have combined to generate more warming, directly and through creation of greenhouse gases: processes that are now unstoppable. Likewise, the “forever” ice of Greenland and Antarctica are unrelentingly on a multi-century march to total meltdown. Most of the major cities of the world and some countries have stopped functioning because of sea level rise. It’s about 3 metres now but scientific records tell us it will eventually be many times that. As if causing sea level rise wasn’t bad enough, all the melt water added to our salty oceans, has disrupted ocean currents causing regional climate shifts, everything from desertification to little ice ages. Somewhere to the south of us (Who cares any more?) what used to be Amazon rain forest has now tipped from self-sustaining forest to grassland. We are on the wrong side of several other tipping points. Our parents and grandparents were consumed with being consumers and they were blind to its effects. Now, it’s Hell on Earth! Civilization is just a word.
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On the survival path, turning back the clock means that we will have to give up many of the consuming habits we hold dear. Fortunately, among us there are those who already know, by choice or by circumstance, how to live with less. From the Covid-19 pandemic we learned what public services are truly “essential” and that we can stand government policies on their head without disaster befalling. Especially we learned that fear can be a driving force toward good. It was fear that changed public policy for the good during the Great Depression. Then, immediately after, because we feared losing a war, we converted industries almost overnight from producing consumer goods to making war materials. Those experiences showed that people can be persuaded of the necessity of living with less. If we need less, we can produce less by adopting 4-day or maybe even 3-day work weeks. In parts of the world where people live simply and there is leisure-time, people turn to artistic endeavours of all kinds and there is time to nurture human relationships. We don’t need to be amused and entertained, we can do it ourselves. Though built for individual use, monster houses can be shared to densify our communities and reduce the need for travel. International travel should only be for necessity and not ever for holidays. Most travel is local. We can still eat animal meats but they are locally farmed rather than “manufactured” in faraway feedlots. As in foregone eras, our cities can be surrounded by small organic farms. Unlike in the original 1960s, we eschew monster gas-guzzling cars—possibly all 4-wheel vehicles–in favour of public transit. And perhaps most important, we teach our children what we didn’t learn until too late, that perpetual exponential growth on a finite planet is an impossibility.
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But, it seems that we have, at least for now, chosen the path to a hot-house earth. Dare we hope that, as climate-related disasters accumulate, fear, if not for ourselves, then for our children, will bring about the needed humanity-saving revolution.
