Daniel Whittingstall: The Global Climate Predicament

Daniel Whittingstall: The Global Climate Predicament

by | Mar 6, 2013 | Climate Change

By Daniel Whittingstall / Deep Green Resistance Vancouver

The Situation and Our Options

Increased concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHG), primarily carbon dioxide emitted from the burning of fossil fuels for cheap energy, have driven global average temperatures to rise. While this in itself is cause for concern, the real distressing predicament lies within the many positive feedbacks that are at or near their tipping points.

One major positive feedback is the arctic permafrost where large amounts of methane (a greenhouse gas) are stored underground. If the temperature continues to rise from the current 0.8C up to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels the permafrost will hit a tipping point and melt, releasing roughly 1,000 giga-tones of methane (which is 22 times more potent a greenhouse gas than C02 over a 100 yr. period, and 150 times more potent over a period of a couple years) into the atmosphere.

Since the global temperature is currently being raised due to Industrial Civilization’s increase of these GHG’s, and there is a time-lag between temperature rise and GHG levels (temperature catching up to where these gases have set the bar, roughly a 30 yr. time-lag), then all we need to do to find out how close we are to this tipping point is to look at current and historic levels of GHG’s and the correlating temperatures, right? Come walk with me for a moment.

Current C02 levels are at 395 ppm (C02 being the main factor in the last 180 yrs. of forcing temperature rise, most of which has increased in the past 30 yrs.). The last time C02 levels were this high was roughly 15 million years ago (mya), with temperatures roughly 3-6C above current levels (or 4-7C above pre-industrial times). It would be good to note here that projected emissions and C02 levels by 2030, if “business as usual” continues, will be around 516-774 ppm; levels closer to those of the Eocene 54-50 mya when temperatures were roughly 5-7C higher than today.

Since there is a time-lag between temperature rise and levels of C02 we can be certain that the temperature will rise 3-6C over the next 30 yrs. solely based on current levels of C02 alone. This of course would be the case without adding in any positive feedbacks like the melting of permafrost, arctic sea ice, ice caps, glaciers, ocean die offs due to acidification and rapid forest die offs due to drought/deforestation etc.

The thing is, the world has changed quite a bit in the last 15 myr. A lot more carbon, and other substances with the potential to turn into GHG’s, have been stored in the earths surface due to the resumption of glacial cycles (since 13 mya the earth has plummeted into glacial cycles-5 mya and rapid glacial cycles-2.5 mya), increasing the potential/possibility with which to warm the globe if they were ever to be fully released.

You see, the other tricky part about this time-lag is that if there was a huge spike in GHG’s over a shorter period of time, lets say 5-10 yrs. (which would definitely be the case if permafrost, ocean and forest die off positive feedbacks were to be pushed over their tipping points, thus releasing massive quantities of methane and C02), the global temperature rise would also increase at an exponential rate. Not to mention the fact that methane has a minute time-lag in comparison to C02.

So, a more realistic picture would be: current GHG levels will undeniably rise temperatures past the 1.5C mark in the next 10-15 yrs., pushing the permafrost over its tipping point and hurling it into a rapid positive feedback loop, drastically escalating the already exponential rate of global temperature rise. During (or even possibly before) this short process, every other positive feedback will come into play (this is because they are all just as sensitive to temperature and/or C02 increases as permafrost is) forcing the global temperature to rise beyond any conservatively or reasonably projected model.

What’s really concerning in all this is that the arctic sea ice, permafrost, glaciers and ice caps have already begun their near rapid melt, and we continue to increase our output of fossil fuel GHG emissions and deforest the earth. Does anyone know what more than a 5-7C temperature rise looks like? Near-term extinction for the majority of biological life, including humans. It means that almost all fresh and drinkable water will dry up. It means that the sea levels will rise by roughly 120 meters (394 ft). It means that the current levels of oxygen in the atmosphere right now will become so low that neither I nor you will be able to breath it. This is the part where most people start formulating rebuttals that usually include the word “alarmist!”. Well, if the bare facts of our current situation are not alarming then I would think we have an even bigger problem.

There are two distinct scenarios here that I feel need to be pointed out (most often they are not). The first one goes like this: if we keep destroying the Earth and continue down this path of “business as usual” then the biosphere will collapse and along with it the global economy and ultimately industrial civilization.

The other scenario goes like this: if the destruction perpetuated by industrial civilization is somehow halted, subsequently averting total biosphere collapse, then the global economy and industrial civilization will collapse.

Basically, in the next 10-15 yrs., it is unequivocal that either way the global economy and industrial civilization (all that we who are living within this structure know and rely on) will collapse.

Kind of makes the worry of a national economic recession seem like a bad joke. The question is then: which scenario would you prefer? The near extinction of all life on earth (including your own species), or the end of a really bad experiment in social organization that has almost, but not quite, destroyed the planet?

The only chance of survival is to immediately end the consumption of fossil fuels (on all levels and in every way, including well-intentioned “green-energy-solutions” that pump huge amounts of C02 into the atmosphere annually during set-up and production), and to quickly begin sequestering GHG’s from the atmosphere. Best way to end this consumption would be to shut down all fossil fuel extractions, and to lock up all ready-to-be-used fossil fuels: gasoline, coal, stored natural gas, and throw away the key. Best way to sequester the GHG’s (semi-naturally) would be to plant native-to-bioregional plants/trees wherever they had been destroyed, and to grow our own food locally in the parks, on roadways, on rooftops, and on the front/back lawns of every suburban home.

These are our only two options, and we need to do both at the same time. Realistically this means we will need to bring down atmospheric C02 levels to where they were in pre-industrial times. In order to have any certainty of success we must be 50% of the way there by about 2016, and 100% there by 2020.

Yes, things look bad. But it all depends on your perspective. One good thing is that civilization does not represent the whole of humanity, nor does it represent any other species of life on earth. So, on the one hand it doesn’t look too good for civilization if people decide to rise up and end this insanity (which would subsequently be a positive effect on the biosphere and the rest of humanity). But, on the other hand, well…not so good for anyone.

Nevertheless be encouraged, we still have a small window of time in which to succeed!

Overview of Data

Below are dates with projected increases of both C02 and global temperature, along with projected tipping points for major positive feedback loops around the world.

Reasonable Estimation of Temperature Correlation With C02 Levels

These calculations are based only on current levels of C02 and historic corresponding
temperature level values, no future increase of C02, no current or future positive feedbacks.
Current level of C02 395 ppm = 4.5C increase above current temp, average between 3-6C
(2013, 0.8C).

35 year time-lag = 2048 at 4.5C increase

Estimates For C02 Increase

C02 ppm increase at current rate, five year increments

2013 2018 2023 2028 2033 2038 2043
395 405 415 425 435 445 455

C02 ppm increase at current rate with increase of fossil fuel consumption and positive feedbacks

2013 2018 2023 2028 2033 2038 2043
395 415 435 455 495 535 575

Estimates For Temperature Increase

Temperature based on current trends over past 20 years (without further inputs)

2013 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060
0.80 0.90 1.05 1.20 1.35 1.50

Temperature increase based on C02 correlation/35 year time lag

2013 2018 2023 2028 2033 2038 2043 2048
0.80 1.33 1.86 2.39 2.92 3.45 3.98 4.51

Temperature increase based on C02 correlation and forcing from positive feedbacks

2013 2018 2023 2028 2033 2038 2043 2048
0.80 1.45 2.23 3.04 4.06 4.88 5.90 6.90

Note:
2050 Conservative estimates based on current trends for major tipping points
2018 Reasonable estimates based on C02 and positive feedbacks for major tipping points
2034 Average between both estimates for major tipping points

Individual Tipping Points for Positive Feedbacks
2016 1.11C increase -Arctic sea ice tipping point (warmer oceans)
2018 1.33C increase -Arctic clathrate tipping point (methane release)
2019 1.43C increase -Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet tipping points (sea level rise)
2020 1.54C increase -Permafrost tipping point (methane release)
2028 455ppm C02 -Ocean acidification tipping point (C02 release) Temp Variations

Fig. 1. This shows the variations between projected increases in temperature: bottom line (brown) represents the rate of temperature increase based on the C02 correlation with a 35 year time lag, and top line (green) represents the temperature increase with C02 correlation including forcing from positive feedbacks.

Overview of Concepts in Climate Change

Carbon Dioxide
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a naturally occurring chemical compound and is a gas at standard temperature/pressure. CO2 exists in Earth’s atmosphere as part of the carbon cycle, emitted through plant and animal respiration, fermentation of liquids, volcanic eruptions as well as various other means. Levels of CO2 concentrations have risen and fallen over the past 3 billion years but with striking clockwork over the last 800 thousand years, rising and falling on a cycle of 40-100 thousand years (Fig. 2).

Ice core data indicate that CO2 levels varied within a range of 180 to 300 ppm over the last 650 thousand years (Solomon et al. 2007; Petit et al. 1999), corresponding with fluctuations from glacial and interglacial periods, with the last interglacial period nearing levels of 290 ppm (Fischer et al., 1999).

tandc02

Fig. 2. This is a record of atmospheric CO2 levels over the last 800,000 years from Antarctic ice cores (blue line), and a reconstruction of temperature based on hydrogen isotopes found in the ice (orange line). Concentrations of CO2 in 2012, at 392 parts per million (ppm), from the Mauna Loa Observatory are shown by the blue star at the top (Simple Climate, 2012. Credit to: Jeremy Shakun/Harvard University). https://simpleclimate.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/global-view-answers-ice-age-co2-puzzle/

Near the end of the Last Glacial period, around 13,000 years ago, CO2 levels rose from about 180 ppm to about 260 ppm and leveled off until the Industrial Revolution in the mid 1700’s when it began to climb from 280 ppm (Neftel et al. 1985). While that 260 ppm of CO2 had remained more or less unchanged for the last 10,000 years, roughly since early Civilization, it was the actions of Civilization through the burning of fossil fuels, since the Industrial Revolution, that caused a dramatic increase over the last century (Blunden et al. 2012, S130).

The contribution of Industrial Civilization’s CO2 comes mainly from the combustion of fossil fuels in cars, factories and from the production of electricity and deforestation for timber and agricultural lands. Today the monthly mean concentration levels, (Fig. 3), are around 394 ppm (Recent CO2 readings for 2012 at the Mauna Loa Observatory by the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), increasing about 100 ppm from pre-industrial times in just the last 100 years and currently rising at a rate of 2 ppm each year.co2_trend_mlo

Fig. 3. This table shows monthly mean CO2 measurements for the years 2008 to 2012 from the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. The dashed red line represents monthly mean values, and the black line is representative of monthly mean values with the correction for average seasonal cycles (NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, 2012). http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_full

Carbon dioxide has a long lifespan once emitted into the atmosphere. “About half of a CO2 pulse to the atmosphere is removed over a time scale of 30 years; a further 30% is removed within a few centuries; and the remaining 20% will typically stay in the atmosphere for many thousands of years.” (Solomon et al. 2007).

Therefore, the amount of CO2 currently in the atmosphere will possibly be persisting long enough to mingle with future emissions that are projected to be higher. Based on CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels in the year 2000, the IPCC calculated out the possible future increase of emissions if Civilization continued at that current rate of economic and consumer growth (increased fossil fuel consumption). “The projected emissions of energy-related CO2 in 2030 are 40–110 % higher than in 2000” (Solomon et al. 2007).

This could result in an increase of atmospheric CO2 from levels that were 369 ppm at the time, to 516-774 ppm by 2030 (Fig. 4); levels closer to those of the Eocene, 700-900 ppm roughly 54-50 million years ago (Paul N. Pearson 2000), when temperatures were about 5-7 degrees Celsius warmer than today and sea levels were roughly 120 m higher (Sluijs et al. 2008).

c02 increase

Fig. 4. This table shows the variations between projected C02 increases: bottom line (green) is the current rate of increase at 2ppm/yr. based on previous ten year average, top line (orange) is current rate plus increased Industrial Civilization forcing and positive feedbacks.

Greenhouse Earth

The environmental effects of carbon dioxide are of significant interest. Earth is suitable for life due to its atmosphere that works like a greenhouse. A fairly constant amount of sunlight strikes the planet with roughly 30 percent being reflected away by clouds and ice/snow cover, leaving the uncovered continents, oceans and atmosphere to absorb the remaining 70 percent. Similar to a thermostat, this global control system is set by the amount of solar energy retained by Earth’s atmosphere, allowing enough sunlight to be absorbed by land and water and transforming it into heat, which is then released from the planet’s surface and back into the air as infrared radiation.

Just as in the glass ceiling and walls of a greenhouse, atmospheric gasses, most importantly carbon dioxide, water vapor and methane, trap a fair amount of this released heat in the lower atmosphere then return some of it to the surface. This allows a relatively warm climate where plants, animals and other organisms can exist. Without this natural process the average global temperature would be around -18 degrees Celsius; see more (Solomon et al. 2007).

The current levels of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, principally carbon dioxide (Fig. 3), in the Earth’s atmosphere today are higher and have the potential to trap far more radiative heat than has been experienced within the last 15 million years (Tripati 2009), amplifying the greenhouse effect and raising temperatures worldwide. “The total CO2 equivalent (CO2-eq) concentration of all long-lived GHG’s is currently estimated to be about 455 ppm CO2-eq” (Solomon et al. 2007), as of 2005. These other contributors of GHG’s include methane released from landfills, agriculture (especially from the digestive systems of grazing animals), nitrous oxide from fertilizers, gases used for refrigeration and industrial processes, the loss of forests that would otherwise store CO2, and from the melting of permafrost in the arctic.

According to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report “These gases accumulate in the atmosphere, causing concentrations to increase with time. Significant increases in all of these gases have occurred in the industrial era”, and the increases have all been attributed to Industrial Civilization’s activities (Solomon et al. 2007).

Historically, through the rise and fall of temperatures over the last 800 thousand years, temperatures have risen first, then CO2 would increase, accelerating even more temperature rise until a maximum when both would then drop, creating a glacial period. Though CO2 levels over this period of time have not been the trigger for temperature rise and interglacial periods, they either have occurred at the same time or have led positive feedback global warming during the stages of deglaciation, greatly amplifying climate variations and increasing the global warming capacity due to the greenhouse effect (Shakun et al. 2012), (Solomon et al. 2007).

What makes the present situation unpredictable to some extent is that never before has CO2 climbed so rapidly and so high, far ahead of temperature. Furthermore, this extra heat-trapping gas released into the atmosphere takes time to build up to its full effect, this is due to the delaying effect of the oceans as they catch up with the temperature of the atmosphere; deep bodies of water take longer to warm. There is a twenty-five to thirty-five year time lag between CO2 being released into the atmosphere and its full heat-increasing potential taking effect.

This means that most of the increase of global temperature rise observed thus far has not been caused by current levels of carbon dioxide but by levels that already have been in the atmosphere before the 1980’s. What is troublesome here is that these last three decades since then have seen the levels of greenhouse gases increase dramatically. On top of the current temperature rise we see now there is already
roughly another thirty years of accelerated warming built into the climate system.

There are many other Civilizational factors that contribute to this global rise in temperature outside of GHG’s. While these extra factors do supply further warming and are just as serious a threat to a semi-stable climate, they are not as long lasting.

One of the most notable of these, being the second largest Civilizational contributor to global temperature rise, is black carbon (BC), also called soot (T. C. Bond et al 2013). The greatest sources of BC are the incomplete burning of biomass (forest and savanna burning for agricultural expansion) and unfiltered diesel exhaust for transportation and industrial uses (Ramanathan and Carmichael 2008). There is a two fold warming effect from the BC.

First, the dark particles of this soot absorb incoming heat from solar radiation and directly heat the surrounding air, though only for a short period of time. Secondly, the soot particles in the air, once carried from their point of origin, are increasingly falling on snow and ice changing these reflective surfaces into absorptive ones, decreasing the albedo (reflectivity). Therefore, BC deposits have increased the melting rate of snow and ice.The most alarming of these effects can be seen on glaciers, ice sheets and the arctic sea ice (T. C. Bond et al 2013). While reductions in BC would have immediate but not long lasting effects on temperature rise, it would increase the chances of averting further warming

Nevertheless, the projected rise due to the continued increase in levels of GHG’s will not be prevented without
reducing overall emissions.

Temperature

The Earth is warming and this time the trend is far from natural. The average temperature of the Earth’s surface has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s (Fig. 4). On a geologic timescale this swift increase is alarming. When temperatures have risen in the past, warming the planet at several points between ice ages, the average length of time this process has taken is roughly 5,000 years to increase global temperatures by 5 degrees.

In this past century alone the temperature has risen ten times the average rate of ice age recovery warming, a recent trend not only driven by the rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but also amplified by them.

Fig2

Fig. 4. This table shows global temperature anomaly from 1880 through to 2011. Black lines are representative of annual mean variances and the red line is representative of five year running temperature mean’s. (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2012) http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2011/Fig2.gif

Continued economic, global population and energy consumption growth over the next few decades will consequently increase not only CO2 emissions, but also the rate and quantity with which they accumulate in the atmosphere. This is a business-as-usual scenario where efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, namely CO2, have fallen short of any earnest mitigation, “locking in climate change at a scale that would profoundly and adversely affect all of human Civilization and all of the world’s major ecosystems” (Allison et al. 2009); see scenario A1FI (Fig. 5).

Even if the global mean temperature only rises another 2 degrees before the end of this century, it would be a larger increase in temperature rise than any century-long trend in the last 10,000 years. A one degree global temperature rise is also significant for the reason that it takes a vast amount of heat to warm all the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much; even more so is the significance of subsequent ecosystem collapse in climate sensitive areas such as the Arctic due to such a rise.

gt

Fig. 5. This is a reconstruction of global average temperatures relative to 1800-1900 (blue), observed global average temperatures since 1880 to 2000 (black), and projected global average temperatures out to 2100 within three scenarios (green, yellow and red), (Allison et al. 2009). Scenario A1FI, adopted from the IPCC AR4 2007 report, represents projections for a continued global economic growth trend, and a continued aggressive exploitation of fossil fuels; the FI stands for “fossil fuel intensive”. http://www.ccrc.unsw.edu.au/Copenhagen/Copenhagen_Diagnosis_HIGH.pdf

Arctic Warming
The greatest changes in temperature over the last hundred years has been in the northern hemisphere, where they have risen 0.5 degrees Celsius higher since 1880 than in the southern hemisphere (Fig. 6). The Arctic is experiencing the fastest rate of warming as its reflective covering of ice and snow shrinks and even more in sensitive polar regions.

One of the main facets that are being affected by the increase of temperature in the Arctic is the potential collapse of Arctic ecosystems that succeed in the region. Ecosystems that are under pressure and that are at their tipping points can be defined as having their thresholds forced beyond what they can cope with. Different components of ecosystems experience diverse changes. In this instance,
“ecosystem tipping features” refers to the components of the ecosystem that show critical transitions when experiencing abrupt change (Duarte et al. 2012).

Fig.A3

Fig. 6. This table shows both annual and five year mean temperature variances between 1880 and 2011. Temperature mean averages for the northern hemisphere are in red and southern hemisphere averages are in blue (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2012). http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A3.gif

Sea Ice Loss
The significance of sea ice loss in the Arctic relates to a serious tipping point in the Arctic marine ecosystem which is given by the temperature at which water changes state from solid to liquid. Ice responds suddenly to changes at this temperature. This causes warming and loss of sea ice to amplify the potential changes to the climate including a reduction in albedo with the declining sea ice. Crossing the tipping point sets in motion many changes that further increases temperature in the Arctic region on top of current global warming (Duarte et al. 2012).

The ice that encompasses the Arctic has slowly been dwindling ever since a catastrophic collapse in the Arctic region in 2007. Since that point, close to two thirds of the ice has vanished compared to a decade earlier when the loss of sea ice was significantly smaller (Anderson, 2009). Scientists had previously predicted that the ice in the Arctic region would not be reduced to the point that it reached in 2007 until at least 2050, and in 2012 it dropped to levels much lower than in 2007 (Fig. 7). It is now predicted that the Arctic summer ice could disappear entirely as early as 2013.

The vulnerable setting of the Arctic region has certainly made it easy for global warming to have significant influences on the natural climate processes. The white ice naturally reflects sunlight back into space, but with the melting of the ice and subsequent open, dark sea water, the reflectivity is reduced and therefore the heat is retained instead. The arctic seas warm up, melting more ice, and then even more is absorbed and melted by the increasing water temperature change. This creates a dangerous feedback loop that intensifies melting and overall temperatures.

Observations and climate models are in agreement that through the 21st century, Arctic sea ice extent will continue to decline in response to fossil fuels being burnt and greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. Through the influxes of heat being circulated, temperature for the terrestrial and aquatic systems continues to increase, delaying ice growth during winter and autumn only to increase the temperature on the region.

BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2

Fig. 7. This table shows the ice volume anomalies of the Arctic ocean, with respect to the volume of ice over a period between 1979 to 2011. (Polar Science Center, psc.apl.washington.edu. 2011) http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png?%3C%3Fphp+echo+time%28%29

Permafrost Melt
One of the most worrisome scenarios of a positive feedback is the thawing of huge quantities of organic material locked in frozen soil beneath Arctic landscapes. Vast quantities of carbon and methane from once rotting vegetation are stored in the frozen soil. This frozen soil is called permafrost and it contains significantly more carbon than is currently in the atmosphere.

Permafrost is defined as subsurface Earth materials remaining below 0°C for two consecutive years. It is thoroughly widespread in the Northern Hemisphere where permafrost regions occupy 22% of the land surface (Schuur et al. 2008).

The temperature, thickness and geographic continuity of permafrost are controlled by the surface energy balance. Permafrost thickness geographically ranges from 1 meter to 1450 meters depending on where the permafrost is situated. The layer that thaws in the summer and refreezes in the winter is referred to as the active layer. The thickness of the active layer ranges between 10 centimeters and 2 meters. Beneath the active layer is the transition zone, the buffer between the active layer and the more stable permafrost. The thickness of the active layer is significant because it influences plant rooting depth, hydrological processes, and the quantity of organic soil matter uncovered to the above-freezing seasonal temperatures. The growing concern is that permafrost’s relationship with the Arctic warming could lead to drastic changes for the region.

The processes that involve the transfer of stored carbon into the atmosphere have the potential to significantly increase climate warming in the Arctic region (Schuur et al. 2008). Since it only would take a few more degrees in temperature rise to tip the permafrost into rapid thawing and subsequently release huge amounts of stored carbon and methane, methane being over 20x as potent a greenhouse gas, this would result in a much larger feedback into the global GHG level rise.

A Warmer World

Industrial Civilization is on a path to heat the Earth up by 4 to 7 degrees Celsius before the middle of this century if it fails to end its carbon emissions, triggering a cascade of cataclysmic changes that will include the increase of extreme heat-waves, prolonged droughts, intensified weather patterns, the total loss of Arctic sea ice, rapid decline in global food availability, sea level rise affecting billions of people, and eventually an abrupt extinction of the majority of biological life on earth.

The solution, while not a simple one to execute, is clear: Industrial Civilization must end its reliance on fossil fuels and begin to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere immediately, reducing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 down to a safe level.

A full reference list for this article is available here: http://dgrnewsservice.org/newsservice/2013/03/reference-material1.pdf

Industrial Civilization is Incompatible with Life

by | May 8, 2012 | Agriculture

By Rachel / Deep Green Resistance Florida

Industrial civilization is systematically destroying everything on the planet that life requires in order to exist.  Since civilization demands infinitely increasing resources on a finite planet, its eventual end is unavoidable.  It follows that the faster it can be brought down, the more likely it is that any chance at survival will remain for those who inhabit the Earth after the crash.

My friend listens attentively as I speak the words, but she’s smiling the way she always smiles when she thinks I’m at the end of my rhetorical rope.  It’s lucky for our friendship that we like to argue on certain subjects, since our views don’t tend to overlap. Our favorite topics of discussion are the ones we’re pretty sure we’ll never agree on. We lived together for a year and never fought once over who last took the trash out, the setting of the thermostat, or the dishes left in the sink.  We saved our fighting spirit for health care reform (I wanted a single-payer system, she thought any regulation was obstructing the free market), the relative merits of capitalism (the only fair system said she, the root of all evil said I), and the relationship of religion to morality (inseparable if you asked her, at odds if you asked me).

Our intense discussions at the kitchen table generally lasted long enough to bore our other friends to tears and often got loud enough to wake our other roommates from deep slumber, but today amidst the lunch rush of our favorite restaurant, no one is bothered by our fervor. She and I have prodded each other’s political sensibilities from so many angles that few of her arguments can surprise me anymore, but this time I’m leaning forward across the table in anticipation of her point.

In some ways, it would be a relief to be proven wrong this time.  See, new information has been leading me to some unsettling conclusions as of late.  Being right about them means that the world I’m used to cannot continue, will  not continue, on its current trajectory.  Being right means that the situation is a lot more urgent and intractable than I’ve previously been able to appreciate.  Being right means that we have a lot of work to do, and not much time in which to do it.  Today at lunch I tell some of these conclusions to my friend, more than half hoping that she can talk me back over to the more familiar side of the line.

“Doesn’t that sound a little extreme, and kind of alarmist, Rach?” she asks.  If you’d asked me that as recently as two years ago when I first became heavily involved in activism of any sort, I probably would have told you it sounded both alarmist and extreme.  I would have argued then, just like my friend proceeds to argue now, that civilization doesn’t destroy the things we need, it provides them for us.  It’s a word to describe the highly advanced state of human society that we’ve achieved.

Civilization means progress through scientific prowess, global connection and trade, a longer lifespan through modern medicine, more comfort and leisure time due to mechanization, and a million thoughtless comforts and distractions to improve our lives.  The main problem with these definitions is the fact that they are written by the civilized, for the civilized.  For me, the word civilization used to connote an almost holy weight, and to bring civilization to a place was synonymous with bringing hope, progress, and power.  Here’s a more accurate definition:

Civilization is the phenomenon of people living in cities, more or less permanently at a high enough density to require the routine importation of resources into the city center; the culture of institutions, stories, and artifacts that arises from such an arrangement.

On its face, that definition sounded pretty innocuous to me on a first reading.  More than just innocuous, to me that definition sounded absurd.  Of course people live in cities, I thought, where else?  People have always lived in close proximity to each other because we’re social animals desirous of community and relationship.  Of course, I thought, people in cities need to import food and other essentials, but what’s wrong with that?  Importation is necessary because without industrial production and agriculture, we couldn’t make enough food and other necessities for everyone, and industrial agriculture needs the empty space outside the city to grow our food.  What else would our culture and mythology arise from, if not civilization?  How could anyone want anything different?

To even approach beginning to answer these questions, it was necessary to gain a basic understanding of how privilege works within individuals and institutions.  When you are the one being privileged, that privilege is usually invisible to you.  Most men do not consciously acknowledge that the dominant construction of masculinity is based on hatred and erasure of women, and even fewer can address the ways that hating and erasing women grants them privilege within the system of patriarchy.

During a speech at Occupy Oakland, activist Lierre Keith articulated patriarchy, capitalism, and civilization as the three main frameworks that direct our culture’s interactions with power and oppression.  Just like the violence of patriarchy is invisible to those it benefits, the violence of capitalism is either rationalized or outright denied by those middle to upper class individuals that are benefitting from legions of wage slaves below them.

You’ve heard them do it, maybe you’ve even engaged in some rationalization yourself.  It sounds like, “anyone can get above their circumstances if they work hard,” or “people get what they deserve.” In a perfect world, that may be true, but in a capitalist world, people get whatever those with more power deign to give them.  A privilege can be the power to oppress or use others, or it can be insulation from the violence that permeates and enforces the system.  I’ve been sensing the blinders of privilege in my periphery, like a dog senses a cone around its neck.  The occasional glimpse of the outside world is illuminating, but there’s no getting the cone off, and so the scene will always be incomplete.

The violence of patriarchy and capitalism did not become visible to me overnight – I’m a white, middle class American, a social position that carries enough privilege to blind most to the inherent flaws in these two systems, which means that even once the basic systems are visible to me, most of the effects of those systems are still invisible to me.  Still, these systems were relatively easier to identify as oppressive than the third system, civilization.

The first person to suggest to me that civilization itself is inherently destructive and unsustainable was my roommate, Sam, shortly after she moved in with me.  The first time she mentioned it, I rejected the idea out of hand.  Humans have always lived in close-knit communities, I said, and our need for community is one of the most intrinsic attributes of humanity.  To reject civilization seemed equivalent to rejecting the whole spectrum of human social behavior as inherently destructive.  I recognized much of human activity as destructive, but labeling our every activity as inherently destructive seemed a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  If humans themselves are irredeemable, then what can we possibly be working toward?

My understanding changed when I read a different definition of civilization – people living in cities.  To me, cities once seemed eternal and inevitable.  As a young child, I learned that the first cities appeared less than ten millennia ago in the Middle East.  On the same day, I learned that humans are evidenced in the fossil record for two hundred thousand years.

For the bulk of human existence, we lived outside the bounds of civilization, and without the framework of privilege and oppression that civilization necessitates and enforces through violence.  At the time, my still-developing brain had no conception of the width of one year, much less the scope of change that stretches between ten and two hundred millennia.   To my child’s perception, that day’s history lesson were not facts, they were a familiar story.  We each know the trope by heart: regardless of whether they exist by design or by chance, humans gained intelligence surpassing that of all other species.  Over time, we used our superior faculties to improve life for ourselves.  The changes we have created are inherently good as well as ultimately inevitable, and working toward the spread and advancement of these changes is both noble and necessary.

We all know this story, and to call it a story gets much closer to the point than calling it history.  Someone wrote down the facts in our history, if they are indeed facts at all, and that person or group of people had to decide what to include or omit, which words to use, and how to arrange those words.  There is no objective account, no hard historical fact.  Even when solid empirical evidence can be produced for a historical “fact,” each kernel of physical reality comes to us swaddled in a story, a fabric of accrued belief to which is added a final and significant layer – the gloss of supposed objectivity is a tool of erasure based on privilege.  Those who benefit from a system are likely to protect it and speak well of it.  Those who have to live the violent cost of our culture don’t tend to get jobs writing curricula.

What cost?  Well, I’m glad you asked, but I probably would have told you even if you hadn’t.  I’ve observed fear and violence from the security of a suburban bubble, seen the desperation of lack and then returned home to stocked shelves, and glimpsed the reality of civilization’s true nature only from the window of a moving car.  If, as I hope, I’ve managed to learn anything about how the real world works, I need to acknowledge that my charmed life has afforded me an education from a safe distance.

More each day, I know that the comfort and safety I call home are wrung from the pain and violation of others, and if the guilt you feel at this knowledge doesn’t tear at the pit of your gut, you may as well be a fucking corpse.  The nagging suspicion that the certainty and urgency I feel in this moment will subside with my youth and naiveté offers little relief.  The picture of reality that’s taking shape behind my eyes doesn’t fit with the story I once knew best, and there isn’t room for them to coexist.   Increasingly, I’ll relay the conflict to anyone who’ll listen, as though my frenetic speech was an incantation to exorcise the myth from my mind.

I still haven’t answered the question – what cost?  The answer can and does fill volumes, and this paragraph should be proof enough for no one, but here is what I’ve been coming to understand.  Today, let’s take only our source of food as an example.  A given ecosystem can only support a certain number of organisms living on it at one time.  If the population surpasses its carrying capacity of organisms, members of the species consume too much of whatever it is they need to eat, and the population’s numbers plummet as resources inevitably become scarce.

Not only do members of the species die, but the carrying capacity of that land is lowered lastingly.  If there are too many deer on an island, the deer food on the island is unable to replenish itself fast enough to support them.  The upward motion on the population graph comes down hard, and can never rise as high again.  That island will likely never hold as many deer as it once did.

Now, when humans began living in high concentrations in cities, these physical laws were an immediate obstacle.  If a square mile of land can only produce enough resources for one person to survive, placing fifty people in that square mile means that the resources need to come from somewhere else.  Every industrialized city in existence exceeds the carrying capacity of the land its built on, so where does the sustenance come from?

In the case of food, the answer is agriculture.  We grow food outside of the bounds of the city and ship it in to the people living in the center – these people could not grow enough food for themselves if they wanted to, because in most cases, the environment that yields nutrients has been replaced by concrete.  Are we on the same page so far?  Good.  Here’s where things get dicey.  This arrangement appears to work well to the people in the city, since the food (usually) arrives consistently from beyond its borders, but the less copasetic effects of agriculture are two pronged.

First, the only way that monocrop agriculture (the most controllable method in the short term and, predictably, far and away the most profitable for some) can successfully produce food is by waging a war against all other parts of nature.  A monocrop means killing everything on a piece of land, all the way down to the bacteria in the soul, so that nothing interferes with the growth on the desired plant.  The clearing of the land is only the first wave of death that agriculture sets in motion.

There are reasons that monocrops don’t exist in nature.  The only way to maintain the biotically sterile environment necessary to grow anything with a monocrop is the use of pesticides, and the gut-wrenching realities of even the most mild of these are demonstrated best by the scars they’ve left on our land, lives, and limbs.  In addition, plants overshoot the carrying capacity of soil just as organisms do their habitats – too many in one place, and the necessary nutrients run out.  Soil takes thousands of years to regenerate, and we don’t have thousands of years – most of the soil on the planet is already dust.  If you’ve followed my explanation, which I hope you have, you can guess what happens next.

Here’s a hint: the exact same thing that would happen to any other species.  The human population graph stays steady until the start of civilized societies with agriculture, and then the line climbs straight for the heavens.  It hasn’t been stopped yet, but it will be.  What will be left when we get there?  Agriculture also necessitates backbreaking labor to actively maintain its war against biodiversity.  We commonly refer to technologies as “labor saving,” but in most cases, we just saving the labor for someone else.  More specifically, we’re saving it for someone who we can justify exploiting.

Fewer people buy their slaves nowadays, but renting them is all the rage.  When wringing labor value from someone else’s body and time doesn’t work, we wring it from the Earth itself.  All the unpaid labor in the world cannot change what monocrops do to soil, but fossil fuels are buying us time.  The fertilizer used in industrial agriculture is derived from oil.  When we inevitable use up this nonrenewable resource, we won’t be able to ask any more of our dead and desiccated soil – it will have blown away for good.  We’ve only looked at food in the last couple paragraphs, but different examples yield similar results.  The basic organization and priorities of our society as it exists are fundamentally dissociated from the reality of how life works on this planet.  If we want to live, it all has to stop, and soon.

To put it simply, circumstances are a lot more dire than I previously realized.  When two conflicting ideas coexist in the same brain, the result is cognitive dissonance.  She who experiences the conflict can choose to preserve her existing framework by ignoring or rationalizing one idea at the expense of the other.  Alternatively, she can choose to critically examine both in light of the available evidence and hopefully construct a more realistic and effective framework for action.  The framework of industrial civilization is not redeemable, because it conflict on the most basic levels with the continuation of life on the planet.

When the first bit of doubt lodged itself between the lines of the familiar story, I ignored it.  When it grew, distorting the consistency of the only plot I could follow, I rationalized it.  I’m not going to do either one anymore.  Some things are obvious – we need food, water, and air, and we need them without poison, thank you very much.  The fundamental illogic and insanity of our current system, the need to dismantle it without delay – when food, water, and air are our priorities, these facts become obvious too.

At lunch with my friend, I finish the last sentence of this argument, and we’re both silent for a moment.  I gulp some water, and she picks at the remnants of her food and bites her lip contemplatively.  For a moment, perhaps a longer moment than I’d like to admit, I hope that she can talk me out of this.  If any of what I’ve just said is true, then the future will look very different than what I’ve expected.  If it’s true, my very existence within this system is predicated on the exploitation of other life, including other humans.  If it’s true, then my actions need to reflect the urgency of the situation, and we’re out of time for vacillation.

“You make some good points,” she says.  “Well, if it’s true, what do we do about it?” Now it’s my turn to contemplate silently, because the truth is that I’m not sure.  These problems span the planet, and even if my answer wasn’t stunted by the lies that insulate my privileges, it can’t be universally true.  Resistance needs to look different in different places, act different according to context, and I definitely don’t have very much of that answer yet.  Luckily, I’m not asking the question in a vacuum.  There are others, here and across the world, asking the same questions right now and throughout history.  Resistance to hierarchy and the abuse that comes with it has a story as long and diverse as the story of humans themselves.  Knowing the story is the only way to change the ending in a meaningful way, and I have a lot of work to do toward both those ends.

A specific analysis has lately been guiding my actions and explorations, called Deep Green Resistance.  The book by that name was written by Lierre Keith, Aric McBay, and Derrick Jensen (authors whose work informed much of this article), and since its release last year, actions groups have sprung up across the country and internationally in accordance with the strategy the book lays out.  A detailed description of the group’s basic premises, organization, and methods will have to be saved for a later article, but we are hardly the first to point out the depravity of the current arrangement of power.  The soil, air, and water are running out, and so is our time.  Whatever happens next, we cannot afford the luxury of relying on symbolic action alone.  Whatever happens next, the death knell for real change is compromise with a system that “creates value” from death, destruction, and misery.  Whatever happens next, I’m siding with the real world.  How about you?

Derrick Jensen: Loaded Words

by | Mar 8, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Music & Art, Strategy & Analysis

By Derrick Jensen

RECENTLY, I’VE BEEN THINKING about something I wrote fourteen years ago, which has become one of my most quoted passages: “Every morning when I wake up I ask myself whether I should write, or blow up a dam.” Despite having faith in my work as a writer, I knew that it wasn’t a lack of words that was killing salmon in the Northwest. It was the presence of dams.

Since that time, things have gotten much worse for salmon, and for almost everything on the earth. By now we all know the numbers, or we should. Two hundred species per day driven extinct, 90 percent of the large fish in the oceans extirpated, more than 98 percent of native forests destroyed, 99 percent of prairies, and on and on. Virtually every biological indicator is pointing the wrong direction. Native communities—human and nonhuman—are under assault. Where I live, frog populations have collapsed, as have newt populations, butterfly populations, crane fly populations, dragonfly populations, banana slug populations, songbird populations. Crow populations have collapsed. Bat populations. Woolly bear populations. Moth populations. Bumblebee and solitary bee populations. And these are just some of the absences I’ve noticed. Salmon of course have continued to collapse. At this point I give salmon fifteen years. If we can bring down industrialized civilization in the next fifteen years, I think salmon, in time, will be fine. Much longer and they will not survive.

So where does writing fit in? Far too many of us have forgotten, or never knew, that words can be used as weapons in service of our communities. Far too many of us have forgotten, or never knew, that words should be used as weapons in service of our communities. For far too long, too many critics and teachers have told us that literature should be apolitical (as though this were possible), and that even nonfiction and journalism should be “neutral” or “objective” (as though this, too, were possible). If you want to send a message, they told us, use Western Union. I once spoke with a nature writer who refused to lend his name to a campaign to protect a species about whom he had written, giving as his reason, “I’m a writer. I have to remain neutral.”

When the world is being murdered, such a position is inexcusable. It is immoral. And it reveals a great ignorance for what it means to be a writer. Have these people never heard of Steinbeck, Dickens, Crane, Hugo? Charlotte Perkins Gilman? Rachel Carson? Frederick Douglass? Harriet Beecher Stowe? Alexandra Kollontai? George Eliot? Katharine Burdekin? Zora Neale Hurston? Andrea Dworkin? B. Traven? Upton Sinclair? A little Tolstoy, anyone?

I would not be who I am and I would not write what I write without having learned from some of my elders who refused to believe that writers should or can be apolitical or neutral or objective. The truth is most important, they said. It is more important than money. It is more important than fame. It is more important than your career. It’s more important than your preconceptions. Follow the truth—follow the words and ideas—wherever they lead. Words matter, they said. Art matters. Literature matters. Words and art and literature can change lives, and can change history. Make sure that your words and your art and your literature move people individually and collectively in the direction of justice and sustainability. They said literature that supports capitalism is immoral. A literature that supports patriarchy is immoral. A literature that does not resist oppression is immoral. But you can help to create a literature of morality and resistance, as each new generation must create this literature, with the help of all those generations who came before, holding their hands for support, just as those who come after will need to hold yours.

I was also taught that art can be and is and, to be moral, must be a combat discipline.

Recognizing that art can be a combat discipline is part of a process necessary for social change, but it’s not all of it. If too few of us remember that words can be weapons, even fewer of us remember that, as weapons, words cannot fight alone. Words themselves do not topple dictators, they do not stop capitalism, they do not stop oppression, they do not halt species extinction, they do not stop global warming, they do not remove dams. At some point someone actually has to do something. At some point someone needs to physically dismantle the infrastructures that allow capitalism to metastasize, oppression to continue, species extinction and global warming to accelerate, dictators and dams to stand.

That job is up to all of us.

A friend and mentor once asked me, “What are the largest, most pressing problems you can help to solve using the gifts that are unique to you in all the universe?” That question shows precisely where I have succeeded as a writer and human being, and precisely where I have failed.

There are many ways my writing life could so far be considered a success far beyond anything I daydreamed about when I was younger. I have twenty books out. People seem to enjoy reading them and coming to my talks, both of which honor me beyond belief. Despite the truth of the old cliché about writing, that it is a terrible way to make a living and a great way to make a life, for at least the last few years I’ve been able to financially support myself through writing. More important than all of these, however, is that I have been true to my muse, and have at least attempted to tell the truth as I have come to understand it. And I have sometimes succeeded in articulating some of those things I know in my heart to be true, and in so doing have, I hope, helped some others to articulate some of those things they may know in their hearts to be true.

This is all to the good. But the fact remains that if we judge my work, or anyone’s work, by the most important standard of all, and in fact the only standard that really matters, which is the health of the planet, my work (and everyone else’s) is a complete failure. Because my work hasn’t stopped the murder of the planet. Nor has anyone else’s. We haven’t even slowed it down. It’s embarrassing to have to explain why this is the only standard that really matters, but at this point embarrassment is the least of our problems. The health of the planet is the only standard that really matters because without a living planet nothing else is important, because nothing else exists. Compared to this, the number of books one has published doesn’t matter. How beautifully or poorly they are written doesn’t matter. Financially supporting oneself doesn’t matter. Life itself is more important than what we create.

These days when I wake up, I’m even less certain that my decision to write is the right one. I know that a culture of resistance needs every form of action, from writing to legal work to mass protests in the streets to physically dismantling destructive infrastructures. And that too few people are calling for actions that are commensurate with the threats to the planet. And so, for better or worse, most mornings, articulating the truth and defending it and rallying others to defend it in whatever ways they know how is the method of combat I choose.

The time for waiting is long gone. It is time to stop this culture from destroying life on earth. So take my hand. Take the hands of all those who came before us. But keep your other hand free, to make a fist or to pick up a pen. The health of the oceans, the forests, the rivers, the salmon, the sturgeon, the migratory songbirds, are all more important than you or I individually, and they are more important than your or my accomplishments. Their health will be the measure of our success.

From Orion Magazine: http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6698/