subject: In An Age Of Specialisation, Climate Change Needs Us To Think Of The Planet As A Whole [print this page] In An Age Of Specialisation, Climate Change Needs Us To Think Of The Planet As A Whole
Humans are great problem solvers. There is nothing, it seems, that we cannot solve given enough time and creativity: all we need to do it break it down into small parts and find a solution to each obstacle. Global warming and the associated climate change has so far proved resistant to that approach. There are plenty of "solutions" available to provide energy from non-fossil fuel sources and there are ways to produce food that do not require inputs of oil-based fertilizers but, somehow, we just aren't adopting them at a rate quickly enough to make headway in "solving the problem". For the majority of people looking at climate change, it appears confusing and lacking a "solution": if it really is the greatest threat facing humankind, what is 'the weapon' that we can use to defeat it.
On 30 April 2009, The Sun newspaper (and others) published reports that said: 'Britain set for a Barbeque Summer [...] with warmer than average temperatures and near or below-average rainfall'. By 29 July, The Times (and others) carried reports which said: 'The Met Office officials refused to apologise today after admitting that the "barbecue summer" they had predicted was no longer likely'. To the Great British public, global warming and climate change took another back seat.
The primary difficulty with climate science is that it is incredibly complex and complex systems are still very difficult for our species to understand, even for those who are supposed to be experts. This was clearly demonstrated in 2008 when the financial system collapsed, causing a deep economic recession.
The first half of 2009 saw a 50% reduction in production output of automobiles and the overall economic output for the 12 months up until mid-2009 shrank by 5.6%. The root cause of the crisis is generally agreed to have stemmed from the high levels of risk that were taken by the banking system in lending to the 'sub-prime market', that is to people who would not previously have qualified for loans by virtue of their probable inability to repay them. When these borrowers started to default, the loans had been incorporated into other financial instruments to such an extent that nobody could figure out how big the problem was or who was most exposed to the potential losses. Confidence collapsed. Banks stopped lending to each other. The flow of money was greatly contracted.
The scale of the ensuing crisis prompted the Queen to enquire of economists why no one had seen it coming. In response, Tim Besley of the London School of Economics and Peter Hennessey, an eminent historian of government, submitted a letter which concluded:
'In summary, Your Majesty, the failure to foresee the timing, extent and severity of the crisis and to head it off, while it had many causes, was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.'
The "collective imagination" is an enormously powerful thing: it is what allows the money system and our modern economies to work in the first place. There is, however, a fundamental problem with the way we organise and account for our economic activity.
The capitalist system has been an effective (though not perfect) system for delivering present day pleasures. However, it has done so by fooling us into thinking that destroying the future is "rational behaviour" through the simple error of omitting to place any cost on using the Earth's resources and services. By assuming the Earth's resources and services are of inexhaustible supply they can be considered free to use. The science of how humans allocate scare resources ignores the one resource that truly is scarce, the Earth. It is an error that is based partially in our shared imagination of what our relationship to the rest of the planet is (dominant) and partially time related. Modern accountancy and decision making only became possible following the invention of double entry booking in 15th century Italy. Unfortunately, at that time there were many fewer humans around and they had not discovered how to use fossil fuels in any great way. So, the system that seeks balance is, in fact, tilted.
There is a way to fix the problem of global warming and the associated climate change that builds on the strengths of the current system. Businesses are well used to the idea that capital items used for production need to be depreciated to provide for their replacement at the end of their productive lives and this concept could be extended to natural capital. A depreciation charge levied on businesses use of natural capital would be an easily understood way to change things in a positive direction. The money raised would be spent on restocking oceans, protecting biodiverstiy and taking carbon out of the atmosphere, making them economic activities. There will be no shortage of entrepreneurs wanting to do them. But it requires a shift in the "collective imagination" to recognise that our planet's resources and services are finite and the current generation must pay for maintenance rather than shift the problem to a future generation. In an age when people's jobs and knowlledge are more and more specialised, we need our collective imagination to look at the planet as a whole.
