by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 29, 2008 | All Posts, Uncategorized
The Camp for Climate Action starts this Sunday and runs for just over a week, until Monday 11th August. I will be there giving a workshop in partnership with the Zero Carbon Britain team (on the Wednesday - full workshop list here), and I urge all of you in the UK to come along too, whether for the whole week, for the weekend, or just for a day.
This is the gathering of the wonderfully diverse mass-movement building against the collective suicide pact that is Business As Usual. There will be talks and workshops with some of the best-informed experts, friendly warm hospitality, passionate activists, music, laughter and perhaps most importantly of all, the chance to have fun with masses of people and realise that we are very far from alone with our fears. I can't wait.
For those in London trains run every few minutes and take less than an hour, and of course it's well organised yet free (I'm told even the food is good, cheap and locally sourced!) Full details at the Climate Camp website. I hope to see all of you there.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 29, 2008 | All Posts, TEQs (Tradable Energy Quotas)
I am honoured to have been shortlisted for this year's Sheila McKechnie Foundation Environmental Campaigner Award, for my work on TEQs.
The Sheila McKechnie Foundation was established in 2005 to help develop a new generation of campaigners who are tackling the root causes of injustice. Set up in memory of Dame Sheila McKechnie, the Foundation is dedicated to helping campaigners create positive and lasting social change.
They run programmes for individuals and groups providing support, advice and a place to share information on key areas of effective campaigning: from strategy, tactics, and targets to evaluating successful campaigns. For more information, take a look at their website.
I'd like to thank them for their work and for the useful advice and support they have given me regarding moving TEQs towards implementation in the UK.
I'd also like to congratulate the worthy winner - Alex Randall of the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), who is working to make political action and peaceful protest on climate change an activity practiced by everyone. He set up the humorous CheatNeutral.com and is keen to explore the possibilities inherent in social networking media to draw attention to the issue. CAT are also the authors of the outstanding Zero Carbon Britain report, which is built around TEQs and shows how Britain could achieve zero carbon emissions within twenty years.
Do take a look at it and the other exceptional work they are doing.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 27, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Philosophy, Politics
Since my earlier review of Burn Up I have discovered a comment on the film posted yesterday by Jeremy Leggett, one of the few with any media profile to openly discuss the interplay of peak oil and climate change.
In his piece Leggett asks: "Why do the carbon-club lobbyists and contrarians do what they do? What is in their heads as they go about their work? Surely they must see the power of the emerging evidence that the threat is real, and massive? ... I don't have an explanation."
This is a question I have devoted a lot of thought to, and I will venture an answer.
Those who are benefiting most from the current 'business as usual' in the global economy are, by definition, extremely wealthy, and thus very influential. Yet it is these people for whom it may be hardest to acknowledge the reality of climate change and energy depletion.
The reason is that everything and everyone around them tells them that they have made an incredible success of their lives. Their ability to acquire whatever material possessions they desire, their exclusive social groups, their desirable romantic partners and respectful business colleagues - so much in their lives speaks to them of their triumphant prosperity.
Quite apart from the challenge of changing the habits of thought and reasoning that have appeared to serve them so well, what we are asking is that they shift the story they hold of their own life from one of heroic progress and success to one in which they are complicit in the end of civilisation and perhaps even higher life on Earth.
We should not underestimate the level of commitment and bravery such an internal transformation requires, especially when their peer groups provide them with all the encouragement in the world to resist it. And so we should not be surprised when many instead indulge in desperately contorted logic or straight-out denial (and bring their considerable resources to bear) in the attempt to resist losing the glorious tale of themselves they worked so hard to earn.
Yet despite all this, there are those who have braved the dark night of the soul. Ray Anderson, the founder and chairman of vast multinational corporation Interface Carpets has been telling his story to fellow industrialists:
"One day it dawned on me that the way I'd been running Interface Carpets is the way of the plunderer. Plundering something that is not mine, that belongs to every creature.
I stand convicted by me, myself alone, not by anyone else, as a plunderer of Earth, but not by our civilisation's definition. By our civilisation's definition I'm a captain of industry, in the eyes of many a kind of modern-day hero."
He deserves our respect for embracing this difficult epiphany (he has described the experience as "the point of a spear into my chest"), and if we can better understand the deeply personal challenges facing his fellow plunderers then perhaps we can help them in changing the story of their lives, so that they may come to measure their success very differently, but again become heroes.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 27, 2008 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Peak Oil, Politics, Reviews and recommendations
I have just watched the BBC's outstanding thriller Burn Up, starring Rupert Penry-Jones, Marc Warren, Bradley Whitford and Neve Campbell (trailer available here).
It is a dramatic account of the intrigue, betrayal, sex and violence surrounding characters in the oil industry, international diplomacy and the environmental movement in the build up to the international conference that will decide on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. For those who haven't yet seen it, be aware that the discussion below the cut contains spoilers.
Right, so you've seen it now - what did you think? Personally, despite the supposedly 'stellar' cast I thought some of the acting was a bit below-par, but I was shocked in the best possible way by the direction the script took.
Against all my expectations of a prime-time major channel drama this was a fascinating attempt to engage with and dramatise the over-riding tension of our times, between the depletion of the fossil-fuel resources which fuel our globalised way of life, and the growing consequences of the emissions those fuels produce.
It was great to see the scientist in the film stating that we have only 5-10 years to avoid irreversible runaway climate change - to me that is the bottom line - but the section that particularly fascinated me was the ending.
One man alone ends up holding incontrovertible evidence that Saudi oil production is in decline, and so that Peak Oil truly is already in the past, and he faces a dilemma. Does he tell the world, so that we can start work in earnest on the transition to a low-carbon future, or does he keep it to himself, since he knows full well that this information would spread panic throughout the financial markets, plunging us into global economic depression, prompting energy wars and causing suffering throughout the world.
His dilemma represents the very real tension our world faces. Our global economies are dependent on both growing supplies of accessible fossil fuels and a stable climate, so we know that our carbon-intensive way of life will end, one way or another. Yet we have now left it too late for a gentle, gradual transition to a low-carbon economy, so we can see that the crash of our existing systems, when it comes, will be painful.
This creates an instinctive desire to put it off as long as possible, but the longer we persist in our current fuel-wasting, carbon-emitting ways the faster and more vicious the crash will be. We know we really ought to go to the dentist, but maybe we can put it off for just one more year...
The pace of Burn Up seemed to speed up dramatically towards the end, and some friends less immersed in this field told me they had trouble keeping up with it all, but in essence it ended with our hero deciding to leak the information, and the credits rolled to the sound of radio news broadcasts apparently indicating the global economy falling apart as the implications of the reality-check reverberated around the world.
I must confess that when I wrote last month about the thought that economic collapse might be the only remaining solution to global warming, the last thing I expected was to be encountering the idea on prime-time TV so soon.
"The world doesn't have to go to hell Mack, just the economy. You're right, this information will cause the biggest powerdown we've ever seen. But you cut world manufacturing in half you cut CO2 emissions in half. Look it may not be tomorrow, it may not be next week, next month, who knows when but the crash is coming."
The battle of cultural stories continues...
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ps Since writing this post, I have been pointed at this fascinating interview with the writer of Burn Up.
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jul 17, 2008 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Peak Oil
Thanks to the Oil Drum's Peak Oil Media Watch I recently came across this fascinating video clip from the "Fast Money" programme on American business news channel CNBC. In the extract the studio panel are discussing the rise in oil prices and - as is the show's theme - how to make money from it.
Their studio guest is Joe Terranova, who appears to be a typical energy investment type (though with an incredibly expressive face!), but their phone linkup is to Matthew Simmons, Chairman of Simmons & Company International Ltd, who is one of the very few high-profile figures to have predicted the current oil price rises, and who has been raising the peak oil issue for some years now. The mismatch in their perspectives is spectacular, especially from 4 minutes in.
I can't make a better comment on this than that made by the ever-insightful Nate Hagens:
The CNBC video is a prime example of the juxtaposition of people's time horizons and boundaries. Simmons eloquently outlined the bigger picture of that society is facing dramatic institutional and structural change, and then the conversation was brought directly back to short term profits. June highs mean July lows, etc.
The reason there is no international, national, or regional body looking at WIDE boundary SYSTEMS analysis is that there is no money in it. If the markets are designed to produce profits measured in dollars, how will the markets solve problems of the global commons? How can the viewers/guests on CNBC even begin to analyze the depth of this problem beyond how higher oil prices affect their portfolio allocations? There will come a day when a 'paradigm allocation' will leapfrog modern financial portfolio allocation. That's why the quizzical looks on those guests faces - energy and ecology are not topics ingrained in most traders pattern recognition banks.
I can only hope that our next crop of national leaders surround themselves by wide boundary thinkers - to surround themselves by the current crop of salespeople will lessen our chances dramatically.
And I agree with PG - this is difficult to do - to present facts about the situation as best as possible while remaining positive. What if the situation is worse than even some of the pessimists predict? The sooner we close off avenues that are dead ends, the better we can save high quality resources.
Well done by Matt Simmons.
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