by Shaun Chamberlin | Feb 11, 2011 | All Posts, Cultural stories, Reviews and recommendations, The Transition Timeline, Transition Movement
The brilliant cartoonist Marc Roberts (whose work will be familiar to regular Dark Optimism readers) got in touch with the Transition Network last year offering to produce a strip exploring the Transition concept. The time has come for the results to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public!
In Marc's own words, "they will be loosely exploring some of the Holmgren and Chamberlin scenarios through my usual combination of toilet humour and sarcasm".
He does himself a disservice - for me, it's a real honour to see my work used by someone whose talents I have long admired and enjoyed.
Two cartoons will be released each week. This post will be updated with the new cartoons as they are released, and they will also go out on Rob Hopkins' Transition Culture site and on a Transition Network blog.
The first four (+ a special message from the Inspectorate) are below. Hope you enjoy them!
Mon 7 Feb
(click to expand each strip)
Letter to Earthlings from the Intergalactic Heath & Safety Inspectorate
To whom it may concern,
Your planet has been selected for an extended audit by the Intergalactic Health & Safety Inspectorate, a worker-owned cooperative originating from a distant galaxy.
My colleague Gort and I have much work ahead and we will need to communicate our progress to you. Our studies of your culture indicate that your pictures paint a thousand words, so we will be using cartoons to convey our message.
We've therefore randomly selected an earthling to chronicle our adventures and given him special cartooning powers. He is working from a safe house deep in the discombobulation matrix and when our work here is done, we'll endeavour to return him to Manchester with most of his main parts intact.
So from now on, our adventures - starting below - will come to you in this medium.
And don't be alarmed if you see us on your doorstep, we may be making housecalls in your area shortly...
Yours intergalactically,
Klaatu
- Primitive Species Specialist, Dept of Planetary Remediation
- Intergalactic Health & Safety Inspectorate, Upsilon Andromedae Sector
Fri 11 Feb
Mon 14 Feb
Fri 18 Feb
Mon 21 Feb
Mon 28 Feb
Mon 7 Mar
Mon 14 Mar
Mon 28 Mar
Mon 4 Apr
Mon 11 Apr
Mon 25 Apr
Mon 9 May
Mon 30 May
This is as far as Marc Roberts has drawn this story for now! Drop him a positive comment here if you'd like to see more!
Edit - Sun 4 Dec:
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jan 5, 2010 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts, Politics
"Tell everybody
Waitin' for Superman
That they should try to
Hold on, best they can
He hasn't dropped them,
Forgot them,
Or anything,
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift"
~ The Flaming Lips
We've all seen Hollywood movies in which humanity is threatened by an unstoppable force, powerful beyond comprehension, which is eventually, in the final climax, held back and thwarted by our hero straining every sinew and pushing really hard...
Over recent weeks I have been in two meetings with Ed Miliband, our Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change - one just before Copenhagen, and one just after. At the earlier meeting he told us to judge him on the results of Copenhagen, and (despite my previous comments, and the fact that the UK is one of the minority of countries who have not endorsed a 350ppm target) I do believe that he tried everything he knew to be that hero and bring back a passable agreement.
Unfortunately, this Hollywood story isn't a useful one for our current predicament. Sometimes superhuman achievements really are beyond the grasp of mere humans. Trying to pull together a global agreement reconciling the fundamentally incompatible demands of unlimited economic growth and a limited physical environment is one such fool's errand.
In interviews in Copenhagen Ed appeared somewhat bewildered by the lack of progress and, frankly, somewhat dejected. It was hard not to feel for him.
For the technical details of what was eventually 'agreed' click here, for the text of the agreement itself click here, or for a more informal 'executive summary' see the clip below, but to cut a long story short, nothing was agreed that comes remotely close to addressing the scale of our climate challenge. Indeed, as I and many others have been pointing out for months, an agreement in line with climate science wasn't even close to the negotiating table, so there wasn't much point in hoping for it.
When we heard from the beginning that “talks are progressing more slowly than expected”, part of the explanation was that some of the smaller countries were stubbornly refusing to sign their own death warrants this time, no matter what they were offered to do so. Bloody inconsiderate of them.
"We're dying here, we're drowning; and some of us know that they don't really care, because we have to beg them. Actions speak louder than words. If they really do care, please have a little listen to us."
~ Jerome Esebei Temengil from Palau's delegation
(In an idle moment I did wonder whether the negotiations would have proceeded any differently had a volunteer Palauan family locked themselves in a transparent box in the middle of the conference hall, set to gradually fill with water and drown them unless they released themselves upon hearing that the 350ppm agreement demanded by their delegation has been signed...)
Of course there were many reasons why various countries and other interests strove to undermine any meaningful agreement, but I think Algerian envoy Kamel Djemouai, who speaks for 53 African nations, outlined the worst-case scenario well: "No deal is better than to have a bad deal, particularly for Africa."
Indeed, even the White House admitted before the talks that:
"An empty deal would be worse than no deal at all"
Yet we ended up with what the Financial Times described as "the emptiest deal one could imagine, short of a fist fight".
(The greatest success of the talks? A bit of childish humour adorning the back of lying climate change denier Christopher Monckton)
Still, by the time of our post-Copenhagen 'debrief' Ed Miliband appeared to have decided (or been told) to put a positive spin on the outcome. Despite looking as depressed as anyone in the room, he described the Accord as a "critical first step", and proceeded to argue that expectations of Copenhagen had simply been too high. Yet of course those lofty expectations were based squarely on the science, which remains stubbornly unchanged by the recent political manoeuvrings.
I suppose Ed is virtually obliged to appear positive about the political process, because that is what he has invested his life in, and what he is giving all his efforts to. And when that many world leaders gather it is inevitable that the outcome will be spun as some kind of at least partial success. But Ed's comments in an article last Sunday are rather more telling:
"In the months ahead, (Copenhagen's) concrete achievements must be secured and extended".
I wonder if such 'unsecured concrete achievements' were what Connie Hedegaard (initial President of the Copenhagen Conference and soon to be European Commissioner for climate change) was hoping for when she declared:
"This is our chance. If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one. If we ever do."
And what do these 'achievements' add up to? Well, if all the aspirational numbers in the Copenhagen Accord were actually fulfilled, they would lead to a CO2 concentration of 780ppm (double current levels) and a 3.9 degree warming by 2100. If political reality and scientific reality cannot be reconciled, there will be only one winner - Nature and physics simply do not negotiate. As George Monbiot put it,
"Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest; it was nice knowing you, not that we really cared".
So now the political focus shifts to the odd game of claiming that the Copenhagen Accord represents success while simultaneously blaming others for its failure. Thanks to the nationalistic, competitive nature of international politics, Miliband, Obama and all the other would-be superheroes are desperately trying to find their supervillain.
Others before me have pointed out that if an alien invasion were swooping in to attack, with projected human mortality and other effects similar to those of climate change, we would have united against the threat long ago. That is the kind of external enemy we could really get to grips with (Hollywood stories have trained us well for that one), but for as long as politics is treated as a competition between nations, cooperative efforts for mutual benefit will remain beyond us.
Perhaps this time the 'supervillain' we face is far more cunning than those movie aliens. He realises that in order to destroy the world with his dastardly plot he needs only to hide from view. As long as humanity perceives no hand but our own in any of these events, he can just sit back and calmly watch us destroy ourselves.
It seems we can accept being killed by our own foolishness much more easily than being outsmarted. Unfortunately, taking a long hard look in the mirror and battling our internal supervillains remains deeply unfashionable...
So where does all this leave us? What are our chances now of avoiding unstoppable runaway climate change, with all that entails?
50%-50% ?
90%-10% ? (I don't need to say which way)
Not even close.
For years now, I have played host to a cordial internal conflict between the part of me that insists that there may still be a tiny chance left of maintaining a stable climate, and the part that accepts that unstoppable runaway climate change is now inevitable...
I kept reading and researching, the information kept getting worse and worse, and then I recently stumbled across a quote that brought me up short. A 13th Century Islamic mystic by the name of Hajji Bektash Wali made the following pronouncement:
“For one who has perception,
A mere sign is enough.
For one who does not heed,
A thousand explanations
Are not enough.”
I confess that by now I may have had more than a thousand explanations of why it is too late, but it is still hard to give up hope on this one. In the article referred to earlier, Ed Miliband declared that:
"The challenge for all of us is not to lose heart and momentum. The truth is that the global campaign, co-ordinated by green NGOs, backed by business and supported by a wider cross section of the public, has achieved a lot... no campaign ever wholly succeeds at the first time of asking. We should take heart from the achievements and step up our efforts."
And of course it is not just the politicians pushing this message. The likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth also spun the Copenhagen fortnight as "humanity's last chance" to avoid the horrific impacts of runaway climate destabilisation, which leaves their calls for (yet) "one more big push" sounding a little hollow. Even, I suspect, to them.
Yet the repeated calls to redouble our efforts do retain a certain allure. Yes, in part because finding peace with our own impotence in the face of such large-scale suffering is a formidable task, but I think even more because it would be so terrible to look back and feel that we gave up while there actually was still a chance there.
Maybe there's still a chance that there's a chance...?
But what if we are on the Titanic and the iceberg has already been struck? Can we think of nothing wiser to do than to try to patch the hole as the ocean rushes in?
There are times when Hollywood heroism is just what is needed, but there are also times when superhuman efforts really are beyond us. And perhaps the perception the mystic spoke of whispers that one such time has come. A time to ponder the reasons why the latest political "last chance" wasn't taken, to accept that a scientific technofix ain't gonna save us either, and to look unflinchingly at the unpalatable, overwhelming realities of the period we are moving into.
Let's at least allow ourselves to really ask: "What does life look like in a world of unstoppable climate destabilisation?". What does my life look like there?
There are still lives to be lived in that world, choices to be made, love to give and suffering to alleviate. And only by allowing ourselves to explore that unknown realm can we see it for what it is, rather than what we might fear it to be.
On that note, I would like to introduce you to The Dark Mountain Project, started by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, which invites us to explore this very terrain. By way of introduction, this from their Manifesto:
~~~
"And so we find ourselves, all of us together, poised trembling on the edge of a change so massive that we have no way of gauging it. None of us knows where to look, but all of us know not to look down. Secretly, we all think we are doomed: even the politicians think this; even the environmentalists. Some of us deal with it by going shopping. Some deal with it by hoping it is true. Some give up in despair. Some work frantically to try and fend off the coming storm.
Our question is: what would happen if we looked down? Would it be as bad as we imagine? What might we see? Could it even be good for us?
We believe it is time to look down."
by Shaun Chamberlin | Dec 1, 2009 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories, Favourite posts
Off the back of taking part in CheatNeutral's spoof chat show 'Going Neutral' at the Science Museum, this feels like the perfect time to take a look at the concept of carbon offsetting, the most recognised example of which is the planting of trees to 'soak up' our carbon emissions, thus supposedly making our net impact 'carbon neutral'...
Now there is no denying that the right trees, growing in the right place, are a truly wondrous thing, with myriad benefits for local people and wildlife, and for the global climate. Indeed, I am a long-term supporter of organisations like Tree Aid and Trees for Cities, which have long been carefully planting trees where they are most appropriate.
Yet neither these charities nor I claim that my donations give me any kind of right to emit more carbon (or to make fewer efforts to emit less). I donate for the traditional reason - simply because I believe it contributes to creating the kind of world we all want to live in. I might donate to Amnesty for the same reason, but would any of us claim that in doing so I earn the right to perform a small amount of torture?
This comparison lays bare the true nature of 'carbon offsetting'. The claim is that we are doing some good to compensate for the unfortunate damage caused by our lifestyles, but the truth is that the damage caused by our emissions is (more than) offsetting the good we might hope to do with our donations to these offsetting companies.
And why would we choose to send our money to them ($705m last year, worldwide), rather than to the charities mentioned above? Because we have a reason to believe that they will do more good with our money? Or because we believe that they have some kind of moral sanction to cleanse our consciences, with their websites full of soothing words?
Not to mention the fundamental physical problem with planting trees to offset emissions. Carbon in nature moves through what is known as the active carbon cycle, cycling between the atmosphere, oceans and biosphere as air and water meet, and as life on Earth breathes, lives and dies. There is also inactive carbon (technically part of a much, much slower cycle), laid down in long-term deposits to which we grant names such as "fossil fuels" or "the white cliffs of Dover". These are, if you like, Earth's natural form of carbon sequestration.
So when we extract fossil fuels and burn them, we are moving the inactive carbon they contain into the active carbon cycle. If we then lock it back up in forests or any other aspect of the biosphere, we are not removing it from the active carbon cycle - we are not offsetting the deed done. Carbon sealed in coal or oil would have remained there for many millennia, but trees are not nearly so long-lived, especially in a rapidly-changing climate, and when they die and decay the carbon is released into the atmosphere once more. The difference in timescale is striking - the lifetime of a tree is orders of magnitude shorter than the 'lifetime' of a coal or oil field... trying to stabilise our climate with tree planting is like trying to keep sea levels down by drinking more water.
So by all means plant some trees - or, failing that, financially support others in doing so - but give not a moment's credence to the notion that these actions give you some moral right to ignore your own contribution to the world's most pressing challenge.
Of course, despite the public perception, proponents of carbon offsetting argue that they have moved on from tree planting, and now concentrate on schemes to build renewable energy infrastructure, fund energy efficiency projects, reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions etc, thus preventing emissions and avoiding the inconvenient truth about carbon cycles.
But the more insidious problem with all carbon offsetting is that it is the inevitable 'perfect consumerist solution' to climate change - "just pay us some money and you can forget about it all and get on with your life". Inconveniently enough, peak energy and climate change together represent probably the greatest challenge in the history of humanity, and paying $12 here and there just is not going to cut it.
If we are serious about retaining a hospitable climate, we need a fundamental re-evaluation of our entire way of life, and the only way that will come about is through changes in the fundamental stories we tell ourselves about life and what it means.
The notion of carbon offsetting is an offshoot of our deep cultural story that money equals value, and that the key way to contribute to something is to give money to it. Until this mindset changes, we will not find our way out of the mess into which we are hurtling head first. Douglas Adams put it well,
"This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much all of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy..."
And yet, for many it is becoming hard to even conceive of any way of measuring the value of life other than small, green pieces of paper, or computerised digits in a bank account. One good friend (and Philosophy graduate) memorably described money as the only way he knew to 'keep score' on his life. And in a world overwhelmingly dominated by money, it is all too easy to feel alone and lose resolve when trying to live by unpopular alternative beliefs.
Yet it is interesting to note that, as in so many cases, our intuitions and instincts do not seem to match with the beliefs we are conditioned to. One example would be the musicians who outright refuse to sell their songs to advertisers, despite that this is by far the most lucrative market for their art. I have heard it argued that "if they are so holy, why don't they take the million dollars and give it to charity? After all, someone else will surely sell the advertisers a catchy song, and probably keep all the money for themselves". Nonetheless, we instinctively feel a respect and admiration for their decision to turn down the easy buck. But why?
My theory is this. Even without studying the detail, we recognise that the whole financial system is designed in such a way that money flows inexorably to the top. That the bankers and financiers who to all intents and purposes run the system are essentially able to magic more money out of thin air than we could earn through a lifetime of hard graft. And that if this is so, then any decisions in the world that will be determined by money will be determined by them - despite all the lists of what could be done with the money, in reality a musician's million dollars would barely make a dent.
All of which means that the only things which we do not cede to their control - the only things, if you will, that remain sacred - are those things on which we simply and absolutely refuse to put a price, whether that be a work of art, an entire natural environment, or the carbon cycle that maintains a benign climate.
Oscar Wilde wrote over a century ago that, "Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing". This still rings true, but if we can avoid actually giving a price to everything, perhaps we will leave open the path back to real value.
--
Edit - 27 March 2012 - A noteworthy event today, Prof. Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research - a man for whom I have great personal respect - has withdrawn from the Planet Under Pressure 2012 Conference due to being forced by the organisers to participate in carbon offsetting. He has explained his reasons, carefully justifying his belief that "offsetting is worse than doing nothing, it is without scientific legitimacy, is dangerously misleading and leads to a net increase in emissions".
by Shaun Chamberlin | Jun 29, 2009 | All Posts, Climate Change, Cultural stories
This year's Climate Camp will run from Thurs 27th August to Weds 2nd Sept, at an as yet undeclared location in or around London (inside the M25).
This year the camp will not be culminating in a 'direct action', but will instead be focusing on movement-building and skill-sharing. I'm helping to organise the workshop programme, and would encourage all Dark Optimism readers to consider offering a talk/workshop/debate, by following this link. The deadline has now been extended, but if you're interested then the sooner you can submit details the better.
The camp's location in London is designed to highlight the links between the economy and the climate crisis, so workshops in this area are particularly welcome, but any relevant themes or issues will be warmly received. I'll be discussing the relationship between the Transition movement and direct action. Anyone can apply, workshops can be delivered by individuals or groups, and you don’t have to be an expert to give a workshop.
Alternatively, if there is a workshop you would really like to see take place at this year’s Camp, but you don't want to run it yourself, then please email us via workshops@climatecamp.org.uk with 'workshop suggestion' in the subject line. If you can suggest a suitable person or group to do the workshop, then even better.
If you are not based in England, Climate Camps will also be taking place this summer in Scotland (3rd - 10th August), Wales (13th - 16th August) and around the world.
--
ps If you too would like to make your own versions of those rather troubling police posters around - "you have the right not to remain silent", "don't understand your neighbour's rubbish? tell the police" etc - James Holden has made it wonderfully easy!
I'd also be interested to know how widespread these red posters are - is it just a London thing, or are they right across Britain?
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