Last week (3/28-29/06) I had a rare privilege to be exposed to some of the best of the visionary hard science and planning for saving the Earth from it’s more glaring human catastrophes. There’s a very bright picture, with an unusually dark side. We’re in genuinely deep trouble. The conference was put on by Columbia Univ. Earth Institute, Jeffrey Sachs director and leader.
The bright side is that there does seem to be a path for changing energy consumption technologies in the industrial world to keep ocean levels from rising more than 3 to 10 feet due to global warming. It's the changes in direction we make in the next 10 years that determine whether we'll do better or worse than that, with doing nothing likely to result in sea levels four times worse. Keeping the impact to a minimum requires a science-led and politically driven global intensive program. The Kyoto protocols are a baby step.
There are also slightly less clear but equally hopeful ways to keep the rapid growth of impoverished and incompetent human populations from increasing to a point of combined environmental and population collapse. There are a variety of neat technologies and hopeful strategies embodied in the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDG), for developing competence in impoverished communities, but these also need to be pursued with a science led and politically driven intensive program.
No, political movement I know of has ever done anything like these things before, except for the US A-bomb or the moon shot projects, and these were small scale and didn't involve changing people's behavior. But maybe we could have the will and find the way... The insurance companies are discovering the severe consequences of failure and some of the big conglomerates are getting the idea quickly too. It’s in no businessman’s or nation's interest to operate on a failed and humiliated Earth with population collapse, the economic loss of most historic coastal development, and the rest of the long list of shocking and embarrassing probable impacts of ineffective action. There’s a fighter’s good chance of turning things around, if everyone joins in and nothing else comes up.
It’s hard to pick favorites among polished gems and I just wish everyone had a chance to hear the two days of rapid fire displays of great work in this ‘save the planet’ field. Two of my favorites among the 30 or so were Steven E. Koonin, the scientist hired by BP to lead their green energy effort, and Stewart Hart who made a very convincing presentation on how visionary investment in the bottom ¾ of the human pyramid (BOP) could power Earth’s economic development for the next century. I highly recommend that you look around the conference websites (below). The original Power Point presentations are all supposed to be available soon, though I don’t see where they're posted yet.
The dark side is that this save the planet stuff may all be fantasy. The threats seem real enough, and the desire and organizational talent for doing something are quite real too, and it’s quite impressive how aggressively this community of scientists and planners are expanding their experience with the nature of the global problems we discovering. The real warning sign is that no one seems to be looking beyond their experience to why we’re discovering this stream of huge new nearly insoluble problems.
There was no mention of the exploding footprints of endlessly accelerating economic development, no questioning of the economy’s rigid rule of ever more rapid expansion and change. It’s quite ridiculous, but they acted as if it was just fine to devote our best talents to trundling buckets around for the sorcerer’s apprentice. I think it’s a total disaster. We’re stupidly accepting as our quest and duty to solve ever bigger and more insoluble problems and don’t give even 5 minutes of time to what is making them. There’s science for that too, but somebody’s gotta ask!
Another of my favorite presenters at the conference, who pointed out how our ways of solving problems sometimes consistently make them worse, was Parker Mitchell of Engineers w/o Borders who went through a variety of stories of how the best intentioned technology interventions in 3rd world communities fail the test of organic fit. A 'failure of organic fit' could be taken as a precise statement of what’s wrong with our intervention in Iraq, for example. We have seductively high goals but are making a God awful mess because we have no idea what we’re doing, trying to reengineer someone else's natural human communities that have completely different ways of thinking from us. Our regular failures with the under developed world seem much the same thing. It is my belief that the whole rapid growth of the majority of the human population that can't take care of itself (see John Coomber & Joel Cohen ) is the direct fault of incompetent charity over the past century, and that’s where we really need soul searching and better technique. Well, that, and understanding the growth imperative and how to creatively get rid of the stupid thing.
it's a great plan if we do it. check it out...
State of the Planet 06 (3/28-29/06)
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/
http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sop2006/about.html
4 of many great presenters
Steven E. Koonin, http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sop2006/bios/koonin_s.html
Stewart Hart http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sop2006/bios/hart_s.html
John Coomber http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sop2006/bios/coomber_j.html
Joel Cohen http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sop2006/bios/cohen_j.html
Parker Mitchell http://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/sop2006/bios/mitchell_p.html