|
There is one thing I dearly wish to see, and that is podcasting of Human Ecology. I despair in the face of humanity’s apparent inability— on display most recently at COP26 in Glasgow — to adopt the ‘rapid and far-reaching changes in all aspects of society’ required to at least keep average global temperature increases below 1.5°C. The activist group Extinction Rebellion has arguably been the most vocal in their call for hope to ‘die’. Hope, they worry, obscures the truth about global warming as the single largest existential threat to the planet and hampers the kind of radical action that would be required at least to rein in its consequences. ‘In facing our climate predicament’, they argue, ‘there is no way to escape despair, (Hope from Despair, Journal of Political Philosophy, https://doi.org/10.1111/jopp.12283). The writer and activist George Monbiot considers succumbing to despair to be a moral failure. Well, being a grandfather of nine grandchildren ranging from two to twenty-four, of course, I take issue with George Monbiot, regarding that characterisation. Of course, we must remain hopeful but that doesn’t mean we can’t feel despair from what we witness and read. I have often observed that many who express hope, happen to have the attitude of “she’ll be right mate”
and they themselves change little of their lifestyles at all. Often
these people do nothing to try to understand the realities and/or
don’t care, thereby doing nothing to try and address our emissions.
A classic example over Easter was the thousands of people boarding
planes for the holidays. I would love to know how many thousands of
tonnes of carbon emissions were emitted over just that weekend. Big fossil fuel companies in Australia are feeding the climate crises threatening our future and destroying our environment while paying no income tax, raking in billions in profit, and giving little back to our community. A new Climate Council report has found that between 2016 and 2021, a group of just 12 Australian fossil fuel companies emitted more carbon pollution than 50% of the Pacific Islands’ total emissions over the same period. The report looked at Australia’s ‘Dirty Dozen’, the twelve biggest fossil fuel polluters regulated by the safeguard mechanism, the policy that requires the largest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters in the country to keep their emissions below a baseline. The Climate Council’s ‘Dirty Dozen’ are: Chevron Australia, Woodside Energy, Anglo American, Santos, BHP, Glencore Coal, Impex, Shell Australia, ConocoPhillips, South32, Esso Australia and Centennial Coal. Collectively, these twelve companies emitted 287 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions since 2016. Together, they account for more than 40% of the total emissions regulated by the Safeguard Mechanism, which covers 215 companies’ total. (Source: Renew Economy: https://reneweconomy.com.au/carbon-emissions-from-australias-dirty-dozen-more-than-half-pacific-islands-emissions/) At present approximately 215 facilities, which account for 28% of Australia’s annual emissions, have virtually no emissions reduction requirements guiding their transition to cleaner operations. How can we be hopeful with corporations behaving like that? In the agriculture sector it’s the corporates who are doing the most harm. Anywhere in good cropping country one can witness thousands of hectares under wheat, barley, corn, and cotton without a tree in site. I had to take a drive into Singleton this morning. The district was once predominantly dairying country with very fertile alluvial soils. Now it’s just being used for lucerne and corn production. This time of the year hundreds of hectares are being plowed and crops sown with artificial fertilisers. Those agricultural practices can be witnessed all over Australia. Yes, more people are turning to regenerative agriculture but it’s a very small minority. The ecologist Aldo Leopold in Sand County Almanac published in 1949 suggested humanity needs a new ethic, an ethic of a more ecological approach in which we regard soil as a partner to be cherished rather than as a captive to be raped. Environmentalist Lynn White suggested our ecological problems derive from Christian attitudes towards our relation to nature and that those attitudes lead us to think of ourselves as superior to nature and contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our purposes regardless of the ecological damage being done. Post the COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 there is emerging global consensus that all forms of fossil fuel now must be left in the ground. A liveable global climate is now clearly at risk from further global warming. When I was studying at Orange, I enjoyed all the subjects. Yes, I had some favourites, like Geology, but at the top of list, and the one that had the most impact and influence upon me was Human Ecology. Studying this one unit led me to explore the possibility of taking a whole course of study on the subject, which led me to UNE and also ANU. While investigating UNE I learnt a great deal about Professor Frank Fenner and although a virologist and a microbiologist, Frank Fenner had an abiding interest in the environment, and was the foundation Director of the Centre for Resources and Environmental Studies at the ANU (1973), where he worked until his retirement in 1979. This Centre became part of the Fenner School of Environment and Society in 2007. He was a keen supporter of Australia having an ecologically, socially sustainable population. At one stage he was also Vice President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. In June 2010, he predicted in an interview with The Australian the extinction of the human race within a century, primarily as the result of human overpopulation, environmental degradation and climate
change. That makes one hopeful doesn’t it! IEA commentIn her book, Dreaming the Dark, the American psychotherapist Starhawk, writes of a power based on a principle very different from power over, from domination… the power we sense in a seed, in the growth of a child, the power we feel writing, weaving, working, creating, making choices… It is the power that comes from within… If we are to survive the question becomes: How do we overthrow, not those presently in power, but the principle of ‘power over’? How do we shape a society on the principle of ‘power from within’?
Source: Broomfield, J. 1997, Other Ways of Knowing, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont.
|
