The old world has ended, the new is being born
December 24th, 2009 by Jim JustNow that the dust from the collapse of the Copenhagen talks has settled, we can begin to see what actually happened: the old world ended at Copenhagen.
Paul Gilding at Business Spectator observes that while Copenhagen failed to deliver action on reducing emissions, it delivered a very clear outcome. It shattered assumptions that had previously framed the debate and so provided an historic shift in the approach to the issue. The world stopped debating the rules of physics and chemistry. As a result, old assumptions about the pace of change and the process by which it would be delivered were finished.
After Copenhagen, it is clear that when the change does come, the pace will be rapid, the process chaotic and the transformation radical. The attempt at consensus is over. Power has shifted to a new club whose membership is dominated by the world’s biggest emitter – the U.S.; China, the world’s second biggest; and India, biggest newcomer in emitter circles.
After Copenhagen, we know that either coal is finished, or Earth’s climate as we know it is finished. The world’s approach to climate change before Copenhagen – embodied in the Kyoto protocol – is too complex and misses the key objective, which is to keep coal (and unconventional sources of oil such as tar sands) in the ground. Coal is the target: every coal mine, every coal company, every coal train and ship.
When governments begin prohibiting new coal plants and demanding that existing plants be phased out, we’ll know they’ve become serious about global warming.
Fat chance, given the implications for the global economy.
Some, like James Hansen, believe it’s both necessary and possible to maintain our high-energy economy. He puts his faith in a techno-miracle: 4th generation nuclear, relying on conventional nuclear to carry us through to the bright day when unlimited, safe power becomes a reality.
Others, such as Jan Lundberg, think we’ll have to give our fantasies of dominating nature and of endless economic growth, reject an unworkable system and culture, and look to the only sustainable model humanity has known: indigenous, traditional society based on tribes.
Then others, such as John Michael Greer, think it’s foolish to imagine that our political leaders could do anything other than what they are doing: try at all costs to keep the present system running as best they can all the while knowing that the fossil fuels necessary to sustain it are being exhausted, putting off the inevitable explosion as long as possible. What will be, will be; and we’re not likely to end up with anything like the complex, centralized nation-states we know today.
I suspect they’re all on to something. While pulling a nuclear rabbit out of the hat seems unlikely, maybe solar thermal could keep the lights on, however dim. Here, we’re growing food, getting to know others around us who do the same or contribute in other ways, doing our best to he;p and support each other. Disillusion has set in – we may at last be getting over the illusion that the world will change with the outcome of the next election.
The old world ended at Copenhagen. The new world is beginning to be born, right here and before our eyes.