Developing resiliency as a planetary population

In another posting, I argue that humanity is in the process of drawing on and further developing the resiliency we need to deal with the crises that are emerging on a day by day basis. To use my own words, "Humanity is in a systems interaction with our environment, to the extent that each determines the other, and both have to change together". As the environment changes its behaviour, in response to our presence, so we are changing our behaviour in respect to its presence. This results from the fact that we have no place else to which to turn - there is no hinterland anymore to which we can withdraw when we want to "opt out" of our responsabilities. We either deal with our problems, or we die. And I said in my other posting "dying is a possibility, but not an option".

I see four (or perhaps five) interlocking areas where change has to occur for us to move forward in our dealing with the changes before us :

1) we must change how we govern ourselves;
2) we must connect the different parts of our being we have allowed to become separate, and reclaim the parts we do not acknowledge;
3) we must reconfigure our economy, including industry and business, the so-called social economy, and what might be called the shadow economy; and
4) we must change our living patterns.

I'm not sure any of these take precedence over the others, they are all part of a necessary change that must occur. I shall be going into more detail in each of these areas over the next set of postings, but let us examine each of these briefly now.

Population Growth versus Environmental Activism

After watching Mr. Gore’s important film on global climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, I am struck by the fact that, not only does he mention the fact that the population explosion is braking (this is in the extended DVD addition, perhaps not the original film), he makes little extra mileage out of this fact, except to say that scientists consider this a “success story” and that the huge population in terms of numbers makes our situation unique in human history.

On this latter point, we agree, but not quite for the same reasons. It is my suggestion that, in addition to being unique because the population numbers are close to the sustainable limits of the planet, the dynamics of convergent population growth will have substantial additional impacts that are not yet recognized.

In the extended section, Mr. Gore talks about the “tipping point”, at which moment the environment goes into a self sustaining change that will be much harder to challenge than before the tipping point is achieved. However, others (see, for example, the “universarium project” at http://www.universarium.net/movie.html) use the term “tipping point” to emphasize the moment in time when a new way of thinking and action is achieved, when we humans finally gain the ability to sustain our lives without threatening the environment.

In my earlier blog (“The Demographics of Change”), I noted that humanity has already passed through the critical point in population growth when the dynamics changes. Mr. Gore, and the ecologos institute which is behind the universarium project, believe that the “tipping points”, whether viewed in terms of irreversible loss of control or recovery of a sustainability, are in front of us. I do not disagree with this, but the result is something very interesting. We are currently situated in this rather unique situation between these two moments in time, each of critical importance in the system dynamics unfolding around us. With the crossing of the critical point in population growth, we have entered a new era, but until we also regain a sustainable balance, we are unable to fully realize the potential inherent in that era. We are between the hammer and the anvil, and this unique moment in human history, a kind of moment of suspension, cannot last very long.

I have been careful, in the above paragraph, to avoid saying that the tipping point in front of us corresponds to “recovery of control”. From a systems perspective, the idea that we seek to control the environment is a fallacy. Control is only possible when one is outside the system whose behavior one is attempting to influence, and we are decidedly not outside the planetary ecosystem – trying to control this is part of what has gotten us into trouble in the first place. Seeking sustainability does not mean seeking to recover control, rather it means correcting imbalances that follow from our behavior, to the extent that such correction is possible.

My argument here is not, therefore, that Mr. Gore is wrong, not that correcting the imbalances in climate constituents that we influence must be restricted, on the contrary, we must engage the substantial resources at our disposition to achieve the right kind of “tipping point”. However, it is important to not lose sight of the other dynamics in play, as our actions and the social reorganization we put into play to deal with the one problem, will have consequences for the others. We need to be aware of these issues. If we turn “action against global warming” into a new kind of orthodoxy, and use this orthodoxy to censure people, groups and parts of society, we shall be in serious trouble several years down the line. That is the danger, and just as Mr. Gore makes a compelling case for action on climate change, we must not lose sight of the need to be open to other viewpoints and issues that emerge and may even challenge this movement at times.