Download Opinion: 90 months and counting

Opinion: 90 months and counting
With the clock running in the climate change countdown, postEnlightenment faith in technological fixes may not be enough, argues
Andrew Simms
Ten months have passed since pointing out that we have, at best, 100
months left before a new, far more dangerous phase of global warming
begins. The ‘chatter’ of concern is getting louder. However, at the same time,
the political system in Britain has been wracked and absorbed more by its
own inadequacies than by this fundamental threat to civilization.
The historian Adrian Goldsworthy writes that the fall of the Roman Empire
was due, to a large extent, to a system of government that became inwardlooking and weakened by internal dissent. Gone was the singular focus from
the golden days of the Republic, when a small, trusted coterie of around
1,000 administrators ran the whole empire efficiently. In its place was a
bloated, inefficient and suspicious bureaucracy of 35,000, seeking power and
personal advantage. Worst of all, gripped with self-obsession, they took their
eyes off the Goths at the gates, and paid a devastating price. Any similarities
to actual people alive today and current political circumstances are, of
course, entirely unintended and circumstantial. Goldsworthy points out that
every age can project its own experience onto the Romans, which goes to
show how much they did actually do for us.
In the last ten months, support for needing to take radical action over the
countdown period has been far and deep. Nobel Prize winners from
Rajendra Pachaun of the IPCC to Wangari Maathai of the Kenyan Green belt
movement have lent support; thousands of individuals have too, along with
groups whose memberships run into millions.
Yet, in spite of the support that investing in the great transition could give to a
weakened economy, the new and additional resources being made available
are paltry compared to the support given to the financial sector. Around the
world, as states become more acutely aware of the threats to food and
energy security stemming from our ecological overreach, they are taking
action. But they are just as likely to be eyeing the natural resources of other,
weaker states to meet their rising consumption, as they are to be changing
consumption patterns to live within their environmental means. Land grabs
for food and biofuels seem to hit the news with growing frequency.
Technological optimism is all around us. ‘You cannot predict the future and
unimagined solutions come along; they always have done,’ we are
reassured. Whenever there is a great problem, human ingenuity finds a
techno-fix. Who could have predicted the chemical fertilizers for our food
system, which thwarted Malthusian pessimists? The problem is, with the
timeframe to act on climate change, those solutions that are meant to allow
us to carry on as usual should have arrived years ago and be in place now.
Now, with 90 months left on our clock, we have a great challenge to face.
Both terrifying and thrilling, we need to brace ourselves for the fastest decline
in the use of fossil fuels that our society has ever faced. It will need
technology, behaviour change and regulations to ensure fair shares and
equity. During this process, I suspect that we will rediscover several
important things that have been largely lost or forgotten: the importance of
community, our own ingenuity and ability to do things for ourselves, and how
deeply connected to, and ultimately dependent on, nature we really are.
This article appeared in The Guardian on 1 June 2009.