Link to Full Paper by Dr. Jem Bendell

Extracted Summary:

and how non-linear (and potentially exponential) changes are of central importance to understanding climate change as they suggest that impacts will be far more rapid and severe than predictions based on linear projections, that multiple forcings beyond carbon dioxide will come into play and that the changes no longer correlate with the rate of anthropogenic carbon emissions. He describes how non-linear changes in our environment trigger uncontrollable impacts on human habitat and agriculture, with subsequent complex impacts on social, economic and political systems. He focuses on opportunities such as agricultural transformation and eco-system restoration. While he mentions climate change having negative impacts on ecosystems, changes in seasons, melting permafrost methane release, temperatures extremes, flood and drought, he doesn’t mention fire.

Geoengineering and natural geoengineering are mentioned and contrasted with the momentum of disruptive and uncontrollable climate change, and it’s potential human impact: starvation, settlement destruction, mass migration, disease, war and extinction are all entertained. He reports on how paternalistic climate and social scientists warn against and censor discussion on the likelihood and nature of societal collapse due to climate change, labelling it as irresponsible, in that it might trigger hopelessness among the general lay public. He states this is related to the non-populist anti-politics technocratic attitude that pervades contemporary environmentalism and frames our challenge as one of encouraging people to try harder to be nicer and better rather than coming together in solidarity to either undermine or overthrow a system that demands we participate in environmental and societal degradation. There is a good discussion on the dynamics of denial which references “interpretative denial” i.e., accepting certain climate facts but interpreting them in a way that makes them “safer” to our personal psychology, and “implicative denial” i.e., recognising the troubling implications of climate facts but responding by busying ourselves on activities that do not arise from a full assessment of the situation.

Interestingly, collapse denial is suggested to be more common among sustainability experts than the general public, given the typical allegiance of professionals to the incumbent social and economic structures they benefit from. Another barrier identified is that there is no obvious institutional self-interest in articulating the probability or inevitability of environmental and societal collapse. He highlights how our interests in civility, praise and belonging within a professional community can censor those of us who seek to communicate uncomfortable truths in memorable ways. His review of a range of projects and studies suggests that the idea we “experts” need to be careful about what to tell “them” the “unsupported public” may be a narcissistic delusion in need of immediate remedy. In terms of framing, Bendell has chosen to interpret the available information as indicating inevitable collapse, probable catastrophe and possible extinction. He has found that inviting his students to consider collapse as inevitable, catastrophe as probable and extinction as possible, has not led to apathy or depression, but rather to a shedding of concern for conforming to the status quo, and a mix of creativity about what to focus on and discombobulation.

He then posits a Deep Adaptation Agenda, emphasising that we must look more critically at how people and organisations are framing the situation and the limitations such framings impose. Given that analysts are concluding that a societal collapse is inevitable, he suggests the following question becomes important: What are the valued norms and behaviours human societies will want to maintain, relinquish, restore and rediscover, as they seek to survive? Resilience asks us “how do we keep what we really want to keep?” Relinquishment asks us “what do we need to let go of in order to not make matters worse?” Restoration asks us “what can we bring back to help us with the coming difficulties and tragedies?” Additionally, I add rediscovery might ask us what can we dig up from archaic times of yore that may have utility in post-collapse or catastrophic scenarios? He claims the era of “sustainable development” as unifying concept and goal is now ending and Deep Adaptation is an explicitly post-sustainability framing. He states the importance of recognising our complicity and posits that the West’s response to environmental issues has been restricted by the dominance of neoliberal economics since the 1970s. This led us to hyper-individualist, market fundamentalist, incremental and atomistic approaches.

By hyper-individualist, he means a focus on individual action as consumers, switching light bulbs or buying sustainable furniture, rather than promoting political action as engaged citizens.By market fundamentalist, he means a focus on market mechanisms like the complex, costly and largely useless carbon cap and trade systems, rather than exploring what more government intervention could achieve. By incremental, he means a focus on celebrating small steps forward such as a company publishing a sustainability report, rather than strategies designed for the speed and scale of change suggested by the science. By atomistic, he means a focus on seeing climate action as a separate issue from the governance of markets, finance and banking, rather than exploring what kind of economic system could permit or enable sustainability.

In terms of academic research and teaching he suggests asking “How might research findings inform efforts for a more massive and urgent pursuit of resilience, relinquishment, restoration (and rediscovery) in the face of social collapse? and “How can we best use MOOCs to widely disseminate the most useful economic re-localisation and community development strategies? He emphasises the need for citizens to access information and networks on how to shift their livelihoods and lifestyles. He adds Local Governments will need similar help on how to develop the capabilities today that will help their local communities to collaborate, not fracture, during a collapse. At the international level, there is the need to work on how to responsibly address the wider fallout from collapsing societies, including the ongoing challenges of refugee support and the securing of dangerous industrial and nuclear sites at the moment of a societal collapse. He states he has explored the emotional and psychological implications of this new awareness of a societal collapse being likely in our own lifetimes in a reflective essay on the spiritual implications of climate despair.

His final recommendations are narrow amounting to suggestions for academic researchers, teachers and students, although he does say he is developing a separate work for managers, policy makers and lay persons. He encourages communities to engage deeply with the three (or four) guiding questions offered up earlier. He concludes by reiterating the redundancy of the reformist approach to sustainable development and related fields of corporate sustainability that has underpinned the approach of many professionals, opting instead for a new approach which explores how to reduce harm and not make matters worse, informed by his Deep Adaptation Agenda, which is not as yet well explicated, but certainly seems open for more reflection and collaborative contributions.

Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy shared by P2P Foundation on Scribd

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Efficiency and Madness

Technologies help us do more with less, they defy boundaries of space, time and self. We experience them as both magic and loss. This essay begins by adopting broader conceptual analysis from the work of academics and theorists, applied from the position of practitioners working internationally on technology deployment for social change. It then looks at how data-driven technologies are currently deployed to solve problems. Lastly, it makes a case for why we cannot leave the challenges posed by data-driven technologies to technologists.

• Place of Publication: Berlin
• Date of Publication: November 2017
• Number of Pages: 62
• License: CC-BY-SA

Download Efficiency and Madness here.

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The “Big Bad Fix” provides NGO activists, social movements, policymakers, journalists and other change agents with a comprehensive overview of the key actors, technologies and fora relevant in the geoengineering discourse. It delivers a background analysis of the history of geoengineering, the various vested interests shaping it, and case studies on some of the most important technologies and experiments. This report calls on policymakers to strengthen the moratoria and work toward a ban on the deployment and outdoor testing of geoengineering technologies – especially Solar Radiation Management – for their potential to undermine human rights, democracy, and international peace. It argues for rigorous debate on real, existing, transformative and just climate policies and practices. It is a call to action for a movement of movements to oppose geoengineering as a technofix for climate change and as a threat to world peace, democracy and human rights.

Please share the Big Bad Fix with your networks and via social media.

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Geoengineering has been back in the news recently after the US National Research Council endorsed a proposal to envelop the planet in a layer of sulphate aerosols to reduce solar radiation and cool the atmosphere.

The proposal has been widely criticised for possible unintended consequences, such as ozone depletion, ocean acidification and reduced rainfall in the tropics. Perhaps even more troubling, geoengineering is a technological fix that leaves the economic and industrial system causing climate change untouched.

Regenerative agriculture comprises an array of techniques that rebuild soil and, in the process, sequester carbon. Typically, it uses cover crops and perennials so that bare soil is never exposed, and grazes animals in ways that mimic animals in nature. It also offers ecological benefits far beyond carbon storage: it stops soil erosion, remineralises soil, protects the purity of groundwater and reduces damaging pesticide and fertiliser runoff.

But these methods are slow, expensive and impractical in feeding a growing population, right?

Wrong. While comprehensive statistics are hard to come by, yields from regenerative methods often exceed conventional yields (see here and here for scientific research, and here and here for anecdotal examples). Likewise, since these methods build soil, crowd out weeds and retain moisture, fertiliser and herbicide inputs can be reduced or eliminated entirely, resulting in higher profits for farmers. No-till methods can sequester as much as a ton of carbon per acre annually (2.5 tons/hectare). In the US alone, that could amount to nearly a quarterof current emissions.

Estimates of the total potential impact vary. Rattan Lal of Ohio State University argues that desertified and otherwise degraded soils could sequester up to 3bn tons of carbon per year (equal to 11bn tons of CO2, or nearly one third of current emissions). Other experts foresee even greater potential. According to research at the Rodale Institute, if instituted universally, organic regenerative techniques practiced on cultivated land could offset over 40% of global emissions, while practicing them on pasture land could offset 71%.

That adds up to land-based CO2 reduction of over 100% of current emissions – and that doesn’t even include reforestation and afforestation, which could offset another 10-15%, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Of course, none of this is license to perpetuate a fossil fuel infrastructure, since there is an eventual limit to the amount of carbon that soil and biomass can store.

Working with nature

Given that they are better even from purely commercial considerations, why haven’t regenerative practices spread more quickly? An answer commonly offered by farmers themselves is that “people are slow to change.” Maybe so, but in this case there is more to it than that. Regenerative agriculture represents more than a shift of practices. It is also a shift in paradigm and in our basic relationship to nature – as a comparison with geoengineering highlights.

First, regenerative agriculture seeks to mimic nature, not dominate it. As Ray Archuleta, a soil-health specialist at the USDA, puts it, “We want to go away from control and command agriculture. We should farm in nature’s image.” In contrast, geoengineering seeks to take our centuries-long domination of nature to a new extreme, making the entire planet an object of manipulation.

Second, regenerative agriculture is a departure from linear thinking and its control of variables through mechanical and chemical means. It values the diversity of polycultures, in which animals and plants form a complex, symbiotic, robust system. Geoengineering, on the other hand, ignores the law of unintended consequences that plagues any attempt to engineer a highly nonlinear system. It exemplifies linear thinking: if the atmosphere is too warm, add a cooling factor. But who knows what will happen?

Third, regenerative agriculture seeks to address the deep basis of ecological health: the soil. It sees low fertility, runoff and other problems as symptoms, not the root problem. Geoengineering, on the other hand, addresses the symptom – global warming – while leaving the cause untouched.

There is no quick fix

Unlike geoengineering’s quick fix, regenerative agriculture cannot be implemented at scale without deep cultural changes. We must turn away from an attitude of nature-as-engineering-object to one of humble partnership. Whereas geoengineering is a global solution that feeds the logic of centralisation and the economics of globalism, regeneration of soil and forests is fundamentally local: forest by forest, farm by farm. These are not generic solutions, because the requirements of the land are unique to each place. Unsurprisingly, they are typically more labour-intensive than conventional practices, because they require a direct, intimate relationship to the land.

Ultimately, climate change challenges us to rethink our long-standing separation from nature in which we think we can endlessly engineer our way out of the damage we have caused. It is calling us back to our biophilia, our love of nature and of life, our desire to care for all beings whether or not they make greenhouse gas numbers go up or down.

Geoengineering, beyond its catastrophic risks, is an attempt to avoid that call, to extend the mindset of domination and control to new extremes, and to prolong an economy of overconsumption a few years longer. It is time to fall in love with the land, the soil, and the trees, to halt their destruction and to serve their restoration. It is time for agricultural policy and practice to become aligned with regeneration.

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