Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Monbiot Says "To the Max"



Better late than never, the Guardian's enviro-scribe, George Monbiot, says it's time to scrap the "target approach" to fighting climate change. He argues we need to move to a focus on maximization.

It’s not just the target that’s wrong, but the very notion of setting targets in an emergency. 
When firefighters arrive at a burning building, they don’t set themselves a target of rescuing three of the five inhabitants. They seek – aware that they may not succeed – to rescue everyone they can. Their aim is to maximise the number of lives they save. In the climate emergency, our aim should be to maximise both the reduction of emissions and the drawing down of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. There is no safe level of global heating: every increment kills. 
Maximisation is implicit in the Paris agreement: it requires governments to pursue “the highest possible ambition”. In its land-use report, the CCC repeatedly admits that it could go further, but insists it doesn’t need to, because its policies will meet the target. The target has supplanted the ultimate objective, which is to respond appropriately to the climate emergency. This is a classic vindication of Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” 
We are all familiar with the absurdities of target culture. ...We know how, in many workplaces, the target becomes the task.  We know how targets encourage people to game the system, as hospital administrators do with their waiting lists, and cause Kafkaesque nightmares of overzealous officialdom, as David Boyle documents in his new book, Tickbox.
...
The appropriate response to the climate emergency is a legal duty to maximise climate action. The CCC’s board should be disbanded and replaced by people whose mandate is rigorously to explore every economic sector in search of the maximum possible cuts in greenhouse gases, and the maximum possible drawdown. We have arrived at the burning building. The only humane and reasonable aim is to rescue everyone inside.
George is right - in theory. All the flaws he shows in our emissions targets system are real and they're potentially lethal. At some point, however, we need to recognize that there doesn't seem to be much enthusiasm for meeting those modest targets anyway. Look at the record of our own federal government that, even now, is pondering the proposed Teck bitumen mine in the Tar Sands that would blow Canada right out of all those solemn promises.

What I like about Monbiot's suggestion is that it would steer us toward the real solution to the myriad existential threats to our survival. The simple fact is that the key to preventing civilization's collapse is for mankind to find ways to live in harmony with our very finite planet, Spaceship Earth, our one and only biosphere. There are far too many of us. We consume far more than the planet can provide. And we're fouling the atmosphere and acidifying our oceans. That's the face of our excess, our insistence on doing everything we possibly can without the slightest regard to whether we should.

Here's the thing. We could easily draw up a fairly accurate picture of what mankind would be like if we were to live sustainably on our planet. That would lead us to a vision of what James Lovelock called "sustainable retreat" - growing smaller, consuming less, producing less waste and contamination. Once we had that in front of our faces we might realize how far behind the curve we have fallen and how we need to focus on maximization. Nah, forget it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You're right. There's no way we could go back to the consumption levels of the 1970s. Those people must have lived like cavemen!

Cap

The Disaffected Lib said...

I stumbled across a company that offers seniors accommodation/resorts around Canada. I contacted them because they offer a free guide to downsizing. It is becoming increasingly obvious, inescapable, that I no longer have possessions. I have acquisitions, most of it meaningless, that now possess me. I cart a load of stuff off to the Sally Annes or the local thrift store. When I return home I find the 'stuff' has been breeding in my absence.

My parents filled a 3,500 sq. ft. house. I went from something almost as big to my current 1,500 sq. ft. bungalow. My kids have a 900 sq. ft. condo. They might like my antique dining room set but they have no room for it. They could already hang a "Full" sign on their condo door.

I live beside a community that has the highest average age in Canada. People move here to retire by the sea. A good many of them die here. I went into an antique shop to ask what happened to all their stuff, their prized possessions they brought here. I was a bit shocked to learn that no one wants it. The value for what is called "brown furniture" has collapsed. The same thing for the family silver and mother's and grandmother's fine china. All that stuff takes room that younger generations don't and probably won't have. They don't want the gold trimmed china that has to be hand washed. If it won't go in the dishwasher, forget it.

The Sally Anne won't even take electronics any more. Flat screen TVs are unwanted because most of it is perfectly usable product that has been replaced with a bigger, newer TV.

At the local electronics recycling yard, pallets of TVs and computers await shipment to parts unknown. One of the crew told me that, as an experiment, the staff chose a pallet of computers at random, plugged them in and found all but a couple still worked. The donors just wanted something better, bigger, shinier.

And that is what we have become.