I don’t agree with everything Lovelock has to say about the world, but am in full agreement with his (Gaia) understanding that the world’s complicated systems interact with each other in a way that enables life on earth to continue, and, potentially, prosper (in the true sense of the word). In history we (many cultures, but technology has enabled the conquering industrial white man in particular to really speed the process up) have endeavoured to control nature, rather than find our place as stewards/guardians of it.

A quote I used in a big post I did on soil a while back sums it up well I think, and is along the lines of what you’re saying:

Working with living creatures, both plant and animal, is what makes agriculture different from any other production enterprise. Even though a product is produced, in farming the process is anything but industrial. It is biological. We are dealing with a vital, living system rather than an inert manufacturing process. The skills required to manage a biological system are similar to those of the conductor of an orchestra. The musicians are all very good at what they do individually. The role of the conductor is not to play each instrument but rather to nurture the union of the disparate parts. The conductor coordinates each musician’s effort with those of all the others and combines them in a harmonious whole.

Agriculture cannot be an industrial process any more than music can be. It must be understood differently from stamping this metal into shape or mixing these chemicals and reagents to create that compound. The major workers – the soil microorganisms, the fungi, the mineral particles, the sun, the air, the water – are all parts of a system, and it is not just the employment of any one of them but the coordination of the whole that achieves success. – Eliot Coleman, The New Organic Grower, p.3, 4.

This quote is garden scale. And its in garden scale that all our problems are solved – environmental, social, political, etc.

Our modern reductionist scientists have pulled everything apart, and are examining and manipulating individual actors in the system, but in doing so can no longer see the connections, the patterns, and in their manipulations the individual elements are getting completely out of balance in the system. The system thus starts to unravel.

If they could join the dots again, then one picture becomes clear.

Harness biology, I say.

We are in a mess, in many different ways. So, how did we get there? The more I study this question the more indications I find that all point in the same direction: our past decision-making strategies were based on extremely poor observational skills. Nature does try to teach us how to do things right, but as she uses methods that are very different from those employed in our schools, we by now have serious difficulty paying proper attention to what she tries to tell us – because it by now is so different from what we recognize as “teaching” and “education”. But that is mostly the fault of our educational systems.

Essentially, a key insight is that a shrinking energy base means that we no longer can go on mis-declaring symptoms as problems and “solving” them by just throwing more energy at them – causing stronger, but different, symptoms which then need new “solutions”. Instead, we now find ourselves forced to dig down to the root of each problem and re-think our basic approaches to problems.

I like to use the jigsaw puzzle as a metaphor for working with Nature: by paying attention to minute details (here: shape, colour, patterns, etc.), one can derive clues about how things are supposed to fit together. And, miraculously, if some of these clues turn out to be right, you will find that other things you did not take into account before quite “magically” will suddenly fit as well. It’s just the same with Nature: the reason why we can expect a synergistic response that gives us more harmony than what we consciously took into account initially is just the “co-evolutionary context of species”. Our conscious mind may be way too primitive to comprehend the full picture of interactions that go on in a natural system simultaneously – but just like with a jigsaw puzzle, if you get some clues right, that will get you going in the right direction. If you ignore them, however, that will just trigger a stronger response telling you you are on the wrong track further down the road.

So, just ask yourself: Does Nature try to tell us that we have to seriously cut back our abuse of fuel and rather start making a serious effort to *solve* problems rather than just messing around? I do identify multiple independent clues that all point in that direction. So, wouldn’t it just be stupid not to act accordingly?

If I can take your thought one step further, and focus on a central concept in the whole ‘argument’, I’d like someone to explain to me how CO2 DOESN’T cause increased trapped heat in our atmosphere. It’s been consistently shown, through empirically grounded peer-reviewed studies that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. The physics and chemistry of this simple base issue is understood and consistently replicable. It’s also been proven that CO2 levels have risen from 280ppm in pre-industrial times to 384ppm today, and that human activities have caused this increase. If someone could explain the physics of HOW a forty percent increase in CO2 levels is NOT linked to our last century’s 0.8′C globally averaged temperature increase, I’d be all ears. Otherwise the conversation is just ‘academic’, but valueless.

And, whilst I am always of the mind that all the other issues (soil erosion and desertification, water contamination and overuse, peak everything, etc.) should be recognised, along with climate change, as having the same root solutions (a return to relocalised, ethically grounded and dynamic, practical communities getting back onto the land to develop small scale food/clothing/shelter/education systems that put carbon back where it belongs – in building soil fertility), we must also keep in mind that to ignore the climate change issue is to ignore what could make all the other issues pale in comparison, taking each individual issue and making them, respectively, each a whole lot worse.

If the science is correct (again, tell me how increased CO2 levels DO NOT increase atmospheric temperature) then we’re heading towards global temperatures never seen at any time while humans have been practising any form of agriculture. It is clear that plant productivity decreases as temperatures rise. It is clear there is more evaporation, wilder weather extremes, etc. We face a century with up to 9.2 billion people by 2050, whilst desertification from mismanaged soil is shrinking the available growing area significantly. This will place remaining lands in the unenviable position of needing to produce even more, thus speeding up desertification on remaining lands, and so on until the world looks like the Easter Island microcosm.

Again, start with CO2 (and methane and nitrous oxide, etc.) and look at the physics/chemistry of it. Prove why it doesn’t trap additional heat in our atmosphere. If you can’t, then perhaps step back to look objectively at your position. Be sure you’re not being an obstacle to global awareness on what could be the planet’s defining issue.

And, again, people keep saying climate change is politically motivated, but fail to explain what politicians get out of it besides an embarrassing narrative from people like me showing how they’re doing absolutely nothing to tackle the issue they supposedly manufactured. The reality is their interest, and the interest of the corporate captains who have these politicians in their pockets, is to ‘grow the economy’ and manage it as profitably to themselves as possible. Climate change, with its resulting necessary shift to relocalised economies is not only a hindrance to what they’re tryng to achieve, it would in fact positively dismantle the whole capitalist house of cards they’ve been constructing over the last century.

Plimer? Factually wrong on a number of things.

Can we please switch over to discussing the physics, rather than just dropping round names?

Please be assured that I do encourage and take action on similar lines of change I am guessing you follow (this being a permaculture forum). If you’re doubting my motives, I started the Permaculture Design course in Dunedin, the Permaculture Design book in Wikibooks (would love people to come in and help with that one), and try as hard as I can to develop subsistance living in rental property.

The links I mentioned.

Adelaide geoligist: Ian Plimer
MIT climate scientist: Deconstructing Global Warming R Lindzen & A Sloan Prof of Atmospheric Sciences MIT.

And some interesting neuroscience in relation to polarisation: More proof that emotion is a powerful force in making sense of information

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dikGn-vpBBQ

There are a number of scientific theories that better explain the trends of global temperatures than the problematic CO2 theory. Chief among them is sunspots and the sun. But also there are the observations of various global cycles such as the Pacific 20 year cycle and the 1500 year cycle. Plus there is the very problematic observation that it has been warmer on this planet both within written history and also in the long term record (via ice cores and what not) and you can’t blame humans for those warm events.

Anyway, trends indicate we’re going into a cooling period and if that pans out those who heard permaculturists spouting the imminent threat of global warming will seriously doubt the truth of anything else said about permaculture.

But to return to like I said. There is much popular and scientific debate over global warming. Things like food toxicity, environmental damage, top soil loss, drought, and arguably peak oil are all much more settled issues.

Pete