As the gap between the "Haves" and the "Have-Not’s" increases, the "Have-nots" become an ever-increasing majority. As a Have-Not, I do not feel that my being a part of the majority carries much clout. If I conserve, does it make a difference? Mathematically you'd have to say it does, but if you rated it on a scale of effectiveness as relative to the urgency of the problem, you might as well try killing a colony of fire ants with a pin, while lying on the ground.
• If I want to live in a simply constructed home, building codes pressure me to devote my limited resources to conforming to societal standards shaped by the "Haves".
• If I want to go to work, road development conforms to standards evolved by the "Haves" and I'm forced to waste hundreds of gallons of gasoline in unnecessary traffic snafus.
• If I don't dress well my employment opportunities are limited so I am forced to participate in the vicious cycle of waste generated by the concept of Fashion.
• Any education concerning these factors that my kids get will be influenced very strongly by their school teachers, who operate in a relatively "closed" system that also conforms to standards set by the "Haves". In a capitalist based democracy the bottom line is economical. Ethics follow, they don't lead.
The Truth is not new. The Truth is not news. The truth is that many people in the 60's saw the Truth then and began a struggle to avert it. The result was obstruction, trivialization and demonization. "Hippies", "Druggies", "Drop-outs", "Radicals", "Tree-Huggers", "Activists", and that real smooth one-"Idealists".
There was a gentleman, Buckminster Fuller, who had great ideas for homes (among other things), but as soon as we started to build them, building codes started banning them. There were economical vehicles, but as soon as we started driving them the safety codes started making them expensive. There were communal efforts but as soon as they established a center, real estate profiteering forced them out.
Today all major cities that I know of have active policies of rousting the homeless, yet social programs are virtually non-existent. No major city bans lawns, yet most face increasing water shortages. The list goes on, and yada-yada-it's all been said before. The point is the solution to global warming rests in the same place as the obvious solution to the rest of the mess. In-depth-examination, not over-simplification.
We can ship millions of dollars of mosquito nets to Africans to curb malaria outbreaks, but we cant's ship millions of tents to America's homeless because it's illegal for them to camp anywhere. We can hire Halliburton to set up an infrastructure in Iraq, but we can't hire Halliburton to develop a plan for how to educate America to conserve resources.
A radical suggestion? An Executive Order that establishes that to work for the government is to be dedicated first and foremost to serving the public, by freezing the maximum pension the government will pay anyone as based on the pension of a Corporal retiring from the Army, and the highest salary the government will pay anyone is based on the minimum wage. All the money recovered through this executive order will be immediately diverted to resolving, in a sustainable way, the issue of climate change. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.."
So, reader, now that you know where the solution lies, go ahead and shoot it full of holes. Just remember, by implementing this solution, only SOME will suffer, as opposed to ALL, as thing are going at present.
Excellent insight, George. I agree with you most strongly on two points:
* As our environmental woes become more problematic, the have-nots suffer disproportionately, which is to say a lot more. This fact has been trumpeted on the international level, where organizations like the IPCC have made it clear that while rich nations continue to pollute, poor countries, without the means to combat climate change, overwhelmingly will be the victims. Locally this is also the case, as you have illustrated. One need look no further than New Orleans to witness this unacceptable paradigm.
* The havoc we're wreaking upon ourselves is so immense that people are increasingly understanding that there is virtually no way we can avoid outright disaster unless we can convince our governments to enact bold and severe carbon-cutting solutions which apply to everyone, rich or poor, individual or industry.
In consideration of these two points, the obvious course of action becomes deciding what kind of policy shifts are ideal, and how to we push for them?
Policy is a complex arena if only because there are many ways to go about addressing issues and some are more effective than others and there is also always some degree of uncertainty. For example, carbon control policies range from increased information to taxes to caps to rationing; on top of that, what measures do we take to ensure that no one over-suffers? We would do well to familiarize ourselves with possible solutions and their myriad nuances.
Pushing for policy, on the other hand, is less enigmatic. We know how to talk to people; we know how to petition our governments and write our members in Congress. While particular tactics, and the effectiveness thereof, aren't constant over time, there is but one way to get things changed: to raise awareness.
Fortunately, when people are marching down the street in a demonstration, it is irrelevant if one particular person is rich and another is poor. Every head carries the same amount of significance.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that the best thing we can do, whether rich or poor, is by raising awareness and getting other people to understand the problem and especially its staggering gravity. The action of governments in developed nations depends entirely on whether enough people under them are in support.
Excellent indeed! A dialogue has begun. Policy is a strange creature. Kind of cute and cuddly in its familiarity, its warm way of reaffirming that the process works, that the system we've chosen to follow is a not the problem, rather the means to the solution.
Remember that we should at all times remain aware of the importance of in-depth examination of our premises if we are to hope to truly find a workable solution to our common dilemma...
Evolving policy to adequately address climate change focuses on influencing a legislative process which feeds on waste. Which is the antithesis to conservation. True or false? Part of the problem or part of the solution?
If the price of gasoline goes up, tax revenue increases proportionately. If energy efficiency is expensive to implement, the resulting increase in tax revenue is a "good thing" for the government, so long as the other revenue streams are not disproportionately impeded in the process.
Policy is influenced by revenue, by the marketplace. Crassly interpreted, government is in business to generate increased spending. How that spending is re-distributed determines the direction and degree to which policy is "allowed" to change. And the end product of that line of reasoning is put forth as being in the best interest of assuring our way of life.
To radically reduce spending on government employees and benefits is to suggest that it is in the interest of far too many that the ship of state not be rocked through policy change which might rock the revenue stream.
How many retirees are currently receiving a generous benefits package compliments of the taxpayer? Really. How many? How many others currently work for the public in one capacity or another and receive salaries with benefits including the promise of retirement while the general population struggles to get by without? I interpret this segment of the population as a rather large, ominous immovable object in the path of change. A body which rigidly perceives change as the immediate threat, not climate change.
Examples abound. Education reform, health system reform, growth limits, reducing consumption, improving public transportation, to name a few. All classic examples of infrastructure failing the public they are intended to serve, yet thwarted from evolving in an intelligent, scientific and rather obvious manner through lobbying from essentially those who depend on the government payouts for their security.
Excuse my political incorrectness on this issue, but in a general sense I see the teacher, the judge, the cop, the government contractor, and the corporation as equally guilty here. They are all, generally, predisposed to oppose change because change threatens their economic stability. They don't live in what I call "The Real World". Unfortunately the inverse also applies and they would generally respond that it is I who does not live in the real world.
I say all this because I see it as a problem equal to removing the ignorance of the facts of climate change. If we can not resolve that issue we can not effect the necessary policy changes.
As a footnote, to enhance the objective of the movie might I suggest making available to web broadcasters and actively promoting the use of succinct video shorts from the movie much the same as record companies promote new album releases. I would personally most assuredly make them available on my website 'A' Net Station ( http://anetstation.com )
Right. "Enacting the right kinds of policies" should not be mistaken as a straightforward endeavor, free of tribulations and pitfalls. When one looks under the hood to see what makes government laws and policies tick (to include the mechanisms whereby they might be someday changed), it's no smooth-running engine. Perhaps a tangled mess of half-broken parts cobbled together with life-support devices?
My focus on policy in this conversation comes from not being able to find any other method whereby we as a species might effectively address the monstrosity of anthropogenic climate change. We cannot tackle the problem if all we do is get individuals to save energy and hope that the "free market" will naturally make sustainability a meaningful priority. Solutions reliant on a bottom-up approach are far too little, far too late.
We need top-down solutions, and you're right: that's crazy talk. Sure, policy change is inherently difficult, since it pits ideology against short-term interests. Worse still, in our case it's a near impenetrable cause. The kinds of policy change necessary to start dismantling our deadly greenhouse inevitably place what seems like ideology (but actually isn't; it's stewardship of our only home) against not only short, medium, long, and multi-generational interests, but also imagination itself. Developed countries are so dependent upon fossil fuels that the vast majority of their peoples can barely picture living any other way.
And when the only sensible way to implement top-down solutions is through debating everyone around you to heck and back until they, too, see that they also need to do the same for everyone around them until, hopefully soon enough, there arrives a tipping point whereupon enough people in positions of power understand the crisis in its full glory and can force us all to conserve--it is I who starts looking like the one who doesn't live in the real world. But I don't enjoy these ideas, I just don't see other useful solutions. I am, of course, all ears if anyone has alternate ideas.
Even the teacher, judge, cop, contractor, and corporation can be made to understand that "business as usual" is not sustainable, if only because climate change will invariably affect their children. I suppose we are now saying the same thing, because the first obstacle is this incredible resistance to genuine self-education about global warming.
What to do then? I believe we must constantly be ramping up efforts to raise awareness and debunk the bad theories. There is a lot of disinformation out there, accompanied by a torrent of words published in bad faith. Knowing more allows us to overcome the fraudulence, bit by bit. George Monbiot does a good job of this, especially in his book Heat: How To Stop The Planet From Burning. I highly recommend that one, both for people who have skeptical friends, as well as those curious to get their hands dirty with the latest (staggering) numbers and an example of what an actual solution to global warming might look like.