We've passed 400ppm: now what?

I have been a Green person since the 1970's and eventually became a Mechanical Engineer and eventually owned my own business saving energy.  I retired in 2004 after putting systems into buildings that save about 100 million US dollars per year.  

I don't say this to gloat, but to show that it is possible to save energy in a big way by making it a viable option to others.   I installed Carbon Monoxide control systems into Parking Garages for 20 years. Very simple to do.  

The payback to the owner is in 4 - 8 months.   The system pays for itself in 4-8 months and keeps doing this for decades.   I am not a genius.  My one full time employee had no experience in any of what I did and she has made millions of dollars too.   Again, i don't mean to toot here, I just want to let others know you don't have to do your best at home to save energy only (which I do 100%),  but you can make a huge difference if you try to find some opportuinity to save tons on energy for other businesses.

I lose sleep proably every night on CC thoughts.  Not because it is happening, that's a given, but that people are so freakin stupid!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.  Look I have refused to have children so I have not much to be concerned about long term, But I am concerened; and mostly concerned just for all the life that has been here 1000's of times longer than our stupid asses have been thrashing our beautiful big home.   Good luck.  Gary

The first step is to overcome despair. No enlightened response can eminate from this place. Put simply, all the ills we are now facing are manifestations of a lack of understanding of our place as human beings in the web of life.  We are not the center of the universe, not the highest lifeform, nor or we indespensible as such in the great circle of life. The world's people must look to the First Nations people of the western hemisphere for the understanding of how to be in proper relation with the rest of creation. Listen to Oren Lyons, listen to John Trudell. Most of the responses I am seeing are coming from people with, for lack of a better phrase, a euro-centric mindset; the same mindset that that brought us to our present condition. Until we return to this understanding, to living within the original instructions, there are no solutions; only short term ways of dealing with things, grasping at straws. Electric cars, going vegan. There were no vegans in the americas in 1491. If the native people had been allowed to continue their way of life, we would still be able to drink out of any body of water. they had this understanding. Many people are going to have to go away. Very painful times are on the horizon, this is inevitable. At the same time a future of peace and reconciliation (with each other as well as the rest of creation) is possible. Mother Earth is changing herself in order to survive. We must do the same. It seems to me to be more about being in harmony with our mother than about concerted political/social efforts. Strengthen your bonds with the earth, hold your children close and teach them it is not about the internet, it's about the inner net. Quit surfing the cloud and go to the dreamtime. Look for the original instructions. 

Jim Byrd

human being

Positive action and something to bring the issue more into the mainstream - a pop concert like BandAid, but this time ClimateAid bringing together musicians to make a big splash and give politicians the message that this is what a large proportion of voters require. Start a network of fun runs as Cancer Research UK has done - I suggested this to Oxfam years ago. It has to be fun, engaging, and profile raising. I know that these kinds of things look a bit frivolous but actually, they could start a national movement....

And be proud of activism - 'even a dead fish can go with the flow' - it takes courage to take a minority stand. And you know what? To the people who think that the individual makes little if any difference - maybe so, but so much better not to be part of the problem.

Erica Neustadt 

One thing we can all do is get involved in the global power shift - http://act.350.org/sign/global_power_shift/

This will be a series of mobilisations around the world targeting political and corporate levers of power, shifting power away from the fossil fuels industry and sparking the kind of visionary transformation we need to fight the climate crisis.  We know what the solutions are, so let's act now.

In my experience, most people who bang on about living a low carbon lifestyle, have decided not to fly, eat meat etc can do so because they were born into comfortable middle class families and did all their carbon gorging earlier in life. I got pulled into this and spent the last 8 years denying myself, having cold, wet summers in UK, returning to work feeling exhausted and depressed! I'm not dng it anymore, all it does is alienate my friends and family and leave me feeling sad and resentful. Changing our individual lifestyles is p****** in the wind, it's too late and this is too big and I do not want to be alone on my death bed, bitter and twisted with my only comfort being that I saved the planet from maybe 30 tons of CO2. This does not mean I am partying, I will continue to grow veg, use a wood burner to heat my home, use public transport whenever possible and raise awareness where ever I can, but I am also being realistic and trying to live somewhere between to two extremes we always seem to migrate towards.

For years I have tried to live a low carbon lifestyle, denying myself of meat or driving a car, heating my flat with a woodburner, growing my own fruit nd veg, no holidays in the sun, struggling through cold wet summers, returning to work in September feeling exhausted and depressed. I am now realising my efforts are of little value, in the face of global industrial growth it's a case of p****** in the wind! None of us can stop climate change, it's far far bigger than us and would need massive political action on a global scale to even slow it down. I don't have children, thankfully, and my stance now is to connect with others and prepare as much as I can to survive the challenges that lie ahead. It's a scary time we are living in!

The problem is clearly psychological. Our society is going mad. See www.ecopsychology.org.uk and www.ecopsychologyuk.ning.com. However, ultimately it seems to me that there are simply too many humans. But I don't believe we will ever manage to control our population on a global level, so we will most likely be culled by nature in some way, and that will be very messy and painful, along with so many  lifeforms who are innocent in this. So - short of a miracle (and they do happen quite alot actually) I don't think we can change the way we are heading. But there is still SO MUCH to be done to make amends with the earth, and to make our lives as good as possible NOW. Simple kindness/compassion towards self and all others is what is at the heart of everything and it can go a very long way.

Mary-Jayne

Dear Franny,

HI Franny,

I have no idea Franny, I feel desperate and I feel stumped. Part of me, the stupid part, hopes the scientists got it all wrong. Stupid.

Dear Franny,

Party, party, party is very tempting - have you seen "Seeking a friend for the end of the world"? Great film!

However, you know that 99% of the people you sent this to can't and won't party and gorge on fossil fuels.

So what to do? Seriously? Elect "our very own" Ed. And hope he doesn't forget us. He got an A in A-level Physics - there is hope!

Chin up, enjoy Eva (she has a 50:50 chance of living to 2112) and one day she can get together with my two girls and win this.

400 ppm is arbitrary - it really was just as bad at 399.

Don't give up! What are you doing early November? A chap you may not know here in Cambridge is giving a talk about the arctic ice melt at my school. It would be great to have you there as well - make a real party of it! He's a real expert and doesn't hold punches:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice?fb=native

All best wishes,

Andrew Harmsworth

Hi Franny

I couldn't resist replying to your request for comment when I really should be out on my allotment planting seeds.....

I think everyone should stop voting for the mainstream parties who have failed this country so spectacularly. Put our crosses where are views are and vote foe the Green party. If there's not a Green Party candidate in your area stand yourself whether it's local, mayoral, national, constituency or European.
Until we have politicians at all levels of the political spectrum instituting policies against climate change we may as well light up an oil well.
Let's put our energies into politics rather than one-off campaigns.
Andree Frieze
@andree_frieze
And yes I am a Green Party member, but only since last summer when I had an epiphany. Vote Green to save the planet 

Just back from a beautiful hike in the mountains in Colorado. Everything is just like it was when I was a kid in the 1960s.  Nature doesn't share your neuroses.

it's a pity this conversation isn't on facebook, twitter etc - we could see each other's identities, and with the latter we could see what the most 'popular' comments were?

Don't despair.

Do what you can personally to limit what you consume - energy and resource wise.

At the same time talk to everyone you know about the issues.

Also we need to stop growth gradually. Read " Enough is Enough" by Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill about why and how we should change to a no growth economy. Talk to everyone about this and lobby politicians. We need to appeal to self interest. It will lead to happier people, with more free time and  greater equality in society. It is a win win for the vast majority of people - only the very rich would be opposed. Preach this.

Good luck!

We need a catastrophe to happen quickly to jolt people and governments into action.  If that doesn't happen, and probably even if it does, the end result will be wandering, starving, crazed bands of climate change refugees in violent opposition to intentional communities of people who saw this coming and prepared for it.  Survivors will end up living in a medieval society without the skills to provide for what we might now consider as basics.  

I hope that I am wrong in my prediction because my preparations for it are feeble compared to what we are likely to be faced with.   To be effective, preparations have to be collective.  Transition Towns are on the right track but I suspect are not going to be secure enough to deal with the refugees.  That leaves me to conclude that the best bet is to find a very remote place to hide...a remote island somewhere that has adequate cultivatable land over 40 m above sea level.  

One preparation that everyone should make is to become vegan and experts in foraging.

Hi Franny, its a bleak picture we have to contend with.  And some of the comments are pretty miserable in all kinds of ways!!  We've all got our pet bandwagons, of course, and this latest news simply gives us a chance to feel righteous about where we feel the solution lies.  Truth, of course, is fractal, so all the pieces matter - even those one might desire to kick into touch pretty damn smartly.  Working as I do in psychology, my own recent reflection is on the nature of our understanding of self in all of this.  It seems that even much of the very laudable and desirable positive work undertaken, and just about all that one might deem negative, is predicated on an idea of doing something about or to the planet.  Its as if we - even us activists - were standing outside.  The terror and challenge is that we aren't.  The history of the self has been a series of steps away from a sense of self that is intimate with the ecosystems and - as the great C4 doco Century of the Self tracks - this has been racked up again in the last 100 years.

As several of your correspondents notice, nature in some form or other is likely to roll on should the greater extremes eventuate, it is human nature that is both the greatest threat and at the greatest risk.  

With the exception of ecopsychology (recommend Andy Fisher's great book for starters) the psychology community has been largely silent about this.  Whilst practitioners are quick to be consulted and quoted on Princess Di's anorexia or the killers of Jamie Bulger, there is almost nothing on the addiction of consumption, or the likely experience of individuals having to face the deceptions and denials that each of us are physically and emotionally designed to pick up, not to mention good old mental common-sense.  Instead, there is a tendency to see individual and personal repsonses to the multiple stresses within the global system (as if the stresses can show up anywhaere else except in particular places) as discrete events and pathologies.  Much the same happens with the distortions of climate change, which show up as discrete and localised events.

It is about time the psychology of denial, and its symptoms and impacts on individuals' health and well-being, was brought into the frame.

Despair is an appropriate state to be in, but not for too long! As TS Eliot says "without hope, for to hope may be for the wrong thing".

If life has an inherent thrust and energy then one can surely feel when one is attuned to and aligned with it.  Following that sense opens the door to energised activity.  I feel one also needs to maintain an appropriate critique of one's own ever-changing understanding of the assumptions and meanings each of us has to draw from the experience to get it on the ground.

Reflecting on how understanding of self and where we fit has changed over the past 2500 years, and the attendant form that society has taken can be rewarding.  We're not only here because of our insatiable and arrogant entitlement and consumption, i believe we're here as part of an inevitable process of alienation.  In not having that named and processed, we are confronted with the need to change who we are without any idea that who we think we are [with all the terror attached to changing that] may not be anything like all that we can be or have been.

Transition - of whoch I am a keen part - hasn't really got its head around this yet - cos its tricky, loaded and counter to the mores of the day.  So we stay stuck.

And its changing.  Did you see the great movie Nora Bateson made about her father, Gregory Bateson?  Worth checking out.

Cheers

Mark in NZ

I lead a simple life - no car etc but I don't feel that is enough. I feel that the people who aren't asleep or in denial need to stand up and help those who are. 

I think there is the almost unbearable grief we need to feel and bear about what we are in imminent danger of losing  on our planet before we can change. How do we help ourselves and others go through this?

Dx

3 years ago I have stopped using my car and only cycle everywhere. Despite the fact I am terribly fit and healthy, I saved a lot of money and feel like doing something, most people around me carry on with their way of life saying I am an alien and I am wasting my time, even the ones pretending to be eco friendly. I try to alert my family and friends about the consequences nowadays (poor weather they say). and their over heated houses, when outside it feels very good and no need to switch on the heating. Nobody cares... I cannot see anything else to do unfortunately. Hope and pray until they click? Keep up the good work. Fabien

Fanny I love your standpoint, every time I read what you write it resonates in me. Thank you for speaking out as you do.

Of course, I will keep on doing my miniscule bit.

Living the life that has meaning for me, as much as I can (in between all the bits that amount to being a rat in a wheel paying the mortgage etc).

Speaking out when possible, adding my voice, challenging the crap, supporting initiatives based on love and realistic viewpoints.

Supporting powering down - the recognition we all need to use less energy and resources year on year.

Continuing to tear my hair out at the insanity of it all.

Continuing to put myself in nurturing places where I can do something more than tear my hair out, where I'm around people I can trust, where I can play my music and build a little of the world I want to see.

x

Governments are in the control of big business; big business is a raging bull called capitalism; capitalism thrives on greed.  Short of an unprecedent and unforseeable cut back in consumption by everyone in the 'developed' world, I fear we are heading, inexorably, towards a mass extinction event in a split second of geological time.  When the methane traps start releasing their stores in a big way then it will be time to say goodbye. In the meantime we should carry on fighting, hoping for the best but planning for the worst  

With the emergence of nerve based learning we have been on a two million year long journey that took us away from the garden of Eden that our gene based learning ancestors inhabited (look at the Bonobo apes as the emergent "humans" of today) and that inevitably set up a massive internal conflict and upset within our "souls" (Especially males who were not kept connected to the original path of cooperative existence as females were by their nurturing role). This upset/anger has produced a world in which we (mostly unconsciously) attack the innocent in order justify our movement away from the natural order of love and cooperation, order of matter and meaning. The "destruction" of the planet by us is a symptom of our self loathing and our resignation to this state of turmoil. When we recognise that we have been on an heroic journey, learn again that we are basically all good, heal the upset within and allow ourselves to live in cooperative loving harmony then we can go back to the garden, a knowing and fully conscious part of the world.

With thanks to Jeremy Griffith - Australian Biologist - for his lectures bannered under the "world transformation movement "