We've passed 400ppm: now what?

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

Hi Franny –

I had the exact same reaction… which prompted me to compile some ideas about what people can do – individuals – to make a real difference. I tried to think of things which would have impact in and of themselves, but which could have powerful knock on effects when others do them as well.  Here's the post, titled "Top 5 Actions to Make a Difference in the Fight Against Climate Change."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-rigg/top-5-actions-to-make-a-d_b_3309788.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change

Cheers, Kelly

Dear Franny,

Don't despair! Despair doesn't allow for any solutions!

Just because we cannot see a workable solution from our present perspective, that doesn't mean that there isn't a solution, just that we can't see it yet.

Keep the end goal in mind and work out one step at a time.

I don't have a cure-all answer, but, just as the atmosphere is the most phenomenal balancing of miriad elements, so is the potential outcome of lots of humans wanting things to work out well, and each drop into that ocean makes a difference, even if it is not evident from the perspective of now, and your awesome film is a huge drop into that ocean, a drop which may well repercuss for a lot longer and in more fundamental ways than are yet understood or felt...

Thank you!

Emma

Dear Franny,

Please do not despair. There are very many of us moving toward producing less co2, working to convince others to do the same,  many inspired by you. Maybe it will be enough. Even if it isn't, it is what we must do. Right now I am going out into my little garden and appreciate all the creatures there. Love, M

We may, indeed, be doomed but I'm an optimist of sorts. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best is my philosophy. So I'm doing what I can with a smile on my face, in the hope that that my optimism and enthusiasm will infect others. Doom and gloom hasn't won any hearts and minds so far, and psychology says that people move most easily towards the outcome they can best visualise. We need to create a vision of a greener, fairer, better future so damn desirable that everybody wants it; slowly but surely humanity will move towards it. Will technology advance quickly enough to compensate for the delay in changing our habits? I doubt it, but it will mitigate the effects to some extent. If we give up hope, our demise becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Peak Oil - with the subsequent powerdown - will create all the right conditions for a dieback of our species, which is pretty much the only way this planet can continue to function. If human beings haven't exterminated themselves by the end of this century (nukes, failed nuke power plants,etc.) whoever's left will be in two camps: Wandering, starving, crazed bands of climate change refugees, or intentional communities of people who saw this coming and prepared for it.

This is the way I see it: the global economy is now 99% beyond human control. You can't have ethics in a corporation that don't fit in with global capitalism - the stock holders will replace you. The economy will carry on like this until it runs out of resources (a stable climate being one of them).

There is a small chance we can stop it. Look at the UK, IE, the US governments now all talking about why the corporations like Apple, Amazon & Starbucks don't pay much tax. That is hope, because if society can rein in the economy in terms of tax, then maybe carbon emissions will be next, although it will take an irrefutably climate-induced bloody nose on an epic scale to trigger it.

Go vegan. A huge proportion of carbon emissions comes from the dairy and meat industries. That will free up land to grow veggies, reduce air, land and water pollution, feed everybody and stop the hideous cruelty to animals.
Vicky

Unfortunately, if too many people think like that then there is certainly no happy future for our kids or grandkids. At present there is hope. We could do something if we put our minds to it and we should be forcing our Governments to take this seriously and put proper plans in place to reduce CO2 levels.

I don't know what to do. I imagine I'll carry on as now. Work, friends, a bit of social life. I do worry about what we have done to ourselves and am very sad about it, and do talk about it to others when I can. Dropping my current existance and becoming an activist is, I guess, one possibility but this is something I know I will not do as it does not feel authentic to me, as I am now. I would judge myself for abandoning, or judging, everyone else, who doesn't join-in with a similar 100% response, for example. For now, therefore, I guess I will continue to feel into it, and see what is the response that I can really get behind.