From Paris to Drawdown

From Paris to Drawdown

Like other unconscionable and unfathomable acts of the early 21st century—a period of historic great change already—Trump’s pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement has sent me searching for the deeper meaning of it all, while the pundits flail away.

Here in NZ – AC is changing to Propane.
And there are still a few R22 units operating, and quite a few HFC units.

So many assumptions in that report.

To me, it reads more like a well crafted smoke screen than a real solution, and that may be entirely unintentional. It is so hard to judge motive from action (almost impossible).

Technical solutions are relatively easy.

Weaning people away from using markets and money as measures of value is much more difficult, even when the logic of the necessity is beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt.
Much like my experience of cancer sufferers over the last 7 years, most would rather die than change their diet. I just can’t imagine valuing life so lowly. And I guess that is just one of the very many ways I am not at all normal.

[followed by
in response to John’s comment:
maybe an analogy is we need to both cut out the tumor so it doesn’t spread out of control and kill us before we can change, AND, change our lifestyles so the cancer doesn’t reoccur (which it most certainly will if all we do is swap out our energy system and think it’s all good! Getting aggressively on the task of drawing down carbon, using existing economic system and existing technologies is a must, while we re-engineer our entire economics, and indeed culture.]

Hi John,

Yes.
In a very real sense, that is exactly what I did after my terminal cancer diagnosis.
I continued cutting out identifiable tumours, while radically altering diet and lifestyle.
Both were necessary.
Now over 6 years since the last tumour.

That danger is thinking one can get away with just one of them.

Fundamental change is required.

We have to forget the common illusion that humans are fundamentally competitive, and understand that humans are fundamentally cooperative, and we will compete if the conditions demand it.

We have to start to see that our current economic system is demanding competitive behaviour from humans generally, and that such a level of competition imposes fundamental existential risk to everyone, as it undermines the fundamental cooperation that is required to sustain social order.

We can tolerate competition when it is necessary.
We cannot tolerate it when it is unnecessary and unwanted.

Social complexity requires boundaries, and the largest single necessary boundary set is what most call morality.

Forcing people into competition when it is not required fundamentally undermines morality as a concept and thereby breaks the bonds that allow social cohesion.

Fully automated systems simply make clear what has actually been the case for hundreds of years.

We are in a full blown existential crisis.

We have a way out.
That way out requires fundamental change.
UBI (Universal Basic Income) is now the only real hope any of us has.

To understand just how deeply these issues are embodied and embedded within us, one needs to understand all that Jordan Peterson has to say about evolved levels of embodied cognition.