I just got home from a wonderful workshop at Esalen, the Big Sur retreat for studying humanistic alternatives to our current culture. I’d like to share a bit about the workshop, and then a bit more about how those of us concerned about runaway climate change can regard – well, our current culture.

The workshop was called Cultivating Inner Freedom, and it was focused on helping make more effective choices, not least overcoming procrastination. The theoretical basis for the workshop is Nonviolent Communication (organization | Wikipedia), a set of techniques for easing barriers between people and helping us work together more effectively. (Among other descriptions.)

The workshop was amazing. Led by Miki Kashtan (her blog is here) of BayNVC, two NVCers and half a dozen novices dove straight into a big pile of personal, work, and activist concerns that we all brought to the table. We worked on them in a rich mix of creativity, friendship, and at least one barn-burner of a conflict. This was all supported by Esalen’s beautiful surroundings, wholesome organic food, hot tubs, yoga classes, workshops, music events, and people – as well as an unexpected but welcome week of sunny weather.

I might go into more about what I learned, and more about NVC as a useful tool, in later posts. But here I want to talk about the role of workshops like this, and places like Esalen, for an activist concerned about climate change.

In working to help our world, I think we need to view our current culture as a sort of bazaar, with all sorts of things on offer – some helpful, others not. I think we should use it to equip ourselves to be more effective in changing that selfsame culture, in a way that’s sustainable for each of us. I think the workshop did that for me.

The entire culture is also full of waste, of energy in particular. Many of my fellow workshop participants – who were not climate change activists – flew, and I made a long drive down from Oakland to Big Sur and back. (Giving a new friend a lift on the way home.) As a venue, Esalen itself is outstanding in this area; it’s a Transition Initiative, and seeks to operate as sustainably as possible. But I certainly would have generated less CO2 and equivalents by staying home.

I think, though, that we have to keep pitching, while keeping sustainability as much in our minds and practices as we can. My own belief is that we need to make the entire world operate sustainably by default; that is, make it so that the easiest, cheapest, and most fun alternative for every activity is always inherently green.

The changes needed to make this so will require enormous effort across the whole culture. For a few of us to sit “virtuously” at home by ourselves won’t make the kind of difference that we need. Being thoughtful about reducing our personal impacts as much as possible, while working to revamp the machinery around us for the benefit of everyone, seems to me to be the only effective strategy.

PS Permaculture and sustainability workshops at Esalen are listed here.

SPUR planner cites 5M sea level rise

Today I began researching news about runaway climate change on the Web – and the bad news is, there is no news.

A search on the term “runaway climate change” for the last 24 hours, using Google News, yielded no results. None. Zip. Nada.

This is sad. Runaway climate change means that human-generated warming has set off new processes in nature. These processes, if the “runaway” assertion is true, have their own momentum. Warming from these processes will continue, whether human-generated warming continues or not.  The Earth will warm by at least several more degrees, with huge consequences for humanity, no matter what. (Slowing or stopping human-generated warming would still slow warming in the coming years, greatly easing sustainability crises, and perhaps limiting the ultimate extent of warming that occurs.)

The question as to whether this is happening or not is of huge importance to humanity. I liken it to finding out that a swarm of meteors is heading straight toward Earth. Finding out just which meteors would hit, or miss, the planet, when they would hit, and what damage they would do, would be the most important task imaginable. Climate change is like that meteor shower; finding out whether it’s runaway – and, if so, the details – is the most important question we face.

So no news is not good news.

Checking the sources in the blogroll next to this post, I did find some relevant news – just not from the last 24 hours, and not dealing with runaway climate change directly. Highlights:

• China carbon emissions could peak by 2025-2030. Projections are that China may have outfitted most of its people with “first world” basics like cars, refrigerators, air conditioning and larger homes in 15 to 20 years, and green power’s growth will start to cut into the use of fossil fuels, according to US researchers. At this time, emissions might be about double current US emissions – a huge addition to current global emissions, but less than the four-fold increase that population comparisons alone might indicate. India is also due to add its own emissions, of perhaps roughly the same magnitude as China’s, as it develops economically. However, any lessening in future emissions projections is a welcome contribution.
• A group of scientists critical of mainstream climate change projections, backed by the Koch brothers, did their own study – and ended up agreeing with the mainstream results. This eliminates a major support for climate change skepticism.
• The US will only act on climate change when some kind of disaster occurs, says Harvard economist Robert Stavins. While I happen to agree that this is likely, any such statement can only be speculation, until the US does in fact wake up.
• Leading climate change blog Climate Progress points out that tornado forecasting saved many lives this week – but that the budgets that fund this work are being cut. I see this as a small parallel to the need to energetically investigate runaway climate change so as to save many, many lives using the results.
• Gabriel Metcalf of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) wants lower planning requirements for planning in SF development – but also points out that a 5-meter increase in sea levels is on the way, and we haven’t started plans for protecting some places and “withdrawing from the places we don’t armor”.  I would only add that we don’t know that it will stop at 5 meters, without sorely needed research.

Let’s see – this is the only large representative, rather than parliamentary, democracy; and, it’s the greatest country in the world. Coincidence?

The Dems were brave today. Whether they were also smart remains to be seen. But if you note the vociferous defence of every last dime of Medicare and Medicaid spending by Republicans (!) just lately, you have to guess they were smart indeed.

Originally posted as a comment
by floydsm8
on The Atlantic using DISQUS.