“You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?”

– Thomas Friedman, The Earth is Full, New York Times June 7, 2011 –

We are living today beyond the planet’s capacity to support the human race. A crisis of unprecedented proportions is no longer avoidable. We simply can’t stop global climate change. We can mitigate its disastrous impacts, but much of its effect is an absolute certainty.

There will be more frequent and severe hurricanes, like Irene, responsible for the worst flooding in my home state of Vermont in the past 70 years; tornadoes will appear in unexpected locations, and earthquakes and tsunamis will wreak havoc. The ocean will rise, as flooding from rivers increases, and deserts expand as temperatures nudge upwards. People will die in increasing numbers. Mostly the poor and those living in low-lying areas.

This will disrupt corporate supply chains, increase the volatility of commodity prices, and place already fragile economies at risk of collapse.

We know this, but somehow can’t bring ourselves to come to terms with it.

 “The war on global warming will be a bloody battle, and whole industries will be wiped out and replaced by more planet-friendly alternatives before it is won.” – John Elkington, The Guardian –

We talk about “stopping” global climate change. But it cannot be stopped. We can mitigate it most harmful effects. But it cannot be stopped.

Today, our greatest challenge and our most important opportunity is to plan for the world that we will have the unique and unparallel opportunity to create in the wake of this turmoil.

Paul Gilding, the former director of Greenpeace Australia and the founder of a sustainability-consulting firm presents in his book The Great Disruption a new paradigm of possibility. He writes:

“Things are going to change. Not because we will choose change out of philosophical or political preference, but because if we don’t transform our society and economy, we risk social and economic collapse and the descent into chaos. The science on this is now clear and accepted by any rational observer. While an initial look at the public debate may suggest controversy, any serious examination of the peer-reviewed conclusions of leading science bodies shows the core direction we are heading in is now clear. Things do not look good.”

These challenges and the facts behind them are well-known by experts and leaders around the world and have been for decades. But big business in the coal, oil, transportation and mining businesses together with organizations like the US Chamber of Commerce having spent tens, perhaps even hundreds of millions of dollars casting doubt on the facts, ensuring that the pace of change proceeds at a snail’s pace to allow them to squeeze  billions of dollars in profits out of a system they know will soon fall apart.

Gilding continues describing the certainty of this great transformation, “because the passing of the limits (of the planet) is not philosophical but physical and rooted in the rules of physics, chemistry and biology. So passing the limits has consequences.”

“As the full scale of the imminent crisis hits us, our response will be proportionally dramatic, mobilizing as we do in war. We will change at a scale and speed we can barely imagine today, completely transforming our economy, including our energy and transport industries, in just a few short decades. Perhaps most surprisingly we will also learn there is more to life than shopping. We will break our addiction to growth, accept that more stuff is not making our lives better and focus instead on what does.

 

“This is why we shouldn’t despair in the face of what the science is telling us — it is precisely the severity of the problem that will drive a response that is overwhelming in scale and speed and will go right to the core of our societies. It is the crisis itself that will push humanity to its next stage of development and allow us to realize our evolutionary potential. It will be a rough ride, but in the end, we will arrive at a better place.

 

“We now need to get ready. We can manage our way through the hurricane, but only if we acknowledge its coming and are clear first on how we will survive it and then on what our recovery plan is. History is full of evidence that when our backs are against the wall, all the great qualities of humanity, our compassion, our drive, our technical brilliance, and our ability to make things happen on a massive global scale, come strongly to the fore.

 

“We have the opportunity to build a society that represents our highest capacities, with extreme poverty eliminated; great technology that works with rather than against nature and provides us with abundant energy and resources; a closed-loop economy with no waste; communities that work and support one another.

 

“The global nature of the problem means only a global solution can fix it, and that means we are going to come together as a people like never before. Protecting national interest will have to be confined to the sporting field. Again, not just because we might choose to, but because it is the only way we can address the challenges we face.”

This is both a terrifying and hopeful prognosis. It presents a way out of the endless denial and gridlock that have prevented real progress, but progress will come at a huge cost to human life and the planet.

At this point, it’s beginning to look as if this will be the most likely scenario. The more I try to understand this new framework, the more I find myself thinking about billiards as opposed to pool. This is about the rebound rather than the shot. How to use the energy to rebound from the devastation resulting from our failures rather than finding the energy to prevent the failures in the first place.

Perversely optimistic?

Please see The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World by Paul Gilding, Hardcover, Published by: Bloomsbury Press, March 29, 2011.