Monthly Archives: April 2023

International Mother Earth Day, 22 April 2023

In debt to our mothers

International Mother Earth Day reminds us of the protection, comfort and education that we owe our own mothers, the mothers of all our ancestors, and the womb-like embrace of nature. But there is an edge to it as well, because although nature is beautiful, creative and generous, she is also powerful, her rules are not negotiable, and they are enforced by terrible sanctions.

Longing, belonging and biophilia

Deeper than the ideas of motherhood, reward and punishment, however, is knowing that we are part of nature and she is part of us. This is why we love fertility and diverse abundance. It is why we like gardens, and why so many people join nature clubs, volunteer for nature charities, and protest when nature is threatened. We sense that harm to nature means harm to us and our children.

Peace with nature as a good marriage

We can only live well when there is harmony between us and nature. But such peace is only possible if we accept that our own interests are not the only things that matter. Then we can join a community of interdependent beings, all with needs and rights that must be met for the whole system to work properly. Thus peace with nature is like a good marriage, one that accepts difference as well as common interest, and is maintained by traditions of respectful reciprocity.

Can we earn a viable future?

This line of thinking is deep-rooted in many indigenous cultures, and in recent years the Plurinational State of Bolivia has been particularly active in promoting it at the United Nations. A series of UN resolutions have sought to rebuild peace with nature by accepting an Earth-centred rather than a human-centred point of view. These ideas are becoming more influential, as the dangers of the global climate and nature emergency become clearer. They are signposts on the path by which humanity can earn a viable future.

The healing powers of ideas and actions

Everyone can help in this. We can all start to show respect for the rights of Mother Earth, simply by choosing to make space for her in our hearts. From there will come interest in learning more about nature, befriending people who share that interest, and becoming aware that even small groups can change the world. Just as a ruined ecosystem can regrow, so a damaged culture can recover through the healing power of informed ideas and community action.

Clean-up time

Many societies are now recovering their confidence in the wisdom of ecology. They include cities on the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour, countries like Costa Rica that have committed themselves to ‘peace with nature’, those like New Zealand that have embraced the ‘well-being economy’, and those like Ecuador that have written protections for the Rights of Mother Earth into their national constitutions. They also include states, provinces, municipalities, suburbs and innumerable communities that are quietly getting on with ecosystem restoration and clean-up, trusting in nature and voting for people whom they believe will support them.

Change, hope and progress

All share an awareness that sustainable well-being is available only to peoples whose laws and governance arrangements respect the needs and rules of nature. Recognising this direction of travel across humanity, despite many setbacks, we can hope that future Mother Earth Days will be even more celebratory than this one of 2023.

Earth Day, 22 April 2023

The power of seasonal transitions

There’s something about seasonal transitions which reminds us that we inhabit a living world, even if we often feel insulated from it by concrete, glass and traffic. The northern Spring of 1970 saw a peak of environmental awareness which left behind several permanent markers, like sea-weed on the beach after a storm. Prominent among them was Earth Day on 22 April.

The magnetic influence of 22 April

Earth Day has ever since been a way to drum up public awareness of growing threats to the global environment. Thus the UN chose 22 April 2009 to declare International Mother Earth Day, and 22 April 2016 to open the Paris Agreement on Climate Change for signature by the world’s governments. Since then, climate change has been a major theme as public concern has grown along with scientific understanding of its causes and consequences.

Where are we now?

And so we have reached Earth Day 2023. It would be good to be able to say that we are well on the way to solve our major environmental problems, but we cannot yet do so. Millions have taken to the streets, whether inspired by Greta Thunberg, the Extinction Rebellion, or Earth Day committees. But we are still emitting many billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, a thousand times more than we save. As a result of these and past emissions, heat continues to build in the biosphere, and major Earth systems are wobbling towards their tipping points.

Tipping points in Earth and human systems

We don’t yet know how this will turn out, but just as tipping points in Earth systems can creep up on us unnoticed, so too can those in our societies. Countries can have anti-environmental governments for years, while their peoples become more and more frustrated and fearful, organising themselves in little groups and talking with one another. Then, out of what seems like a blue sky, change comes suddenly and positive energies are released.

In the transition, on the cusp, or just stuck?

But such breakthroughs are occasional events in a broad and diverse trajectory of change. Some places are in mid-transition, with stable majorities that expect their governments to ensure high environmental standards and reduced net carbon emissions. Others are on the cusp, with widepread public support for green policies that are still resisted by those with political power. And yet others are stuck, rejecting climate science as a plot, or lacking awareness of global conditions, or worrying about what seem to be more immediate issues.

The transition that matters

Where does your own place fit on this spectrum? In answering, remember that the transition that matters is not a one-day event. Rather it is a process that involves overlapping lifetimes and myriad conversations, elections, lawsuits and actions that add up to a direction of travel. Particularly in countries with indigenous populations, the respect with which indigenous insights on ecological sustainability are treated can shape the journey.

Changing the Zeitgeist

It is this gathering of energy from all sources within a society that eventually changes the Zeitgeist. If there is no direction of travel, it can be started. If it has started, it can be accelerated and made more inclusive. And if it is triumphant, it can be consolidated and joined up with others. It is to celebrate this whole process that Earth Day was set up in 1970, and it can still inspire today.

Fossil Fools Day, 2023

On this first day of April we celebrate foolishness. There is none greater than burning your own home because you like the pretty flames. It’s not even as clever as peeing in your pants to keep warm at the start of winter, as they say in the Nordic countries. So we throw more coal, peat, forests, petroleum and natural gas on the fire because it’s convenient right now. But the effects, as Al Gore and Greta Thunberg have pointed out, will be not just inconvenient but deadly.

Too many fires are making too much carbon dioxide too quickly. This traps the sun’s heat on Earth, warming the oceans and melting the ice of the poles. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land. In its bed are a trillion tonnes of frozen methane, which is already bubbling to the surface, and methane is much better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Moreover, in the frozen lands around about are another trillion tonnes of methane, held in frozen peat and organic soils. This is already leaking out as the ice lands melt and rot.

So what will happen when global heating pushes the Arctic beyond whatever tipping point keeps it in the deep freeze? Of course the answer is an immense pulse of methane. That’s the big show that could finish us off. Carbon dioxide is only the warm-up act. And when might that happen? All the signs suggest around the middle of this century. Are we ready for this, and do we even know what ‘being ready’ means? Are we even trying seriously to cut back on carbon dioxide emissions? We still churn out scores of billions of tonnes of the stuff every year, and save only a thousandth part of that. So the answers are: not yet!.

We seem inclined to keep putting things off. But with a mid-century deadline looming from the Arctic methane if nothing else, putting things off is really daft. Even if the sums are wrong and it’s really the 2080s rather than the 2050s when the Arctic methane hits the fan, that’s still not very long. We need to get a grip. And that means putting away the jester’s bladder and getting serious. So what to do instead of acting the Fossil Fool?

I could rattle off a list, but here are a couple. First, we should vote only for leaders who will tax carbon emissions radically and enable ferocious and fair investment in decarbonising our economies. And second, we should make sure that rewards from investment are highest when emissions are avoided soonest. With special merit points for those that also help protect and restore nature, and that promote human wellbeing and community solidarity. This would make working with local communities to prevent harm to all our remaining high carbon-density natural ecosystems the maximum top priority everywhere on Earth.

The simple fact in this emergency is that a tonne of emissions avoided now has much more survival value than a tonne of emissions avoided years from now. So that should be the starting point of all our policies, and it should shape all our efforts, incentives and disincentives. Any proposal to decarbonise anything should be met by the question: how much carbon saved how quickly? And be closely followed by another: and with what co-benefits?

These questions will lead not only to the best nature-based and community-based solutions, but to the best technological ones as well. The point is that every potential investment should be made to answer the same questions, so we can compare them. Talking up innovative and imaginative solutions is OK, but only if they are supported by evidence-based reasoning that lets us pick the most cost-effective ways to avoid global catastrophe. Survival value, precaution and co-benefits should be the watchwords. The time is over for Fossil Fool governments that fail to protect us, our children and the biosphere. No to more foolishness! Happy All-Fools Day.