I also don’t get some of his points. It is okay to buy an energy efficient washer, but not a “flat screen” TV, which, despite what he thinks, can use a lot less energy than an old fashioned CRT model. But, it’s not okay to buy a dryer, because “that’s the sun’s job.” These are very arbitrary and subjective choices.

And, what does he exactly mean by “community?” I constantly see “community” put up as some panacea to our GW and peak oil problems. But, here, it is not well defined. McKibben puts up public transit, farmer’s markets, and “co-housing” as examples of what this “community” will allow us to do. But, I already do all three within the confines of an “advanced consumer society” that apparently makes these things difficult. It is all so hand-wavy.

Real solutions require adapting current systems as best we can in an attempt to increase efficiency and mitigate against the unknown effects of GW and PO on the vital services provided by society such as food, shelter, water, sanitation, etc. For example, farmer’s markets are great, but they aren’t perfect. Some food can’t be grown locally and even if it could, it could still be more energy efficient to grow it elsewhere and ship it in. And, frankly, we’ll all starve if we are forced to just eat what can be grown locally. Why not work to increase farmer’s markets, but also adapt existing grocery stores to provide more local foods and work on reducing the energy requirements of their supply chains? And, your cause isn’t helped by implying that if you aren’t eating from farmer’s markets, then you somehow aren’t eating “real food” and don’t know what it tastes like. That’s just insulting and stupid. In the real world, people buy from both places and if done right, the food from a grocery store is just as real and tasty as stuff from a farmer’s market.

The near term mitigation strategy, as McKibben points out, is conservation of energy. But, the specific ways we accomplish conservation depend on specific circumstances. It just really irritates me when articles like this one obscure that point by making broad over generalizations and get hung up on moralizing about how we “should” or “must” change the way we live our lives. Yes, we must change, we are changing, and suggestions for how are welcome, but stop telling me what I must do. I’ll decide what is most appropriate for my situation and together we’ll decide what is best for our communities, towns, schools, businesses, etc. This dictatorship of environmental dogma that I sometimes see is counterproductive. There isn’t One True Way to tackle GW and Peak Oil, there many that are highly dependent on specific, local circumstances.

Ultimately, though, if you get beyond the annoying self-righteous tone and the unrealistic, perhaps naive, portrait of global activism saving the day, there are some good take-home points:

1. Conserve, conserve, conserve! However you can, wherever you can. Not only does this help in mitigating global warming and peak oil consequences, it can save you money. And, who doesn’t need to save money in a recession?

2. Think about the consequences of your actions, both large and small. Consume smartly when you have to consume at all. Buy the energy efficient devices when you need to replace what you have and after you have exhausted the possibility of acquiring used. Understand where your food comes from, where your electricity comes from, your gasoline, etc. How does your pattern of consumption fit into the overall big picture?

3. Be politically active. Change won’t happen without world governments getting on board and that probably won’t happen without a strong grassroots movement pushing for it.

4. Spread the word. Tackling this problem requires efforts by everyone and every entity in society, from individuals to governments. I still find today that far too many people who are otherwise educated don’t understand the severity of the issue, but will listen intently to someone who is willing to explain it to them without moralizing about it.

From the article:

As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world’s most prominent climate scientists, is preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.

The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem.

We can’t.

We have failed to meet nature’s deadline. In the next few years, this world will experience progressively more ominous and destabilizing changes. These will happen either incrementally — or in sudden, abrupt jumps.

Under either scenario, it seems inevitable that we will soon be confronted by water shortages, crop failures, increasing damages from extreme weather events, collapsing infrastructures, and, potentially, breakdowns in the democratic process itself.

From the article:

The document (with a title printed in a pale gray suitable for something nonexistent) was intended as a template for what the United Nations hopes will, by Friday night, be a two-year road map for talks leading to a meaningful update to the faltering 1992 climate treaty, the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

But late Tuesday, Bali time, the United States bluntly refused to consider language — even in the non-binding preamble — that included any specific numbers for how much overall emissions from wealthy countries would need to be cut to have a chance of avoiding the worst climate dangers.

For over seven years now, the United States has actively undermined any chance for our civilization to collectively respond to the dire threats posed by global warming. And, despite soothing words from the administration about how they take climate change seriously, their actions demonstrate that they still have not joined the rest of us in the “reality-based community”.

I know my family and friends are getting tired of me saying this, but we are facing multiple, simultaneous, deadly threats to our civilization and species. If global emissions are not brought down quickly and drastically, global warming will continue to accelerate with potentially catastrophic consequences.

At the same time, we are facing the imminent peaking of world oil and natural gas production. But, as these fossil fuels dwindle, the only readily available, relatively abundant substitute will be coal. But, burning coal is a primary cause of global warming and we would only make it worse by going that route. And, I haven’t even mentioned the financial collapse that seems to be occurring in the U.S. right now which might undercut our ability to raise capital and make it nearly impossible to marshall the resources necessary to deal with these problems.

My point is that our problems are tremendous. It may even be too late to fix them or even substantially mitigate their consequences thanks to all the time we have wasted for decades, but especially during this last decade. However, it is worth trying to avoid catastrophe and the rest of the world seems to be forming a unified front to tackle these issues, while the U.S. steadfastly refuses to cooperate.

It looks like we don’t have any chance of seeing a change in U.S. policy until the next administration comes into office. I’m very worried that by the time our national priorities change, it will be too little, too late.

From the article:

How dire is the climate situation? Consider what Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the United Nations’ prestigious Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said last month: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Pachauri has the distinction, or misfortune, of being both an engineer and an economist, two professions not known for overheated rhetoric.

In fact, far from being an alarmist, Pachauri was specifically chosen as IPCC chair in 2002 after the Bush administration waged a successful campaign to have him replace the outspoken Dr. Robert Watson, who was opposed by fossil fuel companies like ExxonMobil. So why is a normally low-key scientist getting more desperate in his efforts to spur the planet to action?

Part of the answer is the most recent IPCC assessment report. For the first time in six years, more than 2,000 of the world’s top scientists reviewed and synthesized all of the scientific knowledge about global warming. The Fourth Assessment Report makes clear that the accelerating emissions of human-generated heat-trapping gases has brought the planet close to crossing a threshold that will lead to irreversible catastrophe. Yet like Cassandra’s warning about the Trojan horse, the IPCC report has fallen on deaf ears, especially those of conservative politicians, even as its findings are the most grave to date.

The article goes on to describe the scary realities we will face if action isn’t taken in the next few years to drastically reduce our emissions.

I don’t think many people, Americans especially, really understand the level of climate chaos we are facing and the drastic changes in lifestyle that will be required just for the survival of our own civilization, let alone the survival of the thousands of other species sharing space with us on this planet. The changes only get more drastic the longer we wait to address the problem.

What these reports don’t often consider, though, are the consequences of the fossil fuel depletion that we may now be witnessing. Today, there is practically no political will in Washington to do anything serious about climate change. The IPCC says we need to make drastic emission cuts before 2012. 2011-2012 is also the date range that many peak oil models are converging on. So, after that time (if not sooner), our available fossil fuel supplies will only decrease, year after year. at least for oil. Unfortunately, if the status quo continues, not only will we have passed the point of no return on climate change by then, but if we are short on oil, we’ll have to resort to massive increases in the use of coal to keep civilization running. That would basically guarantee that the planet is uninhabitable by the end of the century.

I get that politicians don’t want to talk about sacrifice or significant lifestyle changes. I understand that people don’t like hearing that they may need to give up the “American” lifestyle in many significant ways. But, the sacrifices that will have to be made in 2012 will be orders of magnitude worse than those we make now, which are already orders of magnitude worse than the sacrifices we would have had to make if we paid attention decades ago.

I have grown up hearing stories about the so-called, “Greatest Generation”, while people all around me and in the media constantly bemoaned the supposed apathy of the current younger generations. Well, the climate/energy crisis is our generation’s great challenge. Again, we sit at a precipitous moment in history. As Al Gore elegantly put it in his Nobel acceptance speech:

The future is knocking at our door right now. Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: “What were you thinking; why didn’t you act?”

Or they will ask instead: “How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?”

We have everything we need to get started, save perhaps political will, but political will is a renewable resource.

So let us renew it, and say together: “We have a purpose. We are many. For this purpose we will rise, and we will act.”

The time for debate is over. The time for action is now. I implore you to join 1Sky or another climate action group and become part of, if not the solution, than the best chance we have.