Climate Change Disconnect #3

The talks in Copenhagen are drawing to an uncomfortable close today.
The morning radio (Canada's wonderful CBC, in my case) was full of assessments and prognostications, few even remotely favorable.
I did hear what amounted to an addendum to Wed.'s post on the two Disconnects by way of an interview with Quebec journalist Cleo Paskal. Her new book, Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map, says it all. The coming disruptions will change the world as we know it.
Climate Change Disconnect #3: thinking that ecology is some sort of isolated subject, without a single tendril connecting it to any other human realm.
As long as we continue to think that nature is "out there" somewhere over the rainbow (and something tells me we won't be this stupid too much longer), then the repercussions to the way we do business, rear and teach our children, feed ourselves, fight disease, and just try to get along will be be enormous.
Ms. Paskal or someone else during this morning's discussion (hey, I hadn't had my tea yet) mentioned climate refugees. To take one recent and dramatic (but relatively small) example: Hurricane Katrina. The people displaced from that event alone experienced great hardship and caused social disruption that police and social services were ill-equipped to handle. It all cost $100 billion. One event. In one of the richest countries on Earth.
Nature (Hurricane) -> human displacement -> econo-politico-social chaos.
Connect the dots, world leaders. There's plenty outside the high palace walls that may eventually affect you!

Disconnects in Copenhagen Talks

I admit I have not been doggedly following the Climate Conference in Copenhagen, choosing instead to dip in now and then, hoping to pore over the conclusions on the 19th, or so, after it all ends.
What seems to be grabbing headlines this week is the nightmare in logistics - too many concerned lining up for too few conference-center seats - and the resulting riots and arrests. (I imagine only NGOs, comprised of brave and arrestable young folk, are those being dragged into paddy wagons by the Danish police, not governmental delegates.)
I was dismayed this morning to see that the head of the Conference, Danish Environment Minister, Connie Hedegaard, resigned her post (why?), and was replaced by Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen. I know little about him except his rightwing views. That doesn't bode well in these talks, where rightwing, bottom-line policies seem to hold sway.
Climate Change Disconnect # 1: when trying to draft an international CO2-reduction agreement, the emphasis remains stubbornly fixed on economics over ecology.
Whether the whiners are climate change activists or deniers, their main contention sounds like a warped mantra: how much is this going to COST?
Too many politicians are in thrall to Big Business and dare not make a false move lest they upset the people pulling the strings. Even Obama has been talking out of both sides of his mouth: delivering soothing lines about our grandchildren's future with one breath, and uttering noncommittal sound bites with another.
Not too surprisingly, ecology gets forgotten - the oh-so-fragile web of life affected by rising temperatures and other physical phenomena. In some cases it's culpable ignorance or outright defiance. In others, it's a plain lack of scientific literacy (something Obama, to his credit, has addressed - if only in a R&D context.)
The NY Times Dot Earth blogger, Andrew Revkin, today points out
Climate Change Disconnect #2: the absence of any mention of overpopulation.
It's easy to blame cars and other CO2 emitters with the blanket of heat-trapping gas around the globe. But how do you suppose it got quite so out of hand? There are no evil elves belching smog from the center of the Earth. The number of human beings on the planet correlates with the the number of cars, factories, intensive farming operations, and coal-fired power plants. The best way to minimize the growth of problem areas is to minimize the need for them in the first place - by limiting population growth.
The first Disconnect hits us in the wallet. The second Disconnect hits us where we live. Two enormous taboos clutter the road to a sustainable future.

The Body Electric

Today, a significant departure from recent themes, but still in keeping with the general one of connection.
I was reading a newspaper this morning - well, I glanced at the columns devoted to the climate change summit in Copenhagen going on this week. To be honest, I really wanted to read, to be informed (a weakness as a well as a strength), but it all seemed to blur.
So my eye strayed to an ad on the same page. It was about gift giving - this being the year's annual (global) summit on materialism, of course - specifically, the ever-popular electronic gift, the "gadget." (The very word suggests nonsense, frivolity, the unneeded.) So seductive, ubiquitous and gradually encroaching has been the gadget plague that we have barely realized it. Jokes aside about "crackberries" and the teenager who cannot leave her cellphone down for more than a minute without reaching for it like some kind of lifeline: toys (entertainment) and tools (useful, even essential items) are now indistinct in our collective consciousness.
Furthermore, these things don't run on air and a prayer. Does anyone stop to think of how many units of energy each toy-tool requires per day, week, year? And how millions of other little vampires like it are plugged into wall outlets around the world every day, sucking the electricity that's created by tumbling water, steam, burning coal, or nuclear reactions?
Cars, planes, crops, and the poor cows we enslave for their meat, milk, and hides are blamed for the ever-thickening blanket of CO2 surrounding the planet (and rightly so). But don't forget the little things. They sure do add up to pack a punch!