Re: [CDR] Re: [geo] A Critical Examination of Geoengineering. Economic and Technological Rationality in Social Context

[Andrew Revkin]

On Peter's wise input, one other thought.

In ecosystems, there's some evidence that a lack of true "organization" -
meaning coordination, consistency - appears to be a source of resilience.
As Thomas Elmqvist captured as "response diversity"

in a remarkable 2003 paper. I cited it a couple of times in the context of
intense deep divisions over climate change solutions (sift to Elmqvist
mention here

).

Applied to human systems, the notion would be that our variegated responses
to environmental stresses - both at individual (
http://culturalcognition.net ) and societal levels (the difference
between China's
climate/energy planning and ours and Europe's etc.
)
- are adaptive in the best evolutionary sense. (There's only been one peer
reviewed paper
assessing
the social-resilience equivalent so far.)

The result looks disorderly and is full of tensions, but it's totally human
and got us through our mess.. so far..  The alternative - coordinated
planetary 'management' - feels necessary but seems implicitly un-human.


Of course we are entering what feels like uncharted terrain given how much
our environmental potency is outstripping our capacity to understand its
implications on time scales we're not set up to consider fully.. But that's
also the human way, it seems. .



On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 1:55 AM, Charles Greene  wrote:

> Thank you for your insightful and thought-provoking comments Peter about
> the evolution of human organizations.
>
> On Jan 21, 2018, at 1:12 AM, Peter Eisenberger <
> peter.eisenber...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For what it is worth here is my 2 cts
>
> History is clear that human organizations have evolved much like other
> living systems. That evolution has had a consistent direction -increased
> social organziations covering ever larger populations.(eg hunter gatherer
> groups, villages
> cities , city states , nation states ) . This occurred because it made us
> more fit - face the cahllenges of the time.   The climate change issue is
> amongst other things a recognition of the global impact of our collective
> impacts and that no nation state can provide on their own a solution to the
> challenges we face. Thus there will be over time an inevitable
> globalization of our human systems. Looking back a previous organizations
> with disdain rather than part of our evolutionary history makes no logical
> sense but ignoring the need to change and that change will provide a better
> future is equally misguided .
>
> In my view human knowledge will provide technology to address the
> challenges we face and we will reorganize ourselves over time to be able to
> implement them effectively just as we have in the past reorgnized ourselves
> to address the challenges we faced.
> My view is that this evolutionary path is inevitable because it will make
> us more fit but what is not inevitable , as is the casse in the rest of
> nature , is how much destruction will occur before we change . That in my
> opinion in the challenge to all of us and I truly hope we are up to it.
>
> Finally to be clear whether that global organziation evolves into large
> global  bureaucracies or that stage is a transient organiztion giving way
> to a technology enabled cloud connected bottom up organizations is yet to
> be determined.
>
> On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 1:27 AM, Andrew Lockley 
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for the support, but I don't fully agree with the reasoning. I've
>> encountered this thinking a great deal in the environmental movement, and
>> it's not motivated by publication incentives.
>>
>> There's a category of people, often found cosseted inside institutions of
>> various kinds, for whom "more government" is the answer to absolutely
>> everything. This approach is often mocked as "watermelon politics" - red
>> through and through, with a thin layer of green on the outside.
>>
>> Unfortunately, such people find it disproportionately easy to progress in
>> institutions of great intellectual influence: academia, state media, public
>> services, and government. This is despite the fact that their life
>> experiences and values run counter to the undeniable realities lived by the
>> vast majority of the population, who typically view the state as
>> inefficient, bordering on Kafkaesque (hence the author's popularity).
>>
>> A
>>
>> On 21 Jan 2018 01:13, "Peter Flynn"  wrote:
>>
>>> Andrew,
>>>
>>>
>>> Thank you for saying this, and saying it very well. I think that the
>>> abstract is just nonsense: claptrap, as you say. I 

Re: [CDR] Re: [geo] A Critical Examination of Geoengineering. Economic and Technological Rationality in Social Context

[Charles Greene]

Thank you for your insightful and thought-provoking comments Peter about the 
evolution of human organizations.

> On Jan 21, 2018, at 1:12 AM, Peter Eisenberger  
> wrote:
> 
> For what it is worth here is my 2 cts 
> 
> History is clear that human organizations have evolved much like other living 
> systems. That evolution has had a consistent direction -increased social 
> organziations covering ever larger populations.(eg hunter gatherer groups, 
> villages 
> cities , city states , nation states ) . This occurred because it made us 
> more fit - face the cahllenges of the time.   The climate change issue is 
> amongst other things a recognition of the global impact of our collective 
> impacts and that no nation state can provide on their own a solution to the 
> challenges we face. Thus there will be over time an inevitable globalization 
> of our human systems. Looking back a previous organizations with disdain 
> rather than part of our evolutionary history makes no logical sense but 
> ignoring the need to change and that change will provide a better future is 
> equally misguided . 
> 
> In my view human knowledge will provide technology to address the challenges 
> we face and we will reorganize ourselves over time to be able to implement 
> them effectively just as we have in the past reorgnized ourselves to address 
> the challenges we faced.
> My view is that this evolutionary path is inevitable because it will make us 
> more fit but what is not inevitable , as is the casse in the rest of nature , 
> is how much destruction will occur before we change . That in my opinion in 
> the challenge to all of us and I truly hope we are up to it. 
> 
> Finally to be clear whether that global organziation evolves into large 
> global  bureaucracies or that stage is a transient organiztion giving way to 
> a technology enabled cloud connected bottom up organizations is yet to be 
> determined. 
> 
> On Sun, Jan 21, 2018 at 1:27 AM, Andrew Lockley  > wrote:
> Thanks for the support, but I don't fully agree with the reasoning. I've 
> encountered this thinking a great deal in the environmental movement, and 
> it's not motivated by publication incentives.
> 
> There's a category of people, often found cosseted inside institutions of 
> various kinds, for whom "more government" is the answer to absolutely 
> everything. This approach is often mocked as "watermelon politics" - red 
> through and through, with a thin layer of green on the outside.
> 
> Unfortunately, such people find it disproportionately easy to progress in 
> institutions of great intellectual influence: academia, state media, public 
> services, and government. This is despite the fact that their life 
> experiences and values run counter to the undeniable realities lived by the 
> vast majority of the population, who typically view the state as inefficient, 
> bordering on Kafkaesque (hence the author's popularity).  
> 
> A 
> 
> On 21 Jan 2018 01:13, "Peter Flynn"  > wrote:
> Andrew,
> 
>  
> Thank you for saying this, and saying it very well. I think that the abstract 
> is just nonsense: claptrap, as you say. I put this in the academic realm of 
> “I need to publish”, and even better, “if I say stupid stuff I’ll get lots of 
> citations from the refutation”.
> 
>  
> I am reminded of the phrase that perfect is the enemy of the good. Linking 
> dealing with the risk of climate change to reversing capitalism would doom 
> any effective effort. Gunderson et al. can rest assured that any real action 
> will take place within the various economies as they exist and evolve, 
> slowly; thinking that climate change is the Trojan Horse that will overturn 
> existing choices about economies is both tedious and damaging nonsense.
> 
>  
> We have a serious problem to deal with, and distractions like this reduce 
> rather than enhance the ability to deal with it. I think all will agree that 
> perfection would be an instantaneous decarbonization that didn’t ruin 
> economies. But perfect won’t happen; we search for the good, the practical. 
> My personal guess is that a mix of decarbonization and geoengineering is the 
> likely future scenario, given the difficulty of mounting the will to 
> decarbonize quickly, in both capitalist and planned economies. I look at 
> catalytic converters added to cars: society found the will to spend more for 
> an existing technology to deal with an emission, but only in some regions of 
> the world, and only when the problem was evident and severe.
> 
>  
> There is a broad range of thinking on the challenge of climate change. Trying 
> to end capitalism, or perhaps more accurately regulated market economies, is 
> beyond the improbability of rapid decarbonization.
> 
>  
> Thanks again for calling this out.
> 
>  
> Peter
> 
>  
> Peter Flynn, P. Eng., Ph. D.
> 
>