Tipping the Balance

The global climate pattern we know is a historically stable phenomenon that we take for granted. Huge land, water, and air masses interact with one another in a very finely balanced way to produce the climate patterns that we have counted on for so long. The key word is balance; with two elephants balanced on a scale, it only takes one mouse to start several tons of elephant moving. It is not at all far-fetched to think that we have caused the world climate to change.
 
All life forms on the planet are finely attuned to and dependent upon both the climate pattern and each other. Small changes in any element of these systems can bring about massive changes in the whole. Take the Great Oxygenation Event about 1.8 billion years ago. This is the point at which oxygen, produced by billions of tiny cyanobacteria, began to accumulate in the atmosphere. These bacteria appeared and began cranking out oxygen about 200 million years before that. Initially, all the oxygen they produced was captured by dissolved iron and organic matter; in other words, iron rusted and organic matter oxidized. Only when those sinks were saturated did oxygen gas begin to accumulate in the atmosphere. At that point these tiny bacteria enabled the evolution of all animal life!
 
These systems are very complex and it is almost impossible to be able to predict what all the consequences will be for tiny changes that we make in them.
 
Our civilization, a subset of the life system above, exhibits similar characteristics on a much-abbreviated time scale. As we have experienced it in the US, it has been so stable and reliable over the last 60 years that few of us appreciate how fragile and finely balanced it is. We take for granted that we can always find almost any food we can imagine delivered within a short distance of our home. In fact, it is the miraculous result of centuries of organization and mutual understanding. The weather, global political and economic stability, availability and delivery of all kinds of resources to the proper places at the right time, and the cooperation of millions of people all have to line up flawlessly in order for us to receive our goods. It is further abetted by the uneven distribution of world resources that guarantees that we in the privileged first world will be the last to experience shortages.
 
Third worlders are far more likely to be aware of the flaws and weaknesses in our global distribution system. A system which does not always work for them has resulted in their being resourceful and resilient in meeting their own needs. In relying on their local environs to meet their needs, they also have an appreciation of their utter dependence on the local life systems that support them. They could teach us a lot. I attribute my own insight to my tour in the Peace Corps in Latin America. In fact, I think that a tour of at least a month in a rural third world village should be required education for all us. The interaction can be a mutual benefit because third worlders are not always fully cognizant of the long-term consequences of their interactions with nature. We have already messed our nest, so we can help them avoid making the same mistakes. We can also do more to defend them from our more predatory corporate compatriots.
 
The point I am trying to make is that we in the US are the biggest contributors, historically and at present, to climate changing pollution, and, at the same time, arrogant enough to think that we can have our cake and eat it too: a classic combination resulting in inaction as we note the record benchmark of 400 ppm of carbon in the atmosphere.
 
Being able to live on our own or locally available resources within a supportive and organized community will go a long way toward providing us with the resilience we will need to weather the coming social, economic, and physical disruption that climate change is expected to create. As I have said before, empires come and go but villages endure. However, the magnitude of the trouble ahead can vary from moderately serious at the minimum to catastrophic and civilization ending, some think species ending (ours, that is), at the worst. Now, some of us will not be sorry to see the end of certain aspects of our civilization; but a total collapse is not something anybody in their right mind could wish for. Clearly, our only assurance for the continuation of any semblance of the civilization we have now is through collective political action at the global level to start reducing our carbon production in the next few years (yes, that soon!). Without that, we will be unable to moderate the storm that is coming however well prepared we may be, as a community, to meet it.
 
More on that in the next column.
 
Comments? terry@vashonloop.com