The fifth story

Now back in Findhorn, I am letting all the sights and insights and new connections and friendships settle within me. I am left – not for the first time – to wonder at the capacity of our species to tell stories. Over the last week in Copenhagen, I have listened into countless versions of what this moment in history means and how we might navigate our way through it.

The stories seem to fall within four meta stories that, while there is overlap between them, represent distinct narratives. The first, associated most closely with the talks at the Bella Centre (the main UN conference venue), is that our political leaders can achieve ambitious targets for emissions reductions through the intelligent application of markets and technology. They just need to find the political will.

The second, predominant at the ClimaForum (the centre for NGO and civil society activities), is that the principal obstacle to the resolution of the climate change crisis is bad, intransigent, and/or reactionary negotiators representing imperialist and capitalist interests. Right the wrongs, ensure that the rich repay their ecological debts and put in place mechanisms that ensure equality of emission entitlements and all will be well.

Stories three and four are most commonly heard at the Bottom Meeting (the ecovillage-based event centre) in Christiania. Number three is that our political system is too corrupt and lethargic to deliver a deal, so we must create our own solutions through community mobilization. The fourth is that we are fundamentally in a moment of spiritual crisis that is so severe it will force us through the fires of purification into a place of higher consciousness and a new paradigm of seeing and experiencing the world that will be dramatically less energy-intensive.

From my perspective, there is something in all these stories. However, none convinces me sufficiently to make me a true believer in any. Do I believe that our political, economic and energy systems have the resilience or flexibility to move at the speed demanded by our climate scientists? I do not. Despite Kyoto and increased awareness of the issues, CO2 emissions globally have increased by 40 per cent since 1990. This morning’s paper carries an article that reports European utility company chiefs trying to dissuade EU leaders from committing to the higher proposed level of 30 per cent reductions in emissions by 2020 because they are ‘physically impossible to achieve’.

Do I believe that the government representatives negotiating the deal in the Bella Centre will not act because they are servants of their capitalist masters? They are a mixed bunch with more than a few corporatist stooges among them, but the majority look to me more like lost and confused souls recognizing the impossibility of i) squaring up the required speed and scale of contraction with the need to seek re-election in democratic elections; and ii) contracting output and consumption without crashing the economy and provoking mass unemployment.

Do I believe that all the community organizing in the world can address the need for global solutions to our global crises? Hardly.

Do I believe that spiritual awakening will be of much help if our ecosystems have collapsed in the CO2-rich hothouse conditions now predicted for the end of the current century? Whatever else humans may be, we are a biologically-based life-form; cut away the roots at the base of the planet’s ecosystems and food-chains and the dominant species will surely fall.

My inability to buy into any of the four main narratives in Copenhagen has left me feeling sidelined and a little alienated, despite the wonderful times I have had in the company of some of the most beautiful and powerful people on the planet.

There is a fifth story that has got little airtime in Copenhagen but that feels more persuasive to me than any of the others. It is that we have entered a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions whose devastating logic is inexorable.

This story recounts that the symptoms of climate change we are already seeing – the shrinking icecaps, retreating glaciers, acidifying oceans, more extreme weather events – are the product of gases emitted 30 years ago when almost no-one had any awareness of the link between CO2 and climate. Moreover, as a result of emissions already in the pipeline, we are already committed to a further 0.6 degree temperature increase. Further, in the process of industrialization, we have depleted our resource base on so many fronts – metals, soils, clean air, water, fish, the list is near endless – that there may well not be enough juice in the system to power a super-charged change of direction even if we could find the political will to embark on it.

This fifth story does not entirely negate any of the others, but adds an element of realism to each. For sure, we need to put all the pressure we can on our representatives to embrace ‘prosperity without growth’, to repay the ecological debt of the rich and to restructure our energy grids. But let us also acknowledge that the inertia within our systems and the advanced levels of resource depletion (as well as the resistance of citizens to change) limit their scope for action.

For sure, increasing the resilience of our communities and reducing their dependence on fossil fuels will make them better places to live as we head down the far side of the energy descent curve. But let us not imagine that this will have a major impact in helping us avoid tipping points governing the Earth’s climate systems.

For sure, let us use whatever spiritual tools we have developed to imagine new ways of being on this beautiful planet that require far less consumption and waste. But let us not deny that we are part of the web of life and that as it unravels, we will not escape the dire consequences.

The fifth story introduces an element of restraint – and of sadness. It declares that climate change is not a problem that we can solve but a predicament to be dealt with in the way that has the least devastating consequences possible. It insists that we have already entered into a long descent for our global civilization in which there will be death and starvation and millions of environmental refugees – in fact, that all these things are already happening and will accelerate. It recognizes the sadness that those who have had least impact on the climate are those who are paying the highest cost and that for the moment at least, there probably is not very much we can do about it.

In her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross describes the five stages of grief as denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. My experience of Copenhagen is that most continue to be stuck at stages two and three.

Acceptance does not need to be the path of resignation and defeatism. There can also be beauty and dignity in decline. But it does require us to grow up, to stop looking for easy scapegoats and facile solutions and to acknowledge that, at least in the industrialized world, we are all compromised by and contributors to the unholy mess we find ourselves in. This step may help us move beyond anger to sober reflection and to prepare ourselves and our societies for a future in which our capacity for generosity and compassion will be tested to the limit.

It all began with a deep and moving morning session down at the Bottom Meeting in Christiania involving around a dozen leaders of various faith groups taking turns to pray, sing, meditate and chant their blessings of support to our political leaders. Then, in comes the human whirlwind that is Vandana Shiva, defiant, dismissive of the political process at the Bella Centre: “The more you rape the world, the more you should be considered underdeveloped!” She speaks of her new book, Soil Not Oil.

This is followed by the daily burial. So far, oil, the growth economy and the military-industrial complex have been buried in solemn ceremonies. Today, it was the turn of the television.

On to the march and a great outpouring of fun, colour, music and dance several miles long. Some great banner slogans:

NO PLANET B

TIBETAN YAKS DEMAND CLIMATE JUSTICE (paraded by protesters dressed up in yak costumes)

DON’T PUT YOUR MATE ON A PLATE (the vegan contingent).

Finally, on to an evening at the Danish Film Institute. Yann Artus-Bertrand and a team of French film-makers are putting on a simply scintillating programme for the duration of the talks. Guests include Al Gore, Salif Keita, Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the International Panel on Climate Change and, tonight, Wangari Mathai, following a showing of the film of her life, Taking Root.

The sheer courage and charisma of this woman cannot be overstated. Given the increasingly common televised images of conflicts and violence on demonstrations, it is not unreasonable to embark on one such as that here in Copenhagen with a certain amount of apprehension. Yet, here before us stands a woman who has repeatedly stood nose to nose with the vicious security services in Kenya – and been beaten into a coma as a result – and who has still come back for more, singing and dancing out her defiance. She is currently looking for Northern partners for her experiential earth restoration and educational activities in Kenya and Congo……..and can shortly expect a call from Findhorn College.

More wonderfully inspiring movies – 6,000 Others is an hour of short interviews with people from around the world speaking about how climate change is already impacting them that goes straight to the heart. Then, Food Inc., including two more of my heroes – US food writer Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin who runs Polyface Farm in Virginia. (Those who know me will forgive yet another plug for the best book I have read in the last few years – Michael Pollan’s The Omnivores Dilemma from which Joel emerges as public hero number one.)

One special pleasure in this wonderful day has been to hear so many languages – Arabic, Finnish, Estonian, Danish, kiSwahili, Hebrew and Urdu at the meeting of spiritual leaders and countless others including Bengali, Inuit, Spanish, French, Hindi and Chinese during the showing of 6,000 others. Having English as a common language certainly serves a purpose. However, the proud linguistic diversity of the human family added hugely to the power and depth of the day’s experience. Unity in diversity is the key.

I feel a silent, slow motion scream emerge within me. All this passion and righteous anger from the floor of the hall. All the wrongs crying out to be righted. And we are at the wheel of a vehicle that does not do reverse – flying blind.

There it is again at the entry to the Bella Centre, where the UN climate change talks are being held. Once in, the halls and corridors spread out before you, with row upon row of exhibition stands representing causes, NGOs and governments.

Thankfully, I learned my lesson from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Jo'burg a few years back when I came away from a similar orgy of printed information with bulging bags full of resources, most of which have remained unread ever since. This time, more restrained, I gathered new reading materials that will take me as little as three weeks or so to get through.

A refreshing and unexpected aspect of the event is how many young people have managed to get accredited for the conference centre. The gangs of young folk from campaign organisations like 350 and Aavaz, discussing strategy and making banners, are the most colourful and encouraging thing happening in the place.

I attended two press conferences during the morning. In one, the 350 campaign had pulled together elders from many of the world’s main spiritual traditions in a moving plea for the world’s leaders to come to their senses. On December 11–13, tens of thousands of people of all faiths will join the World Wants a Real Deal weekend of action organized by 350, the World Council of Churches and the TckTckTck campaign. Wherever you are join them, or start a vigil yourself. With our political leaders apparently looking the other way, seeking to effect radical transformation in consciousness is one of the few tools left to us.

The other press conference was a WWF affair, a strong appeal to EU environment ministers meeting this weekend in advance of the critical last week of the Copenhagen conference. The language of the speakers was authoritative, firmly grounded in the science, yet somewhat desperate. It is clear that the 20 per cent cut in emissions by 2020 that the EU has committed itself to, (even the 30 per cent cut it is prepared to extend to if others take similar steps) is just not enough in the light of the latest science. Moreover, say the WWF speakers, the EU team has been busy with smoke and mirrors, disguising the fact that most of the cuts will be achieved not by changing behaviour or technology in Europe but by the purchase of offsets for activities elsewhere in the world.

There are more underhand goings on as news of a clandestine parallel negotiating process is leaked to the press. A small group of countries, including Denmark, the US and you guessed it, the good old UK, is revealed as having been working on an alternative draft text to the public one that the other delegations are discussing. The Danish Text, as it is being called, sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations, giving a more prominent role to the World Bank, and gives the richer nations long term rights to double the emissions rights of the poorer countries.

In truth, this cannot be described as such a huge surprise. Without the US, there can be no credible deal. And without the approval of Congress, Obama cannot sign any treaty into force. The hostility of a Congress elected on corporate funding to both the UN and sharp cuts in energy use are well known. The generous interpretation is that the diplomats were simply doing what needed to be done to keep all the main players in the game. Nonetheless, it is a huge and very public insult to the rest of the global community. Perhaps critically, it undermines confidence in the impartiality of the Danes who are hosting and chairing the event.

Towards the end of every day, a Fossil of the Day prize is awarded. Today, the not so lucky winners were Canada, for activities incompatible with responsible planet care. The wonderful Greenpeace photo exhibition I went to this evening included stark images from around the world, including devastation caused by the mining of tar sands in Canada, climate change impacts that are already being felt. The arts have incomparable power to bring home new and shocking insights.