Less is more (reductions)
I happened to walk past the Denmark Climate Consortium “Global Platform – Multiple Solutions” in the main atrium directly after attending a session on indigenous people’s views on climate change and its solutions. On a screen in the area, video of industrial agriculture and solar panels on cookie-cutter houses played to futuristic music. I noted the stark difference in these perceived solutions to climate change – which were all developed in the industrialized nations – and those offered by the indigenous panelists, such as Patricia Cochran, an Inupiat Eskimo from Alaska, who mentioned that many of her people are switching back from snowmobiles to dogsleds, because dogs won’t try to cross thin ice, but snowmobiles will. That’s a great example of a low-carbon mitigation/adaptation project (“mitdaptation”? “adaptigation”?).
Why aren’t we discussing more low-tech projects like this? Why is it that industrialized countries seem to think the answer to climate change is industrialization? Shiny new gadgets often require large amounts of energy and mined metals to manufacture and transport, and once the life-cycle analysis of many “green” technologies and buildings is taken into consideration, a good chunk of the environmental benefit may be lost.
Maybe industrialized nations need capacity building from developing countries and indigenous peoples to help us make the transition to a lower-carbon society.
“Maybe industrialized nations need capacity building from developing countries and indigenous peoples to help us make the transition to a lower-carbon society”.
Right on. Great point! And for adaptation. Industrialized nations have lost their sense of place and while I think we can definitely assist the developing world, it’s not a one-way lesson. We need to learn from them about traditional coping practices as the Indigenous Peoples Movement have been telling us they have. Therefore when providing assistance we need to take those traditional practices into account and maybe researching our own environmental history to relearn some of the coping strategies we have lost through development and industrialization.
Here, here! Great post, Jen. Not only do shiny new gadgets require energy intensive and often environmentally destructive processes to produce, but they often involve financing of genocide in conflict areas, as we are seeing in Congo.
This brings to light the paradox of what a carbon-neutral society looks like: prior to industrialization, societies and cultures were carbon neutral. Now, however, we are trying to industrialize and engineer our way back to a carbon-neutral condition. I wonder what analysis has been done in the field of industrial ecology to see if that is even possible? Steven Pacala has his nine wedges, one of which is conservation. Without conservation, getting to 350 is not possible.
As Wendell Berry says, if there were a cheap, “green” source of energy, he hopes we never discover it, because we will use it up in our quest for resources.
I would love to know how Ms. Cochran’s view was received.
On that note, many people can do the same by growing their own food in their backyards: this could not only increase global food production, but greatly reduce emissions by drastically reducing transportation inputs.
Keep up the posts, I love reading this blog.
Ross, ’06