Thread by @SteB777

1) There seems to be almost complete ignorance of sustainability and ecology in our modern culture.

When I say, our system will have to change, and those over-consuming will have to cut back, I get told, but people won't stand for that etc.

It's a bizarre response.

2) The laws of nature, the rules of ecology are just reality. They are like the laws of gravity. What you think about them makes no difference, and the laws of nature are not a democracy.

3) The climate and ecological emergency, means we've hit the sustainability buffers, the planetary boundaries. There is no option, which allows us to carry on as we are.

Of course we can try continuing as we are, but we are not going to get very far before we face collapse.

4) It's like walking towards the edge of a cliff. You can't just keep walking, because you chose to disregard the law of gravity. That is what trying to continue as we are will be like.

5) What unsustainable means, is what cannot be sustained. Then it all grinds to a halt and collapses. We have created a system based on economic growth by exploiting finite natural systems. Beyond a certain point, these life support systems, will no longer sustain our society.

6) Unfortunately, unlike the metaphorical cliff edge, you can't see where that ecological/sustainability cliff edge is, but we know for a fact it is there.

7) Scientific ecology studies the populations of none human animals. When a species exceeds the ecological carrying capacity of the ecological niche it exists in, it collapses.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/1443458356149096451

8) Humans are not exempt from these ecological principles. We've used technology to increase crop yields, used fossil fuels for cheap portable energy, but we have not discovered the ecological equivalent of perpetual motion.

9) All technology has allowed us to do, is to keep on destroying the niches of other life, to extend our unsustainable system. But this will not allow us to keep doing this, it's like just going further and further into ecological debt.

10) Almost everyone knows that if you get into financial debt you can't repay, that you can carry on a bit longer living this lifestyle, taking out more loans, selling your house etc, but this can only carry on a bit longer.

11) This is exactly what humanity, modern human society is doing with the climate and ecological emergence. They are acting like someone in unsustainable debt, taking out loans they cannot repay, just to put off the moment of facing up to reality a bit further into the future.

12) However, most people know if you do this with financial debt, you are just setting yourself up for a gigantic fall, where you will lose everything. Where if you'd addressed it earlier on, you could have cutback, to pay off the debt, and continued with a less extravagant life.

13) It really is the same with ecology. Humanity is living in huge ecological debt and by continuing as we are, we are just taking out bigger and bigger ecological debuts we'll never be able to pay off.

14) What I'm saying is radical change is coming whether we like it or not @GretaThunberg. Either we transform to a sustainable society and give up the extravagant destruction of our ecological life support systems or it will collapse our civilization. It really is that simple.

15) Ecology is massively complex, it is enormous chains of interaction, cause and effect, far too complex to model like climate alone. When non-human species populations collapse, they just disappear.

16) In less than 100 years, the Passenger Pigeon went from being the most numerous bird in the world, occurring in gigantic flocks that darkened the sky, to being totally extinct. Even now scientists struggle to explain the cause of the collapse.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger…

17) Ecological collapse doesn't happen like people imagine, or like it happens in the movies. Just how things used to be, is no longer there. Civilizations throughout history have collapsed suddenly. Historians and archaeologists struggle to explain why it happened.

18) Because technology has allowed us to go beyond typical species boundaries like feeding an ever growing population with bigger crop yields, we can imagine we can keep on doing this. No we can't.

19) As I say, humans have managed to carry on, by destroying more natural habitats, the niches of other species, and it is they who have disappeared. But this can't carry on forever, because we are cutting into what sustains us.

20) The whole idea that humans have a choice, and can carry on with their destructive lifestyle, just because a small proportion of the human population want to carry on over-consuming is bizarre. You can only delay the crunch point, but the fall will be much bigger.

21) Again, think of the person in debt, who takes out loans they can't repay, who then fraudulently gets more loans by lying about their assets, not that rare. The more they put it off, the bigger the fall. They will go to prison and lose everything.

22) With humanity, we will lose our organized economy and food supply system, which is the only way we can feed 8 billion people, and tragically there will be mass starvation.

23) However, this is no reason why we have to go down the route of civilization collapse, and mass starvation. We can live more modestly, sustainably, and avoid that consequence. But what we cannot do is carry on with business as usual.

24) That is what change is coming whether you like it or not means. Because we have left it so long to reduce our carbon emissions and to create a sustainable society, these changes have to be radical.

25) However, these radical changes necessary to avoid collapse are not because environmentalists are radical. It's because our leaders did not take the gradual action they promised in 1972 and 1992. After the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, incremental action was just about possible.

26) The whole problem is that our leaders didn't take the incremental action to slowly reduce greenhouse gas emissions after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, or the gradual transition to a sustainable society/economy.
un.org/en/conferences…

27) Don't blame environmentalists for pointing out the reality and how radical the changes to society have to be now. It really needn't have been like this if we had taken gradual action 30 years ago.

28) If you want to blame anyone, blame your governments, blame the media, vested interests, fossil fuel companies who misled the public that everything could carry on like it was, just with a bit more technology they were developing.

29) Again, environmentalists, sustainability experts, climate scientists, ecologists etc, are not the cause of the problem. They were telling people what needed to happen, 30-50 years ago or longer. It was your leaders that ignored this advice and gave false promises.

30) Now at COP26, our leaders have got themselves into a right mess by making two mutually incompatible promises.

A) That business as usual will continue.

B) That they will address the climate and ecological emergency.

31) However, these promises really are mutually contradictory. The only way we can address this crisis is by radically altering our system, which means business as usual can't continue.

32) This is not because environmentalists, sustainability experts, ecologists, want these changes. It's because it's the only way to balance the ecological books. Again, think of the financial analogy.

33) Imagine if a company, a family, a club or whatever, had been run by a crooked accountant who had kept it all running by cooking the books and taking out crooked loans that couldn't be repaid. There would have to be radical re-organization.

34) Either the entity in financial crisis could just limp on until they are declared bankrupt, and the legal authorities start examining what happened, or they can take radical action to try and avert that collapse.

35) This is exactly what has happened with our societies. The leaders and governments of our societies have been acting like crooked accountants, getting us more and more into ecological debt, and lying about the state of things.

36) It must be a huge shock to people to find we need to make radical changes to our societies to preserve our civilization, and this organized economy - our civilization is the only way of feeding such a huge population.

37) No we can't suddenly reduce our population, because even with a radical birth control strategy, it would be into next century before it had a significant effect i.e. far too late.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…

38) Unfortunately, it means those who are consuming most, are going to have to radically cut back on their extravagant lifestyles. The richest 1% of the population produce more emissions than the poorest 50%.
news.sky.com/story/wealthie…

39) I'm not saying this because environmentalists are all communists. It's just straight forward ecological book keeping. There is nothing left in the ecological bank to allow business as usual to continue. It is as simple as that.

40) Anyone saying people won't stand for these changes, has got it all wrong. Actually only a minority are really benefiting from business as usual, and anyway, it is not a choice, it is ecological reality.

@GeorgeMonbiot @GretaThunberg @GreenRupertRead @CarolineLucas @ClimateHuman @ClimateBen @ChrisGPackham @Luisamneubauer @vanessa_vash @JKSteinberger @KateRaworth @ProfSteveKeen @AyoCaesar @theAliceRoberts

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