Thread by @SteB777

1) This is the fault of politicians and the media who for nearly 25 years have peddled the lie that it is possible to address the climate and ecological emergency, the sustainability crisis with business as usual.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

2) In the early to mid-1990s, and prior to this, there was much acknowledgement, and open discussion that shifting to a sustainable society/economy, meant a transformation of our societies/economies. A no growth economy, a shift away from private cars, lower consumption etc.

3) I can't say exactly when the shift away from this narrative/dialogue occurred everywhere, but in the UK I remember it started when New Labour got into power and then UK Chancellor Gordon Brown, started to talk about sustainability being slow and steady economic growth.

4) There was a complete bastardization of the term sustainability to mean things completely outside it's ecological concept embedded in the Sustainable Development concept, to mean economic growth that could be sustained indefinitely.

5) Along these lines Gordon Brown gave many speeches highlighting how Britain could produce economic growth by being a world leader in "green technology".

6) I've just done many word searches for references for this, and it is almost impossible to find hardly anything prior to 2009, even though this was the era of the internet. The links in older articles are broken, and the pages incomplete.
edie.net/news/0/Gordon-…

7) My attempt isn't to present Gordon Brown as the villain, because this was just part of not only UK government policy, but policy around the world, that attempted to bizarrely present economic growth, and addressing the climate and sustainability crisis in the same breath.

8) What this did, was to present all the language and the terms, which emerged out of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit in terms of of a neoliberal economic growth agenda. At the same time neoliberals started to deny that they were neoliberals, or that neoliberalism even existed.

9) I don't want to get too involved in the actual details, rather the broad big picture of how during this era the whole agenda was transformed, and the public convinced that pursuing all out economic growth was bizarrely consistent with addressing the climate crisis.

10) That somehow this period of high growth maintained in the rich developed nations, was entirely consistent with creating a sustainable society. It was a period of intense greenwash. Where diesel cars were promoted as being environmentally friendly.

11) It is during this era that China was turned into the industrial powerhouse it has become with the full backing and support of the developed countries, and became the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.

12) In short it was a mass delusion. A period of rapid economic growth where salaries grew and a large amount of people started to live high consumption lifestyles, with the bizarre belief that this was sustainable, and we were going to address the climate crisis with technology.

13) However, and this is the important thing, this rapid economic growth was primarily in the rich developing countries and the emerging super-power of China. I call it a mass delusion, because it should have been self-evident the global population couldn't catch up with this.

14) It was widely realised in the early 1990s and prior to this, that the whole world, the global population couldn't possibly catch up with the high consumption lifestyles of the richest countries as it would need many earths to sustain it.
overshootday.org/how-many-earth…

15) Whilst this knowledge has continued, it has slipped out of the mainstream, and the whole idea of overshoot and reducing consumption in the richest countries has been relegated to only environmentalist circles.

16) What this means in practise is that for several decades, those in the developed world, the rich countries have been misled to believe that their high consumption lifestyles could continue for ever, that this was sustainable and consistent with addressing the climate crisis.

17) This is why we've ended up with a population unwilling to even contemplate changing their lifestyle, because they've been encouraged to mindlessly pursue high consumption lifestyles, in the false belief this could continue indefinitely.

18) I honestly don't understand how politicians, the media and vested interests have got away with this. It should be crystal clear that the whole human population can't catch up with these lifestyles, and it be sustainable and consistent with addressing the climate crisis.

19) Yet the tacit premise of the current economic model, is that not only should every country in the world be trying to catch up, but that the richest countries in the world should desperately try to be even more prosperous, therefore massively increasing their consumption.

20) If that is not a mass delusion, then I don't know what is. The Earth is groaning under our current levels of consumption and GHG emissions, and the powerful, politicians, the media and vested interests are peddling this fantasy of this consumption massively increasing.

21) Part of the problem is that in the post-WW2 world, politicians have primarily run for office on the ticket of things are going to keep getting economically better, and that they personally, and their party, are the best option for achieving this.

22) No one, no politician, not the media or any other powerful figure wants to be honest and say you were all misled, we got it wrong, we were selling a lie, and this cannot continue.

23) Many are presenting environmentalists as killjoys, secret Marxists, Luddites, the enemy, for simply saying look, it is impossible to maintain this unsustainable pattern of continuous growth of everything, because you can't have infinite growth in a finite world.

24) However, what environmentalists are telling people is simply the truth, reality described by science. Many or most environmentalists would be quite happy with indefinite growth, if only it was physically possible, but it is not physically possible.
stockholmresilience.org/research/plane…

25) You see, continuing with present high consumption lifestyles, especially that of the richest 1%, 10% in the developed countries is not an option open to us. If we try, then the collapse it induces, will soon curtail those lifestyles.

26) As I've said, before, this is what change is coming whether you like it or not means. I was saying this in my Guardian commenting a long time back. The future is one of radical change. This is not a choice and option open to us. There is no option that avoids radical change.

27) We have a simple and stark choice. Either we radically change our system to a sustainable system, drastically cut GHG emissions immediately, or risk the complete collapse of our present system by the climate and biodiversity breakdown we will induce.

28) The huge danger is if we induce the collapse of our current system, by trying to carry on with business as usual, it will be an uncontrolled collapse, from which we will not recover for a very long time.

29) When the Roman Civilization and lifestyles collapsed in Britain and Europe, it took a 1000 years to get back to a similar level of organization/economic structure.

30) As I say, it is possible to avert this uncontrolled collapse, and all terrible things that will accompany it, by a structured re-organization of our system. Maintaining our current lifestyles is simply not possible.

31) Do not take my word for it and listen to this presentation by Professor Johan Rockstrom at COP26. Where he explains that to meet the Paris 1.5C target, the richest 1% will be required to reduce their emissions by 30 times for this target to be met.

32) For the richest 1% in our societies, to reduce their emissions by a factor of 30, would on it's own, mean a radical change to our current system. Yet far more change than this is necessary to make our system sustainable.

33) This is a crisis, not merely because of the impacts of our trying to carry on with business as usual, but because of the complete lack of knowledge in our societies about what sort of transformation is necessary to avert this looming catastrophe.

34) Especially among the powerful that control our societies, but also influential media commentators, and the general public, there is almost a complete lack of knowledge about ecological principle and sustainability.
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1455255…

35) I've already gone on for too long in this thread and yet I've barely touched on the essentials. So big is the gap between what people know, and what they need to know.

36) The reason I do not lay out a great big plan of what we must do, is that this is not how effective problem solving works. First we must have widespread acknowledgement that this problem exists, and then we must develop a widespread understanding of it.

37) Only when that acknowledgement of the situation and true understanding of the actual problem emerges, and everyone is focused on trying to solve this problem will the solutions emerge. They will emerge out of many minds focused on this problem. Now is not the time for plans.

38) Now is the time to acknowledge and understand the problem. Trying to come up with solutions and plans, when there is so little understanding of the problem and so much misunderstanding, will only produce bad plans that do not help us.

39) This is why I urge you to take no notice of individuals who claim to have fully worked out plans to address this crisis. At the moment we just need a broad understanding of the parameters of the problem.

@GeorgeMonbiot @ClimateHuman @KevinClimate @GretaThunberg @JKSteinberger @KateRaworth @ProfSteveKeen

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