Stephen Barlow Profile picture
Jun 3, 2022 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
People often ask what I mean by system change re: the climate and ecological crisis. It is very simple. I mean a full shift to a truly sustainable society/economy. This means changing more or less every convention of our modern society.
Sustainable means what it says. A society and economy in balance with the ecological carrying capacity of the Earth. Essentially that means no unsustainable trends, where our impact on the natural systems of the world is growing.
You see, in ecological terms, if there is a component, where it's impact on natural systems is constantly growing. Eventually it will have catastrophic effects, impacting also on the component driving it i.e. human society.
Lots of natural components have growing impacts. Let's say an exploding population of rodents. But this is eventually counteracted, by a sudden fall in the population of that rodent. Often, it produces a cycle or rise and fall.
Humans appear to have got out of this cycle and effect, by using innovation to get around what would cause that contraction in that growth. For instance, the use of fertilisers and pesticides.
But this is at the cost of destroying other ecosystem components and biodiversity, which in a long loop, will eventually have serious impacts on us, that we can't innovate our way out of.
There is no simple recipe for creating a sustainable society economy. However, if we don't want our population, our civilization, our society and economy to crash, it is essential.
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More from @SteB777

Nov 30
"Water shortages could derail UK’s net zero plans, study finds"

What this demonstrates is a complete lack of joined up thinking. Climate and other government environmental planning, is incoherent and unrealistic. This is not confined to the UK.

This incoherence and unrealistic planning, demonstrating a lack of joined up thinking (making all government planning coherent), seems to result from not taking the climate and ecological crisis seriously. Putting economic growth first, even though there will be huge economic impacts.

Overall, things like Net Zero, seem more like a list ticking exercise, so politicians can pretend they have done their duty, whilst doing very little to nothing.

As I keep trying to get across, politicians and economists, have a totally unrealistic grasp of dealing with near term, climate and ecological impacts, which are going to be far more severe than envisaged.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
1/🧵
It's not exactly clear, what is going on here. Are mainstream politicians just plain ignorant and in denial? This explanation is not really credible, because there are informed and honest scientists, who will give realistic evaluations if asked.

The #NationalEmergencyBriefing on 27 November, gave a realistic assessment, by expert scientists and planners, on the situation we face, but major mainstream politicians and economists, just ignored it, as they always do.

When I say it's not clear what is going on, I mean the actual thinking of senior government figures, and most mainstream, senior politicians. The mainstream media and senior journalists are not fit for purpose, in that they refuse to challenge the senior figures in the government, to explain their thinking.
nebriefing.org
2/
There are a number of scenarios about what is going on. That senior politicians and economists, do have a coherent view of the situation, which is clearly unrealistic, to the point of being delusional. What I mean by this, is that they are guided by misinformed and scientific ignorant, economists, or powerful vested interests, who insist the climate and ecological threat is greatly overstated.

Maybe they are just massively ignorant, and reckless, and are just burying their heads in the sand. As I say, it is impossible to know, and until they face serious scrutiny, to uncover their knowledge, who is briefing them, there is not much point speculating, as we are just guessing.

However, what we can be absolutely certain of, is that government planning, all governments, not just this one, are ignorant, reckless, dangerous and irrational. They are not true leaders, they are the representatives of vested interests, just pretending to be in control.

They are pursuing AI, and totally unrealistic negative emissions technology, NETs, which as the first report says, will create massive future water shortages. The question is why? Is it, that governments are actually powerless to stand up to oligarch/billionaires, and big corporations, or are they are just plain corrupt, and totally indifferent to the public interest and safety?
3/
Read 4 tweets
Nov 29
"Revealed: Europe’s water reserves drying up due to climate breakdown"

Future climate related water shortages, are one of the near future challenges we face. Yet, our leadership, is remarkably indifferent to these threats.

However, the big challenge, is how these near future threats interact. You can without much difficulty, see how water shortages, combined with agricultural yield, and how water shortages could cripple industry, and the economy.

Nevertheless, these interactions are far too simplistic, because there are a myriad way, near future climate impacts, are going to interact, and most have never even been thought of.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
1/🧵
As I have pointed out with regard to the danger of climate induced civilization collapse, no one, no field of science, no institution, has ever systematically studied the resilience of our societies, and our civilization, to climate and ecological impacts.

Some well known scientists, who have dismissed the possibility of civilization collapse, as unscientific, because there are no scientific papers supporting this concern, are not being scientific. Because there has never been scientific research into this, so of course there are no papers supporting a scenario, that has never been examined. Absence of evidence, is not evidence of absence.

Don't take my word for it, that this has never been studied, read the paper linked to.

I have always been very unsettled, for well over 40 years, why no one has been looking into this.

As a graduate in ecology, I realize the practical difficulties. When you look at interactions on this scale, the complexity is overwhelming, and well beyond anything else, ever successfully modelled.

However, even if the conclusion of such a well funded study, was that it was far too complex to investigate, using any known scientific methodology, it would be useful, if only to tell us that we were playing with fire, and flying blind.

I don't know, how conscious scientists/governments have been about the failure to study this. Is it a case of they just don't want to know, because they already know this, because they know the conclusions would be very frightening. Or is it some sort of unconscious denial?

You could only really establish this, if some sort of parliamentary committee investigated this, and asked tough questions of key politicians and scientists, to find out why such a vitally important topic, has never been investigated.
pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…
2/
The reason I am wary of starting to explain the level of interaction, I'm talking about. Is that just to illustrate the problem with examples, would be highly misleading. In that it would give the false impression, that this is what the future danger is, whereas in reality, it is this, and far, far more.

We can see this with future water shortages. Yes, you can illustrate it with people's taps running dry, the immediate and direct impacts. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, as water is so central, to so many everyday things, that it would totally disrupt everything. Our societies, political stability, food supplies, and biodiversity, which is taken for granted, as are the myriad ecosystem services it provides. Most of it, which we have never even thought about, until the absence of those ecosystem services, hit us hard.
3/
Read 4 tweets
Nov 23
I want to make it clear, why I so often hark back to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. There is a very powerful reason for doing his. I hadn't just become environmentally aware then. In fact, I'd become environmentally aware over 20 years earlier, and was 32, starting an ecology degree as a mature student.

In other words, I had a very clear impression of the time and the lead up to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, because here, was the things I had passionately believed in for over 20 years, finally being addressed. It was a time of incredible optimism by the environmentally aware. Finally politicians were taking the ecological and climate crisis seriously, and were going to address the problem. Rather, it seemed that way at the time.
1/🧵
I attended a seminar around the time I started university, a panel of leading scientists. The chair of the panel, Professor Alan Wellburn, then probably the leading expert on air pollution, opened by saying, now we know what the problem is, we can address it.

I was troubled by this, and had the temerity to stand up and challenge this narrative. I said most of this situation, was actually known at the time of the 1972 UN Environment Conference, and the only reason the 1992 Rio Earth Summit happened, was because in 1983, the UN was alarmed that no progress had been made on the agreed action plan, of the 1972 UN Environment conference, and they set up the Brundtland Commission.
un.org/en/conferences…
2/
Before, I go on, I want to make it clear what my real point is. THE BIG problem, is this sense of progress. So much so, that people, including those who should no better, insist that it is only recently, that humanity understood how serious the climate crisis is, and that somehow back in 1992, there was little understanding of our predicament. No one believes me, when I say people took the climate crisis, far more seriously than they take it now.

I have seen environmental journalists, state that until Al Gore's 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth, most of the public had never heard of the climate crisis. I have to pinch myself. It is possible that public awareness of the climate crisis, was greater in 1989, than it is now. Don't take my words for it.

"These authors presented findings from separately conducted national polls that showed that whereas in 1986 less than a half of respondents (between 39 and 45%) reported having heard or read anything about climate change, this proportion rose to around three-quarters (74%) of respondents by 1990."

That's right, by 1990, 74% of the public were aware of climate change, and public climate change denial, was almost unknown.
wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.100…
3/
Read 9 tweets
Nov 23
"Boris Johnson ‘beyond contempt’ for attack on Covid inquiry’s findings and refusal to apologise"

Boris Johnson was totally unfit for public office, and he has got a record of refusing to take responsibility for lies and errors, that goes back to his school days.

1/🧵independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…
Max Hastings, himself a staunch Conservative, warned people about the dangers of Boris Johnson becoming PM, many years before he became PM.

What's more, Max Hastings was his former boss, as editor of the Telegraph and has known him, his whole working life, where Johnson was first forced to resign as a journalist, for making stuff up, and then as Shadow Culture Secretary, for lying to then Conservative Party leader, Michael Howard, about an affair he'd had. He is an unrepentant serial liar.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2/
Johnson's schoolmaster said this about him.

'The report, from classics master Martin Hammond to Stanley Johnson in 1982, criticised the 17-year-old for thinking he should be free of the "network of obligation that binds everyone".

The teacher also said Johnson "believes it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception".'
thenational.scot/news/19858214.…
3/
Read 8 tweets
Nov 22
"Cop30 delegates ‘far apart’ on phasing out fossil fuels and cutting carbon"

With hindsight, it is now clear that the most powerful countries in the world, have always been opposed to phasing out fossil fuels, even though it is tacit in the UNFCCC signed in 1992.

Essentially, the most powerful countries, have played a devious game, of pretending that they want to address the climate crisis, whilst always opposing the only realistic way of achieving this, the phasing out of fossil fuels. This has been the sticking point, for over 30 years.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
1/🧵
If you read the UNFCCC, it is very clear that it sees itself as a continuation of the 1989 Montreal Protocol, which phased out CFCs, leading to the depletion of the ozone layer. It is very clear about this, as it states it multiple times.

This makes it absolutely clear, that the tacit strategy was the phasing out of greenhouse gasses, causing anthropogenic climate change. This could only be realistically achieved by phasing out fossil fuel burning. However, the means of achieving this was kept open, to let this be settled with the COP talks. No one envisaged in 1992, that we would be on COP30, over 33 years later.

The whole purpose of separating climate change from the rest of the sustainability/ecological crisis, was for a quick agreement. It was never envisaged, that the crisis would only be seen as climate change, when this is only part of the much bigger ecological crisis, which would be far more difficult to address.
unfccc.int/files/essentia…
2/
Whilst all the major countries appeared to be behind drastically reducing emissions, it is now very clear with hindsight, that their hidden aim, was to continue the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels for as long as possible. I am well aware people will object to me saying this, but how much evidence do you need.

The primary sticking point is still, 33 years later, the phasing out of fossil fuels, after this was tacit in the original treaty, signed in 1992.

More fossil fuels/emissions, have been burned since 1992, than in the whole of human history, prior to 1992. You have got to be pretty deep in denial to refuse to acknowledge such strong evidence.
3/
Read 8 tweets
Nov 14
"The fundamental problem is this: that most of the means of communication are owned or influenced by the very rich."

George Monbiot correctly identifies the fundamental fact, as to why we are not living in true democracies.

If you have a tiny, self-interested clique, that controls and manipulates all mass communication, they are effectively controlling the thinking and awareness of people. All very rich people have far more in common, than they have with 99% of humanity. George Soros has far more in common with Elon Musk, than both of them have with 99% of humanity.

As George points out, addressing the climate crisis is relatively straight forward. When Greta Thunberg was asked, early on in her school strike for climate, why didn't she become a climate scientist, and solve the climate crisis, she intelligently responded, that the solution to the climate crisis was known over 30 years ago.

The only reason the known solutions have not been applied, is because it is not in the vested and personal interests of the richest people in the world, to implement those solutions. They only want techno-fixes, which allows them to have their cake and eat it.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
1/4🧵
The top 1% of the richest, especially the top 0.1%, are super-emitters, who individually have greater emissions, than the bottom 66% of humanity. Therefore, they self-evidently have a personal vested interest, in not seeing personal emissions restricted.

That is obvious to anyone, not suffering billionaire brain syndrome, or billionaire sycophancy.

It follows, that as a demographic, the very rich, have got a common interest, in maintaining their high emissions lifestyles. In other words, that this demographic, effectively controls everything, in a manipulative way, the thinking and mass communication of 99% of humanity, who don't have their interests, it is a very dangerous and anti-democratic situation. By its very nature, no one in the bottom 99% has the personal emissions of someone in the top 1%.

The top 1%, has for this very reason, managed to convince most people, that it is humanity driving the climate crisis, not the top 1% (really the top 0.1%). Because they control all mass communication, and so what people think.
theguardian.com/environment/20…
2/4
I mentioned, billionaire sycophants. If I open any of these observations up, for anyone to comment, I will have a pile on from extreme right wing, mindless automaton's, brainwashed by billionaire propaganda, calling me a retard, a commie etc. They are just parroting what they are conditioned to say, and can't think for themselves. If I engage with any of them, they can't put up any sort of coherent argument. It's just a stream of clichés, false assertions, ad homs, logical fallacies and just plain nonsense.

I've repeatedly explained that I don't adhere to any ideology, communism or otherwise. My commentary is purely from the perspective, of long term sustainability, and our civilization, not heading towards collapse. There is simply no room for billionaires in world of 8 billion people, living on a finite planet, with finite resources. My commentary, is not derived from Marxism or communism.
3/4
Read 5 tweets

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