[P2P-F] Fwd: Journey to Earthland (GTN Discussion)

Sun Oct 2 05:07:34 CEST 2016

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Great Transition Network <gtnetwork at greattransition.org>
Date: Fri, Sep 30, 2016 at 10:48 PM
Subject: Journey to Earthland (GTN Discussion)
To: michelsub2004 at gmail.com

>From Herman Greene <hfgreenenc at gmail.com>

-------------------------------------------------------
[Moderator's Note: As noted earlier, the discussion will run through the
end of October. We look forward to your contributions!]

Paul Raskin’s Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary
Civilization (GT2) is a worthy successor to Great Transition: The Promise
and Lure of the Times Ahead (GT1). It will become an instant classic and an
enduring source of discussion about a viable future for Earthland.

It is very difficult to write about a possible, non-Utopian, desirable
future. The typical environmental speech goes through a parade of horribles
and ends with an admonition that we need to do better and solve these
problems. This is followed with completely inadequate illustrations of
solutions. I think of how Al Gore ended his movie Inconvenient Truth with
trifling examples of how to stop global warming. Raskin gives a
well-thought-out, credible vision. Yet he correctly identifies the linchpin
(or Achilles’ heel) to his analysis. He writes on page 57, “The takeaway
from the quantitative analysis is highly robust; the ‘big if’ is not
whether the numbers work out under Great Transition cultural and political
assumptions—it is whether those assumptions can be made valid.”

Due to those assumptions, I can’t help feeling that the positive vision he
offers is closer to Thomas Friedman than Thomas Berry. I also can’t help
feeling that his vision is more a variation of Policy Reform scenario than
an illustration of a New Paradigm scenario. The “global citizens,” it
seems, want a perfected industrial world. I’m not optimistic about what
their lives of leisure would offer were they to come about. I’m afraid this
vision was conceived by those who enjoy the benefits of modernity.

In so writing, I don’t mean to diminish the achievement. I will no doubt
use GT2 a lot in my own work just as I used GT1. I have tried to write the
extension of my critique of industrial civilization into a vision of a
viable future and have not been nearly as cogent or visionary as Raskin. GT
2 offers much to build on. For the reader, it requires consideration of
alternative scenarios of the future and a reaction to the vision presented
of a viable future.

Here are my particular concerns with GT2. First, I don’t think it takes
into account what I see as inevitable climate and ecological disruption.
The positive spins on carbon budgets and the IPCC’s Representative
Concentration Pathways rely on faith in negative global carbon emissions
sometime in the period between 2050 and 2080 and rapid declines to carbon
neutrality beginning by 2030. The most optimistic IPCC projection, RCP6,
provides for stabilization of CO2 atmospheric concentrations at between
430-480ppm. I see no indication that carbon emissions are following the RCP
2.6 track and am aware that even if this were occurring there is
considerable doubt that a 2.0c rise in temperature would not have highly
disruptive effects or that 450ppm would result in less than a 2.0c rise.
The realization of the Great Transition by 2084 does not take into account
the degradation of ecosystems.

Second, I think that the scenarios are treated too much as alternative
pathways rather than simultaneous realities, and I think the timeline for
the realization of the Great Transition is far too short. I believe a
minimum of a 200-year timeline is needed and perhaps 300-500 years. I
believe David Orr’s assertion in Down to the Wire that “[t]he change in our
perspective from the nearer to the longer term is, I think, the most
difficult challenge we will face,” has to be accepted. Bruno Latour in his
2013 Gifford lectures chided environmentalists for their frustration by
writing that the reason they face resistance is not because they are not
reasonable, or objective, or because their data sets are not good, it is
because they are “changing everybody’s world.” He likens the situation to
that of war, a 200-year world war. He wrote that we have entered a new
state of nature, a Hobbesian condition of a war of all against all, with
the protagonists now including tuna, and sea
levels, and carbon emissions, as well as the various human factions. This
time though it is not a condition before people enter into a social
contract, it is a present condition. It will take 200 years to forge a new
social contract.

Third, I believe the concept of the “global citizen” as the principle actor
in the transition lacks definition or sufficient agency. “Citizen”
emphasizes the political task, or perhaps with more merit those who work
for the new social contract. Insufficient attention is given to the
reformer of culture and the ecologist. While it is conceivable that the
production of goods will require fewer people and hours of human labor,
there is no end to the work of education, spiritual growth, social
engagement, ecological restoration and care, and perhaps even of food
production and household maintenance, with fewer labor-saving (i.e. energy
intensive) devices.

To his great credit, I believe Raskin makes an appeal to progressives to
avoid certain traps of the mind. Progressives have a weak vision of global
society and governance. There is too much appeal to an agrarian past of
happy little villages (and perhaps not enough to an agrarian future) and if
not to that to technocratic, knowledge-based future. Further to his credit,
with Latour, Raskin calls us to Earthland—Latour writes that the new word
for the human in the Anthropocene is “Earthbound.” We ARE Earth-bound.
Further, Raskin embraces technology as part of a future vision. This, it
seems to me, is inevitable. Further, he relegates various alternatives as
only being possible if there is collapse . . . in such case the prospect of
little villages of scattered humans loses its appeal. And he calls for
solutions that address an urban, scientific population of 8 billion people
who continue to engage in global trade, communications and travel. I don’t
know if that is the right
number, but he posits a position to work from.

My own work, shared with others, is around the concept of “ecological
civilization, and Berry’s Ecozoic era. I see the need for a body of people
to take on the “imponderables.” I’ll give just one: We say we want a
sustainable future and to eradicate poverty (now often said as extreme
poverty which means somewhere between $1.25 and $185 per day), sometimes
without economic growth and sometimes with sustainable economic growth, all
while lowering emissions. I am caught by an illustration given by Friedman,
which he says he borrowed. If one gives 1 billion of the world’s poor a
60-watt light bulb (nothing else) that alone requires 60 billion watts of
energy generation to power the light bulbs, and at present this means
likely 120 power plants each 500 megawatts in size, fueled by coal and, if
not by that, natural gas (about which we are learning more of the negative
consequences of relying on fracking to run an economy on gas). The modern
world IS energy. Turn off your
electricity for 24 hours and you have entered a past time. How in the real
world do we accomplish these conflicting goals? To me, this is an
imponderable not resolved by what to me is magical thinking about
“alternative energy.”

In addition, we need an International Ethics Panel for Ecological
Civilization (IEPEC). This idea was introduced by Ryoichi Yamamoto of
Japan. The details are far from worked out, but the concept is a body of
people who applies a body of ecological and social wisdom to the
extraordinary challenges and conundrums of the Great Transition.

The people on this listserv are leading candidates for work on the
imponderables and IEPEC. We will all be building on GT2.

Herman Greene
Greene Law, PLLC
Center for Ecozoic Societies
Board of Directors, Toward Ecological Civilization

*******************************

 On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Great Transition Network wrote:
>From Paul Raskin

-----
Dear Friends:

Our series of thematic discussions has been uncommonly rich and animated.
Still, from time to time we’d best step back to a whole-system panorama,
lest we lose sight of the forest for the trees. After all, it is the big
question of how to shape the global social-ecological future that brings us
together.

In that holistic spirit, our next discussion will consider my new
essay—“Journey to Earthland: Making the Great Transition to Planetary
Civilization” (or “JTE,” for short). I wrote it as a sequel to “Great
Transition,” the 2002 treatise that launched GTI. The new volume has four
central aims. First, it updates and develops GTI’s overarching conceptual
framework. Second, it introduces the idea of “Earthland” for the latent
supranational community now stirring in the Planetary Phase. Third, it
describes the integrated planetary praxis and global movement needed to
carry the transformation forward. Fourth, it paints a granular picture of
the kind of flourishing civilization that might await us on the far side of
a Great Transition.

To get your copy of JTE, go to www.greattransition.org/
publication/journey-to-earthland. From there, you can either download a
free pdf or order a paperback through Amazon for $12. (If neither of these
options works for you, please request a complimentary copy by emailing
info at tellus.org with your mailing address.)

In light of JTE’s sweeping scope, I suspect many of you will wish to
elaborate certain formulations and take issue with others. I welcome your
comments in the spirit of a collective exploration with ample room for
difference within a canopy of unity.

NOTE: This discussion will go on for TWO full months—SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER.

Looking forward,
Paul

Paul Raskin
GTI Director

-----
Hit reply to post a message
Or see thread and reply online at
www.greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/178-journey-to-earthland/1727

Need help? Email jcohn at tellus.org

-- __________________________________________________Herman F. Greene2516
Winningham RoadChapel Hill, NC 27516919-942-4358 (ph & fax)
hfgreenenc at gmail.com

-------------------------------------------------------
Hit reply to post a message
Or see thread and reply online at
http://greattransition.org/forum/gti-discussions/178-
journey-to-earthland/2113

Need help? Email jcohn at tellus.org

-- 
P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss:
http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens;
http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20161002/45ce8a8e/attachment.html>