Make peace with the climate, ecology, and
each other
The global ecological system collapses and dies as human
growth overruns natural ecosystems and climate. Our best hope is to
declare peace with the natural world – starting with climate and
old-growth forests – coming together as peace-makers of the rainbow for
truth, love, justice, equity, and ecology.
Only a declaration of climate peace based upon protecting
and restoring natural ecosystems including the atmosphere can save us
now… Making peace with ecology will allow our descendants to live
forever, rather than suffer and die miserably in ecologically
apocalyptic wastelands. — Dr. Glen Barry
Earth Meanders deep ecology essays by Dr. Glen Barry
Ending Ecocide and Genocide
Humanity has waged war against the natural world for millennia,
intensifying with the industrial revolution, culminating with 9/11
terror and resulting perma-war, and threatening now to collapse the
biosphere. Centuries ago an epic wave of ecological terror swept from
Northern Europe as the industrial revolution and colonialism put a price
on everything, liquidating natural ecosystems for illusory consumption
by some, based upon false claims of advancement. Fleeting creature
comforts for a few generations for some have come at the expense of
apocalyptic war waged upon our ecological habitats and all that is
different than ourselves.
In the name of god and country, indigenous cultures ensconced within
the loving embrace of natural ecosystems, living materially simple but
ecologically rich lives, were labeled savages and brutally murdered in
waves of ecocide and genocide. Millions of year old natural ecosystems
were systematically dismantled, and their vibrant life forms mercilessly
slaughtered, to be used as resources to fuel the fires of industry.
Anything that could burn, including timeless carbon stores of ancestral
life meant to remain sequestered, were set ablaze to fuel our insatiable
urges.
Indigenous people will lead the way to
climate peace
Multi-pronged wars upon nature proclaimed as god’s will, and thus
destined to be waged by exceptional nations, have utterly devastated
naturally evolved ecosystems, the current climate equilibrium,
non-Western cultures, and the sum total of life known as the biosphere. A
constant state of conflict with nature and all people with heritages
other than that of European settlers has left the world in an
overpopulated, biologically tawdry and diminished condition, poised upon
utter and complete ecological ruin. The end of being is nigh, yet hope
inherent in ecology and peace remains.
Declaring Climate Peace
It is time to declare and make a lasting peace with the natural world
– starting with climate and intact ecosystems such as old-growth
forests, and encompassing all Earth’s life, including other peoples.
Each of us must seek to minimize biological, ecological, and cultural
conflict in order to allow Earth to rest, recuperate, and recover.
Only a declaration of climate peace based upon protecting and
restoring natural ecosystems including the atmosphere can save us now.
Old-growth forests must be protected and restored
to limit abrupt climate change
Why does Bill McKibben’s recent sensationalist appeal for a “War
on Climate” make no mention, not even one, of ecology or ecosystems?
While understanding Mr. McKibben is trying to call for a rapid societal
response at a massive scale to an urgent existential threat, perhaps a
better analogy would be demobilizing to make climate peace by cutting emissions and reforesting, as declarations of war often only make things worse.
It is irresponsible and contrary to established
ecological science for Mr. McKibben to promote a war on climate focused
solely upon techno-optimist industrial solutions. First and foremost,
climate change is an ecological issue… I, for one, am much less
perturbed that Bill occasionally uses plastic bags for his groceries,
than that he apparently has little understanding of the ecological
systems that maintain a livable Earth. — Dr. Glen Barry
Earth Meanders, Deep ecology essays by Dr. Glen Barry
Climate policies matter. We have very few chances to get it right
before abrupt climate change and related environmental and social issues
collapse the biosphere. Yet the solutions being put forth by the
leading climate activists—including Bill McKibben, Al Gore, Leonardo
DiCaprio, Naomi Klein, and Michael Brune—are woefully inadequate. In
fact, their lack of ecological focus is dangerous and wrong, and
virtually ensures failure in limiting global warming to an acceptable
level.
In a recent New Republic essay entitled “A World at War”,
Mr. McKibben states “We’re under attack from climate change—and our
only hope is to mobilize like we did in WWII.” The colorful essay
correctly notes the urgency of a dramatic, urgent, and large-scale
response to the threats posed by climate change. Yet we are led to
falsely believe that a war-like industrial retooling to produce
massively more solar panels and wind turbines more quickly will prove
adequate to solve climate change. At best this is meaningless jingoism,
at its worst it dangerously misdiagnoses climate change’s causes, and
does not propose ecologically sufficient climate change solutions.
NOT EVEN ONCE does Bill’s essay calling for a war on climate mention
the biological and ecological aspects of our climate change conundrum.
In fact, the words ecology, ecosystem, and even environment are not
used. How is it that the climate movement’s perceived Martin Luther King
type transformational figure has the science and policy behind climate
change so dangerously wrong?
Natural ecosystem loss as a cause, and positive-feedback fed result,
of abrupt climate change is once again given short shrift, and
protecting and enhancing the natural environment is amazingly completely
ignored once again by Mr. McKibben as an element of climate solutions.
Instead we are left with war metaphors and further industrial
development as a dangerously incomplete climate policy prescription.
What the hell Bill? Where is your understanding of ecology, and your
embrace of widespread and connected natural ecosystems as a crucial
element of any climate change solution?
Mr. McKibben, climate change is not Hitler, and waging war will not
solve it. Climate change results not only from billions of pistons
burning fossil fuels, it is also caused by billions of conscious
decisions to destroy the naturally evolved world – one tree, or patch of
ground, at a time – which through vegetation’s cycling of water,
energy, and carbon have sustained a habitable Earth for eons. Of course
at some level Bill you must realize this, but why not speak, write, and
advocate for protecting and restoring natural ecosystems as a keystone
climate change response?
Permaculture forest gardens intermixed with
regenerating old-growth key to stabilizing
carbon cycle
Maintaining natural stores of carbon and the natural carbon cycle
between these repositories is of primary importance in limiting abrupt
climate change and ensuring it doesn’t become run-away. Mr. McKibben’s
vision of a war-like industrial mobilization is myopic and entirely
ignores the re-greening of land and waters that must occur. We could end
fossil fuel emissions rapidly, and still drown in historical emissions,
if there are not ways to remove what has already been emitted from the
atmosphere (we are at over 400 parts per million of carbon and Bill’s
group’s name 350.org acknowledges we have surpassed the safe limit). How
else but through natural processes associated with plant growth will
global ecological balance be restored?
The simple ecological truth is that natural vegetation holds and
cycles carbon in a manner that removes carbon from the atmosphere. We
know much carbon is released when natural vegetation is cleared or
reduced. And that there is tremendous potential to re-vegetate the vast
areas of land that have been cleared of natural ecosystems, as nearly
90% of primary forests have been cleared or dramatically diminished
through fragmentation. All remaining old-growth forests must be
protected not only as carbon stores, but also for sources of seed and
genetic variability for the coming era of ecosystem restoration and
climate adaptation, and aided to expand and reconnect. Along with
secondary forests undergoing succession into old-growth status,
inter-mixed with organic permaculture and forest gardens, expanded
natural forest ecosystems have dramatic potential to store carbon and
perhaps more importantly keep it cycling.
Given how many natural terrestrial ecosystems have been lost, it is
vital to avoiding willful ecocide that we stop logging ancient
old-growth forests, allowing them to recover and expand.
