Are you panicked?
Are you in a panic about the ecosystem, economic system and political system?
The global economy uses earths finite resources as if they were infinite.
Our society and the environment get lip-service, but are an “externality” in the pursuit of profit-maximisation.
It is getting hotter and sea levels are rising.
If this causes you to panic, then I have good news, and bad news.
The Good News
You are not alone. You are not mad. You should be panicking.
The Bad News
We are about to start World War III, the 1-degree War, and it could get ugly before it gets better.
What Can Be Done?
Taking a lead from Paul Gilding’s book, The Great Disruption. We face just 2 options:
- If the temperature rises 1-more degree above pre-industrial levels, then we have a climate catastrophe, first affecting agriculture, but later leading to economic and societal collapse. Or
- We go on a war-like footing and fight the “1-degree war”. This is where we do everything that is within our individual and collective power to prevent the earth heating by 1-more degree.
The time for this “war-like” setting is now.
It is being announced by kids as they strike for climate action.
* If you haven’t already please watch the below TED talk by Greta Thunberg. *
World War III
There will be a great many responses to the “1-degree war”.
Each of us will be willing to do what we can.
We will be shamed into it by our kids.
Climate denial will fall away like the ‘Emperors new clothes’.
Once we find ourselves naked – and the embarrassment of our wilful ignorance passes – we will wake up to ecological boundaries either by crossing them or collectively fighting to back-peddle so we don’t cross them.
We’ll have a “Great Disruption” – it will be MASSIVE.
The economy and technology we have will be re-purposed.
It will look like it did, only better.
This is the modern narrative of the tokenised, blockchain, holochain and distributed ledger technology world.
It is also the historical narrative of the global economy.
There is every reason that waking up to our ecological limits (as opposed to ignoring them) will see a similar pattern of growth (but this time within our ecological limits).
Doughnuts Not Pies
Today economists usually represent the economy as a circle or pie. The conventional idea of good governance has been to “grow the pie”. Growing the pie is (meant to be) good for all.
In the near future we will be asking “how do we stay in the doughnut?” not “how do we grow the pie?”.
Prosperity in the doughnut world will be for those able to produce something of value without crossing an ecological threshold in order to do so. (More on Doughnut Economics)
Wealth will look drastically different from wealth as we see it today.
Getting Ahead In World War 3
Agriculture is already seeing the first-hand, lived experience of climate change.
The Murray Darling for instance is not just up shit creek. It is rapidly becoming shit creek.
But it is not all bad news. Living in the doughnut has its rewards.
Agriculture and biomimicry
There is a growing cohort of farmers taking carbon out of the atmosphere (where we don’t want it) and into the soils (where we do want it) by changing their herd management to suit the environment. This change usually requires more animals grazing for shorter durations and not returning to a given piece of land until it has recovered from the previous graze. It creates a positive feedback loop in terms of productivity, resilience and nutritional density.
This is biomimicry of large herds of wildebeest like you see in a nature documentary.
Just this week we started to see farmers get carbon credits for this work – on top of better production, prices and resilience.
It is quite possible that these farmers will be richly rewarded for their services.
What Will You Do?
If all the children are right and we should be panicking.
If Paul Gilding, with his deep understanding is wrong about the 1-degree War and if 97% of Climate Scientists are wrong about the underlying science, then you might not have to change anything.
But, if they are right and we need to change…We need to fight…We need to fight for our very survival as a species… Then, what will you do?
How will you prosper in this time?
It’s not just a philosophical question. It is a business question too.