CLIMATE - A NEW STORY by Charles Eisenstein

Firstly, a warning: this is going to be a long review. In fact, this book has taken me (someone who can read two books a day with no problem) nine months to read. If you would rather read the book yourself - hopefully in fewer than nine months - you can buy it here. Why has it taken me this long?  And why have I stuck at it? Simply because, like the climate change debate, this book is complicated, nuanced and fascinating, and it deserves to be carefully read and its discussions and conclusions properly considered. It reframes the whole climate change debate in different, non-binary terms. It tries as much as possible to be impartial. It questions everything and names its sources, inviting the reader to challenge and investigate further its claims. It isn’t afraid to challenge some of the underlying assumptions that we in a modern society don’t even think to question. In other words it’s a book for people who are fed up of being bludgeoned with contradictory information, who want to do something to help but feel helpless, and who don’t want ‘win’ a war against our changing environment but rather participate in a new narrative of collaboration, by understanding and accepting our place in the bigger whole. As you can see, this is a massive undertaking for a 300-page book. So how does the author go about presenting this?

Firstly, he does it by defining the issues. The central narrative is this book is simple, and despite its name, it’s not really about climate. Instead it’s this: the planet is dying. The biostructures of life on Earth are breaking down and, since they are all inter-connected, this doesn’t bode well for the continued existence of life on our planet. Climate and its rapid change is not the cause of this destruction but is in fact only one symptom. What does this mean? Here’s an example: climate change and subsequent droughts have been blamed for the large-scale migrations north from Central America. However, there are strong arguments that climate change is the symptom, not the cause, of massive deforestation (Guatemala lost 17% and Honduras 37% of their rainforests between 1990-2005. El Salvador has suffered 85% deforestation since 1960s). In fact, climate change is a scapegoat which keeps humanity’s attention focussed on only a few aspects of the environmental catastrophe we face.

Rising global temperatures are also often cited as climate change, but this too is a red herring in that the warming globe is also a symptom of the underlying problems, not the cause. Evidence suggest that the cause of much of these warmer temperatures is a combination of a growing number of urban heat islands/cities, coupled with massive deforestation/lack of vegetation which reduces vegetative transpiration and the cooling effect of cloud cover (and incidentally also mucks up the high and low pressure fronts that drive weather systems and deposit temperate, regular rainfall). Moreover, it is well to remember that without deforestation and subsequently less regular rainfall, rising temperatures would not be a problem: instead warmer climates would encourage forests to evolve into rain forests, rather than the current deforested areas evolving into sterile deserts.

The narrow parameters of ‘climate change’ are further narrowed and defined by taking a few areas of concern and elevating them to prime importance. One such is the burning of fossil fuels and rising carbon emissions.  Our current obsession with burning fossil fuels and CO2 emissions reduces the problem to one of calculation and problem-solving – how we can plant more trees to act as carbon sinks, as well as create new technologies to solve the problems of energy. However, this again covers up the underlying cause; that of the wholesale destruction of natural carbon sinks which have little value to humans in terms of usage. These include wetlands and mangroves (of which an estimated 70% and 50% respectively have been destroyed in the last 100 years), swamps and rainforests. Not only are these habitats superlative carbon sinks, they also protect further carbon sinks such as coral reefs. Those natural carbon sinks such as steppes, prairie, pampas or veldts that do have some use to us (in terms of being relatively easy to convert to mass agriculture) are also being destroyed and, even worse, are often being converted to carbon emitters through heavy-duty crop cultivation.

So, if rising temperatures, CO2 emissions and fossil fuels are simply symptoms of a bigger problem that is buried under the term ‘climate change’, why then are we choosing to focus only on these few aspects rather than regarding our environment holistically and tackling the root causes behind why our planet is dying?

THE PROBLEMS

1. We are using science as the only metric. Here’s how Eisenstein describes it:

‘Our society’s most potent and familiar tool is the quantitative methods of science. That is therefore how we frame the problem of climate change. We use numbers (eg. average global temperatures) to prove it is happening, other numbers (CO2 emissions) to formulate responses, and yet other numbers (embedded in computer modelling) to forecast the future and guide policy. … Through science we describe the world in numbers and mathematical relationships. Through technology we apply those numbers to the control of the material world. Through industry we convert the world into commodities, characterised by numerical specifications. Through economics we further convert all things into another number called its value.’

In effect, science reduces complex problems only to things you can quantify. Furthermore, if you can measure quantities of things then you can control them and balance them. In the equation of Earth’s biostructures that means understanding how every microbe affects every other microbe (in other words mapping every single living organism on the planet), how weather patterns affect every acre on the planet, the complete make-up of the planet, from crust to centre … you get the drift. This is patently impossible. Therefore, we end up quantifying only the things we think we know something about. That of course ignores all those things we haven’t yet discovered yet, as well as all those things that are unquantifiable in our arbitrary scale (the sacredness of a piece of land, say, or the beauty of a mountain). In effect, we are defining the importance of things only by their quantifiable-ness and by the (quantifiable) value that we ourselves give them.

(Incidentally, Eisenstein notes that making science and data the only methodology means putting systems of measurement into place, which in turn requires more centralisation of government and more information-gathering through surveillance – in other words the increasingly autocratic oligarchies that are abounding throughout the political systems of the world at the moment.)

One good example of the ‘science trap’ is the ongoing conversation about reducing our carbon emissions. Reducing CO2 has become the defining crisis of the time and for very good reason; it’s something we can easily measure. Which means it’s also something that can be used as political capital for governments that need to be seen to be doing something, even if it’s a short-term fix. But in the bigger climate debate, CO2 emissions are only a part. Even if we cut carbon emissions to zero our environment will still continue to decline unless we make protection and nurturing of the many and varied local and global ecosystems a priority. Similarly, with climate change. If we move away from rehashing whether the climate is changing because of human intervention, and if so how much, and focus on rebalancing the ecosystem of which we are a part, then the CO2 emissions issue becomes void.

Another good example of the scientific methods behind industry and economics hamstringing necessary changes for environmental benefit involve regenerative agriculture. This is the collective term for an array of techniques that rebuild soil, water and biodiversity. These might include cover crops to limit soil erosion, crop rotation, management-intensive rotational grazing (MIRG), sometimes called holistic grazing (grazing animals in a way that mimics herd animals in nature), or Syntropic Agriculture, also known as regenerative analog forestry.  So why is regenerative agriculture not more widely used, despite demonstrating benefits when judged by any scientific metric (productivity, environmental benefits etc.)? Eisenstein argues this is for a number of reasons: Firstly, it does not fit current scientific protocols which divides the land into unchanging data sets of: seeds + fertilisers + water + light = valuable crops. Instead each environment needs an individual approach with success relying on a deep understanding of the local area and what it needs to flourish season by season. Secondly, there is little appetite to test such areas because there is no profit to be made by the companies behind big agriculture, such as fertiliser producers, GM seed banks etc. Thirdly, it is difficult to quantify results if the metrics are more than just crop yields: you can’t easily measure or assign value to such things as carbon sequestration, the benefits from preventing flooding, or the increase in biodiversity.

Scientific conclusions are also very rarely, if ever, unbiased. In one of the most interesting (for me) chapters of this book, Eisenstein attempts to understand why seemingly incontrovertible ‘scientific facts’ are regularly and consistently challenged. If we all subscribe to scientific thinking and methodology, how can we continually keep coming up with completely opposed answers?  As Eisenstein says: ‘It is amazing how intelligent human beings, all sourcing information from what we call science, can come to such dramatically opposed conclusions.’

How do we filter out the hysteria and, as reasonably intelligent readers, try to make sense of and come to our own conclusion about the importance of climate change, or indeed any other big question? It’s impossible because science is not as exact as we expect it to be. If we choose to use science and scientific data as our only tool for measurement, then all the data must be examined, and that is not possible because we don’t have all the data. Instead what we have are a variety of studies from different data sets which are never going to be complete (how can you measure every variation of temperature around the planet, or CO2 emissions from every point on earth at a single moment?). The data that we do have is fitted into theories designed by individuals who are asking a particular question, or have a particular theory they want to prove, or are working to find evidence to support a particular position. Data entry itself is not neutral. It is biased.  The questions, or the tone of those questions, are biased. And perhaps the funding for the data collection is biased. Trying to dig down into the science of climate change, as Eisenstein does, shows exactly these biases: one scientific ‘proof’ is refuted by another, which is refuted by yet another and so on and so on until the minutiae become so complicated and erudite that the argument gets lost.

Instead, Eisenstein argues that we all as individuals need to look at the empirical evidence around us and make our decisions in full recognition of on our own biased assumptions. Are there as many insects splattered on our windscreens than there used to be? Do we see as many birds in our back gardens? Are the rock pools as full of life as they were when we played in them as kids? If the answer is no then you, the individual, have your answer.  I am strongly reminded of a road trip I took a couple of years from London, through France, Holland, Germany and Denmark to Sweden. We washed the windscreen before we started out and maybe once during our travel through the heavily agricultural (and pest-controlled) areas of Western Europe. In Sweden, with smaller agricultural areas and enormous tracts of forests and wilderness we were washing squished bugs off our windscreen at least once, if not two or three times, a day.

2. We have created a narrative where we are the all-knowing Superusers of the Earth. 

Eisenstein argues strongly that we need to move away from what he calls The Story of Separation, that idea of being apart from Earth’s ecosystem. Using terms like the ‘environment’ or ‘natural resources’ not only reduces or world down to resources that we can use (and quantify them by our arbitrary values) but also sets us apart from nature. If we look at the Earth as a complex machine, then we are unconsciously casting ourselves in the role of the Superuser; we are apart from the Earth rather than an integral component of it; we pretend that we can make objective decisions, rather than admitting that we are subjective and therefore heavily slant our parameters to human needs. We need to accept that we are not in control of the Earth and apart from it, but viewing it as machine makes us feel that we can be. This is dangerous. Until we treat the Earth as a living organism rather than a collection of resources, we will be undermining the organism that we rely on to survive.

Furthermore, continuing to view the Earth as a machine blinds us to the possibility that the Earth is a self-regulating, complex living entity, which has already had millions of years to work out the best way of evolving an ecosystem that can adapt – within reason – to the changing demands of nature. Our ill-considered tinkering with specific areas demonstrably leads to massive knock on effects to areas we have not considered as linked. (Here’s an example: whales have been considered useful to humans only for their meat and blubber and have consequently been hunted almost to extinction. However, evidence now suggests that kinetic energy contributed by whales to the oceans in effect helps to cool them, by stirring up colder waters from the depths and cooling down the upper layers that have been heated by the sun.)

A good example of treating the Earth simply as a complex machine would be assuming that the carbon emissions caused by chopping down a forest can be offset by planting a similar number of trees in another area.  This is accounting not ecology.  Forests are infinitely more important than simply as carbon sinks. Not only do they maintain a lower temperature than cleared land or urban centres, they are also likely to contribute to cooler areas regionally. A good example is Kenya, where daytime temperatures in forested areas may be 19C, while that on nearby agricultural land is 50C. Furthermore, mature forests (and its accompanying flora) not only lock water into the soil but release moisture in a constant way through transpiration, to create the regular, water-rich clouds necessary for all land-based life. And even more interestingly, natural forests are needed where they are, not where is most convenient for humans: the ‘Biotic Pump’ theory now suggests that forests not only recycle moisture more effectively and regularly (both from land and from oceans), they actually generate the wind patterns that bring water inland from the oceans. In other words, forests help cause the precipitation that waters our crops, rather than grow as a result of it.

3. We have framed the climate change narrative as being on a War Footing.

Human beings in the dominant cultures have created social structures which are based on a continual War Footing. In other words, there must always be a ‘right’ way and a ‘wrong’ way. There must always be an adversary and you must ‘fight’ for change. War Footing allows for a moral high ground which can be uses to justify actions and beliefs which go against your humanity or innate attachment to your natural surroundings, and which also justifies leaving behind or marginalising those who are not useful to the cause. Moreover, in order to win one battle you have to be willing to be extreme in ignoring all the other battles. In climate change terms this may be focussing on reducing the burning of fossil fuels but ignoring the strip mines being dug to mine the lithium needed for our green energy batteries.

By placing us on a War Footing we forget that we are part of the ecosystem, not its enemy. We fight the individual symptoms such as changing climate and rising temperatures with methods which disregard the bigger picture, and often use tools without considering whether they are bad for the planet in other ways (for example the use of nuclear power, or geoengineering events such as pumping sulphuric acid into the atmosphere to reduce the greenhouse effect). However, ecology is the study of relationships, where every part (including us) has a purpose and where the purpose of one individual piece is just as important as the purposes of everything other piece.

THE SOLUTIONS

It’s pretty clear from Eisenstein’s arguments that we have a lot of problems to solve in terms of our environment, and they aren’t necessarily the ones we think they are. Here are his proposals for solving some of these issues.

1. Reframe the argument.

We need to create a new narrative that questions the hidden assumptions of all sides in the climate debate.

Here's one assumption: science will solve the issue. Evidently this isn’t true, since it isn’t answering the problems of environmental destruction, or the emotional disconnect we find ourselves in today. Those questions aren’t being answered because science hasn’t yet understood and weighed all the variables; instead it’s because science isn’t able to weigh all the variables as some of them have no ‘value’ in the scientific method. That’s not to say that scientific methodology doesn’t contain some useful lessons. Things such as critical thinking, empirical observation and hypothesis testing all are useful and have their place. However, we need to consider science as only one of a number of worldviews, each which has validity. That way we can use the teachings of science in balance with other systems of metaphysics, perception or technology. Science needs to move beyond seeing the world as a group of insentient things, making judgments based on utilitarian calculations, acting as though we (the scientists) are impartial observers when we live in precisely the environment we are observing, seeing nature and its processes as something we can manipulate because we know best, and ignoring the things which are not quantifiable (spirit, beauty, sacredness etc).

This may be why science can be used for both ends of the climate argument; for and against environment catastrophe. We are using science to justify our arguments for climate change but by that definition we are also saying that the thing that is ‘proving’ we are right is also the method which has caused the problem in the first place, as well as the thing that will solve the problem. The conundrum is that invoking science in the fight against climate change means we are also buying in to the same systems of intellectual authority that have underpinned the reasons for the collapse of our ecosystem in the first place. We need to get out of the science box and place it in balance with other non-scientific truths.  

In fact Eisenstein goes beyond getting outside the science box and argues the importance of being unreasonable (by that he means using more than just reason, logic, science, data or global measurements) to make changes. We need to stop being entirely reasonable about the way we govern ourselves, and modify our systems of government to place as much value in qualitative things as those which are quantifiable. It’s not an unrealistic goal. In 1972 the then king of Bhutan stated that ‘Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product’, and in July 2008 the Bhutanese government instituted Gross National Happiness as their goal, including an annual index which measures the collective happiness and well-being of their population.

Eisenstein argues that we must seek transition away from high-growth, high-waste societies to one where more is not necessarily better and happier does not necessarily mean richer. Value is not necessarily defined by economics. We need to move away from valuing everything in terms of GDP or growth, where everything from resources to services has a monetary value, and discover what is valuable to ourselves outside of economic lines.

Here’s another assumption: by solving one issue, such as CO2 emissions, we will somehow solve all the other issues.  But what about soil erosion and degradation? What about interrupting the water cycle? What about the poisoning of water, soil and air with chemicals and manufacturing processes? What about the underregulated and misunderstood ramifications of introducing GMOs into the delicate ecosystems of our planet? The great scientific truth is that of cause and effect. In this context, why do we think we can affect change on one thing (CO2 emissions) if we don’t address the myriad causes of this change? We can’t. If we don’t have a holistic approach to helping cure our planet how can we heal it? We can’t. We’ve seen this time and time again in all aspects of our lives, from politics to environment to social cohesion: solving one problem just begets another two or three problems. Have we learnt nothing?

Here's a third assumption: we expect to continue living a quality of life not substantially different from the one we have now. This can be easily seen in how we talk about energy. All the metrics around climate change assume we will continue to use loads of energy. The arguments rage around how that will be sustainable and whether we can completely transition to sustainable energy in a reasonable time frame, not whether we need all that energy in the first place.  This can also be seen in the debate around population control. This debate focuses more on how many people the planet can support (with an onus on developing countries with higher birth rates), rather than whether we want to change our way of living enough to support them. Estimates suggest we can feed at least 10 billion people on the current levels of food production. But that would mean a radical shake-up of the economics around distribution and food waste.

Finally, in reframing the argument we must stop categorising the environment of which we are a part in terms only of ourselves and the utility it has to humans. Our metrics are currently only economic ones (how much a thing is worth financially) which places no importance on the intrinsic value of something; the sacredness or beauty of a place, or the joy that something makes you feel. These are the things that make life ‘richer’ (ironic term!). We need to stop being consumers of nature and what it can provide us and be lovers of nature; recognising the intrinsic value it has in our lives and valuing that as much as the economic value.

2. Humans are only a part of a greater whole and we need to figure out what our role is in our ecosystem.

We need to stop seeing ourselves as the masters of nature, with the natural world and all its ecosystems as the servants of Man. We are not above or outside our environment, we are part of it. Earth is not a pool of never-ending resources, it is a delicate ecosystem with checks and balances that have evolved over millions of years and that requires we put back what we take out. We need to be the servants of nature, not Superusers. 

Moreover, if we accept that there is more than wisdom and consciousness out there than just a human one, why not allow it into our lives as well? This goes against our ingrained ‘fight’ instinct that suggest that if anything is to happen then we have to MAKE it happen. How about opening ourselves to the possibility of things happening without our having to be the driver of them, or indeed to control them, and let them do what they need to do. Reanimating our world ie. seeing it as composed of things that are just as alive as humans but in a different way, is vital. If we see the world as dead then we are justifying our killing it. If we want a living world then we have to act from a place where the world is alive.

Following that path and accepting that we are merely a part of the whole leads us to the next question; what is our role on Earth? We didn’t evolve by accident so what is our purpose in the natural world? Eisenstein has some interesting things to say about some of the tribal wisdom of indigenous peoples around the world and their connection to their environments, and essentially his argument boils down to husbanding the earth in a way that is beneficial to all life, not just humans. He uses as one example the native American connection with California (as written about in the book Tending the Wild by Kat Anderson), which argues that instead of the state being ‘virgin’ and ‘untouched’ before Europeans arrived to ‘develop’ and ‘improve’ it, with the lazy indigenous tribes living off the fat of the land, instead their practices had encompassed husbanding and nurturing the land to its fertile state over the course of generations. Ultimately then, Eisenstein posits that our purpose is to ‘leave a beautiful or healing trace’ on our environment: forging intimate, respectful connections with nature in its specific, local embodiment. 

3. We need to make this personal.

Many of us feel strongly that we want to do something to help save our biostructures and create a more sustainable ecosystem. However, what can one person do? Despite some glaring exceptions such as Greta Thunberg (and how much power does she really have to enact actual change?), we feel powerless. Presenting climate change in global terms not only devalues the effort of individual to minuscule insignificance it also paints the whole problem as theoretical and remote. Big issues such as our changing climate are also existentially extremely difficult to make ‘personal’ and therefore make it much easier to assign their remedies to ‘them’ (the governments, aid agencies, environmental activists) who may be seen to have the power (within our existing social structures) to Do Something About It. In other words, we are abrogating responsibility for the big problems that we ourselves have created. And because it’s presented in terms of fear, it makes people feel powerless, despondent because they as individuals can’t make a difference, and guilty because they aren’t doing anything to help.

Instead we need to focus on the immediate things that we can change. We may not be doing much towards the bigger picture but if everyone focussed on small changes in their own local environments, rather than assuming someone else somewhere else was going to solve this huge, unsolvable problem, we may feel we were actually doing something and making a difference as an individual, even in a small way, as well as feeling less guilty for sitting on the sidelines while our planet dies around us.

Eisenstein ends his book with a question: why are we settling for an Earth which becomes less rich in biodiversity and more degraded every year?  We seem constantly to be accepting and positioning our continually more degraded world as the new norm, which implies there was never anything better, rather than railing against the degradation of the biosphere from what it used to be. We are numbed by the trauma of seeing our ecosystem constantly raped and reduced and degraded, and after this much abuse it becomes difficult to continue to actively demand better. This is turn leads to degradation becoming the new norm, ad infinitas. Is this what we really want? Hopefully, the answer is no, as it seems an incontrovertible truth that we can no longer continue to live the way we have and still have a living planet to inhabit.

Congratulations! You’ve managed to get through the whole of this very lengthy review. I hope that in reading it you understand why I felt it so necessary to be this long. Ultimately, Eisenstein’s book is not only an explanation for a different way of thinking about our environment and how we live on and with our planet, it’s also contains suggestions for what we, as individuals and collectively, can do about it. So now that you’ve read the review, I hope you will go and pick up and read the book. It’ll probably take you a while because there’s so much in there to digest and consider. But trust me, if you have any interest in the future of our planet, it’s worth it.