Tuesday 21 June 2016

Are our institutions and governance structures ready for the close of the Holocene?!

I thought I would share this article with you, from the LSE blog.

I must admit that I find it both ironic and deeply frustrating that we are about to destabilise, through our own acts and omissions (should that be emissions?!!), one of the most stable climatic periods of many millennia!

Our actions in burning fossil fuels, built up under our feet over hundreds of thousands of years, allied to profligate use of resources, for nothing more than a tenuous profit, is about to destabilise this harmonious epoch.

The burning of so much fossil fuel in such a short space of time, has released the locked up carbon and set in train dramatic changes that are staring to manifest themselves now in changes to our climate. But temperatures are running behind the curve of CO2 emissions and there will be an acceleration, leading to changes that we probably aren’t prepared for.

The blog realises our shortcomings at a social, institutional and economic level and discusses the profound impacts that they are totally unprepared to face!

Foresight on these issues, would predicate toward some form of global governance and a culture change toward a much less hierarchical and more cooperative structure.

Adaptation may well not be a case of cost benefit, but instead could be blind panic in the face of adversity and necessity. So many of the governance systems and ways of life that we take for granted are but the tiniest dot in geological terms. We would do well to think of these things as being very ephemeral, paper thin veils behind which we live and which, will be exposed by such profound change!