Carbon, carbon everywhere?

The problem with carbon: a Battle in Print by Richard Rees, urban design director, BDP

Given that we are a carbon-based life form, our obsession with carbon should not come as a surprise. But the carbon that really counts is the carbon dissolved in the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is responsible for global warming. We add to the stock of carbon in the atmosphere at our peril.

Everything we do in pursuing our current lifestyles is about creating more and more carbon dioxide. We have shaped the modern identity of the West and our whole way of life around the casually profligate use of fossil fuels. We are now in a fix to try to change this lifestyle by getting rid of those fuels. We are not always conscious of the full implications of our actions in modern society as we are divorced from nature in our daily lives. There is an increasing desire on the part of people in modern societies to insulate themselves from difficult problems and discomfort. We seek to avoid confronting responsibilities in any area, let alone the nebulously-defined damage attributed to climate change. What does it matter to a housewife in Croydon if someone in New Orleans or Bangladesh has their home inundated as the result of a massive change in global weather patterns?

The whole environment is now commercialised in the wake of the triumph of global capitalism. Even wilderness is seen as a commercial tourist destination, and saved as much for its financial potential as its natural importance. As we are now predominantly urban city-dwellers in the early twenty-first century, humanity’s insulation from nature will only get worse. The need for that SUV for the school run is as much about insulation from other people as it is about status, just as the now ubiquitous iPod is about cutting ourselves off from the people around us.

The future is moving forward on two quite distinct paths. On the one hand, we are becoming increasingly technologically dependent – according to Neil Postman (1993) we live in a ‘Technopoly’. This means that technology is actually driving social change, and not the other way around. Some even see us as ‘Posthuman’ – the result of our dependency on filtering technologies that mediate communication between individuals (Katherine Hayles 1999). On the other hand, many of us are looking to reconnect with nature, to cultivate a more benevolent attitude to the biosphere, and to develop a less technologically-dependent attitude in the future.

These views are diametrically opposed and will soon start to manifest themselves in a battle of ideologies. I have called these two futures the Omega and Alpha futures respectively. The idea of dealing with the carbon problem by sequestering it underground and trading it between countries is a technologically driven solution (an Omega solution). The concept of giving anything up and actually changing lifestyles to produce less carbon emissions is one that assumes that the natural world is precious and we need to preserve what is left of it (an Alpha solution).

Yet both extreme views are fraught with problems. The Alpha or green future is not really achievable if we are looking at solving our global climate problems over the next few years. If you forgive the (unintentional) analogy: is a third way possible? Is it possible to envisage a future that makes the most of technology, but that also shifts the emphasis on to a more caring and co-operative relationship with the planet? I, for one, think that there is such a future. I have called it the ‘Sigma future’ (Σ – sigma as the sum of a number of different elements). But the Sigma future will not arise unless people are willing to strive for an Alpha future and question the technological imperatives being driven by the Omega future advocates. This will rely on a change in the emphasis on the individual, and a move back to a more balanced view of the role of nature and society in our lives. I include society in this as it is another area where we have collectively lost out in a commercially dominated environment, where corporations rather than governments now run the planet.

I am optimistic that with enough debate we can shift the perception of the way we interact with nature and move towards a Sigma future. But this requires a real debate over the role and monitoring of future technology – how we see ourselves as individuals on a fragile planet; how we define our future social relationships. In short, how we see ourselves as humans into the twenty-first century and beyond.

References

Katherine Hayles, N. (1999). How we became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York, Vintage Books.

 

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