As the debate rages about whether humans are affecting the climate a much bigger challenge is at play.
What if the carbon and climate debate were just one of a number of massive game changing scenarios for humanity? How might that change the way we consider putting a $10 per person per week price on carbon?
The collective footprint of human life on earth has risen dramatically. Since the 1970s we have been consuming resources (water, soil nutrients, plants, animals, fish and energy) at a rate faster than they are being replaced.
Australians have the unenviable title of the highest per capita footprint of any nationality.
Were every human on earth to live as we do we would need six planets.
Those who question whether Australians, or humanity at large, are too small to make an impact on planetary issues are wrong. They need a sanity check-up. Seriously.
Consider the Murray Darling Basin. In just 150 years some 12-15 billion trees have been removed. Does that cause climate change, drought, salinity, erosion, water stress, species extinction and soil depletion? The correct answer is: D – All of the above.
Climate change is a symptom of a massively disturbed carbon cycle. Too much carbon moving too quickly into the atmosphere together with gross depletions of natural carbon storage systems like forests and soils. What’s causing that change? We are.
Yet the carbon cycle is just one of many planetary systems in stress. Many physical resources such as oil, minerals, arable land, water and phosphorous are peaking. We are witnessing mass biodiversity loss, toxic pollution, a waste crisis and more.
Add to this the fact that most of these problems are driven by a small portion of affluent people. An Australian pensioner is in the top 20 wealthiest people on earth. Roughly 4/5ths of the world’s population have almost no electricity, secure water or affluence.
We need to dramatically increase the provision of life’s essential needs to more people – food, clothing, shelter, transportation, education, health services, telecommunications, etc – while at the same time dramatically reducing our ecological footprint.
Can we do it? I believe we can. It’s the groundbreaking challenge of our times.
Social change is a very complex process and never perfect. Instead of asking whether we agree or not with the carbon pricing package the questions need to be: Will it shift things in the right direction towards sustainability and social equity? Is it a good enough, next step? Can we live with it?
Taking the whole picture of our precarious human circumstance into account we need more clean and renewable energy, more soil fertility and sustainable agriculture, food and water security. We need to move away from highly destructive systems like coal and coal seam gas mining.
The carbon package will modestly move things in this direction. Much more social change is needed if we are to leap the chasm now before us.
Adam Blakester,
Armidale
