Solid Societal Solutions to Stop Climate Change (ebook) Jac B. Nijssen

Global warming is accelerating. Almost every aspect of earth’s processes (precipitation, temperature, meltdown, sea currents) starts to show dynamics that even scientists are looking at with bewilderment. So far, climate policy has been purely focused on the emissions of machines and processes, and not at all on the way we have organized our mutual dealings, i.e. the way we dance in each other’s arms to make a living. And that is more or less stupid. Because when there are social-economic causes underlying our insatiable hunger for energy (and thus behind the continuous emission growth), then as long as we don’t address those causes we will never get the fossil fuels part out of our energy-mix. The achievement of mitigation then continues to fall outside the bandwidth of behaviour trajectories of the current global economic interplay.

Why didn’t we question our manner of living together? Answer: Where money is at the wheel, the reflection on how we have organized access to the necessities of life is more or less blocked by the persistent illusion that an open liberal democracy is the superior form of mutual interaction; alternative forms are autocratic and dictatorial. Don’t question the system!! Don’t doubt its resilience!

But in this book, we do so nonetheless, cause the abyss comes too close. Based on a thorough systems analysis, we derive how society’s basic rules concerning the distribution of resources will continue to block mitigation. In itself, we don’t need to reveal a startling secret there. It boils down to this: The piston that drives our current economy is that you only get access to the basic necessities of life by competing, and energy guzzling is the main pillar of your competitiveness.

More difficult is how to get rid of that set-up. But that too is explored in this book. It is precisely the broad scope of the analysis (in this book) of current societal dynamics that makes it possible to reason out viable societal solutions to stop climate change. Without restricting democracy.