Reality is not optional

In my 50+ years of bouncing around the crust of this planet, nothing, as in Not One Bleeding Thing, amazes and puzzles and frustrates me more than how much our actions are controlled by the layer of perception we all have between reality and our mental model of it.[1] This is why I often remark that the truest thing anyone ever said in a business setting, which is where I learned it, is that “perception is reality”; people respond not to reality, but to their perception of it, which can diverge wildly from the physical universe we all share. It’s a key reason why advertising works, grown men are moved to tears by national anthems, and politics can become hyper-polarizing, as we see all too clearly in the US currently.

I think part of my profound fascination with the perception filter and its consequences is due to my economics background. In microeconomics we talk about utility functions (i.e. personal preferences) and how that contributes to different people deriving different levels of utility from the same purchase. Part of my attraction to the concept relates to the death of my father when I was 12; one would be hard pressed to find an event that would trigger more introspection and existential thoughts in a 12-year old than that. We’ve all had such universe-reshaping moments in our personal lives, as well as far too many public ones, from Katrina to assassinations to 9/11[2] to elections to stunning sports victories to wars to financial market flame outs to astronauts and robotic explorers making cheesy 1950′s science fiction reality. It’s certainly not a boring life for any of us, and those “tent pole moments” do far more than change the details of our lives; they reshape our relationship with and perception of our world. Some events, as advertisers would have us believe, really do “change everything”.

All of this came to mind in my morning slog through my RSS newsfeeds. Three items stood out in this respect:

The first is probably the best example of a must-read blog posting I’ll ever point you to, Paul Gilding’s The Parallel Universes of Climate Change. Where do you live?:

Some days my head hurts, as I shift between what feels like two parallel universes in the climate change debate. First I have these conversations with world-class scientists who calmly lay out the scientific view of the various risks posed by climate change and their relative scale and likelihoods. They tell me the science says it is almost certain the impacts will be serious and destabilising for our society and our economy. The science also describes a lower level of risk – which they find hard to quantify but generally say between 10% and 50% – that the impacts of climate change will be catastrophic, perhaps even civilisation threatening. This could include widespread famine, war and economic collapse. Not certain, but a reasonable possibility.

It is very clear when you listen to these scientists and read their peer-reviewed reports that, on any calm and rational analysis, we should be preparing for a carbon reduction war. Yes, a war – with all that implies about focus, effort and sacrifice. The threat posed is, after all, a “clear and present danger” and the response should be strong, global and immediate. This should be a ‘whatever it takes’ moment.

Then I shift into the parallel universe.

I spend time in corporate boardrooms and listen to the analysis of business executives who explain how we mustn’t damage the economy by “over-reacting”. They explain their concern about protecting jobs and economic growth, how we must not jeopardise “our” (insert India, China, South Africa, USA, Australia etc) national competitiveness by acting “early” because, after all, without a global solution what difference will our actions make anyway? When I engage with policy makers, even those supportive of climate action, I get only a marginally stronger response.

…

In our present day to day lives, when the weather is a bit warmer than normal but often rather pleasant, and our economy is showing signs of improving, it is hard for most of us to think like this. The business leaders I talk to about this topic are not bad people. Nor are the policy makers grappling with the complexities of transforming an economy and the uncertainty of the outcomes. They are normal people with children and friends – they go to church, they volunteer in their communities and they care about the world. (OK, there are a few exceptions, but not many!)

But they still fall for the easy way out, the path of denial and avoidance. Not because they’re bad people, but because they’re not thinking clearly and courageously.

My message on this topic is clear and direct. We are at a crucial moment in human history. 2009 is to climate change what 1939 was to WWII. Poland has been invaded – the Arctic is melting, the bushfires are burning, the droughts are strengthening and the floods are sweeping away communities. There is only one question you have to ask yourself: “what will I tell my children?”

So now, imagine yourself in 2030. The world is teetering on the edge of geopolitical and economic chaos (this is not a certainty, but it is certainly a reasonable risk). You are talking to your children (add 20 years to their current age) and explaining what it was like in 2009 – what the scientific consensus was and how you personally responded, then and there, when the reality became clear. What did you do in 2009 and why?

In 2030, the parallel universes will have closed and there will only be one left. It will be called reality and you and your children will be living in it. Imagine the conversation. Do it now, then decide what to do.

Read it. Point others to it. Memorize it. Get it tattooed on your back. And then get to work.

The second is Fossil Fuels 101? from David Hawkins of the NRDC (emphasis added):

Well, my comments in a New York Times piece about natural gas have certainly provoked a lot of reaction, including some who thought I was arguing that coal is a better fuel from a climate standpoint than natural gas. Not what I said, for sure. Nor what I think.

No, the point of my statements to the Times reporter is that to protect the climate we need to keep cumulative CO2 emissions over the coming decades below amounts that will produce disastrous disruption of the climate. That means we need a game plan that keeps emissions from all fossil fuels in check—no fossil fuel that is abundant can be given a free pass. A ton of fossil CO2 that goes to the atmosphere does the same damage to the climate, whether it comes from oil, or coal, or natural gas.

Does that mean we can’t make use of natural gas to help limit emissions? No, we can. Done right, natural gas has many advantages. It is a tool that can help or hurt our climate protection goals depending how it is used. If natural gas backs out the use of dirtier fuels, like coal from uncontrolled power plants, it helps. But if natural gas displaces opportunities to invest in energy efficiency or renewable energy, it hurts.

That means clean energy advocates need to push for policies that prioritize clean energy options like efficiency and renewables and assure that natural gas and any other fossil fuels we consume are used in a way that minimizes their CO2 emissions.

The bolded text points to something I keep stressing, but which seems to elude many people: The atmosphere doesn’t care. It responds to every unit of CO2 the same, whether it came from the US, China, India, or Liechtenstein. It responds the same whether it came from a forest fire, a factory making useless junk, or an ambulance that’s saving the life of a philanthropist and humanitarian. It responds the same no matter what kind of political deal had to be struck to limit emissions in one part of the planet while allowing some growth in another. The atmosphere neither knows nor cares about the details humans immerse ourselves in and obsess over endlessly. It simply responds.

Inside India’s Intransigence on Climate Change Talks:

If you ask India’s climate change negotiators, the December summit in Copenhagen will be not about how to save the planet, but about how to accommodate the rights and aspirations of millions of Indians like Kumar. Since developed countries have already pumped out a large proportion of the greenhouse gases that the environment can safely handle, they argue, those same nations must vacate some atmospheric space for the latecomers to industrialization. The current concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 380 parts per million (ppm), 72% of which has been emitted by developed countries. Most scientists agree this needs to be stabilized at 450 ppm or less, leaving a tiny wedge — about 70 ppm — where the developing countries must jostle for space to industrialize and pollute.

According to India’s climate change policy, there’s no question that it is the moral obligation of developed countries to accept binding emissions cuts. Further, the argument goes, since developed countries are historically responsible for the state of the planet, they should pay up by helping developing countries with money and technology to leapfrog to green technology without following the familiar high-carbon path to growth. Only with outside funding will India be able to effectively shift to renewable sources of energy, which, being costlier, will have to be subsidized for widespread use by people like Kumar and the over 400 million Indians who are still without access to electricity.

Obviously, bringing these demands, which other developing countries like China and Brazil support, to the global negotiating table has been contentious. There is a stalemate over just about everything — from how to apportion blame, to who should pay and how. In the run-up to Copenhagen, the Indian government and Indian NGOs have upped the ante against what they call the one-sided western discourse that blames India and other developing countries for being obstructionist and not doing their bit. In recent weeks, there has been a steady stream of Indian-generated reports bolstering India’s assertions that it is unilaterally greening its act. A report released last week says India has consistently greened its GDP since the 1980s, with the energy intensity of India’s GDP falling from 0.30 kgoe (kilogram of oil equivalent) per dollar of GDP in 1980 to 0.16 kgoe in 2004. This, it adds, is an achievement on par with über-green Germany, and is bettered only by Japan, the U.K., Brazil and Denmark.

…

Developing countries refuse to [accept binding emissions cuts]. They say the hard-fought Kyoto Protocol whose successor they will be working out at Copenhagen is unequivocal in laying out differentiated responsibilities, and since the biggest polluters have yet to fulfill their responsibilities, the goalposts cannot be changed. But, they add, India will be happy to green its energy mix if the west provides the money and technology (this is the common position of developing countries — Brazil, India, China have all submitted proposals demanding that funds and technology must flow from rich to poor countries to enable the latter to undertake mitigation and adaptation efforts). Regardless of who will appear the correct party in 20 years’ time, any solution will have to be not only fair — and seen to be fair — but also acceptable to all parties. Intransigence will only hurt the fragile process that scientists, industry and government will engage in again this winter, and negotiators will do well to remember that this is one case where no deal may not be better than a bad deal.

Again, we’re not “merely” trying to hit a goal of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 (or whatever other formulation of the task you care to use), but we have to find a path to that goal that is politically acceptable to countries with wildly differing perceptions of reality.

Expect this situation to get far more contentious than it is today, with a stunning level of myopia on all sides, a truly disturbing jingoism quotient bordering on open racism, and a lot of half-hearted compromises that will lead to endless commentary from the major figures in the environmental groups about how it isn’t nearly enough. And there will be people like me, agreeing with the major figures and doing everything we can to get more people to pay attention to the ultimate figures, namely the hard data.

The situation is so immense, so mind-numbingly complex and difficult, so lost in the labyrinth of humanity’s perverse perceptions, that I’ve now moved beyond any notion of being “optimistic” or “pessimistic”. I will simply continue to fight as creatively and as hard as I can, and hope that my own perception is wrong.

[1] For “Not One Thing” read “Not One Thing with the painfully obvious exception of women”.

[2] I’m sure I’ve told the story here before, but for those who missed it: I lived in Binghamton, NY when 9/11 happened. I had friends and relatives in NYC, some very close to the WTC on that morning. I spent a very long day flipping between various TV networks, trying to assimilate what was happening before my eyes, dreading the next replay, for what seemed like the 10,000th time, of a plane flying into a building or one or the other tower collapsing. By the middle of the afternoon “my soul was as thin as a playing card”, as Joyce Carol Oates once said. I went outside, sat in my car, and turned on the stereo. I played one of my favorite CD’s at the time, a concert recording by Marilyn Manson. One of his songs begins with a series chords growing louder and louder, until the first voice you hear is Manson yelling with rising volume and urgency, “You can’t kill me m***** f*****!” I turned up the volume to a painful level and replayed that 15 or 20 second song intro over and over, probably at least 20 times, until it pushed the insistent chaos of the real world at least far enough away that I could breath again.