Resisting carbon reductionism

A few years ago I wrote the post that is linked at the bottom of this page. I was trying to get at the problem that, in the media, extreme weather events and the damage they cause are often tied exclusively to climate change. There is little discussion of the role farming, mining, and logging play in the destruction caused by floods, nor are droughts connected to deforestation. Extreme temperatures are sometimes linked to endless asphalt and concrete sprawls or countless square miles of denuded land, but more often blamed simply on global warming.

I thought it was worth revisiting this topic, because the problem hasn't gotten much better, and I've acquired better vocabulary with which to discuss it. In trying to untangle the mess of cause and effect when it comes to climate, and natural disasters, and what to do about them, two terms are important: climate fundamentalism and carbon reductionism. (For more on these terms, read Charles Eisenstein’s Climate: A New Story.)

Carbon reductionism posits that increased carbon in the atmosphere is the cause of climate destabilization, which produces more extreme weather events with their consequent destruction. Because this is true, the reasoning goes, we must all convert to climate fundamentalism: All activism must focus exclusively on atmospheric carbon removal. The entire climate movement is based on these foundations and the mere act of describing them is sometimes seen as treading dangerously close to climate change denialism.

There are several problems with this simple narrative of climate destabilization. Not the least among them is that it promotes despair because individual lifestyle choices have negligible impact on atmospheric carbon, and even organized, local activism has little meaningful effect on global emissions. Fighting an invisible, far away, globally-dispersed enemy is hard. Assessing progress against such a foe is nigh on impossible on an individual level. It leaves us completely reliant on “the experts” for reports on progress. I believe that this framing of the problem and its solutions dominates mainstream activism precisely because it's so abstract, divorced from real life, and the solutions available (moving to solar and wind power, converting to electric vehicles, building giant carbon sucking machines) offer great business opportunities.

Another enormous issue with carbon reductionism is that it leads to bizarre and counter-productive measures that actually accelerate biosphere destruction. These range from cutting healthy forests to burn for fuel, to flooding inhabited and productive valleys for hydropower, to replacing gas powered vehicles with electric ones, powered by solar and wind technology with a huge ecological footprint and very limited lifespan. Anything and everything is okay as long as it reduces fossil fuel use which in turn reduces atmospheric CO2. Never mind that in the process we are destroying that we which we are trying to save. (We had to destroy the planet in order to save it!)

A particularly egregious effect of carbon reductionism is that it steers us away from certain actions that could mitigate the worst effects of climate change. We're told that adjusting our behavior to reduce emissions is important, and that we should buy electric vehicles, limit meat in our diets, curtail flying, and stop having kids. But the best local and regional solutions aren't on the table, and are often ridiculed and opposed by climate activists because to accept these solutions would be to acknowledge that there's more to the climate story than just too much carbon in the atmosphere. Alternative solutions that don't center carbon, but focus on ecosystem restoration and the role of water in planetary health and climate control, aren't taken seriously, or are framed as ancillary, and not worth expending political energy on. They include limiting extractive industries in general (not just fossil fuels), stopping sprawl, repairing the small water cycle by restoring wetlands and forests, and changing agriculture to focus on perennial crops and grazing ruminants. These could quickly yield more tangible results than going vegan and buzzing around in your Chevy Bolt, but they would require a restructuring of our economic system and this is the crux of the problem.

I've struggled to put these thoughts into words for many weeks. As soon as I was finally able to do so, I almost immediately came across this article, and this more recent follow-up by Rob Lewis, that are much more eloquent and comprehensive on the topic. I highly recommend reading them, as well as checking out Hart Hagan's youtube channel, and the Climate Water Project written by Alpha Lo. It's well past time to move beyond carbon reductionism and these are some of the folks that are pointing the way.

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