How did we get into this mess?

A collection of columns about climate change and environmental politics. My favourite was "Dawning", an account of Monbiot's pre-dawn walks, "when both nocturnal and diurnal beasts are roaming... animals that melt away like snow as the sun rises." (108) Also an account of the time he found, dismembered, and ate a piece of fresh roadkill. He was on a school camp with a bunch of students. Expecting them to be repulsed, they were in fact curious about the dead animal, its anatomy, what it would taste like, how it would decompose. I think they must have experienced that primeval wonderment which is the origin of the desire to protect nature.

In "The Gift of Death", Monbiot riffs on the insane tradition of giving people pointless cheap junk gifts, the sort of crap that circulates on birthdays and holidays. Unsurprisingly, less than 1% of the goods flowing through the consumer economy remain in use six months after sale:

They seem amusing on the first day of Christmas, daft on the second, embarrassing on the third. By the twelfth they're in landfill. For thirty seconds of dubious entertainment, or a hedonic stimulus that lasts no longer than a nicotine hit, we commission the use of materials whose impacts will ramify for generations. (201)

On politics, I find Monbiot a little bit too "the bankers, the bonuses"-ey (although in fairness, columns must be brief and shallow). I found his perspective valuable, but I don't really agree, however, that action on climate change must be driven from above. The details are vague, but he implies some kind of left-wing technocracy that will break the billionaire class, shatter the international corporations, and usher in a new post-fossil fuel world.

The focus on the wealthiest individuals always feels disproportionate. Yes, someone zipping around on his private WallyPower 118 yacht--which burns 3,400 litres of fuel per hour--does "more damage to the biosphere in ten minutes than most Africans inflict in a lifetime." (105) But in emphasising that fella's exorbitance, I think we condition ourselves to turn a blind eye to our own. Even an average, non-rich person in a first-world country still lives a life of waste and abundance unimaginable to the poorest human beings on earth.

Predicating all change on the success of a populist strike at the wealthiest 1% renders us callously indifferent to the impact of our own lives. In particular, it undervalues the worth of a lot of small actions and their ability to motivate and bring about larger change. No surprise then that the fundamentally nervous, left-sympathetic, climate-anxious urbanite is more pessimistic and apathetic than ever. If the world is fucked, why does it matter what he does? If he is so insignificant compared to the bloke with the yacht, why shouldn't he also go on trips overseas and eat shrink-wrapped beef? I've met hundreds of people like this. Faced with the contradiction between their noble beliefs and their inattentive, uninspiring lives, they prefers to bring things back around to the bankers and the bonuses. Convinced they cannot do anything more than vote for the right parties, they even seem to welcome the apocalypse that will be climate collapse

The anti-consumerist, alter-globalist messengers of the 1990s had a lot of important, confronting things to tell us. But they wagered everything on what Naomi Klein called "building a winning coalition." It was enough to write the manifesto, raise everyone's awareness levels, sweep the general election, and then set about reprogramming the doomsday machine. The hard work would always come later. Less attention was paid to the vigorous social and communal life necessary to sustain political action in the first place.

So rather than beating up on utopian politics, let me share on example of effective chagne that is communal, incremental, practical, and hopeful. Sheep farming has dominated the Wairarapa ever since the Pākehā moved in in 1853. Many of the old paddocks are now depleted. Decades of grazing has compacted the ground, making it so stony that hardly anything can grow there. But recently, out Greytown way, a couple have set up a big vege garden using no-till methods. Their strategy is to buy up these old, marginal blocks of land that nobody wants and slowly regenerate them into something useful and lasting. Now they grow enough food to feed 70 local households.

That was achieved by two people. Yeah, it's not enough to save the world, but it's a hell of a lot more than what most are willing to do. Such actions, modest in scope but expansive in heart, are within the reach of far more of us than we think.