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Ch. 1: Introduction: a blue Arctic

#171: June - Sept. 2020 (Non-Fiction)
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Harry Marks
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Re: Ch. 1: Introduction: a blue Arctic

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Robert Tulip wrote: I have been working rather ambitiously on a scientific article with the title Large Scale Ocean Based Algae Production: A Personal Research Journey. I just received comments from an ocean scientist politely explaining why many of my assumptions and suggestions are not feasible. Although that is disappointing, and means my ambitious ideas are not immediately realistic, I am happy to have this reality check.
I'm sorry to hear that the expert take is discouraging, since your purpose sounded excellent and promising. If the reality check indicates proper directions for improvement, you still may end up playing a great role in rescuing us all.
Robert Tulip wrote: Trying to engage directly in scientific fields where I lack expertise is obviously a hard ask. But it has been an interesting way of thinking for me. The philosophical ground is where I can defend my views more adequately, looking at big picture policy implications. Even so, a fertile creative imagination can help open productive conversations to liberate discussion about practical priorities and alternatives. My genre is more utopia than dystopia, using utopian imagination about the boundaries of the possible to open people’s minds and create hope in rather bleak circumstances.
Still, it might be a signal to you that market incentives are likely to make a bigger difference than heroic imagination. Many scientists and engineers cooperating are likely to solve problems that a few cannot defeat.
Robert Tulip wrote:
Harry Marks wrote:It is directly relevant to the on-going reassessment within Christianity. The whole idea of transcendence is having to be integrated with a more functional theology.
Your phrase “functional theology” will seem out of place to many in a discussion of the melting Arctic. “Functional theology” is not only out of place at first sight, scientists would often see it as an oxymoron, self-contradictory, since theology is generally seen as lacking any practical function due to its pervasive fantasy assumptions. Yet perhaps these big mythological stories from religion can help us to step back from the immediacy of science and politics to place the urgent ethical issues of allowing our planet to collapse around our ears in some sort of strategic context.
In particular, theology strives for a unity of values, a perspective that allows all of our simple motivations and all of our fundamental tasks in life to be integrated into an overall relationship. The Good. Such a perspective, or at least the learning on the way to it, can shed considerable light on our relationship to our values, where reason and instinct are often at odds. A functional theology has to let ideals thrown up by reason give way at times to practical considerations, but without simply abandoning "the Good" and the quest for it. As a simple example, "there is neither male nor female" according to St. Paul, but that ideal has to be modulated appropriately to reject the status difference while permitting the biological differences.
Robert Tulip wrote:Language about “transcendence” is exactly the metaphysical mentality that scientists traditionally find hardest to engage with, due to its associations with escaping reality into comforting fantasy. I like your idea of exploring a functional theory of transcendence as a way to reassess Christianity. For example, in terms of Arctic collapse, we can see the previous long-lasting orderly natural stability of the ice over the last few million years as existing under the grace of God, while the sudden current death spiral of polar ice results from the depraved state of corruption that humanity has inflicted upon the planet. The practical ecological function of theology can be to work out how to transform a state of corruption into a state of grace.
Some values and their instantiations, such as modes of relationship, can transcend others. We all understand how the value of good health transcends the signals provided by discomfort and even pain of exercise. Imagery of a "transcendent reality" (like, say, whoever set the key physical constants in the universe) can serve as a consistent evocation of the transcendence of morality when it conflicts with esthetics. But our stories meant to convey that process are breaking down under the weight of implausibility. The biggest reassessment in theology is to import the cruciform relationship of Jesus to history into the narratives about God's nature. First Jesus became God, and now God is becoming Jesus.

It is difficult to maintain plausibility for a narrative of God as creator, though many find it unproblematic. Setting that aside, we still have a relationship of awe, dependence and a sense of the holy with "Creation", i.e. nature. That natural relationship is a vital element of a sustainable relationship with life itself, as we are coming to realize. We are now finding that we got the whole relationship of freedom wrong, by demanding an external material freedom at the expense of our moral and relational freedom.

The trauma we have inflicted, and continue to inflict, on our physical environment is a reflection of the trauma inflicted by Europeans upon "primitive" people, who were allowed to be only a means to Eurocentric ends. Not that Europeans bear some particular guilt - it was just the extension of the craving to sit atop domination systems, to put the necks of "other people" under our knee. And virtually every culture has had some version of domination systems: it is an unreflective extension of our will to seek our goals unhindered by the needs of others.

Which brings us to your proposal to rise from a state of corruption to a state of grace. I find it useful to think of grace as one of my ministers explained it, in my youth. There is no fundamental difference between the grace we admire in an accomplished dancer and the grace of God shedding unmerited favor on people. If we can sufficiently balance our urges for comfort and security with the needs for grace created by living in competition and community, we can achieve a common life that is graceful. But it must be choreographed by visions of possible harmony and beauty replacing violence and domination. And if we can do that with other people, we can learn to draw the circle wide enough to include other species and all of nature.

Too bad we start in the face of such a world-historical crisis, but maybe that has the potential to lend a sacred status to our efforts to live in harmony with nature. As we know from "Tribe" and some of the other recent readings here, the survival of the civilization can give a transcendent sense of meaning to what steps we take for its sake.
Robert Tulip wrote:I find this sense of natural transcendence seen in stable planetary order the most meaningful and coherent way to interpret metaphysical language about grace. Strong Biblical support for this line of thinking comes from the line in Revelation 11:18 which says the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth. Enlisting theology to explain why we should not destroy the earth is entirely functional, as a way to mitigate wrath, interpreted in terms of natural collapse.
I agree that nature's stable order conveys a sense of grace, and led us into some of the most human endeavors. It was the effort to solve calendar problems created by the disjunction of lunar and solar years, permitting forecasts of the calendar, that gave us much of the basis of mathematics. I don't think wildness per se is a useful image of that order, but it is a doorway back to the needed humility and awe that can put our cravings and ambitions into a needed perspective. We have the guns to shoot all the rhinoceroses in nature, but we do not have the means to bring them back if we do so. A certain kind of relationship with ourselves and each other is crucial to solving the problems created by our material masteries.
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Ch. 1: Introduction: a blue Arctic

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Harry Marks wrote:One of the guideposts of the revised theology is wildness. The notions of God as "wholly other" may emerge more from wildness than from imagery of impenetrably prescient invisible control. Wildness is our origin and, in some sense, our destination. We are shaped by it, but also we are shaped for it. To be able to inhabit our cozy world of light-switch convenience with enough understanding to be subjects of wildness, i.e. agents of wildness, without being destructive agents as exploiters of wildness, that is a tall order but begins to be seen as a worthy objective.
A key way to develop interest in the importance of the Arctic is to link the objective science with theories of cultural value that people can relate to. Part of the problem of disengagement from climate science may be that the scientific method has strongly embedded its notion of objective facts as separate from subjective values, and the process of integrating fact and value – saying why the Arctic is intrinsically important – is still unfortunately only beginning. Explaining the sacred in terms of the natural idea of wildness is a perfect example of this integration of fact and value. Seeing the objective independence of wild nature as having sanctity generates the potential for a theology that has as yet only partially been imagined in Christian traditions, although pantheist traditions have language about the web of life that needs to be better respected among conventional believers in God.

Here is a commentary I recently read that sets out these issues of the value of wildness quite well.
INTEGRAL ECOLOGY by Sarah Bachelard
The famous speech by Chief Seattle includes the words: ‘This we know, all things are connected, like the blood that unites one family. This we know, whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves’. This notion of the inter-connectedness of natural systems and life-forms, the sense of the ‘web of life’, has become a commonplace of ecological understanding. What we do to the soil by way of agricultural or mining practice will affect the waterways that receive their run-off, which will affect the oceans into which the rivers run, which will affect marine life (both plant and animal), which will affect the livelihood of coastal communities perhaps in quite far distant places, and so it goes.
All this now seems so obvious that we wonder how western modernity has managed to remain seemingly oblivious to the consequences of our economy’s heedless exploitation and disruption of the great chain of being. Part of what has blinded us, perhaps, is the fact that the earth system has (historically) been so vast in relation to human culture and action, that we haven’t imagined ourselves capable actually of exceeding planetary limits, or unleashing irreversible damage. And perhaps compounding this is the fact that more and more people do not experience a lived, daily connection with the natural world. Many of us spend most of our time indoors, in temperatures we control artificially, obtaining our food neatly packaged from supermarket shelves and our water at the turn of a tap. We don’t experience our daily dependence on the well-being of the earth, the fruiting of berries and grains in due season, the springing up of water in wells and streams. So we forget that, as the founder of ecological economics Herman Daly once said: ‘The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the reverse’.
Harry Marks wrote:
Warfare should have been sufficient clue that we needed to re-learn our innermost identity, but it wasn't. So now we see if our intelligentsia can learn to see itself not as above and superior to the unlettered hoi polloi of democracy, but as salt and light. Instead of the directors of the aimless hordes of cannon fodder, holding the reins of power, we have no choice but to become humble supplicants on behalf of a life with the wild rather than against the wild.
Harry, you and hopefully others may be interested to read the sermon I gave this morning touching on this topic of the pathological relation between warfare and human identity. The steady loss of Christian cultural knowledge means that many would not recognise your reference to salt and light from the Sermon on the Mount, even though the context of the city on the hill has been such a foundational American image. Your theme of prayer for the wild presents a jarring paradigm shift from conventional dominion theology, which continues to locate morality in the context of taming nature rather than finding our place within the ecological web of life. The psychology of intellectual superiority that you mention generates a tone of patronising condescension in much analysis which shuts off conversational dialogue. Finding the voice of humility is elusive because it is such a hard thing to do, constantly veering into the damaging paradox of being proud to be humble, or the ineffective approach of remaining silent.
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Re: Ch. 1: Introduction: a blue Arctic

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Harry Marks wrote: The strange slow pace and cumulative drama of the GHG threat is unlike anything recorded in our history or our mythology.
I beg to differ. The Biblical account of the apocalypse has a similar slow pace and cumulative drama, “a thousand years as a day for God”. That is why I think it is helpful to analyse climate change against religious frameworks of apocalyptic mythology, such as Saint Peter’s line that it won’t be water but fire next time.
Harry Marks wrote: We can only understand it using means that, to the average person, resemble mystical mumbo-jumbo.
The only reason why the simple physics of the greenhouse effect might look mystical to some average people is because the vested interests of the fossil fuel economy have seen the call to stop emitting as an existential threat to their businesses, and have sown confusion in response, working from the nicotine/sugar playbook.

I see the blame for this as equally resting on both sides. The climate activist movement has largely rejected geoengineering as a climate solution on spurious moral hazard grounds, instead saying the only solution is immediate decarbonisation. Denialism is an emotional reaction against this unrealistic revolutionary ultimatum. The underpinning problem is that decarbonising the economy is too small, slow, expensive, risky and divisive to be an effective climate solution, but politicians have not been able to recognise that geoengineering – cutting solar radiation and CO2 levels – offers the only viable alternative. Both sides maintain faith in spurious placeholder strategies which offer partisan political traction while doing nothing to stop the rolling climate juggernaut.

Peter Wadhams provides an excellent simple summary of the allegedly mysterious physics of global warming in Chapter Five, which I will simplify even further when I get up to that chapter shortly.
Harry Marks wrote: An "apocalypse" is an unveiling, and it calls us to examine ourselves and our self-understanding.
This illustrates why it is so interesting to analyse the current planetary collapse against the Biblical framework, looking to explain the symbolism of Revelation against a purely scientific empirical model. I believe such an integrating synthesis of science and religion is essential to put climate change into a story with a practical theory of change that can resonate with mass culture, unlike the current divisive placement of climate policy within a purely secular context.
Harry Marks wrote: Much of Western society is now convinced of our peril, but outside of scientifically oriented circles they do not see it with any clarity or take on board the implications for the commonality of our fate and the degree of mutual obligation at the heart of our relationship with the wild world we emerged from.
Peter Wadhams aims for a simple clarity in A Farewell to Ice. The sensitive fragility of the Arctic makes it the canary in the coalmine for the planetary future. I don’t agree that ‘scientifically oriented circles’ now have the required clarity. That vision will not arise until the world sees that immediate geoengineering is essential to prevent economic and ecological collapse, recognising climate change as the primary security problem facing the world.
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Re: Ch. 1: Introduction: a blue Arctic

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Robert Tulip wrote:sermon I gave this morning touching on this topic of the pathological relation between warfare and human identity.
Your theme of prayer for the wild presents a jarring paradigm shift from conventional dominion theology, which continues to locate morality in the context of taming nature rather than finding our place within the ecological web of life.
It was a beautiful sermon. Thanks for the link. My son, who is a vegetarian, helps me to see the moral dimension in seeking the good of nature for itself, rather than just relating to it all as a treasure to be plundered. I have been thinking, since reading this thread, about the difficulties of engaging with wildness. I am so busy with scrambling for my goals within society that I scarcely have time for the wild. But my wife loves the mountains, and the whole family treasures our times hiking in the past, and this summer as we have been avoiding the city and avoiding the pleasures of company, we have been plunging back into the wild. I am not quite ready yet to hunt buffalo with bow and arrow, but even small rituals like avoiding any damage to plants off the trail, or packing out the bits of trash that others have left, help me feel a oneness with the rugged and majestic places of nature.

The common theme with the sermon is not too subtle. Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the momentum of Zechariah's prophecy, seeking to proclaim and establish peace. And in the same way we merely need to be at peace with nature, taking some but giving as much, serving as the reflective mind of nature and its spokesperson, rather than trying to grab and control what it has to offer.

Dominating nature probably makes a lot of sense if you are desperate. But I think instead of the people in Kenya who structure their life around the ability to find honey, and contrast it with the fur traders of the American west who hunted the mighty herds of bison almost to extinction, and the droll, playful sea otters the same. We have it within our power to save humans from the kind of desperation which turns them into exploiters and despoilers. And from there, the next step is to re-integrate ourselves into a sustainable, continuing balance with the rest of nature.
Robert Tulip wrote: The psychology of intellectual superiority that you mention generates a tone of patronising condescension in much analysis which shuts off conversational dialogue. Finding the voice of humility is elusive because it is such a hard thing to do, constantly veering into the damaging paradox of being proud to be humble, or the ineffective approach of remaining silent.
I expect that you are right about this, but I have generally found that if you come at a problem in terms of cause and effect and the constraints we face together, that one does not have to be claiming superiority in order to focus attention on the problems we face in common. We have Dr. Anthony Fauci in the U.S., for example, who is all about the facts of the covid pandemic, and, at least to my eye, never seems to come across in an arrogant way. He doesn't seem to want to promote himself as an authority, but he does, constantly, plead for acknowledgement of, and response to, the facts of the situation.
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Re: Ch. 1: Introduction: a blue Arctic

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Robert Tulip wrote: I see the blame for this as equally resting on both sides. The climate activist movement has largely rejected geoengineering as a climate solution on spurious moral hazard grounds, instead saying the only solution is immediate decarbonisation. Denialism is an emotional reaction against this unrealistic revolutionary ultimatum. The underpinning problem is that decarbonising the economy is too small, slow, expensive, risky and divisive to be an effective climate solution, but politicians have not been able to recognise that geoengineering – cutting solar radiation and CO2 levels – offers the only viable alternative. Both sides maintain faith in spurious placeholder strategies which offer partisan political traction while doing nothing to stop the rolling climate juggernaut.
I have yet to read much of the book, but am looking forward to carving out some time. I note that Wadhams devotes a good deal of space to geoengineering and am curious whether he sees geoengineering as I do: a necessary means to buy time as we transition to a non-carbon economy. So the choice isn't between geoengineering and decarbonization; rather, geoengineering delays more drastic warming as we put in place renewable energy and/or more nuclear energy. Given the political difficulties of employing geoengineering, it is likely, anyway, that countries would agree to it only as a temporary measure rather than as permanent regulation of climate.
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