Gaia & Climate Change - An Interview with Karen Litfin,Ph.D.
Saturday, September 19th 2009 @ 7:20 PM (not yet rated)
Karen Litfin, Ph.D., teaches at the University of Washington in the political science department where she specializes in international relations and international environmental politics. She has published two books, Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in International Environmental Cooperation (Columbia University Press, 1994) and The Greening of Sovereignty in World Politics (MIT Press, 1998), and many articles, all (to quote Karen) “up to this point in a scholarly vein”. Her primary focus is the impact of science and technology on world politics. But unlike most working in these areas, Karen’s perspective is greatly influenced by Gaia Theory. In her soon-to-be-published paper, “Gaia Theory: From Global Science to Global Politics”, she writes, “Science influences culture not only through its contributions to technological development, but through the concepts and metaphors it furnishes for social, political, economic, and ethical life. . . . Gaia theory emerges just at a time when the twin phenomena of globalization and environmental destruction call us to adopt a planetary perspective. . . . Thus, we might ask: What concepts, metaphors, and promptings might Gaia theory offer us as we explore modes of governance commensurate to the task before us?”
Karen is currently working on a book on the global ecovillage movement where, she feels, Gaian thinking seems to be having an impact. As a long-time environmental activist, Karen is concerned about the state of environmental activism in this country. After reading an article I wrote on Gaia a while ago (“Gaia in Our Hearts”), a version of which appeared in the first issue of Gaian Voices, Karen contacted me to talk about Gaia’s potential influence on the environmental movement. During the course of our conversation I learned Karen has been co-teaching a course on global warming for the last seven years with an atmospheric scientist and a philosopher. I was impressed with the multi-disciplinary approach to the subject and with Karen’s openly Gaian perspective.
Climate change haunts me. I find myself torn between despair and hope, and the desire to just make it all go away. There is a total disconnect between the reality of climate change and the way we live our lives. We know the ecology of the Earth will shift dramatically and the effects will be devastating -- some areas, like Alaska and the Arctic, are already experiencing impacts. Eventually we’re all going to be in for a roller coaster ride no matter where we live. The years of relatively predictable seasonal temperatures and precipitation are pretty much over. Plants, animals, and insects are already being impacted although so far people seem to want to believe that the aberrations we see are “within normal ranges”. I wish I could believe that.
With this year’s extreme weather: natural disasters coming one right after another, a record-breaking hurricane season, and here at home an extremely wet, cold spring followed by a dry, hot and humid summer, and now an unprecedented warm, rainy autumn (8” of rain by mid October and still no frost) with practically nonexistent foliage, there’s been plenty to justify my preoccupation. So I decided to turn the tables on Karen and interview her. She graciously agreed. While I can’t say I came away from the conversation feeling any better about climate change itself, I am grateful for Karen and others like her who dare to teach the truth.
How do your students respond to the concept of climate change?
KL: Close to half of the 100 students in the class are environmental studies majors, most of whom accept that we’re in a critical situation and that something needs to be done. For the most part, the rest of the students have been exposed to mainstream media’s take on climate change, and that awful movie, “The Day After Tomorrow”, so they are curious and some are skeptical. When students begin to understand the magnitude of the problem they go through a range of emotions and can become overwhelmed and sometimes depressed. And because the class is taught by three professors in three different disciplines they are challenged to think across disciplinary boundaries. This is actually a strength of the class but at first it can be confusing. Nobody takes this class without being profoundly affected by it. I’ve had students write to me years later saying that they still think a lot about the class and for some it has even shaped what they decided to do with their lives after leaving school.
Briefly, what we can expect with regard to climate change if we continue on our present course?
KL: Certain aspects of global warming are pretty easy to calculate, like how much the sea level will rise, others are not. We can expect to see coastal areas being inundated, especially in places like Florida and the Gulf. We can expect low lying areas in the third world to be inundated resulting a huge number of environmental refugees; the island state of Tuvalu is already being evacuated to New Zealand. We can expect to see droughts in most agricultural regions and a corresponding decrease in food production in those places. Increased food production is predicted for the northern latitudes of Canada and Russia. Here in the Pacific Northwest we can expect to see dramatically decreased snow pack -- and we already have a fairly small snow pack -- which will affect us in terms of hydroelectricity. This will also affect western US and Canada because the grids are interconnected. But there’s a lot of uncertainty.
Plants, animals, insects will all be affected since they are adapted to their current climate and ecosystem. Normally species adapt to change over a period of centuries but this change is going to happen on a scale of decades. And some scientists believe there will be some big surprises -- but they can’t say exactly what. One possibility is the halting of the Gulf Stream. When this idea first came out as a possibility in 1990, it was considered almost laughable. But now that fresh water is coming in from the Labrador Sea, the Gulf Stream is changing measurably and it’s actually being talked about seriously. This would be dramatic, and it would have a huge impact on everything.
In the meantime we can’t ignore the fact that we’re hitting peak oil which I also address in the climate change class. It’s interesting because for 16 years I’ve included a section on oil in all my international relations and environmental politics classes and now people are really paying attention. It’s all kind of hitting us at once.
Do you talk with your students about the magnitude of what is needed to address all this?
KL: Yes. Just to make it concrete, right now the average carbon footprint of an American is six tons per person and globally it’s one ton. In order to stabilize the world’s climate system and keep temperatures from rising no more than 2 degrees Celsius -- which is considered the outside limit in terms of climate stability -- we have to get the world average down to a third of a ton. And that’s assuming that population stays where it is, but it’s expected to double by the year 2050. These are just some basic numbers that my students are very familiar with. And it can seem so overwhelming to compare where we’re at with where we need to be.
And with China coming on line with the consumer society . .
KL: Right. Every country wants to live the way we’re living. These aren’t problems that are going to be solved in a few years or even a few decades. What we’re dealing with is the momentum of human history. A momentum of constantly seeking more . . . which has to stop. What is needed is a civilizational change, a whole different orientation towards who we are with respect to the rest of the world.
How do you help students maintain perspective and hope?
KL: It’s true that when you look at the big picture, it’s easy to become depressed and frustrated. Top-down solutions like the Kyoto Protocol are essentially meaningless in terms of actually stabilizing the climate anyway, and while the official position of the United States seems to be total denial, good things are happening but on a smaller scale. I help students see that there are other ways of making a difference. We talk about what communities of people are doing in terms of models for sustainability in various ways, about what the European Union and individual countries are doing, and we discuss what we can do in our personal lives. In all my classes I make a very strong link between the personal and the global and I’m not afraid to use my own life as an example. While I don’t want to make my students feel guilty because they’re American consumers -- after all, I’m a professor and I probably consume more they do -- they are in a critical stage in their lives where they can make choices about how they want to do things.
Every other year I take a group of students to India where we live in an ecovillage and study sustainable living practices and spirituality. And every year when I come back I make a different change in my lifestyle to reflect moving in a more simple direction like riding my bike instead of driving. Then I share with my students what some of those changes are. Last year, for instance, I decided to stop using toilet paper.
Why toilet paper?
KL: Well, they don’t have toilet paper in India -- or in 80 percent of the rest of the world. Plus the idea of cutting down trees to wipe my butt just seems absurd. It’s tricky to have a composting toilet in the city but at least I don’t have to use toilet paper.
A friend of mine used to say that humans are the only species that actually shits in their water supply.
KL: Yes, isn’t it crazy? I once read a piece that said our culture is based on the toilet assumption, that all we have to do is flush and it’s gone. The pollutants we’ve been flushing into the air, water, and soil are going to be the undoing of our civilization. The very concept of waste is strange, if you think in terms of nature’s cycles.
It seems like things are moving so very quickly on all levels. Human systems are expanding and growing and what’s happening to the Earth is becoming more and more apparent. It’s like time is speeding up somehow. I don’t know if it’s just me or if I’m picking up a general sense of urgency that’s part of our culture these days.
KL: Yes, I sense that in our culture that gets translated as anxiety. One thing I notice when I bring students to rural south India is they have a lot of fear about disease and poverty and their physical safety and so they bring medications and other stuff with them to feel protected. But interestingly enough, once the students are in India they’re actually less fearful than when they’re in the States. They come to understand that in this country we live in a culture of fear; we’re so preoccupied with our security and with our physical safety. But somehow when you don’t have all that you actually feel freer. It’s an incredible thing. It’s not that I want to live like a poor person in India, but we need to find a place between where we’re at and where they’re at that feels good psychologically and culturally, and that is also sustainable.
How does Gaia Theory fit into all this?
KL: I was first exposed to Gaia Theory through the work of Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, and others working in the field of spiritual cosmology. But it wasn’t until I began working with the scientists with whom I co-teach my course on climate change that I got it from a scientific perspective. To me, Gaia Theory is extremely compelling. It moves beyond reductionist science and instead views the Earth holistically as a self-regulating system. It is both a testable scientific theory as well as a source of faith, humility, and inspiration, reminding us that we are an integral part of an evolutionary process that has been unfolding on our home planet for four billion years. Keep in mind that throughout most of history the Earth was perceived as a living, intelligent being. It’s only since the latter half of the seventeenth century that the world has been understood as a lifeless machine, a view by the way, that was very much in tune with the agenda of the rising forces of capitalism. Gaia Theory brings the ancient idea of a living Earth into the realm of scientific legitimacy. Most importantly, in these times of globalization and environmental destruction it has the potential to inspire a sense of wholeness and interconnectedness.
I agree. Absolutely. Still, when I think about the specific changes that are possible -- like no snow in New England or the death of the maple trees -- it’s scary. And it hurts.
KL: Yes, when we allow ourselves to be aware, it does hurt. I’ve been active in the environmental movement for almost thirty years and there’s a way environmentalists talk about environmental issues that is rooted in fear. And it’s true -- when you think about what we’re up against it’s hard not to be fearful. Embracing the whole means embracing our own experiences, including our fear and despair. We need to have compassion for ourselves and for the grief we feel. Allowing ourselves to feel the full intensity of what it means to be living at this time on the Earth is so necessary. This is why I think the despair and empowerment work that people like Joanna Macy do is so important. We need to have patience with ourselves and recognize the magnitude of what’s required.
I believe we are the means by which Gaia is growing into self-awareness, and current conditions may be the labor pains of that birth of consciousness. Gaia enlarges our vision of human purpose beyond the growth imperative, and reorients our actions beyond the personal and the local to the planetary scale. The wonderful thing is, if you really internalize this way of seeing the world, you internalize a deep sense of interdependence, of being part of a greater whole. And climate change . . . well it’s definitely going to help us become more intimate with Gaia. Climate change is the indicator that the Gaian system is shifting. And we’re all in it together.
From Volume 3, No. 3 & 4
