Join the Dots... Climate Change Is Tearing Us Apart - SLF Event | Online

About this event

This event is presented as part of the 2020 Sustainable Living Festival program

The climate change conversation is moving from barbeque chat about the weather, to kitchen table talk like 'how will we pay the mortgage next week?

Many households are struggling to make ends meet. There are now almost two million Australian families in mortgage stress. How do we include everyone in the climate and ecological emergency discussion as the effects of deep adaptation strategies start to impact the economy?

Growing polarisation around climate change and its causes are already creating divisions which reactionaries and nationalists are exploiting to undermine forty years of environmental activism.

The antidote may be to educate the public about why their prosperity is in decline, why its global, and why economists are at a loss to explain it.

The aim of 'Join the Dots...' is, firstly, to highlight the risk posed by the growing polarisation. Then by using current and historical data in the realms of energy, economics and finance, show how we can create a shared understanding of why our experience of ease and prosperity is diminishing year by year.

A recent impulse for this presentation was the emergence of right-wing reactionaries and pro-nationalist movements - Trump voters, Brexit voters, One Nation voters, the Yellow Vests in France, and anti-Islam extremists like the shooter in Christchurch.

This phenomenon is, in part, a response to a decline in middle class prosperity across the western world. Prosperity is the surplus we have left after paying the basic, non-discretionary cost of living.

Throughout history, when economic times were challenging, scapegoating movements arose. These movements aimed to strengthen existing political, ethnic, religious or social divisions for their own ends by targeting vulnerable minorities. Today, the growing influence of polarising movements threatens to undermine years of great work by climate activists and community builders.

The current polarisation looks like this; climate change activists say we need 100% renewable energy as soon as possible, at any cost. Doubters say we should stick with coal, oil and gas and that renewables will drive up living costs and destroy the economy and jobs.

Neither side acknowledges that all forms of energy are now expensive by historical standards. Wind and solar can only compete with fossil fuels because coal, oil and natural gas prices are two to three times their long term averages. The public are starting to join the dots between the inexorable rise in energy costs and their future livelihoods.

The aim of the presentation is to join the dots between these apparently disparate issues and show how the Permaculture concept of 'energy descent' is now manifesting as declining economic growth. The expansion of both financial and ecological debt is shrinking the possibility of continuing the lives of ease and surplus to which we've become accustomed, and that we hope will be possible for our children.

Can a culture conditioned to having more, bigger, brighter, faster, embrace simple living and still be at peace with each other and at peace with the earth?

We need to build communities of trust, where the tragedy of the modern world and our collective sense of loss is acknowledged. With a shared understanding about how we got to where we are as a civilization, we can begin to plan meaningful lives with less energy rather than be taken by surprise as entropy plays out before us.