Financial crisis versus climate change: Aaaaarrgggh!!!

Please forgive the vent of frustration at the end of the title there, as the financial turmoil continues and the banking system that led to the whole sorry credit crunch business in the first place is being propped up at huge cost. The money, as with most money, has simply been conjured into being by yet more financial wizards, as more debt. It is us, our children and probably their children, who will have to do the real work to pay it back.

So, thinking money, I did a little web research of how much "we" have spent so far. I usually précis guided tours of my holding with the words "Don't believe a word I say," or rather, "Don't just believe what I say; listen, ideally with an open mind but question everything I say." The same applies equally here.

The BBC web site puts the UK sum poured into the banks and economy at about £964 billion, so far. Here's the link to the article;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7893317.stm

That's a lot of money. It seems to me both tragic and bizarre that we are spending such huge sums of money to support a financial system that is essentially unfair and has demonstrably increased the division between rich and poor, both nationally and globally. Further, the other main beneficiaries of the spending spree have been industries that are key players in generating CO2 emissions, such as the motor industry.

If we look at the estimated costs of dealing with climate change we find various figures. The European Union suggests that Britain will need to spend between £4.4 billion and £6.3 billion per year to achieve its CO2 reduction target of 80% by 2050; Open Europe, an independent think tank, suggest £9 billion per year. Going by the larger figure that gives a total spend of about £369 billion by 2050. Yet we have paid out more than twice that amount in less than six months bailing out banks. That deserves saying again:

Here in the Britain, in the last six months, we have spent more than twice what it would cost us achieve our 2050 CO2 emissions reduction target of 80%, and we've spent it on systems which generate or encourage the generation of CO2 emissions.

If we look at the international response to the financial melt down, its much the same. An article in the Guardian,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2006/oct/29/greenpolitics.politics

suggests that the price of failing to act now on climate change will be £3.68 trillion. How much have the US and UK spent on shoring up the financial system in the last six months? £6.8 trillion. Aaaaarrggghhh!!

Well, I would not be alone in suggesting that we are probably at a point where we need to carry out a complete system re-design and I don't mean of just the banks or even the economy, I mean of everything we do, our whole involvement with Earth, within whom we live and move and have our being.

Big task? Yes, as permaculture designers are heard to say, I can't do it alone, there probably needs to be at least three of us...and of course, really, there are many, many more of us and people like us and our voices are being heard more and more clearly and more loudly. And the absurdities of the current systems are becoming more and more obvious.

So, rather than prop up discredited systems, we could instead embrace the challenge of climate change. If we spend the money there, on designing and creating genuinely sustainable systems, we will generate millions of jobs and probably have a lot more fun doing it. We may even be able to avert a catastrophic temperature rise.

My strategy of choice for a major system re-design of our interaction with Earth and each other would be permaculture design. Though not necessarily perfect, I think the 72 hour permaculture design course is still about the best, most accessible, empowering introduction to positive, practical eco-social action that I've come across in the last thirty years or so. Let's do it.