Matthew Pye
Part 1
Pocket Edition - Januari 2019
No common sense
Philosophy tackles climate change.
Colophon Author: Matthew Pye Guest Authors: Vappu Väänänen, Ginny Tyson, Jules Pye (‘3 Essays for Childpress’) ISBN/EAN: 978-90-74730-40-2 First run: January 2019 Published by Fysio Educatief in coöperation with ChildPress.org Copyright ©2019 Fysio Educatief Proofreading: Sean O’Dubhghaill & Generation Z Cover Illustration: Stijn van der Pol Cartoons: Carl Jonsson Design: www.thisissaf.com Graphs and Photography: All sources listed with image, unless the original source could not be tracked. In case you find a copyrighted image, please let us know. Fysio Educatief • Groenburgwal 59 • 1011 HT Amsterdam www.fysioeducatief.nl • office@fysioeducatief.nl
No common sense Philosophy tackles climate change. An Examination of the State we are in. - Part 1 By Matthew Pye
An astonishing transformation of the Earth is happening right now. This change is affecting every living species on the planet. If this change is not stopped, it will move through human civilisation like a wrecking ball. - II -
Photo by Niels Kuiper
You have the right to know the truth.
Matthew Pye Teacher of Philosophy Full Member - Club of Rome (EU Chapter) - III -
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Preface An astonishing transformation of the Earth is happening right now. This change is affecting every living species on the planet. If this change is not stopped, it will move through human civilisation like a wrecking ball. This is not a Hollywood movie trailer. This is not the blurb for a science fiction novel. This is simple, mainstream science. The change that is happening is climate change. Yet, we have no common sense of it, even though this shift is radical and deeply damaging to human life.
The Extra-ordinary truth of Climate Change. There have been major dramas in the planet’s history before. For example, 66 million years ago (66.043 ± 0.011 Ma) a massive asteroid marked a massive full stop (over a hundred miles wide) at the end of the dinosaurs’ paragraph of history. The Chicxulub crater, which still marks the Yucatan Peninsula, was the result of a blast that was as strong as 10 billion Hiroshima A-bombs. The dinosaurs did not see it coming. How could they? The Ampelosaurus had the biggest brain of all of them, but it was only the size of a tennis ball1, and their club-like feet would also have made it difficult for them to grip a telescope. By contrast, homo sapiens have brains the size of a decent melon and it is filled with about 16 billion neurones. Although we have puny bodies, we have managed to construct high-precision scientific instruments with our intellectual and physical dexterity. We can see far into the past with our satellite dishes, and quite clearly into the future with other high-tech equipment.
1 https://www.livescience.com/26539-giant-sauropods-small-brains.html
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Science The Earth is round
c600BC
Copernicus: Heliocentric Solar System
Watt: Patent of the Steam Engine
1543
1784 First Telescope
1608
History
The Tennis Court Oath
The Inquisition of Galileo
1789
1635
The Execution of Socrates
US Declaration of Independence
399BC
1777
Philosophy
Descartes ‘Meditations’
1641 Plato ‘Republic’
423 BC
Ancient Philosophy
Scholastic Philosophy
Rousseau ‘The Social Contrast’
Paine ‘Common Sense’
1776
1751
Modern Philosophy
Map 1 The Timeline
headline the chapters of this book are put alongside the major cultural and scientific events that are significant for climate change - in a three layered timeline.
Having a clear family tree can help us understand ourselves. Map 1 lays out the place of each of the Philosophers in our deep family history. The 7 thinkers that
In a society that seems to be continually pressing on the refresh button to update the present, understanding our past has become especially important.
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Fourier: Disovery of The Greenhouse Effect
Hansen: Testifies to US Congress about the reality of Anthropogenic Climate Change
1824
Lyell: ‘Principles of Geology’
2019
1988
1830-33
First Solar Panel Human Population reaches 1 Billion
1804
Three consecutive years of record breaking average temperatures
1884 Discovery of Oil
1859
2014-16 WWI
1914
Nietzsche ‘Thus Spoke Zarathustra’
1887
WWII
1939 Popper ‘The Open Society and its Enemies’
1953
Arendt ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’
1963
“Direct self-observation is not nearly sufficient for us to know ourselves: we need history, for the past flows on within us in a hundred waves.” - Nietzsche
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3.0
CAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE Long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin 2017 projected to 2018
Watts per square meter (W/m2)
2.5
Radiative forcing (warming effect)
It does not matter how many politicians, scientists, media or celebrities figures have been put into all the COP meetings organised by the UNFCCC. It does not matter how tough or determined the sound bites sound, the only way to judge their words are with numbers. The only question that matters is: Are we reducing our emissions? (And then, are we reducing them fast enough?)
2.0
CO2 1.5
1.0 CH4 0.5
N2O
3. We have been encouraged to progress little by little, small gesture by small gesture, one recycled bin and one reusable bag at a time. Individual actions, individual responsibility. It has not worked for 30 years, why would that approach suddenly start to work now? We have to take a critical step back from this narrative. Nietzsche was against alcohol and Christianity because their false comfort prevented the people from dealing with the real problems. These soft storylines have kept us quietly comfortable whilst an enormous ecological debt has built up in the background. We need to step of the shadows of these little rituals and face up to the bigger systemic questions. CFC-12 CFC-11
0.0 1988
15 minor
1998
2008
2018
We must not be distracted by celebrity endorsements or celebrity distortions. It has to be made very clear where we currently stand with climate change and what we are heading into. 4. Just because the planet has provided a comfortable environment for human development in the past 11,700 years, this is not the product of some essential characteristics of ‘Nature’. We should not anthropomorphise the ecological system. If we built God in our image, we should not be naïve about how we understand the natural world either. ‘Nature’ is not our parent. It is neither evil nor kind, it has no ‘essence’. ‘Nature’ is simply utterly indifferent to our plans. 5. It is a grand idiocy to assume that we can overshoot our emissions targets and then suck carbon out of the atmosphere to drag the Earth system back to a manageable
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equilibrium. Nature is not Apollonian, it is far more chaotic and complex than we can model in our minds and computers. The main trends do seem predictable, the main thresholds of the system are fairly well understood. However, pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate is asking for big trouble that could suddenly cascade profoundly damaging consequences onto our society outside of our computer modelling. ‘Dionysus’ needs to be paid a great deal of respect. Nature often changes in a non-linear way, our emission targets cannot just be understood as a simple matter of addition and subtraction. The balance of the current biota is the product of tectonically slow alignments of all the flora and fauna, the lithosphere and atmosphere. We cannot scramble these deeply established layers of nature in a few decades of frantic technological activity and then just extract a single egg from the omelette. 6. Society also changes through non-linear movements. Climate change is plugged into so many deep social issues, such as inequality and human rights; it will cause mass conflict and migration and cause major economic damage. Therefore, any shift in the framing of the problem towards the most important conclusions of the science could trigger a surge in public anger and demands for action and transparency. We have some very basic human instincts for survival and justice that once awakened to an issue, can become unstoppably powerful. When our cage is rattled enough by the forces of nature, it could easily speed up our thinking. 7. Ancient people might have put their trust into ancient pagan gods to look after the basic needs for survival. Having achieved control over so much of nature, we should not now make the opposite mistake. We should not be over confident about our technological power. We should throw huge resources and energy into research and the development of various carbon capture techniques. However, for the moment, geoengineering does not have the capacity to get much beyond a superficial impact on greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. To count scientific breakthroughs not yet achieved in our climate calculations is neither honest nor helpful.
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At ChildPress, like real research journalists, youngsters create and publish content for schools and the public. While producing trustworthy media, they experience what influence the media has on both the quality of dialogue as well as on the quality of any decision making process, first hand. - Elise Sijthoff, Publisher Fysio Educatief, Founder ChildPress
The unknown truth below the surface of consumerism By Vappu Väänänen
A Cry for help: Ginny Tyson meets Greta Thunberg By Ginny Tyson
Boskanter - Disconnecting and Reconnecting By Jules Pye
264
268
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3 Essays for ChildPress We are Vappu, Ginny and Jules - Students of Mr. Pye and members of ChildPress. Reporting and publishing opens up our experience to be heard. Reading our publications will give adults insights in our lives and in the issues we care about. In this book, for the first time we present 3 essays. We are preparing many more publications, for both schools and the public.
Photos by the students.
Together we will share our words and learn from each other. We invite you to read our following 3 essays and challenge you to join us in the climate change dialogue.
+3 CLIMATE ESSAYS
No Common Sense is informed by the latest scientific conclusions about climate change. Chapter by chapter, this innovative book unfolds the extra-ordinary reality of the state we are in, guided by some of the greatest minds of the past. Perfect for those short on time, but looking for more than just superficial responses.
“I am convinced that young students and adults are hungry for this level of reflection and guidance.”
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ISBN/EAN: 978-90-74730-40-2
Philosophy tackles climate change.
This book will give you the edge in any climate change debate.
- Els Vermeire, Inspector of the European Schools
- Theo Selimovic, 18
This book is just like Mr Pye’s lessons - you get entertained and challenged at the same time. You get moved without getting lost. - Carolina Teixeira, 16
No Common Sense is an amazingly rich book. It is deep but very readable. - Zoë Sleath, 17