Matthew Pye
Plato
courage tackles climate change. No Common Sense
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Colophon ‘Plato tackles climate change.’ Author: Matthew Pye Guest Authors: Carolina Teixeira & Jules Pye (from the ‘Climate Academy’) ISBN/EAN: 978-9-08-310150-7 Published by Matthew Pye Copyright ©2020 Matthew Pye First edition, September 2020.
Facts & Science: Homo Sapiens Foundation Birgit van Munster and Michael Wadleigh (ourfutureuncompromised.org) Cover Design: Stijn van der Pol (w7b14.com) Proofreading: Sean O’Dubhghaill, Anthony Swallow and Moira Cronin Design: thisissaf~ (thisissaf.com) Cartoons: Carl Jonsson (carl-brink.com) Photography: Katriina Surquin (katriinasurquin.com)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. Graphs & Photography: All image sources and credits are listed in the image index at the end of the book, unless the original source could not be tracked. In case you find a copyrighted image, please let us know.
Plato
courage tackles climate change. By Matthew Pye
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common sense superman courage reason thought openness progress NoCommonSense.org
From the series ‘No Common Sense; Philosophy tackles climate change’ The series “No Common Sense - Philosophy Tackles Climate Change” mobilises some of history’s greatest philosophers to bring fresh depth to our climate thinking. Each book is written in dialogue with the strongest minds of the past and in consultation with the latest climate science data and analysis. In this book Pye introduces Plato, underlining the importance of courage in climate thinking and acting!
No Common Sense
contents XV
Preface Chapter One: The Boom in the Bust
3
Introduction
3
Why Plato?
13
Chapter Two: Tragedy or no Tragedy?
17
Greek Tradegy
17
Or no Greek Tradegy?
29
Chapter Three – The Opening of the ‘Republic’
39
I went down to The Piraeus yesterday
41
The Characters
57
Conclusions from the Opening of the ‘Republic’
69
Chapter Four – The Allegory of the Ship
71
Truth Decay 1 – Sophistry
78
Truth Decay 2 – Truth Flattening
83
Truth Decay 3 – Buying the Truth
92
Philosophy in the fight against Truth Decay
111
Conclusions to the Allegory of the Ship
114
Chapter Five – The Seventh Letter
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221
Chapter Six – The Key Problems
131
1. Capitalism
132
2. Growth
136
3. Fragmented thinking
142
Chapter Seven – The Key Solutions
155
Turning problems into solutions
155
1. The central solution – Rational Laws
158
2. The deeper solution – The Virtues
169
The Simile of the Charioteer
177
The Academy
196
Chapter Eight – The Science of Climate Change
203
The Absolute Basics
205
No Common Sense
211
The Essential Science in 6 Graphs
216
Chapter Nine - System change; Cut11Percent
241
Chapter Ten – The Climate Academy
261
Student Essay 1 – “The Return of a Deathly Silence”
265
Student Essay 2 – “The Surprising Value of a Broken Mind”
281
Image Index
296
Appendix - The Cut11Percent Data
299
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Image 2. - Matthew Pye
Preface Crisis
Image 3. - Warming Stripes
This is a crisis. A big one. In fact, it is so big, it is hard to see it. The climate crisis is very real. However, it exists in a very dangerous blind spot of our awareness because of its sheer depth and scope. This blind spot has enabled us to carry on as if climate change was not happening. Science can make the reality of the climate crisis crystal clear. It can summarise a vast amount of data into a small space for our eyes and brains to picture it. For example, the “Warming Stripes�1 above demonstrate just how radical the shift in the average global temperature has been since the start of the industrial revolution. The first stripe of colour, on the left, represents the average global temperature for the year 1850; the last stripe of colour, on the right, represents the latest thermal data.2 The contrast between the cool blue on the left and the hot reds on the right is vivid. This monumental change in our reality would be hidden from us without the work of science. 1 2
Thanks to the clarity of mind of the climate scientist Ed Hawkins. The colours are rooted in the HadCRUT4 gridded dataset of global historical surface temperature anomalies relative to a 1961-1990 reference period. Earlier data sets are available for each month, since January 1850, and can be found in the collaborative work of the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
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Climate change is not a weather event, it is not a moment. It is something that exists far beyond our common senses. We have known about the science of a greenhouse gas effect for nearly two centuries, after Joseph Fourier first proposed the idea in 1824.3 The atmosphere’s rising heat has been the constant background theme to all of our economic and social development, all of our wars and our peace treaties; most significantly, it has been the background effect to our booming population (from 1.2bn in 1850 to 7.8bn in 2020) and to the booming industrial activity (from 7 tonnes of resource extraction in 1900 to 90 tonnes in 2020) driven by the Very High Developed nations. Our failure to recognise and to act on this change has lead us to this moment of crisis. There will be an awful escalation of extreme weather events in the absence of radical action at a systems level. However, the real action will not be so visible. The collapse of biodiversity and the melting of the glaciers, the destruction of the rainforests and the disruption of the Jetstream, will all happen away from our senses. They will happen as averages, as patterns and trends. If we do not make a deep and immediate response to the science, then everything will fall apart in our blind spot. How odd it is that something so devastating can happen so clearly, and yet remain so hidden. We have already achieved an average temperature rise of 1.1°C since the start of the industrial revolution. This does not sound like a lot, but a human being suffering from a fever of 1.1°C will not feel great at all. A sustained temperature of 2°C can start to cause vital organs to fail. We are currently on a pathway for global heating of around 4°C by the end of the century4 For a human, such a rise is a medical emergency (known as ‘hyperpyrexia’), and it causes death without quick and effective treatment. 3
4
After Fourier’s insight that the atmosphere must have insulating properties in 1824 and 1827, it was Eunice Foote who was the first to explain some of the chemical mechanics of global heating in the paper she read to the American Association on August 23rd 1856, “Circumstances affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays”. It was later coined the “Greenhouse Effect” by Nils Gustaf Ekholm in 1901. The details can be found in Chapters 8 and 9.
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This is only a metaphor, but since temperature is one of the fundamental co-ordinates of the biosphere, suddenly pushing it to a new level is a profoundly reckless act. The minefield described by the scientific scenarios gets increasingly dangerous the more we allow the heating to continue uninterrupted. Tipping points lie ahead that cannot be crossed without triggering system collapses that would threaten the supply of the most basic requirements for human life, for example, food and fresh water. The graphs of mainstream science are emphatic in their conclusions: booming material consumption is incompatible with a safe and stable future. The hard truth is that the industrial revolution is heading towards a dramatic and tragic finale. After the economic boom, we are now facing a monumental ecological bust. This is a bust that would pull so much down around it. This is a crisis, a systemic one. OK Boomer.
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the boom
the bust
Plato
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Image 4. - Plato
Chapter One
The Boom in the Bust Introduction In this famous bust, Plato appears to us as a mature and dignified man. He looks self-assured, statesmanlike and wise. Plato is a thinker with a reputation as solid as the rock onto which his face was carved. He certainly deserves the status that scholars accord to him as the Father of Western Philosophy. He was a giant thinker, whose sheer range and ambition of thought set the agenda for over two millennia – something that is agreed upon by both his admirers and his detractors. As A.N. Whitehead once commented: “The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”.16 Plato (b. 427 BCE) lived during the ‘Golden Age of Athens’ (480-404 BCE), an absolutely astonishing segment of history – a time in which so many cultural, social and political aspects of human life bounded forward together.17
16 Process and Reality (Free Press, 1979, p. 39). 17 Plato was born towards the end of this Golden Age and wrote most of his best-known works after 404 BCE.
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The Allegory of the Ship ‘Suppose the following to be the state of affairs on board ship or ships. The captain is larger and stronger than any of
They have no idea that the true navigator must study the seasons of the year, the sky, the stars, the winds and all the other subjects appropriate to his pro-
the crew, but a bit deaf and short-sighted, and similarly limited in seamanship. The crew are all quarrelling about how to navigate the ship, each thinking he ought to be at the helm; they have never learned the art of navigation and cannot say that anyone ever taught it them, or that they spend any time studying it; indeed they say it can’t be taught and are ready to murder anyone who says it can. They spend all their time milling round the captain and doing all they can to get him to give them the helm. If one faction is more successful than another, their rivals may kill them and throw them overboard, lay out the honest captain with drugs or drink or in some other way, take control of the ship, help themselves to what’s on board, and turn the voyage into the sort of drunken pleasure-cruise you would expect. Finally, they reserve their admiration for the man who knows how to lend a hand in controlling the captain by force or fraud; they praise his seamanship and navigation and knowledge of the sea and condemn everyone else as useless.
fession if he is to be really fit to control a ship; and they think that it’s quite impossible to acquire the professional skill needed for such control (whether or not they want it exercised) and that there’s no such thing as an art of navigation. With all this going on aboard aren’t the sailors on any such ship bound to regard the true navigator as a word-spinner and a star-gazer, of no use to them at all?’ (“Republic”, 488a-489d)
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i
This is a picture of a society that is in deep trouble. The captain can hardly see or hear, and his crew are involved in all sorts of tricks and plots to gain control of the direction of the ship. It is a drunken pleasure cruise – and drunk people tend to act in an exaggerated way with their emotions and appetites, regardless of reality. Indeed, the drink has made their minds so slippery they would not be able to hold the truth, even if they tried to.
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The series “No Common Sense - Philosophy Tackles Climate Change” mobilises some of history’s greatest philosophers to bring fresh depth to our climate thinking.
by Matthew Pye
“Our ruling philosophies can both imprison us and liberate us. Matthew Pye’s hugely important and inspiring book shows how we can examine and change our thinking to re-connect with nature and talk realistically about the oncoming crisis.” – Jules Evans - best-selling Philosophy author “Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations”
ISBN/EAN: 978-9-08-310150-7
“Read it, loved it. At every page I thought: “This is the book. This is the one that every single decision maker out there has to read”. Totally brilliant!” – Patrick Worms – Senior Science Policy Advisor at World Agroforestry and President of the European Agroforestry Federation.
NoCommonSense.org