Humanity's Greatest Challenge and Its Solution

Climate change is not humanity's greatest challenge (even though scientists predict it may unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration in 20 years, and increase the global surface temperature up to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100).

Neither are pandemics, nuclear proliferation, water scarcity, the Middle East conflict, or many other things you might think.

Our greatest challenge is that our institutions can't resolve any of these challenges, let alone prioritize climate change as the challenge that poses the greatest threat if we don't act immediately. Until we address the crisis of the failure of our institutions to resolve the significant challenges we face, don't expect progress on any of them.

Climatologists are beginning to recognize that institutional failure is our real problem:

"One of the problems is that the issue is still being framed as a scientific and environmental issue. This is a major mistake. Climate change is just a symptom of dysfunctional social and economic practices and policies. It is a social and economic issue. The emphasis needs to shift away from the biophysical sciences now to the social sciences if we have any hope of solving this problem," said Bob Doppelt, director of the climate leadership initiative at the University of Oregon.

Stephen Schneider, a climatologist at Stanford University, said: "Can democracy survive complexity? That is what this [energy-environment] problem represents. It is so difficult. It is multi-scale, multidisciplinary, with large certainty in some areas and small certainty in others. It is irreversible and reversible and we won't know how we did until it is over. We will only know forty years later. That is why climate complexity is a challenge to democracy. Democracy is short term."

The institutions we rely on to address the major challenges we face have many shortcomings. They don't view the challenges in a holistic manner or appreciate their interrelationships and those of their solutions (fortunately, we now have a U.S. President who seems to have a holistic view of our challenges; unfortunately, he's leading an institution that doesn't). They seem unable to anticipate, let alone address, challenges whose consequences won't manifest within the financial quarter of economic institutions or the two, four, or six-year terms of officeholders in government institutions. They are easily manipulated by special interests, money, criminals, nuts, and whoever speaks the loudest or has the ear of a decision maker last. They lack transparency that fosters understanding, involvement, and faith in how and why decisions are made. And the "solutions" they implement too often compound the problems they're supposed to resolve - like the hydra myth, each purported solution creates multiple new problems.

In order to address climate change (and give it the priority it demands), as well as the other significant challenges we face, we must rapidly evolve the capacity of our institutions to make better decisions than the ones that have put our survival in jeopardy.

In his book Nonzero: The Logic Of Human Destiny, Robert Wright posits that the best way to understand the evolution of human institutions is from the perspective of non-zero-sum game playing, which allows for win-win outcomes. Wright argues that non-zero-sum game playing is optimized by communication and trust, and that whenever communication and trust are lacking, new technologies emerge that increase their presence.

In a period seemingly devoid of trust and communication in governmental and economic institutions, the Web (the kind of technology Robert Wright wrote of) has unleashed a blizzard of information. Other innovations are beginning to help us organize the Web's massive flow of information in ways to make it trustworthy and actionable through an expanding number of communications technologies. There are many valuable experiments underway to leverage the Web to increase transparency in our institutions, including (but certainly not limited to) efforts funded by the Sunlight Foundation, such as Change-Congress.org and MapLight.org, and to use the Web for social change, including efforts covered by techPresident and the Personal Democracy Forum. At TransparentDemocracy, we're experimenting with ways to let people see how organizations and people they trust recommend they make governmental, economic, and other decisions. And there are many technologies, such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Twitter, which have the potential to significantly increase the ability of people to make a difference by making our institutions more accountable and responsive.

However, the resources available to support experiments to leverage the Web and other technologies for these purposes are woefully inadequate for the task at hand. An article by Jon Gertner in The New York Times Magazine on April 19, 2009 reported that "about 98 percent of the federal financing for climate-change research goes to the physical and natural sciences, with the remainder apportioned to the social sciences," a fraction of which goes to understanding how we make decisions about addressing climate change. Hopefully, the allocation of resources will soon respond to the admonition of climatologists that this is not "a scientific and environmental issue" but rather "a social and economic issue." Just as resources are needed to develop new energy sources and other solutions to climate change, resources are needed to evolve our institutional capacity so we can make wise decisions about which of those new energy sources and solutions we should pursue. And so we can make wise decisions about options we'll be forced to choose among to adapt to and mitigate the effects of the climate crisis, including geoengineering (using potentially radical technologies to cool the Earth's air), which the nation's top scientist, John Holdren, has said has "got to be looked at. We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."

In addition to investing in new tools to effectively organize to address the many challenges we face, we need to invest in developing people - organizers - who can effectively use the new tools. "Tools don't build houses. Carpenters build houses," explains Marshall Ganz, who has been credited as the architect of Obama's field campaign (a fantastic fusion of effective organizers and new technologies).

Perhaps the most underreported, significant outcome (and legacy) of the Obama campaign is the army of organizers it trained. Just like the civil rights, farm worker, anti-Vietnam War, and other historic movements, the Obama campaign produced a large number of skilled organizers who will continue to contribute to American society for years to come in other organizing efforts. We urgently need to engage these organizers in addressing the looming threat of climate change and the other significant challenges we face.

H.G. Wells said "History is a race between education and catastrophe." Current events suggest that education may be losing that race. It is already too late for us to avoid all of the consequences of climate change - the earth's global surface temperature and the seas are rising at accelerating rates.

Our best hope is to invest in accelerating the development and deployment of innovations that increase trust and communication in our institutions so we can optimize our capacity to find win-win solutions to climate change and the other challenges we face.

Dee Hock, the Founder and CEO Emeritus of Visa Inc, recognized some time ago that most of the "problems" we think we have "are symptom not disease. At bottom, we have an institutional problem, and until we properly diagnose and deal with it, all societal problems will get progressively worse."

Continuing to expect our institutions to resolve the "problems" that their "solutions" are in fact compounding may fit Albert Einstein's definition of insanity: "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." As Einstein observed: "The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." It is time for us to consciously evolve our institutions to a higher level from which they can solve the problems they are now creating - the survival of our civilizations, and perhaps our species, depends on it.

(Updated: 5.27.09 to add 5th & 6th to last paragraphs about the importance of organizers)

Follow Kim Cranston on Twitter: www.twitter.com/KimCranston

Comments

[Chandra Vikash]

Great Article, Kim. Building on your solution, Community Solutions ( www.communitysolution.org ) in Ohio has been doing some great. They came out with a prescient documentary called "Power of Community" - citing how "goddamned" Cuba - at least according to powerful sections of Western media - of all places on earth responded with tremendous innovativeness and courage - two traits that hold the keys to the overall solution.

I have been working on one set of solutions in the transport-land use-energy eco-systems over past 10 years. It is based on my discovery of a "natural" pattern in what kind of transport experience will delight us - and that can be personalised to meet individual needs; technologies in IT, Satellite Navigation, Communication, Fuels etc., sound management rinciples such as Pay-for-Use, full variabilisation of transport costs, fair and equitable; Health, Safety & Security and Environment Protection. Based on this discovery, I have devised a MetroLITE Personalised Mobility System that has been well received in various quarters - I will be presenting on one of its aspects - Public Roads as Service Markets: Paving the Way for Civilisation 2.0 at the coming ITS World Congress in Stockholm.

I will be very glad to write for The Huffington Post, in company of delightful writers like you. How do we move forward?

[Kim Cranston - Huffpost Blogger]

Thanks for the comment. Sounds like great work you're doing.

[Richard2]

Just how much unrest, conflict, and mass migrations can 0 degrees of climate change cause?

The earth's air temperature decreased only 1 degree C during the 19th Century. It increased only 1 degree C during the 20th Century. Since 1998, the earth has actually cooled very marginally. We're trapped in the middle again, cooler than the end of the 20th Century, but warmer than the end of the 19th Century. During these two centuries, do you think anyone ever woke up one day and said, gee, It feels like the average temperature has changed 1 degree since I was a kid?

So how much unrest can 0 degrees of climate change cause?

[John Swan]

Kim,

I agree completely!

The debate on Climate Change....."Real or a myth?", ....a classic example showing we are dysfunctional.

Forget climate change, ……let's do it for:

1) Fiscal Reasons. The US ships $600-700 billion a year off shore for energy costs/oil imports.
2) National Security Reasons. We are shipping the majority of those $600-700 billion to regions of the world that are not real fond of the US.
3) Food production reasons, NOT energy production. Michael Pollan in his book “The Omnivores Dilemma” summarizes how global food production is highly dependent on chemical fertilizers (fossil fuels). Scientists postulate that our Earth can sustainably support 3-5 Billion people (maximum). We are now at 6.5 billion and counting.
4) Stimulating the economy. In 1960 JFK turned fear into opportunity when he set the national goal of putting a man on the moon and returning him by the end of the decade. Look at what the spin off technologies were created by the 1960’s Apollo program. Computers/the internet/cell phones/ high tech in general can be directly traced to the Apollo program. Let’s do the same with alternative energies/green tech. Stop the fear debate on climate change and focus on opportunity.
5) Quality of life….look at 1960-1980 pictures of the California L.A. basin. Look at pictures of air quality in Beijing/Mexico City today….fossil-based fuels are extremely dirty.
6) Lastly, do it for climate change.


John

[topgunna]

This is almost too easy.

1) We do purchase lots of foreign oil, but these dollars are not lost forever. They don't get tucked underneath foreigner's mattresses. They eventually HAVE to come back to the States, in exchange for goods and services. Producing those goods and services requires something called employment, which most here would agree is a good thing.
2) For starters, most of our imported oil comes from friendly neighbors. Regardless, isn't it better to have mutually beneficial trade relations with those "enemy" nations? Do you think isolationist policies act to soothe tensions? Wouldn't it make more sense for America and those nations to be invested in one another, so that we have an incentive to see the other side prosper?
3) Ridiculous. There is no magic number of humans needed for "sustainability." The population problem faced on this planet is the billions of humans living in destitute poverty. We should be discouraging poverty practices like subsistence farming, not encouraging them.
4) Creating artificial demand for a product does have a short-term stimulative effect, but destroys wealth over the long-term. Any time resources are diverted from their most productive and efficient uses, wealth is lost. Don't confuse mandates to divert resources with technological progress.
5) Straw man. Comparing photos of two wildly different regions doesn't prove that the world is changing for the worse.
6) Forget climate change, let's do it for climate change? You've turned the argument around a full 360 degrees. Nice work.

[Suzanne Taylor]

Kim, you couldn't be more right on. It's fingers in the dike to address all our challenges, when our worldview is what's keeping them all in place. Changing the way we see ourselves in the world is what we need to deal with. How to do that? It's a conversation to be having!!! This challenge is why I'm so plugged into the crop circle phenomenon http://WhatOnEarthTheMovie.comm).

This from my Huffington Post blog piece, "Time for Disclosure that We're Not Alone": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suzanne-taylor/time-for-disclosure-that_b_160457.html

"If we knew for sure that a non-human intelligence was engaging with us, it would evoke a shift in our worldview...Our presumption that we are the only intelligent beings in the cosmos is a supreme position. It lets us think of nature as something to dominate that we are free to use and abuse. But the awareness of a sacred interconnection of all of life grows in us. For instance, slavery has ended, and women essentially have been freed from a second-class status that used to be taken for granted. Now, imagine how our dominator posture would be further reduced if we recognized that there is a life form whose intelligence not only equals ours, but is more advanced. We would be one humanity in relation to that otherness, and cooperating with one another likely would become the prevailing game."

[elmerfude]

For those of you who want to deal with some real science on this issue, get a copy of this month's Nature magazine--a publication for real scientists. You will find some disquieting articles about climate change.

[topgunna]

11.5 degrees? If you have to resort to a worst case scenario to prove your point, I guess that's in line with Stephen Schneider's preferred "scientific" method:

"We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=965718

I guess that's how we arrive at phrases like "Humanity's Greatest Challenge"?

[Overtone]

See The Brooklyn Project for a new, and different, approach: http://www.aesopinstitute.org

Breakthrough technology will rapidly make possible future electric and hybrid cars that need no external battery charge. They can turn into power plants when parked. Imagine vehicles that pay for themselves - by wirelessly selling power to the local utility.

This will become a cost-competitive alternative to building new coal and nuclear power plants.

It reflects one application of new technologies that tap energy sources never before commercialized.

Scientists will be understandably skeptical until independent laboratory validation takes place.

That is on the horizon, as is production of self-powered generators - along with demonstration devices for schools and universities.

See http://www.chavaenergy.com for more information concerning these and other revolutionary technologies.

They have surprising potential to accelerate rapid reversal of our economic and energy concerns.

For example, they can turn future cars into power plants when parked.

Such vehicles will need no fuel and can pay for themselves by selling electricity to the local utility.

They are a potential alternative to building nuclear or coal burning power plants.

[KimCranston]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report indicates global surface temperatures will likely rise 2.0 to 11.5 °F by 2100. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming

The UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, warned that a "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions. "We head into a perfect storm in 2030" http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/mar/18/perfect-storm-john-beddington-energy-food-climate

US State Department chief scientist, Nina Fedoroff, is convinced food shortages will be the biggest challenge facing the world as temperatures and population levels rise. “We are asleep at the switch,” she said, echoing comments by John Beddington, Britain’s chief scientist. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5962238.ece

President Obama's Energy Secretary Steven Chu gave a press briefing at the "Summit of the Americas" and warned about climate change: “The last ice age, we were 6 degrees Centigrade colder than we are today -- a very different world. Okay, only 6 degrees Centigrade means, in North America, ice sheet from Canada down to Pennsylvania, Ohio -- year round in ice. So imagine a world 6 degrees warmer. It's not going to recognize geographical boundaries. It's not going to recognize anything.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/19/earth-day-2009-obama-ener_n_188721.html

[JanBjernfalk]

In December 2008, Al Gore famously predicted that the entire polar ice cap will be gone in 5 years.

Fortunately for us, Earth is being stubborn and not cooperating. Look at the data. 2007 was a low point for Arctic sea ice. Now we're back to normal, a 10 yr high:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/seaice/extent/AMSRE_Sea_Ice_Extent.png

The Antarctic isn't helping much either. Sea ice has been expanding there at a rate of 10K sq km per year for the past 30 years:
http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2550320.htm

What about the rest of the oceans? You'd think they would be warming, but it seems they are also defying Mr. Gore's solemn decree:
http://climatesci.org/2009/05/05/have-changes-in-ocean-heat-falsified-the-global-warming-hypothesis-a-guest-weblog-by-william-dipuccio/

Where's the heat? Is it all bottled up in Washington?

[JackHudson]

I like that last link, from climatesci.orgg" -- a guest weblog by William DiPuccio. Among his credentials: "...he served as head of the science department for St. Nicholas Orthodox School in Akron, Ohio (closed in 2006)."

I'll stick with MIT, thanks.

http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/topten.html

[Richard2]

Kim,

It is noteworthy that none of the scientists you cite have any track record at making accurate predictions of future climate changes. Just as weathermen are unable to predict two months in advance what the temperature will be in a city, so-called climate scientists have been unable to accurately predict the changes in the earth's climate. Even the IPCC's prediction for the future looks fuzzy. Look at the prediction range: +2 degrees to +11 degrees? Can you image a weatherman predicting 2 to 11 inches of rain in the next rain storm? What kind of confidence does that kind of prediction provide?

Further, the temperature of the earth has been stable to cooling this new century, which puts it outside the +2 degrees to +11 degrees range. What kind of credibility do any of these scientists have in predicting climate change in the 21st Century?

[Virgil Kane]

(even though scientists predict it may unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration in 20 years, and increase the global surface temperature up to 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100).

Where is your evidence for this assertion? I've never heard this before.

Others think we are heading for a new "little ice age": http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090504-sun-global-cooling.html

[junesey]

The idea of trying to have man control the whole world's climate is very scary to me bringing up more problems than it solves. I don't think these problems can be solved from the top down. I hope that from the local communities, that solutions can appear. Unfortunately, I think there will be big problems that will teach us how to live.
Thanks for your post..
June

[Absintheforall]

Unfortunately the jury is still out on "climate change". Of course everyone knows that change is the usual, inescapable reality of time and space, but the question that won't be answerable definitively for, say, 10,000 years is whether we are entereing another routine ice age or another routine warm eon. The only calm, rational thing we can do is wait patiently and see.. In any event, we can no more do anything about it than we can stop the tides from coming in and going out.

[drkazmd65]

No - the jury has ruled - climate change is happening.

The only questions that remain to science are:

How bad will it be?
What will the specific effects be in different regions of the globe?
Can we do anything to affect it?
How much of the effect IS directly attributable to human actions, and what fraction of is it part of a geologic-scale climate shift.

The jury is long since in - and the verdict is Climate Change is happening, and at least a substantial portion of it is due to human industrial activity,

[Richard2]

Yes, climate change is happening. The only question is, will the earth's climate get hotter, or colder? What are the probabilities?

During the 19th Century, the earth's temperature decreased by about 1 degree C. During the 20th Century, the temperature increased by about 1 degree C. Since the peak year of 1998, the earth's temperature has declined very slightly.

In addition, people have finally noticed that our sun is moving more and more into a cool phase. Such cool phases have been associated with global cooling in previous centuries. Some scientists are predicting that the earth may cool for the next two or three decades.

Remember, the sun contains 99% of the mass of our solar system. CO2 makes up about .4 of one percent of the tiny earth's atmosphere. Which influence is likely to be dominent?

What is your prediction for how much the earth's temperature will change over the next five years? Will it warm or cool, and by how much?

[JackHudson]

Actually, the jury has been in for at least five years, if 'by jury' you mean all the world's major science institutions.

http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/topten.html

http://globalchange.mit.edu/resources/gamble/no-policy.html

[mioffe]

We need ASAP reevaluate mistakes of Al Gore, who enslave our mental capacity to wrong directions of less carbon dioxide and only conservation of energy by stupid directions.
It is not only carbon dioxide.
It is wind, which send hot air to cloud level.
It is reflection, which send short wave back to space.
It is convection, when hot air from the land surfaces going up.
It is evaporation.
Let see what did mankind:
Level of carbon dioxide and others greenhouse gases were really increased and man made sulfur rain destroyed some forests.
Almost all around every country in the world we till land, grow and harvest for food many different from usual vegetation build roads and houses. All of these activities changed as reflection, as convection, as evaporation.
Of course, sun is main player in Nature, but we can reduce it influence the same as volcanic activities, be energy independent and fight global warming, cooling or something else by understanding role of wind, reflection, convection and evaporation.

[rwext]

KIm,,, when will the global alarmists realize the two greatest effects on climate change are that great flaming orb in the sky and the earth itself and not MANKIND. since 1998 the climate has been cooling thanks to a quiet sun and volcanic activity

[GYRainforest]

Good points Kim. I do hope that various governments will realise the importance of addressing the social and economic issues resulting from Global warming. Generally despite much that has been said and done by 'notable spokespersons' on global warming, the issue is still viewed in many parts, by ordinary folks as simply academia rhetoric that can be ignored. More needs to be done in sensitizing the populace about practical options that must be taken, which should go beyond using energy saving bulbs. Several capitals, towns and other communities will have to be relocated and the national budgets should reflect this. However, governments in general appear to be afraid to address the real economic costs involved because of the vast sums required.

[Rhetticent]

Yes. I assume any official in power would be a little cautious about spending billions upon billions of dollars to "move a captial" (which ones do you have in mind, by the way?) only to find out the decision to do so was based on complete and utter nonsense. What if they'd all panicked and moved capitals when scientists were screaming about the coming Ice Age in 1975? Or started killing people because Paul Erlich said population would destroy the planet in 20 years? (that was in the late '60's, by the way). Global warming is a huge pile of crap that will make Al Gore the first Green Billionaire if he can scare Congress into passing cap and trade. Let me predict: they get that tax passed, and suddenly the crisis will be averted, and we can admit the planet is pretty damn stable right now.