In
Discussions with David Wasdell
Subject:
Global Warming
The Meridian Programme www.meridian.org.uk
Apollo - Gaia Project http://www.apollo-gaia.org/
On a
recent trip to UK (Oct ’08) I had the opportunity to spend a few evenings
chatting with David Wasdell, coordinator of the Meridian Programme and the
associated Apollo-Gaia Project.
David
is a lead scientist on global warming issues, and has established the
scientific reasons for the fact that the rate of global warming is now much
faster than had been projected from models based on earlier scientific
assessments.
Pretty
well everyone has heard of global warming, and a few people have heard of
accelerated secondary global warming and the possibility of a tipping point.
That point is when heating will take on a life of its own, so that even if/when
our human activity stops, the global temperature will continue to rise. It is as if human activity has been cranking
the engine of a car until another energy source takes over, and then…?
In
the case of a car, we can control the engine speed. In the case of global
warming, it is likely to be the highly accelerated beginnings of the sixth
major extinction event of known geological history.
The
project name, Apollo - Gaia, has Greek mythological roots. Apollo represents
the sun and Gaia the Earth. Earth would
be barren without Apollo’s constant flow of energy. Time, energy and evolution have developed the interactive outer
layer of systems consisting of animal (including humans), vegetable and
mineral. The Gaia name was recently
popularised by James Lovelock who explained these relationships and the current
dynamic balance that produces weather within our habitable home. An unintended consequence of the industrial
revolution has been a disruption of the energy balance between Gaia and
Apollo. Our task is to restore that
balance.
Planet
Earth, We Have a Problem is section heading in reference to the message from the crew of Apollo
13 (“Houston, we have a problem!”). After a brief time to digest the
grave implications of the problem, the NASA team underwent a rapid paradigm
shift. Their focus changed from the planned moon mission to crew survival. “Failure is not an option!” was the team
mindset, as verbalized by Gene Kranz of Mission Control.
We,
the crew of Spaceship Earth
(Buckminster Fuller’s term), have an Apollo 13-like problem. Many of our top scientists indicate that we
need declare a state of emergency: but this message has yet to filter through
in a meaningful way to current governments and we the people who elect
them. Dave Wasdell and team of the Meridian Programme intend to
ignite the people of Earth into demanding to be served by governments that will
base future decisions on a survival paradigm, a paradigm that must rapidly be
created.
David
Wasdell has degrees in theology, mathematics, physics and has practiced in each
of these fields. He has also spent many years in leading edge research on
psychodynamics and social dynamics. This background gives him a unique
perspective on both the relevant physical realities of our situation, and human
reactions to information that indicates our tomorrow will be vastly different
from our yesterday. Individuals and
groups use denial, avoidance and other such characteristics of our human nature
to escape the discomfort of unpleasant reality. These characteristics were, no
doubt, instrumental in the crash of regional civilizations past.
Below
are a few paragraphs clipped from sections of the Meridian Programme web
page. These emphasize that the time is
over for downplaying the severity of the human predicament, and that this is
not a time for political correctness or avoidance of such issues as human population
overload.
“The Meridian Programme exists in order to serve the task of human
integration at every level of the world system in order to ensure species
survival and to optimise the quality of life within the sustainable limits of
our holding environment.
(Purpose
section)
“The current
relationship between species and environment is critically unsustainable and
accelerating towards ecological catastrophe. The window of opportunity within
which it is still possible to intervene effectively in these systems is small
and reducing steadily. Newly discovered positive feed-back loops in climate
change may already have been triggered to the point at which they are beyond
the reach of human control.
“This "footprint
overshoot" leads to annual debt-accumulation in the interaction between
the human enterprise and its supporting ecosystem. Current estimates indicate
that the supporting capacity of the global environment will collapse when the
accumulated debt reaches some 50 or 60 Planet-years. The most recent
conservative forecasts from the UN predict that that point will be reached
around the year 2050. In addition, the value of a Planet-year is degrading
because of the effect of environmental pollution, the over-grazing of the global
commons and the impact of humanufactured climate change.
Call To Action: (Global
Warming section)
“Each wave calls for its own specific response:
The threat of Climate Change calls for Environmental Stewardship.
The threat of Footprint Overshoot calls for Footprint Reduction.
The threat of Global Psychosis calls for Psychological Integration.”
In
the past few years, David has made many presentations to a wide variety of both
scientific and political audiences, such as the Club of Rome and the All
Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group in the UK House of Commons. He has had personal discussions with Al Gore
and James Lovelock. “Unfortunately”,
David says, “the scientists all tend to agree with the dangers of second order
sources of global warming”. David’s presentations are listed and described at http://www.apollo-gaia.org/, in the Background and Development
section. This page also links to http://www.meridian.org.uk/, and the
evolving pages describing the Meridian Programme.
Both
Gaia and human civilization are complex nested systems. The Meridian Programme does not presume to
know how to fix our common problem, but it hopes to function as a catalytic
hub. As such, it could be a facilitator of ideas and movements that emerge from
the dark shadow of our dying paradigm, ideas that may mesh together in a
mutually supportive and chaordic (Dee Hock’s term) fashion. Our hope is to
gather a new form of order on the edge of chaos, as our malignant growth
paradigm dies. A good overview of these
thoughts is in a paper by Wasdell in response to Ervin Laszlo’s Report to
the Club of Budapest, 2003. See:
http://www.meridian.org.uk/Resources/Systems_Dynamics/Global
Transformation/index.htm
Today
we have an edge over civilizations past that blindly reached overgrowth and
slid into die off: we have technologies and a global communications network.
These have contributed to a high anxiety level among millions of people; it is
the intention of the Meridian Programme to focus this anxiety into action,
rather than allow it to take hold as morbid paralysis.
This
program needs your support, both in spirit and financially. Every bit of help
matters. Growth in human activity will
soon end: let us humans decide the optimal way of dealing with it based on
scientific realities. By following the support links you can become an Associate
of the Meridian Programme (AMP). http://www.meridian.org.uk/Action/Support/support.htm
The Apollo-Gaia Project is
co-ordinated by David Wasdell as part of the Meridian Programme. It is
hosted by the Unit for Research into Changing Institutions, URCHIN, an
Educational Research Trust, registered as a Charity in the UK (Registration
Number: 284542. Tel: +44 (0)207 987 3600.
E-mail: info@meridian.org.uk
Don
Chisholm
RR 4
Picton
Ontario
Canada, K0K 2T0
President
of Gaia Preservation Coalition www.gaiapc.ca