AR6 SYR Full Version is Here!

Yeah! that only took 3 months, since the presentation of the Summary for Policy Makers. Weather-wise the three most devastating months since the reference point of 1850, the emergence of industrial economies.

What emerged between April and August this year is what has been going on underwater. A huge store of energy was dumped by human industry into the thermal mass of the oceans, and having reached its maximum capacity, is now spilling out into the atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong, right?

What does this development over the past three months mean for the relevance of IPCCs Assessment Report #6, Synthesis Report?

We, ordinary humans, should be aware that this report is not aimed at us, but at C-Suite people in government & industry – definitely not like us at all 😉 It is aimed at policy makers, with decision makers in government & industry as by-catch. One consequence being the assumption of all government & industry, that government and industry matters.

Ocean surface temperature: warmer then ever recorded before since 13 March 2023.

So far the IPCC reports provide evidence that government and industry only matter to make the planet as uninhabitable as they can get away with. AR6 SYR makes that perhaps more blatantly and brutally clear then any of the previous much more cautious reports. The last three months are compelling evidence that we are way past the point of no return and that government and industry are not the agents of change we need to weather the collapse of our planetary organic life support systems and come out as a thriving humanity at the other end – which may well be centuries if not millennia down the path of time.

So what are you and I to do?

THAT is an excellent question. One which only you and I can meaningfully answer. Primarily by changing our minds, being creative and living in harmony with the rest of nature 🙂 So, that should be really simple then. With respectful gratitude to everybody in IPCC, WMO and UNEP, for facilitating this epiphany, since June 1972 🙂

“That Option No Longer Exists”

A recent article in The Guardian headlined “‘It’s absolutely guaranteed’ : the best and worst case scenarios for sea level rise“. As media climate rhetoric has escalated since COP27 (6 to 20 November 2022 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt), it went from dire predictions for undetermined futures to admitting we are in the thick of irreversible collapse of climate and associated effects on the biosphere as well as the fabric of human sanity, economies and societies on a global scale.

Prevention, mitigation, and ‘turning the tide’ have gone out of the window over the past 30 years and are options that no longer exist. Not in the real world anyway.

Perhaps not entirely by coincidence the timeline of the COPs of the international panel on climate change is remarkably congruent with the collapse of the climate over the past 30 years. As COPs are an annual event and were disrupted by COVID for about three years, it really could have been COP30 last year 😉 This year’s COP28 promises to be especially hypocritical, being presided over by the CEO of an oil company.

Design new options

Anyway. Rather then mourning the missed windows – missed by the drivers of the collapse, like energy and resource industries, and governance and banking that facilitated them – perhaps we (you and I) could reclaim some of the agency we delegated to them and consider what options still do exist to lead a meaningful and fulfilling life. Perhaps one of the last remaining options still open in the UN call to ‘live in harmony with nature’ is indeed just that: to live in harmony with the rest of nature.

Make it so!

This begins of course with recognising and realising that we, individually and as humanity, are indeed an integral element of nature – just the way we are. As such there are only choices and consequences. Our societies’ structures and relationships must be transformed in such a way that individuals get unfiltered information on the impact of individual and collective choices. Perhaps we transform them by transforming our self? Being connected to consequences, we should then be able to govern our behaviour in a much more appropriate way then through the mediation of structures that have both inherent and systematic sociopathic and ecopathic instincts and agendas.

Make it count 🙂

Forget about collapse. It doesn’t matter anyway.

Find/create the company of people that matter to you.
Do the things that matter to you and your chosen company.
Choose and embrace consequences. Be fluid. Adapt.

Your company matters to me 🙂

AR6 SYR ?

Ah! Yes. In case you are wondering.

The Assessment Report #6, Synthesis Report (Full Version) is still missing in action (since the publication of the summary for policymakers on 19 March 2023).

The IPCC finalized the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report during the Panel’s 58th Session held in Interlaken, Switzerland from 13 – 19 March 2023

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/

Clearly ‘finalized’ and ‘finalised’ have fluid meanings to whomever happens to be speaking.

AR6 SYR Full Version: MIA?

The IPCC finalized the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report during the Panel’s 58th Session held in Interlaken, Switzerland from 13 – 19 March 2023

from: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/

Big media event on the presentation of the “summary for decision makers” in week 12, 2023. Yet here we are in week 18, and no full report has been released.

Where does that leave the qualifier “finalized“?

How is it that an approved and adopted summary (of what?) for decision makers has been published while the full report is missing in action? Six weeks later?

Update week 23: you've guessed it! AR6 SYR Full Version: still MIA. Eleven weeks and counting.

On The Menu…

In case you missed it.

From the latest UN IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report (March 2023)

The climate choices available: rare, medium or well-done.

Scenarios for returning to a stable mild climate (pre-industrial, pre 1850) are off the table.

So with biodiversity, and most logically and likely with economy and society.

This is good news! Finally we are free from pretence, that we can fix it, well: that government and corporates are fixing it. We are now free to pursue a fulfilling life under own agency. Where we want to go. Who we want to be with. Remember “On The Beach”?

So, the planet is saving us, by just being itself, doing what comes natural. The essence of ‘by-product mutualism”. What do you say?

BTW… what is missing at the time of this posting, is the AR6 SYR Full Report itself.

So. we have reports on climate, biodiversity, economy and society. What about a similar effort to analyse global government and corporate leadership and performance? Wouldn’t that be fun? Would their goose finally be cooked?

The Permaculture Difference?

“Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive.”

David Holmgren

The European Permaculture Community announces its 2023 EUPC Forum, the second edition and successor of a long tradition of IRL Permaculture Convergences since 1992.

The theme of this second online Europe-wide meeting is “Let’s Talk About Food!”.

David Holmgren’s quote from his 2002 book “Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability“, on the landing page of this event, suggests that Permaculture-designed system have something (new?) to offer that will provide viable solutions to current issues in the human food supply system.

Shall we have a closer look at this?

EUPC Forum’s invitation opens with (https://forum.eupc.community ):

Let’s shape the future with respect for planet earth!

Join us if …
– You are concerned about climate change
– You have had enough negative news
– You want to hear more about permaculture
– You want to improve your local food system
– You want to connect with like minded people
– You want to hear inspiring stories from experts
– You want to support an active community in Europe
– You want a healthy, happy planet

And how does this relate to Holmgren’s quote?

OK. First: I do not doubt the integrity or intent of Holmgren. I much identify with him 🙂 Like many idealists in the late 1960’s early 1970’s, I was under the illusion that the planet needed saving (from human domination and disrespectful abuse) and that changing the food systems could be a fruitful leverage point.

You can recognise this line of thinking in Holmgren’s quote. He enumerates characteristics of traditional – implied is: pre-industrial – agriculture, industrial agriculture, and permaculture-designed agriculture. Suggested is that each is a stage in the sequential evolution of food systems, where each modality dominates a certain era in a kind of exclusive competition. Also implied is that the characteristics of one modality of food production system replace the characteristics of the others.

Finally the call for this online gathering implies that (only?) permaculture-designed agriculture represents “respect for the planet” while the other modalities do not. And of course that it is our call to “shape the future”.

As the current global existential multi-crisis is the result of what came before, including the generations of activism and indeed permaculture-designed food systems and permaculture-design based livelihoods in teaching, designing and media authoring, it does not follow quite so clearly that permaculture has changed the course of mainstream civilisation. On balance it did not really do anything much for the respect that humanity collectively has for the planet, even though it did produce some fierce champions of its biosphere. Did anyone really change their mind? Were systems changed in such a way that respecting the planet became the function of those systems?

Is there a difference?

  • “Traditional agriculture was labour intensive, industrial agriculture is energy intensive, and permaculture-designed systems are information and design intensive.”
D. Holmgren, 2002 in Permaculture: Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability”

Indeed, pre-industrial agriculture was labour intensive – the global population was still below 1 billion humans (around 1800), relatively even fewer domestic animals and a lot more biodiversity among domesticated species then today. Given that pre-industrial agriculture is still widespread around the world, it still is a current situation in many places. But so (labour intensive) is industrial agriculture. The difference here is that much of the labour is hidden out of sight. Places of labour involved in the global supply chain are beyond each other’s horizon, hidden in the fossil fuel. And end-consumers in particular have no clue as to how much labour has gone into the food on their plate. Industrial agriculture is based on fossil fuel. Cheap fossil fuel. And so it is indeed fossil energy intensive. A lot of that fossil energy goes into transportation and manufacture of things like fertilisers and pesticides, in ‘normalising’ soil substrates. All replacing processes that nature provides organically of its own accord, when it is healthy and given a chance to do its thing.

The implied suggestion that permaculture-designed agriculture does not require intensive labour or intensive energy is misleading, nor – in the everyday practice of working permaculture-designed food systems – is it evident that they are rigorously information and design based. In fact the lack of information and thoughtful design is one of the most common issues in permaculture projects.

A key characteristic of all these modalities of food system is that they are all enclaves1the reversal of which is encapsulating which took place in the last decade or so encapsulated by and separated from the wild and self-directed biosphere, yet impacting it dramatically with its dominance of species diversity, its spatial displacement of wild species, its depletion and pollution of natural resources. The key issue is agriculture itself, the perception of superiority and entitlement of humans over the planet. That can hardly be construed as ‘respect for the planet’. Can it?

Holmgren does provide good philosophical principles, like “observe and interact”. But hardly any permaculture designer or practitioner, practices these principles. They may be briefly acknowledged and mentioned – in a PDC or diploma project context, or even in real-life designs for clients. The application of such principles though, should rarely lead to homesteading in usually arbitrary locations, to be occupied permanently and still manage to evolve harmoniously with the dynamics of the natural environment. They need to be maintained as they are against the natural evolution of places and people, the weather 2climate having collapsed into day-by-day weather, migration of species, extinction of species, ongoing conflict between ever growing populations of people and their ever increasing demands of consumption, and irrational behaviours. Which takes oodles of energy 😉

The challenge of living in harmony with nature starts with changing your mind and indeed observing and interacting, with care, attention and humility.
And transcending systems, any system.
Perhaps that is a pathway beyond sustainability?

note | noot[+]

Free Lunch*

Saturdays from around lunch time, say: 12:30h, we have warm soup, good company and warm conversation. If you would like you personal invitation (= your ticket), please send us a postcard, with your return address of course, to: HKB, p/a Aalsterweg 287-111, 5644RE Eindhoven.

Please bring your own bowl and spoon.
Bringing something delicious to share is always warmly welcome, but not required.

The number of guest is strictly limited to 12. Registration via postcard is required.

*With: Erling & Leo 🙂

Bye, bye, biodiversity?

Applause!
It’s official, yet legally non-binding, now: 70% of the planet is now exclusively zoned as the dominion of humans and their domesticated species.
What could possibly go wrong?

So. Let’s have a really good cry…

… realise our individual power & agency, follow the new generation of change makers and take this future into our own hands. Right now, is a good time.

Stockholm – 50 years on

5 – 16 June 1972: United Nations Conference on the Human Environment

Is there a perverse irony in the top bureaucrats presiding over the global platform for prevarication on planetary survival for 20 of the 50 years since the Stockholm UN Conference on the Human Environment, to call for world leaders to deliver on their climate change promises.

“We need to see leaders delivering on their climate change promises, in the interests of people, prosperity and the planet.”

Christiana Figueres, Yvo de Boer and Michael Zammit Cutajar
The Guardian, Thu 2 Jun 2022 09.00 BST

So say the top bureaucratic leaders that kept the insanity of failure to embrace reality going.
There were 20 years before them and 10 years since them, with identical failure.

The war on nature, the war on reality, is an insane and unwinnable war, with only losers. The only choice in this war is how bad a looser you want to be. Stop gaming nature and be playful & joyful for a change.

“But as three former UN climate chiefs, let us be clear: as the world’s first major environment summit – the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment – recognised, the crises in security, health, development and the environment are linked. They are loading stress upon stress, especially in the most fragile and conflict-torn parts of the world. The myriad reports of extreme weather we have witnessed in 2022 suggest there is no time to waste.”

Which, as is now the case, turns out to be EVERYWHERE on the planet.

“The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human wellbeing and planetary health,” reads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. “Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.’”

Oddly enough, that ship sailed irreversibly, formally and publicly in broad daylight in June 1972 with the UN Conference on the HUMAN Environment, appropriating the subject as a political issue and self-appointed mandate.

What political and corporate agencies should have done, is immediately reinstate individual people’s agency, terminating their holy trinity of violence monopolies, bureaucracies and competitive politics.

We might have had a chance to turn the tide then, 50 years ago (1972). 30 years ago(1992) there was a last call and then all doors and windows collapsed, and the ships sailed, the trains left the station, and Elvis left the building – definitively.

“The leaders of today – not 2030, not 2050 – must make this choice.”

Barbados prime minister, Mia Mottley’s words at Cop26

Each and every one of us makes their own choices.
Choose to follow or choose to live. There are only choices and consequences.

This is the time for empathetic, sensible and compassionate choices.
This is the time to CHANGE YOUR MIND!

Trudo’s Next Step…

So much for Trudo’s mission to support their tenants climbing the social ladder.

Party Party!

On the occasion of the municipal elections (once every four years) a few observations on the political ecosystem of Eindhoven.

When the only political party on the election roll in Eindhoven – and beyond – respecting the privacy and mental health of their prospective and current constituents is The Party Party (De FeestPartij) you know something is up.

In an analysis of the 17 registered parties in the 2022 election for the municipal council of Eindhoven, 16 of them invite you to follow, visit or join them at their ‘social media’ accounts. 15 set/leave cookies on your computer/mobile device, 2 without asking. This sometimes – often actually – in clear violation of their self-professed respect for the privacy and well-being of their audience. Just the fact that they engage with commercial enterprise, mostly based outside the national and international jurisdictions and legal privacy protections they nominally subscribe to, that have been proven to be toxic to both the individual mental health and the collective political process they are supposed to defend, should set off all your alarm bells and disqualify them as a legitimate candidate to represent your interest in the decision making process on the disposition of the annual budget of the Municipality of Eindhoven: € 1,005,000,000. Not to mention your agency as a free citizen, your mental, social and physical health, well-being and self-determination.

The only one not engaging with these toxic communication platforms & technologies is… De FeestPartij of Johan Vlemmix, a one-man party. A party with a political platform based on personal grudges, frustrations and delusions. At least they are up front with it. Their programme lays bare all that is wrong with competitive politics and the rule of the few over the many. Once you’ve seen it, you cannot unsee it and you recognise it clearly in the programmes and practices of the other parties, nominally representing you. You may well ask if this really is you or just them.

Now you may well wonder whether this is an oversight on the part of De FeestPartij‘s one and only candidate, or whether the other parties willfully and deliberately bought into the business model of their surveillance marketing intelligence suppliers. Most likely they at least bought advertising with micro-targeting from Meta, Google and Twitter. Why don’t you ask them?

Given the steady stream of anecdotes swirling around, the almost weekly breaking news stories about the violations of individual and collective rights to privacy and self-determination in the diverse commercial news media – who are without exception complicit in (if not the root cause of) the surveillance industry game – and the growing body of scientific research publications on the matter since the early dawn of the commercial attention-industry somewhere in the 1800’s ( 3 September 1833, according to some) and especially since the Internet .com boom & bust of the 1980’s, our representatives in government really should know that the use of social media and behaviour tracking is totally unacceptable in responsible political discourse. They aren’t simply aware of this fact. They feel it is opportune, perhaps even unavoidable, to use these tools as a means to achieve the power of governance they crave. Reducing you, the voter, from a person to represent to a brick in the road to their glory.

All, except De FeestPartij.

Go figure 😉 And good luck with that. We will all need it.