#rockstrom

Johan Rockstrom and company have a new paper talking about possible trajectories for the climate through the year 3000. There is a fair amount here, but one thing I find interesting is that while they are not talking about the highest emissions scenarios anymore (SSP3 under the CMIP6 framework), they are looking at a range of equilibrium climate sensitivities (ECS), and this makes a big…

Climate scientist, is this how you feel?

Een steeds groter wordende lawine aan data toont aan dat we de planetaire grenzen overschrijden (Rockstrom et al 2009; Steffen et al 2011) en zo de safe operating space van de aarde verlaten. Toch houdt de ‘waan van de dag’ ons gevangen in een state of mindwaarin praktische beslommeringen ons verhinderen om lang stil te staan bij problematieken zoals klimaatverandering. Om dieper na te denken en…

Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development

http://www.ted.com Human growth has strained the Earth’s resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize thi…

Johan Rockstrom: Let the environment guide our development | Talk …

Human growth has strained the Earth's resources, but as Johan Rockstrom reminds us, our advances also give us the science to recognize this and change behavior. His research has found nine "planetary boundaries" that can guide us in …

Extract from Johan Rockstrom on Protecting Earth Systems from Catastrophic Failure

Bankrupting Nature, Denying our Planetary Boundaries

This is a new book by Rockstrom and company who came up with the "planetary boundary" concept. Basically it's a new way of framing the limits to growth / ecological footprint concepts in a way that might make sense to today's scientists and politicians.

(This was a piece I just submitted to Monash University's Verge Anthology which they'll hopefully accept)

Our Mind Travels Further

A nonexistent memory compels me. Sitting in the back of my mind, it nudges, causing my legs to move, almost out of my control. Why do these stairs intrigue me? Cold, damp stone steps, leading up through the forest, into the mountain. The staircase juts out of the face of the mountain, blue stone mingling with the light green of moss, growing from the ceaseless damp of the forest. It zigzags upwards into fog, the destination obscured. Somehow I know this place. I’ve never been here in my life, never seen photos, and never even heard of it. Even as I’m thinking this, my legs carry me closer to the first step.

From behind me, the guide tells me not to bother. She’s been here a hundred times, there’s nothing but the statue of a cat up the stairs. There’s nothing important. I’m inclined to believe her. Behind me are buildings of wood and stone, their perfect, curved roofs designed to flow the moisture in the air and from the rain down into the gutters. Shrines that, hundreds of years earlier, samurai would have made a pilgrimage to, a dedication of years of their own lives, searching for spirituality. As is always seen in the holy, spiritual places of Japan, the atmosphere is of an imposing gentility. Every shrine and temple is adorned with decorations, crests and symbols denoting their importance. Red, gold and blue paint worn with time, they are yet well taken care of, the monks who live in this lost area of the mountains devotedly maintaining their home.

The stairs have nothing. No Torii gate, no statue, not even a plaque. Compared to their colourful surroundings they were out of place. There are small images that dot the thick, stone handrail that runs up its right side but the moss has obscured most of them. One still partially uncovered peeks at me and it stirs a memory, but it is lost as my father places his hand on my shoulder, distracting me from my confused reverie.

My father. Bringing me to Japan was something he always spoke of. For fifty years he had trained in Aikido, learning a martial form passed down through centuries, specialising in a style of swordsmanship that was used by the greatest warriors of this country’s history. The movements he knows and practices, the meditations he lives, would have been known to men standing in this very place during a different age. I have grown up not on stories of Australia or Europe, but of samurai, Zen teachings, Japan. To be in such a place was to be part of those stories. Take away the tourists of our group and we could well be standing in a temple during the time of the samurai. This place does not feel foreign. Both of us have that feeling in our souls, that we are content, peaceful. And strangest of all our feelings: one of coming home. And we each knew that the other could feel it.

My father asks me what I’m doing. He tells me that the rest of the group will be heading down the mountain soon. I ask if we can go up the stairs. He looks at the staircase, saying that Yuri told us that nothing was up there. Nothing important. He hasn’t looked away though. He scans the jagged path, contemplating the mist, almost as if he can see through it. Is he drawn to them as I am? I ask again, it’ll only take a little while. I just want to see what’s up there. I don’t say it out loud, but I need to go up there. I recognise it like the way we recognise places from our childhood. Dad looks at me, then back down to the group. My sister turns to us, the silent question in her eyes. Dad is silent for a moment and then calls that we’ll meet them at the bottom. He turns back to me and just says “Ok.”

The stairs are light to climb. As I climb I trail my hand along the moss on the stone rail and along the walls where the stairs have been carved deep into the mountainside. Like a blind man finding his way home, every touch sends waves of familiarity through my senses. The air gets damper the higher we climb, the forest trees dripping water lightly around us. An image flashes through my mind, almost as if its right in front of me but I lose it once again. As the stairs lead us around the mountain’s curvature we reach a small platform that lies just below the mist that hides the peak from view.

As Yuri had told us, there was the statue of a cat. Nothing else. Nothing important. The cat somehow disenchants me. It shouldn’t be there, it’s out of place and unfamiliar. It is not even in the centre of the platform, almost randomly placed to the side, as if the statue itself felt incongruous and did not want to be there.

I don’t understand it. Why did every part of me urge me to follow this path, yet the result feel so wrong?  I consider fleeing. Back down the staircase, away from this misleading place. Just as I move I’m stopped once again by my own self. Something holds me there for a second longer. I take one last look back and on the wall a small carving catches my eye. How could I have missed it? How could I have forgotten? The pattern I had seen scattered throughout the shrine, hidden on the stairs by moss and the ravages of time; the mõn, the crest of the man who had unified and reformed the nation I was standing in. Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa.

A name not commonly known by Westerners, the man resides in history as a legend to rival Hannibal, Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan. A man who changed the course of history. Had changed the world.

I run my hand over the crest and know why I am here. I beckon to my father who sees the crest and understands as I do. Following the wall it turns a small corner and before us is another staircase that rises ominously into the mist. This is my path, this is the way I must go.

It feels like we are going further this time. I can’t see very far ahead of us. The mist, the trees and shape of the mountain concealing my way. I don’t know how far we’ve gone or how much of the path is left. Dad has fallen behind, taking photos. I’m by myself on the stairs, disconnected from everything except this pocket of existence, surrounded by fog, between worlds. There could be nothing outside except a void. I don’t stop. I continue to scale the mountain, step by step, the fog thinning as I rise. I turn the final corner and step out of the mist into the real world.

I’m on another flat plateau but this is larger than the last. Before me is a chest high octagonal wall, each segment two or three metres long and directly in front of me are the gates. If there is such thing as gates to another world, then these are it. Unlike the nexus of carvings on the shrine at the summit, the ornamentation on these gates is a strangely simple style of intricacy. The dichotomous nature of this place is tangible. These gates have no handles and cannot be passed through, yet they guard a wall I could easily climb over. However it would be physically impossible for me to do so. Guarding the gates are two dragons, sitting like scaled bloodhounds at the feet of their master. The stones in their eyes glow red, stealing the souls of those who look into them. Every part of my being knows that this door commands respect, and will not be defied.

There is a path around the wall, viewing in to the central dais. The dais is raised on eight progressively smaller platforms, stepping up to the tomb. Stories live in our imaginations and memories, yet now the story was made real. This grave had no decorations. No engravings, words or crests. Above it is an almost typical Japanese headstone. As with all Japanese headstones a short, cylindrical pillar is mounted on the zenith, holding up a small curved roof, identical to the style of the shrine below, protecting the tomb from rain. Any who looked upon it knew that they were in the presence of a colossal force.

I instinctively bow towards the tomb, as if the spirit of the man was somehow watching, thanking him for being allowed to this place. To be buried here, separate from the world, yet in a place more real than anywhere I’ve ever known, it is a perfect moment that lasts an eternity.

I don’t live here. I’ve never been here before. A memory I shouldn’t have tells me I know this place. I will have leave here, return through the mist to the world below. I am forced to go back to my country. I know that I am leaving myself here, above the mist. I know that I’m not going home.