usiness Culture Myths
The climate is always changing . . . the climate has changed before . . . Anybody that says this, is being encouraged to doubt that business as usual is the major cause of global heating. This is a deliberate business culture myth, one of many. It is the most useful myth for fossil fuel dependent societies.
As noted by many who get to figure the elements of the myth out, it induces to forget what should be the real question, which is , what is it that causes global climate changes? Why would’t it be us causing it, when global civilisation has grown so large, it has now filled and is impacting the whole planet? We are the most rapid change happening on this planet, of the last two centuries.
Effects have causes. Everything is always changing, because energy flows are downhill. Our behaviours are complex, but not unexplained, and not unstoppable. Earth has always been spinning. Time marches on. Climate science has known for a long time the workings of our global climate. What consequences are likely, are now known with more than enough detail and certainty. This time we are the unprecedented global, rapid acting cause.
There are deep problems with most business culture thinking, and its assumptions that we fail to question from its self-serving myths. Various articles use the myths to talk about better and alternative uses of climate mitigation efforts, and so they are used to “maybe” paint Greta Thunberg as “wrong”.
By association, such myths are really being used to attack the climate activism movement, and climate science itself. But it never matters really which person or movement is attacked by the myths, the global predicaments we find ourselves come entirely from workings of the myths themselves.
The first common global business culture problem, strongly evidenced in many articles, is that success of human business is narrowly defined and limited entirely by its self-serving concern of “dollars created” and “economic growth” and “increased trade” for the self-selected receivers of benefits, the short term growth system winners. Business as usual ignores all of its external system dependency and consequences. Business as usual leaves out all longer term system effects.
Systems ignorance is an unfortunate consequence of the diverse vocations and specialisations of “homo colossus”, particularly business culture. Division of labour, and competitive requirement for cheapest possible factors of production, ensure system ignorance , or “need to know” basis, forms the ethos of “business as usual”. Corporations and governments hide their secrets. Myths must be created to fill a vacuum of reality connected information, and resist removal by their framed observations of reality.
Myths, of business and religions, to national and tribal identities, are made to benefit the people who are getting the most benefits out of current systems. They maintain social structures. The main aim is to maintain the behaviours of other people, so that myth originators continue to receive the most benefits. Social order and misdirection is the prime purpose. So no surprise that efforts are being made every day, to cast doubts on climate science, that originate from fossil fuel wealth holders and users.
We have social bias as a major evolution developed feature of our species. Survival is dependent on good relations within our social groups, for food and protection. Good relations depend on everyone getting the resources they need. And now the getting of resources to support the global wealthy depends on the continued exploitation of fossil fuel energy. Most people can be forgiven for believing what works best in order to get “whatever they takes”. Fear of losing ones social or economic foundations of daily life, is a deep animal instinct.
We are really frightened of enforced change, because we are relatively big creatures, have long lives and relatively slow reproduction, with a lot of energy invested in the care of our young. Now global climate is changing faster than the time of one generation to grow into adults, and the cause of changes are still accelerating.
Myths of prophets and divine creators, mediated by their earthly representatives, reinforce whole batteries of social edicts, and no doubt have been used to reinforce the control of lower classes, in the otherwise unmanageable growing large populations since the first city states of civilisation required large numbers of slaves. The most stable myths have successful meme propagation properties, and are harder to dislodge from the deeply brainwashed when young. It helps myths that they structure how people subsequently observe events of their lives, because our brains interpret first according to what we think we already know.
All of growth myth favourites of the business culture of industrial civilisation serve only their own growth oriented parts of the systems. Everything for production, or consumption, is modified by business systems to become more growth serving parts or will be destroyed, or neglected, in order to feed growth. This growth monomania increases the accumulated wealth and supplies for the business-connected privileged, which is the ultimate positive feedback of the growth part of this cycle. More elites require more stuff to feed their growth, and strengthens the justification for myths.
All growth is growth of our “ecological footprint”, and encourages further human population growth, as we draw down faster on Earth’s resources, including the destruction of formerly long term self-renewable ecosystems.
A part of value of every equivalent dollars of GDP ever created, our accumulated wealth, requires us to continue our global total energy consumption and therefore greenhouse gases system accumulation of our civilisation. This is known as the “Garrett Relation” — Our current Power consumption is proportional to our current accumulated wealth. We cannot hope to keep our planet in the state that it nurtured us, and at the same time keep altering its material and climate states with our growing energy and resource extravagance.
As the saying goes, you cannot both have your cake and eat it. As we live in a complex system of systems, we ought to heed what we already know about them. To reduce power consumption, requires the abandonment of the most privileged levels of wealth, or reduction of rate of use of current energy consuming wealth.
Our inability to do this becomes the extinction failure of “homo colossus”. We are the most privileged and biggest consuming people on the planet. The most wealthy are those in direct control relations of the business command centres of our world, who are reducing all of the life conditions and systems on our biosphere.
The only thing likely to save any part of the failing ecological systems that still support civilisation, is a rapid oncoming collapse of civilisation itself. Due to our widespread alterations, perhaps the most fortunate fact is the long recovery time of the biosphere will likely not bring about ever again the once-only conditions favourable to growth of this fossil fuel powered industrial human civilisation. We won’t be allowed to repeat our mistakes.
From the long term viewpoint, efforts of business culture to keep fossil fuelled industrial civilisation from collapse are misguided, as collapse to a non-fossil fuel using system is the only place our systems will have left to go. Survival on much lower wealth is possible, as half the world already manages this. Our changes and forced transitions will not get any better, no matter how much they are denied.