Paper short abstract:

Stifling scientific work about fossil fuel carbon footprints & climate change is producing hopelessness among scientists about possibly lowering GHG to control temperature change & irreversible tipping points. This paper explores the potentials, risks, & benefits of revitalization movement responses.

Paper long abstract:

The potential climate mitigation goals of the Paris accord are widely believed by experts to be insufficient to stop the 2-degree temperature tipping point that is predicted to produce irreversible effects of polar melting and sea water rise and vast changes in weather extremes that will negatively impact food production on a global basis. This problem is also severely threatened by the current election of a climate change denial of the US President-elect and the potential dysregulation of the efforts of the various branches of the US government that are designed to achieve and control these GHG lowering efforts. Also, the threatened cutbacks of efforts to control, research and publicize climate predictions together with the deliberate disinformation efforts by industries to protect their financial gain by discrediting them, are producing a profound sense of disillusionment and hopelessness on the part of the community of scientists globally and particularly in the US. This paper reviews the evidence of the degree of the hopelessness and uses AFC Wallace's anthropological model of revitalization movements to determine the degree to which this kind social movement will occur in the future and the likelihood that it will help solve the climate problem.

Paper short abstract:

The world faces a food supply and distribution crisis, notably import dependent countries like Indonesia. Case studies of grassroots initiatives are presented that provide hope as they successfully address issues of sustainability, productivity and distribution to benefit both farmers and consumers.

Paper long abstract:

The world faces a twofold food crisis - supply will be insufficient soon due to deteriorating environmental conditions and this supply is not evenly distributed due to escalating economic inequality. In Indonesia the food problem is essentially a rice problem, as 1,25 million tons need to be imported annually from the Mekong Delta, which is itself under threat. Most domestic rice is grown by small farmers who struggle to make a living from farming, partly because government interventions depress prices. For poor consumers all over Indonesia, fluctuations in the price of rice in the market is a real issue.

The mainstream approach, shared by the agricultural research complex, corporations, international organisations and agencies, and the Indonesian government, is that the problem is deficits of capital, technology and market access and the solution is more of each. The alternative approach, shared by small-farmers organisations, NGOs and ethnographic researchers, tend toward solutions grounded in local knowledge, traditional farming, and local systems of distribution and consumption. The radical disjuncture between these two approaches leads their proponents to talk past each other.

Since the 1990s, there have been initiatives encouraging farmers to convert to organic production to reduce production costs and add market value. Many succeeded in reducing production costs and some increased production, but most were less successful in marketing.

We've been looking for initiatives working across the gap of understanding, and addressing marketing and distributions issues as well. This paper will introduce briefly two cases in Java that provide reason for hope.

Paper short abstract:

How religious communities discover and reclaim elements within their traditions that reinforce both identity and responsibility and direct believers/practitioners to participate with other scientific, ethical, and political communities aids both personal and public action regarding climate change.

Paper long abstract:

Religions historically have defined “responsibility” in both broad and narrow terms for believers/practitioners according to “identity.” Religious ethics took form on the basis of what the particular religion taught with reference to belief and practice. In mono-cultural societies this connection between identify and responsibility was seamless, virtually one and the same. But as the “lived-context” became more religiously diverse, the believer/practitioner became more self-conscious of what responsible action was entailed by reference to a self-declared religious identity. Some religions (or factions of religions), for example, could guide their self-identified followers on how to responsibly treat the creation while others could leave that issue unanswered or justify exploitation of the earth. Beyond the phenomenon of diversity, the secularization of societies also contributed to a separation of religious identity from religious responsibility or the weakening of deeply held religious beliefs and their ethical consequences and the stronger adherence to secular societal norms and practices (e.g., consumption, accumulation, wealth accumulation). If religions are to contribute to meeting the challenge of climate change, they can no longer assume religious identity will lead to responsible religious responsibility; instead, religions will need to allow global responsibility to define religious identity. The challenge, it will be argued, for religious communities is to discover and reclaim elements within their traditions that allow for their reclamation and reform in both identity and responsibility in order to direct believers/practitioners to participate with other communities (e.g., scientific, ethical, and political) in both personal and public action regarding climate change.