A Review of the Journal of Integral Theory and Practice's First Special Issue on Climate Change
Good Integral Climate Change Articles
by Mike Breland
In Reference to: Climate Change: A Broader View by IPCC scientist Dr. Karen O'Brien
If you found this article by Dr. O’Brien as interesting as I did, you might want to consider getting the Winter 2009 volume of the “Journal of Integral Theory and Practice.” I devoured it in about 2 weekends of reading. That I did not completely agree with some of the articles, I think, indicates that the editor of the journal was attempting to be “integral” in their presentation of several different perspectives. But, in the end, the articles ended up creating a more complete picture of the situation in an integral sort of way rather than being irreconcilable viewpoints that cast more heat than light. I finished the journal feeling I now had a much more balanced view of climate change and the tools to review other articles on the topic more critically.
For example, the first article by Michael Zimmerman caused me a bit of consternation. It was about: “An Integral Approach to Climate Change” and as I read it, I noted some of my “climate change” buttons were being pushed because he was pointing out the nakedness of some of my emperors. So, I was somewhat relieved when I finished that article and went on the Richard Slaughter’s article about: “Beyond the Threshold.” Even though this article was basically a review of “Climate Change Literature,” my perception of Richard’s perspective was that his was somewhat like mine. However, since I was already sensitized by Michael Zimmerman’s article I started to see a little nakedness appearing once again.
I then forged onto the next article by Jordan Luftig about “Movement Building Through Meta-narrative” and surprisingly really enjoyed it. First, I liked that in the Abstract he stated his perspective and continued to refer to it through his article. After all, this is an integral approach and one of the basic requirements of Wilber regarding making a non-metaphysical statement is that a “cosmic address” needs to be given, which includes the perspective of the person making the statement. Second, he brings up the very important idea of the AQAL-Integral community as an “ideological movement” and how that we as a group have generally been shying away from this, partially since “ideology” can imply an us-versus-them scenario. However, as he's using the word, it isn't necessarily so. He then gives some good examples and practical suggestions, such as in “The Curious Case of Camp Obama”, plus that we integralists should seriously consider that we really are participants in a social movement.
However, one re-occurring theme I found somewhat disconcerting in the journal as a whole was its use of “meta-this” and “meta-that”. After reading the whole journal, I still don’t know what a meta-narrative, meta-view, meta-theory, meta-systematic, or meta-approach mean, even though the latter term was discussed on page 79. That discussion concluded with: “A meta-approach that can address any limitations in the previous approaches can then be designed.” I couldn’t find anything in the Wiki-pedia for meta-approach, but did find meta-system. It stated: “It means, if a system S is described by the set of attributes A and these attributes are considered as abstract objects (with their own properties/attributes), then their interrelations may form a meta-system of S.” While I still don’t understand what a meta-system is, I did recognize the phrase: “their interrelations may form a meta-system” and so from that I concluded that “meta” implies an integral relationship of some sort. Can anyone help me with this? Maybe it’s just “too turquoise” for me to understand.
Since my blog is already too long, let me skip the 3 intervening articles and conclude with the interesting suggestion made by John Bunzl in his article on “Solving Climate Change”. He argues for a “global electoral politics” that he says are ‘second-tier politics” and his suggestion seemed to be a good one, at least to me. Basically he suggests that a group of people with similar ideas band together and let all of their electoral candidates know that regardless of their party, that this group will bloc vote for whomever of them will agree to vote to implement the group’s campaign policy package on climate change if it ever comes up. And then only if it is instituted simultaneously with other governments in order to prevent severe economic hardship. There is much more economic and political background and follow-up discussion that supports this reasoning than I can go into here, but overall, I thought it a reasonable idea.
So, if you found this or Dr. O’Brien’s discussion somewhat interesting, I suggest you purchase this journal at: http://integrallife.com/node/62646, as I think you will find it will truly enlarge your perspective on climate change.
Yours,
mb
