it doesn't add up

A friend sent me this. I didn’t solve the riddle but it inspired a poem and reminded me of why I didn’t like math class. Although it was satisfying to swap out the right numbers for letters to solve for x, it also felt like an illusion. What did it actually solve?

I didn’t like math partially because I was a nihilistic, angsty teen. I wanted things to make sense and it didn’t make sense to be excited about solving problems in the abstract when the real world seemed riddled with problems: injustice, inequity, war, disease, rape, slavery. Catastrophic things happened to innocent people constantly. It just didn’t add up.

I think about this in terms of climate change solutions. Variable A produces B emissions. In order to maintain a habitable planet, variable A emissions need to decrease by X. In theory, this makes sense. For example, if current refrigeration methods emit 100 gigatons of HFCs (worse than CO2) and we need to get to zero, we plug technological changes into the refrigeration equation to get there. But this is an abstraction.

When we focus on manipulating variables to achieve a particular outcome, those variables are regarded as a given; we don’t question their existence within the equation. In the real life application though, we must interrogate variables.

Why does refrigeration top the list of climate mitigation strategies for  EGN (Environmentalists of the Global North)?

Refrigeration became an integral part of the lives of some starting in the early 1900s. For nearly 600,000 years, humans lived without. Further, according to a 2018 IEA report, the 300 million people living in the US consume more energy for cooling than the 4 billion people living in all of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia (excluding China) combined. Meaning, the majority of humans live without refrigeration. Either do the other 8.7 millions species we share the planet with.

Don’t get me wrong. I think ice cream is as necessary as water, sometimes more. Frozen pizza is manna on some days. And of course I turn on my air conditioner when it’s sweltering outside. 

But we are facing extinction. 

We are swiftly losing the ability to feed ourselves because of what we’re doing to soil, water and climate and other species. Worldwide access to potable water is jeopardized. We continue to degrade air quality. Why are we invested in revamping a variable that serves only a fraction of the world's human population and no other beings? 

We even sometimes compromise soil, air and water with our solutions.

HFCs are the industrial chemicals we adopted as a 'solution' to the previously used ozone depleting CFCs and HCFCs. We plugged in unknown entities into the refrigerant equation and claimed we solved for X without thorough testing. Now we're scrambling to clean up the mess HFCs cause.

Given the amount of HFCs refrigeration vomits, the material resources required and the ethical issue of disposal, we should question whether refrigeration is even compatible with a habitable planet. 

Now that I’m a nihilistic angsty old woman, I am still leery of fabricated equations and solutions because in order for equations to work, you must ignore some variables while privileging others. Our modern lives are built on economic equations that favor some who, what and where over other who, what and where, which become externalized costs. This reminds me of how Nazis used the word solution. There was a methodical abstraction in the execution of their solution, too.

Similarly, outside the purview of the refrigeration equation are the environmentally hostile and xenophobic government regimes surfacing worldwide during this ecologically dire time. We simply cannot ignore how they endanger nonnegotiable variables-air, water, and soil- for all as well as actively sacrifice lives. 

Externalized costs mount outside the purview of economic equations. It's why parts of the world suffer habitat and cultural destruction from extractive and manufacturing practices which fuel species extinction and create desperate people vulnerable to slavery and are ultimately rendered homeless. Consider the United States' decades long economic equation in Latin America and why there's a 'crisis' at the southern border of this country. 

I’m reminded of the oft quoted definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So here we are using equational thinking to solve the problems equational thinking ignores. Remember HFCs?

With this legacy, do we have proper regard for where the technological components come from and are manufactured to produce ‘greener’ refrigeration? How will our solutions impact air, water, soil and living beings? 

In the face of imminent extinction, who, what, where does better refrigeration serve? Who, what and where bear the externalized cost of my beloved ice cream? Will some who, what and where be externalized as collateral damage for other who, what and where?

Arguably there’s a worldwide appetite for refrigeration, explaining why it’s foremost on the EGN's agenda. Before refrigeration, people worldwide practiced food preservation and built structures in ways that fit cultural, regional, seasonal rhythms using the materials gifted to them by their particular habitat. I suspect they weren't nearly as wasteful and casual about what they worked to harvest, butcher, dry, pickle and so on, as we privileged few with our full fridges. I suspect too that shelters were built in ways more sensible than our thinly walled structures reliant on HVAC. Would lawns continue to be the most irrigated crop in the US without refrigeration or would we become more realistic, regional and seasonal in our dietary expectations of the planet? 

Of course giving up refrigeration is disorienting. But our building practices and food industries are incompatible with a habitable planet for all beings. Retrofitting refrigeration enables the unsustainable global food system. Refrigeration enables extractive practices complicit in habitat destruction. Refrigeration enables externalized costs. Refrigeration enables a dysfunctional, unjust and destruction relationship with our planet and its inhabitants.

Are we invested in maintaining fundamentally flawed industries or protecting earth's systems? We can't have both. The equation for all species' well being doesn't allow for both.

Instead, who can we be, what can we learn about ourselves, our habitats, cultures, histories, food and structures? Where will our inventive reimagining lead us if we start with the premise that air, water and soil are the ultimate nonnegotiable variables? We are called to transcend the artificial, abstract and destructive limitations of equational thinking to find solutions that benefit every living being. Herein lies extraordinary opportunity to evolve new systems. 

Refrigeration doesn’t add up.