Climate binds us. Our macroenvironment is now a legal and social contract in the form of the Paris Agreement, also known as the Paris Accords.Footnote1 The international treaty on climate change is one of the first to unite 196 nations in a common goal to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels” and “limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C above pre-industrial levels.”Footnote2 Signed on December 12, 2015, it marks the first time a unilateral global goal is not focused on war or trade, which underpins the defense of national boundaries. Instead, it underscores something more significant than these transitory identities, something apparent when you watch the clouds or a sunset: boundless nature, a continuum of sea, land, and air as a constant exchange of energy and sustenance that is Earth, and now our shared responsibility.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s famous “social contract” emerging at the beginning of the industrial era placed agency for change in the hands of society, not government. The compact proposes that “Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”Footnote3 Unlike his contemporaries, Rousseau recognized that society consists of interdependent individuals whose equality depends on mutual consent and agreement and in harmony with nature qua nature. It seems unlikely that he imagined we would threaten nature to this extent as he believed we emerge from nature, are part of nature, and always look to nature to see ourselves. In short, society is always defined in relationship to nature. Ironically, as we enter the digital age of information and shed our industrial skin, our demands on nature have taken and continue to take a toll. Not surprisingly, this is reflected in some of our frayed social contracts. It can be no coincidence that the first global social contract unites us to preserve what Rousseau believed defined us.
Our disciplines can’t tread lightly in this social contract. Architecture and its allied fields contribute about 40% of total US energy consumption and about one-third of the world’s energy consumption through building construction, use, and location.Footnote4 To reach the goal of limiting global warming, greenhouse gas emissions need to peak before 2025, one year from now, with a 43% decline by 2030, six years from the time of this writing.Footnote5 Deforestation due to land management and environmental systems in landscape architecture, planning, and agriculture, among other specialties, is among the most significant contributors to global warming.
Our allied professional societies and organizations are calling for action, not words. This call to action rallies us around saving the planet so it can continue to support life as we know it, but maybe we shouldn’t want life as we know it; maybe the real lesson of the first social contract is that saving ourselves means shedding our familiar nature, this time to save nature.
Notes
1. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding international treaty on climate change. It was adopted by 196 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) in Paris, France, on December 12, 2015. It entered into force on November 4, 2016.
2. The US Energy Information Administration, in 2020, published that the residential and commercial sectors accounted for about 22% and 18%, respectively, totaling 40% of total US energy consumption.
3. J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract Book 1.6 (1762), Marxists.org accessed December 1, 2023, https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/rousseau/social-contract/index.htm.
4. U.S. Energy Information Administration Office of Energy Analysis, “Annual Energy Outlook 2020, January 2020,” accessed December 1, 2023, https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/AEO2020%20Full%20Report.pdf.
5. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change,” IPCC Working Group III AR6 Synthesis Report, accessed November 25, 2023, https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/.