With wildfires, droughts and floods dominating the news, increasingly, the climate agenda has become a centre stage issue, yet there still remains so much resistance to the radical approaches needed to address it. Dr David Cliff examines the denial around and priorities that must be given to this important issue that can no longer be subject to short-termism.
You can slice it and dice it anyway you like. We can rationalise, trivialise, eulogise about technology, focus on cost-of-living issues having greater immediate priority and so on, but the science is inescapable. Right wing pundits on TV talk shows, the vested interests of banks and others that still believe fossil fuels have a long-term future and continue to separate cause from effect in the interests of the bottom line, the truth cannot be sidestepped. The planet is under unprecedented pressure and the climate is changing massively at our hands. Humans now consume so much that the Earth needs to be around 1.5 times its current size to remain sustainable!
The good life, the concept that economic growth was an ongoing exponential that could be ably supplied by our World providing ever more abundance falls short of naivety and is closer to self-interested abandon.
Business class air seats three times the carbon footprint of economy, second and third homes, overseas long-haul flights – three, four and often many more times a year are all part of the story. The pursuit of cheap, disposable, non-repairable goods, including clothes carried halfway around the planet has not only polluted the atmosphere, destroyed species and habitats, but has also ennobled states that are now a global threat to security.
Scores of climate scientists, activists like Greta Thunberg, the King and naturalists, including Sir David Attenborough, now in his nineties, continue with their warnings. They have been pleading for decades we have one planet, we all occupy it and if we get lost in egocentric self-interest or encapsulated economic models, everyone and everything suffers.
Therapists and others observe it in their clients, observing almost a collective consciousness reflecting an anxiety level that is about uncertain futures. Pandemics, AI and other factors add to the mix of perceived modern. threats, but none are so fundamental as the maintenance of the biosphere that maintains all life.
The politically expedient goals of several world leaders that have uprooted so much of our rainforests, sabotaged gas pipelines, destroyed ecosystems, neglected energy policies, avoided crucial regulation and more, further exacerbates the situation.
It has taken billions of years for life to evolve as it has on the planet and we have seen the loss of unprecedented numbers of species, particularly over just the last 30 years. Meantime, emissions grow ever higher, along with an accelerated encroachment on animal and other habitats. The poorest of the world often suffer the most violent vicissitudes of climate change with poor housing, poor infrastructures, and low resilience, contributing to often unstable geology and baseline mass poverty. The 50% poorest of this world contribute around 10% to greenhouse emissions. Conversely the most affluent 10% contributes around 49% of all omissions. Whilst we should attempt to limit population growth on an already crowded planet, emissions are not correlated so much with family size as with affluence and lifestyle.
Like the ‘frog in the pan’ story, we are heating up slowly absorbing a degree at a time until it is a fatal dose. Frankly, there is no escaping the need for every person to confront how we live, and what we exploit in order to do so. Some do nothing at all.
Our natural human tendency to project responsibility elsewhere is also unhelpful. In small, virtue signalling ways so many of us assert they are ‘doing our bit ‘, without fully intellectually engaging with the true enormity of behavioural change that will be a necessity for future generations to live well. Change that will need to be ever more draconian the longer we defer.
If this sounds a tad apocalyptic it’s probably because it very may well be as the time to intervene meaningfully is now short on this matter. That’s perhaps why Septuagenarians and others in slogan T-shirts are appearing on tennis courts and similar and are becoming more activist than they ever countenanced in their lives. Agree with their methods or not, one can sympathise with the sense of powerlessness they and others experience when trying to speak truth to power. these days. People’s legitimate concerns increasingly seem nullified as they flow through the usual filters of elitist self-interest and tribal ideologies. Many fear the usual political fudges of half measures and “too little, too late” policies will not wash with the enormity of this agenda. For sure, the current cost of living crisis and other concerns are important, but do not justify deferment on climate matters. These more transitory issues will seem like a cake-walk by comparison to the future where, for example, food and other supplies are under threat, vital species and habitats are lost, large numbers of people die in unprecedented weather conditions, millions migrate from hotter zones and rapid disease propagation/mutation occurs in a warmer, wetter world.
Personal, Political, Corporate and Social Responsibility are inescapably linked here and must be effective. The business community must be a real part of the solution here and profit must be achieved by far greater adherence to ethical frameworks than ever was the case hitherto. Any more gesture signalling would be little short of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Many, including those in government have already secured berths it appears!
I do hope that T-shirt is organic cotton!
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