Each time another climate line is crossed without action at the scale or pace we need, it makes people feel like any action at all has become pointless. Jess Berentson-Shaw looks at how we can avoid fatalistic, short-term thinking.
In the spaces between feeling a bit helpless that yet another Monday is upon me and I have no idea what I will cook the kids for dinner, or wondering whether I am going to get through this week’s mountain of project tasks, or whether that weird headache I've had for a few days is something more sinister (and maybe I should have income insurance, shouldn't I?), I worry about the destruction of our biosphere. That remarkable veil of complex systems that sustains our life on this planet.
Pasta two nights in a row? Or the speeding decline of our life support system. Ha.
It doesn’t escape me, the ridiculousness of swinging between the mundane worries that mark parenting, working and getting older, and the somewhat less mundane ones about the existential crisis that threats to our system of living have brought. Though I suppose even in a crisis someone has to do the supermarket run, and hang out the school uniforms.
Helpless. Yes, that is the word. That is the feeling as I look at the people with the power to make the biggest difference not acting to redesign our systems. Angry too, I think, that those who claim to be pragmatic, responsible managers and leaders can't responsibly manage their way out of a paper bag when it comes to our biggest challenge. That they keep falling back to small and less-than-courageous tweaks around the edge of a failed system. Worse, some of them still spend time bickering about whether the issue is even real and whether acting might “damage the economy”. This response especially fails the most basic of common sense tests: there's literally no economy without a functioning biosphere.
And as I come to the end of this paragraph I now feel enraged. Utterly enraged. These, as we say in our house, are some big feelings.
Where, then, is there room for hope in all this helplessness and anger? Where does hope live in between the mundane day-to-day concerns and the existential threats? Because we need hope, shit do we need it. In order to come together and act. To do what is possible, what we know we can do.
Drawing hope from Covid-19
Lately, some hope has crept in from an unlikely source: Covid-19. Ironic really, given it is the mess we've made of our natural systems that created the pandemic in the first place (Destroying animal habitats and ecosystems to build outdoor furniture; over-stocking farms to improve short-term returns; cramming wild and domestic animals together and making them ill - while also consuming them in vast numbers because this is a “productive food system” - creates the optimal conditions for animal diseases, like Covid-19 to jump to humans.)
Where was I? Oh yes, hope and action from Covid-19.
In our Covid-19 response I have seen people do three things that we also need to do to sort out our environmental mess. They haven't been done consistently, or without issue. But that they have been done at all makes me feel like we can respond to the climate.
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Some political leaders (and their representatives) have acted in ways that follow the best evidence even after previous inaction or insufficient - or rubbish - action has seriously stuffed things up with their Covid-19 response. Other countries that acted effectively sooner, like China and ourselves, have also made mistakes along the way. Yet they have changed tact, refocused, reset and responded when required. It's this “never too late to act'' approach we can draw hope from.
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People across communities, including business, research, and government, have done all the things (or at least many of them). Covid-19 was never going to be overcome with just a vaccination (and it still won’t be given the mutations making it far more infectious). It will be slowly overcome by doing all the things. From personal to collective. Handwashing, social distancing, border closures, contact tracing and vaccinations. Using existing technology we had evidence would work, applying it to a new challenge, having people work together across countries, and collaborations between business, government and research. Again, not perfect by any means, but pragmatism seldom is.
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People have engaged the power of the collective to influence better responses to Covid-19. People in governments have been pushed to act (albeit imperfectly) by people joining together to advocate for them to do better for people with the greatest need. Whether that is equitable vaccine access for people in the global south, or ensuring those more at risk from Covid-19 effects are vaccinated first. Humans are connected to each other and our planetary systems, it makes sense we act in connected ways on our big challenges.
We can apply these three Covid-19 responses to environmental action
Taking a never-too-late attitude
The interconnected climate and environmental crises are urgent. The best time to act was 50 years ago, 20 years ago, yesterday. And those decades have slipped past without action at the sort of scale and pace that would be most effective at both reversing the damage and creating a whole new set of systems. Earlier action would have also made it a lot easier to adjust the way we live: changes done yesterday are easier than those done tomorrow and all that.
As we have failed to act so we have moved at pace towards much more serious harm. What the science now suggests is significant harm to one type of life supporting ecosystem will have a domino effect – it will start a chain reaction that leads to collapse of other ecosystems – it's a bloody scary reality. So many lines in the sand have been drawn to help us act and prevent these “tipping points”. Many have passed. We have transgressed many planetary boundaries, gone past particular temperature points. It is important, really important, that we know what the risks are of not acting, but also the line in the sand narrative means that each time another line is crossed without action at the scale or pace we need, it makes people feel like action has now become pointless. Such fatalistic thinking is deadly.
We need a new narrative that tells people it is never pointless to act. That acting sooner will mitigate more serious impacts, but we can still improve the situation at each point in time by acting. Climate change is like having a chronic illness. Act early and the long-term benefits are much greater than acting late, but acting late is still beneficial compared to not acting at all, no matter how much we have messed up. This is especially important if we are focused on the needs and hopes of the next generations.
Do all the things
The next pragmatic thing we need to do is move on from limited cost effectiveness analysis and other “return on investment” models to try to predict the payoffs of acting. It's way past the time of trying to apply models of decision-making that are not fit for the purpose of saving the entire life-sustaining biosphere of the planet. Fine for deciding which technocratic tweak we need for a social or financial policy - utterly ridiculous for managing multiple ecosystem collapse.
Now is the time to use the knowledge we do have about harm reduction and alternative ways of living, and apply it in new ways without being constrained by short-term return thinking. To experiment widely and bravely, and hope like hell that some of this will work. That means that people in politics are going to have to step up and step past short term political payback thinking and talking, and push into planning for and talking about intergenerational collective returns way down the line. Some of which we will have no idea how yet to predict or measure. Less risky than status quo thinking and action in the current scheme of things. Just the pragmatic and responsible thing to do.
Build strategic movements across multiple settings.
Acting as individuals with no reference to others, by for instance hoping we can purchase our way out of this, or just keep working away in our own little areas, shouting on the internet (or in op-eds), makes little sense. If collective pressure from the outside works on people with power, then we need a wide and broad base of diverse people from across settings and institutions. We need to reinvigorate collective movements.
A broad base of people acting collectively in their own specialist areas allows for more effective movements. For instance a collective movement of people in the building industry can act to leverage building systems, while a movement of people in the media understands our information and narrative environment. No-one can do this work alone, not when status quo bias holds fast to existing systems. The lawyers get it, using their collective power to take legal action.
And what's more, people get a sense of hope and efficacy when we see people acting together on climate and environment at the scale and level we know is needed for this challenge. Nothing more disheartening than being told that a different type of shopping bag will save the biosphere. What is empowering is seeing a group of legal people, across countries, use their skills and positions to sue people in their governments to do better.
There is something to be hopeful for even if it is pasta for dinner again.
Will we get our response right the first, second or third time. No way. We will bumble through this, make mistakes and suffer setbacks and failures. But we will do it because common sense and responsibility will prevail. If COVID-19 shows us anything it shows us we are capable of rolling up our sleeves and responding to problems of our own creation.
Interesting reading and listening
Ministry for the Future: Kim Stanley Robinson
