One of the labels often pinned on those of us who choose to speak up about the climate is “tree hugger”. You probably have your own vision of what that it means, but the implication is that we somehow care more about the Earth than the people who live on it.
My response is typically “the Earth is indifferent”. Over many millions of years it appears (from ice core analysis) that the Earth does what it can to keep the CO2 concentration somewhere on average between 200 and 300 ppm. Humans invented fire and found it convenient and advantageous to dig up and burn fossil carbon – sometime in the early 1900s the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide went above 300 ppm and has been going up ever since.
The Earth does not care if we do nothing to arrest and reverse the accumulation of carbon dioxide pollution and the disastrous changes to the climate that comes along with it. If we do nothing and create a climate that we cannot survive, the Earth will not care. Without us, the Earth will begin a long, slow process to bring the CO2 concentration back to a manageable level, including growing tropical forests, letting them die and decay and turning what once was carbon dioxide back into hydrocarbons with heat and pressure.
As much as I am personally relieved by the results of the 2020 US presidential election, the Earth doesn’t care that Joe Biden just got elected, even if his Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice is likely in its best interest – at least better than anything the US in play right now. As much as I am relieved, it is disheartening to know that US politics have gotten to the point that the act of simply doing the right thing has become Herculean. I despair that without progressive if not radical action, our approach to the climate crisis will be that status quo maintaining, incremental thinking we embrace now.
If the Earth were watching and actually had an opinion, it may observe with keen interest our attempts to turn around our thus-far appalling inaction on the very real pandemic crisis that immediately threatens so many of us, and then see if we leverage that action to address the existential crisis of climate change.
As often is the case, Greta Thunberg is a voice of reason and urgency. In a recent interview in The Guardian she warns of too many loopholes in existing climate agreements, and too little action not fast enough: “We shouldn’t be focusing on dates 10, 20 or even 30 years in the future. If we don’t reduce our emissions now, then those distant targets won’t mean anything because our carbon budgets will be long gone.”
“As long as we don’t treat the climate crisis like a crisis, we can have as many conferences as we want, but it will just be negotiations, empty words, loopholes and greenwash.”
Greta Thunberg
It is encouraging that Biden uses the term “environmental justice” so prominently. His plan includes a focus on a clean energy economy, achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, building climate resilience, working globally and supporting those communities most at risk. A plan far better than the denial, distraction and distrust that forms the official position of the current US administration.
But Greta Thunberg is quick to condemn most politicians: “I wish there was one politician or one party that was strong enough on these issues”. It is, however, justice she seeks, saying “that’s why we are fighting for climate justice, social justice. They are so interlinked, you can’t have one without the other.”
but flinch when immediate action is needed” – Greta Thunberg
I have to admit to being quietly optimistic about the future again, after a long, hard four years. But as William Arthur Ward says, “the pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change, and the realist adjusts the sails”. Despite the damage inflicted by a disastrous US administration, despite the sustained assault on science, despite racism and injustice, we have to center ourselves, embrace the essential reality of our climate crisis and commit to the long, and difficult fight that we cannot and must not lose.
