01 The big question is now getting into the media.
The big question is now getting into the media.Will the thoughtless, suicidal people with their craving for carbon emissions keep on wrecking the planet so that the future for our children is bleak or worse OR will intelligent people who care about the future give up their wasteful lifestyles before it is too late and really stop carbon emissions in time?
You can’t have this both ways. The world cannot go on as it is without wrecking the future for our children. Economic growth and the wasteful lifestyle, expanding populations, destruction of the planet’s resources, pollution etc give the illusion of progress where consumption just goes on increasing. BUT this is insanity, a child can understand that good things can’t last if you consume them faster and faster and when they run out the blame and the anger and the violence follows.
This reality is so obvious, when you think about it, that instead of acknowledge this truth and acting accordingly, many people simply give up immediately and turn to hedonism or distractions. Some, in denial, persist with gesture politics and token changes in lifestyles which are wholly inadequate to prevent runaway climate change.
We need to realise that fundamental changes in every aspect of life on our planet are necessary, to enable us to succeed in controlling carbon emissions (and the other global problems). Some of these changes are already happening and the pace of change is accelerating.
The good news is that the changes that can make it possible to succeed in controlling carbon emissions are themselves inherently good for the population of the planet. However, we must not underestimate the scale and depth of the fundamental changes that are the necessary conditions for achieving global control of carbon emissions. We are so deeply reluctant to change our habits and expectations and, indeed, we will have to change our fundmental assumptions about life, society, and the future of humanity. This view of the possibility of a very different human society is literally ‘a world apart’ from the mindsets of the billions of people whose heads are filled with misinformation and trash culture purveyed by the media in our consumer-dominated society.
So the task is on a scale beyond anything we have known in the past. It involves an epic struggle against immense vested interests, against ignorance, fear and pessimism, and against psychological and cultural inertia.
But there are strong reasons why we should believe that we have a fighting chance of succeeding.
There are significant, existing global trends in the direction we need to go. There is the most powerful motivation, once we face the reality of climate change, and this affects the self-interest of everyone on the planet so it is the means of achieving unity of purpose. The rewards for achieving success will benefit the vast majority of the world’s population and even those who are denied the life of violence and exploitation that they seek may discover a better route to happiness and self-fulfilment. The reformation of human society on a global scale amounts to the release the creative potential of the next generation, who will grow up in the knowledge that humanity succeeded in rising to the challenge in its time of greatest peril - the early years of this century. Their’s may be a world where optimism prevails and so great achievement will be possible, as long as that society is wholly sustainable within the parameters of our ecosystem. There have been societies in the past that, compared with us, lived in harmony with each other and with their environment. Such societies only emerge through generations of relative stability so that the necessary traditions of wisdom emerged over time. Instability can easily destroy such societies and instability is one of the threats we have to overcome.
So the task is immense and it embraces all of the many, interconnected problems that we now face. The logic is that unless all of these existing problems (which have festered through lack of motivation to resolve them) are now dealt with effectively, we will fail to control emissions and the future will be more bleak than at any time since recorded history began.
One example. We cannot impose global control of carbon emissions by force. In fact the military are one of the greatest carbon emitters. We can only achieve global cooperation on reducing carbon emissions on the basis of that the cooperation is a just and fair one. Hence we have to resolve the issues of global injustice as part of the essential means of achieving control of global carbon emissions. So self-interest, in the face of the reality of what will happen to all of us if we fail to control global carbon emissions has become a compelling motive to achieve a just and fair human society. Morever, the struggle to control carbon emissions subsumes all other struggles to create a better human society: we have to succeed with all but the reward for success is all the greater.
So what we have to achieve is no less than a global, just, humane society living in harmony with each other and in a sustainable relationship to the ecosystem that will gradually bring it back into a more healthy and benign condition. Quite a task and there is very little time. We need a lot of motivated, informed, realistic and capable people and we need them world-wide. Get into contact with any like minded people, get started, and network what you are doing across the geographical and cultural barriers.
So, ’Not a moment to lose, lets get on with it’.