On this fine Friday we share with you James Gounis’ mini-essay on climate solutions... Read EVERY word!
“The climate apocalypse draws nearer by the day. People laugh when I use that phrase, but deep down I know many accept that it’s inevitable, yet do little to alter our course. Ignorance is bliss etc. ‘What can one individual do to save the planet, there’s 7 billion of us out there’. This retort is a mere fact that proves we do have a chance, as hundreds of millions of people currently live a life that contributes little to the emissions that endanger us all. We could all have ecological footprints that small. But these people live a simple, difficult, if not poverty stricken, life, with lower standards of living and without the capacity to act on materialist desires like those in the developed world. They are in countries moving towards our developed status, potentially bringing these hundreds of millions, if not billions, into the middle classes, and the consumption that goes with it. And this is where I think the true problem lies, we in the developed world have no right to tell those in the developing world that they can’t live how we have, driving cars daily, cooling and warming our homes with air conditioning, flying regularly, eating meat, importing goods from all over the world. We all need to meet at a happy medium, every person at an equilibrium of resource use, no one with the right to do more damage to our ailing planet than anyone else, a fair standard of living for every global citizen, with access to all the universal rights and protections we all deserve. Alas, this will never happen within a neoliberal capitalist system that relies on inequality to function, that rewards gross consumption of finite resources, that is doomed to fail by its constant reliance on never ending growth. Growth can’t continue unabated when resources are finite, logic tells us that, yet those deceived by neo-liberalism are all caught up in the capitalist trap.
Natural Capitalism may be the answer, but no country has been willing to try it, and in the current political climate around the world, the appetite for progressive change is non-existent, the rise of neofascism a testament to this. The real answer could be to learn from the indigenous people on our planet that the scourge of colonisation did so well to try to eliminate. These are the people that have always had a connection to nature, and consider themselves part of it, rather than it as an unlimited resource to exploit, nurturing and managing ecosystems and self regulating their human populations in balance indefinitely (notwithstanding the population collapse on Easter Island, which could well be a small scale example of where we are heading as a species). Maybe if we all considered ourselves as part of nature, we’d be less inclined to destroy it at every opportunity. Indigenous people have done so little to contribute to the situation we’re in, and are set to lose so much as they are often on the frontlines of climate change battles. Maybe the global population is too out of control to implement indigenous land management at such a scale? Maybe increasingly dangerous climate change-induced natural disasters, antibiotics resistance or a new plague will get us back down to a more manageable population level? I’ve got many questions, and no easy answers.
I worry that there are none, that we’ve gone past the point of no return, our world will never be the same, there will be worldwide suffering, hunger, disease, war, disintegration of societies, cultures, destruction of cities, livelihoods, fighting for food and water, life’s necessities. People having children today can’t ignore the fact they’re bringing them into such a world. We will see this reality in our lifetime. The great work of eco warriors reading this will no doubt help to mitigate the damage, and this is our best hope, crafting a world where the human race can survive on a changed planet. But do we deserve to?”
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