We don’t want to step out and face the sun. Living in the shadows has become a habit. Post covid, it was almost with a sense of vengeance, that we returned to our so called normal life.
Someone once said that “ Mere existence is plagiarism”. But the bad news is we cannot just exist through something as grave and somber as climate change. Unless each one of us understand the seriousness of the problem and act in unison, we all are staring at a bleak future.
One million species are on track for extinction. There is an increase in atmospheric temperature and extreme weather events…It has been estimated that there is a sixty percent decline in world marine fisheries.
To feed the ever increasing world population, food production needs to be doubled in the next forty years, at a time when there is 23 percent degradation of agricultural land. Nearly two third of the world’s population will be living in water scarce/water stressed areas by 2025
These are grim statistics and the list is long. Each of those factors has the potentiality to bring about the total collapse of the earth system. We are in fact heading towards our own annihilation. Ignoring and not acknowledging this dystopian vision will only aggravate the situation. But sadly this is what the majority is doing.
Part of the problem lies in the messaging system related to climate change. The information available is so technical, academic, and complex that it hardly gets the message through. For most people, climate change is something their governments must deal with. It is about conferences held in exotic places, that churn out occasional headlines, news items and statements with high-sounding phrases, complex words, and diplomatic tongue twisters.
It is imperative for those with information to percolate it down the line. This is necessary to remove the misunderstanding between technology and history. But the top-heavy approach hardly seemed effective. A case in point is plastic. Time and again, there have been attempts to ban plastic. But success has been elusive.
Symbolic gestures like preference for glass bottles in public forums does no good. People are aware that the water in the bottle actually comes from a plastic bottle, which might have been unceremoniously disposed off earlier. The truth is, plastic is irreplaceable, and it will remain so until a suitable alternative is found.
The end result is that the masses hardly bother about greenhouse emissions or matters like limiting temperature increase to 1.5 C above pre-industrial level. All they expect is a list of do’s and don’ts, which they can follow as per their whims and fancies.
This way of thinking is typical to consumerist ideals that run deep in today’s society. It is an ideal that propagates that the twin act of buying and consuming, provides for the solution to all the problems plaguing us. It is but natural, that people may actually expect a shopping list to tackle climate change. Air Purifiers are in high demand in cities which have rising levels of pollution.
The need, therefore, is to move away from this system of mindless consumption. By doing so, we will strike at the very heart of the problem.
Since the Industrial Revolution, the mass production of luxury items has turned humans into mere consumers of goods. It led to a rise of an economic system that sustains itself on creating artificial needs. “We crave for things which we don’t need” and in mass producing the things “we don’t need”, most of the greenhouse gasses are emitted. To break this vicious circle, drastic behavioral change is required
If we objectively look at our lives, we will realize that we are surrounded by things that we don’t want. It can be a toothbrush, an extra pair of jeans, electronic equipment stored away in the backyard, an eight-seater SUV for a family of three, etc..etc.
The list is endless, but one can imagine the amount of resources used in producing those items. If we can limit our demands, we can in turn affect the supply pattern. This minimalist approach brings the fight against climate change right to our homes.
But the tricky part is how do you induce millions of people to change their behavior? To start with, the messaging about climate change has to be simplified and made more accessible.
Then, as historian Yuval Nora Harari says, we need a captivating story. He says humans differ from other species by their singular ability to believe in stories. A currency note is just a piece of paper without a story backing it. A powerful intersubjective story makes it possible for a large number of people to work towards a common goal.
He says “ It’s important to have human enemies in order to have a catchy story. With climate change, you don’t. Our minds didn’t evolve for this kind of story. When we evolved as hunter-gatherers, it was never the case that we could somehow change the climate in ways which were bad for us… So we have a narrative problem with climate change”.
But he is optimistic when he says “ If you look at movements like Greta Thunberg’s and the whole youth movement, what the young people are telling the world is that you are sacrificing us on the altar of your greed and irresponsibility. It’s no longer something hazy like CO2 in the atmosphere. It’s a human drama of the old sacrificing the young. That’s powerful.”
This fight against climate change ought to be fought with all humility.
But stand-up comedian, actor, author, and social critic George Carlin lamented when he says “We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails. And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet…The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles … hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids ..… And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. We are!”.
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Mahabahu.com is an Online Magazine with collection of premium Assamese and English articles and posts with cultural base and modern thinking. You can send your articles to editor@mahabahu.com / editor@mahabahoo.com (For Assamese article, Unicode font is necessary)
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