For any challenge facing society, the greatest obstacle is fatigue.
You’ve probably heard of donor fatigue. How many more organizations can ask for my money?
How about covid fatigue? Do I care enough to change my behaviour again, even if our hospitals are at critical capacity?
And how about climate change? How many of us pay attention when another dire report comes out from the IPCC? Do you perk up when a scientist explains we are on a path to ecological destruction... again?
Even in the middle of a crisis like the current pandemic, we can happily live in denial. We can only take so much bad news before we tune out.
We tune out to the scientists, the analysts, and especially the politicians. Greta Thurnberg, the teen aged climate change crusader from Sweden, made this point most memorably at a youth climate summit a couple weeks ago:
“Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.”
Her interpretation of politician speak reminded me of how my friend and I would make fun of adult speak when we were kids: “Did you hear blah blah blah?” “Yes, how terrible... blah blah blah!”
We could extend this to science speak as well. Most people want simple answers – not the vagaries and uncertainties of what a scientific understanding of the world entails.
Bill Gates tries to plain speak in his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, and succeeds to some extent. Before reading, I had no idea most of our greenhouse gases are produced by making stuff, most of it overseas for our consumption.
Ironically, his book demonstrated to me that we will likely not avoid a climate disaster – at least not entirely. There’s a reason why politicians can’t just wake up one morning and say, “Okay, folks, the age of oil is over. From now on, it’s organically grown vegetable oil or nothing!”
All our progress, our wealth (including a massive reduction in poverty worldwide), and modern-day technologies are a credit to the fossil fuel boom of the last century. Cheap, powerful energy from fossil fuels continues to keep our societies from literally collapsing (as much as I hate to use the word literally, I need it for emphasis). And, based on the most realistic scenarios, the transition to cleaner energy sources will take longer than what the Earth has patience for.
Getting over our fossil fuel dependency is no small feat. Tackling climate change requires more than small individual choices, as much as we’d like to think that driving a little less and recycling a little more will make a difference. What’s required is government action on a global scale.
If we’re really concerned about climate change, we need to demand government action that will hurt: like making conventional energy more expensive, including all the products produced overseas. We need hordes of people on Parliament hill with placards that read, “Increase prices! Make us pay!”
I can only imagine what it will be like when Canadians have to pay $5 a litre
for gasoline. We complain enough with the current jump in energy prices.
There is still hope, but our window to act is closing quickly. There are visible signs of climate change in my own backyard, like forest fire smoke in October (a strange occurrence in Saskatchewan), sudden flooding in June (amidst a two-year drought), and hurricane-like storms in January (winds clocked at 126 km/h!) All of this in the past year.
Don't get me wrong, I like plus 22 in the middle of October. But this
in itself should make us ponder... what will it be like in
10 or 20 years? What can governments do today? It has to be more than
blah blah blah.
