A Lament For A Paradise Lost

Not having written a blog post for a couple of years, I knew that it might be difficult to get into the flow. I wanted to break my silence. I thought I would write a post about climate change and that I would take my usual tone of the disgruntled citizen railing against the powers that be for their inaction and a complacent citizenry for not paying sufficient attention to what’s going on. Then, this Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published its latest assessment, and the prognosis was worse than what I feared. It now seems certain that climate change is occurring at a faster rate than we thought, the change is unequivocally being caused by human activity, and the effects will be felt for centuries. The only thing we can do know is mitigate the damage. For example, if we can cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by the middle of this century, we can halt and possibly reverse the rise in temperatures. Good luck with that!

I am not a pessimist. Far from it. However, the scale of the change required to be able to reach those lofty goals are beyond humanity’s capacity to change. It would require a total make over of how we live our lives. Massive investments would need to be redirected into re-engineering how we make things, how we move about, and what and how we consume what is produced. In other words, our level of comfort and the convenient way in which life has been arranged for the vast majority of people in the developed world would become a thing of the past.

One of the key takeaways from the global response to the COVID pandemic is how deeply we are attached to our precious lifestyles. What should be a simply straight forward public health issue has become politicized. Throughout Europe and North and South America a significant number of people resent or even refuse to adopt rather innocuous measures like wearing a mask in public or getting vaccinated against the virus, claiming that their rights are being infringed upon. Moreover, there are sufficient number politicians who pander to their desires not to have to make changes in the way they live. As a result, the number of human lives lost and the level of grief to be endured is far higher than it need be.

I say this because the level of change required to mitigate climate change is exponentially greater than what has been required to limit the effects of the spread of the COVID virus. This is extremely discouraging since the effects of contracting the virus are immediate and the spread of the human misery caused by the virus is very rapid. It only took a few scant months for the world to become engulfed in a global crisis. Yet, countries like the United States of America and Brazil dragged their heels when it came time to protect their citizens and hundreds of thousands of people perished as a result of government inaction.

If major, economically-advanced nations cannot respond adequately to the threat of the spread of a virus, it is extremely unlikely that they will be able to respond adequately to the threat of climate change. Too many players have to come to agreement on what needs to be done in too short of a time frame for an effective response to emerge. Besides, the political will is not there. Governments are not apt to take action that would reduce the earnings of the shareholders of fossil fuel companies, and citizens who are trying to return as quickly as they can to their previous lifestyles are not going to force the issue.

So, what’s left for the distraught to do? Not much. Individuals cutting back on their own consumption of fossil fuels will not be enough. The damage has already been done and will only get worse as we plod through the rest of the century. By the time humanity reaches the tipping point of realizing that it is the midst of a climate catastrophe, it will be too late. The apocalyptic images we have witnessed in the summer of 2021 are alarming, but no where near what is coming down the road in the years ahead.

I mourn losing what we had, and ask forgiveness to future generations for not exercising the duty of care necessary so that you too could behold the amazing beauty of the earth as it used to be.