What the world needs now is constructive panic
Recently I took part in a “Climate fresco” workshop, where a group of participants collaboratively lay out cards on a large sheet of paper representing the causes and consequences of global warming, creating an eye-opening web of interconnected phenomena that must be linked together with arrows. Spoiler: it ends badly.
The most striking thing when you finish the exercise is that the ultimate consequences of unchecked global warming are the infamous trio of famine, war and disease — because those are most likely what happens when increasingly severe droughts, floods and heat waves lead to hunger and mass migration.
The irony here is that famine, war and disease are the very plagues humanity managed to (mostly) rid itself of through centuries of technological progress and civilization (Yuval Harari’s points that out in his blockbuster book Sapiens). Which counters the argument often made by climate change skeptics that drastically reducing our environmental footprint would amount to “going back to the stone age”: in reality, not acting on climate change is what will send us back to the stone age.
Following a depressingly common pattern, the recent COP 24 in Poland was a step forward, but a small and insufficient one. And while the proportion of the world’s population that understands what we’re addressing is nothing less than our survival is consistently growing, and while positive evolutions tend to be picking up steam (take the rising number of electric vehicles or the rapid development of green energy worldwide), all our efforts, well-meaning as they may be, are just not enough.
Climate experts tell us that to keep global warming under 1.5°C, humanity must reach net-zero CO2 emissions by 2040. Net-zero emissions mean that we pump no more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than what Earth can absorb (through its forests and oceans). Current trends are not taking us there, far from it — in 2017, the global increase in CO2 emissions actually started going up again after a few years of lull.
In rich, carbon-guzzling nations, attitudes are changing relatively quickly. That’s good, but our efforts to recycle more, switch to low-energy light bulbs or no longer eat imported cherries in winter aren’t going to cut it. Energy sobriety as required to reach net-zero emissions implies changes in our behaviors and economies that go deeper than we can imagine. But however huge the problems are, the solutions already exist.
The main difference between the time — as early as the 1970s — when experts first started getting alarmed about global warming and today is that 40 years of inaction and unsustainable economic growth have passed. The sheer emergency of the necessity for climate action means it’s time to find a way to get humankind to snap out of blindness and lethargy. Hence the proposed need for well-founded panic.
Free-falling cartoon characters only start doing something to save themselves (like reaching out for a branch miraculously sticking out from the cliff face) when they realize the danger they’re in. The thing about climate change as we hear about it on a daily basis is that, gloomy as it is, it’s either too scary or not scary enough to trigger a reaction beyond shrugging. The argument is often made that fear is counter-productive as the human brain is hardwired to ignore what’s just too scary. On the other hand, not realizing something is truly dangerous is the surest way to opt for doing nothing about it. And sadly, there is no proverbial branch humankind can grab onto.
Granted, panic alone won’t lead to much, so it should probably be followed up with resolution, which can in turn generate action. Over the course of recent years, NGOs and even individual citizens (sometimes kids) have been suing their own governments for climate inaction in a growing number of countries: Colombia, India, Pakistan, Belgium, the Netherlands, the USA, and soon Canada, Australia, the UK and France. Such exposure contributes to raising general awareness, but again, it’s not sufficient to engage a large enough proportion of the population.
Tell people about desperate polar bears and receding coral reefs and they’ll feel bad for a while. Tell them about famine, war and disease realistically reaching their doorstep and that might just trigger a shift in their perception of what global warming really means. This should go hand in hand with down-to-earth explanations about complex climatic phenomena and how our behaviors and lifestyles affect them.
In an ideal world, political leaders would be clairvoyant and brave enough to tell it like it is. Obviously, such is not the case, so the task falls upon whoever is willing and able. If we want to get people on their feet about global warming, the time has come to take things up a notch and paint them the bleak yet realistic picture of human misery within this century. After all, it’s not Earth that’s in trouble, it’s the people that live on it.
