More than once over the last several years I have talked with
people who understand the deep hole humankind has dug for itself
because of our reliance on fossil fuels and the dominant
system's environmentally destructive model of "development."
They have difficulty seeing a way that we will ever get out of
this hole. Intuitively, they see little hope that we can avoid
climate catastrophe. They ask me why I'm doing what I'm doing
given that likelihood.
What I say to them is, OK, let's assume the worst. Let's accept
that it is unlikely that we will be able to overcome in enough
time the power of the fossil fuel interests and those allied
with them and enact a clean energy revolution in enough time.
Let's accept that throughout this century billions of people
will die and the world's population is reduced to several
hundred million people, the prediction of James Lovelock. What
then? What does that mean for those of us alive today who want
to do the right thing with our lives?
First of all, what we do today can increase the odds that those
who come after us will be both greater in numbers and in a
better situation than would be the case if we just give up or
half-step it. The stronger, the bolder and the qualitatively
better a climate/progressive movement we build, the sooner we
can expect the U.S. government and other governments to get
serious about the changes urgently needed, and the greater the
chances that future generations will be able to rebuild human
society on a firmer and sounder foundation.
Secondly, perhaps we will find an inner peace that will give us
the strength we need if we accept, if we just accept, that just
as each of as individuals is going to someday die, life on earth
as we have known it-a world dominated by injustice, war and
exploitation, in the main, for millenia-may also have to die in
order for a qualitatively higher form of civilization to have a
chance of evolving.
This is a strange thing to write. It can be interpreted as my
saying that humankind deserves what is coming down the pike,
even the most catastrophic version of it. And given that it will
be overwhelmingly the poor people of the world, those who have
done the least to cause global heating, who will suffer and die
first and the most, this seems very insensitive.
And yet I know from my own personal experience, the experience
of someone who has fought as best as I've been able for over 40
years against injustice, war and exploitation and who intends to
do so until I die, that what I am saying is true. I am in no way
suggesting that people can or should find "inner peace" by
withdrawing from the struggle for change, concentrating solely
on qualitative personal change (as important as that is),
accepting our human and societal limitations and the likelihood
of the Great Catastrophe. But if a person engages in the
movement for climate and social justice, giving it their best,
taking care of themselves along the way, one's spiritual and
emotional life will improve.
We feel better, we are better, if we connect with and follow our
conscience no matter what the odds.
Finally, we just don't know what the future may hold as far as
potential new discoveries that could be game-changers. As one
example of a number of "geoengineering" ideas that are being
seriously investigated, research has been underway for years to
come up with a way to take carbon dioxide out of the air. There
are at least two huge problems associated with this process. One
is the problem of what you do with the CO2 once it is removed
from the air. The other is the tremendous cost of this process
if done on the scale necessary. However, these problems might be
overcome if the political will for strong action grows among the
U.S. population and among the peoples of the world as the crisis
unfolds and more and more catastrophic weather events take
place. The financial costs, for example, could be met by a
dramatic reduction in preparation for war and a hefty "wealth
tax" on the obscenely-rich.
And there could be other technological breakthroughs, other
game-changers, that as of now we have no knowledge of.
In "Our Final Century," a book by Martin Rees, former President
of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, he
refers to a 1937 study by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
aimed at predicting coming breakthroughs. "It came up with some
wise assessments about agriculture, about synthetic gasoline and
synthetic rubber. But what is remarkable is the things it
missed. No nuclear energy, no antibiotics (though this was eight
years after Alexander Fleming had discovered penicillin), no jet
aircraft, no rocketry nor any use of space, no computers;
certainly no transistors. The committee overlooked the
technologies that actually dominated the second half of the
twentieth century. Still less could they predict the social and
political transformations that occurred during that time."
Some words of hope there, for sure.
Those of us alive and aware right now as we're about to enter
the second decade of the 21st century are an absolutely decisive
generation for the world. Those before us were not able to build
a broad enough movement with sufficient political will to make
the changes needed. Those coming after us in the third decade,
even later in this decade, will probably be too late to be able
to avoid runaway and catastrophic climate change if we can't
take the steps in the first half of this decade, the sooner the
better, that guarantee an irreversible, broad, deep and rapid
clean energy revolution.
There are lots of opportunities for internationally-coordinated
actions this fall-September 21-25, October 12th, October 24th,
November 30th, December 12th. Let's make this fall a period in
earth's history that future generations will look to as the
rise-up time that launched the worldwide popular movement which
changed history!
Ted Glick is the Policy Director of the Chesapeake Climate
Action Network (www.chesapeakeclimate.org). Past Future Hope
columns and other information can be found at www.tedglick.com.