There is no such thing as a free lunch
More people are growing concerned about climate change and environmental decline. But when will society respond with real change? Is it just a matter of waiting for a majority before we get the transformative change that scientists are crying out for. What actually catalyses transformative change, anyway?
Earth Day – does it provide hope, make a difference or is it actually something that blinds us to a greater truth? Protect the environment, it demands; let us create a truly sustainable future, it implores. But shift the status quo? Not if it pushes up the cost of living!
To quote a much (over) used aphorism, ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’ It sums up our approach to sustainability. I call this the ‘green button syndrome’, and to appreciate it, think of the world as a photocopier. It’s also a good way of understanding our policy response to mass coral bleaching.
There’s probably not a government on this planet that isn’t telling its people they acknowledge climate change and are making ‘serious’ efforts to combat it. However, in the parentheses at the end of every proclamation is the implicit (sometime explicit) caveat that new policies won’t change the status quo, won’t slow down economic growth, won’t bite the hand of key stakeholders (read fossil fuel sector), won’t cost the voter anything additional and likely won’t even be implemented in the current electoral cycle. Climate delay may sound different to climate denial but it amounts to the same thing.
Science is telling us coral reefs are dying. Politicians, while ignoring and denying the science on climate change, are telling us science is going to save the Great Barrier Reef. It’s called the techno fix, and it’s one of the oldest tricks around.
The future is suddenly a very uncertain place. What we did yesterday is no guide to what we can do tomorrow, and we’re all quite scared. This is what a no-analogue future looks like; except it’s not in the future, it’s here now.
This Black Summer is but a foretaste of the conditions we will need to endure in the summers ahead; summers that will likely be far blacker than this one past. Our Prime Minister presents this new normal as merely a management issue, a need to organise our response agencies a bit better.
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