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?
Given the risks of catastrophic climate change, a possible anthropogenic mass extinction event, and seriously bad and irreversible climate tipping points, a precautionary approach to managing the future must rapidly decouple, in absolute terms, economic growth from environmental impacts. This requires much more than ‘steady-as-she-goes’ transitions. Despite this, ‘transitionists’ hold the floor. Quentin Grafton discusses the folly of accepting the ‘transition’ line of reasoning.
Transformation is about creating a new and different system. Transformation is enormously challenging as the existing system has a lot of inertia and sunk investment. Transformation is one of the most overused and abused terms in the realm of sustainability. For transformation to occur, resilience thinking says there are three important factors needed: to get beyond denial, to have optional systems to move towards, and to have the capacity to normalize these options.
The EPBC Act is the most important environmental law in the country, but it doesn’t work. To achieve what it was established to do it needs to:
– pursuing national environmental outcomes (rather than just be a prescriptive regulatory processe);
– shift from Indigenous tokenism to full use of Indigenous knowledge;
– simplify regulatory outcomes between federal and state jurisdictions;
– lay new foundations for quality decision-making; and
– restore trust in decision-making.
If society was to really to engage with the sustainability of tourism in an uncertain future then maybe we should be talking about how we can protect the many environmental and cultural values of our top tourism destinations in a way that doesn’t involve travelling to see them.
I’m not saying that the IPBES announcement last week was ‘wrong’, just that its framing reveals an inherent ‘disconnect’ with reality. The numbers presented are horrifying, but the call for transformation just seems naïve.