We are on the path to our own destruction
THIS may very well make me a lonely chorus of one, but it needs to be said.
The world's present efforts toward climate change adaptation and mitigation, and all the nebulous, morally comforting buzzwords that we've invented to describe those efforts — "climate justice," "just transition," "circular economy," "green" this and "sustainable" that — are a complete farce, the ultimate expression of our hubris and self-indulgence. We will indeed "save the planet" if we continue on our present path, but we will do so by destroying ourselves and removing the infection we have become.
Everyone, with the exception of an insignificant minority of people like our own climate change-denying village idiot, understands that human activity has destroyed the environment. Most now feel the consequences of it personally, but even those who have fortunately not been affected firsthand accept that the changing climate is not normal, it is dangerous, and we need to take action to correct it.
However, very few people have been courageous enough to follow the root cause analysis to its logical end, and accept that humanity itself is the culprit for the sorry state of the only planet we can comfortably inhabit. That huge blind spot is the result of several assumptions that we are hard-wired to make, and if we think about these objectively, it is clear these are fallacies that we can only escape if we deny them.
First, we assume that constant expansion is our natural, inevitable state, and moreover, is a legitimate goal to be actively pursued.
Second, we apply economics to everything. Growth and progress, or the lack thereof, is expressed in economic terms. Everything we create or destroy is ultimately judged according to a cost-benefit analysis, and one way or another, every way in which we define ourselves is fundamentally a measure of wealth.
Third, and this is where our collective hubris is most visibly expressed, we believe that we can apply the power of our creativity to any need or desire. We revere our technology and hold the belief in its omnipotence, more ardently than any god we've invented for ourselves.
All of these are dead wrong, and dead is what we will be, soon, if we do not accept that and work to change ourselves.
We live on a finite planet with finite resources. Constant growth is naturally incompatible with sustainability. As animals, we are likely indeed programmed naturally to reproduce and increase our numbers, but every other collective of living things on this planet maintains a balance with the resources it needs — either actively, or through being subject to natural processes. When deer populations exceed the available food in their habitats, for example, they starve; a number of them will die off, until the population is reduced to the number their environment can support.
Humans are the only form of life that does not do that because we have the capability to break the natural cycle and self-awareness that irrationally tells us that we should. But we cannot create fundamental resources; sooner or later, they will run out, and we will discover that we haven't broken or changed the natural cycle, only delayed it.
Our resources are shrinking faster than they would be due to sheer numbers alone because of our technology. We caused the climate to heat up to levels that are quickly become unsurvivable with our industry, and that ultimately is the result of our demand for things. Cursed as we are with self-awareness, we need to actualize our existence as much as we need air, water, food and shelter. And because we have adopted economics as the framework to measure our well-being, we actualize our human existence, rise above the near-autonomic state of mere animal existence, with things. Our individual ways of differentiating ourselves as individuals, of "feeling alive," are unique in detail, but all the same in general — we consume things as a matter of choice, and we assign some artificial value to those things for the purpose of comparing ourselves to others, or for the slightly more enlightened, comparing our present state to our own aspirations.
That is probably far enough down the philosophical rabbit hole for one day, so let's put this reality in the context of climate change action, where the discussion started. What it means, in the simplest possible terms, is that the entire orientation of climate policy, or attempts to develop climate policy, is completely backwards. The accepted notion of what is fundamentally needed to fight climate change — the elimination of greenhouse gas emissions and the reduction of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere — is a supply side orientation, whereas if it was honest, it would begin with the demand side. Our demand creates the power plants and factories, and ships and trucks, and airplanes that all pump prodigious amounts of climate-destroying emissions into the atmosphere, and while industry does bear a burden for cultivating that demand, it still starts with us — you, me and every other one of the teeming billions.
We need to change individually before we can change collectively, otherwise everything that is said or done to "fight climate change" is pointless. Not a very comforting thought, but comfort is something we have to earn.