From Emergency to Emergence: New Ideas for Responding to our Climate Crisis
The author Naomi Klein is clear: we must take the money out of politics. That is, reining in the power of transnational capital over our governments by banning corporate campaign donations and stopping the revolving door between corporate lobbyists and lawmakers.
The environmentalist Bill McKibben says, “Put out the sparks in cars and boats and buses” instead of setting our planetary house on fire, by using that huge “ball of burning gas 93m miles up in the sky, which we now have the wit to make full use of.” Let’s act fast!
‘Make healthcare green’, urges Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization. Climate change has a marked impact on people’s health – and on the capacity of the health sector to deals with the consequences. After COP26 last year, 60 countries pledged to make their health systems more climate resilient, and to lower carbon emissions from healthcare. Now the WHO is calling on every country do the same and to provide clean and reliable electricity to every health facility.
A senior UK Greenpeace campaigner, Nina Schrank, urges us to shift to reusables. We may feel overwhelmed by the tonnes of disposable plastic our society generates and jettisons. The corporate world has encouraged us to fail to value the objects that have taken natural resources and energy to produce. But we can shift to packaging that is used, washed, reused and kept out of the environment as landfill.
Economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel call for a proper, fair tax on the wealthy. As they point out, the wealthy contribute a disproportionate share to climate change. Globally, 10% of the population contributes to about half of all emissions.
“Empower poor nations,” says the environmentalist Sunita Narain. We will thrive together, as a species, or wither together. Environmentalism is not about wheeling up the next technology that promises to be a silver bullet. Instead, developing nations and impoverished communities need to be able to declare, NIMBY – not in my back yard – so that they can say no to the next polluting project and fossil-fuelled over-consumption. Climate justice is at the core of climate action.
“Clean up public life,” urges the author, Mike Berners-Lee. Saving the planet demands high-quality, clear decision making to deal with complex problems. This is made harder by hidden agendas, dishonesty and greed. Berners-Lee argues that we must cultivate and insist on much higher standards of honesty and compassion among our political and business decision-makers.
“Rewild the planet,” say Rebecca Wrigley, Chief Executive of Rewilding Britain, and George Monbiot, author and columnist. The rewilding of our living systems on Earth can also mend not only our natural environments but also our relationship with them. When we enable forests, wetlands, savannahs, reefs and other depleted ecosystems to return and regenerate, we may slow or in some cases reverse the sixth great extinction of species and draw down much of the carbon we have released into the atmosphere.
“Give power back to the people,” says Jacqueline Patterson, founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project. The US, one of the biggest polluters in the world, has a major influence on climate negotiations. However corporate interests have acted as puppet masters, pulling the strings. To achieve climate justice, she argues, we must ensure that power rests in the hands of the people.
These writers are taking a necessary global perspective. This may leave some of us overwhelmed by the scope of their analyses of the problems and the scale of solutions required. Nevertheless, even at a local, community level, there are equivalent problems (political, social and environmental) and possible solutions. Taking positive action, where we live and as we can, is our best defence against despair and defeatism.
Contributed by Wendy Morgan