We need to face this head on. Now!

WHEN I was younger, I could be very intense about the things I felt passionately about. So much so that some people were intimidated or “put off” by my – I called it – “enthusiasm”.

But because I believe in compromise and working towards consensus – and because some of my good friends and family finally made me understand that I could be an absolute pain – over time I came to realise that, for more people to listen, I needed to be calmer about a lot of things.

And so, over the years, I’ve become (mostly) calmer and more understated in public about those things I’m passionate about – and definitely about one particular issue. But the pressure has been building inside and I really need to get it out.

It’s about climate change. Please stay with me for a couple more paragraphs while I get this off my chest. You’ll either agree or disagree,

but I’m confident you’ll be shouting inside one way or the other.

You see, for quite a while now, whenever I hear the phrase “climate change” a big voice is screaming inside my head, “It’s NOT about climate change!” It’s actually about “Whole of Environment Change”.

And yes, I’m darn sure that humans are involved, that we’ve had a significant influence and that it’s going to keep having a huge impact on us. Real soon.

You see, it’s been going on for more than 60,000 years now – ever since humans learned to use fire as a tool. And like so many things we humans have done over that time, there has been exponential growth. If you don’t understand how that works, please Google it and you’ll see that when it starts from a very low base, exponential growth can appear to be slow for quite a long while; until it reaches a certain part of the cycle, after which things change VERY quickly. We’re past that place now!

My point is this: We humans have been chipping away at altering the environment to suit ourselves for a long time – SIXTY THOUSAND years remember – and we’ve gotten really good at it.

Only 200 years ago there were just 1 billion of us, and although we still depended on animals, fire and our own hands to do the work, we had significantly changed the forests, rivers and fields of our planet.

In the last 200 years we have not only increased our population by almost eight times, we now have millions of machines that can each do more work than hundreds of us at once. And BILLIONS of engines and other machines, from fridges to frigates to flying things – heating, cooling, entertaining, transporting, manufacturing and much more. All doing stuff, chewing up resources, polluting, and then being thrown away.

Look down from an aeroplane or look at Google Earth at night to see the impact we humans have had. We have radically changed half of the land surface of the planet with deforestation, cropping, intensive grazing, cities, recreation, roads, mines... We’ve polluted and poisoned the rest. And it’s happening at an exponential rate. (If you haven’t looked that up yet, now is a good time.)

Before I write this next paragraph, I apologise if I’m offending you. But I believe that to suggest that all of the above hasn’t impacted the environment – and remember, the climate is just a PART of the environment – is just plain irrational. Not to mention suicidally blind.

I also feel like screaming when most of us say, glibly, “It won’t affect us. It will be our grandchildren’s problem,” or, “Hey, we have at least 30 years,” or a wistful “maybe in a hundred years”.

I want to make two points about that. Firstly, again, look up exponential growth! Secondly, we’ve been saying the above for, hmmm... well, I first heard it at least 30 years ago.

The future is now, people. Yes, Australia has always had droughts and it will rain again, some time. But the land was much less damaged and was ‘coming back’ from a ‘higher base’.

Only 100 years ago we had four times the average tree cover we have now – and eight times that 200 years ago (that exponential growth thing again).

Among many other things, trees cool the land massively, slow the wind and evaporation, nourish birds and all sorts of other creatures that are important to the environment, as well as bring and recycle rain. Let’s not even mention how much we’ve changed the oceans, rivers and streams, wetlands and wild places.

Is it time to panic? It really is. We’re in trouble if we don’t move past the blind doubt, blaming and ‘not me-ism’.

We’re all on this tiny planet together and it’s about to be dangerously overcrowded. (Exponential growth anyone?)

I’m confident that we do have the knowledge and the ability to adapt in time to survive, but to have any chance to do that successfully we need to acknowledge the size of the problem. It’s the whole environment! And we need to act NOW!

We can do this. We have the intelligence and the community spirit. So the next questions is: Do we have the leadership and the political will? z Kim Macrae is the Dubbo-based founder of ikifit. He writes about ideas and activities that can help brighten our own lives and the lives of those around us.