A ‘great unraveling,’ or a renewal of our imperilled world?
“We now see there is great urgency, but there is also agency. We can all be part of this solution. We can make a better future.”
– Michael Mann, climate scientist
Many of us have found the state of the world to be particularly bleak. Red zones of the pandemic throughout Québec promise, once again, to make life more difficult than ever as we approach winter. The U.S. election circus poses more dangers for democracy, and it pushes the pandemic to the side even as more Americans die of the virus. Meanwhile, Trump’s multi-faceted carnage is its own little universe causing a worldwide unravelling of basic ecological and social prerequisites for a healthy society.
The growing international ecological instability is made worse with Canadian hypocrisy and steadfast refusal to agree when it comes to federal and provincial subsidies for oil and gas production. Canada is the G20’s worst regime for climatedestructive financial backing on a perGDP basis. More specifically, the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project (TMX), which goes across unceded First Nation lands, is putting into place catastrophic consequences for these lands and their peoples. TMX has already started. A poignant short video puts all of the fossil fuel companies’ pro-economic assertions into a human context: tinyurl.com/land-defenderstmx
If that isn’t enough, a photographic essay by Garth Lenz showing the route of TMX across pristine parts of Alberta and British Columbia: www.policynote. ca/no-tmx-photos is particularly convincing.
And if this project isn’t a recipe for ecocide, maybe Justin Trudeau, Canada’s ardent and unapologetic TMX buyer and not-so-honourable salesman, can inform us of a greater disaster in the making.
On top of the multiple sets of crises headed by climate breakdown, accelerated biodiversity loss and the ever-increasing rise of authoritarianism, the world is being further destabilized by the pandemic. How can we hope to act positively in an increasingly disenfranchised world when most people are experiencing daily existential assaults on their wellbeing, or even begin to think about future generations?
Laurie Laybourn-langton of Post Carbon Institute recently interviewed 15 leading activists, thinkers and futurists about crucial topics such as food, climate, energy, planetary systems, inequality, imperialism and geopolitics. Under the banner “The Great Unraveling?” he examines the interconnected crises that can unravel the fabric of this world, and acknowledges that in order to realize a better future, efforts to realize a more sustainable, equitable and resilient world must be capable of navigating the compounding crises of a more destabilized future. In a forthcoming article he will be looking in depth at positive ways to respond to these crises. www.postcarbon.org/great-unraveling/
Michael Mann is one of the world’s most influential climate scientists. I have read his articles, followed his courageous actions, read a book of his on climate sceptics and heard him speak. In the Post Carbon Institute conversation entitled ‘ How bad is the climate crisis?’ we learn from him that ‘agency’ is a key indispensable ingredient in preventing a 2C or 3C warmer world. Mann tells us that the 1.2C increase in temperature that we currently find ourselves in need not accelerate into a ‘civilization-ending’ scenario. The metaphor he uses is that of a carbon highway that permits us, if we have the will to do so, to exit quickly, but he wants us to realize that a 1.6C exit, for example, is much better than not getting off this road at all, if we miss the 1.5C exit that we strive to aim for. If the forecast of a safe world is to become a reality, we must lower emissions by seven per cent each year for this decade by decarbonizing as fast as we can. The economic impacts as a result of the pandemic created a four to seven per cent reduction for 2020. And Mann reminds us of “the remarkable coalescence of renewed global advocacy and activism on climate led by the children, led by Greta Thunberg and other youth climate activists, who have really recentred this conversation where it needs to be: on intergenerational ethics.”
To further address this critical issue, Thomas Homer-dixon’s just-published book, Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril, will be discussed in my next article in some detail. Homer-dixon states, “The best way to ensure we’ll fail to solve our problems is to believe we can’t.” His book goes on to develop in an insightful way the means to create new pathways to a safer and positive future. We’ll also look at the role of young people in creating a more just world.
The pandemic has given us time to think. It has opened up the global conversation to include in a most visceral dimension our abusive relationship with Nature and our social justice failures. At the same time, the youth generation has risen in outrage to demand a just future. In the GEM series The Nature of Things, David Suzuki’s documentary, Rebellion, connects us persuasively to the young people around the world who are demanding a new politics of hope for our planet. tinyurl.com/suzuki-rebellion
The activist group Extinction Rebellion features prominently in The Nature of Things. The group asks politicians to “tell the truth” about the climate and biodiversity crisis. We each need to tell ourselves that same truth. The undisputed urgency for action can catapult us to a world-saving agency.
Take time on 30 November to participate in the Remembrance Day for Lost Species. We are asked to reflect on and commit to exploring “the stories of species, cultures, lifeways and habitats driven extinct by unjust power structures and exploitation, past and ongoing.” With acknowledgement and, most importantly, determination, a new ‘normal’ can be a world of flourishing. www.lostspeciesday.org