"Planet Earth, creation, the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know and stable shorelines, is in imminent peril." -- James Hansen
"We're screwed!" -- David Letterman
Are we tweeting while Earth burns? Is climate collapse our new collective Titanic? How do we best describe the survival struggle of 7 billion in a way that connects?
The science on global warming is clear and compelling. Earth is in serious climate crisis. That's why many writers have recently upgraded climate change to climate collapse, climate catastrophe, the long emergency. We need a new story to convey the threat.
In a well known Greek myth, the very rich King Midas, who loves gold above all else, is granted his singular wish that everything he touches turn into gold. The gift becomes a curse when his golden touch kills plants, food, and even his daughter, who is turned into a statue. Bereft and repentant, forsaking greed, the king begs for deliverance. His curse is lifted by a wash in the river. All he holds truly precious is restored.
The modern version of the story is about a gold rush called globalization, a monetized world order that commodifies everything and poisons all that it touches: air, water, soil, whales, indigenous cultures, mothers' milk, and babies, now born with a body burden of toxic chemicals. Money, as symbolic reward for goods and services, when elevated above all else, becomes a curse. The symbol turns tyrant and casts a plague on the living. We're currently in the atonement chapter of the tragedy, praying we have time to write a happier ending.
But despite the best efforts of climate scientists and environmentalists to explain the dangers of climate inaction, political response is slow, most people don't get the seriousness of the issue. CO2 emissions aren't falling, they're rising.
Experts use escalating phrases to describe climate change. James Hansen: "the coming climate catastrophe," "our last chance to save humanity;" Gustav Speth: "system failure," "looking into the abyss." Lester Brown writes: "The signs that our civilization is in trouble are multiplying."
That's why we need a new lens and lexicon for conveying climate change as the greatest threat on Earth, a tragedy of epic proportions, especially for the world's young.
Here are the main elements of the new story. The lens is Earth & Child--Child friendly means Earth friendly. The lexicon is a whole-brain "linking language" of systems, not fragments. The frame is climate change as The Crisis, the compound threat to the human future. The story aligns present with future, connecting climate change to kids, health, and behavior so families get that it's about them and their future. Just as the loss of King Midas's daughter melted his gold-worn heart, children may yet move humanity to bathe in a new river. The story's protagonist is the Child, our conscience.
The moral of the new story is undeniable: We must not love money more than children. While there is time, societies must reorder priorities towards supporting life systems--what matters most--not maximizing monetary wealth. Worldwide, social inequities are growing, while our planet's life support systems are failing. The choice is clear: Gaia's gift of life, or the Midas curse.
If our species could be granted one wish, what would that be? Wouldn't it be to lift the Midas curse, reclaim what we have lost and restore our sanity?
Climate change is not one among many issues, it is the crisis, the greatest threat on Earth, the cumulative damage that has no partial remedy. It's best addressed with systems change, beginning with belief systems learned very early. To cut pollution and GHG emissions for good, change personal belief systems. Start young.
To grow Earth stewards, steward the children and youth. This is where the restoration must focus--strategically and morally. Not only do kids get sustainability, they have the most to lose or gain.
With all it portends, the specter of catastrophic climate change may offer our best and last chance to work towards a massive green revolution that stabilizes climate with atmospheric CO2 at 350ppm, the mark science dictates.
The young have the strongest moral claim on climate action. It's their future on the line. And they may hold the key to inspiring an emotional tipping point for critical mass.
We urgently need to embrace social and economic systems that constitute a culture of respect for children and their planetary habitat.
We need a stunning paradigm shift that stabilizes climate by reducing suffering and increasing joy. We may need a youth-led cultural revolution to get there. Sixteen-year-old Alec Loorz of California thinks so: he wants people to live as if the future matters. His "iMatter" climate change campaign plans to rally the world's youth.
In 1990, two words (20 characters) brought down the Soviet Union and the Berlin wall: glasnost and perestroikia--openness and restructuring. What if the enormous convening power of social media gave the existing global disorder a "glasnost & perestroika shakedown" just as unimaginable? Can the abusive globalized money system unravel by people flexing their tech muscle to collectively demand "the right to a future?"
We're in the moral moment. We must thoroughly detoxify our world, cool this planet down, and redesign societies to be systems smart. With utmost compassion, let us steer a course away from icebergs and towards a welcoming shore.
Raffi Cavoukian, C.M., O.B.C., founder and chair of the Centre for Child Honouring, is best known as Raffi--singer, author, children's champion, ecology advocate, and entrepreneur. Member of the Order of Canada, Raffi's honours include the UN Earth Achievement Award, the Global 500 Roll, and two honorary degrees. His renaissance as a systems thinker includes the anthology he co-edited, Child Honouring: How To Turn This World Around (2006) and two recent companion CDs of motivational songs: Resisto Dancing, and Communion. Raffi networks to advance Child Honouring as a universal ethic for creating sustainable peace-making cultures.
Follow Raffi Cavoukian on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Raffi_RC
Rabbi Or Rose: Life on Planet Eaarth: An Interview with Environmental Activist Bill McKibben
We exploited and killed our children for a political agenda
Destroyed, in the name of profit.
Richard Lindzen, of MIT
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen
~H.L. Mencken
But why does this boil down to left vs right? Is the right anti-science? I can't believe that it is as simple as that.
Surprise, surprise so educated doctor,
Please take Dulcolax it is helping with rhymes.
However I am struck by the assumptions underlying our analysis of the lack of responsiveness to climate change and threats. These assumptions go something like this: that humans act on the information they have; and that we do not have filters to mediate and help maintain a sense of reality as we know it. Both are flawed and inaccurate, based on much of what we know of human psychology and social processes (the social production of meaning and knowledge). Until we begin to recognize -- what arguably clinicians know very well -- that humans have astonishing strategies to minimize anxiety and pain (including losses incurred through climate change, including our consumptive practices and deep identifications), we will be rehearsing the same laments.
What is needed is a reframing of these acute issues so eloquently laid out in this piece and related other pieces; an engagement with those who understand human resistance, as well as the nuances of communication practices, messaging and so on. One must engage the other. We need new ways of thinking about these problems, and to consider both unconscious and conscious processes.
Shouldn't this article be written in Chinese?
What a joke! Climate patterns have NEVER be steady and shorelines have NEVER been stable. Climates change. Shorelines grown and erode. The Earth is dynamic.
So far, the 21st Century has experienced less sea level rise than the 20th Century did. Do you think you can handle this moderation of sea level rise?
This is one of "multiple lines of evidence" that the global warming of the late 20th Century has slowed down. The near term future is just as likely to be cooler rather than warmer, based on data from tide stations, from ARGO buoys, and other measurements of the real world.
"The science on global warming is clear and compelling."
Recently Al Gore admit that ethanol production, created under his influence was mistakes.
We lose hundreds millions dollars for this direction.
Today vision of climate change is science, which created under his influence.
It creates solar cells, windmills, cap & trade and many others directions, where we are losing money for real jobs in vane.
We need to reevaluate science of climate change only because of Al Gore.
We no need to wait additional 30 years, when Al Gore will admit that slogan "Debate is over", was wrong the same as his vision to fight climate change by "green" ethanol.
Ah yes,,, righteous indignation and the black and white thinking it implies. Hey buddy there are over a billion people in the world living in abject poverty. To make that term a little less abstract, it means living without access to power, sanitation, clean drinking water, etc... It means living short brutish lives dominated by disease and death. Development, globalization, or whatever your fairytale mind wants to call it is their only way out, and it has always required increasing power usage. The cost of power and the rate of economic growth are inversely proportional. If you raise the cost of power significantly, you necessarily slow the rate of economic development. That means prolonging the misery of a great many people.
I'll grant you that the climate is changing and that there will be negative consequences. However, it seems far from clear that we are heading towards climate catastrophe. The costs of globally decreasing carbon emissions given our current technology would be hugely expensive and, as the rich world is unwilling and probably unable to pay for it, involve tremendous human misery.
We need a very convincing argument that the benefits of reducing carbon emissions will outweigh the costs.
Those responsible for doing the research have compromised the science by politicizing it, by lying about it, and by thinking less like scientists than political activists.
Provide compelling evidence, and even skeptics with give it a chance. But, to reorder the world, and damage economies, and and extend the poverty and misery of billions in order to "save the Earth?" Come on. Is there nothing but hopelessness and big government enslavement of the human race in the liberal lexicon?