Only one way out

I didn't find anything good in the Washington Post report on the heat wave in India that I later tweeted:

Between Friday and Sunday, temperatures could climb as high as 120 degrees (49 Celsius) if the most extreme forecast models are correct.#india #heatwave #climatecrisis https://t.co/USDvo8qxMS

— Sriram K (@congoboy) April 26, 2022

Heat comes on earlier, in spring, with record high temperatures, and summer extends into a forever.  Add humidity to the mix, and that is the devastating and dystopian climate-fiction that Kim Stanley Robinson presented in The Ministry for the Future.

For people like me who worry about climate change and its effects, we often worry that our personal choices are affecting the environment and that maybe we should do something about it.  We sincerely practice the three "R"s--Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.  We say no to drinking straws.  And more. 

But, we also know well that our individual actions won't even blip in the larger scheme of things.  

In fact, by treating climate change at such individual levels we are falling into the wonderful trap that fossil fuel companies laid out for us:

In the early 2000s, the major oil company BP weaponized the scientific concept of the carbon footprint, placing it at the center of a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that made resolving the climate crisis a matter of individuals reducing their consumption. The effect of their strategy was and is to make people feel personally responsible not only for causing the climate crisis by simply living their lives, but also for solving it by no longer driving or flying or eating beef or using plastic straws or whatever the case may be.

Addressing climate change is way beyond what the readers of this blog or I can do as individuals.  It is the equivalent of asking individual Ukrainians to fight the Russian military.  It doesn't take even a five-year old to understand that no single Ukrainian can battle the Russian forces, and yet we think individual actions can do something against the massive global climate change?

Only governments can do anything at all meaningful.

Only governmental institutions have the capacity to meet the systemic challenges of decarbonization. Even if every individual person on the planet reduced their discretionary carbon footprint to zero, the electrical, industrial and agricultural systems of our economies would continue to emit greenhouse gases and make global heating worse.

In thinking about climate change and what we can do about it, we "have to recognize the realities of the world, and the realities of the world tend to be unpleasant, discouraging and depressing," says Vaclac Smil, who is not new to this blog.  I wonder if I have quoted Smil before because he is a lot more realistic to the point of being cynical like I am.  

Smil makes an important point that requiring people to make sacrifices so that their grandchildren will be better off is asking for a lot because thinking about such voluntary sacrifices is not how we animals are wired. "You have to redo the basic human wiring in the brain to change this risk analysis and say, I value 2055 or 2060 as much as I value tomorrow. None of us is wired to think that way."  

Most people can't even save for their children's college fund or their own retirement by giving up on their lattes and streaming services today, and we expect the same people to make sacrifices to fight climate change?

But, our governments have always required us to give up something today in order to enjoy greater returns in the future.  We pay taxes, which means less money for our discretionary spending.  Those who have more to give pay more in taxes.  Note that these are not individual-level decisions that we make.  Very few of us would voluntarily part with our money for the sake of the greater good.  Instead, it is the government making the decisions for us.  

We selfish humans make sacrifices for the sake of a better future--but only collectively and not individually.

So, yes, continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle.  Say no to the drinking straws.  Eat grains and vegetables, and not animal proteins.  Those are good behaviors.  But, there is one thing that we need to do over and over and over: Compel our governments to address climate change.