Today, on October 15th 2009, more then 13,000 bloggers all over the world are writing about “Climate Change”, the topic of the 2009 Blog Action Day.
Lately, a couple of interesting articles have caught my attention. They all seem to tell a story of a Great Story, they all seem to put our human race and developments of our time in a much bigger picture.
Scientists in the well-respected journal Nature have tried to quantify the planetary boundaries on which our economy is balancing, ranging from climate change to chemical pollution. Politicians are trying to grapple with the extreme complex challenge of reaching an international – or preferably a transgovernmental – agreement on tackling climate change this December in Copenhagen, coined the most urgent challenge of recent human history. Scientists at have recently coined the name Anthropocene, to try to reflect the immense impact the human race has on planetary systems in the last decades and centuries: we have achieved a species extinction rate to rival great extinction events of all geologic time as well as a rapidly acidifying ocean, dwindling ice caps, and even sinking river deltas.
It might be difficult to keep the head cool and not to devolve into doom thinking with an overwhelming amount of threats, challenges and scenarios channeled to us in an overwhelming amount of media that only the ‘Generation Y‘ is capable of digesting.
So where do we go from there? There is an impressive amount of good and promising solutions out there, and a lot of bright minds and ideas. Everyone is talking about ‘doing your thing for the environment’, ‘10 easy ways to save the planet‘ but still world (over)consumption is increasing rapidly, we’re all still flying to Mexico or India to do voluntary work in an orphanage, but we also plant trees to make our travel ‘carbon neutral’, and we call ourselves a ‘world citizen’. We turn our Twitter accounts on green to support democracy in Iran and we sign a billion climate petitions. Is that the way to cope with the extreme complexity of global challenges we face? Is it really enough to cut flying at take the train to Copenhagen this December, or do we need more systemic solutions? There is still an enormous lack of true global or transgovernmental leadership to connect the good and promising solutions, to make them happen.
A good friend and recent colleague, Pieter Ploeg, wrote some interesting thoughts on his blog today:
Maybe the most important question of today should be written in every single newspaper every day, in all school text books, tweets, blogs, television shows, etc:
How on earth do we want to live together?
Our prevailing attitudes, standards and environmental conditions of groups, periods and places need to become different, altered, modified, transformed or converted. It is so important to not only focus on reducing our emissions, but to consciously leapfrog our thinking and perception into a radically new perspective.
Constantly.
Environmental Climate Change and the story of CO2 is just a chapter in the journey of global human and natural development.
We need to ask ourselves this fundamental question, constantly. Challenge our peers, friends, family, colleagues, leaders of business, politicians, scientists, world leaders…
Probably one of the most promising solutions out there is in the economic field. Der Spiegel recently challenged the unquestioned fate in GDP as indicator for growth: Do we need economic growth? Is economic growth equal welfare growth? GDP has been used for measuring the wealth of nations for almost eight decades. It doesn’t, however, reveal whether the economy is sustainable in the long run. An expert commission comprised of the world’s best economists is working on an updated version of the old yardstick. President Sarkozy was one of the first this year to seriously research the possibilities to integrate new values of ‘welfare’ and ‘happiness’ in the new GD, just as the king of Bhutan does already for decades.
In order to cope with the extreme complexity of converging crises but diverging interests, we need to look beyond our own circle of impact, beyond our own ’10 easy ways to save the planet’. Ultimately, we need to realize that this is not an experiment, and ‘we’re all in this together‘. The story of the boiling frog or the global village are maybe still the most applicable to our global current situation.
What we need in Copenhagen during the climate talks is more than pure self interest, even more than altruism. It is the realization that it is in our own interest as an interdependent, interconnected world that we all have the opportunity and responsibility to be part of the solution. To be able to overcome the prisoner’s dilemma of climate negotiations. This means not only a shift in technology or policy, it means a shift in thinking, it means breakthrough thinking and big ideas. Climate change might well challenge today’s status quo governance and thinking. It’s just a chapter in the journey of global human and natural development.
