A recent article in Harper's Magazine written by Garret Keizer titled Climate, Class, and Claptrap generally has a very scolding tone, but the last couple of paragraphs are a well-written analysis of what truly dealing with global warming will mean to all of our lives. It is not enough to acknowledge that global warming exists; we also need to ask what global warming means. Surely one thing it means is that a culture that has as its highest aim anything remotely resembing physical work must change its life. If you want an inconvenient truth, there it is: that hte very notion of convenience upon which our civilization rests is a lie that is killing us...You do not repair the climate of an entire planet without staggering sacrifices, and people will not elect to make staggering sacrifices unless the burden is shared with something like parity.
To put that as succinctly as possible, the days of paradise are drawing to a close. The game of finding someone else in some convenient misery to fight our wars, pull our rickshaws, and serve as the offset for our every filthy indulgence is just about up. It is either Earth for all of us or hell for most of us. Those are the terms, those have always been the terms, and any approach to climate change that begins on those terms can count me as a loyal partisan.
I have included the exerpt in the interest of asking my readers to think about what you would be willing to give up and what you would not be willing to give up. How convinced would you have to be that your sacrifice would improve the conditions that future generations are living with? How many other people would you need to see making the sacrifice along with you?
Any solution that requires sacrifice from the public is not popular, and politicians stay far away from asking their constituents to lower the standard of living that they've gotten used to and the conveniences that help to make their life easier. If the threat of global warming is as dire as the predictions, that's what it would take to make a difference, though. I think, deep down, everyone knows that, but the public discourse has focussed on everything but serious sacrifice.
I'm just saying we should start to consider what it would be like. Next time you are taking a long shower, or driving a car, or running your air conditioner, ponder whether you will live to see a time when it is a thing of the past.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
An Inconvenient Future
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2 comments:
It would be difficult for many people (including me, in all honesty) to radically change a way of life without a deep conviction that doing so makes a real difference. If the changes aren't pursued equally by all, it becomes more difficult to justify personal sacrifices. Why should I do it, if all these others aren't; and if only a small percentage of us are doing it, what's the point?
That said, I have made changes in my way of living that are connected to my concern for the world's future--and they haven't ended just because other people aren't doing the same things. Recycling, public transportation, trying to minimize use of "disposables", etc are all small gestures in the grand scheme of things; but ones that on a personal level at least feel satisfying to me.
If someone at a global leadership level (um, like a president, or something... ahem...) could present the issue as one that demands shared sacrifice and cooperation-- both on a personal and an international level-- perhaps that would go a long way to waking people up from a "not me" mentality. Alas our current excuse for a president has chosen for many years to ignore the issue, and now when talking about it simply seems to focus on ways to "offset" the burden of actions onto others. Which, as TFE points out so well, isn't sharing responsibility.
I think ultimately the only catalyst for action on the part of individuals or nations is sadly summed up in one word: economics. Until we feel the economic consequences of our choices, there is no real-world immediate incentive to change. I'm encouraged that the rise in gas-pump prices seems to spur the sales of hybrid cars. Maybe if people felt their purses and wallets lightening every time they left a light on, or drove 30 miles to buy food, they'd consider other alternatives.
Written by Rebecca Solnit in Harpers, July 2007: The future, at least the sustainable one, the one in which we survive, isn't going to be invented by people who are happily surrendering selective bits and pieces of environmentally unsound privilege. It's going to be made by those who had all that taken away from them or never had it in the first place.
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