Dealing with Climate Crisis
Source: That empty feeling: Vancouver’s public spaces thin out - VancouverCourier
As we do our work and get on with our lives, it is important for us to stop and reflect on what matters us the most. We know that COVID has provided us with an opportunity to reduce our emissions at a global level and I really hope that we will all learn from this experience. We know that the difference between the current pandemic and climate crisis is the timescale of each event. Climate change is happening at a longer timescale compared to COVID that is happening right now. As humans, we tend to respond to threats until we are attacked and overwhelmed by it. Hopefully, with COVID our collective mind has evolved and rewired in a way to see the long-term - time will tell. For now, BC has a plan to open up the economy up to 60% and that will mean more emissions back on the way. Especially in, and because of, bigger cities like Vancouver, where the use of public transit is going down because of the fear and anxieties we have around COVID. To avoid buses and trains, we are driving more but what if we had encouraged more active transportation then we did previously? What if we mandate/legislate active transportation as thing that we just have to do? This is just one of the many complex issues that we all will face because of how we, a global society, has advanced and progressed over the last few centuries.
The Province of BC has a Climate Change Accountability Act and a CleanBC Strategy. Similarly, Canada has its own plans and legislative targets. The problem with legislative targets is that they are typically made to follow other jurisdictions and support the economy. How can we make them more environment-oriented? What is it that we need to do to get 'our governments' to listen to us? Keeping in mind that the governments can only create opportunities for general public and it is the public that has to do the actual work on their own. Are we, the general public, okay to go back to storing our water for consumption, growing food for sustenance, utilizing our shelters for a majority of our days and clean energy to do anything/everything?
Human beings are basically like a boiling frog/crab (look up that analogy) with respect to climate change. Tom Rand explains this really well in one of his books. The frog/crab is basically dying slowly because the pot of water is getting to a boiling point. Its legs go first then its upper body and then its too late for it to jump out of the pot - he’s dead now! Climate change is that boiling pot of water and very soon it will be too late before we, the humans, can jump out of it. We might be too late, but I still believe that we have the collective will to get out of the pot entirely. However, the work has to be done at a policy/legal level, so no one takes what we have within our reach for granted. Are we ready to live a different lifestyle though? Can we make sure that we have our own daily needs met? Our needs being water, food, shelter and energy - and in that order, as Chief Patrick of Kanaka Bar often says. How can we make sure that individuals, whether in rural or urban areas, can meet their own needs, as communities on their own? What is one thing that will make that happen? So many questions, and I do not have all the answers.
I have heard that orcas have returned to the Vancouver bay because of low activity on the sea. This pandemic is showing us the impact we can have on Mother Nature (that we are a small part of) and we need to be loud about this impact in the hopes that people will listen. There will always be people who may not listen or just say that the solution is too complex but we still need to keep talking and finding those wins that are necessary for our survival. It's as simple as that. I firmly believe that COVID has presented us with an amazing opportunity to actually expedite our efforts to curtail climate change. What action can we take at our individual levels? What actions can our governments take? Can we make climate preparedness and adaptation a law, if it is not in our respective jurisdictions at this time? Are our laws only built around economic growth or do we have room in them to have a flat economic curve and focus on a growing environmental sustainability curve? I struggle when our politicians and other people say that economics and the environment has to be balanced. For the past few centuries we have let economics take the lead and industrialized our societies to a point where we have gotten addicted to a certain type lifestyle that apparently does not need to be changed. Can we now reverse that and let the environment take the lead for the next few centuries? Why balance.
A young colleague of mine told me that we need to convince social influencers in local communities, municipalities and nations to be on board with the science and traditional knowledge around climate change. How can we convince the general public that climate change adaptation and preparedness, and GHG mitigation is their idea? It is only then that people will make the real change - my biggest fear is that we may be a little late in the game to convince but then I do not stop trying either.