What did the climate ever do for us…… ?????
Despite what the next egomaniacal tech gazillionaire is going to tell you, without an environment that we can live in, we’re stuffed.
For too long we have seen protection of the environment and the advancement of society as competing causes. It’s an old idea that progress must mean some kind of destruction. Certainly the Industrial Revolution lifted millions out of poverty, and gave us wondrous things and easier ways to live, but it also led to unprecedented environmental pollution, the fossil fuel industries, the birth of plastic, and a rapidly escalating biodiversity crisis.
That doesn’t mean we have to hate everything that has gone before, we simply have to fix it. The answer isn’t to shut down the economy, ask everyone to live off the grid, do less, be less.
The answers start with us incorporating the environment in to the structures that we have, and while we’re surviving, we can discover new structures that might work better. It’s finding a way for nature’s success to be our success. Because we are a part of nature, and if it fails, we fail.
It’s having clean air, a house that’s not going to flood, a backyard that’s not going to burn down. Not experiencing heatwaves that will kill the more vulnerable. Not having microplastics in your body. That’s not going to end well. It’s keeping the species and the lands alive for our lifetimes and the lifetimes of future generations. It’s having food we can afford.
Buy more sustainable clothes, eat less meat, demand an end to fossil fuels extraction, try not to buy plastic when you can, celebrate the small and big wins around you. Follow a thought leader, join a campaign, use a Keep Cup, be proud to describe yourself as an ecofeminist, and explain to others why they should do it too. Educate yourself about the Planetary Boundaries and the Sustainable Development Goals.
But it’s not just down to the ordinary consumers to make change. The right choices should have already been made earlier on in production and policy, so that the easy choice is the right choice. But it hasn’t happened yet. Society will have to stop prioritising shareholder return over benefits to people and the planet. It makes no sense to poison ourselves and the environment so that a very small number of people can simply add to the wealth they will never get around to spending.
Social and environmental justice are intimately linked, if not the same thing. As we fight for an end to the subjugation of women, communities, races, classes, countries, religions and sexual identities, we are fighting for the environment and vice versa.
We will have to allow our ingenuity to flourish. We can develop the science, invent the tech, develop the economics, calm the politics. Companies that have the most to lose are fuelling an non-sensical argument, sometimes by lobbying, sometimes having outsourced their cause to social media algorithms and foreign boiler rooms. They are turning citizen against citizen in a fight that should be all of us, including our politicians, against the very few of them.
We are paying for the destruction of nature, and therefore ourselves, through the subsidies that are provided by the taxpayer to these extractive companies. Subsidies that they then spend on themselves and lobbying governments around the world to get more subsides, and more land rights. It’s a destructive cycle that has hit breaking point.
We are lucky that here in Australia we can be world leader in renewable energies and the worldwide transition into a NetZero future. We have so much wildlife and biodiversity that needs protecting, we can show the world how we get the job done. Its an exciting time and it will lead to great prosperity if and when we get its right.
Vote for politicians that prioritise the transition and the future.
Become a politician that prioritises the transition and the future.
Do your research. Find your causes. Wear the T-shirts. Get into the hashtags. Don’t give up.
Buy your stuff from companies that are making a difference. Let your money talk.
Invest any extra money you have, your super, your pension, your $5, into organisations that prioritise the transition and the future.
And if you don’t have any extra money, congratulations, chances are you’re not the biggest part of the problem. But one day you might be. Now try and persuade someone else to be a hero and do all of that with their money.
And never stop being Irresistible. X
