The story we have been living has gotten us into a world of trouble
The COVID-19 crisis has revealed how, even in the darkest of times, there are silver linings. The stay-at-home orders have created opportunities to connect with our families and to better appreciate health care workers, teachers, and other service providers. It has shed new light on the plight of the elderly, those without health care, and the 60% of Americans without even $500 in savings for an emergency.
But COVID-19 has created another silver lining as well. It has given us time to reflect on those embedded human values, behaviors, and systems that have contributed to the global climate crisis.
The 75 years since WW II have seen unparalleled global economic growth and a 5x increase in the human population. Much of the credit for this can be given to fossil fuels and free-market economic policies. But now we can see two of the many unintended consequences of this fossil fuel-driven growth: global warming and climate change. If left unchecked, continued CO2 emissions could easily kill billions of people within decades.
For more than fifty years, scientists have been sending us the same message supported by increasingly solid data and delivered with mounting urgency. The message is simple: a climate crisis is coming. Incremental changes in our energy and economic systems and policies could have helped avoid the monumental challenges we now face. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet demonstrated that we are ready to make the changes now required if we are all to survive and prosper.
COVID-19 may be just the wake-up call we have needed. The pandemic is proof that, when under duress, humanity can mobilize and take the drastic actions called for. What will it take for the people and institutions of the United States to understand the positive future within reach if we take the actions called for to address global warming and climate change?
Among other things, we need a new story.
The story we’ve been living since WW II—a story of economic growth at all costs driven by both fossil fuels and free-market neoliberalism—is so embedded it will be hard to transform. That is now our challenge.
Several interesting articles have been written on this subject recently, including Coronavirus Spells the End of the Neoliberal Era. What’s Next? by Jeremy Lent. I hope you will read it.
And here is a link to a talk I gave recently on the same subject. What's the New Story? The talk explores the values and actions embedded in our current story that have created the climate crisis. It also explores a new story that could guide us to a new, life-affirming future in which prosperity has been reimagined. The talk is an expansion of my blog, Turning the Climate Crisis into an Opportunity.
And, this from Arundhati Roy: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next."
Finally, the documentary Polar Extremes | NOVA | PBS, explores what is likely to happen to our planet and humanity if we do not immediately mobilize around the climate crisis the way we have around the COVID-19 crisis. The documentary is powerful and beautiful. It is also a terrifying look into what’s in store if we do not change our ways.
If you feel this blog might have value to others, please pass it on. And, if you have a comment on what I have written, please email me at wilford [at] wilfordwelch [dot] com.