“Take us to your leader”

When the aliens have landed on Earth and climbed out of their spaceship (at least as depicted in comic strips) the question they ask is: “Take us to your leader”. The aliens expect that there will be someone assuming the leadership role, heading the negotiations for collaboration - or surrender. However, sometimes the leaders do not come forward and the aliens might even conclude that a dead object or a donkey is our real leader. 

Real leaders are hard to find in fiction and even more so in the real world. After the recent climate conference in Lima (COP20) we should ask ourselves: Where are our leaders? Do we have politicians that are able and willing to confront not an alien invading species, but the threat that climate change will dispel human society as we know it? Leaders who also can deal with the fact that we ourselves are both the problem and the solution?

We are now living in the “Anthropocene”, the era where human emissions are changing the very chemistry and physics of the planet. Global warming is ongoing and will continue, even if we could stop carbon emissions this very moment, we are committed to further warming. 2014 is set to be the warmest year on record, globally as well as in Sweden and in most of Europe. And the last decades have been continuously warming.  

Global surface air temperature by decade in celsius (Think Progress, 9/25/13)

We humans are thus now the drivers of the Earths geology, but we are driving it off the cliff, blindsided by the our demand for growth and material wealth. The mantra “shop ’til you drop” may become more real than we like to think about. The leaders we now have fail to fully address the challenge of the climate crisis, I think mainly because they have no clue what to do, since they are bound by thinking within the system. At the root of the problem lies the absurd situation that all decisions regarding decreasing greenhouse gas emissions are measured against the “need” to create growth. Growth has become a goal in itself, no one dare question what it will bring us or what we will sacrifice on the way. 

“Why have we enthroned growth, regardless of its utility, above all over outcomes?” 

Of course there are strong economical interests, especially in the fossil industry that are fighting white-knuckled to protect there assets. This, even at a time when the Bank of England has concluded that coal, gas and oil may no longer be a good investment.  

But there are also strong psychological mechanisms that holds us back. Fact is, facts are not enough to get us moving in a more sustainable direction. Despite the now overwhelming scientific evidence that shows the acuteness and magnitude of climate change and the effect it has on our biosphere, this has yet to be something that moves us all.   

If people responded to facts alone, nobody would smoke anymore and we'd all eat more vegetables.

And then there is the “pluralistic ignorance”, the psychological term describing why a lone person might jump into the river to save a drowning man, while if a hundred people are watching they may all be looking on “someone else” to save the person in the water. And shouldn’t our “leaders” be the ones assuming responsibility? 

But we cannot allow ourselves to sit back and blame the lack of leaders for our own inaction. There is an urgent need for a movement, a bottom up engagement. 

“We must create an atmosphere in which active engagement in the climate crisis is considered a fundamental part of living a moral life. To accomplish this, we have to give people opportunities to be a meaningful part of the solution; we have to give them the opportunity to be rescuers.”

Of course we still will need leaders, real leaders that do not anxiously watch the latest poll and consult with their advisers before saying something more directed to the pundits than we the people. Nor do real leaders exploit the fears of the unknown for their own quest for power. 

"In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skilful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better." 

So far, it is clear that there has been a major lack of leadership, both on the international and national level. The chicken race has been going on for years regarding who should start acting on the climate play field. The industrialised world points fingers at the emerging economies, disregarding that these countries are producing what we consume. The developing countries rightfully ask us to shoulder the burden for the good times we have had.  

Climate change is not evenly distributed and the polar areas are especially affected, with a quicker rise in temperature rise. In the Arctic, summer ice cover is melting away, while in the south, the West Antarctic ice sheet have started an irreversible slide to the sea. And it is in Antarctica that I find my good example of a leader that turned defeat and near disaster to if not success resilience and survival. 

Ernest Shackleton lost the race to be the first man on the south pole and his next plan to traverse the continent became frozen in the ice. After an arduous winter in the pack ice, his ship was crushed and sunk. Instead, he led his men on a near impossible path, finding the only possible shore in the area where they could set up camp. He then took his best men and sailed in a lifeboat through the roaring forties of the south Atlantic, found land on the South Georgia Islands, climbed a mountain and a glacier to get to a whaling station, hitched a ride to South America, rented a steamer and went back and rescued all of his men. All this in the midst of the First World War. 

So what was Shackletons strength as a leader? For one, he did not panic. When his first mate told him that they did not have enough food, his answer was “Yes I know but I can not allow that to restrict my decision making”. But he was also able to install hope and inspiration in his men as well as finding solutions. Of course you can climb a glacier without climbing equipment, just put some nails in you boots! 

The writing on the wall I found when waling along the Seine river in Paris

To solve the climate crisis we need new kind of heroes, at all levels. We need innovators and entrepreneurs that can provide us with new technologies. We need CEOs that welcome change and challenges instead of holding back and protect. We need scientists that can both push our boundaries and make our present knowledge accessible in society, a real Academic Social Responsibility. We need new and inspiring leaders that can bring this together. We need psychologists that help us to understand our own borders. We also need ourselves in the roles as activist, that can challenge the innovators and scientist to come up with new solutions and make the companies deliver them. But most of all we need us as activist that will push the politicians to become or make way for the leaders we will  need. 

You are a citizen of this Earth and your responsibility is not private but public, not individual but social.

So despite the dire strait we are in, looking back at 2014 and forward to 2015, I choose to look for hope and change. No, it will not be easy but the path we choose is and will be important. All choices matter, at all levels. It is not a quest we can win singlehanded, what we need is much more the shoulder to shoulder struggle than the lone (male) wanderer. Still, there will be room for heroes of many types along the way.  

Figure 9 from IPCC WGII AR5 Summary for Policymakers