Christmas night contemplations

Revisiting the dystopic optimist

Some nine months ago I wrote on my blog about being a dystopic optimist. Now, on Christmas night, is an appropriate time to reconsider this position. And, although being a very firm atheist, I write this after listening to “Oh HolyNight” as sung by the Swedish long dead master tenor Jussi Björling. His interpretation of this song still stands out as THE Christmas song and it is also a song that regardless of your faith is a song about hope and change. We are supposed to celebrate Christmas as the night Jesus was born, even though we have mixed Christian traditions with pagan and Viking celebrations of mid winter. But lets look at this night as the time for birth of something new. I will try to elaborate on this line of thoughts.

A week ago I posted on my Facebook page about this article, that summarizes recent science on the state of the climate and the picture painted is very bleak, or rather extremely alarming. We are currently on path  to a +4°C warmer world, maybe as early as 2080. This is something the World Bank (well know extremist leftist radical group…) has stated as “not being compatible with an organised society. You could choose any metric, but we are speeding up towards catastrophe, even faster than I thought when I wrote my blog post ¾ of a year ago. And yes, although this is an article/blog on the web, I have read most of the original scientific papers that this article builds upon. So sorry, this is the reality we are facing – if we do not radically change the path we are on. (Anyone who still want’s more evidence please take a look at Skeptical Science).

A friend of mine after reading this post asked med “But what can we do, should we just give up?”. No, is my answer, I may be dystopic at times but I am still stubbornly optimistic. And there is still time and there are possibilities for change. But it will not be an easy trip; a little bit of green shopping will do little to remedy the situation.

So what do I think is needed to create an understanding of the dire situation we are in? On Christmas Eve 45 years ago, Apollo 8 astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders were coming around from the far side of the Moon. As they did, the Earth rose into view over the Moon’s limb. Anders, caught sight of the view, and exclaimed: “Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There’s the Earth comin’ up. Wow, is that pretty!” He snapped a black and white photo, capturing humanity’s first view of Earth from another planetary body.

And this is really it. There is no other planet we can escape to. We inhabit a tiny dot in space, where we will live and die. And if we want a decent life for ourselves, our children and grandchildren we better remember that! We will not change our behaviour solely based on data, we need connection, emotion and also companions to do that.

We need to connect the dots between the numbers and what is happening with the planet. This "winter" with the warmest November ever on the globe and +8°C and rain on Christmas Eve it is easy to think that something is askew with the climate. And if we don't trust the scientist we could listen to the insurance industry which is built upon evaluating real risks. And they think that climate change is real. 

We need to emotionally understand the implications of climate change. Coastal flooding will mean people loosing their home and livelihood. This is already happening on Pacific Islands. But the county council in Skåne (south Sweden) has already produced a map of the areas that will be flooded with rising sea levels. What would you do if you owned a home in these areas? When will it be impossible to sell?  Climate change is coming home, it is not a far away phenomena, in time or space. 

Back again to my friends question: What do we do? We don’t have time to wait for magical silver bullets or politicians that assume the role of Neville Chamberlain 1938, who thought he could gain "Peace in our time" by bargaining with Hitler. And you can not bargain with physics and the global climate...  Thus we need to start acting together and to pressure our politicians into action mode. We need to get the ball rolling now! 

So for 2014 I would like to propose a very simple start on the big change that needs to take place: - the 5 % project. If we are to achieve the decreases needed in greenhouse gas emissions, we need to decrease our (mainly) CO2 emissions by 5 % per year, every year until 2050. For me as an individual I can easily achieve this goal 2014, just by adjusting my travel habits a bit and eating less meat. And I challenge anyone who claims that it would be impossible for them to do the same! Even for 2015 the - 5 % goal is quite easy, but in 2016 it might start to get a bit harder. Of coursem if I just do it myself, it would not make any difference. But if it instead would be everyone in Gothenburg, it would start to mean something. And if it also was my university that took on this task and at the same time challenged other universities and corporations to do the same, it would make a huge difference. By 2016 we would have solar panels on every roof. And if we knew that this was a serious commitment, innovation and implementation would follow suit so by 2018 I am sure that we would be ahead of the  plan! 

At the moment, governments are playing chicken race with the climate question. "Yes we understand the seriousness but we have to wait for global agreements". So we can not wait for them to lead us. And as individuals, denial, regarding the global climate system or on the personal level may be a very common human reaction when something threatens us or may force us to question our beliefs. But it will not help us and we need to understand that we have a responsibility as individuals and together. So let's use our natural tendency to compete, not primarily with others but with ourselves.