The pandemic proves our capabilities in the face of climate change.
Like half of humanity, I’ve spent these last few weeks under lockdown due to the coronavirus. This global pandemic has already massively defined 2020. Beside continents that were on fire. Cities being flooded. Countries under the spell of a storm. Hundreds of thousands of people on the move as a result of climate change.
At times like these, I can’t help but wonder. Are we doing the right things? Are we doing what is necessary for our future? Where are we heading? What are we going to leave behind for future generations to come?
Throughout my studies, I’ve always felt the urgency and the impact of the changing climate as a quickly unfolding emergency. As I wanted to do my part, I looked at what is in my control. The few tons of my own emissions and that of immediate family, the political party I vote for every few years, whether I went on one (or multiple) march(es) or not, none of it seemed to make a noticeable difference. The systems that seem to be determining the outcome are big geopolitical negotiations, massive infrastructure spending plans and the steps an entire population takes. The gap between what I could do and what I felt could really make a difference, was so huge that I couldn’t see any way that I could bridge it. It felt futile.
This can be a common perception for many people, and maybe you have experienced this as well. When faced with an enormous challenge, where we are unable to grasp control over, our mind will tell us, “Maybe it’s not that important. Maybe it’s not happening in the way that people say, anyway.” or, “There’s nothing that you individually can do, so why try?”.
Is it really true that humans will only take sustained and dedicated action on an issue of supreme importance when they feel like they have a high degree of control?
Look at what our healthcare sector does day in, day out. These people are doctors, nurses and others who have been helping us overcome the coronavirus. Are these people able to prevent the spread of the disease? No. Are they able to prevent their patients from dying? Some they will have been able to prevent, but others will have been beyond their control. Does that make their contribution futile and meaningless? It would be offensive to even suggest that! What they are doing is caring for someone at their moment of greatest vulnerability. And that work has huge meaning, the courage those people are showing makes their work some of the most meaningful things that can be done, even though they can’t control the outcome.
Now, that’s interesting, because it shows us that humans are capable of taking dedicated and sustained action, even when they can’t control the outcome. This brings us back to this other massive challenge. In facing the climate crisis, the impact of our efforts is invisible to us, there is no immediate result of our actions. Whereas during this pandemic, these caregivers are not motivated by a desire to change the world and create a better future but by the day-to-day satisfaction of caring for another through their moments of weakness. With the climate crisis, we have this huge separation. We used to be separated by time; the impacts of the climate crisis were supposed to be way off in the future. But right now, the future has come to meet us. Even if those impacts are no longer separated from us by time, they’re still separated from us in a way that makes it difficult to feel that direct connection. They happen somewhere else, to somebody else or to us in a different way than how we are used to experience it.
There is however a way that we can do it, a powerful combination of a deep and supporting attitude that when combined with consistent action can enable whole societies to take dedicated action in a sustained way towards a shared goal. It’s been used to great effect throughout history.
It’s simply a choice. A deep, determined, stubborn form of optimism. That stubborn optimism is powerful. It is not dependent on the assumption that the outcome is going to be good or having a form of wishful thinking about the future. However, what it does is it animates action and infuses it with meaning. This symbiosis between stubborn optimism and action can become self-sustaining: without the stubborn optimism, the action doesn’t sustain itself; without the action, the stubborn optimism is just an attitude. The two together can transform an entire issue and change the world.
We saw this at multiple other occasions. We saw it when Rosa Parks refused to get up from the bus. We saw it in Gandhi’s long salt marches to the beach. We saw it when the suffragettes said that “Courage calls to courage everywhere”. And we saw it when Kennedy said that within 10 years, he would put a man on the moon. These are the sparks that electrified a generation and focused them on a shared goal, even though they didn’t know how they would achieve it. In each of these cases, a realistic and gritty but determined, stubborn optimism was not the result of success. It was the cause of it.
So right now, we are going through one of the most challenging periods in the lives of most of us. The global pandemic has been frightening, whether personal tragedy has been involved or not. But it has also shaken our belief that we are powerless in the face of great change. In the space of a few weeks, we mobilized to the point where half of humanity took drastic action to protect the most vulnerable. If we’re capable of that, maybe we have not yet tested the limits of what humanity can do when it rises to meet a shared challenge.
We now need to move beyond this narrative of powerlessness, because make no mistake – the climate crisis will be orders of magnitude worse than the pandemic if we do not take the action, that we can still take, to avert the tragedy that we see coming towards us. We can no longer afford the luxury of feeling powerless. The truth is that future generations will look back at this precise moment with wonder as we stand at the crossroads between a regenerative future and one where we have thrown it all away. And the truth is that a lot is going pretty well for us in this transition. Costs for clean energy are coming down. Cities are transforming. Land is being regenerated. People are on the streets calling for change. Genuine success is possible in this transition, and genuine ‘failure’ is possible, too, which makes this the most exciting time to be alive. We can take a decision right now to approach this challenge with a stubborn form of realistic and determined optimism and do everything within our power to ensure that we shape the path as we come out of this pandemic towards a regenerative future. We can all decide that we will be hopeful for humanity even if there are dark days ahead, and we can decide that we will be responsible, and will take action to engage with governments and corporations to ensure they do what is necessary coming out of the pandemic to rebuild the world that we want them to. Right now, all of these things are possible.
Yes, living now feels out of control. It feels frightening and scary and new. But let’s not hesitate at this most crucial crossroad that is coming at us right now. Let’s face it with stubborn and determined optimism.
Because a bright mind and a joyful heart is both the path and the goal in life. This stubborn optimism is a form of applied love. It is both the world we want to create and the way in which we can create that world. And it is a choice for all of us.