“How dare you pretend that this can be solved with just ‘business as usual’ and some technical solutions? …You are failing us. But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.We will not let you get away with this.” These were the words of sixteen-year old Swedish schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg as she addressed the United Nations climate conference on 25th September this year.
Greta is right. Not just about our failure to respond to the challenge of climate change. Climate change is interacting with other threats of human origin and we now face the greatest existential emergency of our entire existence. But most of us and most of our leaders continue to behave as if it is not happening. This may sound apocalyptic, but the situation really is that serious, and the opportunities for timely action are running out. The scientific evidence shows we are living well beyond what the Earth can sustain. To ignore these mounting threats and not devise integrated national and global strategies to prevent them will commit future generations to catastrophe.
Yet, here in Australia – and in much of the western world – these threats are being ignored or treated as second order issues. As a result, citizens, young and old, are becoming concerned and angry and are making their feelings known to all, through protests and strikes.
Roger Hallam, British co-founder of The Extinction Rebellion ,has recently published a small booklet “Common Sense for the 21st Century” that concludes: “We can delude ourselves if we so wish, but we can be assured the next generation will be free of such delusions. They will be in the middle of the chaos of ecological collapse. They will want the prosecution of those who created the hell they will face. Think on that. Feel it in your body. And then act. Friends, there are no easy options anymore. There is only one way that leads to true self-respect – and that is Rebellion. Let’s get to it.”
Australia could be a global leader in helping to solve the combined threats that face us, in ways that secure our health, wellbeing, prosperity and a bountiful future for our grandchildren. But we are, like many other nations, sitting on our hands. A new institution, A Commission for Australian Futures, is being developed by a group of concerned Australians, arising from discussions among academics at ANU and the independent think tank, Australia21. The group has been stimulated by Canberra science writer and author of four books on the threats to human survival, Julian Cribb. The planned Commission will focus initially on Australia and on the severe threats facing our region of the world.
The Commission will engage in the following activities:
· Alert Australians to the looming planetary crisis
· Promote a positive narrative for transitioning to sustainable planetary health
· Partner with researchers, policy makers, industry and civil society
· Draw on the research available in Australia and internationally
· Act as a ‘knowledge broker’ in communicating the evidence on threats and solutions
· Engage in policy dialogue workshops with key players in order to develop action on threat reduction, mitigation or adaption, that each focus on a selected risk such as food security or water management.
· Communicate findings in regular and readable reports to key players and the public
· Propose a Human Survival Index comprising component risk indicators (climate change, resources, human population, pollution etc) in order to measure and monitor progress
In her 2019 book, “On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal”, author, Naomi Klein, refers to the recent UN Panel on Climate Change report that, she says, has had a greater impact than any publication in the 31year history of that organisation. The report examined the implications of keeping the increase in planetary warming below 1.5°C. Given the worsening disasters we are already seeing with about 1° it found that keeping temperature to below the 1.5 degree threshold, is humanity’s best chance of avoiding truly catastrophic unravelling. But doing that will be extremely difficult. Turning the ship around in time to keep the warming below 1.5 degrees, will require cutting global emissions by half in the next 10 years. Pulling off this high-speed pollution phase-out is not possible with a single technique or with approaches like carbon taxes. Rather it requires deliberately and immediately changing how societies produce energy, how we grow our food, how we move ourselves around and how our buildings are constructed. What is needed is rapid far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.
In tackling the climate crisis, Klein says we can create hundreds of millions of good jobs around the world, invest in the most systematically excluded communities and nations, guarantee healthcare in child-care and much more. The result of these transformations would be economies built both to protect and to regenerate. The Green New Deal could instil a sense of collective higher purpose – a set of concrete goals that we are all working toward together; rebuilding the planet’s life support systems and respecting and sustaining the people who depend on them. The idea takes its inspiration from Roosevelt’s “New Deal” in the USA in the 1930’s.
Without something of this order the human future looks grim. With it, our grandchildren could perhaps, after all, anticipate a flourishing future.
Emeritus Professor Bob Douglas AO is a retired Public Health academic and leader of the Australia21 project on “Survival Matters”. www.
Em Prof Bob Douglas, AO is a retired Public Health Academic and a committee member of The Council for The Human Future (CHF) and The Canberra Alliance for Participatory Democracy (CAPaD).
Comments
3 responses to “BOB DOUGLAS. Responding to Greta’s Challenge”
Listening at the time I was thinking off historical parallels and was wondering if future generations might develop the concept of “Crimes against the Environment”.
Bob,
Congrats on your efforts and I hope the Commission for Austrtalian Futures thrives, but you make no reference to the key factor in all this…nor does Naomi. Some of us have been trying for decades to get it understood that consumer-capitalist society is so far beyond sustainable that per capita resource and ecological impacts must be reduced by probably 90%. There is a powerful numerical case that this is the approximate magnitude of the degrowth needed. Most good green people have no idea about this; they think more solar panels etc. will enable rich world living “standards” to more or less continue. They have no idea that degrowth means capitalism has to be abandoned; if only because it is a growth system. For decades it has been impossible to get these issues thought about by the mainstream.
If the magnitude of the limits to growth problem is as huge as I have indicated, then the solution has to involve a transition to far simpler, far less resource intensive, systems and lifestyles. Few, including Green New Dealers, Green parties and Naiomi are prepared to face up to this. Lets hope the Commission is.
I hope you keep us up to date with the development of the commission Bob.