A climate decade (and the one that awaits us)

This piece is part of the book CTXT, a utopia in progressin which sixty-seven signatures talk about the first ten years of the magazine’s operation and its political context. It can be purchased here.

——————-

After almost five years, many and many essential acquaintances, a few afternoons of beers and two books published, the only bad thing I can say about Contexto is that, in this desert – at the moment, media – being an oasis is very difficult. But CTXT turns a decade old. If in ten days the world could be shaken, imagine in ten years. In reality, imagining is not necessary, at the moment. First it’s time to remember.

The Paris Agreement was sealed in 2015, and it seemed that we could be looking at something truly transformative. The following year, Trump was elected, against all odds, as the 45th president of the United States, and made good on his threat to pull the most crucial country out of the most important agreement in recent history.

Of course, their actions and statements (climate change is a Chinese invention, etc.) fueled those historic mobilizations of 2018 and 2019 with creative rage, which brought millions of people around the world to the streets, and which Only an unforeseen event, the pandemic, could stop it. Unforeseen, because it was not unpredictable.

Trump pulled the most crucial country out of the biggest deal in recent history

Now in 2021, I can tell you about something that I experienced firsthand. One midday in August, a small media outlet that boasts of being late to the news, publishes the leak of a part of the most relevant climate report on the planet. The IPCC (Group III) policy summary, before it is modified by the lobbies and governments to dilute its content. It is also the most proactive part of the report.

In a couple of days since the publication, the aftershocks can already be felt. And when he publishes it Guardianeverything changes. Der SpiegelYale University, dozens of media from different countries republish the CTXT exclusive despite the absolute silence in “our media” (which took more than ten days, those who deigned) about the work of a Spanish journalist in a Spanish media , which, for whatever reason, goes around the world. CTXT cited in the major headlines. It’s for you, Florentino.

This report leaked by the scientific community itself is one of the reasons behind the uprising “in peaceful arms”, and in half the world, of a part of the scientific community that is fed up with almost nothing being done in the face of a challenge that puts in endangers life itself on Earth, as recognized by the IPCC report itself. The professor, writer, mathematician and poet Jorge Riechmann, the environmentalist Marta García Pallarés, the ecologist Fernando Prieto or myself will go through, with other people, the experience of visiting the justice of this full democracyand we will do it for an action that not only did not cause any damage, but sought to protect everything that is at stake.

We still have deniers of anthropogenic climate chaos governing countries in Europe

The judge is going to have a difficult time. Since that action in 2022, everything has accelerated: ocean temperatures are absolutely out of control, and extreme phenomena are occurring with increasing frequency and virulence. The Mediterranean, which was a favorable place for the beginning of civilizations twelve thousand years ago, will soon cease to be so. And we arrive at the current moment. That prior to The autumn of civilization and The end of the seasons?in which, despite the fact that the evidence is incontestable and the effects are palpable, we still have deniers of anthropogenic climate chaos governing countries in Europe, autonomous communities in Spain and television sets everywhere.

As if that were not enough, the fascism that never left is beginning to mutate from a latent state to a more obvious one. Meloni or Milei were always there, and Trump shows his paw again. It opened this climatic decade and perhaps closes it. Let me be clear, even though the Democratic Party is largely the pro-genocide disgrace that it is, Trump is no better. It’s worse, in almost everything.

And now is when it’s time to imagine. Faced with the realization that what exists is no longer useful, new ideas must arise. Degrowth is becoming less taboo and more real (if Queen Letizia allows the joke). Meetings in the European Parliament lasting several days, scholarships for the best researchers to put into practice what they know: the panorama, although attacks are also increasing, is beginning to improve.

The decade that awaits us does not need illusions but an organization and empathy—at least among those of us on the side of the guns—that we have not known how to create, and therein lies the greatest challenge. By entertaining ourselves in disputes and fights, spaces are created where bad guys end up passing through. And this time it would really be necessary for them not to pass. Or that desert to which we are rushing, and which perhaps could still be reversed with courage, will swallow everything we love.

——————

Juan Bordera He has been a CTXT collaborator since 2018 and co-author of the books The autumn of civilization and The end of the seasons?

This piece is part of the book CTXT, a utopia in progressin which sixty-seven signatures talk about the first ten years of the magazine’s operation and its political context. It can be purchased here.

…