Civilized yawn. That has been the collective response to climate change for decades. vague. Far away. And especially non-sexy. Those who sounded the alarm were a minority hardly taken seriously. Activists, climate scientists, and a few anachronistic politicians: the Cassandras of our time. The media and politics paid little attention to them.
Climate change has now degenerated into an undeniable climate crisis, as the Council of State also warned this week: the cabinet must take more ambitious measures as soon as possible, caretaker or not. “It’s code red for humanity,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres when the (another) alarming IPCC report came out this summer. A report that was richly illustrated by current events with floods in Europe, fire tornadoes in Canada, burning forests in Siberia and starving children in Madagascar. The bottom line: we still have a few years to prevent irreversible heating, a few years to reduce the chance of dangerous tipping points, a few years to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. A few years to keep the number of climate deaths from running into the millions.
Most of the Dutch have stopped yawning: according to the SCP more than three quarters of the Dutch are concerned about the climate. But instead of rolling up our sleeves, we seem to be falling into fatalism. ‘It doesn’t matter what I do, the problem is too big and we’re too late anyway,’ is the tenor more and more. We seem to suffer from the Eline Vere syndrome: rich and free enough to give direction to life ourselves, but use ‘fate’ as an excuse not to have to take that responsibility. We prefer to leave these to politics or business: these are the only powers that can avert fate. We, ‘ordinary people’, are just impotent souls who can only hope that politics or technology will save us.
Don’t get me wrong: the impacts of climate change on humans, animals and the planet are as terrifying as they are tragic. Let’s face that, with all the feelings of despair, grief and powerlessness that can accompany it. But let’s not use those feelings as an excuse for doing nothing. Blue envelopes also don’t disappear by complaining about them. They also only become more dangerous if you leave them to fate.
Look around us
What the climate needs is for us to mature as a society. First of all, that means facing the truth, namely that as a small country we emit disproportionately a lot: in fact, our ‘carbon budget’ in 2026, and we should be carbon neutral by then. But coming of age means perhaps even more that we have to realize that the world around us is not self-evident.
Like Eline Vere from Louis Couperus’ novel of the same name, we seem so spoiled by our wealth and privileged position that we no longer realize how exceptional and valuable life is. We are here on a planet that is still bursting with life: an impossibly unique place in the universe. It is no coincidence that many astronauts return to Earth as climate activists. By seeing the world from the outside, they realize how vulnerable our blue planet is. But we don’t all need to be launched into space – that would be a climate catastrophe – to experience that ‘overview effect’. We just need to take our eyes off our navel and look around us.
This collective maturing requires mature politicians. They act according to physical reality, not to the political issues of the day. Moreover, adult politicians are politicians who regard citizens not only as voters, but also as equal adults whom they can trust to tackle the great challenges of our time together. Politicians who dare to make democracy more democratic with new ways of decision-making such as citizen consultations, in order to shape the necessary system change as well and fairly as possible. Politicians who dare to fight for an international climate agreement that is not already bankrupt from the start, because agreements are not binding and polluting sectors such as aviation and shipping are kept out of the wind.
Also read this open letter: The planet is becoming unlivable, stop dawdling now!
An extremely exceptional planet
A mature society also means mature companies. They take responsibility for the waste and emissions they produce, and do not pass the costs on to society. Companies that do not exist primarily to enrich their shareholders and thereby increase extreme inequality, but which contribute substantially to the well-being of their employees and society. Companies that don’t spend millions on ‘green washing‘campaigns that placate society with green talk, when in reality they are just as polluting as before.
And it means adult residents. Many young people have already come this far, according to recent UN investigation, which just goes to show that mental maturity is not tied to age. Adult residents do not consider themselves only as consumers, but first and foremost as human beings. People who are critical enough to break free from the dogmas of eternal economic growth and every man for himself. People who don’t leave the necessary change to politics and business by hiding behind their own so-called powerlessness, but actively work to narrow the gap between ideal and reality – even though they know they may not be able to see the effect of their effort themselves. will experience. People who know they can replace an unjust and destructive system, stop climate change and stop biodiversity loss – as long as they try to do it not individually, but collectively, as togetherliving. People who realize that they live on an extremely exceptional planet, an unlikely intergalactic coincidence, and therefore love to do everything they can to protect and celebrate life on that planet.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC Handelsblad of 30 October 2021
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of October 30, 2021
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