Man has responsibility, not power.
Source – Tuscarora Proverb
AUTHOR
Robin E-H. Hoard, Program Manager, H&S.CO – Climate
ID. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7960-9780
Where the human life span ranges from 45 to 80 years, depending on the region or country, the human attention span is even shorter. Climate change and its accompanying local environmental changes will play out over hundreds of thousands of years, until a new normal has been established in the planarity time scale.
This is discussed in the study “Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents,” published in the journal Nature. How did the human species – with its limited life and attention span – affect so much? And how can we address the problem across a planetary time scale?
On the Upsteam Conversation podcast, Jason Hickel, anthropologist at the London School of Economics, discusses what I call the “Cuisinart Factor,” in which liberal democracy places a high value on individualism in service of neoliberal free-market capitalism. In cases like this, individual identity is based on the type of work a person does and their political affiliations; friends are those one finds in their place of employment. This is a very strong force, which most people buy into it unknowingly.
This is similar to the Hans Christian Andersen’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which two weavers who promise an emperor a suit of clothes, which they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. Not wanting to appear unfit, stupid, or incompetent, the emperor doesn’t speak out when presented with the fictional “new suit,” and others follow along, not wanting to look like fools in front of the emperor. In our world, loyalty to employers and politicians breeds subservience to liberal democracy and neoliberalism, much like the emperor’s willingness to take the two weavers at their word ends in his naked parade through town.
At one time or another, we have all bought into the magical set of clothes the ruling political and economic systems have presented us.
In the 2015, I did a survey for the project called “Climate Change and Local Responses to It” (available on this blog). Question 4 asks,
“Do you think climate and environmental change will be a multi-generational problem in years ahead?”
Of the 3,000 climate change professionals surveyed across the globe, 97% said yes. In a 2016, I posted an article on LinkedIn called “Civilian Defense in the age of Climate Change” which states “we are led by developed nations that have never learned the limits of the carrying capacity of their cultures in relationship to their countries size. Much older human cultures have learned the hard way to the limits of their growth and the success of their adaptability.”
What is missing in our approach to climate change is the sense of perspective that a human timescale brings to this picture. Not just hours, days, weeks or years, but human generations.
Generations that have passed and generations that will be. It is here that we are the link between the past and the future. Each of our families, clans, and tribes carries a history.
A genealogy of ordinary people stepping forward to do extraordinary things both big and small, which makes them standout to us. By looking back at these generations and the history they lived, we can start to understand the difficulties and problems they faced for us. We can also realize that it is our turn to face the new challenges before us.
That each generation that following us will deal with same set of problems, or with new and unknown aspects of climate change. Oddly enough, our own family, clam, or tribe histories and genealogies supply us with this perspective of time.
Update: This is a personal observation, that keeps showing up as time goes on. That most people in western countries treat their life as if they were on a vacation. That they are tourist on a tour group time schedule of some far distance exotic land called Earth. Tourists totally unconcerned about the poverty, pollution and destruction of the local environment that they bring in their wake.
As long as they can collect as much brick-a-brac and possessions as possible, to define where they have been and what they have done in their short time of this tour.
References:
Early onset of industrial-era warming across the oceans and continents. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v536/n7617/full/nature19082.html
Podcast: Anthropologist Jason Hickel on How Capitalism Fuels Climate Change
Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes
http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html