On Climate change, inaction, and lock-ins
As I learn more and more about climate change in my various classes and its relationship with society, I become increasingly anxious for the future. We are currently hovering at around 1 degree Celsius of warming and is on track to 3 degrees by 2100. There are numerous studies detailing the effects of a three degree warming of the plant and needless to say, it will be a disaster.
I brought this up at dinner the other day with my parents and although they are some of the most environmentally conscious people when it comes to reusing and recycling, they didn’t really know what the effects of excess warming was. I realized then that this problem didn’t just exist with my parents, but any layperson without advanced knowledge of global warming and climate change are simply trying to help the planet by doing what they’re told without knowledge of why their actions make an impact. Inherently, there is nothing wrong with this, but it gets me thinking whether or not if we would be able to garner additional social support/attention if more people could clearly articulate what climate action is working towards and the severely limited window of action that we have to prevent irreversible climate catastrophe.
There are many literature that explore this topic in detail. In fact, there is a popular Youtube video published by Vox recently on how America can transition to clean energy — which entails transitioning most of the energy consuming sources from fossil fuels to electricity. The video talks about how we already have all of the technology to do so and it would cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 75 percent. However, if we look at the proposal from a multi-level-perspective analysis lens, the “landscape” has to shift significantly in order to warrant this massive scale of change. It would require a substantial amount of capital, increased social awareness of the climate crisis, significant policy changes, and technological innovation. Each one of these is hard enough to achieve by itself in the current world, let alone all of the above. Furthermore, with the United State’s current political atmosphere, the consensual divide on climate change, and the power held by fossil fuel companies to influence policy, any shift towards a national effort to climate action appear to be impossible to achieve.
In fact, scholars have suggested that a “war-time” level of mobilization would be required in order for us to keep temperature anomalies at a sustainable level. That means having the entire nation’s labor force and policy transition to contribute towards climate action — electronics manufacturers converted to solar voltaic cells production, policies that mandate sustainable practices, introduction to climate bonds, etc.. Aside from the obvious reasons why this method is not feasible given our current conditions, I also think that there is a lack of a tangible enemy and the “kill-or-be-killed” mentality that exists during war. If people can’t feel or conceptualize the issue at hand, it is very hard to garner support for extreme actions.
I realize that what I’ve written above seem dispiriting and bleak, but that is my honest reflections on the climate issue that we face today. In fact, there are many other aspects of climate change inaction that exist and I’ve only barely scratched the surface. Although there are many people who are very environmentally conscious and are doing their best in shifting people’s perspective on climate change, we still need to be even more rigorous in our efforts if we want to maintain the Earth that we all share.
