A 9km wide asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, very likely to strike the planet with enough force to wipe out all traces of human civilization and push the reset button on all life Earth has seen so far. This cataclysmic extinction event, one would expect, should cause mass hysteria and panic, and should warrant an unheard of international effort to redirect the asteroid. Instead, it provokes not more than a “meh” from most people, and science-based deflection missions are thwarted in favour of greedy expeditions to mine the mineral-rich asteroid. Unfazed by the pathetic mining attempts, the asteroid continues on its path, eventually striking Earth and swiftly ending life as we know it.
Horrifying as it is, this sounds extremely farfetched, and indeed, the scenario is ripped from the screenplay of the Netflix film “Don’t Look Up”. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence, the film seems to be, at face value, the latest in a long line of repetitive end-of-world disaster flicks. However, a closer look reveals much more. The movie is a satire on humans’ apathetic reaction to another impending catastrophe that we have passively brushed aside to the annexes of our collective consciousness. This problem is arguably trickier to tackle than a giant rock from outer space: the Earth is heating up, and we just cannot seem to give a damn.
Exactly as in the movie, those who spoke of climate disasters and global warming have been, up until extremely recently, labeled as alarmists, and mostly ignored. Since climate change, unlike an asteroid, is largely invisible, it has been hard for short-term thinking humans to push themselves to care. And to make matters worse, seemingly objective truths have been polarized, with different sides of the political spectrum manufacturing their own version of scientific facts. “Don’t Look Up” hilariously parodies this politicization, with Meryl Streep playing the film’s version of a recent Republican president who often found themselves in the limelight due to their sacrilegious statements on the “nonexistence” of climate change.
Emissions, the main culprit of climate change, are unfortunately immensely complicated to study, with a myriad of factors affecting how much greenhouse gases we emit and whether we can cut down on them. A clear variable, however, is growing population size. More people need more food, more shelter, and more products. All these respective sectors cannot, in the way they function today, run smoothly without massive emissions. If we were to overlay the world population and global emission graphs starting from 1850, a frightening correlation is evident. This analysis is incomplete without the mention of the additional relationship between economic growth and high emissions. Simply put, more developed countries emit more than less developed countries, and as said less developed countries are rising out of poverty, their emissions are rising in tandem. This dependence on CO2 sheds light on a critical aspect of the nature of climate change, which is quintessential to our response as a species: climate change is a systemic problem. Our over-dependence on CO2 is not limited to the industries people rush to point fingers at when discussing emissions, like the meat-making industry or cars and jets. In 2016, for example, landfills emitted just as much as the entire aviation industry. The iron and steel industries emitted almost 60% more than all our livestock did. This is certainly not to say that the usual suspects are free of blame, but it is important to keep in mind that our modern world and all of our industries practically run on fossil fuels.
The devastating impact of our reckless actions has been abundantly clear in recent years. Every year, frightening climate records are broken, and multiple climate-related natural disasters occur. 2021, for example, provided more than its fair share of tragic events which researchers directly linked to our changing climate. From deadly heat waves across western North America to wildfires in California to enormous floods in Germany, China, and Canada, this year has been yet another painful reminder that climate change is no longer a distant reality that affects only the penguins and the polar bears. And while historically, less developed and post-colonial countries bore the brunt of climate-related natural disasters (due to them being less equipped to handle them), extreme weather nowadays is transforming into a sort of an equalizer. Slowly but surely, as we have seen in the past few years, even developed countries will not be safe as Mother Nature rears her ugly head.
Our reaction to this predicament as a species has been subpar at best. This has much to do with people’s attitude towards climate change and whether they perceive it as a threat or not. Startlingly, as recent as 2015, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reported that 40% of adults worldwide have never heard of climate change. The number floats upwards to around 65% in developing countries like Bangladesh and India. But this seemingly shocking statistic must be taken with a grain of salt. That same research study found that “globally, education levels tend to be the single strongest predictor of public awareness of climate change.” It is hypocritical for the world to expect nations that have endured centuries of colonial oppression to suddenly develop an acute understanding of complex problems that they have never been told about. Ask yourselves, how many of us would have realized that the Earth is heating up if not for proper scientific education and access to popular media? A more poignant statistic is that despite global concerns about climate change generally rising significantly since 2013, substantial shares of people in developed countries (with access to education) still dismiss climate change as unimportant. In 2019, a survey in one of the largest emitters on the planet, the United States, found that around 25% of people believe that climate change is a minor threat, and 16% say it is no threat at all. These embarrassingly high numbers are further made worse by the nasty role politics is playing with respect to climate change. The survey found that a wide partisan gap exists in the U.S., with almost 3 times as many Democrats as Republicans saying climate change is a major threat to their country.
Several other factors play a psychological role in keeping most of us passive with regard to the changing climate. The doom and gloom messaging, for one, that has long been a favourite of mainstream media, helps very little in stirring people to action. Headlining articles and reports with what looks more like an announcement of the end of times rather than a call to action surely attracts click and views, but fares remarkably poorly in the way of pushing audiences to genuinely care. Psychologist Per Espen Stoknes, in a video interview with Vox, commented on this style of messaging saying that “it makes people passive”, and adding that when “I feel fearful or guiltful [sic] I will withdraw from the issue and I will try to think about something else that makes me feel better”. The more we portray climate change as an insurmountable and impending catastrophe, the more people will practically give up on any environment-friendly habits they currently pursue, with the probable justification that the climate is a lost cause anyway. In fact, a nationwide behavioural experiment launched by UCLA Engage showed that appealing to social competition (by rewarding efficient energy in a student dorm building use with gold stars for a good job and a red dot for a poor one) led to a staggering 20% reduction in energy use. Humanity is not a toddler that needs to be scared by the bogeyman in order to eat their vegetables or do their chores, we instead need appropriate encouragement and a push in the right direction.
Proper portrayal of the problem is incredibly important, and there is no better example of that than a previous environmental crisis we have faced: the hole in the ozone layer. The ozone layer is a region of the Earth’s atmosphere that plays a critical role in absorbing the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. In the mid-1980s, scientists announced the discovery of an area of depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica. It was predicted that due to human activity, the ozone layer would completely break down by 2050, severely threatening all forms of life on Earth. Studies also eventually proved that the main culprit in this depletion were CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), found in various household products. Thus began an enormous effort to properly communicate this message to the general public, in an attempt to call them to action. Approachable and simple terms were used, coupled with relevant risks. For example, advertising the depletion as a “hole”, and warning of increased risks of skin cancer or cataracts is a very straightforward and tangible cause-effect relationship. And finally, practical solutions were offered; CFC products were extremely easy to replace. This resulted in the Montreal Protocol, which was signed by every single country on the planet, making it the only universal treaty and singularly the most successful collective environmental action that we have taken as a species. The hole in the ozone has since steadily recovered and is expected to completely recover by 2065.
The average individual has been severely misguided in terms of what they realistically can do to help remedy climate change. It is indeed in the benefit of large emitters to lead people to believe that action can be taken on an individual level, thus somewhat vindicating themselves in the public eye. Interestingly (read: conveniently), the concept of one’s “carbon footprint” was popularized by none other than fossil fuel giant BP in the mid-2000s. This shift of blame from large corporations and governments to individuals, while successful in increasing consumer concern, is extremely detrimental and misleading when one thinks of the systemic nature of climate change. Funnily enough, not five years after BP paraded around its new flagship marketing scheme, the company was responsible for the largest marine oil spill in history into the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing says “lowering my carbon footprint” like 200 million gallons of crude oil.
Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world has concrete evidence of exactly how much micromanaging individuals’ actions can help in climate change. Not because we wanted to, but because we had to, most of us were cooped up in our homes for extended periods of time in 2020. At first, this seems like a reason for climate activists to celebrate; fewer everyday activities surely slashed emissions for 2020, right? No. 2020 had just 7% fewer emissions than the previous year, and in fact, the month of May witnessed what some estimate to be a fifteen million-year all-time high amount of emissions.
One would logically surmise that if responsibility does not fall on the individual, it must fall on the entire society instead, with different economic and political systems having varying degrees of success with remedying the changing climate. Capitalism has been on the losing end of the climate blame game for as long as the climate blame game has been played, and rightfully so. “Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders”, reads a famous caricature in The New Yorker. Most of us cannot help but feel that this hilariously lopsided prioritization scheme is exactly what is guiding the thinking of policymakers and large corporations, and in a way, that is not very far from the truth. Capitalism makes it difficult to prioritize anything over growth and profits, and this systemic greed is a main reason that humanity has found itself staring down the barrel of climate change’s gun. However, we must bear in mind that so far, no economic or political system has in reality proved to be effective in reducing emissions. Most of you are logically thinking of China now, which runs mostly on state-owned corporations and industries, and you are correct in your thinking. The Chinese Communist Party has been described by one Foreign Policy writer as an “environmental catastrophe”, and one look at their insane amount of rising emissions is more than enough to see why. Following current trends, China will be responsible for the most atmospheric CO2 in less than 20 years.
So, a 180-degree shift away from capitalism is far from an optimal solution, and neither is a conscientious attitude towards our “carbon footprint”. What can we do then?
We can vote. Not only can the public vote at the ballot, but they can also vote at the supermarket, the grocery store, the hardware store, and anywhere else that sells anything for that matter. Come election season, it is high time for people to consider candidates’ proposed climate plans with respect to fossil fuel subsidies, renewable energy, and high-emission industries. This is not to say that we must forget all other policies and focus only on climate change. There is a popular saying that compares voting to public transport, with the objective being arriving at the closest possible destination. Climate change is not the type of problem that is magically to be solved in the span of one election. It requires us to gradually chip away at the gargantuan scale of the problem we have created for ourselves and future generations. In tandem, as we gradually shift our policies to more climate-friendly ones, we can vote with our wallets. Eat less (or more sustainable) meat, buy recycled products, and practice green habits at home. It is not much, but it is certainly better than nothing.
Surely but gradually, if we tread on this thin but correct path, we can reverse the damage that we have done so far. Human ingenuity is limitless. Human stupidity and greed, on the other hand, are equally limitless. Climate change is rapidly closing in on us, and it is up to us as a species to decide which side of humanity we choose to show it.
Edited by Mohamad Wehbe