How do we reconcile our call for panic with the confident proclamation that ‘we got this’?
First of all — we isn’t ‘Climate Pledge Collective’, it’s all of us. We’re just one tiny smidgeon of the climate action revolution. There are thousands of us working full-time to turn this ship around. And we aren’t all the hippie weirdos fossil fuel executives and conservative politicians imagine us to be. Though some are hippies and many are weird, we are grandparents and teenagers, we are from all countries on earth, we are doctors and lawyers and scientists, we are graphic designers and musicians and bankers. But… as of now, we’re still losing — so it really does matter whether YOU get involved. With your help, we are very close to tipping the tide in our favour.
We’ve GOT THIS! There’s no way that we can lose.
The beauty of changing everything is that there are many ways to get involved. You might develop a plan to replace air travel with teleconferencing at your workplace. You might start a vegan soup club or lobby for bike lanes or learn how to install solar panels. You might organize a parent symposium on climate change at your child’s school or fight to improve migrant rights or return land to indigenous people. Whatever your skills and interests are — there is a role for you in the transition to a low-carbon world.
Secondly, there are soooo many solutions. Check out Project Drawdown if you’d like to read a detailed overview of the top 100 solutions.
And most solutions have major co-benefits that make the world a better place to live. Less polution. Healthier diets. Lower expenses. Friendlier neighbourhoods. All we have to do is start talking seriously about the problem and the solutions and we will steamroll our opposition because they don’t have a shred of evidence or even a single drop of joy to support their positions. Political will is the last remaining barrier to a rapid transation to a low-carbon world — I know this because I have friends who work in the civil service who could roll out a transition sooo much faster than their political masters are comfortable with.
The only reason we haven’t reduced global emissions is that we haven’t actually tried yet.
We got this! All we have to do is keep talking and marching and making ourselves heard.
We can’t reverse climate change in the short term — but if we look at the problem from a climate justice perspective, we can still win. Average temperatures will certainly increase by 1.5 degrees, probably even by 2 degrees. But we can stop emissions fast enough to prevent the truly catastrophic outcomes and we can work to improve the lives of those most heavily impacted. The world is horrifically unjust with or without climate change — so a concerted effort to make ammends for climate justice might also begin to redress many other historical injustices. There are reasons to believe that ten years from now, as the climate heats up, living conditions will deteroriate for many people, plants and animals — but there is no scientific reason that we couldn’t instead create a world that is more just, where more people have what they need and more wild places are preserved from human predation. All we have to do is try very, very hard and pick ourselves up each time we get knocked down.
We got this!
Climate Pledge Collective 