When Will We Know If We’re Headed Toward a Habitable Climate by Aric Clark

The IPCC released their latest report calling some of the effects of climate change inevitable and irreversible, which does not mean that we should succumb to fatalism in the face of ecocide. There are still meaningful choices and actions we can take. Foreknowledge of what our greed is doing to the planet presents us with a stark divide in the road: either we continue toward destruction, or we turn toward a habitable climate. Every fraction of a degree of warming we prevent potentially saves countless human and non-human lives. The urgency of collective action is the highest imaginable, but what does that action look like?

First, let’s consider what that action does NOT look like. It doesn’t look like much of what we are presently doing. Presently we have politicians talking about climate change as a serious threat while materially supporting fossil fuel infrastructure. Building more pipelines and roads for automobiles does not set us on a path to lowering emissions. We cannot have our cake and eat it too when it comes to climate change. Anyone who talks about “growing the economy” while also claiming to address climate change is simply lying to you. Business as usual at this point is a crime against life.

This means we must become sensitive to the lies of green capitalism. For decades now we’ve been told that if individuals just recycle more, if we just switch our lightbulbs, and lower our individual consumption habits in small ways that we’ll fix this problem. We’ve been conditioned to think about how often we shower, but to ignore the budgets of major corporations, the military, and the impacts of industrial agriculture. Meanwhile, hybrid and electric vehicles often have a worse environmental impact than standard ones, and you’d have to use your reusable shopping bags tens of thousands of times to make them a lower energy expenditure than the single-use plastic variety. So many individualized consumer-focused solutions have turned out to be traps, designed to keep us hooked into the very system that is destroying the basis for life.

When meaningful actions are taken, they will not be profitable. We got into this crisis by putting profits over people and planet. We must get out of it by putting planet and people ahead of profit. In fact, we need to understand the profits of the past century and a half since industrialization as an accrued debt that must be paid. The countries and corporations that brought us to this crisis must be made to pay for the efforts that will now be required to save us.

Therefore, that is the first factor we should look for in determining if we really are starting to turn the corner away from destruction and toward a habitable climate: a massive shift in priorities away from profit and toward collective responsibility. When the polluter pays, principle is in practice everywhere. Instead of headlines focusing on “the economy” narrowly defined by Wall Street, we will see headlines about the nationalization of major corporations and even whole economic sectors. We will see court judgments against major corporations leading to their dismantling. We will see major new public programs created from formerly private funds, designed to do things like assist with refugee resettlement, build public transit, and promote widespread small-scale regenerative agriculture. Instead of “growth” as a dominant metaphor for success, we will begin to see “repair” as the critical paradigm. In such a paradigm, the military would shrink dramatically, down perhaps to the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard. There would be no money for bombs, and all of our resources would be directed toward the activities that sustain life, and yes, while we’re here, a paradigm of repair does entail reparations.

When we are finally addressing climate change, we will see the decline of globalization (which is really neo-colonialism), replaced with a new spirit of internationalism. There will be fewer consumer electronics. Get ready to make the things you have last. There won’t be food in the grocery store from everywhere else on the planet. On the other hand, borders will be demilitarized and the right to migrate will be recognized and honored. Furthermore, we will recognize that what one region does impacts others. We will accept collective responsibility for not only our shared atmosphere, but for the impacts we have upon the land and the water as well. Internationalism as opposed to globalization means that we won’t tolerate labor exploitation in one place to fund excess consumption in another place. It means no more sacrifice zones; no more places or peoples we are willing to destroy because they’re out of sight of the wealthy.

We will know these changes are afoot when we see a real and broad respect for indigeneity. Indigenous people, who amount to less than 5% of the world’s population, are currently protecting 80% of global biodiversity. If we’re seriously addressing the threat of ecocide, we will see more and more power given to indigenous peoples, and more and more non-indigenous peoples seeking to listen and learn from their indigenous neighbors how to live well in their local ecosystems. Environmental activists who court indigenous support for their movement without demonstrating real support for indigenous sovereignty aren’t serious about addressing the underlying causes of climate change, because colonialism is the foundational ideology that has enabled the devastation of our planet.

We will really be on the path to evading extinction when few of the changes we observe can be described as lifestyle choices or adjustments of habits. Individualism will cede ground to communitarianism the way the coastlines will cede ground to the oceans. The questions will not be how much energy an individual is using, but how neighborhoods are coming together to build distributed energy networks. Not what constitutes an eco-friendly diet, but how much food your community is growing and how it is being shared. When we are less concerned with how individuals commute to their jobs and more concerned with building our cities so that people live and work and care for each other within close walkable neighborhoods, then we will have started to move toward a livable future.

Perhaps the ultimate sign that we are finally beginning to take climate change seriously will be evidence that we understand that this planet belongs to more than just humans. When we begin to reverse the transformation of wild habitat into human-centered biomass, and when even our agricultural land ceases to be monocultural, and becomes instead complex polycultures, intentionally cultivating habitat for creatures beyond the ones with immediate utility to humans, then we will have started to turn the corner. When reverence for non-human life is as foundational as reverence for money is now, and when knowing one’s watershed and being able to speak the language of one’s local ecosystem is seen as being of equal importance to being literate and understanding basic mathematics, AND when the dominant cultures of our world understand human beings as part of nature, rather than as lords over nature, and we start to believe that humanity actually has a positive role to play in the ecosystem… THEN we will know we’re headed toward a habitable climate for generations to come.

The Rev. Aric Clark is a pastor, father, writer and activist living in Portland Oregon. When he isn’t protesting, he’s probably playing a board game.

The graphic at the top of this piece is by Alexander Radtke. His work can be found at warningstripes.com.