If unified national and international commitment could achieve monumental progress during crises like the world wars, a similar level of coordinated mobilization is required today. A wartime economic restructuring transitions society at emergency speed off fossil fuels through massive investments, just transition programs, and an enduring rationing of carbon pollution. Government mandates modernize infrastructure, transportation, manufacturing and agriculture along renewable lines while stimulating sustainable jobs and industries.
International cooperation leverages strengths and resources, from research collaborations to emissions pacts holding all nations accountable. Wealthy emitters aid economic transition of frontline nations suffering first from weather extremes. A progressive carbon fee program funds mitigation efforts while incentivizing structural economic changes. Grants assist vulnerable communities relocating from rising seas and intensifying natural disasters.
Prioritizing collectivity and justice transforms sacrifices into liberating progress for all humankind. With science as the commanding general, nonviolent civil disobedience compels stubborn political systems to catalyze transformations long stalled by obstructionism and misinformation. But societal will aligned behind solutions offers hope where bleakness once prevailed.
The problem being, of course, that conservatives and capitalism are ruining everything. Just look at how we fared at COVID. If we can’t get the entire population to stay at home and wear masks to protect themselves against a global pandemic, how the heck are we supposed to get them to stay at home and wear masks to protect themselves against climate change?
If we can’t get the entire population to stay at home and wear masks to protect themselves against a global pandemic, how the heck are we supposed to get them to stay at home and wear masks to protect themselves against climate change?
Good question. I know people who never had any problems trusting medication and vaccines, but then with COVID they suddenly parroted the idea that masks and vaccines don’t work. A few days ago a friend said the famous line that “Ukraine was invented in the 20th century to damage Russia, they’re actually Russians”. I tried to tell him the story of how Kievan Rus’ came to be from a Norse people to a primarily Slavic state, and how modern Russia isn’t the same thing as medieval Rus’, but he cut me off mid sentence and said that he knows that story and doesn’t believe it.
You literally can’t say anything to that. With every conspiracy theory, you can say, show and prove whatever you want, but you will always be defeated by the answer: “I don’t believe that”, and you can’t argue belief away with facts. Also the same people who said that the Earth isn’t getting warmer are now saying that it’s due to natural cycles where the Earth is closer to the Sun.
What I’m trying to say is that a lot of people take these things (global warming, covid, war in Ukraine, the EU, NATO…) personally and emotionally, not on a factual basis. Hell, some people deny that we had an air pollution problem in Serbia when you could literally see and smell the disguisting air yourself.
How to get through to these people before it’s too too late is beyond me, but an information campaign wouldn’t do much because you could give me the biggest and best scientific report about human effects on the climate, signed by every scientist on the planet, and I could just say “I don’t believe that” and that’s it. The question we need to answer is: “Why do people get so angry about man made climate change?”