Climate change needs citizen activism

By Ignatius Tsuro | Oct. 31, 2024 | 6 Min read

Mother Earth is not only mighty to nurture, but also mighty to destroy. File Pic

AT any one time, a part of our planet is in summer and another in winter.

This means that given the intemperance of climate change, we witness one part being deluged by floods, another baked by malevolent heat and yet another frozen by Arctic-like temperatures.

Mighty Mother Earth continues to grumble her displeasure with humanity.

Floods have killed in Africa, Asia, Central Europe and lately North America.

We have had extreme temperatures in both winter and summer.

Even here in Zimbabwe we had frigid temperatures in October, South Africa received record levels of snow.

The list is endless and the tempo of humanity’s death throes picks up each year.

Mother Earth is not only mighty to nurture, but also mighty to destroy.

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We exist on this planet on its terms not ours.

Earth was not created specifically to host humanity, but rather it was that life found the conditions favourable to it and took hold.

The planet never diverged from its evolutionary processes to accommodate life.

Earth does not in any way accommodate humanity, it existed billions of years before us and will do so long after we are gone.

Should the conditions change and become inhospitable, then all life will die out.

There is no magic to it.

If humanity against all reason so alters these conditions that they become a malevolent force arraigned against us, then it is an apocalyptic ending of our own making.

Our activities are contrary to our hosts’ terms; the issue will accordingly be settled on her terms not ours even if it means our destruction as a species.

Nuclear weapons provide the most concise look into the irrational human mentality seemingly dominated by Thanatos the death spirit.

The premise is that there are some points on the continuum of human interest that are held to be so important that they are worth killing off all life on Earth for.

This is philosophical nihilism.

Nothing should be so important that we are prepared to annihilate our entire race including babies and Stone Age tribes living in Borneo or the Amazon for.

We humans seem to think that our own selfish interests are more important than our very survival.

But it is only the living that harbour interest, be they selfish or altruistic.

Nuclear weapons show that we are a little too ready to play a zero sum game.

This banzai attitude applies to the issues around climate change and global warming.

It is unfortunate that the question of climate change is at present being addressed by the very same politicians whose fingers hover over the nuclear button.

Equally tragic is that it can only be addressed by politicians.

Politicians have been known to start wars for their careers, cause famines, allow pandemics to spread and decimate populations.

Politicians put their interests front-and-centre, national interests are only important because they are one way of safeguarding their own individual interests.

Our politicians today, therefore, are incapable of taking the necessary and difficult decisions that need to be taken in order to save ourselves.

They all look at the issue in terms of their political careers: the reasoning is always can we as a country make these sacrifices and still retain the support of the people.

Therefore, the issue is not being viewed through the prism of what needs to be done but rather what can be done economically and by extension politically.

The calculus is biased in favour of individual, then national interests rather than the global interest.

Should the fate of humanity be riding on the shoulders of the likes of Donald Trump, Vladmir Putin or Xi Jinping? Really?

Human beings are, therefore, never the most likely candidates to save themselves, that is perhaps why we need religion.

Religion transfers the responsibility for our existence on to another, leaving us to go on doing incredibly foolish things in the hope that we will be kept alive.

Today all reason points to the fact that with the climate we have reached an inflection point.

Changes have to be made no matter how painful or economically expensive.

The time has come to abandon the minimalist approach to climate action.

It’s either our self-centredness and foolishness give way to survival instinct or we commit ourselves as a specie to a turbulent end.

Science has achieved so much, put a man on the Moon, explored Mars, but all our efforts and knowledge are so puny when arraigned against the elemental forces and powers of our planet.

Science cannot stop an earthquake, a hurricane, drought or cold spell.

Should these natural phenomena ever reach the scale of a species ending event our fate would be no different from that of the dinosaurs with their pea-sized brains.

We would be reduced to hapless spectators of our own inexorable demise.

Given this humbling fact would not it be better for us to live well within the terms of our host planet?

After all these are generous, accommodating and give us much leeway to fashion luxury and ease out of her bounty.

In order to do this, to live reasonably on the planet needs citizen activism.

Politicians the world over are too worried about our support to do what is best for us. Ironically we in turn prefer to leave the climate issue to the politicians to solve.

It is a dangerous Catch-22 situation that stymies meaningful action and eats up the little time that there is to save ourselves.

People talk about climate change, its effects and the unprecedented havoc it is wreaking.

But they never, as they stand drenched by floods or huddled against unseasonal cold, talk about what they can do to make the change that will save directly if not them then their children.

The world needs many more Greta Thunbergs, in fact one in each country because the time has come to make climate activism a worldwide movement.

Only if each and every political leader is agitated by his/her own people and/or is threatened with removal from office will we see any meaningful movement in healing the planet.

This process should start with the establishment of transnational non-governmental organisations (NGOs) represented in every country dedicated to saving our planet.

These NGOs should focus on disseminating information about climate change and climate healing in a manner that empowers the people.

At present the message has been extremely disempowering and almost fatalistic.

It is all about the millions of tonnes of pollution that are pumped into the atmosphere by major corporations sanctioned by intransigent governments greedy for their taxes.

The individual is inevitably overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness, what can they do against billion dollar corporations and governments far removed from their small world?

It is not only about giving people information it is about giving people the knowledge that they have the power to change the destiny of the planet.

Information without empowering people with the knowledge that they can make a difference induces apathy and fatalism.

The NGOs in disseminating information must link the individual’s experiences with climate change to their activities at the micro-level as an individual and at the macro-level as part of a consumerist society.

The message must always be: this what we are doing to the planet and this is what the planet is doing to us.

Every single human being on the planet must own the problem of climate change and the solution to it.

It is not only about making the threat real as has been done, but also making the solution real and achievable to everyone of us.

The failure to make planet healing universal means that the efforts that are underway right now have been to an extent “othered”.

It is a movement for fringe near radical elements.

This othering means that the efforts to save the planet can be easily derided because they have not been mainstreamed.

The majority of the world’s population though suffering the depredations of climate has not bought into the actions of Greta Thunberg and other activists simply because they do not know enough to.

Into this knowledge gap then step in the demagogues like Trump, conspiracy theorists and deniers.

People prefer to pass their lives in the somnolence that passes for a peaceful, uneventful life so these alternative voices give them a reason to remain unengaged even though the issue is an existential one.

Citizen activism is the one way of mainstreaming the fight to save the planet.

And the planet can only be saved when the fight becomes every person’s, this drives up the cost to politicians of ignoring climate change.