Today, Earth Day, marks yet another landmark year of global environmental inaction. Though the conversation has thankfully shifted toward highlighting the very real threats climate change and ecological degradation, little to no progress has been made in terms of policy and concrete global action. In this piece I reflect on the potential reasoning behind this phenomenon in response to an article which aptly explains the gravity of our situation.
This is written in response to: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruption
Despite dire warnings and morbid studies issued the past few decades, we are still failing to take the climate crisis seriously. Every call upon global governments to take action seems to have fallen on deaf or willfully uncooperative ears, as we yet again fail to meet any of the UN’s carbon reduction or biodiversity targets (Weston, 2021). Driven by economic factors, government leaders would not deign to reign in the mythically unlimited growth of markets, even though our own survival is at stake. For them, it is easier to conceptualize quantified markers of wealth rather than the amount of irreversible destruction those delusive numbers are causing. Take, for example, the value of the US dollar, which is powered solely by collective belief in its legitimacy and predicated, most notably, by America’s international affairs. Why is one metric so fervently sought after while the other is categorically pushed aside despite its apocalyptic underpinnings? This article delineates that the bulk of humanity struggles to grasp the ramifications of imminent ecological collapse; I posit that this lapse in comprehension stems from the same psychological phenomena that lead to the unrelenting accumulation of wealth and capital: scale conceptualization and the immediacy of consequence. On one hand, the average elected official in the Global North has not personally witnessed a red tide or a mass bird die-off, having only seen disembodied counts of environmental damage, if that. On the other hand, the digitization of currency, a step beyond the proliferation of currency, has divorced accumulation from materiality; though the numbers have meaning, it is impossible to truly grasp the extent of an exceedingly large amount of money, much like an exceedingly large amount of now-extinct species. Without having a physical approximation of either statistic, the human mind hits a wall attempting to ascribe deeper meaning to them on a subconscious scale. That is, until the immediacy of consequence is factored in.
The difference between the loss of a million dollars and the death of a billion insects lies in the amount of time between the event and its consequences. The hemorrhaging of capital seems more pressing to the run of the mill politician, but the oncoming collapse of whole ecosystems proves much more costly, with human civilization hanging in the balance. This collapse, however, comes slowly as warning after warning is issued to no avail; its true ramifications will not take shape for several years, unlike the red ticker flashing immediate doom to a financier. The paper cited in the article notes that this disconnect between loss and consequence fuels our general inaction on climate change (Frontiers in Conservation Science, 2021). This choice of immediate prosperity over long-term viability is not unlike the neoliberal’s quixotic embrace of trickle-down economics. Despite statements from the World Economic Forum naming “biodiversity loss as one of the top threats to the global economy,” world governments have failed to act on this in favor of short term success (Weston, 2021). It has become clear that the status quo will not be sufficient to avert this oncoming nightmare. The only path forward is immediate action, even if it does not yield immediate results.
Weston notes that “even well-informed experts” admit they struggle with capturing the scope of our “environmental challenges,” so how do we tackle this debilitating disconnect (Weston, 2021)? We must attach a sense of immediacy to this cosmic threat. Calling and writing to politicians demanding them to take action on the flagrant slashing of environmental protections by the former administration is only the beginning. On a personal level, we should be mindful of our own impact and let ourselves empathize with those most vulnerable to the effects of the climate crisis. On a larger scale, we must rally to levy financial and penal consequences on the most egregious offenders and create policies that demand just treatment for people and the planet. Lawsuits, outreach, and collective action are our main weapons against this systemic, distanced-fueled apathy. Only by working together and recognizing the importance of all living things can we finally begin to unlearn the old ways that have driven the current system to decay. We can begin to reimagine a new system built not by dominion but by solidarity