First published on LinkedIn, 25th August 2019
Where were you when the Earth burned?
Imagine opening your curtains tomorrow morning to see your street on fire. The flames are licking their way towards your house, your eyes, nose and throat are stinging from the acrid smoke filling the air. What would you do?
Right now, the Amazon is burning and it is as much of a threat to us as if the flames were at our own front door. This summer has also seen massive wildfires in Alaska, Bolivia and Greenland. It is less than a year since the town of Paradise in California was decimated by the worst wildfire in a century; 90% of its population has left and those who remain there wait with trepidation to see what this year's wildfire season brings. Australia has just experienced its third-hottest July on record (the other two hotter years being 2017 and 2018) with the warm winter following its hottest ever summer and a historic early start to the bushfire danger period. In the first half of 2019, the UK saw more moorland fires than any other year on record.
It has been reported this weekend that senior White House advisers at the G7 summit are frustrated at the prominence of "niche issues" like climate change on the agenda, when they want to focus on the economy. The UK is potentially only 10 weeks away from crashing out of the EU with no deal, which would have enormous consequences for the environment AND the economy.
The way we choose to measure economic growth, GDP, completely decouples financial capital, which has no value on its own, from the resources and systems that generate it - natural, human asocial capital. The Amazon wildfires should make plain the insanity of destroying Earth's ecosystems in the name of growth and expecting us to believe that it is a good thing.
We need sustainable economic activity by urgently transitioning to a low carbon economy, one where we fully recognise that the financial capital we generate only has a value for so long as the natural, human and social capital from which it is derived can sustain it. While we continue to refuse to acknowledge the true costs of our consumption, we also fail to recognise where we can create real value in mitigating, or reversing, the effects of centuries of depletion of our resources.
The alternative to our current western hemisphere lifestyle isn't to go back to living in caves and don't believe anyone who uses this straw man as a scare tactic to delegitimise those who question the status quo. No, the real prize is to seize the opportunity to develop new technologies, new economic models and new ways of thinking that transform all of our lives for the better. We can decide right now to live within our planetary boundaries, we know how to do it. We are lacking the political leadership in the USA and UK, but we can all add our voices to the demand for change until the cacaphony is deafening.
The first line of this article is taken from a poem by the amazing Nikita Gill (@nktgill) and I reproduce it here with her permission. Think about her words, and add your voice to the throng.
"Where were you when the earth burned?"
they will ask, and we will explain to them
about Brexit and Trump and Fake News
and billionaries and corporate taxes and big oil
and how it wasn't just the rainforest burning
but Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen
and Kashmir and Sudan were bleeding too
and the ice caps were melting
and the coral reef was dying
and the tigers and leopards
and elephants were going extinct
and of course, so many of us were fighting
but the well of truth was poisoned
so strongly and how we did not listen to
the environmentalists and scientists on time
because how does one fight monsters
when there are an eternity of them
to fight, we promise, we promise, we tried.
"Where were you when the earth burned?"
they will ask, and we will hold our hands out,
and take theirs and say, "we, too, like you,
were hoping, praying, wishing...
and just trying to survive."
Nikita Gill