Until the last moment...

What will it take for us to take bolder action?

I came across this article today which highlights a particular challenge for us humans in adapting to warmer temperatures and it sparked a few thoughts given the current pandemic: "Global warming now pushing heat into territory humans cannot tolerate" — https://theconversation.com/global-warming-now-pushing-heat-into-territory-humans-cannot-tolerate-138343

Whether you believe in man-made climate or not, it is hard to argue that temperatures are not rising, with significant implications for our environment and our lives through the connected web of the Earth’s ecosystem.

The COVID-19 crisis has challenged our notion of how work should be performed and did so very rapidly - executives who have held the underlying belief that those working from home are not actually working have been forced to accept a new reality and I hope will have reflected on their often unspoken beliefs. Economic activity had to be reduced or curtailed significantly as most governments around the world prioritised the health and well-being of their citizenry, hoping the economy will bounce back quickly eventually. Many things in our lives taken for granted have been challenged in a very short space of time.

With climate change which is likely already affecting far more people and probably will affect most of humanity within the next 60-80 years, we do not yet seem able to forge and implement bolder plans, often for economic reasons, perhaps because we have not yet faced an environmental event equivalent to COVID-19 (though some would argue the events are all around us we just do not seem to “see” them). If as nations we only really respond to the kind of strong stimulus that COVID-19 represented, I wonder, and not necessarily with excitement, what it will take for us to take decisive action on climate change.

It is instructive to see how resistant to change we are, until the last moment…