What would you do if YOU could save the planet?

Do you consider yourself a hero? Because when thinking about my headline and saving the world, I automatically think of an action movie where the world is threatened by a higher force – be it a virus, a meteor, a dragon, aliens. And then this one person or group of people heads out to save the world. 

Don’t you love watching these movies and join in with pure excitement? In the movies, in most cases, the hero wins the battle and saves the world. We can all go to bed, sleep well, and get on with our lives. It was in the end, “just” a movie. 

But what if this threat was real? Would you consider yourself one of the heroic people who venture out to kill the beast? And what if you knew there was a threat, but you cannot really grasp it? And there we are, right in with the greatest threat of our time. Climate Change. The problem: It is looming. It is slowly advancing. It is far away and therefore we are not compelled to act.

How do we better understand Climate Change? 

The matter of climate change is complex. While we all – or at least the majority of us – know it is a matter that needs to be taken seriously, we cannot entirely comprehend its full force. 

Personally, I believe that most of us are actually climate illiterates as we do not learn anything about climate change or carbon emissions in our daily lives (read my article on the topic here: https://bit.ly/3pJ8gFC). It is not a class in school nor is it something you address in private conversations. And I get it. Who wants to talk about humankind killing their own planet and destroying the only known place in this universe where we can live? It is not a conversation you have at your dinner table. 

The essential problem with fighting Climate Change: We are all very much alive and many of us are very comfortable with the way things are. And while we all read the terrible headlines of climate catastrophe happening around the world, most of them do not touch our lives. And therefore, we do not panic. Or act. 

And to be frank, this is a very human reaction. 

Three Evils of Climate Change 

When I think about Climate Change, I see it as “putting all evil and unimaginable scenarios mixed with all human and psychological challenges I can think of in a box. And then I give this box to my loved ones and ask them to solve the problems. Sounds terrible? It is. 

Climate change overwhelms us. We know we need to do something, but we freeze in the moment, just like a deer in the spotlight of a car. For us to solve the matter of climate change, we need to face these evils and more importantly we need to understand them.

There are several evils surrounding Climate Change and I want to pick three and walk you through why they are so crucial to understand. 

Climate Change does not have a clear narrative

Think about the action movie again. It has a clear challenge, e.g. there is a large meteor heading towards our planet. We can measure its speed and its direction. And we can act accordingly. Or if you think about real happenings, when Covid-19 broke out, we started researching the source of the virus to fight it. Once we identified the virus, we started working at a cure immediately. It takes time but we are inclined to hurry as there are people’s lives directly at stake. 

These are clear narratives, they contain heroes, and villains. And they also have a clear timeline: we can tell when the fight began and when the battle was won. The story of Covid-19 is not yet over, but with vaccines being developed at the fastest possible pace, we can see the vague light at the end of the tunnel. 

The story of the fight against climate change does not have that kind of clearness. Its effects are experienced around the world in quite different kinds of ways. They say that a hurricane in New York or a Typhoon in Southeast Asia are entirely associated with climate change; however, exactly how and why they are related is still unclear. And this unclarity also explains why there are still a lot of people who don’t believe in climate change at all. A survey among Germany, the UK, France and Norway in 2017 revealed that in Norway, four percent of its population questions climate change, in France it was six percent, in the UK 12 percent and in Germany even 16 percent.  Every fifth German did not believe in climate change arguing that its existence was not scientifically proven. And it obviously doesn’t help if a head of state publicly denies climate change and calls it a hoax. Luckily, there will be another president taking over soon and shifting back the focus on saving our planet. 

This makes it difficult as we do see a clear villain that we can beat. 

Climate Change is still so far away

Climate Change is not an eminent threat. It proceeds slowly and that also makes it difficult to grasp. I read a good example the other day: 

Imagine your child is playing on a climbing frame. They bend out far and appear as if they are about to fall off it.  What will you do? Most likely, you will run towards your kid at a speed you didn't even know you had in you.

Imagine that someone tells you that climate change could affect your child’s life to an unthinkable degree sometime in the future. What will you do? Most likely, you will not do anything at all. And what could you do? You do not even know when that deadly moment will occur. Maybe it will not even affect your child but your child’s children. 

This makes it difficult as we don’t see the threat happening in a timeframe that affects us. 

I cannot solve Climate Change alone

If you see a problem in your daily life, you go about to solve it. But there are problems you cannot fix by yourself. Climate change is such a problem. 

I read this interesting article in Quartz that refers to a recent Yale poll. “Two-thirds of Americans said they felt a personal responsibility to reduce global warming. Yet while there are things everyday people can do to reduce their carbon emissions, it is clear that “solving” climate change will require an unprecedented overhaul of the global energy system. And social systems will need to adapt to the climate impacts that are already locked in, including sweeping reforms of urban design, housing, and healthcare.”

The interesting thing is, that we can all do our part in reducing carbon emissions and fighting Climate Change. The same article names five things every individual can do:

1. Reduce your fossil fuel diet. You can eat less meat, waste less food and water overall, and drive less. If you have to fly, try to avoid flights with connections; the bulk of airline emissions happen during takeoff and landing, so two flights have a much bigger impact than one of the same distances. 
2.  Lead by example. Take action in reducing your carbon footprint and talk about it to your family and friends. Your actions may encourage them to follow.
3. Form a daily reading habit. Remember I said we are all climate illiterates? One key way to change that is to learn more about it. If you gather facts about it you can more confidently talk about it to others.
4. Get involved in politics, especially locally. There are plenty of local issues that are essential for climate adaptation where individual voices or small-scale community organizing can make a big difference.
5. Practice compassion, listen, and check your privilege. Climate change is ultimately a story about inequality. Most of the climate disasters happen in the Southern hemisphere and often people are hit the worst that are living in poor conditions anyway. Remember the Hurricane devastating Haiti - followed by an earthquake, the recovery was hard on the country’s people. 

Do these points make you reconsider the aspect that you cannot solve Climate Change alone? Of course, you cannot do it alone, but you alone can act and contribute to the fight against Climate Change. And now imagine millions of people would do the same. You would be part of that group of people who ventured out to fight the threat.