2050.....2035....2030 - Stop there - 2030.
I have a problem with how to pitch this proposal where it counts. Here in America, in spite of the repeated nervous caveats concerning the pandemic, the natural disasters and not-so-coded messages from the Almighty, just over half the population is breathing deep sighs of relief every day as we hear leaders who speak soberly and sanely or at least intelligibly and the rhetoric from the top is beginning to spread hope across the wider world. "The world can longer do the minimum in the face of climate change" says Biden today as we re-sign the Paris Accord we should never have left. So why my rising frustration and alarm?
"Too little too late so far and continuing" is my theme, which may seem harsh and ungrateful to shout now in the face of reassurances from the titans of capitalism and government, that the recent paroxysms of blind greed are over. I fear that we are suicidally mistaken if we believe in the talking up, the figures, the promises, even some of the science.
Here I might flood the piece with the best facts and figures I can find, statistics ending in promises which may or may not have a basis in the real world and the possibilities of survival. The fearsome scale and complexity of our planetary activities and problems could always hypnotise us, and with only barely perceptible memory-loss we could leave the meeting, the conference, the session of government, mistaking the promise for the achievable goal that would be truly effective.
Yes, I am profoundly worried about the signals of crisis I am picking up. Here are my top ten in the natural world, often set aside and easier to assign longer timelines of recovery than the solely human: the thinning and extinction of vast numbers of species. melting ice, still-rising CO2 levels, warming oceans, microplastic everywhere, fires, droughts, floods, snow in Texas and the Middle East, particulate and other hazardous matter in the atmosphere, soil erosion and poisoning, unpredictable changes in the ocean currents, the major weather patterns, the very seasons - that's fifteen, sorry did I say ten, without trying, and I haven't even mentioned human disease, mass starvation and migration.
No, I do not underestimate human powers of innovation and invention, I know that some of the threats are cascading from a few root underlying causes and our leaders have to spread calm determination rather than flat panic.But the chances are still slim with the likes of Xi Jinping, Modi, Yoshihide Suga, Bolsinaro, most of the Middle Eastern dictators and half a dozen European leaders including our very own Boris Johnson in charge, and the giants of capitalism are still making their calculations first and their PR second - so even with our own US worst offender temporarily at least off the stage, we need a BIG URGENT PLAN WITH ALMOST IMPOSSIBLY TIGHT TIMESCALES.
So to my point. Whole nation states are saying that they will be carbon-neutral or even negative by 2050, 2035 etc.; many cities and regions are following suit, GM and Ford are promising no more gas vehicles by 2030, 2035 etc. and I could cite many more examples of virtue tomorrow, or at least a decade or two ahead. By 2050 we'll be pure and clean, relaxing by the pool and ready for the shuttle to Mars.
No, no, and no again! It may seem churlish to reject the comforting dates and figures without six international conferences and a hundred peer-reviewed articles to back me up, and the goals are at very least conceived in terms aligned with what we have to do. No, we are not in the desperate days of the last US administration, when the whole dialogue was crazily distorted and largely meaningless and we seemed to be pedalling backwards as fast we could go.. It seems a little rough on Uncle Joe to shout "Not good enough!", and much harder to make that stick with people we are so much happier to see in charge, after so much impotent confrontation.
The dates we should be pulling back towards us are 2025, 2030, 2035 at the furthest, not the comforting 2050. For some goals, 2030 seems impossible without massive upheaval, unemployment, the world economy and financial system in chaos. True.
The big car companies calculate the longevity of factories, the power consortia the working lives of power stations and comfortable projections for future construction, the oil giants their profit margins for various sources of energy after oil, and government agencies what their masters and mistresses judge the people can stand. We have to adopt another strategy altogether. We have to prepare for the worst-case scenarios, But that itself, ambitious and inspiring, is not good enough. We have to add and multiply the crisis effects of combinations and cascades of connecting crises, and take the boldest measures in the light of these multiplied calculations. Politics has to become not the art of the possible, but the art of pushing on with the impossible, at least for a century. Old-style politicians were not made for this, nor were our democracies, especially now when they are bedevilled by extreme polarization.A "moon target" of a decade similar to the 1960's post-Sputnik but not the effort of one country in a clearly-defined Cold War is called for, a much more difficult ambition.This is the decade where every significant step has more power the earlier we can achieve it. This decade, not the next three or four I know this, in my very bones. Don't trust me, check the facts.
For now, the world of 4 am feels cold and forbidding. Time for more warmth, and a little sleep - but not for too long. Speed up the musak, friends, raise it above the perky morning level. It can still be music to our ears. I'm pretty sure the dawn will be sunlit, crystalline cold, beautiful to this beholder, whispering "Glory" as in the one-word reply of God to humanity in one of my poems.One doesn't have to have an orthodix faith to believe that. If we can stay in touch with Glory, we have a fighting chance.
