This is how the emergency warning sent to people in danger in Australian bushfires starts. Two lines down, the sobering information appears:
It is too late to leave.
The rest of the message gives information about how to survive a bushfire:
Australia is suffering from severe wild fires, due to incredibly high heat and drought conditions, which are in turn due to early stages of climate change. The average temperature across the whole of Australia was over 40°C for 11 days in December. Think about that: Australia is a big country, with lots of temperature variations from one end to the other. That the average temperature of the whole country to be over 40, for nearly half the month, means that there aren’t just weird anomalies here and there. It’s serious.
We can see the dramatic pictures coming out of Australia, like Allison Marion’s picture of her 11 year old son steering their boat away from their home. The picture was taken midmorning, but instead of clear blue skies the thick smoke has blotted out the sun and it was nearly dark
Because of the fires, over a billion animals have died. Many species are being driven towards extinction as their habitat goes up in flames, including koala bears.
This isn’t a story about Australia
In Ottawa, we’ve had record setting, “once in a century” flooding twice in the last three years. Recently we’ve had severe droughts one summer, high levels of rainfall another summer. These are not standalone events.
We all know about climate change. We’ve known for decades now. It’s not new. What is new is that we’re starting to see the devastating consequences.
What the scientists are saying
During the Chernobyl disaster the scientists, from the earliest moment, were issuing dire warnings: “We need to evacuate! People will die! This is a calamity!”
They were brushed off by the politicians.
“Everything is under control.”
“Things will be fine.”
“The scientists are alarmists who are spreading misinformation.”
Eventually, when even with the most determined effort people couldn’t ignore the burns on the faces or the vomiting of victims, they were ready to listen to the scientists. But it was too late by then. Thousands suffered because they were determined to not accept what was going on around them as real, or to take action.
Scientists are, right now, saying that we need to take urgent, major action about climate change; that we only have seven years to totally eliminate our net greenhouse gas emissions.
What does this mean, exactly? Think about it: no more car trips. No more flights. No eating meat. No heating your house with natural gas.
And from the people who don’t understand the environment, we hear the same lack of urgency; the same unwillingness to do something, as during the Chernobyl disaster.
Greta Thunberg is spreading hysteria and fears
I was inspired by Greta Thunberg. Her stark, uncompromising speeches finally made me realise that it made absolutely no sense, in the face of the crisis that we are facing, to go on like usual. It was time for action. More so, it was time for total, determined action.
Some people dismiss Thunberg as being alarmist. That she doesn’t offer solutions. She is needlessly worrying people. Just like they said about the scientists at Chernobyl. Besides, she’s sixteen years old. It’s unfair to expect her to solve the world’s problems. Regardless: yes, she is raising the alarm, and we need to take heed, because she’s right.
So what do we do?
Stopping climate change is a big problem. We can’t stop heating our homes. People won’t just stop flying, or eating meat, or getting to work, any of the other changes needed. The economy can’t just stop.
We need a large-scale plan for how to do the changes required quickly and intelligently, looking for ways to do the things that we want to do (like having warm houses, or getting from one place to another), while at the same time stopping global warming. It will be a massive, costly effort. Not making the changes will be even more costly.
None of the plans put forward by governments comes close to doing enough.
In World War 2, the economies of the industrialized world focused on one single goal: win the war. The news media dedicated themselves to reporting about the war. Companies reoriented their production. People bought war bonds to fund the effort. What’s needed now is a similar, all-out effort to fight climate change. We can do it again, and we need to do it now.
As individuals, we can’t wait for government and businesses. We need to do all we can, right away.
We owe it to future generations. When my daughter, 7 years old at the time, learned about climate change and how it was affecting the area around Ottawa, she was distraught. To her. climate change wasn’t about abstract notions like species extinction and flooding: It was about a deer, slowly starving in the woods, because drought was killing the plants; or a family of squirrels dying an excruciating death, being burned alive in a forest fire. What can I tell her to make her feel better? Because, the sad reality is, she’s right. She cut through the bullshit and saw what we all need to see.
The time to act is now. You might not know all the solutions. You might not have all the answers. I don’t. It doesn’t matter: you can start.
If you’re not doing all you can to fight climate change, what are you waiting for?