{"id":239994,"date":"2023-07-24T12:00:46","date_gmt":"2023-07-24T11:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=239994"},"modified":"2023-07-23T09:12:05","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T08:12:05","slug":"facing-climate-change-as-one-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/07\/facing-climate-change-as-one-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing Climate Change as One World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>19 Jul 2023<\/em> – \u201c. . . we need to do everything we can<\/a> to keep (global) warming as low as possible.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When it comes to climate change, one two-letter word has me totally perplexed: \u201cwe.\u201d There\u2019s an implication of global unity \u2014 a transcendent \u201cwe,\u201d marching as to war (so to speak) \u2014 facing humanity\u2019s greatest crisis, undoing the exploitative, Earth-destroying aspects of our social structure and grabbing control over the planet\u2019s rising temperature. We need to do everything we can!<\/p>\n

Yeah, sure. And then it turns out \u201cwe\u201d aren\u2019t doing nearly enough. The blame gets passed around \u2014 to the rich countries of the global north, to the world\u2019s largest fossil fuel companies. And the ice keeps melting, the wildfires rage, average temperatures keep setting records. Scientists grow ever more distraught. The cry repeats itself: We need to do everything we can!<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t disagree with this. I just don\u2019t know who \u201cwe\u201d are, and hardly feel like a participant in the process, except in small ways: when I recycle stuff or argue with a climate-change denier or walk rather than drive wherever (achy legs, balance issues \u2014 I mostly drive). This isn\u2019t enough, of course. It\u2019s change from the social margins. The global warming \u2014 the global \u201cweirding\u201d \u2014 continues unabated, as do the warnings from the science community. National promises to change remain minimal, and are ultimately bypassed and ignored.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m trying to say is this: There is a \u201cwe\u201d that most Americans embrace and feel a part of, but it has nothing to do with the warming planet and collapsing ecosystem. Before we can begin \u201cdoing everything we can,\u201d we have to transcend our limited sense of who we are and what matters.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a>\u2019 Brad Plumer, for instance, writing about a report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, noted:<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernments and companies would need to invest three to six times the roughly $600 billion they now spend annually on encouraging clean energy in order to hold global warming at 1.5 or 2 degrees, the report says. While there is currently enough global capital to do so, much of it is difficult for developing countries to acquire. The question of what wealthy, industrialized nations owe to poor, developing countries has been divisive at global climate negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

These words quietly scream for a fundamental shift in the planet\u2019s political infrastructure. \u201cEncouraging clean energy\u201d isn\u2019t really any nation\u2019s first priority, especially if it\u2019s rich and powerful. As I read that paragraph, what popped into my head is this: The planet\u2019s annual military budget is about $2.2 trillion (with the United States accounting for nearly half of that). War is hell, but that\u2019s OK. It\u2019s the primary manifestation of nationalism, the primary expression of power. We have treaties and such \u2014 some nations are allies \u2014 but the essence of the situation is this: We live in an us-vs.-them world. We have to be continually cautions and, if necessary, aggressive. This is a divided world. Any questions?<\/p>\n

The problem, of course, is that the divisions are mostly arbitrary, not to mention pragmatic. There\u2019s nothing like a good enemy to help a country maintain its unity, to help a government assert control over the population. (Careful, he may be a commie.) But these arbitrary divisions are also distinct and specific; they\u2019re called borders.<\/p>\n

Borders have nothing to do with reality, but \u201cwe\u201d pretend that they matter \u2014 often to the detriment of people who need to cross them. And as climate change continues to create chaos, it makes certain regions uninhabitable. More and more human beings will find themselves being pushed out of the \u201chuman climate niche,\u201d which means they\u2019ll have to go somewhere else.<\/p>\n

As Anju Anna John and Stefano Balbi write at Common Dreams<\/a>, regarding a study called Quantifying the Human Cost of Global Warming: \u201cIn the worst-case future scenario \u2014 where the world reverts to fossil-fueled development and has a population of 9.5 billion at the end of the century \u2014 the study found that 5.3 billion people would be left behind. We would be looking at a world where about half the world\u2019s population would no longer be able to live in regions they once considered home.\u201d<\/p>\n

So they\u2019d have to move. They\u2019d have to become climate refugees, which probably means confronting a foreign bureaucracy at some border or other. Uh oh. That could be a problem, even though, according to The Guardian<\/a>: \u201c. . . the richest 1 percent of the world\u2019s population is responsible for twice the amount of greenhouse gases as the world\u2019s poorest 50 percent, who suffer the brunt of the harms.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far, the rich countries of the global north are regarded as having promised too little \u2014 and delivered even less \u2014 for climate adaptation efforts in poorer countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

We need to do everything we can \u2014 to minimize global warming, to deal with its inevitable effects on some. But this will only happen minimally in the context of the present moment, in which the wealthy and powerful are motivated primarily to protect and expand their wealth and power, and who will casually dehumanize those who are in the way or who attempt to cross a sacred border.<\/p>\n

This is not the \u201cwe\u201d that\u2019s going to do everything it can to save the planet, but it\u2019s the \u201cwe\u201d we\u2019re stuck with, at least for now. Truly dealing with climate change \u2014 doing everything we can \u2014 means transforming who we are and reorganizing ourselves as one world.<\/p>\n

______________________________________<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Robert C. Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based peace journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, <\/span><\/em>Courage Grows Strong at the Wound<\/span> (Xenos Press) is still available. Contact him at <\/span><\/em>koehlercw@gmail.com<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 commonwonders.com<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

19 Jul 2023 – When it comes to climate change, one word has me totally perplexed: \u201cwe.\u201d A transcendent \u201cwe\u201d grabbing control over the planet\u2019s rising temperature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":122360,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[686,993,493,380,75],"class_list":["post-239994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tms-peace-journalism","tag-climate-change","tag-global-warming","tag-paris-climate-agreement","tag-solutions","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=239994"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239996,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/239994\/revisions\/239996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=239994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=239994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=239994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}