I don’t want to be writing this post. It’s significantly easier to sit on twitter and be distracted by whatever the current hot political topic is than it is to look the climate crisis in its face. Not that those other things aren’t important. We are seeing a wholesale attack on New Zealand’s sociopolitical and economic structure in a way that we haven’t seen since the 90s, and this time it seems even worse.
But then somehow this pierced the social media veil.
United Nations sounds ‘Red Alert’ as world smashes every major global climate record
Every major global climate record was broken last year and 2024 could be worse, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said on Tuesday, with its chief voicing particular concern about ocean heat and shrinking sea ice.
The UN weather agency said in its annual State of the Global Climate report that average temperatures hit the highest level in 174 years of record-keeping by a clear margin, reaching 1.45 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Ocean temperatures also reached the warmest in 65 years of data with over 90% of the seas having experienced heatwave conditions during the year, the WMO said, harming food systems.
from Newshub 20/3/24
The video in the piece references the New Zealand context.
Beyond that, I’m not sure what to say. Maybe no-one will bother commenting. The UN sounded a Red Alert and we all carried on as if it’s not happening. I get that the scale of the problem is difficult for the human mind and heart to deal with. What I don’t get is why we’re not even trying.
During the pandemic a leftie friend told me that it was unfair to criticise progressives for not organising around climate because people were struggling. Last year it was the cost of living crisis. This year it’s both of those (why is no-one talking about the ongoing impacts of covid on society?), plus a government intent on radical right wing change that is going to cause immense chaos. Many of us are reeling.
And all of that will pale in comparison to the shit coming down the line within most of our lifetimes.
The only way this gets better is if we act. On climate we desperately need stories of how things can work out so that people feel it’s worth putting energy and time into climate action despite other urgent issues being in the foreground. But in order for those stories to exist, people have to make a conscious choice to read/listen/watch them and engage and take those messages out into the world.
We did the hard yards on getting people to wake up to the crisis. Now we have to show the way through.
Another friend said to me a decade ago that the fuckery coming from big business and right wing politics over climate was the death throes of capitalism. I found that comforting at the time, now I find it terrifying, because I understand there are people that will literally choose the death of the planet if it means they can have power and money now.
Which is by way of introduction to say that we can see NACTF’s current fuckery as being part of the same dynamic. The job cuts, mining and oil drilling, attacks on disabled people and beneficiaries, the threat to news media, stealing from the poor to give to the rich, the war on nature, all of these are contained within the climate/ecology crises, and arise out of the same condition.
The problem we have is that if we close focus on the things most urgently in our face, this plays exactly into their hands. Those things aren’t a distraction, but we have to see them in the context of the bigger waves. The time has passed for being able to put climate action on the backburner. What we might find is that climate action addresses the death cult as well. Maybe it’s the only thing that will, because it’s a radical choosing of life.
There is a Climate Strike coming up on Friday April 5th. That’s the ball in our court.
p.s. you know what protects us from tsunami? Forests.
Mod note: no climate denial under my posts. That includes ‘it’s too late’, ‘adaptation not mitigation’, ‘NZ is too small to make a difference’. All of those have been addressed many many times, and they all amount to saying the crisis isn’t as bad as it is. Take it to Open Mike.
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