Prior to the emergence of COVID-19, there was increasing uproar over climate change, with doomsdayers, do-gooders and wanna-be influencers all voicing the importance of tackling climate change for the sake of the planet and all those who inhabit it… Or something like that… Maybe?
Well, there was definitely a lot of noise. So much so that politicians would speak about it and some Swedish teenager became a celebrity. So much so that every company started talking about it was doing to prevent climate change, or asked you to pay more for its service in order to offset its negative impact. Even kids who should be in school learning literacy, arithmetic and science (which, arguably, would give them the skills to come up with solutions to this mess) thought that, once they’d reached their private school via their private taxi (parent), they’d ditch their education to walk through the city streets yelling about how bad it all was and how they were forced to sacrifice their education for the sake of the planet.
Blame. There was – and is – so much blame in the noise. Blame on others. Blame on who went before. And with that, playing the victim. The fact is that the real victims don’t have a voice. And who are they blaming for their obsession with the latest i-phone when their 6-months-old phone works perfectly well? When the people they blame had to wait at least a week for news from loved ones on the other side of the world? Of course, there is truth to the fact that people are the product of the society that they are born into, but it doesn’t mean that it’s inevitable or that the new generation bears no responsibility. If we all blame what we were born into, we end up going back to the start of the hominids, and we end up discrediting both what our ancestors achieved and our own power to do what is right.
Blame. So much blame. Blaming the government; blaming the companies; blaming the people who love us and raised us; blaming technology. At the end of the day, blame is just noise. And noise is just distraction. Distraction that saves us from action. It’s a way to feel like we’re doing something when we’re doing nothing. It just makes us feel good. We’ll march down the street and call on the government to invest more in public transport or renewable energy, but we’ll fight against paying more at the petrol pump and better watch out if the rugby world cup has to be put on hold because of a cyclone…
But at least people care about the planet, right? I mean, that is the number one reason that people are concerned. It’s not to do with flooding or coastal collapse destroying homes, or concern about getting enough food as a result of more changeable weather and extreme events. And that wouldn’t make sense anyway, when people have chosen to build on floodplains, eroding coastal cliffs and the most fertile soils, replacing nutrients with chemicals, and vegetation with concrete…
The canary in the mine. When the death of an innocent animal serves as a warning sign for humans to get out of the mess. A lot of people have reacted to climate change as if it were a canary in the mine. The sad reality is that this is just the latest in a line of ever-larger canaries. You only have to have an inkling of the deforestation, toxic waste and extinction rate to realise that climate change only exacerbates the damage that has already been done. Climate change is a natural process, and there’s still debate as to how much is due to human activity, but there’s no denying that humans have a negative impact on this planet. These signs of a struggling planet have been all-too-visible in other parts of the world, but people who have profited from destroying the planet only now seem to care as it starts to affect their way of life, although they will still delay making any real change until it is too late, I fear.
It is interesting how, with COVID-19, climate change has taken a backseat. And no one’s talking about the burning of the Amazon. People are complaining about staying home as if it’s the end of the world. It’s actually not. The world hasn’t stopped. I guess I’ll wait for this to settle down for people to make noise about their rediscovered grand morals. But it will only be noise.
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