…well, it would be a disaster, wouldn’t it? But every now and then, a bit like daydreaming about what one’s Desert Island Disc choices would be, it’s nice to imagine what one would do if unwisely left in charge of things. So here are Sketching Weakly’s ruminations….
Making the visible invisible, is the usual magic trick. But making the Invisible visible, is the magic trick we need.
What can we learn from lockdown? What have we discovered from this strange experience of imposed isolation? To me, two things have emerged:
People will step up to a Big Ask
If people are given a clear fair rule they will follow it, accept it and be prepared to make reasonable sacrifices.
People have been willing to completely change their way of living in order to prevent the Covid19 virus rampaging through the population.
People love Nature.
To most people, nature is really important and a source of joy and wonder.
People have been treasuring their daily walks, getting to know their local patches of nature, and watching the small changes as Spring 2020 has been coming in, and transforming into Summer.
Can we use these two lessons to tackle climate change?
It often seems like the issues the world faces are endless, and to address the world’s problems we have to change everything. But it can help to concentrate on the two biggest existential threats to life (as we know it) on Earth. Those two threats are: loss of biodiversity, and carbon dioxide.
CO2 is invisible. When we emit it, we can’t see it. We can see the plastic trail that we leave, but it’s impossible to grasp what size your own carbon dioxide emissions are. But carbon dioxide is key, because the blanket of greenhouse gases is making the Earth warm, melting the Arctic and Antarctic and pushing temperatures worldwide out of the range of recorded history, towards a new climate that none of us or other life-forms on Earth are adapted for.
But the good thing is, we CAN change this by shutting down the flood of CO2 leaking from humankind into the atmosphere.
Action on Climate Change for me boils down to two main asks:
Less CO2 and more nature.
Can we use the magic trick of making the INVISIBLE VISIBLE, to make less CO2 and more nature?
Yes we can and here’s how. I’m going to do carbon dioxide first. Then I’m going to do nature. You can do them in any order you like.
WHAT DO WE WANT MORE OF? AND WHAT DO WE NEED LESS OF?