It seems everywhere I go these days I see signs saying, “Climate Action- Now!”. But what do people mean by climate action? What exactly are they calling for? Are they calling for the right actions? Is our climate message the right one? Are our demands workable? Will the necessary outcomes be achieved?
It’s time we more carefully analysed our call for climate action to make sure we are focussing on the right message.
From what I can tell the current climate action framing goes a little something like this-
We’re happy to remain within the paradigm of pursuing endless economic growth. For the foreseeable future we will continue to allow corporations and governments to use expanding consumption to drive economic growth. This consumption growth will primarily be driven by population growth fuelled by the mass movements of people from low consumption to high consumption countries.
But we do also want to see the billions of poor lifted to at least a lower middle-class lifestyle- as poverty must be eradicated. We will accept the unavoidable rise in energy and resource demands, and the inevitable rise in waste generation which will accompany that process. But we believe this can be offset by the rich suddenly abandoning their lifestyles and accepting middle class existences. The ecological savings then being distributed among the billions, while we simultaneously achieve the necessary net reductions in emissions, year on year.
So, we’ll ignore the unprecedented size of the human population, and the fact that we have added the last one billion in just 11 years. We will just allow population growth to play out over the next 60–70 years, without sending out any particular messaging other than “It’s good for economic growth”…
…click on the above link to read the rest…