Be a 'language leader' a play you part in breaking this contemporary curse

By Robert McLean

Somehow we have to change the conversation.

Life in Australia and many other parts of the developed world is simply too good and so any suggestion that we alter our behaviour is met with “Why?”
Life in the underdeveloped parts of the world is so bad, that any suggestion about doing things differently is greeted with “How?”

The gap between the “why” and “how” groups becomes more distinctive each day and with the mitigation of climate change being many faceted, one of the cards that must be played is that of equity.

The way of life for many, particularly in the developed western world, must come down, while that of those in the world’s underdeveloped countries must be ratcheted up.

How do we talk about living a life in which we use less energy?

How do we explain to people that we can live a less energy-intensive life and still enjoy a fulfilling existence?

What do we say to break the prevailing consumerist vice-like grip that most are addicted to?

A simple elaboration of the facts of climate change is clearly inadequate as appears to do little other than further entrench many deeper in their denial of the realities that are eroding the near ideal atmospheric conditions that have existed for about 10 000 years.

The corporate world loudly proclaims its interest in preserving the environment on which it so inescapably depends, but the charade never stands in the way of ensuring record profits; profits which are its legal and prime reason for being.

Those profits are built on the fossil fuels, the very things that are producing climate change and the same things in this finite world that are being seriously depleted.

Civilization arose from the first agricultural revolution about 10 000 years ago giving humans their first taste of surplus energy, a surplus that changed little until fossil fuels were discovered, understood and exploited about 200 years ago.

Armed with an energy source that freed us from our subsistence-style of living we quickly fell into a way of life, and a language, that quickly made what had gone before not only irrelevant, but something about which we seemed unable to contemplate, consider or even talk about.

No longer could we articulate or envisage life without the surplus energy afforded us by fossil fuels.

However, talk we must for if we don’t, we allow ourselves to continue to live in delusory times.

Even initiating a discussion is remarkably difficult for the conversation is complex and many people are either unaware or wilfully ignorant of the unfolding energy crisis and the seriousness of climate change.

Let's be a 'language leader" and talk
about energy and climate change.

Strangely, if we resolve the energy crisis (what crisis? the fossil fuel companies cry), we have taken a major step toward mitigating what is that is evolving, quickly in geological terms, as a wounded world climate that threatens humanity.

Technophobes see salvation in new technological developments that will end our reliance on fossil fuels, giving us bountiful energy resources that are not only free from greenhouse gases, but actually use some in their creation of this as yet unknown carbon dioxide-free energy source.

Shelve in bookshops all around the world are packed with books written by highly credentialed people who explain repeatedly that such a wondrous energy source does not only exist, but is not even on the horizon.

They explain that to further complicate the issue, even if that inexplicable energy-saving process was just a decade away, the transition from our reliance on fossil fuels to this a yet unknown new thing would be so disruptive, sweeping and costly, that implementation and adaptation to it could be beyond humanity’s capabilities.

The language most of us use, sees us cling to the dream, or fantasy, that our existing way of life will always be preserved through the application of this hitherto unknown and magical energy source.

In an energy sense it is 15 seconds to midnight and rather than discuss an unlikely future, it is time we reverted to a conversation about how we can apply what we already know to a different sort of future; a future similar to that the pre-agricultural revolution and one that has a striking resemblance to the subsistence living that has been common for most of human existence.

We have an inter-generational responsibility to engage all around us in the conversation, we need to be “language leaders” in that we can help people understand that a less-energy intensive life is not necessarily a lesser life, rather a life that it about the enhancement and broad betterment of the human experience through the greater understanding of what it is to be human, rather than a corporate slave and consumer.

Humans have walked the earth for about 200 000 years and with the surplus energy that arose from the first agricultural revolution some 10 000 years ago, we have made hitherto unimaginable changes to our lives and then with the understanding of fossil fuels, and their exploitation, we have arrived at a point after about 250 years where the continuation of the human experiment is in severe doubt.

Now we need to talk about that, but the language needs to be such that we “don’t scare the horses”.