Alarming disconnect stops us from imagining a solution

-       by Robert McLean

A disconnect of cosmic-like dimensions frustrates climate change activists.

Considered in geological terms, climate change is happening at a withering rate; confusingly however, on a human time-scale, it is moving at snail’s pace.

Therein lies the massive, confusing and ultimately hugely risky disconnect.

Our response to climate change demands an immediacy of action never seen outside modern times, except that of World War Two.

Many, who live with the misplaced comfort that nothing appears to be happening, don’t see any need to change personal or societal behaviour and so the human contribution to the disruption of earth’s climatic machinery continues largely unabated.

So, climate change is arriving at an alarming speed, but to many, it is dawdling along, if happening at all and so will not impact on their lives and in what is an instance of tragic intergenerational irresponsibility, they choose to do nought or align themselves with some feel good green ideology.

This year, in the Goulburn Valley at least, has seen residents treated to mild weather with temperatures below that those expected for this time of the year.

And so the disconnect worsens with even more people not understanding, or even caring about, the fact that the weather (that’s what we have been experiencing since the New Year began) is different from the climate; a dynamic that continues to change and become even more remote from preserving conditions that ensures the earth is habitable for humans.

So here we stand in the midst of this alarming disconnect – geologically we are rushing toward an irreversible difficulty, but looked at through the human prism that is evolutionarily about “now”, nothing of any concern is happening.

Imagination has led us to where we are now
and it's about all we have left to rescue us
from the difficulties of climate change.

Humans have what it a unique skill in in that they can imagine, but for centuries now that ability has been perverted and applied to imagining things and ideas that we know now are clearly not in humanity’s best interests, hence we have climate change.

Yes, we can still imagine, but after many decades, if not centuries under intellectual assault form the capitalist/commercial world, that ability has become impoverished, almost skeleton-like, and so is largely limited to ideas and things that are profitable in our consumerist ways and being energy hungry make us even more remote from resolving the dilemmas that will, and are, disrupting life on earth,

To make our way through the unfolding disruptions brought upon by climate change, we need to renew, refresh and refocus our imagination and figure out a new way of living, a way that is far less energy intensive, kinder to the world and more about equality, rather that the amazing and disturbing inequality the world now suffers.