'Survivor guilt', although having not yet survived!

-       by Robert McLean

Death will personally arrive before our disrupted climate system tips into a new and troubling paradigm.

Or at least that is the interpretation drawn from predictions of the world’s climate scientists.

Most are saying that our climate will retain some sense of normality until about 2050 and from then on become rather weird, that is what we now consider extreme weather events, will become the “new-norm”.

Should I see a sunrise in 2050, I’ll be 102 (in theory not impossible as I have a family history of longevity), but even at 68 now, I have a strange and inverted-type of survivor guilt.

Most people live their lives with the unstated hope that they will leave the world a better place than they found it: that is not going to the case for me and so I have that puzzling survivor-guilt already, even it is unlikely I’ll be a survivor.

However, my kids and grandkids will still be about and it’s my behaviour, or at least that of my generation, that has left the world in a somewhat depleted state. I feel bad about that – it’s “survivor guilt” before I’m even really a survivor.

Individual responses and personal behaviour will have some impact, but the real change, the essential and critical change hinges on society’s willingness to allow for, or opt for a governance process that brings changes to how the world community lives and behaves.

History is loaded with stories of revolutions; revolutions that were social, industrial, or both, but generally they were aimed at ideas that improved human life, and often they did just that, but frequently at a cost.

However, those revolutions often brought with them untended consequences, outcomes misunderstood or simply not known about at the time, that are now manifesting themselves as climate change, a disrupted climate system that is bringing changes to life on earth that will make all pervious revolutions, no matter how extreme, appear quite pleasant.

So what do we do?

A former Australian PM said in talking about terrorists said, “Be alert, not alarmed”, but in considering climate change, we should modify that suggestion and be both “Alarmed and alert”.

Ever since the fossil fuel-powered industrial revolution of more than two centuries ago, which resulted in many life-enhancing ways, we have become largely untroubled and international alarm has only arisen when the world has gone to war.

However, that war-time alarm produced a wonderful harmoniousness among many resulting in some, to this day unparalleled achievements that morphed over the post-World War Two decades into an untroubled and comfortable way of life, certainly for the developed world, that has silently coerced people into a state of mind from which they cannot escape and make the urgent decisions needed to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Yes, we need to be alarmed just as we were on the eve of World Wars One and Two, and alert to the steps we need to take, as world community to do what must be done if we ware to employ our physical and intellectual skills; our resources, again physical and intellectual; and at least give those who follow a chance of living in a world without a seriously disrupted climate system.

And, should we be able to get beyond the school yard-like squabbles that presently have us so in their thrall, then maybe, just maybe, my future, and yours, will not be so filled with regret, or guilt.