The Ship of Climate Change
We’ve been sailing aboard the fossil fuel energy ship to advance humanity for about 150 years now; that is, we invented machines that burn fossil fuel to create power and electricity, and it has brought us from horse and buggy to cars, airplanes, houses with electricity, and computers in our pockets so we can watch videos of cats wherever we are.
Also whatever this thing is.
Or this.
Or these.
Point is, we’ve been sailing on this big ship for a long time. And it’s brought us far. And I don’t know if you know, but big ships take a long freaking time to change course. Supertankers like this can take up to 15 minutes to stop. To turn, it takes some ships over a third of a mile to turn around. In other words, it takes a really really long time for ships to do anything. And that’s AFTER they’ve decided they want to change course, stop, turn around, etc.
So you can imagine, if it takes one ship with one captain and a crew of less than a hundred people to get a supertanker turned around, you can imagine the tanker ship of the human race with all it’s different governments, businesses, and industries is going to take a super super duper long time to change course on anything.
Humanity’s Ship Is Kinda Like The Titanic
With climate change, it’s like we’re The Titanic. The “terrible collapse of life as we know it on planet earth” iceberg is off in the distance. A bunch of scientists saw it about 50 years ago (a handful before then), but we’re still trying to figure out how to turn this ship. Within the past decade, that iceberg has come into sight for most of humanity (Yes, most people now agree climate change is real and we need to do something about it) and we’ve finally made some decent decisions to start to turn this ship to face a new direction.
It certainly helps that we’ve started to hit a few of the smaller icebergs. Terrible things like unprecedented fires all over the world, storms and flooding larger than have ever been seen, and entire countries disappearing under the rising seas.
But the good news is that recently ship IS turning. We’re slowly seeing the transition to producing power with renewables (it’s not just better for climate, but it’s cheaper now too). Hugely successful offshore wind farms powering entire cities, solar panels being deployed more and more every year, and increasingly popular electric cars, just to name a few things. We’re also seeing a large number of people, young and old, coming out to protest and make changes to their lives for climate change: increasing numbers of people going vegetarian, dreaming of cities built in balance with nature (Solarpunk!), and yearning to reconnect with nature.
Stay Calm, and Keep Pushing For Climate Solutions
Now a lot of you out there are worried. Climate anxiety is a real thing and it’s affecting a percentage of young people that is increasing every day. It’s hard to deal with. But don’t despair. The ship is turning. It’s starting to change course. The indications are there. Another bit of good news is that we get to control how fast this ship turns. And the more we push for change, the faster the ship will get turned around.
Along the way, We’re not sure how many icebergs we’re gonna hit, but I guarantee you we are gonna hit more. We will continue to see increases in ‘natural’ disasters and climate-related problems that will disproportionately affect those who didn’t have anything to do with causing it. And we don’t know if we’re going to avoid the big one (staying under 1.5 degrees C), but it’s within our power to avoid it. All it takes is us. Change from the collective us that is humanity.
So get out there. Protest and fight for systemic change. Change your life. For you. For us. Live ECO.
