Last time, I described how the film The Zone of Interest highlights the false comfort and cruel consequences of compartmentalisation. Here, I look at how narrow interpretations of the appropriate responses to climate heating are self-defeating and why we need to embrace grander visions now.
The appropriate responses I refer to are (i) limiting climate heating by reducing the volume of greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere (mitigation); (ii) being ready for a hotter world by putting measures in place in anticipation (adaptation); (iii) the Global North providing finance to the Global South, to help the latter’s adaptation efforts (loss and damage): and (iv) implementing the necessary changes in ways which support those adversely affected by the changes (just transition).
Despite these responses having been debated in detail at every recent COP, our collective efforts in respect of each continue to fall woefully short. Examining why this is reveals a pattern which explains those failings and identifies the challenge to be overcome in addressing them.
Mitigation is the issue which has attracted most attention to date. It has spawned lots of net zero commitments, from countries, from corporations and other public bodies. Problems with these commitments are manifold. One was highlighted by COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber at the end of that event, when he committed both to transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner” and to continue investing in oil. Another is the extent to which nations’ net zero commitments are dependent on technologies which remain unproven and do not currently exist at any scale, such as carbon capture and storage and green aviation fuel. The implicit message in both is that not only will there be no move away from fossil fuels until comparable volumes of alternative energy sources are available, but fossil fuel producers and their host nations will not make the investment to make that come about any time soon. Further, in no narrative of transition is the focus on reducing excessive consumption. There is an assumption that the primary concern is not reducing emissions to zero, but meeting energy demand. It is somehow unreasonable to contemplate humanity, either voluntarily, or via regulation, getting by with less – notwithstanding the consequences of not doing so.
This is another form of compartmentalisation. By discounting the most pragmatic and obvious solution, those benefitting the most (and who doubtless assume they will suffer the least) from continuing to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere are able to dissemble. They claim to be heading towards net zero and engaging in transition whilst continuing unchecked in their fatal practices.
Adaptation, to date, has been something of the poor cousin to mitigation. There is a sense that it comes second chronologically: first we need to reduce emissions, then we need to deal with the consequences of climate heating when it happens. What is understood by adaptation, certainly in the UK, remains rooted in technological (e.g. improving flood defences) and financial terms (such as creating natural capital markets to persuade landowners to look after their land in generative ways and wealth holders to pay them to do so in expectation of a financial return).
There is a degree to which, especially in the Global South, it is necessary to put measures in place to anticipate and protect citizens from drought, famine, wildfires and more. However, as with mitigation, it is a massive missed opportunity to think of adaptation only in these financial and technical terms, when we could be encouraging a re-framing of our relationships with each other and with the rest of the living planet. Rather than falling back on the thinking and limited dependencies that humans can offer from within the prevailing hegemonic narrative that has triggered, and is exacerbating, this crisis, we can embrace adaptation as the opportunity to change for the better these critical relationships.
It will not be enough to switch to new energy sources if that just means we still plunder the planet but in different ways. It will not be in any of our ultimate interests if a minority of us continue to consume the earth’s resources beyond its capacity to replenish those resources, whilst others die as they scramble for enough simply to survive. Financial wealth will mean little if our planetary health is so out of balance that extinctions continue to proliferate and ecosystems collapse. As homo sapiens, we know how to live in harmony with the rest of the natural world: we have done so for far longer than we have sought dominion over it. We know, because we experience it when we allow ourselves to, the strength of connection we feel with nature, when we immerse ourselves in it and allow ourselves to care for and to love it.
Adaptation of this kind is about gaining so much more than we might give up through seeking less material possessions, less financial surplus. It is a chance for our quality of life to expand in ways we have almost forgotten during the years of accretion of debt to accumulate possessions; longer and longer working weeks; increasing social pressures and disconnection; and an increasingly intrusive background thrum of impending doom. Instead, adaptation can be built around an intentional focus on regeneration and care and restoration and healing; on embracing a feminine energy in balance with and complementing the masculine one which has predominated of late; on recognising and celebrating our interdependence with the rest of the living planet.
This is an attitude that does not have to wait until mitigation efforts have been exhausted. It can inform mitigation efforts now, transforming them from a process of intentional or reckless failing slowly, to becoming the inspiration for a more inclusive and collaborative vision. It can make the approach to loss and damage and to just transition one of collective endeavour: to transform them from mean, transactional, grudging attempts by the Global North to give up as little as they can get away with and to offer no more than the minimum, to beacons of redistributive practice with justice to the fore, setting the tone for future global engagement.
All this is the opposite of compartmentalism. It is being open minded and open hearted. This is a condition which initially provokes a keen sense of vulnerability but which, particularly if taken up in large numbers, can quickly become a source of strength. This may make us far less vulnerable to climate heating and its consequences than is likely to be the case on our current trajectory.
Currently, it is beyond the capacity (or will) of those vested in the current system to think in these terms. It is in our interests to widen their horizons if we want to avoid the temptations of compartmentalism ourselves should a darker future prevail. The final post in this series will highlight some examples of this being understood which, if they can be brought together into a coherent narrative, could begin to embed the change we need to see.