OPINION • Jun 28, 2020
What are we doing wrong about the climate change problem? (part 2/3)
Continued from the previous article…
We crave feedback; what I mean is we are doing an action we need to see a reaction. Like when driving a car, you expect to accelerate when you are pressing the throttle. The converse is also true; we go crazy when we don’t see or feel any feedback This is the primary factor behind people quitting exercising and dieting too soon; you don’t see any feedback, at least for the first few months. And working without feedback requires either immense volition or high rewards. Like when a young cricketer practices for years in hopes of playing for the Indian Cricket team.
If you think about it, lack of feedback is a major factor behind the failure of the most lot of climate change campaigns: Just because you have installed a solar roof on your home, you cannot expect the average ambient temperature by a couple of degrees (even when exercising you see feedback in a couple of months). The same is true not just at an individual’s level but also at levels of entire countries. The lack of feedback makes this more complex than anything. It is a highly powerful deterring factor– Listen to one of the dumb talks of Donald Trump about climate change. However dumb they may be, TBH, you cannot give an unequivocal answer to most of his questions.
But there is one precedent for climate change crisis – “Hole in the Ozone layer”. How this is a precedent? Let me explain. Same levels of global scale required action without feedback and we are actually en route to “closing the ozone hole”. But unlike the climate change crisis, the Ozone hole is a very simple problem (at least relatively). It was found that Chlorofluorocarbons (CFSs) and halons (Halogen compounds) react with ozone in the upper atmosphere and break down the O3. The sources for these gases were very limited. So, by simply banning those products using these gases, we could restore the Ozone layer. So, forget what I said earlier about this being a precedent to climate change, it was far too simple to be compared to the climate change crisis.
Since we don’t have any feedback, we have to resort to propaganda and marketing…. And this is where a lot of the mistakes are being made. But we have just a few ways to do it and we cannot force any decisions since we are living in a “Free Society”. As I wrote in my previous helmet article, fear, coercion, and guilt don’t work.
Science the shit out of it…
The utter worst way to make the people follow anything. Science and math are the two most insipid subjects ever (It's subjective, I love them, and I know a lot of people who hate them), and using them to disabuse people is hopeless, especially given that you won’t have any feedback. Think about what you feel when you are told that “Average global temperature will rise by 2 degrees in 20 years”. Do you even care? Everyone has their plate full of tomorrow’s concerns, who gives a shit about 20 years from now. Even if one does the response would be "We at Chennai have already lived at 40 degrees, so we won’t probably die at 42 degrees." And there are a lot of skeptics for science. A lot of people are actively Anti-Science (Like Donald Trump).
“ART”
Art is very powerful… and don’t go for the narrow-minded interpretation of art – Art means paintings. If you ask me, Art is all-encompassing. music, movies, photography, Design, and a lot more comes under the umbrella of Art. It is a mix of art and marketing, made Tesla as cool as it is now. It is the “coolness” factor that made Tesla the powerful brand it is today. Teslas won’t be selling as well if it looks like dull Fords or a Chevys.
A lot of photos and videos have made entire countries care about problems. Think of the Polar bear on a tiny melting Iceberg photograph, or better, watch the movie “Racing Extinction” I was talking about. A similar recent example would be the pregnant Elephant killed by eating the “Fruit Bomb” issue. Worse things are happening than pictured in these artistic creations, but art made us care like nothing else. Deep visceral emotions are at play when art is involved, the way science can never make us care. Trust me on this… Art is always more powerful than science, come to peace with this fact, sooner than later.
In contemporary society, few plays a powerful role as the Movies. It has the power to make or break opinions. Movies can make going green the new sexy. Like Tony Stark driving an Electric Audi in Avengers Endgame is a statement of intent (It may be a product placement, but still…). But this seldom happens here. If happens, it can have a substantial effect; Think of Thala Ajith, riding an Ather instead of a Royal Enfield or a Ducati, or Thalapathy Vijay giving an impassioned speech in his movie about going green. It might sound a bit uncool, but with the kind of influence they got, they can change the opinions of a lot of people.
However powerful Art maybe, there is no precedent of Art effecting thing kind of a change in the Status-quo. As much as I hate to say this, there is just one precedent where one thing changed even overturned the behavior of a large enough population in a relatively short period, the only time something made us do completely irrelevant and meaningless things without any kind of feedback… We have to turn to god.
Om Namo Narayana Naya or Allah or Jesus…
Make no mistake, I have no interest in Religion, I can even go so far to say that I am an anti-religionist and I know we are nothing but a tiny speck within an indifferent universe. But Religion is powerful, it gives people hope, it can sway people’s opinion and even it can make people do senseless things without any feedback. Believe it or not, every religion is created by a roomful of people to control people and create something to be in common between them, the same way Nations are created. But think about how powerful it has grown. It is the single most powerful emotion in the world. More powerful than nationalism, Science, Art, even all of them combined.
Using religion for the climate change crisis is not new, it has been happening for quite some time. Pope, inarguably one of the most influential people in the world, has made public discourse about the need to work for the climate change crisis. Oh, I hate to say this… Even people like Sadhguru has a great influence among people, and are starting to advocate the Green-way of life.
But truth to be told, we may be doing too little too late…. Even Science, Arts, and Religion combined may not help us restore the earth to pre-artificial carbon emissions world…. Maybe what we need is a "Thanos" to save us from the impending crisis...
But it is better to light a single candle than to curse at the darkness…
To be continued in Part 3…
REFERENCES
Racing Extinction - A Must watch film, I have attached a torrent link, if you want to watch... I strongly urge you to do so...
Pope
https://www.vox.com/conversations/2017/4/19/15271166/climate-change-religious-arguments
Sadhguru