Menu
In 2019 more than 11,000 scientists in 153 countries—ranging from Morocco, Egypt and Cameroon to Russia, China and the United States—warned that the Earth “clearly and unequivocally faces a climate emergency” (see, Ripple, Wolf, Newsome, et al., 2019). UN Secretary-General António Guterres declared last October that the climate crisis is a code red for humanity.
My own colleagues are actively discussing the need of a very big shift in the economic paradigm. MacArthur Fellow, Dr. Saul Griffith underscores a climate emergency, even as he documents the very real possibility to Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. And yet? It is so much bigger than climate change alone. We must tackle what I often refer to as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But as you’ll read, I think there may be a hidden “fifth horsemen” of the Apocalypse. Bear with me as I tease it out.
In this case, we have the Pandemic and Ecosystem damages. We keep pushing land, soil, and water with our roads, developments, and wastes which encourage zoonotic leaps and continue to ravage the Earth. Second?
Which is clearly the growing burden of Climate Change. In the 1980s we averaged at least $19 billion of structural damages from climate-related fires, droughts, and storms. And that does not cover health, employment, or other social costs. Last year it was $152.6 billion. See the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Summary Stats. And if my numbers are right? By 2040 it could be 3 times bigger. Yet, it is still so much bigger than that. And third? Hmmm. . .
Or in this case, the slow erosion of our social and economic well-being as the non-productive uses of energy and other resources continue to mount. For the first time in 2020, our anthropogenic mass finally equaled all the biomass on Earth. We are, indeed, into the Anthropocene. And it is causing a very big and diminishing resource productivity, so that while we worry about the nation’s fiscal burden or debt, the growing resource burden and debt may be much, much bigger. Turning finally to…
We suffer so many inequities including racial, sexual, income, and climate injustices. We have pushed ourselves – all of humanity – into a corner in which all four of these Horsemen, and their many related burdens, must all be solved together. Yes, we can do it with much greater levels of energy and resource productivity, together with renewables, but we may have placed ourselves into a “yes and” position. And yet? I think there is the lingering Fifth Horseman, what I will call…
Which is to say, the lack of trust in our different forms of social institutions, communities, and our many different forms of governance. We must learn to communicate the science and enable the trust. Not in ways that take away our individual sense of pride, or our opportunities, but to recognize the need for a more trusting, greater level of connection and interaction to deal with the erosion of the Earth and our social, environmental, and economic well-being. Together. Because unless more of us come together quickly and create an immediate response, we face either a very hard decade of getting things done – the huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and the replenishment of our many ecosystems and planetary boundaries – or we likely face a very bad century in oh so many ways. . . Ouch!!!
There is neither a law of physics nor economics that prevents us from quadrupling the productive use of energy and other resources. Rather, it is much more an issue of imagination and our political will to get it done.
– John A. “Skip” Laitner