There is no shortage of scientific evidence to suggest that the transition to a post-fossil fuel society is imminent, either through foresight or necessity.  Clearly, the latter – committing to decisive and meaningful collective change before the remaining critical climate tipping points are breached – is what we ought to be striving for.  This, however, requires taking action and making sacrifice when, in most of our day-to-day lives, the need to do so is not apparent.

Our consumerist society wasn’t built in a day; it is underpinned by an unassailable commitment to the eternal quest for ‘more’ which, by definition, has no end-point.  This is the driving force behind not only our economic and political system, but our values and lifestyles as well.  As a result, as much as we pay lip-service to how our out-of-whack values must give way to a commitment to sustainability, not many people are actually prepared to give up what this would entail unless they absolutely have to.

Foresight, however, requires taking action before the point when you absolutely have to.  It is about the precautionary principle, and committing to difficult decisions in the face of uncertainty, because the risks if we do not are too dire.  Climate change deniers, and the powerful interest groups propelling them, have done a very effective job of using the public’s underlying fear of making meaningful sacrifices to their lifestyles as leverage to wedge open that crack of uncertainty into a chasm of convenient doubt.

Increasingly, the public is buying any propaganda veiled as scientific evidence that discounts the occurrence and severity of the climate change issue hook, line, and sinker.  From a cynical point of view, these counter-arguments have given the majority of people a ‘way out’: they provide what can be construed as a rational basis to stop caring about an issue that was taking too much time and energy to continue caring about.  The public was, in a sense, itching for a Climategate scandal, which would allow us to dismiss all other frightening reports we have heard – and continue to hear – about the climate crisis.  Post-Climategate, guilt, fear, and urgency evaporated and life with heads in the sand resumed.

The reality now is that alarmism, despite the ever-increasing body of alarming and largely ignored facts that deal with the state of our planet, no longer works.  The majority of people have become desensitized to it.  And with it has gone the momentum and the palpable sense of urgency that seems required for foresight to translate into action.  As protectors of our grandchildren, what now are our options?  Do we have little choice but to sit and wait helplessly until the future becomes so undeniably bleak that necessity replaces foresight?

By Sandeep Kembhavi