Eric Holthaus is a meteorologist who has grown weary of the inadequacy of scientific discourse as a means of conveying the urgency of the climate crisis; instead, he's written an inspiring future history in which he traces the year-by-year steps that lead to a just climate transition: "a vision of what it could look and feel like if we finally, radically, collectively act to build a world we want to live in."
This is the kind of thing I tried to do with my start-of-the-decade Globe and Mail piece on imagining a decade that gives rise to the first generation in a century to look to the future without fear. I'm also working on a new, post-Green New Deal novel called "The Lost Cause" that starts with a future of climate crisis and works back from there.
I loved reading this. Stories of the emergence of the political will to face our crisis head on are the precursors to mustering that political will in the real world.
We will begin to redefine individual actions as actions on behalf of the collective. We will see care work and mutual aid as being at the core of climate action. The term “climate action” will start to lose meaning. It will just become “action”.
We will begin the process of climate reparations – partially repairing the loss and damage of colonialism and decentralising political power on a global scale. We will begin the process of returning land to indigenous control.
We will see each other as people deserving of the right to thrive.
Indigenous people have, for centuries, effectively managed more than 80% of the world’s biodiversity. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides a particularly effective model for how to uphold peaceful nation-to-nation relationships while simultaneously building a world that works for everyone. We, as humans, have known how to do this for a very long time. We will remember how to do it again.
We will finally reach peak global emissions. We will finally stop accelerating towards our own destruction.
In 2030, we ended the climate emergency. Here’s how [Eric Holthaus/The Conversation]