We Need the Earth
Not the Other Way Around
I see an amazing view outside my house every day.
Green lords over the snow in spring. Red and yellow take over in fall. White dominates in the winter. Lively animals and birds go about their business at nature’s pace, foraging for food, building nests, gathering for migrations. Nature is beautiful and awe-inspiring.
I turn on the news.
I see the orange-red haze of fires burning off the greens. Smoke shrouds entire regions in a grey cloak. White walls of hurricanes batter seaward cities. Black oil coats the blue oceans of Mauritius. I see once-lively migratory birds dying in the millions.
I read about oil and coal companies lobbying for relaxing emissions targets. Automobile companies pay out a pittance in an emissions scandal that will be forgotten even as the world burns.
I hear a young girl giving an impassioned speech to the UN assembly about what adults need to do to stop destroying the world they will bequeath to their children.
Meanwhile, the adult leader of the free-world wants us to rake forest floors while he saves coal jobs.
I switch off the TV.
Unlike Trump’s COVID-19 testing, however, I am aware that stopping the news feed will not make the problem disappear.
Climate change is real and visible. We are undeniably the cause. The rhetoric around it, however, is misdirected towards saving Earth. But the planet doesn’t need saving. Should it lose all breathable air and potable water, it will not mind. It will carry on spinning. Evolution will continue. We, on the other hand, will perish. Earth doesn’t need us; we need it.
But modern society is ruled by corporates. These bastions of capitalism care about bottom lines and minimizing costs. What that girl on TV, Greta Thunberg, may or may not realize is that thinking about the effect of business on the environment incurs a cost that companies would rather not pay. What they will find cheaper is to lobby governments to make it easier to do business at any cost to the environment. Greta’s speech might have put politicians to shame but they continue to pander to the whims of powerful companies to cling to their seat of power and their bottom lines.
What incentive do well-established oil, coal, and gas-based energy companies have to change the status quo by investing in expensive and inefficient renewable energy without immediate returns? What pitch do they make to shareholders concerned with nothing but profits? That they’ll reap the rewards in the future? That doesn’t cut it any more with the modern investor. What makes more sense for these lions of industry is to invest in killing cubs that venture into renewables before they become a threat.
This strategy won’t work forever. Eventually, renewable energy will catch on like the forest fires they hope to reduce.
It may be too late by then.
(I say renewables, but I mean all forms of green technology, whether currently available or under research and development.)
It would take a sacrifice by corporates on a global scale to address the issue of climate change.
Sacrifice, because right now fighting climate change is not worth the cost and effort required of organizations.
Corporates, because individuals cannot contribute as much as companies can, and while the collective human potential is limitless, the funds available to educate them all aren’t.
Global, because regardless of national borders drawn on paper, we live in a physically connected world. Efforts of one or few countries are easily undermined by an equally limited number of non-participating nations.
The concept of sacrificing profits to ensure human survival is alien to companies. Because a corporate made up of humans is not human. And the humans making it up likely view survival of the species through the lens of company vision while wearing the blinders of career growth. Which is to say most of us rarely think about the long-term survival of our species.
My ask is not for us to protect our planet or the various other species that call it home. Humanity’s track record in safeguarding the freedoms and survival of other species is so abysmal that I cannot reasonably ask that. My ask is for us to protect ourselves by taking a step back from our headlong rush towards annihilation and look at the bigger picture. If we do not bear this burden now, we will have to bear a far greater one later.
I do not know if it is reasonable to expect companies to invest heavily in research and development of eco-friendly products that will impact their profits for a few years. After all, companies are made up by and of humans that have a limited ability to envision life ten or five or even three generations ahead.
I do not know if it is reasonable to expect governments to take the measures required to bring about such change. They do not trust one other to work together long enough to make any lasting, positive change.
What I do know is I want to continue being able to see the amazing view I have now. I want to continue to see the beauty of changing seasons. I want to continue watching animals foraging in my backyard and birds singing in the trees.
And I want for as many future generations as possible to have the choice to enjoy such views.
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