Nobody Understands Climate: How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?

The Anthropocene Essay: Part Three of Three

… this essay continues from Part Two: “Nobody Understands Climate: Can We Trust the Science?

Al Green

The sky is darkening over our political discourse on climate change. News bulletins inform us of somewhere being hit by a “once-in-a-century” storm, flood or wildfire with unsettling frequency. We hear and read about it and feel enormous sympathy for those impacted, yet it feels remote. We understand that there is a problem we need to tackle, yet it feels distant; and so we put it on the back burner. Our weather vane politicians react to focus group sentiment and electoral trends. They no longer seem capable of taking a lead. Their inertia feeds ours, and vice versa.

This is disconnected from what we are witnessing: a clear and concerning increase in extreme weather events, linked to human-caused climate change. Climate modelling – at least that which is shared widely for public consumption – isn’t necessarily accounting for what we are seeing play out. For example, the outlier events considered extreme scenarios at the turn of the century are now looking more likely than they were back then.

Irrespective of the modelling, scientists have clearly warned us about a future fraught with extremes. Reality is now catching up faster than expected. Earth’s climate is changing without waiting for us to get the memo.

The models back in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina devastated the southeastern United States, did not suggest it was likely that the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold would be reached before 2030. Similarly, today’s modelling could prove to be underestimating the scale of the problem and the rate of temperature increase; which is not fixed.

Rather than constantly trailing in the wake of the data, we should inject some versatility into our strategies for tackling the issues linked to climate change. Because despite all of the talk, political declarations and commitments, we are not getting global temperature increases under control. All of the climate ‘consciousness’ of the (more than!) four decades of my lifetime isn’t making the required difference.

In this three-part essay I’ve attempted to briefly explore the growing gap between climate projections and lived experience, questioning whether our current understanding – and communication – of climate risk is sufficient for the moment we’re in. If what was once considered unlikely is now becoming commonplace, then our strategies, policies, and narratives must evolve with equal urgency.

We need a game-changer solution that works across political divides; for individuals and communities irrespective of whether or not we accept the premise that we are living through the Anthropocene Epoch. That means devising solutions that are better than the status quo of how we produce and consume energy, coupled with how we organise industrial activity and production.

Future Gridlocked content will explore this further, because we simply cannot continue doing things the way we have always done them. We are are already witnessing the devastating consequences of our inability to change. We know that worse is to come: we cannot say we weren’t warned.

I am, however, convinced that we can change. In fact, I know we can: because I myself have changed.

In my Nightswimming essay, I argued that it was naïve and unreasonable to think that the world can be free from materials that humans have been using. This was not always my view. Indeed, up until I met Jacopo Buongiorno in 2021, I unquestioningly considered any deviation from deriving energy from ‘natural’ sources such as wind and solar as being highly undesirable (there’s nothing natural about solar photovoltaic panels or glass/ carbon fibre wind turbine blades, of course).

Nuclear ‘waste’ – spent fuel – was entirely unacceptable to me, because I considered it to be incompatible with the natural order of life. It was a deviation too far from nature. I subscribed wholeheartedly with the sentiment expressed by Gary Snyder in an essay he wrote for A Controversy of Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry back in 1965:

“As a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth. They go back to the late Paleolithic: the fertility of the soil, the magic of animals, the power-vision in solitude, the terrifying initiation and rebirth; the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.”

However, in coming to the view that nuclear is the only viable clean source that can underpin our energy systems moving forward, if we are serious about decarbonising, I had to confront my own hitherto ideology. I came to realise that I was holding humanity to an impossibly high standard and so decided to modify my opinion.

I still agree with Snyder, but I have no desire to hold up the conditions of Palaeolithic times as any kind of environmental benchmark (Snyder wasn’t suggesting this; he was arguing that his values are timeless and enduring). I now find that the words Snyder used in the line immediately following the above quote are the ones that really speak to me: “I try to hold both history and wilderness in mind, that my poems may approach the true measure of things and stand against the unbalance and ignorance of our times.” How relevant his words remain, sixty years on.

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I’ll cover nuclear and other clean energy sources in future essays, building on this one plus my Salon pieces.

It is also worth focussing some more on the geography of human civilisation, namely our growing urban centres that are at the frontline of the fight to combat climate change. Most of our economic activity takes place in cities, consuming vast quantities of energy and resources and producing about 70 percent of global CO2 emissions. So, a razor-sharp focus on sustainable urban living will help produce a significant percentage of the decarbonisation progress we require, given the growing proportion of humanity that lives in cities.

And humanity is swelling in number – the latest projections by the United Nations indicate that the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050 and peak at around 10.3 billion in mid-2080s before declining a little by 2100. More than half of the increase in global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in just eight countries, all in Africa and Asia.

Overall population growth is concentrated in developing countries that are already witnessing increasing demand for energy. This trend will only continue throughout this century. Therefore, any strategies for dealing with climate change must acknowledge the reality that energy demand will only go up, irrespective of any technological efficiency measures that are introduced to energy consumption.

Cities are also the urban laboratories where ideas are tested out, and where social and political change tends to be driven forward. This means considering cities in terms of the conflict of human versus nature, together with the back-and-forth between them; how each is both shaped by and shaping the other.

To understand how best to implement change in our cities and elsewhere, we need to appreciate the past and how it has led us to where we are now. Only then can we try to shape what may come. But we must be in no doubt about the seriousness and urgency of the situation we are currently in.

A climate event can dominate the news cycle for a couple of days. Then the media moves on to cover a military conflict, election campaign or celebrity court battle. Meanwhile, the threat of climate change does not move on; it stews and intensifies unseen before re-emerging somewhere to unleash more severe punishment.

I started Part One of this essay series with reference to Philip Gerard’s essay, What They Don’t Tell You About Hurricanes. By vividly conveying the emotional journey of enduring a hurricane’s onslaught on his home and community, Gerard transports an extreme weather event from the abstract realm of statistics, or the remoteness of a news bulletin, directly to life in the reader’s mind.

For many years I have recommended Gerard’s essay to anyone seeking out great creative nonfiction writing. Nowadays, sadly, I wonder whether I ought to do so more for its practical utility as a guide in how to prepare for when – not if – one encounters a major climatic incident.

Gerard concludes his piece with a flourish: “What they don’t tell you about hurricanes is how many ways they can break your heart.” Each year, more and more hearts are being broken in a myriad of ways. Many more will be broken still unless we get a grip of the climate crisis. Until we acknowledge that a sea of worst cases is already lapping at our doorstep, we risk drowning in our tears.

References:

1. Gerard, Philip. “What They Don’t Tell You About Hurricanes.” Creative Nonfiction, no. 11 (1998): 100–109.

2. Luqman, M., Rayner, P.J. & Gurney, K.R. On the impact of urbanisation on CO2 emissions. npj Urban Sustain 3, 6 (2023).

3. Snyder, Gary, in Paris Leary and Robert Kelly (eds), A Controversy of Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, New York: Doubleday, 1965: 551.

4. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2022), World Population Prospects 2022: Summary of Results. UN DESA/POP/2022/TR/NO. 3. New York: United Nations.

5. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2024). World Population Prospects 2024: Summary of Results. UN DESA/POP/2024/TR/NO. 9. New York: United Nations.

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