The ticking clock

Let’s get one thing straight: we are not going to “save” or “fix” the environment any time soon. We would need to be informed by science on this issue, but it could easily take centuries to adequately roll back humanity’s effects on the environment.

However, it is entirely possible to course-correct the environmental crisis and get on the right path well within our lifetime.

But again, how long will it take? This question is important in order to set realistic expectations and to provide context for the Total Green Future requirement of taking extraordinary measures to counter extraordinary problems.

Most democratic governments work on four or five year election cycles, and are therefore focused on short-term gains in order to win the next election. But short-term gains often come at the expense of long-term pain, which is why we have the environmental crisis. Of course, what we really need is short-term pain for long-term gain: this is the common-sense approach behind many things we do, such as getting a higher education, building a business, or going on a diet to lose weight.

It is difficult to predict how long we would need to take “emergency measures” in order to course-correct the environmental crisis. In our discussion about the scale of necessary reductions in consumption, we argued that we need to get used to bigger numbers that currently feel unrealistic. Something similar needs to happen in the context of Total Green Future emergency measures.

It is probably useful to think in terms of decades. A figure of 30 years is an interesting number to contemplate. Of course, it might require significantly less time, or significantly more. But the idea is to think way beyond the current timescales of election cycles. If you’re young, 30 years probably sounds like an eternity; if you’re middle-aged or older, you’ll know that 30 years go by pretty fast, and the idea of coming out of the other side into a better world feels quite tangible.

We should explore this idea of an “emergency” in greater detail, because it is open to being misused. Walter Benjamin famously stated that, “the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.” What he meant is that governments are always using the idea of an “emergency” in order to force citizens to do things that they would otherwise resist.

Any person with healthy critical thinking skills should question whether the Total Green Future requirement for emergency measures is just another power grab: in fact, not “just another” power grab, but one that lasts for decades to come.

But here’s the thing: this is an actual emergency. The scale of emergency that we currently face is historically unprecedented: depending on outcomes, this emergency has a spectrum of possibilities that range from something akin to wartime disruption right through to the extinction of humanity. This is not an exaggeration: this is the real deal.

To reiterate, the good news is that it is entirely possible to course-correct the environmental crisis. We just have to do what is necessary, and we will start to see the fruits of our labor in a relatively short period of time.