2 / What crisis?
(A climate, Nature and complex systems missive)
Have we messed up the marketing of the greatest challenge in history?
“Climate change”
“Climate crisis”
“Climate emergency”
None of these names tells a relatable story about what’s going on.
Great marketing is supposed to make every receiver feel smart.
Do you feel smart?
Samsung, Disney, Nike.
None of these names tell you what these companies do, but to ensure that we know, all these brands have multi-billion-$ marketing budgets.
The “climate emergency” does not.
In a fast-paced, information-saturated world, we need to call important things what they are.
Here are some suggestions…
1. “The fossil fuel crisis”
The primary drivers of accelerating global heating are the burning of coal, crude oil and natural gas.
None of these fuels is mentioned in the Paris Climate Agreement even once.
This is testament to how much the global political solution (COP) has been captured by fossil fuel companies.
There have now been 27 COPs, yet fossil fuels are now being burnt faster than ever before.
The president of COP28, beginning in just a few weeks, is the chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Fossil fuels are causing the problem, yet fossil fuel companies are in charge.
2. “The Nature destruction crisis”
The biggest communication failure in history has led all of us to to believe that this crisis is just about emissions and rising temperatures.
But the real reason we scientists are so worried is because…
rapidly climbing levels of greenhouse gases, mainly from fossil fuels
most of the world’s habitable land being taken over for animal farming
the over-exploitation and mistreatment of our rivers and oceans
the accelerating spread of pollution (from plastics to pesticides)
…are all causing the collapse of Nature.
Nature is the source of all our food, most of our medicines and the air we breathe.
When Nature thrives, it ensures stability and liveable conditions. When it dies, other parts of Nature collapse with it.
There’s no knowing how quickly the world could destabilise as more of Nature dies off.
No one knows how unliveable the world might become for large mammals, like us.
3. “The over-consumption crisis”
For most of history, most of trade was based on needs. Now it’s mostly based on wants.
We simply don’t need most of what we have.
Almost everything we purchase places a burden on the natural world, and often on other humans too.
The power is often ours to refuse single-use items, to buy fewer, higher-quality things, and to repair and reuse what we already have.
4. “The human expansion crisis”
For millennia, we’ve displaced wild Nature to make space for ourselves.
We’ve treated it as if it’s disposable and can look after itself.
But if this was ever true, it isn’t anymore. There are so many of us now.
We’ve depleted Nature on 75% of the world’s land. And most of the oceans are now struggling against pollution, overfishing, mining and drilling.
Decision making that only considers humans isn’t good enough anymore. The world is one single, interconnected natural system, and it won’t work with humans alone. We need all of Nature to thrive, from algae to eagles.
We know we can prosperously live on a fraction of the space we use today, leaving space for Nature to thrive.
It’s time to pull back, better integrate Nature into the land we do take for ourselves, and to rewild and regenerate the rest.
5. “The animal farming crisis”
Nothing takes up more habitable land on Earth than farming.
Of the world’s farmland…
20% is growing crops for humans to eat – generating over 80% of our food
80% is creating animal products for us – generating less than 20% of our food
There’s almost no system on Earth more inefficient than animal farming.
Humans have never eaten so many animal products as we do today. What’s happening now isn’t normal.
If we cut back on animal products (especially beef and lamb), we could still feed everyone and return almost 40% of the world’s habitable land back to Nature.
6. “The ‘everything is dying’ crisis”
Nature is dying, all around planet Earth.
It may not feel like it near where we live, but the numbers do not lie.
In the past 100 years, we've lost 90% of the large fish in the ocean.
In the past 50 years, we’ve lost 70% of the world’s wild animals with backbones (reptiles, amphibians, mammals, fish, birds).
In the past 20 years, insects are down as much as 80% across Europe.
Today, if we were to put all the mammals on Earth (from whales to squirrels) into a big pile, only 4% of the pile would be wild animals. Most would be humans and cows.
Nature is the engine of capturing and storing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.
As it dies off, it not only gets harder to grow food, discover medicines and access clean water, it also weakens the world’s ability to overcome the overall crisis.
7. “The liveable future crisis”
Millions of us are already being displaced from increasingly unliveable places on Earth.
8 million people were displaced by flooding in Pakistan last year.
Many died from intense heat exposure in Mexico last month. A mother and her baby died trying to get from their house to the car to use the car’s AC.
Famines, heatwaves, flooding and intensifying diseases are becoming the norm. And they will keep getting worse.
Many of our children will die from this crisis. Many of us alive today will die from this crisis.
Maybe we should call it the imminent starvation crisis?
Whatever we call it, we live in a terrifying time. But it’s also a crucial time.
This is a crisis of tipping points — unaddressed, it will continue to accelerate, evermore unpredictably and irreversibly.
But today, we are wealthy, knowledgeable and powerful like never before.
Collectively, we are easily strong enough to fight this crisis.
The more clearly we all know what this crisis really is, the better the chance that we’ll have.
For now, we must decide on the names we use carefully.
Those who want to continue profiting from destruction — the fossil fuels, factory farming, over-exploitation and polluting chemicals that are destabilising the world and the safety of the future we all share — will seize upon division.
Therefore, we must choose the names we use carefully, and stick to them.
So I’m interested to know what you think…
If we were to choose just one or two of these crisis names, which would you choose and why?
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Thank you to Nat Hancock for creating all of the images for this post!
Good terms for big ideas get repurposed, warped and diluted. (Marx wasn’t a Marxist.) I think “sustainability” is now more commonly associated with a corporate function than a social movement.
Liveable future crisis is the closest of your options I think!