Eight days ago the peer-reviewed science journal Environment published an analysis by the legendary climatologist James Hansen and 17 fellow scientists of the breathtaking leap in Earth’s mean surface temperature over the past two years.
The paper foresees more extreme storms, floods, heat waves and “flash droughts”, but its most disturbing prediction concerns a pivotal system of ocean currents. It says the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), linking Arctic and Antarctic waters, is now likely to shut down within 30 years, locking in “major problems including sea level rise of several metres”.
An AMOC shutdown, the paper says, is “the point of no return”. It wants scientists, politicians and the rest of us to grasp this looming crisis, “to avoid handing young people a dire situation that is out of their control.”
That’s the point of this discussion – not climate or science, but us. How do we deal with this?
San Francisco-based futurist Alex Steffen is not into blind hope or “apocalyptic optimism”, a belief that when things get bad enough people will change suddenly. But he is optimistic about “our ability to understand the problems in front of us better, to arrive at better solutions through new thinking and innovation, and to change the politics of how and how quickly we deploy those solutions.”
When enough people clearly see the danger in an unstable climate, he says, humanity can respond with urgency. “Obviously not many places are moving as fast as we’d like to, so sometimes it can feel hard to have much hope… but that can change.”
“There’s this dance that needs to happen between massive decarbonisation done as quickly as we can manage it, carbon cycle restoration and some combination of other potential things.” Action is inevitable, he says, and it’s plausible that warming can be limited to 2C, but there will still be “really serious, catastrophic consequences.”
If you fear for the future, live in the present. That’s how Emily Schoerning sees us getting around mental roadblocks. A microbiologist and science educator based in the American midwest, Emily Schoerning began a movement called American Resiliency which combats climate anxiety with useful, practical tools for ordinary people living ordinary lives.
Humans think of their species first, but climate change affects all species. Small populations of species matter, says Shoerning.“I love life. I love living things. We’re in an extinction event. Saving what biodiversity we have is very important.”
Tasmania’s major party leaders clearly disagree; they believe it’s far less important than jobs and company profits. That’s something which should bother all of us who vote them into parliament.
Last month Shoerning told Ben Thomas on his YouTube channel Sisyphus 55 that heatwaves in hot countries are now delivering temperatures at or above the level at which plants – any plants – can fix carbon through photosynthesis. If and when such heatwaves become everyday experiences, plant food will disappear, imperilling us and every species.
Given past failures to change the current trajectory of emissions and temperature, it seems foolish to think that such a turnaround might somehow be achieved. But Shoerning believes it will be, and in the meantime her recipe for surviving our troubled times is staying focused in the moment.
The more aware we are of what our senses are telling us right now about the real world, she says, the better equipped we are to act. Solutions may be as small as something you keep in your pocket, an object with good sensory textures, reminding us that we’re here – “a little ritual that helps you to be present in your life”.
“It helps me to acknowledge that I’m still in the good time. It’s extremely likely that things are going to get worse, but do I want to spend the good times crying? There will be time to cry later. Now is the time to have an active and present way of living.”
It’s a matter of allowing time to stop and smell the roses – and feel the thorns as well. Shoerning’s recipe for resiliency calls for us to be acutely aware of our real, three-dimensional, living world, in which we are only one of millions of species. We ignore those other species and their accelerating extinction rate at a cost that is mounting as the years pass.
Looking out over a morning coffee to our garden the other day, the sight of a host of tiny flying bugs highlighted by a bright sun took me back to my childhood, when summer warmth after a spot of rain would bring out insects in their thousands – mosquitoes included, but plenty of less bothersome ones besides.
There is still time. We’re not there yet.