Climate change - taking the gloves off, carefully

It is time to take the gloves off, carefully.

Good advice and near endless research suggests it is unwise to “take the gloves off” as most people are more comforted and secure in living their lives within a cocoon of myths, fantasies, and wrapped in the warmth of the rhetorical political mumbo jumbo that rains down every day.

The former leader of Australia's Youth
 Climate Coalition, Anna Rose, was among
those who came to Shepparton in 2013.

“Don’t tell them the truth,” the advice runs, and “Don’t confront them with uncomfortable facts,” the argument continues , and, “Don’t say anything that will cause their pool of worries to overflow,” we’re further told.

The first serious attempt to give people in and around Shepparton a chance to better understand the realities of our changing world was orchestrated in 2013 when a clutch of knowledgeable people were brought here.

That trio of speakers attracted more than 600 people to the city’s Eastbank auditorium and in just a couple of hours those listening heard how our behaviour was taking the world down a path from which return would be difficult; adherence to what was would lead only to catastrophe.

What was espoused in Shepparton that night was the continuation of a story being told around the world and has since been echoed and reinforced at forums, seminars, lectures, and conferences from Mooroopna to  Manchester and Paris to Euroa.

A couple years ago, U.K communications specialist George Marshall came to Shepparton and reiterated the warning of confronting people with uncomfortable facts arguing that what people wanted was a metaphorical hug from a loving mother-like figure, with a gentle stroke of their brow and an assurance that all will be fine.

UK communication specialist brought his
arguments to Shepparton a few years ago.

Well, since George was here things have only worsened and we are beyond any soft and easy solutions as it seems the world, Australians and Americans in particular, has sleepwalked into a perfect storm from which escape will be difficult. 

That 2013 warning, as powerful and combustible as it was, dissipated within weeks and although a few may have changed their habits and behaviours, broadly people here and the city itself continue to live as this is still the 1970s and not early in a distinctly different, and dangerous, 21st Century. 

And so here we stand at a difficult and confronting time; a time when what we ache for is a story that all will be fine, that the richness of Australian life that has been a staple for most of our modern history will continue unabated and the promised jobs and growth will miraculously appear defying compounding realities.

That reassuring story is not, however, to be found.

Instead we hear the professor of atmospheric science at Pennsylvania State University and director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center, Michael Mann, warning us via an article in The Washington Post , that climate change is a serious challenge, one that the evidence says we must tackle now, but one, the professor also warned, that can only be confronted if we avoid the paralysing doom and hopelessness stories. 

So, how do we avoid those stories? Learn more about the causes of climate change, understand how our behaviour worsens the dilemma, what we must do to ease the trouble and so ignite a new sense of hope, and speak up against anyone who obstructs climate mitigation.

Beyond that, we should listening to people like Filipino born Laurance L. Delino, from Munich’s Ludwig Maximillan University, who calls for the phasing out of fossil fuel-based passenger transport and its replacement with public transport, along with the increased cycling and walking and a reduction in the use of private cars.

America climate scientist Michael Mann is famous
for his "hockey stick" description of climate change.

Calling for wartime-like mobilisation in response to climate change, Delino notes that people are at their best in emergency situations, adding though that humans are generally hostile to any change in the absence of a perceptible driver - climate change is real, but in the minds of most its catastrophic consequences are distant and will be eased, if not erased completely, by technology. 

That is not true.

Former Echuca man, and education editor at The Age, Geoffrey Maslen, wrote in his newly released book, “Too Late”: “Clearly, the situation is dire. Yet the Australian government continues to act as if nothing terrible is about to happen”.

Political rhetoric will not solve the trouble; Paris promises will not provide an escape; but your behaviour and local action will help and so the City of Greater Shepparton council should be given licence by its ratepayers, that’s you and me, to reduce the city’s energy needs, build resilience through design and create a city able to thrive in a hotter and drier climate.

Work is about wellbeing, a job is about profit

W

ork is integral to a person’s wellbeing. A job is not.

Work is something you choose to do; a job something to which you are directed to by another and so the matter of choice is no longer yours.

Therein is a small, but critical and significant difference.

Freedom is about choice and so as your freedom to choose goes, so does you actual freedom.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs,” has been the mantra of most, if not all, in their bid to secure public validation for personal political ambitions.

Everyone from the Prime Minister down chants what is a social more with the success of a society, or the government, being measured by the number of jobs created within that same society.

The drive and need to create jobs is further evidence of our social obedience to a way of life that has drawn its sustenance from the brutal mechanics of the Industrial Revolution and for centuries now has seen profit prioritised ahead of the welfare of people.

Our allegiance to the idea of jobs is evidence of what was at first a flirtation and then an affair to become a habitual way of life that meshes cleanly with the fundamentally contradictory consumerist idea that we can grow infinitely on a finite planet.

Jobs are intimately and intricately entangled with the growth economy, whereas work brings with it more ancient connotations; connotations that are about the provision of essentials; helping us find what we need, rather than want; jobs have a sense of mass production about them; work has an artisan affiliation, allowing for personal expression and a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment that is rarely experienced in our money driven society.

Jobs and our insistence on their creation, from the upper echelons of society, is about maintenance of the modern status quo, whereas work is about the ancient human need to contribute to your community and within that repair and rebuild your sense of self.



Confucius - "Choose a job you
love and you never work
another day in your life".

The difference between having work to do and a job is subtle, but such that it is a damning significance; a contrast that can distort human values to drive people to pursue ideas that would not have normally have attracted them.

Yes, jobs are the salvation of the modern profit-driven world and yes, jobs erode peoples’ expansive thinking and embrace of the other, while work does not until circumstances turn it into a job.

It was Confucius who said: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

And through a different prism: “Love the work you do and you will never have worry about finding a job.”

Our communities would be emotionally sounder and richer places if the emphasis was on work rather than finding jobs.