If we don’t change direction, we’ll end up where we’re going.
Duh… what kind of a no-brainer is that?, you’re probably thinking. But wait. Before ditching it totally, let’s re-consider—especially in light of one of the most important days of the year coming up just around the corner. And I don’t mean Easter, although that’s pretty special, too.
“They”—whoever the proverbial “they” is—variously attribute that little bromide, above, as an old Chinese proverb, or a quote from Lao Tzu or any number of untraceable sources symbolizing all things distant, ancient and supposedly mystical that social media, and more, too often hide behind despite no factual evidence of any such provenance. Still, you can find it, and many variations thereof, posted on Facebook and more from here to Timbuktu. It’s even the epigraph in Jody Picoult’s best-seller, Nineteen Minutes, about a school shooting. (Consider it a cautionary sign.)
But let’s not quibble over this little saying’s origin story. Let’s be tolerant, as we Canadians often are, and offer it a bit of consideration even though, or maybe especially because, it feels like a slice of mockumentary satire from the master himself, Sacha Baron Cohen—making us squirm and laugh at the same time because it’s as dumb as it is true, and something we really don’t want to realize about our confounded selves.
So hello, Earthlings! This is planet Earth speaking on the eve of yet another Earth Day coming up April 22 (as it has every April 22 since 1970, when it was started by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson to force environmental issues onto the national agenda) with a reminder that, duh… if we don’t change direction, we’ll end up right where we’re going.
And where’s that, exactly?
Well, let’s see… As reported by NASA (just one of many organizations crucial to the climate fight, and more, that are facing massive budget cuts under the current White House scythe), 2024, with its annual global surface temperature of 1.28 C degrees above average, was the 10th year in a row that was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880. So how about 2025 will be the 11th in a row of warmest years? And 2026 the 12th, and so on—all pretty much the same no-brainer destination since we haven’t changed direction.
Note that when scientists started keeping those global temperature records back in 1880, it was right around the end of the first great big industrial revolution and the start of the second one—both of which profited great big industrialists, many of whom remain amongst the world’s super-rich today. People who, as longtime activist Senator Bernie Sanders recently reminded us again at huge American rallies, are central to the “extraordinary danger” of oligarchy festering in the U.S. and beyond. And don’t forget—those great big industrial revolutions, and the great big industrialists’ subsequent bank accounts, were largely powered by fossil fuels.
You also won’t have to wonder much about our “destination” this month, or the next, or the one after that, and so on, what with the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service reporting that, besides this past winter’s Arctic sea ice being the thinnest since record-keeping began, March was the 20th month in the past 21 months with global-average surface air temperatures higher than 1.5 C above the pre-industrial average. (Just a friendly reminder that 1.5 C was the “safe threshold” for limiting climate warming 196 parties agreed to in Paris at the 2015 UN Climate Conference. Ten long years ago.)
Of course, climate isn’t the only environmental disaster. We’ve got a biodiversity crisis. Huge extinction rates. Massive wildfires. Clean water issues, and more. But climate is arguably the biggest, baddest granddaddy of them all, and the fossil fuel train is still driving us on toward a blunt-force dead end.
It’s ironic—just when we need a new direction more than ever, climate and the environment are barely blips on Canadians’ radar. In the run-up to the April 28 federal election, with mass anxiety pervading due to Trump’s chaos, voters are mostly worried about affordability—even though a messed-up environment actually costs us all more. A recent Angus Reid poll found that only 15 per cent of respondents said the environment/climate change was their top concern—way down from 42 per cent in 2019. Carbon taxes have been ditched after populist pushes, and long-rejected oil pipelines are touted as the latest panacea.
So how do we change the destination? The obvious no-brainer is to change direction, like our little bromide advises. But how do we do that, given the missed goals of the Paris Accord. The dwindling protests. The failed attempts at proportional representation to better represent voters—not influential billionaires. Then there are the high, but largely unfulfilled hopes for green energy sources—like solar, wind and hydrogen. (Anybody remember those hydrogen fuel cell buses that once served Whistler? See one of my several ancient Pique articles on same, here.)
Sure, progress has been made. But clearly not enough. Ergo in light of the upcoming federal election, 120-plus municipal officials from across the country pleasantly surprised Canadians with their “Elbows Up for Climate Action” public letter to five federal party leaders. (No Whistler signatories so far, but councillors Katrina Nightingale of Pemberton and Chris Pettingill of Squamish are there.) The letter urges leaders to steer clear of fossil fuels, like drill-baby-drill Trump is advocating, and avoid a climate disaster through job-creating initiatives, like building a national electric grid, high-speed rail network and thousands of non-market green homes.
Sounds to me like a great roadmap for changing direction and destiny—if only we’ve got the vision and grit to do it.
So let’s go, Earthlings! Mother Earth is hangin’ on for dear life—but she can’t keep dangling much longer.
Glenda Bartosh is an award-winning journalist who knows we can do a million times better when it comes to environmental issues.
