Liveable future

The window within which to sustain life on earth as we know it is ‘rapidly closing’. It does not get any more stark than that. Many who have long labored in the climate movement struggle to function in a soul-crushing dilemma. Year after year we watch as irreplaceable time is squandered away while we realize the tipping point to “out of control” moves closer. Yet knowing the entire precious gift of life on earth is at stake, we cannot allow ourselves to give up. So we slog on.

In order to do so, we put up a shield to protect ourselves from despair and collapse. But there is a price. Sometimes, in order to keep going, we use that shield to take mental breaks from the grisly details on how bad things actually are. But when we are approaching the actual end point, we must gather the courage to open our eyes wide so we are able to sound the warning.

It sounds like hyperbolic exaggeration, but an objective view which contrasts the stark scientific warnings with what is happening in the Senate reveals we are teetering on the very edge. Humanity has already squandered vast time in the massive failure to act on the scale required. Science tells us the inexorable laws of physics cannot be stopped. The earth system cannot absorb another interminable delay. There IS such a thing as out of time. While it is impossible to fully grasp the existential meaning, as a video producer this writer has tried to approximate what such a breakdown of life might look like in this very brief [just over one minute] collage of images.

The last time Democrats controlled both the presidency and both halls of Congress was in January of 2009 after President Obama was elected and lasted only two years. The Waxman-Markey climate bill failed to be passed, and we have witnessed the unspeakably tragic absence of meaningful national legislation on the climate emergency ever since.

Due to an electoral miracle in Georgia in 2020, the Democrats regained a razor-thin one vote majority [counting the tie-breaking vote of the vice-president]. Biden campaigned on by far the biggest green energy transition in history, and we allowed a flicker of hope to re-enter our lives. Coal state Senator Manchin has placed road blocks, but from the beginning there has been a path to the finish line.

Democrats must retain the urgency of what is at stake – in the words of the classic civil rights anthem to ‘keep their eyes on the prize and hold on’. If we measure a political failure in terms of its impact on the future of life, this would be the most consequential in human history. Again this sounds like hyperbole, but if such failure seals in the crossing of the dreaded tipping point, can this be described as an exaggeration?

Other issues have intervened – a brutally cold-blooded invasion of Ukraine, a global economy disrupted by Covid impacts and dependence on Russian fossil fuel, and seemingly runaway inflation. All deserve attention but cannot be allowed to eclipse the greatest threat looming over humanity and the window for action about to close in our collective face.

Excerpted: ‘Climate Movement Must Wake up Senate Democrats Before Last Chance Is Gone’.

Courtesy: Commondreams.org