How to face Climate Change with Hope?
Question from the Internet:
“What is it like to face climate panic with hope?”
I think more and more people start to sense a certain level of panic in relation to climate change, as the actual consequences influence us in many different parts of our lives.
But in order to face these changes and the ensuing panic with hope, we would need something to make us hopeful.
After all, simply being hopeful without any reasons or foundations we would be fools, or we would be like children hoping for something that can never actually happen.
And at the moment, when we look at all the declarations, scientific results and predictions and we also look at the actions of our leaders or the actions of ourselves, there is nothing to give us real hope.
We do not even understand the root cause of our inability to understand and react to climate change let alone come up with solutions.
We can argue endlessly about who or what caused climate change, and what part our actual human activities play in it. But we cannot argue about the fact, that when we are facing truly collective, global problems any solutions have to come from positive, sustainable, constructive, mutually responsible and mutually complementing discussions and action, when everybody makes calculations for the benefit of the whole system, or at least for the benefit of humanity — above and against our instinctively 100% selfish, egocentric and subjective calculations and actions.
And this is something we are simply and utterly incapable of doing. We are programmed only to take care of ourselves and of a small “inner circle” that is important for us. Beyond that “inner circle” we ruthlessly compete and fight with everybody and everything else, moreover, we constantly survive and succeed at their expense — knowingly or unknowingly.
Today it is not difficult to talk about this, to accept this, since we are getting reminders and proof about our inherently self-serving, self-justifying, egocentric and exploitative behaviour and lifestyle every day, even within our own families.
True hope will start from the moment when we recognize that the root cause of our inability to understand and solve, ease the effects of climate change is within us — within each and every one of us. Hope will come when we accept that only by changing ourselves — each changing oneself instead of trying to change, lecture, correct, cancel, censor or destroy others — can we find the necessary ability to interconnect and cooperate on a global level.
Then through the positive, mutually responsible and mutually complementing calculations and actions we will start to understand the cause and effect processes leading to any of the threatening global problems — since by our conscious and willing mutual integration we acquire a certain level of similarity and inner understanding of how Nature works. Then we will also acquire the ability — through our newly build “collective intellect” how we can avert the threatening changes and how to safeguard our collective survival in Nature’s fully integrated and interdependent system.