A Seismic Shift in the Zeitgeist: Implications for Responding to the Climate Crisis

There were harbingers of what was to come. The polls have been increasingly indicating Canadians’ preference for a right of centre, conservative party. In BC, a far right political party emerged, seemingly out of the blue, led by someone who had been ejected from his previously right centrist party for his climate change denialism. The party ran a self-described rag tag slate of mostly inexperienced candidates some of whom held racist and other forms of objectionable views. They came close to winning. Then the tectonic plates of public opinion shifted dramatically in the US election. An erratic, far right, populist candidate for president along with the party he had systematically taken over swept to victory sending shock waves across the continent and around the world.

“So, what’s going on?” The right is tapping into a deep sense of grievance and injustice widely felt across western cultures. Guided by urban elites and promising a more just and egalitarian world, progressive governments have simply failed to deliver. It is not because these governments have not meant well, but because they have not recognized that the socio-economic deck is stacked against them. The status quo, our deeply ingrained and taken-for-granted habits and the system it drives are antithetical to the more just and egalitarian society governments promise.

Income disparity is a dominant feature of the stacked deck. Epidemiological research has shown that virtually every measure of health and well-being from infant mortality to longevity is inversely related to income disparity. In the simplest terms, if too many resources are in the hands of too few people, the society does not have the means to keep its emergency rooms functioning, no matter how well intentioned it is. Another characteristic of this stacked deck is the way in which the society subsidizes the market driven economy. Like health care, housing is one of the major grievances driving widespread dissatisfaction with the society’s institutions including government. Our collective tax dollars pay for landfills into which developers dump demolished homes, the roads construction vehicles travel, the reformatted sewage systems serving new developments and the financing support of public/private partnerships.

The stacked deck cuts both ways it turns out. It opens the door to the extreme right and closes the door to its own progressive flank. The BC government has tried to present itself as friendly to climate change and touts its Clean BC polices as the most advanced in Canada. At the same time, it continues fracking, supports the development of LNG and its former leader accepted a position on the Board of Directors of a Coal Consortium. The rationalization for LNG, like the federal government’s for pipelines is ethically vexatious – since the stuff in question will be exported and burned elsewhere it does not count against our carbon emissions scorecard. In the recent election 8% of the population voted Green contributing to the close call experienced by the NDP.

Over the past 30-40 years the society had entrusted urban professional and intellectual elites identified with left and left centre political parties with a great deal of influence in sectors such as community social services and health care, in particular and the overall direction of the body politic, in general. Large segments of the populace feel that this trust had been betrayed and they showed their displeasure in voting booths.

Ironically, as we digest this news over 70,000 registered delegates are gathered in Baku, Azerbaijan, for the United Nations climate conference known as COP29. People who flew in from jurisdictions around the world, many of whom no longer have a mandate from their governments. For example, when Trump and his cohort take over the government in January, 2025 they will pull the US out of the Paris Accord again. When the Conservative Party wins the 2025 election in Canada they will axe the major way in which the government has attempted to reduce carbon emissions. Meanwhile, scientists continue to fret as the globe hurtles on to global warming over the 1.5 degree Celsius benchmarked as a point of no return in terms of limiting humanity’s susceptibility to the more catastrophic impacts of climate change.

This changing zeitgeist will impact the work of responding to climate change. Under more typical circumstances it would be reasonable to keep our heads down and weather the storm, keep on meeting, keep on having conferences, keep on crafting policies. But these circumstances are atypical. Here is what is likely to happen: the climate crisis will continue to be pushed to the back burner and mitigation chronically underfunded. But, this will not forestall the cascading march of extreme weather events, like the recent situation in North Carolina and the current wildfires in southern California. Extreme weather events will become more frequent and increasingly intense. Our faltering solutions like upping the use and availability of air conditioning will increasingly exacerbate the problem (by making more demands on the grid resulting in more consumption of fossil fuels). 

So, short of burying our heads in the sand or feeling depressed, what to do? As always, the moment offers an opportunity. I think we have an opportunity to firstly, deepen our collegial relations and secondly, rethink how we understand social change. I have a sense that we also need to focus on preparing the society for what it is about to face. This will be a time of considerable chaos and uncertainty as the social and political institutions as we have known them transform, in some cases, and unravel, in others. In terms of the climate crisis, efforts at mitigation will stall in the best case scenario and collapse in the worst. Whatever scenario prevails there will be a premium on adaptation at the community level. 

In summary, our work needs to increasingly focus on adaptation at the community level during a period of global chaos and uncertainty (as societies turn inward, institutions waver and despots strut their stuff). It sounds a little grim, but we can take the opportunity to get to know one another better and the time to enjoy the festivities our ancestors celebrated in new ways. 

A box of rain will ease the pain
and love will see you through.

                       From a song called Box of Rain