The Wrong Enemy

It is extremely difficult to get a large group of people, from different (or even similar) walks of life to reach a consensus. Thus, hoping the entire planet will work together to solve common issues seems almost utopic. However, one method that has proven effective in unifying people in the past has been a common enemy against whom to fight. Be that enemy a contagious disease, an unsolved physics dilemma or a rogue nation, we are often ready to lay down our differences and rally against it. 

Unfortunately, we have chosen the wrong evil to fear and persecute: the natural world. The safe (or sterile) haven we have created for ourselves promises to squash any primitivity that may try to emerge from our receding lizard brains with the full force of 24 hour white LED lighting and obese chickens. Evolution has done its job too well. Not only are we surviving, we are over-surviving, over-producing, over-consuming, over-eating, over-travelling, over-populating, and over-dumping-plastic-in-the ocean-ing. The trait that one day, long ago, helped a clever cave-child steal an extra morsel of raw antelope and go to bed fuller than his cave-siblings, has gone haywire. Somehow, a society of intelligent and loving people has developed a massive collective blind spot. We are well-meaning. Many of us would reach out a hand to save a baby sea turtle or march with fists in the air to prevent another million tons of black carbon from being pumped into the wild. We would just as soon hop on a plane to Barbados to save these tiny sea creatures, or throw our plastic signs with catchy “There is no Planet B” slogans into the overflowing garbage as soon as we were done. 

We are fighting the antithetical enemy. While we are building bigger homes, to protect ourselves from weather’s woes, the hoary-throated spinetail, the yellow-headed poison frog and the amazon river dolphin are flying, hopping and swimming, trying to find new places to live. While we are fracking our oil sands dry, the ocean’s pH level is increasing another decimal point. If we took a moment to put aside our greed and our self-obsession, we might realise Mother Earth means us no harm. We are treating this planet as though it has a grudge against us, devouring it like insects. If we took a moment to consider that just because they can’t think quite like us, the Mexican mosquito fern and the wild hyacinth have just as much right to soak up sunlight and cover this planets with their seeds as we do. We might discover that the eternal survival of the glorious “Human Race” doesn’t have to be a central goal. We might ponder, and we might realise, that the true enemy that we ought to be fighting is a manufactured enemy that everyone is tired of hearing about: climate change. 

Think of far our concerted efforts have come in destroying and changing the environment. We could turn that energy into attempting to live harmoniously with our fellow tenants on this hunk of rock. This is not a new idea, nor an original one, but it is apparently the one that must be shouted time and time again. “Eco-friendly” practices are not going to be enough to keep us under the famous one point five degree limit. A complete change in mentality is necessary if there is to be any hope of saving the few patches of dark sky left. We should not be advertising new wind energy technology, nor fashionable hemp clothing as much as we should advocating for a shift in perspective. As green as we become, this planet cannot sustain our need for more more more. We can blame corporations for money-guzzling while some of us starve, and we can blame governments for buying new pipelines, but we must also realise that any change must first happen at an individual level, and that such a change must go far beyond eating fish instead of beef. “Even little things count” is no longer enough. We must want serious change, change which includes retracting, not expanding; less, not more; local, not international. The kind of change that challenges our idea of progress. If we can stomach the idea of giving up luxuries to prioritize the well-being of our huge home, the super powers that, on paper, are responsible for the large scale pollution, would not be able to survive. They survive because they are tolerated. They survive because green-party-voters still expect easy take-out mochaccino cups and exotic tropical fruit. A systematic radical social, cultural, political and economic change is necessary to fight this massive beast we have bred.  

Who knows what will be the plastic straw that breaks the camel’s back and actually incites drastic measures. Let us all hope it shakes us out of complacency and denial before we turn against each other, disunited in the panic that will ensue with the inevitable climate wars, deprivation, loss and hunger that will occur if we can’t change our thoughts and behaviours.