Our generation's D-Day

Our generation's D-Day

What are we sacrificing for future generations? Should this anniversary also be a wake up call in terms of how we are treating the planet today and what effect this will have on future generations? How will they judge us?

We all recognise what becoming more sustainable is about, don’t we? Saving energy, reducing CO2 emissions, minimising waste and producing goods and services which have less harm to the environment and greater benefit to society. PR professionals will tell us to accentuate the positive and in doing so, perhaps, gloss over the negative or at best explain that the positive will in some way off-set the negative.

There are points in time when such an approach doesn’t meet the challenge and doesn’t begin to solve the underlying problem. Recent stories that Canada is ready to exploit ever more of its fossil fuel resources are indeed worrying. A country that until recently was often held up as a paragon of open space, eco-system resources, renewable energy supply development and a progressive attitude to their First Nations, is now becoming vilified and might even – dare I say it – overtake the USA as the one we Europeans love to hate when it comes to matters sustainability.

What we seem to be seeing in Canada under their current government appears to be a national and extreme version of greenwash. Rather worringly, what Canada might be showing us – if our addiction to fossil fuels continues much longer – is what our world might look like in seventy years’ time. Will we have torn up and developed all the land under which lies some form of exploitable fossil fuel or mineral resource, leaving behind islands of ‘nature’ (national parks and the like)? These islands of nature are then only valued for their 'eco-tourism' dollars/euros/pounds (insert currency of choice).

Worst case scenario is that even some of the world’s most unusual and precious natural resources will be ploughed up in pursuit of short-term economic growth. We can see this beginning to be played out both in Canada and in Australia where plans to dredge shipping channels threaten the Great Barrier Reef.

Some have postulated that the recent global recession has been good for the sustainability movement as it has focussed us on efficiency and the carbon emissions have slowed (in some cases actually fallen). However, this is a statistical anomaly simply created because for the five years since 2008 we have produced and sold less stuff. I would argue the reverse is true and that the recovery from recession will leave a terrible environmental and social scar on the planet we inhabit. We will see great exploitation of resources, allowed by short-termism political systems and politicians who only talk about economic growth – current Coalition Government in the UK is guilty of this charge. This is one reason why the term sustainability itself is now in question (see this previous blog).

Don’t misinterpret me, we need economic growth but at a scale and pace which is sustainable in planetary as well as human terms. The social costs of this dash to exploit natural resources are likely to be bad, with greater inequality and social injustice and more poor peoples ignored or worse by both countries and companies. Perhaps even more ignorant is the belief of those with money and power, that giving money to those affected in order to offset the negative temporary inconvenience experienced locally is all that is needed.

There are some glimmers of hope out there that need to be replicated. One such shard of light was the announcement a few weeks ago that Stanford University in the USA is to divest its coal related investments. Other institutions are reportedly considering similar action – my alma mater Oxford University is one of these. Why is this a significant action? By publicly stopping acting in a damaging way – albeit indirectly – these institutions are sending a signal. But it’s more than that they are taking their money out of the game and presumably will place it somewhere else more sustainable.

Where does this get us? While moves by companies to be more efficient and therefore reduce a negative impact is a good way to begin on a more sustainable path, it isn’t enough. The urgency of the challenge, exaggerated by the current dash for unadulterated economic growth, is now so critical that merely claiming efficiency gains as being sustainable behaviour is insufficient. It must evolve into decisions and actions which mean unsustainable behaviour is stopped. This is not just at the individual level but also at the national and transnational level.

So let’s all simply stop doing one or two unsustainable acts – things we know will make a small difference – as well as starting to minimise our more sustainable living behaviours. If we don’t curtail our unsustainable behaviours, the small efforts to be more sustainable will ultimately be futile. This can be our generation’s sacrifice – and let’s face it, it’s not quite the same as standing in a land craft waiting to hurl yourself into who knows what with a reasonable chance you won’t see tomorrow.

This is a gloomier blog than we normally like to post, but that’s just how it is. Sometimes, we might need to sugar-coat the pill, but we still need to take the medicine. We look back on the ordinary people doing extraordinary things for a greater common cause and thank them. In seventy years time, will our grand-children look back with respect at the way we met and dealt with our challenges, or not?

Maybe this should be our generation’s D-Day?


This blog was by Dan Vivian of the Vivan Partnership. Read more from them in our Clubhouse or on their website.

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