Climate Change and Where We Are Today: Standing on the Precipice of Promise and Peril
Introductory Subseries of the Our Story Together Series — Post #1.6
In the present, in medias res, we stand on the precipice of promise and peril. We face the choice of allowing the past to be our prison, or our platform upon which we build a better future. Will we allow the past to give us only stumbling blocks? Or will we take hold of the building blocks it has bequeathed to us? Are we past-dwellers or future-makers?
Only in the present can we exercise our freedom to create the future. Only in the present can our values become reality.
Unlike the past when scientists were voices crying in the wilderness, today we have a Climate Movement.
But we are not yet what we must be.
To play our indispensable role we cannot ebb and flow in strength and activity like we have these last few years. We cannot just bob along in the turbulent waters of our time.
We must choose to grow and become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world. We must choose to be active every day all over the globe. We must choose to be so big and broad and active that we cannot be suppressed, missed, or ignored.
Here’s the good news, a status update on The Catalytic-4.
Only in the last five years or so has the Climate Movement begun to come into its own, in fits and starts, even as it has lost momentum recently; and yet we are within striking distance of being on the right track in overcoming climate change; just think what we can accomplish when we have a full-fledged, continuously active Climate Movement — 400 million by 2030!
Climate Action Supporters have kept us in the race by supporting the modest efforts by governments thus far; in many countries they have already reached or surpassed our 80% of the population goal; a recent global research poll found that 89% want strong political action on climate, with China at 97% and the US at 74%; yet the full strategic potential of Climate Action Supporters has yet to be tapped.
ARTC (the accelerating rate of tech change) has helped to keep us close enough so victory is not out of reach, and moving forward strategic ARTC in many areas of life can utterly transform how we live and help us create prosperous sustainability.
Markets have become more climate-friendly, with, for example, solar and wind now outcompeting fossil fuels on price alone; as the Ember charts above demonstrate, projections are that solar, wind, and batteries will push fossil fuels off a cliff by 2030; if given the right incentives by governments, markets can implement needed climate action at the speed and scale necessary in many parts of the economy; in most of the world we have not yet created the pro-climate-action governments-and-markets symbiosis that is our proper Fourth Catalytic Source of Transformation; think of what we will accomplish when we do!
It is with Catalytic-4 strategic synergies that we will overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. We haven’t seriously begun to do this, which means there is so much more untapped potential for us to turn into reality.
In medias res we are poised for greatness on all of our Olympian Fields of Action as we work to have The Catalytic-4 come into their own together through strategic synergies.
But in the present, in now-time, in real time, in our time we must choose to create a future worthy of those who have come before us, a future worthy of our struggle, a future worthy of today’s children and tomorrow’s and the children of a million tomorrows to come. We are not past-dwellers, we are future-makers. Join us!
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as other posts in this Our Story Together Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.