EARTHFUTURE by Guy Dauncey

This month, in Copenhagen, Denmark, the world’s leaders are gathering for the all important Climate Conference, hoping to reach an agreement sufficiently robust to prevent human civilization, and most of Earth’s ecosystems, from spiralling down into climate chaos. On our current track, we are heading for civilizational suicide by this end of the century, as a result of a 6°C rise in Earth’s average temperature.

Within the heart of each negotiator, however, beats a deeper drum of loyalty and love, but for whom or what does this drum beat? If a delegate’s heart beats first and foremost for “my country,” he or she will fail to grasp the true urgency of what is at stake.

In our long and amazing journey on this planet, circling the Sun on a distant arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which we share with 200 billion other stars, and which shares the Universe with 3,000 billion other galaxies, we have steadily evolved from clan-love to Earth-love.

In our early days in the forests of Africa, our loyalty was to our immediate clan, among whose members we felt safe and protected. All other humans were either strangers or enemies.

Even while our heart beat as one, however, there were adventurous clan members who wanted to explore and it was through their journeys, cemented by trade, marriage or conquest, that the clans gradually widened their loyalty to a larger tribe.

Once we were tribes, the process continued. In England, the tribes of York and Lancaster fought a long and bitter war before Henry Tudor prevailed in 1487, uniting England as a nation. In North America, the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca tribes united to form the Iroquois Confederacy. Among Europe’s Germanic tribes, due to a lack of natural frontiers, unification did not happen until 1871, when Bismarck finally unified the German tribes – the same year that Garibaldi united Italy.

Today, we are still a world of discrete nations, demanding special treatment and protecting our economies. Yet, with this attitude, we place the entire world in peril, for Earth’s atmosphere cares not where boundaries lie. We must either tackle this crisis together as one world, or die separately as 193 nations.

Most global leaders have yet to make the crucial step of bonding with the Earth. Here in Canada, both our Liberal and Conservative leaders have put their party interests above either Canada or the Earth – witness their recent failure to pass the Climate Change Accountability Act, which would have required the Canadian government to set regulations to bring emissions 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent below by 2050.

The true urgency of the climate crisis is that world-renowned climate scientists like NASA’s James Hansen are telling us that if we do not stabilize our global emissions within eight years and then drive them rapidly downwards, we will be on the slippery slope toward climate chaos, from which it will be ever harder to escape.

What does it mean to bond with the Earth? It means that your primary love is for this whole wonderful planet, from its melting icecaps to the glory of its long distance migrating birds; from its incredible forests to the wonder of its dolphins and whales. It means that when you tune into its magnificence, beauty and diversity, your heart fills with love. And it means that when you face a crucial decision, such as the one we face in Copenhagen this month, you place the needs of the planet above those of any nation.

After six million years of walking upright on two feet, we only saw Earth from space for the first time 43 years ago. Most people over 75 probably feel more love for their country than they do for the Earth. Among people under 25, I really hope it is the opposite. You are our future.

We are in transition to a world in which everyone will share the bond of Earth-love. If we all felt this way, we’d have no problem in acting together to eliminate the greenhouse gases that threaten our future. We’d do so immediately.

Guy Dauncey is author of The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming (www.theclimatechallenge.ca) and president of the BC Sustainable Energy Association (www.bcsea.org)