One Billion Lives

I had a vlog all ready to post tonight but I was reading my email this evening and have something more pressing to share right now. I probably shouldn’t but I read a substack called Last Week in Collapse which is a horrifying summary of events from around the globe (I counter with The Best News of Last Week but it’s much more sparsely populated…)

Anyway, apparently last week a review of over 180 articles from scientific literature was released that suggests that over the next century, we could see 1 billion deaths as a result of human caused climate change. The review was published in the journal Energies, and sought to turn the volume of carbon that will be burned over the next century into a number that actually resonates with people.

“Energy numbers like megawatts mean something to energy engineers like me, but not to most people. Similarly, when climate scientists talk about parts per million of carbon dioxide, that doesn't mean anything to most people. A few degrees of average temperature rise are not intuitive either. Body count, however, is something we all understand.” - Joshua Pearce from Western University

And holy shit did it ever resonate with me. 100 years? That’s our kids, folks. That’s our grand kids. 1,000,000,000 could die.

I see these kinds of predictions and it’s like a punch to the gut. It’s a flood of emotion that washes over me and settles down with the realization that we’re too late.

Like, why are we even talking about anything else?

Why are we being deluded into living life as usual without any change?

You know I don’t have a lot of faith in the political systems, but where the fuck are our governing bodies?

Why are we worried about maintaining an economic system that will kill our babies and their babies? Not to be crass, but really…

I shared a post on Instagram a while ago:

“Nobody is trying to fix the problems we have in this country. Everyone is trying to make enough money so the problems don’t apply to them anymore.” - @niilexis

And I think this concept applies critically here: it’s easy enough to say that those 1 billion deaths won’t be us - it will be those in the global south whose homes are being devastated by earthquakes and tsunamis and floods, but that’s not all true because wildfires are ravaging Canada as I type this and even if that was the response, come on! We, of the global north, are entitled to continue decimating the planet because we’ve got enough money to avoid the problems?

And it’s not like we don’t already have the solutions. We know what we have to do. But those solutions are in direct opposition to a capitalist economic system that demands endless growth. As long as we, as a species, continue on this trajectory with no change, it’s only going to get worse.

I keep hoping that things are getting better. I keep seeing positive change in the world around me, but then I realize that my tiny worldview is so naive. When people are struggling just to get by, they can’t be responsible for changing the world, but we need everyone on board.

Alas, there is finally a happy ending to this post: the solutions ARE here and they are tangible and doable and real. It’s about regenerative farming and fighting to keep the forests in tact and please please please stop buying stuff you don’t need. If you do have to buy stuff, make sure you’re buying locally or buying second hand. Please stop using big box online stores and support your local economy. It’s about planting more trees and yes, it’s even about burning less fossil fuel but let’s remember that that’s only one piece of the puzzle!

The worst thing you can do is nothing. Let’s stop arguing and second guessing the best way to make a more just and sustainable world and just start doing ALL the things because we’re officially out of time.