I’ve been following climate change and its effects for years now through various news publications and documentaries. It seems that every year, scientists from around the world, release more and more evidence supporting the fact that ‘global weirding’ will not only happen, but is happening as we speak. After these reports trickle out, get passed around the Internet bloggersphere, and garner a few precious minutes on various network news segments, I watch eagerly in anticipation of some sort of social uprising or massive political and economic shift towards saving the planet. Yet, year after year, society sees the evidence, panics for a second, and then moves on as if forgetting about the research will somehow make it untrue. I always ask myself “Why does no one seem to care? This is THE most important issue in the entire world. If we don’t address it, there won’t even BE a world.”
I’ve asked a few of my close friends about this and I mostly get the same answer: “Dude, there’s nothing I (as in individuals) can do to really change things. It’s a lost cause.” That passive type of thinking is not only a massive cop-out, but also the reason why no one tries to change anything. If everyone thinks they won’t have an effect, then no one will actually try to change the way things are.
Climate change data is easily accessible and it seems that most people understand a basic idea of what is going to happen. Even my understanding of climate change is limited to this basic explanation: “CO2 emissions increase the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, which warms the planet, which melts the ice, which raises sea-levels, which destroys civilizations.” Sure it scares me, but until climate change negatively effects my life on a personal level, then why should I care? It wasn’t until I watched VICE’s short documentary Greenland is Melting, that it really hit home.
The short documentary follows Shane Smith, the co-founder of VICE Media, as he travels to Greenland, the country most affected by climate change on Earth. What he finds is that Greenland is melting at an extremely fast rate, and will eventually raise the global sea-level by 4 to 5 feet. Now that might not seem like much, however a 4 to 5 foot rise would put every coastal city on the planet underwater.
To corroborate the evidence, Smith talks to Dr. Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA, who states, “Sea-level rise is the problem where there are no winners. Changing in rain patterns or wind patterns might benefit someone somewhere. Sea-level rise? Nobody wins.” The fact is that Greenland will melt, and all we can do is slow that process down. Schmidt goes on to tell Smith that society needs to cut global CO2 emissions by 80% in order slow down the process. If that is done, the melting will still happen over the course of hundreds and thousands of years, instead of just a few decades.
Upon finishing the documentary, I remember thinking about how depressing and grim it was. There was no happy ending. I realized that VICE did not want to just scare people. They wanted to show the dire situation in Greenland with the hopes of garnering more attention towards climate change.
It’s important to realize that every single person leaves a carbon footprint, but every single person can also contribute to helping save our planet. I hope that our generation and future politicians can take a step back and see that saving the planet is the not only the most important issue of our time, but in all of human history.
Thank you for posting on this important topic. I’m looking forward to checking out the Greenland documentary you mentioned as I had not heard of that. The point you raise about your friends gets at the heart of one of the most important question about climate change – if most people don’t think their actions matter on an individual level, is it up to governments to step in and mandate change? Lots to think about. Keep up the great work.
Great Read! You bring up important points about how everyone knows about the negative affects of global warming but no one seems to do anything. It is going to take a team effort to slow down climate change but I feel there is hope in the future. I look forward to watching the Greenland is Melting documentary when I have free time available.
Great post Chris! Thank you for sharing your own experiences as well as this documentary about Greenland, which I look forward to checking out. You raise the important question, “Why does no one seem to care?” I think this is an important question to be asking, and I applaud you for talking to your friends about climate change. I think that just having conversations about the issue is an important start.
Your experiences with your friends also suggest why the focus on “individual” solutions might be too limiting and might turn people off. Perhaps we could focus instead on communities and get people working together as opposed to working independently as individuals. Of course, this isn’t to suggest that individual responsibility/individual action doesn’t matter, but rather that it matters SO much more, because what an individual does affects what a community does, which affects what a state does, which affects what a nation does, which affects what international coalitions do.
Chris,
I enjoyed reading your post, in part because it made me think about the way you set up the “grim” realities of global warming media coverage (documentaries, etc) as part of that media’s attempts to bring greater attention to the topic of global warming. Making an audience feel “grim” is a kind of strategy to hold your attention… but I wonder… is “depressing” the best form of gaining and holding an audiences’ attention and political engagement? I feel like the most popular TV/Youtube/Music out there isn’t depressing, but rather over-the-top positive. Are there better strategies for spreading the word than doomsaying, or is telling it like it is, in all its gravity, the most ethical and appropriate way to make us pay attention to global warming?