Climate action - call it what it is

I was brought up to be polite - I went to the bathroom, visited the restroom and washed my hands a lot. Heaven forbid I use that crude word toilet or refer to some icky bodily function. We find ourselves in an equally ridiculous position when talking about the climate emergency. We throw around collective nouns like governments, corporations and the fossil fuel industry as euphemisms to mask our collective failure to act - to do the right thing for those we love.

The horror we're hiding from is that we, us middle-class residents of high-income countries, are living on borrowed resources. An unsettling truth to face. Saying no to the dopamine hits of our consumption-based lifestyles requires an annoying amount of inner fortitude. Equally confronting, it demands an admission that, somehow, despite all our cleverness, we've got it all very wrong if the benefits of modern life come at the cost of the very fundementals we need to sustain them.

Us mere mortals who are not involved in ruling the world can easily deflect responsibility onto governments, the fossil fuel industry and the finance sector. And the people working within these collective nouns can toss the ball to their mates working in the other collective nouns in a constant game of smoke and mirrors.

Dr Maria Neira, responsible for environmental health at WHO, called out the responsibility of individuals working as politicians: "Anytime you postpone, OK, are you ready to cope with that? You have to live with that weight on your shoulders of the fact that you are ....not protecting the lives of those people.”

Let's be clear, it's not governments that regulate.  It's today's prime ministers, presidents, top bureaucrats and policy and decision-makers who have to decide whether to act in their professional capacity to protect the climate future of their loved ones - or not.

It's the individual leaders of political parties and the factions within these parties that must account to their loved ones, present and future, for their professional decisions. And it's the individual party members, and all of us eligible to vote, who need to decide if we expect our party to have realistic, transparent policies that provide a livable future for our loved ones. 

It's not the fossil fuel industry which is driving the CO2 emssions that cause climate change. It's the CEOs, COOs, CFOS, and all the other OOOOOOs and their managers making decisions in fossil fuel companies who have to decide whether to increase the CO2 emissions for their loved ones to clean up, or be part of the clean-up process. It's the fossil fuel lobbyists who have to decide whether to take up the personal challenge of doing the right thing for their loved ones rather than their wallets.

The bankers and investors and fund managers need to calculate, based on climate science not financial speculation, whether they are really making the right decisions for those they love - their children and grandchildren.

And the techbros, not the tech industry, need to decide whether they want to gift their loved ones a future based on misinformation or one that is liveable and viable.

And it's us middle-class residents of high-income democracies, waiting for 'them' to do something, who have to think about how we will account to our loved ones for our apathy and lack of personal courage to demand action and change of our lifestyles from consumption to sufficiency.

It's not COP that's failing. It's us, all of us, failing to do what we can as citizens, consumers, professionals, decision-makers, investors and influencers within our social circles.

Let's stop hiding behind these climate euphemisms. We will all have to account to our loved ones about what we did in this climate crisis. Let's start now: Governments I have to act.

Together, we've got this.

Louise Rapaud