It is not just a year we are bringing to a close. It is a decade.
A hundred years ago, the second decade of the 20th century was marred by war. That war extinguished the Ottoman Empire, making the world safe for the western powers to rule. But it did not permanently incapacitate Germany that, barely two decades later, embarked on another attempt at conquest.
At the end of many years of brutal war, humanity was treated to stirring visions of world peace under the aegis of the League of Nations. That first venture at global governance failed and the world endured a second world war. The Great Depression of the 1920s indicated that what the world needed was global economic governance – although that goal was constantly impaired by the strong force of nationalism.
In the second decade of this new century, the challenges are only slightly different. Instead of rogue powers, humanity confronts of specter of borderless terrorism. More important, the entire planet is threatened by human activity. The comprehensive challenges posed by climate change threaten the very premise not only of human civilization but of life itself. There is a real possibility the planet may not outlive humanity.
With our powerful astronomical instruments, we observe stars being born and dying millions of light years away. We have tracked gravitational waves that travelled billions of years. We know, although not fully, about black holes thousands of times larger than our sun and observe them as they gobble up stars. We know the universe is in constant flux and is definitely finite.
But it is beyond our powers to intervene with the large forces that cause galaxies to collide and solar systems to disappear. We are not helpless, however, to save our planet from premature extinction. The sun is calculated to be capable of keeping us warm and holding us in place for another two billion years. But we might kill the earth way ahead of that.
To date, however, we seem utterly incapable of saving the planet. Our atmosphere has warmed 1.5 degrees since the industrial revolution, when we began throwing up millions of tons of carbon up in the air. Scientists argue that beyond this point, there can be no return. Already we witness the effects of climate change in severe weather phenomenon and the rapid melting of the ice caps. The rise in sea levels is a certainty.
Greta Thunberg, bless her, thrived rather than wallowed in her Asperger’s syndrome. She has become the voice for a global movement of young people demanding the earth be spared from the effects of our unsustainable lifestyles. This movement condemned politicians in all nations for substituting talk for real action.
In the last global climate conference concluded early this month, no meaningful initiative to reverse climate change has been agreed upon. A moron who insists the cold winter disproves global warming governs the world’s largest economy.
A century ago, we tried to build global institutions of governance to end all wars. We failed at that. In the intervening years, humanity continued to slaughter in large scale and, in addition, condemned thousands of species to extinction.
Ending wars is vastly more achievable than reversing global warming. There is little basis for hope we might succeed in this more challenging task.
Over the last decade, our world saw the most breathtaking technological advances in human history. It also saw the worst devastation of the planet we live in.
In our pockets, we carry devices that have thousands of times the computing power assembled to send a man to the moon. Yet we fail to reverse by a fraction of a degree the warming of our own planet. That has to be the central irony of our time.
Somewhere in the northern Pacific, the ocean vortex has brought together a floating garbage patch the size of France. We have yet to figure out a way to clean up that mess.
The Philippines has the dubious distinction of being the third worst polluter of the oceans. More urgent that pulling up our ranking in the Ease of Doing Business Index, we should try and lower our ranking in the world’s worst polluter index. China and the countries of Southeast Asia are the worst polluters of the ocean.
There is no technological antidote to killing the planet, unfortunately. In the past decade, all the technological advancement did not result in reversing climate change.
Rapid urbanization has magnified rather than diminished the propensity to pollute the planet. Urbanization is the trend in the foreseeable future. Pollution must be reversed.
That challenge of saving the planet, since it cannot be met by technological achievement, leaves us with the traditional tool humanity developed to spur progress: governance.
We tried to end war and win peace by building institutions for global governance. Although that earlier effort failed, we need to design more effective global institutions for fighting climate change. The COP framework has just failed. We have to try again. We have no other tool except governance.
The most encompassing global crusades are ultimately dependent on effectively action at the locality. Climate change is ultimately a lifestyle issue. It is addressed within families, within communities and within nations.
Our contribution to the fight against climate change is ultimately measured by how the problem is addressed by our local institutions of governance. If our local institutions fail, everything else unravels. In the next decade, we should choose our leaders according to the programs of sustainability they embrace.