We Are All In This Together: Reframing the Climate Crisis 2

The premise of this post, as the previous one, is that the climate crisis is likely to dominate world politics for the next 50 years, beginning quite soon. It is moving very quickly towards becoming the dominant issue in the United Kingdom and in Europe as a whole. Japan and other nations in Asia and Africa are taking it very seriously, as is the UN.

The United States and its major media, and much of its alternative media, including blogs blue and red, are virtually alone in their ignorance and denial.

In that first part, I outlined the difficulty of reframing an issue with such unique properties. I suggested first steps in reframing in order to encourage a sense of urgency. In this part, I'll try to point out how to reframe the climate crisis in ways that simultaneously reframe the purpose of the Democratic Party and the progressive or liberal agenda.

The climate crisis could conceivably go on being unrecognized for some time, as we try to cope with its individual manifestations, from weather-related emergencies to disease infestations and epidemics. It is even possible that global heating droughts will lead to severe fresh water shortages, which will lead to severe conflicts and even war, without the ultimate cause ever being made clear. In fact, this is pretty likely, as long as we continue with politics as usual.

However, there will likely be weather-related manifestations that people will understand as related to the climate crisis. Polls show that a large majority of Americans-up to 70%---believe that global heating is real. Once they believe that the climate is an urgent crisis, they are going to need to know what to do about it.

It is imperative that our political leaders begin talking about the climate crisis in terms of how to deal with it. Not just in terms of programs or funding, but first of all in terms of what it means, and what it challenges us to do.

The facts can be outlined very simply. The climate crisis will create serious problems very soon, and there is nothing we can do to stop these effects. We must address the consequences, hopefully in the more predictable cases by anticipating them and taking preventive action. Admit that there will be problems, try to anticipate them, but act quickly and with a sure hand when and where they occur. That's the first set of challenges.

What ideas will help us cope with the effects of the climate crisis in our lifetime? Certainly the renewed attention to science and to our international partners that John Kerry talked about in his campaign will be essential. But the climate crisis also provides the opportunity to re-state in suddenly very meaningful terms the basis of our political beliefs. In fact, the climate crisis demands that we respond at this level, because it's going to take a broad emotional consensus for us to manage this perilous time.

The climate crisis will manifest in different ways in different places in the world, at different times. Problems common to several manifestations will emerge---the lack of fresh water, for instance. There will be likely be food shortages in some places, catastrophic weather events, a severe change in climate resulting in many more heat or cold related deaths, and so on. And there will be less quantifiable but no less devastating changes, as local ecologies change, and the vegetation and wildlife, the landscape itself becomes unfamiliar. We are seeing this already in the Arctic and northern Alaska, where hotter oceans devastate the polar bear and whale population, ice is melting and the cultures as well as the livelihood of Native peoples there are under extreme stress. It is happening with rapidity that surprises even climate scientists.

What does all this mean? Basically, that we are all vulnerable. Although some places will feel direct effects as catastrophes, our planet is so interdependent at virtually all levels, that we will all be affected. Moreover, the whole web of interrelationships will be affected.

That is the message of life we've been missing. Our individual liberties and prosperity depend on the indulgence of the whole, and on the basic social bargain that since everybody may need help at some time, everybody needs to be ready and willing to lend a hand.

This relationship of individual freedom to a sense that we are all in this together is basic to progressive and liberal thought, and to the Democratic party. Equality before the law, regardless of race, gender or class, is one expression of this. Economic and environmental justice are other expressions. Compassion is the ethic that emerges from it, but compassion and empathy are basic to human survival, because none of us survives alone. It's been that way for a very long time.

That is the frame: we are all in this together. It is recognized in indigenous and ancient cultures all over the world, which have evolved systems and customs of exchange, of helping neighbors, of hospitality to strangers. We see its resurgence when something dramatic catches our attention, like the Asian tsunami or some particular kidnapped child---something that momentarily seizes imagination and cuts through the numb busyness of our lives. It awakens the empathy genes, or stimulates the empathy circuits, however you want to explain it.

In order for each of us to pursue our differences and our destinies, we have to be able to depend on each other. It's as elemental as the family. It's as profound as what binds the most cohesive military unit.

In our individualist culture, it requires a little imagination. Someday I will be old. I was once young. I am well-fed, but someday I could be hungry and desperate. I am healthy but someday I will be sick. I was born in a privileged race in a privileged place, but it could have been otherwise and I would not be less worthy. I am old and weak, but I know things; they are young and strong, but they don't know what would make things better. We can help each other.

We are all in this together. It was the basis for FDR's response to the Great Depression, and the Marshall Plan and the GI Bill of Rights after World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement, Medicare and the War on Poverty in the 1960s. Certainly they all had other less noble political objectives, and messiness in the details. But we evolved some greater recognition of common self-interest: that we are all in this together.

We will need leaders who will stand up and re-state this fundamental truth, to make it central to our national purpose again. The United States can use its vast economic power, its science and technology, to help the rest of the world through the short term crises they may face. The science and technology of wringing fresh water from seawater and wastewater is one example.

We can learn much from what Europeans have learned from the different paths they've taken. We can learn much from ancient cultures, some of which we are usually in the process of destroying.

We will need to apply these old lessons and expand their purview. The definition of "we" must expand. In a sense we might call social, with political implications, we will need to evolve some more.

We are all in this together. There will be states and regions in the U.S. that are harder hit than others, and the kind of callousness we now exhibit in our failure to have a decent health care system will not do much for our ability to get through the climate crisis, even in our own country, as well as our own continent and our hemisphere.

Of course none of this tells us specifically what we must do. It doesn't automatically illuminate the best policies, and it certainly doesn't predict exactly what manifestations we will face. But people are working on those subjects. They are figuring, quantifying, extrapolating and designing solutions. They are experimenting, advocating, producing. They are testing and stockpiling the knowledge we will require to choose from, as events call forth the need.

But we have to be ready to consider and choose, and know why we are choosing. I believe we need a framework. Maybe this isn't exactly it, but it seems close enough to restate: we are all in this together.

The second set of challenges will be to do what needs to be done to restore the earth's climate and its self-regulating systems so that human civilization can continue after our generations are gone, and the world belongs to our grandchildren and the generations that follow. Suggestions for reframing the climate crisis issue for that purpose will be the subject of the next part in this series.