This is a fictional short-story telling about courage and vision after the failure of COP26, submitted on 10 October 2021 to the Extinction Rebellion Solarpunk story competition.
As expected, the COP26 conference had adhered to business-as-usual; the fact that many of the UN Sustainable Development goals did not recognise the ecological limits of Earth went unmentioned. Growth economics was still regarded as the only way forward, and by the end of November 2021 the future for humanity looked even more hopeless than before the COP26 conference had taken place. Those who realised that humanity had squandered its last chance to pull itself out of ecological nosedive were exhausted from long-term anxiety, unfulfilled-hopes and the emotional and financial efforts of activism and protests. They were left numb with fear and dread about the future for the whole of life on Earth.
Then there came an announcement to the press in December 2021 which seemed to shine the light forward on the possibility of a global aspiration to shrink humanity’s ecological footprint. The two oldest Universities in the United Kingdom, Oxford and Cambridge, had collaborated to make a press announcement which left the British public stunned. It read thus:
The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge wish to apologise to the UK public, for not insisting that key ecological principles and awareness about global ecological overshoot be included in the basic skills curriculum within schools. We now find it our sad duty to alert humanity to the fact that our species are causing the Sixth Mass extinction event that has been underway for decades and is now rapidly escalating. Our modern techno-industrial lifestyles have spawned a coercive consumer culture which relies on unsustainable growth economics. This has caused the rate of acceleration of the climate and ecological emergency to be so rapid that humanity are now facing the possibility of extinction this century along with the majority of the other life-forms that have shared the Holocene epoch with us on Earth.
The courage to make this announcement comes together with a vision for a way forward to galvanise global collaboration in the urgent process of dismantling our coercive consumer culture, and instead focussing on the regeneration and growth of our ecological capital whilst undertaking a managed scale-down of all non-essential pursuits that have a high eco-footprint. The following steps by the academic world will assist politicians to facilitate the urgently needed transition:
A1) Deliver a formal recognition of the Anthropocene geological epoch and the escalating Sixth Mass Extinction. This will raise awareness that the behaviour of humankind will determine whether we allow the Sixth Mass Extinction to engulf us.
A2) Revise the Basic Skills curriculum to include an awareness of the key drivers of ecological overshoot and the global and country specific overshoot situation, and to provide children with a profound understanding of how to best dispose of organic and inorganic waste material, in order to maximise recycling and reuse opportunities. Thereby signalling a formal end to the ‘throw-away’ era.
A3) All academic establishments are advised to formally declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency, and to formally recognise that the Sixth Mass Extinction threatens to engulf humanity. Subsequently they can then encourage and facilitate any activities that students and staff feel are appropriate to raise awareness about the scale of the problems now facing humanity.
A4) Academic establishments are advised to lobby their governments to promote and support the idea of ratifying a UN Global Aspiration for voluntary and rapid reduction of humanity’s ecological footprint until we all succeed in living within the bio-capacity of our environment.
The recommendations above should facilitate a rapid rise in public awareness about the predicament that decades of pursuing economic growth has created. This awareness will allow governments to take steps that previously would not have found favour with the voting public, and therefore were not available options in the past. Once the academic institutions have raised public awareness adequately with their declarations governments will then have the ability to consider taking the following steps:
G1) Governments are advised to formally declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency and to formally recognise that without radical changes the Sixth Mass Extinction now threatens to engulf humanity this century. The moment of declaration would ideally be combined with a pardon and release for any activists that are in the judicial process due to their actions in defence of the eco-systems on Earth.
G2) In democratic countries a cross-party emergency government is desirable to ensure cross-party commitment to focus on regeneration and regrowth of eco-systems, whilst undertaking a managed scale-down of all non-essential pursuits that have a high eco-footprint. Attempts to reinstate former biodiversity levels within any country will need to be undertaken using expertise about climate change predictions, for it will not be feasible or appropriate to try to protect species that will struggle to survive our rapidly changing climate.
G3) All governments to consider ratifying a UN Global Aspiration to shrink back within our ecological boundaries.
Oxford and Cambridge University consider that if these recommendations are followed they will provide a just and ethical framework to rebuild our Society in an imaginative fashion that will address the flaws of the growth orientated culture that has dominated our culture in recent centuries and now threatens to destroy us.
The two Universities had not acted in isolation, they had invited many other Universities to offer their support to this announcement to the media, but no other Universities had found the necessary courage to sign up. Nevertheless the leadership and humility that was shown in this article had a profound impact on its readers. After the article appeared there were significant changes in the way that the media reported on extreme weather events and there was a shift in priorities. Celebrity news, which had always claimed many column inches began to be eclipsed by invigorating discussions about the upheavals reverberating around the academic world globally which had been initiated by this bold announcement.
It was early in the year 2022 that the scientific community finally agreed to declare that the Anthropocene epoch had commenced in 1800AD, and the anthropogenic Sixth Mass Extinction had commenced around 1950.
The leadership for changed attitudes continued to emanate from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. They involved all their staff and their students in a process of curriculum re-evaluation. Every subject came under scrutiny, in each case the question was asked — How valuable is this discipline in an escalating climate and ecological collapse? Some areas became difficult to justify, some involving data collection and interpretation were judged to be a waste of effort, because the data was changing so rapidly that the length of time required to collate and analyse would render the final research paper out-of-date before it could reach publication. Some areas like law and economics were clearly in need of a complete overhaul.
Local authorities also began to engage local communities in discussions about how we might rework our society to reduce our dependency on fossil-fuels whilst still living a fulfilled life. It was soon realised that simply engaging in these discussions created a buzz and an excitement that could relieve the converging anxieties that had been fomenting since the COVID pandemic had started. Activists will recognise this sensation — ‘an anxiety shared is an anxiety halved’. The public anxieties about financial and health security had been exacerbated by the steadily growing awareness about the climate and ecological crisis and the humility shown by these two noble Universities became infectious. Everyone began to wonder whether a very different way of life might not just be possible but also desirable and essential for long-term survival.
The Extinction Rebellion and numerous non-governmental organisations that had been campaigning on environmental and climate issues, proved themselves worthy conduits for sharing information and imaginative ideas as the general public awoke to the idea that they could influence development of their own future society.
By exploiting the power of virtual communication, physically separate communities were able to connect and share ideas. The affluent world began to listen to the growing stories of lost livelihoods throughout the world, due to rapidly changing climates and the widespread lack of awareness and empowerment with regard to ecological overshoot and its causes. Rich people with a surplus of financial wealth and property began to choose to invest worldwide in degrowth education and empowerment and eco-regeneration schemes. Funds became available from private donations to help flood-hit areas to either relocate their accommodation away from the flood-plain or to construct protection.
The feeling of remorse about the time and resources that had been wasted in the damaging pursuit of economic growth was palpable, it provided strong motivation to voluntarily invest any spare capital in work to reverse the environmental damage that had been inflicted over the decades. There was wide acknowledgement that the risk of imminent financial collapse was very real, so people were willing to invest their capital rather than wait to see its purchasing value evaporate.
Young people in the UK suddenly became aware of the severe ecological overshoot relating to their homeland, this influenced their purchasing and parenting choices dramatically. The media reported on the changing perceptions within the general public, and the trivia that had dominated our media and had always distracted our public from the really important issues for survival, faded and disappeared altogether from trustworthy news sources. TV dramas and films rapidly began to look dated and irrelevant, saccharine and unreal. Adventure movies seemed tame compared to the real-life adventure that was unfurling before our eyes. War seemed unthinkable, for we could hardly contemplate fighting over remaining resources when we had been guilty of squandering so much and for so long.
A new sense of purpose and understanding was born and this served to galvanise communities to aspire to shrink their size and ecological footprint voluntarily and rapidly. The rest of the world soon followed suit. As the mind-set of humanity switched from growth to urgent and voluntary degrowth a plethora of imaginative ideas were revealed about how to dismantle the fuel hungry modern techno-industrial lifestyles, whilst retaining enough of the food supply chain to survive comfortably and provide sources of entertainment that were not eco-costly. Music and dance became key to building emotional resilience. Those activists who had campaigned with Extinction Rebellion were familiar with the courage that a powerful Samba band could bring to a protest. The birth of the new culture brought with it new songs, music and ideas and new ways of looking at both life and death.
My dear readers, I am no story-teller, I am simply a realist and an optimist. What I have drawn in this story is a very realistic vision of something that could really happen. I have deliberately not been too specific about how our new eco-aware culture might look, I have only painted a vision of how we might get started on a rapid cultural evolutionary process. At the moment our politicians have their hands tied, for public opinion will not vote for the voluntary and rapid degrowth that is needed. If our academic world find the courage to face up to reality and talk honestly about the Sixth Mass Extinction then we would be able to reverse the tragic trajectory that we have been pursuing for decades. Thank you for reading my short-story I hope that it seeded some ideas of how our society might turn into something very different and much more fun than the fast-paced and anxiety-ridden modern techno-industrial lifestyles that we worship right now.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Barbara Williams is the author of the booklet ‘Poems For Parliament’, and the book ‘Saving Us From Ourselves – Can we repair 50years of ecological overshoot?’. The book was written to help people in affluent countries understand the extent to which we can change our behaviour to salvage our eco-system. It is free to download here. After writing the book she came to realise that we need a UN ‘Universal Aspiration for an Altruistic Anthropocene’ to inspire the necessary behavioural changes, read the petition to the UN here. She has been a climate and environmental activist since April 2019, and maintains this website. Her mission statement as at 3 May 2021 is available here. Barbara can be contacted on bw@poemsforparliament.uk.
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