People of Plenty

Have you seen this recent Washington Post article about the U.N. secretary general urging world leaders to “pick up the pace” in remarks at COP26?

I’ve talked about the responsibility that we all have in becoming an agent of climate solutions. It doesn’t matter if we are a leader of country, a small business owner, a person working in HR, a teacher, a student, or even a retiree. We all must wear this badge in order to make an impact on this global mission.

I talked about this in a Green Biz article that was published earlier this month in a piece titled The Mission Monster Message at COP26 which you can read by clicking here.

If we don’t reduce the habits of our ‘people of plenty,’ we share more harm in our combined near future.

My article wasn’t meant to criticize leaders. I wrote to inspire and highlight the voices all around the world that have weight.

COP26 misses key points of things we should be talking about, but thankfully we have a generation of young people who are taking notice. They are becoming their own agents of change. Modern corporations have the ability to do a lot, but are they doing the right things? They may be aiming for the target but are they coming close to a bullseye?

In my article, I write:

“This emphasis on consumption will not sit well, at first, by those in the leisure class, select technical elites fostering idle hopes, such as Bill Gates and company, the undertaxed and the many who would rather imagine a different, more self-justifying story. As the world’s population grows from 7 billion to 10 billion people this century, however, intelligent tradeoffs on food and energy will become second nature in a populist way.”

We as a collective, need to reduce the habits of our “people of plenty,” we share more harm in our combined near future. Avoidance of this climate and capital challenge is not sensible. You can watch the new generations excel in this climate anxiety. Denial is proving no longer tolerable. The scientific community now meeting, and the nations watching, need collectively to be more artful, more competitive, more frugal on these central issues of simple consumption rates per family and region in our century.

Maybe we need a larger view?

As David Bowie sang:

Am I sitting in a tin can
Far above the world
Planet Earth is blue
And there’s nothing I can do

Though I’m past one hundred thousand miles
I’m feeling very still
And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much she knows
Ground Control to Major Tom

Doing more with less allows greater inclusiveness and civic diplomacy than a politics of hate. It would be unfortunate if the commentators do not challenge the experts on consumption rates.

We are facing many opponents who should not be thought of as simply stupid in a superficial way. More science, more medicines, more money, more investments can only go so far into our near future.