Harry Potter, Pokémon Go and Our Unnamed Crisis

By Michael Jessen

J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels trace the young wizard’s efforts to vanquish his adversary Voldemort, also known as the Dark Lord.

Throughout the series, Rowling establishes that Voldemort is so feared in the wizarding world that it is considered dangerous even to speak his name. Most characters in the novels refer to him as "You-Know-Who" or "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" rather than say his name aloud.

Fast-forward from fantasy to a real world where almost 7.5 billion humans have spewed more than 22 billion tons of CO2 into Earth’s atmosphere to date in 2016, precipitating the arrival of an existential emergency which scientists predicted we wouldn’t see until the second half of this century.

This should be front page information, the lead item every night on the six o’clock television news; instead the media give us terror, death and disaster. No wonder that only about a fifth of the public trust the reports they get from their local news organizations.

Could it be that our media so fear this crisis that it keeps us in the dark about this unnamed calamity or are the newspapers and television networks so compromised and corrupted that they don’t want us to know?

British writer and environmental activist George Monbiot believes the latter and writes that if humanity fails to prevent climate breakdown it will be the fault of the media which gives social licence to the Voldemorts causing Earth’s systems to collapse.

“Why should we trust multinational corporations to tell us the truth about multinational corporations? And if they cannot properly inform us about the power in which they are embedded, how can they properly inform us about anything?” asks Monbiot.

Such questions stall the plot development in our real-life storyline as we attempt to do combat with our climate nemesis. Just like Harry Potter, humanity faces a life or death situation.

How can we respond appropriately to the scale of the challenge we face if we remain unaware of the grave state of affairs we have put ourselves in? And can we even make the required behavioural changes in time to correct our course toward climate tragedy?

Fooling ourselves

Climate Code Red: The Case for Emergency Action is a 2008 book which presents scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is worse than official reports and national governments have so far indicated.

David Spratt, co-author of Climate Code Red, believes the international policy target of limiting warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels is too high and that there is no wiggle room remaining in the carbon budget if we are to have a realistic chance of holding warming to even the 2°C level.
 
In his recent paper Climate Reality Check: After Paris Counting the Cost, Spratt writes:

 “We fool ourselves if we are not deeply alarmed by the recent news about the state of global warming. According to new data released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, measurements taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii show that carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations jumped by 3.05 parts per million (ppm) during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research. 2015 was the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew more than 2 ppm. Methane levels also reached a new instrumental high, 254 per cent higher than the pre-industrial level. And Arctic sea-ice extent hit a record winter low.”

Spratt goes on to write that scientists were shocked and stunned by the “unprecedented” NASA temperature figures for February 2016, which are 1.65°C higher than the beginning of the twentieth century and around 1.9°C warmer than the pre-industrial level.

 He quotes Prof. Michael Mann: “We have no carbon budget left for the 1.5°C target and the opportunity for holding to 2°C is rapidly fading unless the world starts cutting emissions hard right now”.  And Prof. Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam University considers that we are now “in a kind of climate emergency” and that at least 1.5°C is “locked in”.

Spratt was interviewed for the documentary film “A Simpler Way: Crisis as Opportunity” where he expresses the worry that having a carbon budget means that people will spend it. “Saying there is more carbon emissions we can reasonably put up, I think sends the wrong story.”
 
Putting up more CO2 is “absurd”
 
He argues that sensible risk management practices would inform us that we already have too much CO2 in the atmosphere and therefore the proposition of putting up more is “absurd”.
 
The documentary, directed by Jordan Osmond and Samuel Alexander, takes us to Gippsland, Australia where residents in a 12-month experiment known as The Simpler Way Project share a common commitment to social change and environmental preservation.
 
It also presents interviews with leading activists and educators in the world’s most promising social movements, including David Holmgren (permaculture), Helena Norberg-Hodge (localization), Ted Trainer (the simpler way), Nicole Foss (energy and finance), Bill Metcalf (intentional communities) and Graham Turner (limits to growth).
 
Dr. Samuel Alexander is the co-director of the Simplicity Institute and a lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also the author of Sufficiency Economy: Enough, For Everyone, Forever, a series of 12 essays exploring why degrowth is necessary in developed nations in order to move toward a just and sustainable economy that operates within the carrying capacity of the planet.

Our mainstream media – chained for its survival to advertising a consumer culture – ignores this message.  A simpler way of living for those of us in the developed world needs to become part of our climate conversation.
 
“This is not a popular thesis, but it does reflect a biophysical reality,” writes Alexander.

Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 8, 2016, five days earlier than in 2015. It is the day we have used as much from nature as our planet can renew in the whole year. We use more ecological resources and services than nature can regenerate through overfishing, overharvesting forests and emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than forests can sequester.

A rational response

The most rational response to any problem is to first address it by doing less of the thing that is the problem, not the opposite. Therefore one of our most crucial challenges is how to consume appropriately so as to conserve our humanity and the ecosphere.  
 
We have become a society addicted to affluence.
 
Mark Burch describes this as being on a highway with no off-ramp to more of what we already have: “More affluence; more things; more speed and power and noise; more competition and overwork; more pollution and more conflict; more booms and recessions and depressions.”
 
The brutal truth is that pursuing limitless growth on a finite planet is a recipe for ecological and humanitarian catastrophe.  As Alexander states, “Our aim should not be to do ‘more with less’ (which is the flawed paradigm of green growth), but to do ‘enough with less’ (which is the paradigm of sufficiency).”
 
“The pursuit of greater material wealth is now the basic cause of the ecological and other global problems now threatening our survival,” writes Ted Trainer, an Australian academic  and an advocate of economic degrowth, simple living, and conserver lifestyles.

In a 2011 article, Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, wrote: “Not only are immediate, substantive and system-wide investments in low-carbon infrastructure required but these also need to be accompanied by a rapid transition to low-carbon practices.”
 
The challenges we face
 
In a blog post written just after the signing of the Paris Accord, Anderson says “just 10 per cent of the global population are responsible for around 50 per cent of total emissions.  A 30 per cent reduction in global emissions could be delivered in under a year, simply by constraining the emissions of that 10 per cent responsible for half of all global CO2 to the level of a typical European.”
 
 To achieve that, we would have to embark on a radical energy demand reduction path and a Marshall Plan-style transition to zero carbon energy supply – goals that Anderson believes are achievable.
 
He says Annex 1 countries (industrialized nations belonging to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development plus the Russian Federation, the Baltic States, and several Central and Eastern European States) would need to reach emissions reductions of the order of about 70 per cent by 2020 and over 90 per cent by 2030.
 
Calling this a disturbingly short time frame, Anderson says, “The typical response is: ‘That is impossible’. In response, we need to ask: Is living with a 4°C global temperature rise by 2050 or 2070 less impossible?”
 
“Ours is now a world of very difficult futures, and the sooner we acknowledge this, the sooner we can seriously address the challenges we face,” he adds.
 
The question is: are we, the wealthy few per cent sufficiently concerned to pass the necessary legislation and make substantial personal sacrifices and changes to our lifestyles now in order to help the rest of the planet’s population and future generations?
 
Those of us who are emitting significantly and disproportionately need to change our habits and behaviours which beg the question: can we do it?
 
Can Pokémon Go help?
 
Mike Hower, a senior writer at the GreenBiz Group, recently wrote “Pokémon Go shows how digital technology can be an agent of behaviour change – getting people to do things they otherwise might not do.”

Detailing how friends and others have surprised themselves by doing things they do not normally do while playing Pokémon Go, Hower ponders whether we could “develop a single app that achieves the same kind of global reach as Pokémon Go that actually helps individuals improve sustainability outcomes?”

“If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior … you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured,” Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
 
Creating community is what Pokémon Go is all about with its incentive to be more active in the real world, creating a common purpose, talking with strangers and promoting physical activity.
 
Humans are not rational decision-makers but emotional ones; we go with our gut, with what feels right not logic.  Research shows we don’t make better decisions when we’re emotionally disengaged; emotions are fundamental to effective action, and positive emotions are much more potent than negative ones.
 
Hower writes, “The Pokémon Go of sustainability must inspire action by melding the best attributes of logic and emotion – helping people to understand all that is at stake while also empowering them to do something about it. All of humanity’s latent potential rests in a reservoir of hope – and figuring out how to tap into this ultimately will save the world.”
 
He suggests Pokémon Go itself could be made more sustainable by rewarding players for eco-conscious decisions like riding a bike or take public transit to school or work.
 
Hower concludes, “It’s time for a new generation of innovators to harness digital technology’s potential for instigating meaningful social and environmental behavioral change.”
 
In the end, we need human heroes like Harry Potter who are unafraid to show their emotional vulnerability, to step forward and challenge our unjustified sense of complacency, to do battle with our nemesis – global warming and its consequent climate destabilization.

We simply need to recognize the opportunity this crisis has presented us with. To defeat the evil of global warming, we not only have to fight it, but try to understand where it comes from in the first place.

Then we will realize that the key to ridding the world of this evil is for all of us to live it out of existence.
 
 Michael Jessen is an eco-writer and sustainability consultant living at Longbeach near Balfour, BC. His business Zero Waste Solutions helps individuals, businesses and communities make sustainable choices in day-to-day management and utilization of resources. Learn more at www.zerowaste.ca or www.michaeljessen.ca. Michael can be reached by email at zerowaste@shaw.ca
 
RESOURCES – If you have been inspired by this column to take actions to reduce your own carbon footprint, these websites will give you lots of ideas - http://www.climatecare.org/climate/low-carbon-living/, http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/reduce-your-carbon-footprint/, and http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/13-steps-carbon-footprint

Want resources to help guide you to simpler living? Brian Gardner’s 11 Simple Living Resources to Inspire Your Journey puts them all in one place.

Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life is an outstanding starter’s guide.

The Simpler Way: A Practical Action Plan for Living More on Less is available here.

Job One for Humanity (http://www.joboneforhumanity.org/) is an excellent place to learn more about escalating global warming caused by human actions which is leading to increased climate destabilization. You may also wish to sign the petition asking national leaders to declare an international global warming state of emergency. By signing this petition, you pledge to act together with others as one human family to acknowledge and resolve the current climate crisis.  

In his latest book Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, Sebastian Junger explores our evolutionary wiring for community, and paradoxically, how our modern aspirations for success and wealth attempt to distance ourselves from it -- making us unhappier and emotionally unhealthier in the pursuit.

A carbon offset is a greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction that is used to counterbalance, or offset, a GHG emission. A carbon offset occurs when an individual or organization emits a given amount of GHG emissions but invests in measures that remove the equivalent volume of GHG emissions from the atmosphere or prevent the emissions from taking place at all. Carbon offsets are a financial instrument that represents this reduction in GHG emissions. Find out more about offsetting your carbon emissions at Offsetters and the David Suzuki Foundation.