O autor deste artigo recente, David Wallace-Wells, defende que o pânico e o medo são essenciais para guiar a acção política colectiva e que esta é indispensável para complementar as mudanças a nível individual, que, só por si, são insuficientes para a escala da transformação necessária. E defende-o devido à tendência para a complacência e a negação, quer por parte dos políticos, quer do cidadão comum, dando como exemplo as mobilizações sociais como a do movimento Extinction Rebellion (https://rebellion.earth/).
Excertos: "The planet is getting warmer in catastrophic ways. And fear may be the only thing that saves us. [After the Oct 2018 IPCC report] It is O.K., finally, to freak out. Even reasonable. This, to me, is progress. Panic might seem counterproductive, but we’re at a point where alarmism and catastrophic thinking are valuable… (…) the strongest argument for the wisdom of catastrophic thinking is that all of our mental reflexes run in the opposite direction, toward disbelief about the possibility of very bad outcomes. (…) We are all living in delusion, unable to really process the news from science that climate change amounts to an all-encompassing threat. Indeed, a threat the size of life itself. (…) conscious consumption is a cop-out, a neoliberal diversion from collective action, which is what is necessary. People should try to live by their own values, about climate as with everything else, but the effects of individual lifestyle choices are ultimately trivial compared with what politics can achieve. (…) That is the purpose of politics: that we can be and do better together than we might manage as individuals."
Aproveito para partilhar um outro artigo ("Don’t panic about climate breakdown" de Chris Saltmarsh, Fev 2019) que põe em causa a estratégia defendida por Wallace-Wells e propõe respostas baseadas na esperança e no optimismo, como as das greves estudantis pelo clima.
Eu próprio defendo que todas as estratégias são válidas e vitais, mas estou muito céptico em relação às propostas do chamado 'Green New Deal' (defendidas neste último artigo) por não porem em causa o modelo económico baseado no crescimento e no consumo.
Uma outra abordagem é por sua vez defendida num outro artigo ("'Everything is not going to be okay’: How to live with constant reminders that the Earth is in trouble" de Dan Zak, Jan 2019) que propõe a coragem em vez da esperança como reacção perante a crise climática.
Excertos: "Climate change is more sly than time-lapse video of a disintegrating glacier. It’s the creep of bay water into ditches, and then onto roads. It’s a smell. A nuisance. A crinkling of the calendar. (…) The anthropocene - whether it began with agriculture, the colonization of the West, the Industrial Revolution or the atomic bomb - was born of human ingenuity. That’s what empowered us to create this mess, and what empowers us now to see it. (…) That’s the riddle. To grasp the problem, we have to slow down. To respond to it, we have to act fast. We have both no time and more time, says climate scientist Kate Marvel. Climate change is a slope. We can ease our descent. But we don’t think about it this way. “We want there to be a really simple story: You do this, and then everything will be okay,” says Marvel, who works for NASA in New York. “And everything is not going to be okay.” (…) Maybe we should stop saying [everything is going to be ok]. There is opportunity in this acceptance. Marvel thinks we need courage, not hope. We must know what’s coming, we must realize it will hurt, and we must be very strong together. Hold the problem in your mind. Freak out, but don’t put it down. Give it a quarter-turn. See it like a scientist, and as a poet. As a descendant. As an ancestor."
A necessidade absoluta e a premência de reagir perante o risco de colapso sistémico devido à crise ambiental global já deviam ser evidentes para todos os que têm acesso à informação (fidedigna) disponível e se preocupam com o nosso futuro comum, mas aproveito aqui para partilhar um artigo que comenta mais um relatório dramático ("This is a crisis" publicado pelo 'Institute for Public Policy Research' no Reino Unido) sobre este tópico.
Excerto: "The gathering storm of human-caused threats to climate, nature and economy pose a danger of systemic collapse comparable to the 2008 financial crisis, according to a new report that calls for urgent and radical reform to protect political and social systems. The study says the combination of global warming, soil infertility, pollinator loss, chemical leaching and ocean acidification is creating a 'new domain of risk', which is hugely underestimated by policymakers even though it may pose the greatest threat in human history."
