Where is the Sense of Urgency?

Our leaders feel the truth will cause panic.

Photo by Javier Miranda on Unsplash

When I was a kid playing sports, my dad said something that always stuck with me.

It was long ago, so I don't remember the exact details. The idea was, “If you're going to succeed at something, you've got to have a sense of urgency.”

This must have been a little later in my athletic career because I know my father didn’t say that to me when I was five or six. A six-year-old should not have a sense of urgency about anything. When everyone is just learning something for the first time; how to dribble a basketball, how to kick a soccer ball, how to hit a baseball, just have fun.  That is the way most of life should be. Have fun. Make friends. Don’t worry about the score. Pick the flowers popping up in the field. The stakes are low. Have a good time.

But a sense of urgency is required if you are involved in something that matters, be it competitive sports where they keep score, or trying to avert civilization collapse.

Not panic.

My dad knew well enough not to tell a six-year-old that he needed a sense of urgency. Because that six-year-old didn't know how to dribble a basketball or kick a soccer ball. That six-year-old would have panicked. The situation didn’t call for a sense of urgency. I was just having fun.    

I feel that's where a lot of people are with the crisis of overshooting our planetary boundaries. They don’t understand the gravity of the situation, they don’t know how dire things are. For example, a poll from earlier this month of Americans showed that while 78 percent believe climate change is real (only 54 percent believe it is caused by people), only 50 percent believe we should use less fossil fuels and a striking 45 percent were willing to pay $1 more per year to fight climate change. Only about 21 percent were willing to pay $100 more per year to fight climate change.  

Your average American doesn’t have a sense of urgency about climate change (or any other planetary boundary) because for the most part, they aren’t told much about it, and they can avoid the reality about climate change if they get their news from their preferred sources.

You can’t blame the average American. They are just living their lives, having fun, making friends, and picking flowers in the fields.

You can blame leadership in America. But leadership in America doesn’t want to level with the average American because they feel they will panic. They treat the average American like that six-year-old playing sports. If they upset them, they might stop being good consumers.

What a sense of urgency looks like.

A sense of urgency is needed to get important things done. There is a problem, it is serious, and the deadline can't be moved. Get to work.

That is where your sense of urgency needs to kick in. The presentation is due in two days. You’ve got to work with two other departments to get something done. There's a climate crisis and an overshoot crisis that is threatening to destroy civilization. Our leaders need to recognize there's a serious problem, there's a deadline that can't be moved, and get to work.

And yet they do not. Mostly because a sense of urgency doesn't pay very well, and they're afraid their sense of urgency will lead to panic among the people they lead. They also understand that if the public has a sense of urgency about climate change and overshoot, that public will demand action. Such action would change our society and diminish the power and wealth of those who currently enjoy the most power and wealth.

With great power comes … telling everyone things will be just fine.

That we are in a climate crisis and an overshoot crisis has been known by the powerful for quite a long time, it's just that it's becoming undeniable now.

And yet most of our leaders and most of our media are telling us that, yes things are bad, but look at this new technology that's going to save us. Green jobs and green investing are coming! Climate change and overshoots make the news, but mostly only if there is a heatwave or a big storm.

During World War II, when the fate of the free world was in peril, the news didn't report on the war maybe once or twice a week with a 5-minute clip showing how swimmingly things were going. The message wasn’t, “Don’t worry things will be fine.” The message was that we needed everyone to act with a sense of urgency because our way of life was on the line. They put newsreels in the middle of movies back then. Your escapism didn’t allow you to escape the war. It was that important. Everyone understood the sunset of urgency. Imagine if a company bought an ad to spur people to act on climate change and placed it before a movie today. There would be weeklong stories complaining about “wokeness”.

We don't have the luxury to say, “I'm sure it will be fine”.

The next leader to communicate a sense of urgency will be the first.

Do a little thought experiment with me. Imagine that George Monbiot, Timothee Parrique, Kate Raworth, Nate Hagens, Steve Keen, Rachel Donald, Jason Hickel, Hans Stegman, Erin Remblance, Dave Gardner (who is running for president in the U.S.), and those like them are members of the government where you live. What do you think the conversations in the halls of power in those places would be like? (If you don’t know who those people are, follow them).

There would be a sense of urgency in those places.

Imagine that these people, or those like them are the heads of companies, heads of investment banks, heads of universities, or heads of media companies. The sense of urgency would be communicated daily, by leaders who respected the people they led enough to treat them like adults, not children.

There wouldn't be chaos, there would be less wealth for the top 5%. And that's why it hasn't been done.

Tell me if this looks like urgency to you.

Public Companies

Only 4% of the world's largest 2,000 public companies meet UN Emissions Reduction Criteria, despite a record number of net zero pledges.  The UN uses its ‘Starting Line criteria’, which include setting a specific net zero target and clear conditions for the use of offsets to implement immediate emission-cutting measures and regularly reporting on interim and long-term progress.

Private Companies

Only half of the world’s 100 largest private firms have set a net zero or emissions reduction target - compared with the vast majority (82) of the 100 largest publicly-owned firms - and only eight of those have actual plans.

Governments

The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific group that monitors government climate efforts, evaluates countries’ net-zero targets. The project has found that most net-zero strategies are vague and don’t comply with the best practices encouraged by scientists for long-term planning. CAT suggests that countries include transparent assumptions about future carbon removal.

The Media

Climate change is most often discussed in the media when there are extreme weather events. Unfortunately, most news media drives viewership and clicks based on short-term fears and perceived threats. Stories about the long-term collapse of our way of life that climate change will bring if we don’t act do not sell a lot of ads. So they aren’t featured.

Also, the solutions available, such as moving away from a consumer-driven society and following a degrowth path to a steady state economy, run counter to the interests of the large media companies and billionaires who own most media. Their interest is in increased ad revenue and perpetuating the status quo.

There are not a lot of media co-ops out there.

If our leaders continue to assume that we can’t be trusted with the truth, we won’t get anywhere. Tell them that you want the truth. Tell them that there is a problem, it is serious, and the deadline can't be moved, and to get to work.