So this is what a war footing feels like
Just a few weeks ago, half of Australia was on fire.
It was a mid-February morning while I was beavering away at the York Butter Factory, when my friend Adam Lea (who heads up The Talent Institute) came bounding into the common area, fresh from a busy morning hustling for opportunities to place his budding growth hackers in progressive companies.
The reality of the Australian bushfires was weighing heavily on everyone’s mind. It was a cataclysmic disaster, and it created a feeling that the effects of climate change could not possibly be treated as a hypothetical anymore. They were playing out before our eyes as our cities were shrouded in dense smoke. It was unavoidable, everybody was talking about it, and it dominated every form of media.
As we chatted, Adam shared a point which really struck me. He said
“I’m meeting some really smart people out there at the corporates I speak to. It gives me hope that if we ever need to take a war footing to combat climate change, there are people out there who are good at solving problems and getting stuff done”.
It wasn’t the first time I had heard of concept that tackling climate change would require the equivalent of the utterly aligned and determined approaches that nations took in the midst of the World Wars. Until that day with Adam, that war footing idea had also just felt somehow theoretical to me. But now our country was literally on fire, and it felt like something massive had to shift. Surely.
Later that day I participated in a session with The Catalyst Network, which I feel very honoured to be a member of. It includes some of the smartest, most tapped in, people I know. They not only can see how our world works from multiple dimensions, but can articulate it, and are working to find solutions to some wicked societal problems. In that session we did a backcasting exercise, imagining that in a few years time that Australia, spurred by the 2020 bushfires, had become a world leader in responding to climate change. The exercise then had us play out all of the critical success factors and events which lead to that outcome, with the objective of illuminating the actions we need to take to bring about that imagined reality.
Inspired by my chat with Adam, the idea of the war footing was strong in my mind, and it dominated the narrative that I formed. In reflecting with the broader group, I found myself at a particular end of the spectrum with my outlook. Whereas others developed positive narratives about how the energy coming from the present bushfire disaster could be harnessed to propel societal forces, I was stuck on the idea that it is going to take a very heavy war-like response to overcome the inertia and the powerful opposing commercial forces which have hampered our collective response to climate change to date. Although it seemed unfathomable that day, given the intense amount of media attention, my fear was that the news cycle would pass and we would somehow lose the chance to channel the energy and create the momentum towards real progress in addressing climate change.
Fast forward less than one month to March 12 2020, and I sat in the next monthly meeting of The Catalyst Network. The world was suddenly a different place to what it was just 28 days prior. The group assembled was about one third the size, with most of the members locked in crisis meetings at their respective organisations about how to respond to the Covid-19 situation, which was escalating hour by hour, as it continues to do so as I write a few days later.
What we are witnessing right now resembles what I imagine a war footing to feel like. Countries are in lock down, industries are being halted under governmental orders, and people are genuinely frightened and compliant. All of this is with perfectly good reason. Covid-19 is looking likely to be a devastating virus. The difference with climate change however is the speed of the feedback loops. It can take months or years between significant weather events or disasters, and often these are relatively localised, and for most of us it is not our house or livelihood being destroyed. Climate change somehow still doesn’t feel like something that will effect all of us, everywhere. Contrast that with Covid-19, where every human is in its crosshairs, potentially within days or weeks if the situation escalates unchecked. So the immediate and drastic response is appropriate. But it still feels almost impossible to imagine governments and citizens responding in such a determined and aligned fashion towards climate change as they are to Covid-19, even though the consequences are likely to be even more dire.
At this moment, we are still counting on a silver bullet to save us from Covid-19 in the form of a vaccine, which it is said will be 12 or so months away. Hoping that eventuates, the decision we will face as a global community is whether we will then go back to business as usual, or whether will we be more selective as we turn the taps of commerce back on. We are yet to see how all of our supply chains will be forced to adapt to Covid-19, but it seems logical and probable that things will get more local, less wasteful, less indulgent, more mindful and perhaps even more altruistic. Could this be nature’s way of forcing our hand? Does Covid-19 give us the leg up we need to make the drastic changes required to avert a climate disaster? Or is this yet another news cycle waiting to be trumped by the next pressing crisis that will push climate change further down the agenda?
