Some would say it’s already too late. Climate change is already happening, and all of our efforts will only succeed in limiting or delaying the damage. Consequently, research is being conducted into how science and technology might provide more extreme methods of intervention in the form of climate engineering – finding ways of managing solar radiation, for example, or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Such stories of science saving the day are reassuring – many of our visions of the apocalypse, as we have seen, push things to the brink of disaster, and even beyond, but reserve a ‘eucatastrophe’ or unexpected escape or happy ending – but it seems foolish to rely upon such a deus ex machina in real life.*
The idea of climate change engineering is also a controversial one, partly because it suggests that we don’t need to engage in a systematic overhaul of our lives to address the underlying problem. Another, possibly valid, concern is that we would rush headlong into a scheme intended to save us but that has terrible unforeseen consequences and side effects that only make it worse or create an entirely new problem. Such a scenario is the basis for Bong Joon Ho’s movie Snowpiercer (2013), a powerfully eloquent portrayal of human hubris in which an attempt to reverse global warming has instead brought on a new ice age, and the last human survivors live on a train that travels endlessly around a frozen world.
The film also focuses on the clash between the lower classes at the tail of the train and the first-class passengers at the front, and so highlights another very real issue in the climate apocalypse: the fear that the poor will be left to die or scrabble to survive while the wealthy are able to protect themselves from the worst of the effects. We can already see this to some extent: the richest 10 per cent of the population is responsible for more than half of the world’s carbon emissions, but are able to protect themselves from the worst effects – they can simply jet off elsewhere when the weather gets a bit extreme. Meanwhile, billions of the poorest people around the world, who tend to have the smallest carbon footprint, are most likely to suffer from climate change – drought, floods and extreme storms. As the effects are felt more keenly, this gap between rich and poor may only widen.
The situation we find ourselves in is understandably scary to most people. Fears over climate change are rising, as is a belief that something must be done – recent Pew Research Center polling finds a 68 per cent global average of the population who consider climate change a serious challenge, rising to as high as 90 per cent in Greece.* But are we scared enough? Given how gloomy the scientific forecasts are – and that this is the one apocalypse scenario it would be quite sensible to be afraid of – perhaps the global figure should be higher, and action should already be well underway. Environmental concerns have been around for decades, after all.
There are reasons why we’ve been slow on the uptake. Certain groups with a vested interest in the continued use of fossil fuels have lobbied determinedly to obscure or undermine the science and prevent policy changes in regard to energy sources. It might also be more plausibly argued that scientists had difficulty mastering the channels of media communication – years in a lab do not ready a person for the bright lights of a TV studio. At the same time, there is a convention that media coverage must be ‘balanced’. With politics this makes sense; it wouldn’t be fair for a left-wing pundit to dominate the airwaves without giving a right-wing pundit the chance to reply and rebut, and vice versa. But climate change is about science first and politics only insofar as politicians need to act on what the science determines. We don’t look to balance a news story about a new Earth-orbiting satellite with a rebuttal by a flat-earther, or a report about the particle accelerator at CERN with a vox pop by a man who thinks electricity is little demons running up and down copper wire. But for years climate change deniers were given equal footing, even though scientists have been largely in agreement for quite some time. So if the scientists failed initially to communicate the urgency of the situation to the masses, perhaps it’s not entirely their fault.
Now, climate change often dominates the headlines. There are still deniers but the global climate strikes, protests and movements demonstrate that people are increasingly getting the message. Even with this raised awareness, however, scientists agree that not nearly enough is being done to avert the crisis. According to the IPCC report mentioned above, to avoid the worst-case scenarios we need to limit the global rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees by 2100. On our current trajectory, we could be looking at a rise of between 2 and 4 degrees in that time.
At the heart of our stories, real and fictional, is a warning of what is to come if we do not confront the problem head-on. Because while we might very sensibly fear climate change itself, what we should really be afraid of is our own apathy and inaction. Climate change is not just a story on our screens, nor are we unfortunate victims of an unavoidable fate. This is
