Dear Mr. Prime Minister and all those it may concern,
My name is Amelia Penney-Crocker, climate activist and writer from Halifax, Nova Scotia. I’ve written you over 50 letters about the climate crisis. Every day we inch closer to a whole year of writing a letter a week. You know what we’re also inching closer to? The death of the planet and collapse of society! Yay!
One thing that makes the climate crisis the biggest threat humans have ever faced is how it is expected to affect everything about our society. Recently in my history class, we watched a Ted Talk discussing how societies fall. Most of the societies discussed fell long before the current era, the era of globalization. We are, more than ever before, one global society and while that comes with a lot of advantages there is also a great deal of instability as well.
The Ted Talk I watched in class was by professor Jared Diamond. He lays out a five point framework for the collapse of a society. The first thing to look at is the negative effect humans are having on the environment. When we start to take our resources for granted, and use too much, we are fueling our own demise. The second thing is climate change. When our environment and weather start to change (whether through our own fault like today, or naturally like some examples in the past) we become vulnerable. Humans can adapt, but often we don’t do it fast enough and our societies fall. The third thing on the check list is relations with kind neighboring societies and the forth is relations with hostile neighboring societies. These points are difficult when you’re analyzing the global society as I am trying to do, but if we can look at inter-country relationships and I must say they’re not the worst they’re ever been. Donald Trump’s years in office have done lots of damage to international cooperation, and we’ve seen many countries like Russia, North Korea and China disregarding international agreements. But as a whole, we’ve been in worse shapes.
All the other pointes show that we are not in a stable situation as a global community, but I think it’s Diamond’s fifth and final point that really shows that the climate crisis could take us down. Professor Diamond discusses how many societies form values, and if those values are strong they can support people, hold them together and preserve their society through tough times. But, if those values become too deeply intrenched that people are not willing to let go of them when they no longer serve the preservation of the people, we become vulnerable. The last letter I wrote to you discussed Alberta. In it I talked about the capitalist mindset that makes people think that they have to work to be worthy. That is the mindset of the workers who push to support the oil companies that they work for instead of pushing for financial support for the government as the oil companies are taken down. So many people say that climate activists want to ruin their lifestyles they love, lifestyles that have always worked for them. I think preserving tradition is extraordinarily important but we have to let go of practices and values that are killing us.
The climate crisis is not just going to make our weather more extreme, it’s going to fundamentally shake the foundation on which our world stands. The increased number of refugees fleeing unlivable areas of the planet will put’s strains on our inter-country relations, and limited food and water supplies will certainly cause war. With resources becoming more even scarcer, countries will become more territorial and offensive. They’ll be less willing to help out other places in need. We’ve seen this pandemic break some global partnerships, and the climate crisis will likely do the same. Speaking of the pandemic, there are likely to be more of them as nature becomes un-stable.
In science class, we watched a documentary that explained that Antarctica (that is currently melting) plays a fundamental roll in stabilizing the planets weather systems. Honestly the key word in this letter is ‘stabilize’. By destroying our planet we are destroying stability. Stable whether systems, finances and societies. Sometimes a lack a stability can be good, it can push you to takes steps you wouldn’t have otherwise. But we cannot come back from this unstable time if we go too far.
We might need to turn ourselves upside down to stop this crisis, but if we don’t, it will turn us upside down anyway and we won’t be in control. It isn’t an exaggeration to say climate change threatens humans existence.
I hope you have a wonderful day!
Amelia Penney-Crocker