How to respond when life resembles science fiction

In the span of one week, we try to absorb the news that experts in artificial intelligence think it will outrun and outsmart us, leading to human extinction, and that the risk of nuclear war has increased as Russian President Vladimir Putin ramps up his nuclear sabre-rattling, and that we are unlikely to hold to an average 1.5 C of global temperature warming, with the potential for human civilization's collapse. Pandemic. Inflation. Opioid crisis. Take your pick. The four horsemen of the apocalypse have no shortage of horses. I hear from so many that, “I have stopped watching the news. It is just too much.” Maybe that is why legacy broadcasters, like the CBC, seem to have moved to “news-lite:” the human interest angle asking how a Ukrainian mother feels about war, or what it is like to race from your house with flames all around. Thomas Homer-Dixon and his brainiac team at the Cascade Institute call it "polycrisis," and it is our unhappy reality. Decision-makers must find ways to analyze and anticipate simultaneous crises. We cannot afford to respond to each in isolation or sequentially. We especially cannot afford incrementalism. All require attention, and all require that attention at once. Actions to combat one must be taken with an eye to the knock-on effects on the others. This is not whack-a-mole. This is an entirely different operation that requires up-ending the game board. One example: to undermine Russian aggression, end dependence on Russian oil. End dependence on oil everywhere. Where Russia still has buyers for billions of dollars a day in oil exports, work with their customers, like India, to rapidly decarbonize their economies. India is already banking billions on its gambit of becoming a green hydrogen super-power. Invest in that to help them make it happen faster. Whatever it takes. Billions of dollars for renewables and converting economies to electric transport displaces demand for Russian oil, reduces air pollution and saves lives. Moving off oil everywhere reduces geopolitical threats, stabilizes the economy by reducing inflationary energy price pressures, reduces the threat of human civilization collapse, and incentivizes industries we need and want. It will not be easy, but it is a winning strategy across several of our current crises. The worst possible decision? Try to ramp up Canadian oil and gas to provide more fossil fuels (but this time, ours) to Russia's current customers. We cannot deal with the crises if we live in a primitive state of ignorance. We have to smarten up. Let’s start with climate. This is the science fiction bit. Remember the Dennis Quaid film, The Day after Tomorrow? Its climate change plot was mostly a set-up for amazing special effects, but it did have top-notch science advice. The late Dr. Stephen Schneider, an early climate hero, worked on the film. There was more than a grain of truth in the plot. Before the film veers off into the implausible, there are a series of astonishing events: tornadoes in Los Angeles, killer hail in Tokyo. Our science hero Quaid interrupts a national weather service conflab as stunned meteorologists watch the incoming news. To the derision and skepticism of all he asks, “What if all these events are connected?” Then he sets out his theory of shifting ocean currents due to climate change, buttressed by recent reports of a major temperature shift in the Gulf Stream. Enter a new climate system. We are like that confused gathering looking at climate events as though they are unconnected. We are informed of events as though there is no science to explain what is happening. Sometimes the media mentions that these events—such as an early fire season and massive wildfires—are due to climate change. In Parliament, such suggestions are met with Conservative attacks that other parties are “politicizing” the fires. Every night’s newscast, across all networks, should start with a map of the jet stream. What was science fiction in The Day after Tomorrow is now real in the changed jet stream. In the old days, say, when I was 40 years old, the jet stream moved in a fast-moving horizontal band at mid-latitude. That’s how it got its name. Have you seen it lately? It is a lazy, loopy mess. What kept it in place and fast was the differential in temperature between a hot equator and a permanently cold Arctic. We have warmed up the Arctic. There is a lot of science to explain how we did it; it has to do with positive feedback loops, melting ice and the albedo effect. But what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic. The jet stream has gone AWOL, and its deep southern bends and curves visit long periods of hot and dry weather on one part of the world and wet and cold on another. Our isolation from the facts allows Ontario Premier Doug Ford to blame lightning strikes and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to blame arsonists for fires. Blame fossil fuels for warming up the Arctic and freeing the polar vortex from its daily rounds, unloosing atmospheric chaos. Think of this not as the hottest summer on record, but as the coldest summer for the next century. Polycrisis demands that we smarten up. Take care this summer and try to integrate thinking about the threats as requiring connected solutions. Green Party Leader Elizabeth May represents Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C. The Hill Times

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How to respond when life resembles science fiction

Decision-makers must find ways to analyze and anticipate simultaneous crises. All require attention, and all require that attention at once.

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