This post is directed to all of us within the CCA Community.  That is, we who’ve chosen to act because we care not only about the fate and well-being of whales and dolphins, but about our own species’ sense of honor in wanting to do the right thing when it comes to our treatment of other life, indeed of the entire biosphere and of the planet as a whole.  We’ve arrived at an important inflection point in our history, and I believe that now is a good time to reflect on where we’re going over the next several years.  Given what the stakes are, the perspective each of us chooses to adopt going in will really matter.

As I write this, protests are taking place all over the world in response to the first two weeks of the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland.  World leaders have made a few significant pledges so far – towards things like reversing deforestation and putting an end to coal and fossil fuel financing.  Unsurprisingly, as with most events of this kind, these deals have fallen short of many peoples’ expectations.  Equally unsurprising is the fact that a large proportion of the protests we’re seeing now have been organized and led by youth.  

It’s been said in the media that when it comes to the topic of climate change, young people have been the adults in the room.  This is in fact true.  And being the ones who have the most to lose, their demands with regards to climate policy have been less likely to be motivated by political expediency.  Their anger with the present state of the world is understandable.  Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has already slammed COP26 as a “failure”, and a “Global North greenwash festival”.   The young, (who also happen to make up a hugely important segment of the CCA community I’m addressing now) have a right to demand better from all of us.

I’d like to suggest that we take a step back and recognize that there is some good news in what we’re seeing taking place right now.  We should take those wins and continue to build on them.  For example, around the world there seems to be a much greater appreciation for the practicality and efficiency of public-private strategic partnerships to get capital into the right projects, backed by policy that will encourage markets to move in the right direction.  Also, we see a belated but widespread acknowledgement that we’ve been delinquent in meeting our commitments to less-developed countries in battling climate change.  Probably because it’s become undeniable that no-one anywhere will be immune to climate effects anywhere else.

It’s also important to note that it’s not just political leaders or heads of states that matter.  It can be frustrating to listen to Indian Prime Minister Modi promise ‘net zero by 2070’, a timeline that’s essentially meaningless.  Or the Australian federal government that’s content to let the states there do all the heavy lifting leading to meaningful progress, then to take credit for that progress when their own policies are having precisely the opposite effect.  Or Canada’s federal government that pledged to end fossil fuel subsidies, but instead increased them.  Those examples are barely the tip of the iceberg, as we all know.

Fortunately, these people aren’t the whole story.  The fight against climate change is being waged by a growing number of people in a vastly greater number of places, organizations, institutions etc. than it was just a few years ago.  Despite all the ‘greenwashing’ we still see at conferences like this one, I seriously suspect it’s possible that, as recently as in the last year or so, humanity may have at long last turned the corner on this.  Finally, a large scale and widespread recognition that this problem is real, and it is immediate.  

My personal belief is that we’re going to continue to get our butts kicked by climate, and it’s now too late to change the fact that we’ll experience a number of major losses.  Our biodiversity is particularly vulnerable, and though many of us will work hard to protect it, we won’t always be successful.  And those losses are going to hurt, badly.  Nevertheless, I’m starting to believe we may well be able to avert the worst of what’s possible, and in time even to build a secure, clean, zero-carbon future for the globe.  Like I said, it’s not just our political leaders that matter, and the actions being taken by a great many of our fellow humans right now do give me much hope.

So, does that make me an optimist or a pessimist?  I don’t know, but perhaps that isn’t the question that matters. Amory Lovins, cofounder and former chief scientist at the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), once said this…

“I am neither an optimist or a pessimist because they are each just a different form of fatalism that treats the future as fate and not choice – and absolve you from taking responsibility for writing the future that you want.  I believe in applied hope.”

Now that may have a somewhat didactic phrasing, and perhaps one’s willingness to take action isn’t necessarily related to either of these labels, but the important take away is absolutely correct – we cannot refrain from taking responsibility and acting accordingly to work for the betterment of the future.  And with climate change especially, there is no option to wait this one out and see how it goes.  

We also shouldn’t put too much weight on the whims of individual personalities, letting ourselves get drawn into the belief that they will determine our fate.  Whether Bolsonaro and his buddies clear cut what’s left of the Amazon rain forest matters, of course, and we need to resist such bad faith actors in every way we can.  But we must not let ourselves believe that we are somehow dependent on the decisions of such people.  It is the aggregate of what each and every one of us chooses to do that will determine the outcome.  

Each of us has our particular role to play, and everyone’s input is going to matter. For our part, the Canadian Cetacean Alliance will continue to speak out on behalf of the health of our oceans, which is critical to the wellbeing of the whales and dolphins that are our primary focus, and indeed are the reason for our existence.  But that is one piece of a much larger puzzle.  It will take innovation and ingenuity across a vast range of challenges to get us through this.  But I am 100% confident that we have the capability to do it, given the will to do so. 

For The Orca’s Voice, 

Phil and the CCA Team