Climate crisis mathematics

1 + 1 equals 2

You tell that to people – they accept that right?

1 + 5 equals climate crisis – right?

And all of a sudden people seem to have these big attitude problems…

Jokes aside – I want to talk about the issue of people denying or not wanting to hear about these global issues our planet is facing and I think that from listening to, talking to and using some own common sense – there are several reasons why people get uncomfortable or even angry with you when you try to create awareness, try and make them question their own lifestyle, show them devastating articles or videos and tell them that this crisis is theirs as well.

1. It can overwhelm people who (believe it or not) know little to nothing about the climate crisis. For many seeing newspaper articles is something far away, just another news report but they never realize the extent of it. They have no sense of what is going on and there is a big lack of education. Suddenly you tell them that this crisis is already affecting their lives (if only indirectly at the moment), that our entire food system is broken, that we may reach a 3-4 C global temperature rise by 2100 and that we pay for renewable energy that is being produced but never reaches our power outlet because fossil fuels and energy from power plants is still being used first.

This can overwhelm people tremendously if they have never had this kind of education on these topics before because it can make them question their belief system, governments, . . . and they may not know what to do with this information.

So ease them into it!

2. The big industries who basically run the food, agricultural and pharmaceutical markets have been influencing the public with well placed advertisements, TV commercials, studies and articles from in-house “specialists”. Pushing people towards chemical medicines and away from natural and homeopathic methods. Telling people that they need dairy for Calcium and that several very harmful practices like killing bugs, insects, bees or weeds with poison on a regular basis with things like bug zappers or Raid spray is the normal thing to do. Or in the case of the fossil fuel industry: being the first to know about human induced climate change and covering it up to continue making money based on practices that can make the human species go extinct. So the public has been heavily influenced by the marketing and influence that these industries have had on them for a very long time and it is not super easy to get all that out of society.

3. Governments are not helping. Neither are they doing close to enough to repair and prevent damages but they are also grossly neglecting to create awareness amongst the public or educate kids at school about this. I am not a conspiracy theorist in any way. I just look at the way the world works at the moment. The climate crisis is the biggest issue humanity is and ever will be facing and you don’t see big blinking signs being put up that say: WE ARE IN A CRISIS! THIS IS WHAT WE ALL SHOULD BE DOING TO BE ABLE TO SURVIVE ON THIS PLANET AND THIS IS WHAT YOUR GOVERNMNET IS DOING TO PROTECT YOU! –>

Followed by a list of emergency actions like:

>funding and using primarily renewable energies,

>banning single use plastics and creating a circular economy as fast as possible,

>Funding regenerative agriculture and taxing the 100 companies that are responsible for over 70 % of the pollution,

>putting money into preventing disasters and not funding the destruction and then paying even MORE just to clean up the mass that SAME government has funded!!!

>Creating and fostering green jobs and having scientists, environmental activists and indigenous leaders and people as advisors on all issues.

So people see what governments are doing and think: “They want good things for us. They’ll handle it and do the right thing.”

4. The main frame of our systems is built on mass producing, exploitation, pollution and letting the big corporations get away with most of their wrongdoing because they are what currently stabilizes our economy. This may sound like another gloomy and far-fetched tale of the big bad wolves vs the small people but the fact of the matter is that our current economy is dependent on people buying and buying for cheap prices. When people buy less the economy “slows down”. And we know that in order to keep it all up in running in the way it currently works stuff must be produced, quickly, cheaply and newly – all the time. Which in itself is a concept that cannot be sustained with the resources on our planet.

So people find this system to be “normal”, it is how it is and they accept that. So telling them that we must overhaul it and create new and more sustainable ways can be overwhelming.

Does any of this sound familiar?

What are your thoughts and experiences with starting conversations and being confronted or confronting others with these topics?

DM me on my Instagram account @thrive_bynature and let’s discuss

Thank you for reading💚

See ya next blog👋🏼

Cheers,

Stella