So, it's official. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this summer was the hottest ever recorded in the Northern Hemisphere. But is anyone really surprised anymore? We're five decades into warnings about the climate catastrophe rushing toward us, but the politics of climate change have never looked less promising.
The overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is occurring has reached everyone it can. Among those who accept that evidence, some are galvanized to protest and demand change — as the recent "climate strikes" demonstrated — and others retreat into fatalism. At the same time, climate denialists cling to their views, even as, in the face of each new deadly heat wave, flood or firestorm, their position sinks ever-deeper into absurdity. And yet denial still retains a hold on a large proportion of the U.S. voting population.
Everyone knows everyone else's arguments, and nothing is changing; we're stuck. But what if we changed the framework of the debate in a way that lets us vault past the exhausted polarities? The narrative we've grown used to on this subject is one of blame, casting humanity as a virus destroying an Earth which now needs saving (from us). But there is very different story we can tell, one that recognizes climate change not as a marker of shame but as a story of an astonishing success that has led humanity to a moment of great peril, yet also profound possibility.
This new narrative emerges from interdisciplinary studies connecting humanity's project of civilization with the Earth's own multi-billion-year project of life and evolution. The central point is that climate change is the dire but unintended result of our species' thriving. Humans are not a greedy plague on the Earth but simply the latest experiment in planetary-scale evolution. Any species that flourished to the extent we humans have would have to seek out energy sources on a massive scale — and in doing so would change the global ecosystem. It took centuries for the downsides of carbon-based fuels to become apparent. But now that we have figured that out, it's incumbent on us to change course, and do so quickly.
That's not an anti-business argument. Nor is it even an indictment of humans' initially developing an economy around oil, before we knew about the implications. By stripping away the self-flagellating rhetoric and reorienting the story in this way — a longer timeline, a broader canvas — new alliances in the fight become possible.
Some climate-change activists are already rethinking their rhetoric; they're debating, for instance, whether to use the phrase "climate catastrophe" or "climate crisis," recognizing that harsh rhetoric may push people not to action but to desensitization or even despair. But the narrative revision I'm talking about is far more sweeping.
The first implication of a planetary-scale view of the problem is that humans shouldn't be considered as a force set in opposition to nature. From the "blue-green bacteria" that created a breathable oxygen rich atmosphere on to dinosaurs, grasslands and large hairy mammals, our planet has been relentlessly inventing new versions of itself. Humans, and our globe-spanning civilization, simply represent the latest round of innovation. We are who's at-bat right now — and that's largely an accident of fate and evolution. When it comes to life changing the Earth, humans are not fundamentally different or special. This has happened before.
A second implication, the most contentious, is that climate change is not our fault. Don't get me wrong: Human activity absolutely has caused the rise in temperature that our scientists are hard at work documenting — and without doubt, those who continue to drive climate denial are deeply and profoundly worthy of blame. I mean, rather, that all human history is the attempt to harvest new forms of energy to power our cherished project of civilization. We triggered climate change by mistake when we tripped over fossil fuels as part of that long effort. It wasn't because we are evil or unworthy.
