THURSDAY THOUGHTS: Heal Yourself, Heal The Planet?
What if the mental health crisis and the climate crisis are the same thing?
(Shhh - it’s still Thursday somewhere!).
In the words of retro British comedian Peter Kay, "I like it hot, but not this hot!". Singapore, if you can believe it, is baking in a heat wave hotter than usual yet, as uncomfortable as I am, it is nothing compared to my friends and colleagues across the rest of Southeast Asia. In Manila schools have been shut down due to temperatures up to 48 degrees, in Bangkok 30 people died last week when the mercury pushed 52!
Before we rush to condemn those cherub-like innocents that run the fossil fuel industries I am duty-bound to explain that this is in part due to a natural phenomenon known as El Niño.
El Niño occurs when the average sea surface temperatures in the Central and Eastern Pacific Ocean increase, causing a significant impact on weather patterns around the world. However, sea surface temperatures hit a record high last August and then broke that record this February following nine consecutive months of record-breaking temperatures - so this El Niño is starting from a much higher base temperature inescapably caused by manmade climate change.
These symptoms are what journalist and climate activist George Monbiot calls The Flickering, a term he took from systems theorists that refers to the early warnings of systemic collapse, like the flickering of light bulbs before the power goes out.
These flickerings are intermittent, not consistent, so they are often easy to dismiss as isolated events but in planetary time they are occurring far to frequently to not be connected. Unfortunately they happen most frequently in the developing world. Sure, California gets its bushfires, even Spain and Greece are starting catch light at the height of summer but eventually seasons change and the horror of the previous one is forgotten as life and the news cycle moves on. But for those in South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa daily life gets tougher and that has some less obvious impacts.
For instance, my colleague Mia lives in Manila, which hit 48 degrees last week, forcing the schools to close and depriving her daughter of the education she needs to improve her life and those of her countrymen.
For a further instance my housekeeper who is also from the Philippines (it’s common to have a housekeeper in Singapore), tells me that her husband and son cannot work due to the heat, that her father’s crops are dying and the two goats he’s invested will likely die too. When a woman you live with tells you that her goats are dying of heat exhaustion and malnutrition it brings home just how immediate the impacts of climate change can be but also how easy they are to ignore when you're sitting in the comfort of air conditioning - a luxury her family cannot afford.
It seems cruel, almost spiteful, that the people who did the least to cause climate change are suffering the most because of it and that its impact is not only on the temperature but their hardworking attempts to improve their lot through education and honest labour. It also compounds the West's view of these countries as being beyond redemption due to their own laziness, corruption or ineptitude (the sorts of countries Trump called “shitholes”). The Philippines gets hit by dozens of monsoons every year bringing flood rains and violent winds that are becoming worse due to climate change, is that their fault?
Its hard to know what to do, particularly when Western solutions emphasise restricting the development of poorer countries in lieu of sacrificing their own standard of living (and what do we even mean by standard of living? The right to drive everywhere, eat junk food and buy plastic crap with a click?).
Yesterday I was in a discussion with a client of mine at a global logistics firm. She told me that the E.U. are bringing in strict regulations about the import of goods made with palm oil, grown largely in Malaysia and Indonesia. They have decided that because palm oil is responsible for deforestation and the destruction of orangutan habitats that it cannot be allowed. What they fail to disclose is that most of the palm oil plantations were set up by the British, the Dutch and the Belgians 150 years ago, who profited from them for decades. Only now that they’re back in the hands of the locals is palm oil being banned.
It's hard to know what to do when the scale of the problem is so large and each individual so small. There is an argument that it is simply not our responsibility, that this is why we elect governments, to represent us at the big tables and solve the big problems. But governments, like corporations, are addicted to GDP as the only current measure of success which, in the words of UN Secretary General António Guterres, “reflects a harmful anachronism at the heart of global policymaking: our economic models and measurements overlook many aspects that sustain life and contribute to human well-being, while perversely placing disproportionate value on activities that deplete the planet.”
Last year Guterres introduced a series of proposals to outline a path to develop complementary metrics that more fully recognize what matters to people, the planet and our future and with which I wholeheartedly agree.
But, this doesn’t solve the problem of how to get individuals to care about and act upon climate change right now so here's a different approach. Developed nations are experiencing a mental health crisis (developing nations may be too but they are not as well documented and are generally not top priority). I would strongly argue that two of the causes of this are rampant materialism coupled with a sedentary lifestyle; working in front of a screen all day to invest one's wages, and self worth, into buying useless stuff to assuage the feelings of inadequacy and emptiness on repeat.
I don’t need to argue that time in nature and physical activity is one of the most effective cures for mental ill-health as there is plenty of science to back that up. What if we could convince people that they could be happier, more fulfilled and richer by simply buying less and getting out more? Would that personal motivation lead to collective climate impact as they value stuff less and nature more? Might it be easier to encourage people to save themselves first and the dolphins and polar bears as a bonus? Think about it.