The battle to define our generation Cara Walker

The battle to define our generation

Climate change isn’t going away any time soon, writes Cara Walker .

Picture: Lucia Mai

AS A MEMBER OF Gen Z, climate change and its associated challenges are something I have learnt about and been aware of for as long as I can remember.

Encouragements to recycle and to remember to switch off the lights in primary school. The promotion of Earth Hour, gardening clubs, education about endangered species, and global warming. Granted, there was talk of climate change in the 1970s, decades before I was born, but I digress. I believe and the belief of many others around my age that climate change will be the battle of our generation. The likes of Greta Thunberg, Alexandria

Villasenor, and Jean Hinchliffe are at the forefront of climate activism, all young, passionate people eager to make changes and take heed of the climate crisis.

In the new light of 2020, additional, more unfamiliar challenges have arisen, which, in some ways, have pushed the issue of climate change to the back burner. The dominant voices of society have grown silent when it comes to the Black Summer fires, and summits supposed to be key in reaching the goals of the Paris agreement have been postponed amid social distancing policies and the international shutdown of travel. With the parliamentarian, media, and public focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing economic crisis, climate change does not hold the precedence it once did.

However, this is not an issue that simply goes away.

I am not here to argue for the presence of an environmental crisis; science has already done that. The catastrophic events of last summers’ bushfires (which were, in fact, linked to concurrent floods in Africa), demonstrated the immediacy of the environmental crisis we are facing to some, and for others, merely provided an opportunity for political finger-pointing.

Global consumerism and mass manufacture

The nature of the world in the 21st century is increasingly globalised. Neo-liberal style trade agreements dominate, and off-shore manufacturing is more commonplace than onshore. In 2007, for the first time in world history, the volume of people living in urban areas outnumbered those living rurally. By mid-century, it is expected that approximately two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities.

Globalisation provides ease of trade, travel, and demands the necessity for bodies such as the UN. The outbreak of COVID-19 in China spread in a few short months reaching the heights of a global pandemic. Through trade routes and commercial travel, the complacency of the developed West, and reliance on a world-wide network, in a few short months, the world was on lockdown. Worry over supply chain damages, shortages of medication and other medical supplies, clothing, and textiles

and other manufactured goods quickly built up.

Australia's largest trading partner is China, accounting for more than a quarter of our trades. Our top exports include iron ore, coal, natural gas, beef, refined and unrefined petroleum (which also ranks in our top imports) as well as other raw mined materials and agricultural products. Statistica reports that China is the largest manufacturer of textiles, accounting for nearly 38 percent of global textile exports. How many of your clothes have a tag saying ‘Made in China’? According to an article from The Conversation by Rory Horner, it is also estimated that China provides around 40% of the world’s Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients, making it a cornerstone of the world's medicinal supply chains.

While Australia’s population is relatively small, China is the biggest. In terms of carbon emissions, Australia produces 1.8 percent of

Picture: Lucia Mai

world emissions versus China’s 29.34 percent. Yet taking into account population, Australia’s CO2 emissions per capita are more than double that of China (data from the European Commision’s JRC Science for Policy Report: Fossil CO2 emissions of all world countries, 2018). Last year almost 50 percent of China’s coal came from Australia. The complex industrial relationship between China and Australia is founded on fossil fuels, mining and carbon emissions. These are direct contributors to the climate crisis.

In terms of the pandemic, The New York Times reported earlier this year that even before COVID-19, China exported more Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and respirators than the rest of the world combined. Fears regarding medicine and medical supply shortages were abundant only a few months ago. Reports from hospitals around the world indicated insufficient numbers of PPE to combat COVID-19. With borders shut and supply chains in disarray, medical staff resorted to reusing old PPE. Developed nations with the world's largest economies couldn’t support their hospitals in times of need.

Calls to bring back on-shore manufacturing were dominant in the reaction to this year’s supply chain crisis, not only to be less reliant on foreign manufacture but to supply jobs and help economic recovery. COVID-19 highlighted our overwhelming reliance on the global network for everything from our clothes, to paracetamol, to technology.

Hyper-consumerism is a harmful practice that has driven this mass global market we see today. People enjoy affordable options, online shopping, and being free to buy in excess. Online shopping means sending items by post, at times internationally, involving planes, vehicles, and therefore, carbon emissions. Companies will often produce in developing countries where laws regarding worker’s rights, waste management and sustainability are less stringent, resulting in low cost prices. On-shore manufacturing back home in Australia or other rich, developed countries is vastly more expensive.

With the cost of living on the rise already, onshore manufacturing on a small scale is not financially viable for the vast majority of consumers. Emissions and waste are not only produced in the manufacturing aspect of the supply chain, but shipping, delivery, import and export. This mass globalised supply-chain, facilitated by consumerism and exploitation of both people and the environment, is perhaps the biggest hurdle in the battle against carbon emissions and the changing climate. Globalisation is the biggest environmental threat we face.

The future of global marketplaces

Personally, I believe that changing our attitudes and our ways of life to combat climate change involves far more than small-scale manufacture or local production. Shifting consumerist attitudes in order to buy less, use less, and make less waste is key. Mend your clothes, buy a new smartphone when you actually need to, use your leftover dinner for lunch.

Planned obsolescence describes the phenomenon by which goods are manufactured with a lower “lifespan” in order for consumers to buy

the product or a similar product again. A nuanced issue, planned obsolescence, can be due to the demand for cheaper goods, ‘fashionable’ trends (particularly in relation to technology like smartphones), or desire from the manufacturer to readily make money. Take printers; for example, the cost of buying new ink cartridges can often be more than the cost of a new printer. This is not a recent phenomenon; it has been happening for decades and can be traced back to light-bulb manufacture in the 1920s. Economists and business people may claim that planned obsolescence drives innovation and invention, and it may contribute to lower cost prices. However, in the end, the obsolescence of goods in this manner is highly wasteful. As a society, we should be building skills to combat hyper-consumerism- repairing damaged goods, setting a standard of manufacture that does not result in excessive waste in the name of money. While a manufacturer or a consumer may be able to afford such a thing, the

long-term environmental impacts mean our planet

Picture: Tash Turner-Cohen

cannot. Humanity has permeated the globe in a way unlike anything else. Human

influence is everywhere and is unavoidable. In his book Darwin Comes to Town, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Menno Schilthuizen, articles this extensive impact. Remarkable

stories of nature’s adaptation to human influence permeate the pages. Schilthuzien makes the argument that we cannot erase such influence or its future impacts; instead, we must adapt too:

The battle to define our generation, Cara Walker “While we have been trying to save the world’s crumbling pre-urban ecosystem, we have been ignoring the fact that nature has already been putting up the scaffolds to build novel, urban ecosystems for the future ” .

I have not leached this book for every word just yet, but already Schilithuzien proposes a perspective I had not previously considered. One I have been pondering ever since I picked up and began the book.

We must adapt our practices to better live in conjunction with the environment than being emblazoned in a battle against it. Harmonise the urbanscape and nature.

Help the environment to help ourselves

Undoubtedly humanity is impacting ecosystems globally, creating irreversible damage has already wrought its way through many species and habits, and indeed there are still the effects of damage yet to be seen. To fight back, we must learn our lessons from the damage already done. While nature has an incredible ability to adapt, with evolution occurring faster than initially thought possible, we need to combat climate change for our own good.

The people who are the least responsible for climate change (future generations, those in developing nations) will be the ones to feel its effects the most. Small island nations in the Pacific are under constant threat of flooding due to rising sea levels and the people of these islands will most likely be the first ever ‘climate refugees’.

We are releasing microplastics into the environment to a point where humans are consuming, on average, five grams of plastic every week. Human population levels show no signs of slowing down in growth, and living in cities will be the reality for more and more people as time goes on. I am not one for ecofascism (think ‘humans are the virus’ type rhetoric or judging people on their individual plastic consumption rather than putting the onus on large corporations), but we need to learn to live harmoniously with the environment. Not only are we damaging nature as we know it, but also ourselves.

There will always be those who elect to ignore scientific evidence—coronavirus conspiracies are proof enough that in 2020 this is no different. Like a historical pandemic, climate change is not something we can afford to agree to disagree on. Changes larger than switching from plastic bags when you do your weekly grocery shop are necessary. Changes on a mass, country-wide, world-wide, corporationwide scale have to be made. Humanity is not untouchable, as much as we may like to think so.