DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.2552793
Who has not even once wished to go back in time? Have this one chance
again? To make it better this time? We have the deep need to feel
powerful about our future and our human or physical environment.
There is this one clock that we can actually turn back:
The Doomsday clock
This clock was first a picture by the artist Martyl Langsdorf (wife
of the atom physicist and Manhattan Project research associate and
Szilárd petition signatory Alexander Langsdorf, Jr.) on the cover of the
1947 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists issue. It was meant to draw the
attention on the dangers of atomic weapons and our responsibility for
human kind, setting symbolically midnight for human extinction through
an atomic war.
Following the same model, an environmental doomsday clock survey exists
since 1992 (http://www.af-info.or.jp/en/questionnaire/clock.html). Each
year the The Asahi Glass Foundation “conducts a survey of the sense of
crisis felt by respondents about the continuance of the human race as
the global environment continues to deteriorate, gauging the responses
with the time expressed on the hands of the Clock”. Its hands also moved
back and forth with the years, with a dramatic jump forward last year.
While this is sometimes controversial because the non-quantitative
“time measurement “is somehow arbitrary and subjective, it is
nevertheless a powerful image and reminder how local and global human
decisions and actions bring us closer – or further from our own
extinction.
We might feel completely powerless facing world events and climatic
catastrophes, and watch anxiously, resigned or indifferently the “clock”
ticking and bringing us closer to midnight. Many say it’s almost too
late, so how do we reply to the run against the clock? This is not a
bomb about to explode, but a mechanism we can accelerate, slow down or
even reverse and redirect.
It is most straight forward to look at the effects that bring the
clock forward – pollution, deforestation, global warming to name a few –
and focus on stopping or at least reducing those effects. While this is
difficult enough it is also necessary. But with the clock as a mental
picture, this would, in the best case, slow down the mechanism, or leave
it immobile.
Therefore i suggest to look further, and view our future actions and
research as a new mechanism to bring in, in order to replace the
previous one. Weight in actions that can reverse the movement, until the
balance switches back, environment restored and regenerates.
And there is actually a lot that can be done. From re-thinking energy
consumption , re-shaping agriculture, optimizing water use on big
scale, viewing ecology as the economy of nature and using it as a model
of circular paths for energy and resources, the possibilities are
multiple and the starting points numerous. But, always with the same
picture in mind, these actions have to be more than shy attempts or
superficial green-paintings – it has to outweigh the other side of the
balance…
It is an ambitious and arduous path, but it is possible, given fast action. We have “two minutes” from now, 2019.
Where will you weight in to change the direction?
OR
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
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