To:
Electronic Telegraph <et.letters@telegraph.co.uk>
Re: Facing up to  man's threat to himself: continuing the analogy
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000
 
 
Dear Sir/Madam,

In a recent letter to you, an edited version of which you kindly published in your Feedback section (Apocalypse soon, 28 November 2000), I drew a comparison between the current threat to our planet's climate and life-supporting ecosystems through non-sustainable lifestyles and economic activity and the threat our parents and grandparents faced in the 1930's from Nazi Germany.

I thought I would continue with the analogy.

We were only able to defeat Nazi Germany (with the help of our allies) because most people put aside their narrow self-interests for the sake of a common, greater self-interest.

If we had not done so, Hitler would have made mincemeat of us.

Exactly the same applies to the threat we are facing - but not yet facing up to - today.

Unless we subordinate our narrow, individual self-interests to the far greater common self-interest of achieving sustainability on our planet, with its limited resources and finite carrying capacity, in the coming decades we - or our children - will be facing calamity on an unprecedented scale.

With hindsight it is easy to see that we waited far too long before facing up to Hitler. By the time we did so he was powerful enough to defeat us and very nearly did. Luckily he decided to attack the Soviet Union before finishing us off, and the rest is history.

The question is, will we recognise and face up to the threat we are facing now in time? 

I suspect that history will repeat itself. We have probably already left it too late to be able to achieve a smooth transition to sustainability (for that we should have begun in earnest 10 or 20 years ago); but as more and more people recognise and understand the threat and what must be done to counter it, after a prolonged period of "blood sweat and tears" - during which we will reproach ourselves, and children will curse their parents, for not having acted earlier - we will come through, I hope, be able to repair much of the damage we will have done, and perhaps finally even be ready to begin the golden age that through the ages some men and women have always dreamed of.

Most people still have great difficulty even recognising the threat. Not surprisingly, since when you catch your first proper glimpse of it, it's terrifying. It appears so overwhelming and our chances of overcoming it so hopeless, that one's first reaction is disbelief. It is every tempting to put one's head back in the sand, but if we do the threat just continues to grow, and the longer we leave it the worse it will be.

Returning to the analogy from the 1930's: A terrible sense of helplessness and hopelessness is, no doubt, what those individuals felt who first clearly recognised the threat posed by Nazi Germany, especially when the vast majority of people still failed to see the threat at all, telling them that they were exaggerating or imagining things and not to worry about it. How much they must have wished that they could follow their advice!

On their own, of course, an individual is pretty helpless. Our parents and grandparents only succeeded in defeating Nazi Germany - once they finally faced up to the task - because they all did their bit, putting aside their narrow, individual self-interests and working together for that common cause.

When we finally recognise and face up to the threat (to our survival, no less) we are faced with today, it will have to be in the same way, with each of us putting aside their narrow self-interests and pulling their weight for the common, far greater self-interest of achieving sustainability on our fair and finite planet.