An Imperfect Climate Action Better than Inaction

Today is Earth Day. This year the theme of the day is “Our Power, Our Planet”. This slogan emphasises accelerating the transition to a green economy, fostering sustainable habits and protecting biodiversity. In order to foster sustainability, one has to adopt habits like consuming less, planting more and switching to a sustainable economy. However, people’s choices are shaped by income, location, ability, access to transport and available resources. These are important truths about environmentalism.

One of the aspects of environmentalism is to observe nature and learn how it can help us fix our problem. Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, mentioned that “human beings grew up in forests; we have a natural affinity for them”. How lovely a tree is, straining towards the sky. Its leaves harvest sunlight to photosynthesise, so trees compete by shadowing their neighbours. If you look closer, you can often see two trees pushing and shoving with languid grace. Trees are great and beautiful machines, powered by sunlight, taking in water from the ground and carbon dioxide from the air, converting these materials into food for their use and ours." Sagan observed this cooperation in nature, where we exhale and they inhale. This observation is important for environmentalism.

Think about a fragment from Kafka’s diary. One evening in November 1917, writer Franz Kafka added a brief sentence to his notebook: “Leopards invade the temple and drain the sacred vessels; this happens again and again. In time, it becomes predictable and a part of the ritual.”

Kafka did not mention what drives the leopards into the temple. It may be drought, or a new road, or farmers burning the forest for pasture. However, it has been realised that we are born of the need to live together; a new way of being in which all life can thrive becomes possible, and leopards show the way. Here animals take the first step, and also priests learn to keep replenishing the pitchers. There is a reason for which leopards are coming into the temple. We can observe both the effect and cause of the problem carefully by observing the nature. This will pave our way to solve the problem.

In her novel Flights, Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s narrator observes the appearance of a crowd of strange creatures. Part animal, part plant, they travel in great flocks like birds. The narrator notes, ‘I see them from the window of the bus, these airborne anemones, whole packs of them, roaming the desert.’ Olga’s strange animals are, of course, plastic bags, whose name came from the Greek word ‘plastikos’, meaning ‘mouldable’. It is present worldwide in soil, ocean water and sediment and also Arctic ice. Plastic is just one facet of the chemical age. Millions of chemical compounds are synthesised every year. Many find their way into the environment without us really understanding their effects. It has been observed in nature that some organisms adapt to toxic environments extremely swiftly. For example, water fleas living in a German lake were discovered to have developed a tolerance for toxic cyanobacteria. Philosopher Mel Chen, in an essay ‘Toxic Animacies, Inanimate Affections', mentioned that ‘A toxin threatens, but it also beckons.’ Scientists do not yet know how the animals are able to remain unaffected by a substance which, in humans, can cause cancer and pulmonary disease. We definitely need to learn more from nature for the sake of our adaptation to climate change, which requires more research and observation.

Many people regard environmental degradation as an unavoidable consequence of development. If we generate wealth and permit social progress via economic growth, then some loss in environment is inevitable. However, a study carried out by the Potsdam Institute in 2024, published in the journal Nature, warned that climate change impacts could lead to much more economic damage than previously estimated. It is important to note that the loss of economic value is about six times as much as it would cost to decarbonise the economy to meet the two-degree warming limit set out in the international agreement.

Johan Rockström, from the University of Stockholm, argues that the last forty years of research reveal that major change is already occurring. He added, 'The Earth is an interconnected, complex self-regulating system, but this system is at serious risk of destabilisation, with the evidence for that also very compelling.’ Various data suggest that there are observed fundamental pressures; for example, since 1950, the global population more than triples, to 8.2 billion in 2025, and simultaneously there is a tenfold expansion in the global economy since 1950. There is an observed expansion of demand; for example, energy use is up fivefold since the 1950s and there is a tenfold rise in the consumption of natural resources. The observed consequences are the mass extinction of animals and plants and also record concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

One argues that a fairer world can save the planet Earth, but how to make our world fairer? Tony Juniper, in his book Just Earth, observes that “the industrial revolution and the post-war growth boom were both revolutions led by people of vision, and we need similarly transformative leadership now to ensure the health, happiness and security of the ten billion or more people expected to be living on Earth at the end of this century.” This requires some decisive action on ecological recovery with greater fairness.

An imperfect climate action is better than inaction. There is no single right way to be sustainable. However, we need to realise that without biodiversity, there is no food system, no ability to sequester carbon, no ability to regenerate materials, no ability to regenerate oxygen-breathable air and no quality fresh water. This means losing biodiversity poses a fundamental threat to the liveability on Earth. This is the bottom line for climate action, and that action can be governed by observing nature closely. This is not a conclusion derived from ideology; it is a necessity from the fact that we have nowhere else to go. There is just Earth.
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The writer is a UK-based academic who writes on science, philosophy and education