A common criticism of politicians and other leaders today is that they lack political will when confronted with global problems.  Part of the reason for this lack of political will is the weakness of constituency pressure concerning trans-national issues. Politics is largely local, and most people naturally focus on the day-to-day issues of their lives, their societies and their immediate location.  Most people, most of the time, lack a planet-wide perspective, and this lack is felt throughout the political hierarchy. Conversely, encouraging a more widespread global perspective and identity would help empower ordinary people with a worldview within which to think about the issues we face today.  It would help us to ‘think global’ so that we might more effectively ‘act local’.

Images are a very powerful way to communicate ideas and points of view and photographs of our planet taken from space during the last 40 years have had a profound influence on the way we see the earth and ourselves. 

The iconic “Earthrise” photograph taken by the crew of Apollo 8 in December 1968 was the first to show our planet as a whole, and has been credited with developing planetary consciousness and with jump-starting the environmental movement.  Another photograph of earth taken by the crew of Apollo 17 in 1972 has become one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography.  It remains the only photograph of our planet ever taken with the sun directly behind the camera, thus illuminating the entire globe.

In more recent years two other images of earth have had a widespread impact.  The first was taken from the Galileo spacecraft on December 11, 1990, when the spacecraft was about 1.5 million miles away. It consists of a 500-frame motion picture showing a 25-hour period of earth’s rotation and remains the only video of our home ever taken.  The second significant image was also taken in 1990, this time by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance of over 4 billion miles.  It shows the earth as a ‘pale blue dot’ and has been popularised by the late Carl Sagan in his book of the same name.  All of these photographs, and others, have helped us to think beyond our place and time to see ourselves and our home as we are - a beautiful and fragile oasis of life amidst an ocean of empty space. 

I therefore propose that a small spacecraft be launched into a solar orbit parallel to that of the earth.  This spacecraft would consist simply of a camera that would continually broadcast video and still images of our planet to a series of ground stations.  The orbital location of the camera would place it directly between the earth and the sun so that, from the camera’s perspective, the earth would always be fully lit, and would rotate beneath.  High-resolution video feed and still photographs taken from it would be available to the world both in real time and in archived format via a dedicated website and would be free of copyright and other restrictions on use.

The cost of this project would not be prohibitive - several million dollars at most, some of which might be in the form of goods and services donated by space-related businesses and organisations wishing to be associated with the project.  While the complexities of placing a satellite into a solar orbit exceed that of an earth orbit, the spacecraft could be piggybacked onto a scheduled launch as a “secondary passenger”. The satellite itself would be very small and very simple, consisting only of the camera, a radio transceiver, solar panels to provide power, the casing and perhaps small rockets to fine-tune the orbit. Once stabilised it should last indefinitely - decades at least.  While several ground stations would be required for reception (due to the planet’s rotation) it is likely that existing facilities would suffice.  The minimal ongoing costs would include maintaining the feed from the ground stations and operating the website. Effective placement of the satellite would be insured, as is standard practice in the space industry.

The development, launch and indefinite operation of such a spacecraft and camera would have innumerable benefits.  Publicity surrounding the launch and the reception of the first images would offer an unprecedented global publicity platform from which to draw attention to climate change, endemic poverty and other planetary issues.  The website itself would be a continuing medium through which to reach a large and global audience with messages concerning these issues. 

But by far the most important and enduring advantage of implementing this project would be the spread of video and photographic images of our shared planet.  Around the world individuals, schools, businesses, NGOs, governments and other organisations would use and distribute these images widely.  They would be broadcast on television, reproduced in newspapers and magazines, and printed as posters for classroom and bedroom walls.  We would witness the changes in the earth as it tilts through the seasons, see our own nations and regions from afar, and watch as large weather and other events unfold.  This camera would, through the Internet, bring live, real-time and real-colour images of our planet into the homes of many millions of people around the globe.  We would see ourselves as we have never seen ourselves before.

And that, I believe, would change the world.

Climate change affects all of us and all of our descendants.  National and sectarian conflict continues to plague us.  Technology has brought us together as never before in human history.  Whether we are Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, Jewish or Hindu, whether we are Irish, Chinese, American or Indian, whether we are liberals or conservatives, realists or idealists, this planet is our only home.  In the vastness of space it is a small place and, faced with the power of our technology and the multitude of our numbers it is increasingly fragile.  We are one humanity and we live on one world.  It is very important that we see it - and ourselves - that way

However the problem is not that people will not vote for poverty, it is that people ARE voting for poverty. Older people are voting for poverty for others and for their children and grandchildren, while younger people are actually voting for poverty for themselves.

If they are in conflict, political and social reality will always lose to the physical and environmental reality upon which they are based, and scientists are very clear about what we are doing to our physical and environmental reality. Maintaining the political and social status quo does not avoid change, it merely postpones it and takes it out of our hands.

Part of the problem in facing and dealing with climate change is that solutions have been framed as losses and costs and sacrifices rather than as movement towards a better life and a better world. Even in the absence of climate change it makes no sense to cling to imported and diminishing fossil fuels. Or to spend large parts of our lives in traffic jams. Or to pay heavily to heat the air above our leaky homes. Or to destroy the community and diversity of local farmers in favour of bland produce ripened in containers from the other side of the world. Many of the solutions to climate change are true ‘no-regrets’ solutions that make perfect sense anyways.

And our current consumer-focused lives are nothing to be proud of. Depression, suicide, yobbery, obesity and widespread emptiness and lack of meaning exact a huge and unquantified cost for living in an age focused almost exclusively on the material. As the newly emerging field of positive psychology is discovering, the things that make us happy (health, strong relationships, community connection, goals compatible with values, etc.) have little to do with consumption. (1)

We suffer from a lack of imagination and a resulting inertia. It is difficult for many people to imagine the world and their lives as different from what they are today, and thus they accept the prevailing social and political ‘realities’ not because alternatives are not possible, but because they cannot envision them. And, of course, in any dramatic change there are losers as well as winners. Unfortunately the losers in a change towards a sustainable world are some of the most powerful organisations in our society, and will defend their current positions without regard to any greater good.

This is why real leadership is so vital. John F. Kennedy could envision a moon landing only a few short years after man had first reached the edges of space. American and other leaders of the 18th century could imagine a world in which all men are equal. Many others could see the possibilities in great building projects, new technologies and new ways of organising ourselves when most others could not.

From the conventional perspective we seem to be caught between the unstoppable force of political and social reality and the immovable object of physical and environmental reality. But we are not. We can redirect our energy and our efforts to escape catastrophic climate change and to create a better, happier and more secure world for ourselves and our decendants. We just have to lift our eyes from the mental and political rut of ‘the way things are’ and see what is possible.

(1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/

Forget the science for a while.  This is about something just as important - communication.

Solitaire combines a professional marketing and communication approach with a real understanding and focus on climate change and on the reality of mass communication of the issues involved.  This is vitally important work, especially for those of us who live in democracies and would like our governments to take radical action. 

Its very easy to remain trapped in an environmental ghetto of like-minded people, preaching always to the converted.  But if you want to change popular attitudes, then listen to this talk.

Futurra’s website at http://www.futerra.co.uk/ has additional information about communicating climate change, including ‘New Rules: New Game’ (PDF), a guide to behaviour change communications.  This is an update to a longer previous document ‘Rules of the Game‘ (PDF) that was created as part of the UK Climate Change Communications Strategy, an evidence-based strategy aiming to change public attitudes towards climate change in the UK.

For the real communication geeks there’s a full inventory of the work done by Futerra for the UK Department of Environment on communicating climate change here .

But in 2010 the third session of the new Global Council of Religions reaches agreement of a series of core and agreeable values that are shared between all the world’s major faiths. In the years following the value of creation for its own sake, the value of a unified human identity, and the value of human ancestors and decendants are promoted widely and consistantly in churches, mosques, synagogues and temples around the world. This, combined with the emergance of America from its period of conservative darkness, prompts a feeling of spiritual hope and freedom similar to that of the 1960’s.

As Australian cities run out of water and food prices rise due to the American drought the pressure for strong targets in the second round of Kyoto grows, but it is only the Great Flood of London and the horrific scenes that follow it that prompts the 60% emission reductions that are finally agreed.

By 2015 almost all countries have stablised their emissions, but it is the introduction of the parallel carbon economy that year that begins rapid change. Everyone is allocated carbon currency giving them the right to a certain level of emissions and purchases of carbon-causing products and services require both money and carbon credits. The market in carbon credits explodes and vast fortunes are made as economists grapple to understand the dynamics involved.

Over the next decade everybody becomes highly aware of the value of the right to pollute - especially in the rich countries, where carbon allocations are falling to equalise emission rights among all people. Huge resources are put into global population control and, helped by the vast transfer of resources as the rich buy carbon credits from the poor, several of the UN Millenium Goals are met, albeit several years late.

As the power of the market and of human creativity and industriousness is released at an individual level, a substantial part of economic activity becomes devoted to giving people what they want within the constraints of carbon allocations. People buy local food to save the carbon-causing air miles towards their holiday, there are no such things as incandesent lightbulbs and everybody has a smart-meter on their mantlepiece showing how many carbon credits they are using to power their homes. Emmission rates fall much, much faster than expected.

By 2025 emissions are at 1970 levels, carbon emission rights become the same for every person on earth and, for the first time in human history, the global population falls. In the years that follow emissions continue to drop and carbon allocations begin to rise but our society and economy is by now so transformed that this is of little significance. Indeed, a substantial part of the world’s population now proudly emit no greenhouse gas, yet continue to live comfortable, interesting and satisfying lives.

But the biggest change is in our attitudes and world view. The new lives we live in the post-carbon economy, coupled with the spiritual resurgence of newly-relevant religion has transformed how we see ourselves and the world. We live at a slower pace, spend more time with friends and family, and value knowledge, art and personal growth before the material. We become far less suceptible to mass media and consumer propaganda. Indeed, looking back at the old movies from 2006 we find it hard to imagine a time when people sought status by purchasing a car and then sitting in traffic jams for three hours a day. What were they thinking? How could they have been so stupid?

Above all, we now see the world as one, and most people feel a real sense of connection with the rest of humanity and the rest of nature. We feel connected to our ancestors and to our decendants and feel that our lives exist within the flow of the human experience. We have a meaning and a depth to our lives that those living only 30 years ago found hard to imagine and we shudder at the thought of a time when the second highest cause of death among young people was suicide.

Over the next century humanity stabilises its relationship with the earth and learns to manage its awesome technological power. Population stabilises near four billion. There is universal education and healthcare and abject poverty is seen as abnormality and not as an enduring condition. The world becomes both more unified and more diverse.

And then, following the incredible discoveries in physics made in 2087, we begin to explore the stars.

Since the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century ideology and science have collided on numerous occasions. The theories of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin and others posed profound threats to ideologies of the time, and were strongly resisted. But as experimental and observational evidence poured in, and as the idealogues failed to produce a solitary experimental or observational result disproving the theories, most people adjusted their worldview accordingly and accepted the facts.

But not everybody. There are still those who believe that the world is flat, or that it was created 6,000 years ago, or that humans are unrelated to apes. Not everybody is capable of challenging and adapting their own beliefs, whatever the evidence says.

The idea that humans are dramatically changing the planet’s climate is a scientific idea based on replicable observational and experimental evidence filtered by a rigourous peer-reviewed process. This idea, and the implications that flow from it, threaten the interests and the ideology of many people and so it is inevitable that there will be resistance.

But ideological resistance has never been a match for science, nor is it this time. While it might be difficult to question your worldview, your beliefs and perhaps your core values unfortunately, if you want to stay connected to reality, you don’t have a choice.