We’re enjoying the perfect fall weather with sunny days and cool nights. It’s the time of year when you have to lock your car otherwise people will put zucchinis in them. It’s the season of plenty if you have a garden or friends who have one. Nature at its best. I want to rejoice but this fleeting moment passes when my friend Camp leans back in his chair with a pint in one hand and his silly phone in the other. 

            ‘I’ve just got a book in by David van Reybrouk called The World and the Earth. It deals with climate change and the wrong focus of the world’s nations. The climate and laws of nature – the earth – doesn’t care if we humans care but the world is currently run by a group of old, ruthless men.’

            ‘I presume you’re talking about Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, Modi, Erdogan and Netanyahu, to name a few that come to mind.’

            ‘Yes, they are currently building a new world order that is not focused on the future because they don’t have one themselves. They are bullies who colonize the future and rob and exploit the next generations even before they are born.’

            ‘Wasn’t the world always ruled by old men? I seem to have had the same complaint when I was young.’

‘Yes, but over the last couple of decades the climate issue was politicised for reasons of power politics and economic interests and dragged into the culture wars. Climate protection and climate research are being dismantled today. Completely crazy! Instead of this new national protectionism, we need a to come together.’

‘What does your author think?’

‘One of the founding myths of the West since the Renaissance is the separation of nature and culture. Now nature reminds us that we can’t really detach ourselves from it. We have forgotten for too long that there are two perspectives on our environment: as the World – and as the Earth, in French le monde and la terre. We humans are so anthropocentric, obsessively concerned with our human world and its artificial borders, that we have forgotten that the earth, our planet, is the basis for everything.  The planet’s resources and atmosphere are limited, and therefore we have to think planetary.’

‘But we already have global institutions like the United Nations,’ I said.

‘Yes, but the UN is primarily concerned with avoiding and reducing violence between states and is not suitable for mastering the planetary woes of today. Te environment is a planetary concern and doesn’t care about inviolable national sovereignty.’

‘But the European Union maintains national sovereignty while working and cooperating together,’ I said.

‘Yes, it’s a good model but we need to have this happen worldwide. Most people believe that states should put aside their differences and find common solutions. In democracies, the population must push their politicians and encourage them to stand up to the big companies. People are in favor of stricter regulations if they apply to everyone. With the smoking ban, they have also managed to do that.’

‘Are people willing to change their life styles for the betterment of all?’

‘There’s always this cognitive dissonance between what you’ve seen as right and what you’re doing. But people are willing to do a lot if they can trust that everyone has to play by the rules; that the burdens are distributed fairly.’

‘But politics is going in the opposite direction, especially in the USA, which Trump is transforming into an autocracy,’ I said.

‘You don’t stop being a peace activist because the Third World War begins. But it’s true: we are witnessing a rapid change in the USA – from a democracy to an oligarchy. Van Reybrouk argues that with the growing inequality between the super-rich and ordinary citizens, pre-revolutionary conditions may be created. The growing discontent among the population can only be suppressed by force, and that is exactly what we are seeing today.’

‘Isn’t the Chinese regime very successful in driving progress in climate control, for example with solar panels or electric cars?’

‘True but I don’t like the idea that an autocracy should be the only way to protect the climate. The price is too high. Adult democracies can be very well equipped to deal with the challenges of climate change. And if we have a real democracy – including citizen participation – then the susceptibility to corruption of professional politics can be contained. Democracy needs three forms in order to be able to act: representative democracy, in the form of elections; direct democracy like referendums and deliberative democracy with citizens’ assemblies that advise politics.’

‘This author of yours sounds almost like a utopian. Do we have enough time to wait for a global coming together and trans-national cooperation?’

‘It’s never too late. Hope and despair are not concepts I subscribe to,’ Camp said. ‘During our one-hour conversation alone, six or seven species became extinct and millions of microplastic particles were emitted. And the trend is rising. There is a lot to do.’ 

‘Here is another round to help you two solve the world’s problems,’ Vicky said when she swapped our empties for two fresh ones.