Optimistic October
It is, apparently, ‘Optimistic October’ according to the little calendar I’ve been given, from ‘Action for Happiness’, which encourages us to be happier and kinder together. It’s sweet and lovely and I can’t help but look suspiciously at it, and I’m generally a glass half full kind of person.
It’s autumn, orange pumpkins are everywhere, hygge is in the air with warm sweaters and candles flickering, the children are getting giddy with the thought of half term holidays and Halloween coming up. And yet, the general mood is far from optimistic, and I'm not even thinking about the petrol queues or all the other logistical supermarket issues we are dealing with. COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, is about to begin in less than a month, and yet we are already hearing that targets are not ambitious enough, worrying us that it will be yet another wasted opportunity for actual meaningful change.
It feels like the 2000 year old parable by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai who taught: It is to be compared to people who were in a boat, and one of them took a drill and began to drill a hole beneath himself. His companions said to him: Why are you doing this? He replied: What concern is it of yours? Am I not drilling under myself? They replied: But you will flood the boat for us all (Leviticus Rabbah, 4:6).
It’s a popular story about how interconnected we are, how much we are affected by each other's actions, and it feels very poignant but also frightening right now. We recycle, reduce our consumption, switch to green energy and green finance, use our cars less, fly less, and yet we now know that our private actions cannot make a significant enough difference compared to the impact of industries, councils or governments. It’s hard to feel optimistic or hopeful.
In the story of the boat, there is no outcome, we don’t know how the person who bored the hole reacted, whether they stopped, or decided to make more holes. We would like to think that the person drilling would somehow have an epiphany and realise their mistake and rectify it.
The lack of an ending is I think the story’s message. The only actions we know of were those of the other passengers who spoke up. And that’s perhaps the lesson we need to learn, and the hope we need to remember. The other people in the boat didn’t turn away. They didn’t throw the person overboard. They reacted, they spoke up, perhaps while pouring water out of the boat, perhaps while offering the person materials to plug the hole with, perhaps comforting them, and reminding them that we can have a better future.
On the one hand we feel very small and without power against the large multinationals and governments far away. And yet we also know that there’s a real focus and awareness of climate change and its dangers now, perhaps more than ever before. And speaking up is working, the mood and attention has changed. It was never going to be an easy change, nor straightforward, but more and more holes are being exposed and more hands are trying to help plug them. At the same time we should not forget to speak up, to hold governments accountable and argue for a fair and just change to help the ones most affected by flooding, wildfires and droughts.
At COP26, all the world leaders will be sitting in the same metaphorical boat. And as they sit there, looking at the ocean of potential, can they create the partnerships, the collaborations and investments in climate finance that the world needs to change the course we are currently on?
Let’s remind them through our actions and our voices, through how we are plugging the holes and cracks in the boat, that they can too, so that the hopes for COP 26 will be realised. Let’s hope that the only drilling that will be done is in our pumpkins.