3.4 We need an enemy we can personify
I’ve heard the argument that during World War II, our country came together in common purpose and accomplished great things. We were super productive and super effective. We beat the German Nazis and the Japanese Empire. We established our nation as a world power, in fact, a superpower.
And if we were able to do that back then…
How come we can’t come together now to fight climate change?
There’s a simple reason…
Our war against the Germans and Japanese was tribal.
They were enemy tribes and we know how to come together against tribal enemies. That’s built into our DNA. It’s automatic, it’s compulsive.
But our fight against climate change is not tribal. Because that thing is…
A thing.
It’s a pattern. It’s not the kind of enemy our long history as a social group species prepared us for. We focus on people first. That’s primary. The rest of the world is a distant second. And especially things that are long–term events and hard to see and make tangible.
Maybe if we called the climate George, and gave him a personality and turned him into an evil villain of a character, we’d start to take climate change more seriously, and get passionate about it, and pull out the stops and fight, really fight, to have a future.
