It Can’t Be Done

Marshal Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch was, by all accounts, a brilliant and insightful military leader, the Supreme Allied Commander during the last years of World War One. His opinion of airplanes? “They are interesting toys, but of no military value.”

Not long before that war, the motorcar had come into vogue, and in many jurisdictions it was required to have a man with a flag walking along in front of the car in order to alert horses and carriages of the arrival of the terrifying machine.

On April 30, 1860 the Pony Express was founded and became the thing of legend, the surest way to get a message across the continent in the shortest time possible. On October 26, 1861 it went out of business, bankrupt. Why? Because telegraph lines had just been completed from coast to coast.

Funny stories, aren’t they? Humans were such dummies back then. Much smarter now, right?

We humans are a strange bunch, aren’t we? “It’s impossible to wean modern industrial society off oil!” Oh, really? “You’ll never eradicate poverty!” Don’t be so sure. We said such things about the gold standard, paper money, and castor oil. Carburettors would never be replaced, and eight-track players would be around for a thousand years. Well, we’ll see about those.

Homo sapiens seem to have three visions of the future: that it will forever look like the present, that it will inevitably be dystopian, or that the good fairy will arrive and by magic all will be paradise. Of course none of these are true, and the future will always surprise us.

What we do know is that a good future, for individuals and for the collective, doesn’t arrive as a fluke, but is the result of choices made today. I can choose to eat like a pig and stay in bed, or I can choose to eat wisely and exercise, and the future I get will follow directly from my choices. Ditto for society.

Some of our offspring will get to live in a future where we treat nature right and nature treats us right. The only question is how many of our offspring will enjoy that, and how hard will be the transition. The answer to that is in our hands today.

“Fighting and reversing climate change can’t be done!” Nonsense. It will take determination, courage, and sacrifice. But let’s not say it can’t be done.