Carbon Crisis In The Amazon: We Own It
By Scott Poynton, Skytop Contributor / September 7th, 2021
Scott Poynton is an Australian forester. He founded The Forest Trust (TFT) in 1999 and grew it into a global non-profit working in 48 countries, impacting more than $1 trillion in supply chain transactions.
Scott supported some of the world’s largest companies to be more environmentally and socially responsible. He brokered major transformations across the wood and agri-commodities sectors, pioneering responsible sourcing and launching the world’s first No Deforestation, No Exploitation commitments.
In 2020, Scott founded The Pond Foundation. Its My Carbon Zero program helps individuals and businesses take their own strong, credible climate action. He also leads a different way limited, supporting C-suite executives and their organizations grow values-based leadership while sharing the lessons of his experience through writing, presenting and lecturing.
Time to Turn to Ourselves
Overwhelming, negative climate news risks driving humanity to inaction and resignation. Might we instead choose inspiration?
New research published this week in Nature shows that the forest of the southeastern Amazon region, long a major carbon sink that has absorbed vast amounts of carbon released from burning fossil fuels, has now tipped to become a net carbon emitter. And not just a small one; linked to fires, deforestation and climate change, it’s emitting in the order of 1 billion tOCO2 per year, equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of Japan, one of the world’s largest, industrialized economies.
It’s Not Good News
This sort of change has long been predicted by climate scientists. But the Brazilian government has not only ignored the warnings, it’s rushed headlong toward it, encouraging more deforestation for cattle and soy.
Other geological tipping points unravelling elsewhere such as melting Antarctic ice sheets, melting Arctic methane, global temperature rises, the mass extinction that’s unfolding as we speak, pollution levels, and the like, suggest that not only are we in trouble, but that our efforts to bring change are failing spectacularly, that we’re completely ineffectual.
In the face of such monumental challenges, it would be easy to fall into inaction and resignation. Indeed, it seems that so many already have, and who’s to blame them?
People elect governments to keep them safe, but governments all over the world have failed them and continue to do so. In so many sickening ways, governments, like that in Brazil, have become major parts of the problem. In hope, we turn for salvation to corporations who play their own part in the problem. But they too are proving ineffective. There is so much greenwashing around sustainability claims these days that it’s impossible to determine who is credible and who is peeing into the wind.
Who, Then, Do We Turn To?
Well, the answer is as clear today as it’s always been. We’ve just been reluctant to acknowledge it. We must turn to ourselves.
We like to find someone to blame for the bad things that befall us. Climate change and other environmental and social woes are no different. “It’s the government’s fault,” or, “It’s the companies’ fault,” but never, it seems, is it our fault.
Governments and companies act to deliver the things we want. We can’t be unhappy with the fossil fuel industry if we rely on fossil fuels for energy, transportation, heating, flights. We’re complicit. We can’t be unhappy at the beef industry if we eat beef. We can’t be unhappy with the soy industry if we use products derived from soy – pork, chicken, and milk chief amongst them. On it goes. We truly are all complicit in creating this unhappy state of affairs. We’re not victims.
Victims do exist. All the animals and plants suffering the changed climate are victims. People living in poverty are victims, especially those in developing countries crushed by debt and the implications of other’s political games for so many decades, even centuries. Overall, though, humanity as a whole carries the burden of blame for much of the world’s ills.
And So, We Come Back To Ourselves
If we own the problem, we own the solution. We can point to corrupt, failed political and financial systems that seem so large that there’s nothing we, small little citizens, can do to bring change. But this is to abrogate both responsibility and opportunity. If we instead each looked in the mirror, looked at our life and did some sums, we’d soon work out there’s much we can do.
We can make choices that reduce emissions. We can make choices that help others reduce their emissions. We can make choices that remove carbon from the atmosphere. We can make choices that inspire others to do likewise. We can make choices that influence leaders to act more strongly.
We can take action. We can say no to the notion that we’re victims. We have agency, we should use it.
If we’re a company, we should stop seeking to paint ourselves as heroes with marketing budgets that far outweigh the climate action budgets. Turn that around and let your climate action speak for itself.
There really is so much reason to despair but likewise so much reason to shake ourselves down and do something ourselves. My action, my responsibility, My Carbon Zero.
For my part, though despair does visit from time to time, I’ll always keep asking myself, “What more can I do?”
We have some serious questions to ask ourselves, as individuals, not as a species, in the time ahead. As the situation worsens, and for certain it will, we have to choose whether to stand on the side of hope and inspiration, or the side of resignation and despair. In the end and in the face of vast geological processes we don’t control, our choices might amount to no more than a hill of beans, no impact whatsoever, but we will have been in the arena at least, having a go. And there’s no shame in that.
I really do hope that more individuals, more companies, more governments can step up to the plate and challenge the inexorable flow of things. It’s beyond time for inspiration. Let’s leave resignation behind.