Nuclear Fission Won’t Solve The Climate Crisis. A Trip to Space Might
Recently, a large group of scientist published a pretty scary report. According to this, 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries (like climate change, biodiversity, and chemicals in environment) are currently transgressed.
While we don’t know 100% what this will mean, the world as we know it is clearly hanging by a thread. A really thin one, it seems.
Change takes time, but we are running out of it. Optimists are often pointing to how we saved the ozone layer back in the 80’s, with a single conference leading to the Montreal protocol in 1987 and the following phasing out of CFC gasses.
The situation is just so much more complex and dire now. Fossil fuels are like the blood of our economy. The technology-implementation gap is huge. We’ve seen plenty of conferences, but not enough action. We are not on track to meeting the targets in the Paris Agreement, and even meeting those would not take us all the way we need to go.
Many take comfort in renewable energy and technological innovation. If windmills and solar aren’t going to cut it, nuclear fission or some other bright new thing will probably save us.
Jason Hickel, in his great book Less Is More, compares this technological optimism to jumping into a deep hole without knowing if the parachute is working. A very striking image indeed, and why I often find myself thinking (read: mentally screaming): “ Okay, What do we do here????”
I have come across a proposal for how to save the world. It’s relatively cheap, can be executed in a short time, and it is even research-based.
In one sentence, it goes like this:
Send all the world’s leaders into space.
Biden, Putin, Jinping, Scholz, Macron, Modi, da Silva, even Jong-un. Maybe add some CEOs of fossil fuel companies and other key people. Off they go. Let them gaze out those round spaceship windows. Have a look and a chat. And then return.
To explain how that would work, let’s think about what can create “real change” for a moment.
The Stanford behavioural researcher, B.J. Fogg, claims there are only three things that can create lasting change:
Option A: Have an epiphany
Option B: Change your environment
Option C: Take baby steps
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As he goes on, “Creating an epiphany is difficult. So rule out Option A unless you have magical powers — I don’t.”
I like this summary. Option B and C neatly sums up some of the strongest ideas in behavioural change.
But. Are we dispensing Option A too quickly? What if there was a proven method for creating ephipanies? Like, near-death experiences or religious revelations on demand?
The Overview Effect
According to the American space philosopher and author, Frank Miller, there’s a least one fairly reliable way to do just that. And this takes us to our world leaders on a space voyage.
Frank Miller has studied the effect of space travel on astronauts through many years. He has interviewed a long range of astronauts and cosmonauts about what it’s like to be out there. Concentrating on what happens psychologically when he space rangers exit the familiar environment on Earth, he boils down his key insight with the concept The Overview Effect. The Overview Effect, he writes, is a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space. It is the experience of seeing first-hand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, “hanging in the void””
Seeing Earth from space is a mind-changing experience. A mind-revolution, as a matter of fact. The subjects of Miller’s research shared the experience of a “cognitive shift”, caused by the first-hand vision of Earth hanging in empty space. It is not an intellectual insight, but an “immediate” understand. Like the difference between being told “the coffee cup is on the table” and seeing wiht your own eyes the coffee cup standing on the table [1].
But where seeing a coffee cup on a table and getting the information second hand does not evoke a big difference in our emotional response, it is clearly a different thing with seeing the Earth hanging in empty space. Not even googling space pictures will get you anything near to the same state of deep insight that simply seeing Earth from space will do.
As it turned out, for several of the astronauts and cosmonauts, the experience was not only mind-changing but also life-changing: After returning from their space voyages, many moved on to careers as environmental champions and activists. Seeing Earth from space brought them to a deep realization of how fragile our home is. To a level that no scientific understanding of climate change or environmental destruction could do. And made them put their foot forward to save our home.
There you have your epiphany. It’s not magic. It’s simply a radical experience that coins a fundamental mindset change, which defines how someone responds to the world emotionally and behaviorally. Change, real change, has happened.
Why An Epiphany Is What We Need
So, back to our world leaders and how we save Earth from climate catastrophes and nuclear war. How about a Kickstarter to finance their space trip? Let them go out there, have a social epiphany, overcome their differences, and get priorities straight?
Space travel is expensive. But if the overview effect is the real deal, we have a shortcut to world salvation. At least to get that political momentum which we so badly need.
Because right now, it’s not a lack of technology that is holding us back. It is political will to change the system. It is a deeply felt unity around the urgency of making fundamental changes. Yes, policies are being implemented, but we need to accelerate our momentum, remove barriers to the green transition, and impose heavy regulations to make it in time.
A trip to space might give us just that. And if it does, I think it will be worth every penny.
[Footnote]
[1] My favorite quote from Frank Miller’s interviews is by a Solar Engineer, who in his interview says that “Suddenly, you realize that the sun is just a big round ball, hanging in space”. Fascinating, right? This guy has spent years and years researching the sun, thinking about the sun, reading, writing, measuring, probably dreaming about the sun. And still he learns something new when he first sees the sun from space.
Seeing is believing. If anything, this quote tells you something about the power of experience.
