As I sit here at my desk, I look out upon a perfectly calm ocean at 5 AM in the morning, it is as still as a millpond, and on the horizon sits an old sea barge with its sails pulled in and ready for the weekend ahead. Like many people, it is easy for all of us to forget what a fragile world we live in and how everything we do can affect the climate and our planet.
There are those that will argue that climate change is just a natural occurrence and others that say what we are doing in business and life has no effect on the planet we live on. The reality is that those statements are wrong, science has proven this just in the past few weeks again, by taking a long look globally at the past few thousand years and identifying that this is the first time in our planets known history that the climate globally is changing. Previous arguments from doubters, including Presidents of the US, have stated that evidence was only localised to regions, this now has been proven incorrect.
I overheard on BBC Radio 4 scientists this week discussing how Greenland is losing its first glacier and the explanation how if all the ice melts on Greenland then the oceans would rise over 21 feet (not in all places some may only see 14 feet if you are lucky). Already last year the oceans have risen slightly. The scientist went on to explain in detail to those that did not understand the difference between the Greenland ice sheet and that of icebergs and north and south pole.
The most alarming news was not scared mongering at all but was incredibly enlightening, how the experts themselves said we have got the timing wrong. Globally between the climate scientists, it had been agreed previously less than a decade ago that the changes we have seen in the past 12 months would only occur at the end of this century. They are alarmed and rightly so because this means things are happening far greater speed than previously thought.
Consciously I make decisions myself now that are focused one hundred per cent on the climate, be this at a personal level and shopping or whether this is with business. I think hard about the consequences of certain actions and why I have taken them. It is so easy for us to all get locked away in our little singular worlds and not take note of all that surrounds us and the beauty that is our planet.
I was recently at a conference by Fast Company at Gucci offices in Milan, Italy. Here one discussion covered was simply how we as humans are already to some of the planet Gods. The reality is we have the power already to change the planet, to change the life and habitat of other species no different to that of a God and we are now at the stage with Artificial Intelligence where we are creating life too, that is something new never seen before. The truth is we are entering an age where our lives will be radically different than we ever dreamed possible. However, with such changes comes responsibility and surely the most important of all these responsibilities is to protect the one place in the solar system that we call home – Earth.
Mother nature as I like to call the Earths protection system, will always strive and help to repair, but she needs our help. She needs us to grow up, to see what we are doing, to stop acting for self-interest, to stop pretending that business is the most important thing in our lives, to start to act mature and to step back and think, plan and change the way we all behave in personal and business lives to better the world we live in.
Take a moment to just think about this… if we are such an intelligent species, why are we such a danger to the natural world that we rely so much on?
