Quality of Life

I want to tackle the idea that our quality of life will suffer from measures intended to mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions. Let’s consider the COP27 summit in Egypt, and how interested parties are flooding towards the summit in jets, and are likely to enjoy the scuba diving, great weather, and general opulence of a beach resort vacation. I think I’ll sidestep any judgement of the hypocrisy of these carbon intensive summits on climate, because we all have room for behavioral improvement. But let things about what wealthy and privileged people can experience now vs. the quality of life decrease, or any “sacrifices” we might expect the future… what does that look like?

Will the places one can enjoy a healthy oceanside experience, with a safe and diverse ecosystem, even exist if we don’t mitigate our greenhouse gas emissions? Will Hawaii, or the Caribbean even be the same without coral reefs due to an acidifying ocean? A beach vacation might be an extreme and inaccessible example to most people, so let’s think about cars, or houses, or gas vs electric stoves. Or our diet and food systems – we’re reliant on carbon intensive farming and supply chains, for the most part. The problem with climate change is how slowly and invisibly it tends to affect us. Air pollution create asthma, increased infant mortality, and other respiratory effects. But it’s rare to find a person taking out their inhaler and blaming the interstate highway only a quarter mile away. Water and food pollution has been proven to cause endocrine issues, cancer, and ill-health, but we generally charge through life eating food and drinking the tap water without testing it at length.

My point here isn’t that we should be individually testing our environment and living in fear, it’s that it’s extremely easy to ignore or not notice negative effects of our modern lifestyle. We become far more inflamed when we’re nudged or forced into certain consumption patterns, and therein lies concern about “quality of life” decreasing. A smaller house. A smaller car. A shorter shower. A longer “gas” station wait as our car charges. A yard that isn’t watered in the summer. Why do those things emerge as incomprehensible sacrifices? We know, in our hearts, that a cancerous tumor, a child’s respiratory illness, those are “quality of life” things most worth preserving.

I think ultimately that the information about the negative effects of our actions are important primarily to provide the counterbalance to our resistance to change. And as I’ve been contemplating this topic I’ve managed to completely avoid the equity issues associated with huge amounts of people striving for a non-impoverished life, as opposed to just a slightly more opulent existence. Fostering a contentedness and sense of shared sacrifice will be vital as we continue to try to reduce our societal greenhouse emissions.