The Next Stop

In 2050, how will we see our past mobility amid a climate disaster? One day, the tragic consequences of climate change may make us wonder about our past mobility, which seemed limitless. When the natural laws hit back, Northern Europe might become more of an El-Dorado than the Bahamas are today.

With my shirt covered in sweat, I have been waiting for my train for almost two hours. The 45-degree heatwave is certainly as hard on the body as it is on the rail network. The beginning of July 2050 has been terrible. During these two weeks, the temperature has not fallen below 20 degrees.

The measures taken by the Federal Council restrict water consumption to what is strictly necessary. This makes it impossible to refresh oneself at the fountain in front of the station. There is, of course, the lake below; but its 29 degrees will not do much to cool my body temperature down. Finally, the train arrives.

During the ride, the old vineyards of Lavaux offer a desolate backdrop. The water limitations also apply to the winegrowers, ensuring certain death of a major part of their grapes. The few wild birds still alive are desperately looking for food in this arid setting.

Mobility of the Past

In the hot and humid wagon, I reflect on my son’s questions on how the world used to be. In this devastating reality, he can hardly imagine what my youth was like.  A time when mobility was glorified and cheap, and immobility far from glamorous. Moving, traveling, accumulating experiences abroad, importing products from the other side of the world were commonplace. The further you would go, the more beautiful it seemed, and the brighter you shone in the eyes of others.

All the photos I posted on social networks of my weekends in Malta or Cyprus allowed me to get tons of likes. They also extricated me from the Swiss winter. In addition to our own journeys across the globe, we could get what we wanted from any corner of the planet. Argentine beef and Filipino pineapples were more glamorous on our plates than salads from the local farmer.

I was also incredibly fortunate that my position as a Ph.D. assistant „forced“ me to travel. How could I have done research without going to multiple conferences abroad? These events were an integral part of my work. They were encouraged and highly valued. Yes, my résumé needed the boost of an incredible number of kilometers traveled through the air. Moreover, I felt proud to fly regularly for professional reasons. Today, I admit it seems a little strange to have traveled a few hours by plane to receive ten minutes of feedback on an unpublished paper. But like so many others, we were so caught up in this great machine to produce, consume, throw away, pollute, travel that we lost sight of the tree of life on which we were sitting. We did not know…

How to Justify the Present?

At least, this is what I try to explain to my children, against the backdrop of the intergenerational clashes that led to 23 deaths in the city of Zurich last Saturday. Yet, deep down inside, remorse is overwhelming; but it is far too deep to reveal it to my children. In 1972, long before I was born, the Meadows Report for the Club of Rome (Meadows and al., 1972) already showed the limits of our economic and societal system based on infinite growth on a finite planet. In 1990, the UN, through its institution the IPCC, warned of the potentially catastrophic consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, in 2016, the Paris agreements and world leaders lulled us into illusions (Bang et al. 2016, Dimitrov et al. 2019). Yet, we could see that in scientific reports after scientific reports (e.g., Kumari et al. 2018, Vermeulen et al. 2012, Watts et al. 2019), the situation was deteriorating at a rapid pace. Hope for a viable future at our latitudes was dwindling.

It is true that, at the time, we were caught up in this infernal machine. The whole society was restless and running, head down, in all directions, which in turn led to growth and overconsumption. We were more concerned with living our daily lives than with leaving a viable planet to our successors. How could we imagine this? How could we stop to take a few moments to listen to what the scientists were telling us? This dark future had become the background noise of our comfortable lives in the West. But, little by little, this background noise became deafening.

Facing the Future

Finally, the train arrives and I find my children. Their bags are ready; like so many of their peers, they are leaving to go to the North and try to tinker with a medium-term future. Finland seems to be the new El Dorado for this generation; between droughts and hunger, there is no future for them at our latitudes. They are all looking for a place with the only treasure of fresh air and sufficient water. As I bid them farewell, I wish I could tell them that I was sorry, and that, since my youth, I had been committed to taking action against environmental disaster by not flying, consuming local food rather than importing from the other side of the world, cycling rather than driving, defending food resilience… Unfortunately, denial and comfort had the last words.

Salomon Bennour is a Ph.D. student at the SFM (University of Neuchâtel) and an associate of the nccr – on the move  and contributes to one of its projects, namely  Societal Norms as Predictors of Behavior and Attitudes regarding Migration among National Majorities and Immigrants.

References

Bang, G., Hovi, J., & Skodvin, T. (2016). The Paris Agreement: Short-term and long-term effectiveness. Politics and Governance, 4(3), 209-218.
Dimitrov, R., Hovi, J., Sprinz, D. F., Sælen, H., & Underdal, A. (2019). Institutional and environmental effectiveness: Will the Paris Agreement work?. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 10(4), e583.
Kumari, R. K., de Sherbinin, A., Jones, B., Bergmann, J., Clement, V., Ober, K., … & Midgley, A. (2018). Groundswell: preparing for internal climate migration. World Bank Group, 54.
Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The limits to growth. New York, 102(1972), 27.
Vermeulen, S. J., Campbell, B. M., & Ingram, J. S. (2012). Climate change and food systems. Annual review of environment and resources, 37.
Watts, N., Amann, M., Arnell, N., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Belesova, K., Boykoff, M., … & Chambers, J. (2019). The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate. The Lancet, 394(10211), 1836-1878.