Superheroes can’t stop the climate crisis
Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash
Imagine if, one day, you wake up with super powers straight out of a Marvel movie. Lacing up your trainers for an early morning run before work, you feel different but don’t know why. As you begin to jog down the street and pass by the railroad tracks, a train speeds by. Barely breaking a sweat, you pump your legs faster and faster until you’ve left the train in your dust.
Intrigued, you stop at an abandoned lot and lift up a derelict car as effortlessly as if it were made of paper mache. Looking up, you see an airplane passing in the heavens above. Bending your knees with both arms pointed up, you launch into the air at supersonic speed. Soon, you are flying next to the airliner, waving at perplexed passengers peering at you through portholes.
Congratulations, you are a superhero. Choosing to use your powers for good, over the course of the next several months you foil countless crimes, defy dictators, and even stop an alien invasion or two.
And yet despite your awesome physical strength, super speed, and ability to fly, you are powerless to stop the largest world-ending threat facing humanity: the climate crisis. Your powers can’t decarbonize the economy, address systemic socioeconomic inequality, or reverse planetary warming.
That’s because the world doesn’t need superheroes endowed with fantastic powers — the problems are too complex to be eliminated by a punch to the face. What the world needs is ordinary people engaged in every day acts of ingenuity, pluck, and mindfulness.
First, we need people to care about the climate crisis and other social and environmental challenges. Second, we need people to be empowered with the knowledge and skills to address these problems. Third, we need people to act to apply their passion and power to effect positive change. And fourth, we need people to stay motivated to endure when facing inevitable setbacks.
We need put away the pedestals. No individual person, company, organization, or government will solve the climate crisis or most of the world’s biggest problems. What we need is everyday people like you and I to bring together our collective skills, experience, and passion to solve complex problems, rethink the status quo, and begin laying the bricks for a more sustainable and equitable society. Collectively, we can form “super communities” capable of taking on any challenge.
Stop looking to the skies for salvation. Superheroes can’t save the world. We need you. And we need each other. Only together will we succeed.
