Sustainability Lessons We Learned in 2020
This year has been challenging, to say the least. Fortunately, difficulty often brings opportunities for positive change. In this post, I outline the biggest sustainability lessons we learned in 2020, and explain how we can use them to encourage change in 2021.
Climate Change is Happening now
People in vulnerable locations (like the arctic or island nations) have long endured the effects of climate change, while the rest of the world has remained relatively unscathed. But this year, people in less vulnerable areas began to feel the social and environmental costs of climate change.
From record-breaking wildfires in Australia and California to mass bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef to extreme flooding in Asia and East Africa to an unprecedented Atlantic hurricane season, climate change proved its presence globally. These events cost us money, infrastructure and lives.
Mainstream media also acknowledged climate change as the potential cause of many 2020 problems, including COVID-19. This recognition is vital to creating effective climate solutions. As mainstream outlets discuss climate change more and more, people will become more aware of climate change's widespread nature. And as the public becomes more passionate about the issue, politicians will (hopefully) feel pressured to enact change.
However, politicians will likely not act without persistent public prodding. In 2021, we need to use this year's massive climate events to convince our peers and politicians to take climate action. To encourage your representatives to mitigate climate change in the new year, I suggest calling or writing to them regularly!
Bottom line: This year saw a record number of climate-related extreme weather events, yet politicians failed to act. Let's make contacting our reps a priority in 2021!
We Cannot Take Food Security for Granted
As a result of coronavirus, people who were previously food secure experienced potential food insecurity. Whether they lost their sources of income, saw nothing but bare shelves at the grocery store, or were afraid to go in public to grocery shop, many in 2020 were unable to obtain food the way they usually do.
Unfortunately, food insecurity will likely creep ever-closer to the middle class in coming years. The coronavirus pandemic is the first of what experts predict to be many major global pandemics. On top of this, climate change will lead to more extreme weather events that threaten our food supply. With these changes, food insecurity will become more and more common for previously well-off people.
Learning from this year's events, we need to create more resilient food systems, including more diverse, locally controlled, adaptable and regenerative food production. Again, contacting your representatives can make a world of difference in creating more sustainable food systems and ensuring universal food security.
Bottom line: COVID-19 led to increased food insecurity, and future disasters will do the same. We need to create more resilient food systems to ensure future food security.
Ending our social crises will require as much work as ending our environmental crises
After Minneapolis police officers murdered George Floyd in May, the Black Lives Matter movement resurged and the general public began exploring their roles in present-day racism.
As a result, many people realized that they are more racist than they once thought, or even that racism still exists. Meanwhile, many black people felt the pain of watching people learn what they have long known, experienced and decried. Ultimately, we all witnessed that the vast majority of non-black people do not have the historical knowledge or humility to have productive conversations about race.
Despite our desperate need for improvement, anti-racism has mostly left the mainstream news cycle and faded from most non-black people's minds. Racism, like climate change, is all-encompassing, insidious and all too often ignored. This year has proven more than many years in recent history that ending racism will require extreme persistence. Neither climate change nor racism will end overnight, but that does not mean that we can get complacent.
Call and write to your representatives, talk to your friends and family, and educate yourself on racism's roots and current manifestations. Environmentalists need to stand up against racism just as fiercely as we do against climate change. These issues are inextricably connected, and ending both will continue to require massive public outcry.
Bottom line: Many people started taking racism seriously in 2020, but our country has failed to enact long-term changes. Like climate change, we need to keep fighting for anti-racism in 2021.
Our societies are adaptable
In response to the coronavirus pandemic, our world adapted to wearing masks and PPE, implementing new cleaning protocols, distancing, working from home, reinventing businesses and more. And we did all this in response to government orders implemented in a matter of weeks.
Although skyrocketing unemployment and a lack of federal relief in the U.S. reveal that our government's response to the pandemic is lacking, many industries and countries have reacted quickly, implemented new policies and successfully adapted to these changes on a remarkable timeline. If our societies and industries can adjust so quickly to these new norms, they can also adapt to new climate policies, social structures and government systems.
And we don't have to wait until disaster strikes to make these changes. Our government and our world systems are never stagnant — we are ever-evolving and capable of implementing large-scale changes at any moment. As we fight against climate change, racism and police brutality, transphobia, digital inequality and an abundance of other ills, we cannot forget how quickly our world can change given momentum and public pressure. In 2021, we need to continually remind ourselves and our government of how efficient they can be, demanding policies to address climate change, racism and our other most pressing issues.