Adapting to differences exceeds of imaginative capacities

Adapting to differences brought upon by our changing climate demand a lifestyle so different that understanding the resultant reality pretty much exceeds our imaginative capacities.

Public transit will play a
key role in adapting to
climate change.

The journey from here to there will be both troubling and tumultuous and adaptation is something we need to begin now and no matter what it is we do, it will not be enough.

The idea that we should work fewer hours is little more than a step in the appropriate direction, for alone it means little, but it simply a step and whatever the journey, it begins with the first step.

Working just Four-Hours a Day is as an idea totally inadequate as our response to dilemmas brought upon us by climate change need differences to our lifestyle that reach deeper our way of living that we can comprehend.

To have any serious impact on what is causing our climate to change we need to dethrone the economy, extract it from within our political lives and return it to being nothing more than a tool; a simple tool that is little more than a recording process and method of exchanging promises among people simply going about the normal business of living.

Once upon a time countries had a process in which all debts were cancelled and everyone reverted to a blank slate. I don’t claim to understand the dynamics of it and although it seems like a good idea it is absolutely certain that today the world’s rent-takers would corrupt the process.

Apologies for the digression, the Four-Hour Work Day, no overtime, no double time, would not apply to privately owned businesses with four or fewer employees, public institutions, such as hospitals, but would include our armed services.

How does it work? I don’t know, but I do know that if we are serious about adapting to climate change and its rather trying implications, we need to build resilience in our communities and resilience evolves from close-knit communities in which that have most everything needed to live contentedly within an easy walk or a short cycling distance.

Should we need to travel any further, our public transit system should be such that we can move easily and conveniently around our towns and cities. The car should be despatched to the rubbish, or at least recycled.

The Four-Hour Work Day is not the answer, but it is a conversation we should be having.

Life is fine just the way it is, but. . . . .!

I like life just the way it is.

Working fewer hours is integral
to responding to climate change.

Sadly, it is not likely to change, it is going to change!

The prognosis for humanity’s future is less than encouraging as circumstances prompted by our consumptive behaviours collide drawing us little by little and quicker and quicker toward the abyss.

Even if we stopped consuming, stopped burning fossil fuels and stopped living the wasteful life typical of the world’s developed countries right now, we are still committed to a global increase in temperatures of at least two degrees and to soar past carbon dioxide content in the earth’s atmosphere of 400 parts per million (ppm).

Not long ago it was considered that the point of no return was 350ppm and now we are at about 398ppm and rogue weather events all around the world suggest the 350ppm warning was timely.

The shift to a Four-Hour Work Day brings societal complications difficult to explain and necessitates change to our way of living that almost exceed, or do exceed, our understanding.

Those complications, it must be said, are miniscule compared to what is ahead is we do not step away from out consumptive behaviours.

The idea of working fewer hours is hugely inadequate in terms of responding to the implications settling upon earth because of our changing climate, but if nothing more, it is an acknowledgement that we must do something.

The implications of working fewer hours is simple – we will earn less money and so be able to consume less and subsequently use less of everything, especially energy, most of which is generated by burning fossil fuels.

A working day of just four hours contradicts everything the neo-liberals believe in and rather than having people working fewer hours, they would prefer to see work based on a 24-hour cycle, seven days a week.

Such a concept will unquestionable disrupt earth’s ecology and reduce our future to just decades rather than millennia.