And so, as a new decade begins, the climate crisis has passed the duck test. It looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, so it probably is a duck. It is declared an emergency by the European Parliament and it feels like an emergency for most Australians. As Australian climate scientist Joëlle Gergis puts it: “We must act as if our home is on fire – because it really is”.
It is good sense to mobilize the actors most appropriate for any given action. If you are sick, you call the doctor. If you are afraid of ghosts, you call the ghostbusters. In Australia now, they have called for fire fighters. But who can we call after declaring climate crisis?
The answer to this question is more complicated given the gigantic task of solving the creeping, invisible and ghost-like global climate crisis. Yet there are people we desperately need to employ and mobilize if we are to slash emissions anywhere near the 7.6 per cent per year demanded of us to meet the 1.5 Paris target. We have to call upon the hands and brains of particular groups of workers whose jobs directly and indirectly – when summed up, regulated for and funded – can provide certain and steep emission cuts, and put out our global fire as soon as humanly possible.
