Kaze, July 2020

The uniqueness of the Climate Crisis
Saburo KATO
In the past 50 years, I have been involved in pollution control measures(air, water, wasts) as a government official, and, after I retired from the government,in advocacy activities for global environmental issues (global warming and climateissues) as the representative of an NPO. Particularly in the past two decades, criticalenvironmentalissues(adverseclimatechange,massivedecrease

ofspecies/populations, and environmental hormones/hazardous chemicals) haveplaced a great financial burden on our society, not just the actual physical damages
directly inflicted on us. Therefore, I cannot help focusing on these new aspects ofthe environmental crisis.
Earlier this year, the COVID-19 attacked the human sphere out of blue. The
corona pandemic seems to be a terrible consequence of the expanded humanactivities. The expansion of the global economy has been promoting freetransportation of people, goods, and money all over the world, and finally allowed
humans to go beyond the boundary into the realm of nature.
While staying home the last few months due to the COVID-19 “curfew”, Iwas thinking about various crises that surround us - a huge earthquake, a missile,or a meteorite coming down on you. In addition to the above, some people will
worry if another burst of a nuclear power plant will devastatingly ruin our economy,
and others may fear their losing jobs after the pandemic.
However, the global environmental crisis is uniquely and fundamentallydifferent from such usual crises as I raised above. Huge earthquakes, wars, andgreat economic depression are not something that we consciously sought for. We
want to avoid them at all costs, but they may happen for a certain reason. On theother hand, the climate crisis is the result of our sane desire for a better living.
Humans always have been seeking material richness, physical convenience, andcomfort. Then, after enthusiastically working for a better life for hundreds of years,

we stepped over the limit of the Earth and now we found ourselves amid atremendous crisis. Our efforts to raise living standards resulted in an environmental
crisis that will totally devastate our own life. This unique characteristic of theenvironmental crisis, however, would give us hope for the future. What does itmean?
Human development, as its natural result, brought about economic changes
both in volume and quality. Nevertheless, the global environment was relatively
stable until the 1970s, when the world population was somewhat less than fourbillion and the global economy was much smaller by an order of magnitude. Thismeans that the global environment (air, land, ocean, and ecology) was barely
sustainable 50 years ago.
This fact is worth remembering. If we can reduce the environmental burden
to this level, we may be able to survive. Therefore, what we should do now is tominimize the burden (CO2 emission, excessive use of chemicals, deforestation, landdevelopment, etc.) as soon as possible. We should shift energy resources, establish
a system to screen technological development from the environmental viewpoint,
review our mass-consumption lifestyle, and try all possible measures to build a newsustainable society.
While staying home in the past few months, I found out that, among allcrises surrounding us, only the environmental crises can be overcome if we havethe guts to review traditional values and change our ways of life. Now is the time
to turn crisis into opportunity. Based on what I learned through our NPO activities,
I firmly believe that the opportunity resides in the environment-oriented society.