In 2021 — unlike 1941 and 2001 — there is no enemy to mobilize against. Or is there?*
So what is our Pearl Harbor moment? Well, how about now? After all, to extend the analogy, the Pacific seaboard of the US has recently come under unprecedented climatic attack. The heat domes, the droughts and fires there this year should have been enough to shock everyone out of their isolationism. But the gap between these events and people’s understanding of the forces that caused them is, arguably, the greatest public information failure in human history. We need bodies equivalent to Roosevelt’s Office of War Information, constantly reminding people of what is at stake.
As the US mobilisation showed, when governments and societies decide to be competent, they can achieve things that at other times are considered impossible. Catastrophe is not a matter of fate. It’s a matter of choice.
Read the whole thing, as the kids say. We can have any future we choose. The sooner we choose, the better.
* There is an enemy, in fact. The need to make a profit, to produce RoI (as if pulling the world back from the brink of disaster isn’t sufficient return) before acting to save lives, ecosystems, the untold potential of the world is the enemy. The US military — and others around the world — are already acting, as if their mission depends on it. Is that really our priority?