‘You can make history or be vilified by it’

In my last post I stated my own belief (and I’m not alone in thinking it!) that we can’t rely on a global mitigative strategy being formulated, agreed upon and kept to ((King, 2004). We need to accept the reality of a fragmented mitigative future and find ways to solve the problems this will ultimately create (Aldy et al., 2007)

Having solidified this viewpoint over the course of this blog, I decided to look back at my first post and see how things had changed. Immediately I was drawn again to Leonardo DiCaprio’s words:

‘the time to answer the greatest challenge of our existence on this planet is now. You can make history or be vilified by it’

When I first heard this statement I thought its intentions were to unite nations together under a collective purpose. Having thought about it over the course of this blog, I’m now not sure this what was intended at all. Perhaps because my views have changed, but I now think this is not a call for collective action, but a call for key states and individuals to stand up and take their place as the heroes in the climate change tale. As someone who has obsessively watched movie after movie, I feel as if I know what it is that makes a hero. In the word’s of Sylvester Stallone :

 it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward'

As we have seen, reducing emissions requires compromising immediate economic priorities (Enkvist et al., 2007). But what makes a true hero is the ability to accept this compromise and continue none the less. It is no easy task to be a hero (just look at the Australian Carbon tax I discussed a few posts ago) but if it were easy then we wouldn't need one would we!