Any vision of the best possible future without climate change is likely impossible or entirely catering to the whims of the one who designed it. The complicated and multifaceted nature of climate change prevents it from settling in a perfect solution where everybody wins. All that we as humans can do is visualize that ideal future and do what we can to attain as much of it as we can.
However, there are underlying principles that are necessary for the eradication of worldwide climate change. To have any possibility at creating an ideal future, the structures in place that prevent these principles from being realized must be changed. Some basic tenets for creating a future that is safe from worldwide climate change must include:
- Access to education. Everybody should have access to a quality education, and part of that education must include education on environmental science and climate change. To fully establish the existence and dangers of climate change, people worldwide must be aware of its existence and impact. A quality education that allows people to understand climate change beginning at a young age will foster new generations that can understand how to create a climate healthy future and effectively participate in working towards it.
- Demilitarization. Nations who turn their police and military on their own citizens who are fighting for the right to a healthy planet are at the forefront of global violence and war. Overdeveloped militaries have caused violence and war to become too quick of a response to dissent and conflict. The war periods of the 20th century have developed today into a dangerous environment that "inhibits society’s ability to avoid violent dislocations as climate change kicks in" [13]. Those who suffer under climate change are not enemies, and should not be treated as such.
- Reduced capitalist interests. A society that reduces its people and its resources based only on their economic value undermines their inherent worth and rights. The interest of the state should first and foremost center around serving its people; to craft a society based around wealth leaves many behind to suffer. Economies should be for the people and work in their interests to create an active and functioning society, yet so many, human or otherwise, have fallen victim to a wealth-obsessed world that leaves no room for those who do not generate profit. Personal care must take priority over economic interest.
- A government that serves its people. The leaders of the world must act in the interest of its people, all of its people, in order for climate change to be stopped. The failures of the government have allowed for industry to gain an overabundance of power, resulting in corruption and exploitation. The people must be able to choose their own leaders as well: power must be earned, not given. Until any government serves the interests of its people, it will never hold the power to prevent climate change.
- Equality across age, gender, and ethnicity. Each member of a society must be able to fully participate in it. Women, young people, and the elderly are not given proper space to change the societies they live in. Furthermore, the nations with the most wealth impress burdens onto those with the least, most notably in places that are home to people of color. The voices of those who lack power are most important in the creation of a world without climate change, as they are the ones who have had to suffer the most under it.
These things manifest in any number of ways, and are only the beginnings of a basis on how to eliminate climate change once and for all. The structures that perpetuate the escalation of climate change must be dismantled under these conditions so that the people of the world, particularly those who have already suffered as a result of climate change, are given their proper due and can help create the world that benefits everybody.
To talk about the possibilities for a greater future brings those opportunities to light. Only once the reasoning behind these principles is understood can action be taken to put them into place. Endless criticism of a currently-failing system without an offering of hope or change merely fosters greater negativity and division in the world that already exists. Humans are not doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past or the ones happening in the present; we must learn from them, and visualize a world in which these injustices cannot exist. Once we have done so, then we gain the power to bring that imaginary world into reality.