The mechanics of threat perception pivot on collective organizational and national imagination. Imagination is often associated with dreams, nightmares and creativity et al. This is a fallacious underestimation. Threat perception in the collective narrative usually leads to imagine about possible war, terrorism and most recently macro-economic instability has been added to the spectrum. I think we are missing the colour red in this spectrum; climate change. We have not war gamed climate change impact. It is still imagined to be a distant threat but the meteor is hurtling towards us and I imagine it will hit us like meteors hit planets, wiping out species.
In discussions on climate change and they are happening now with high frequency and reaching almost frantic proportions, the world is scrambling for solutions. In our motherland hardly anyone talks about it. Our discourses nay blabber is about politics, judiciary, civil-military relations, terrorism and recently the water has been added to it, which is also basically politics of the federation.
Carl Sagan on seeing the photograph from Voyager 1 from the edge of the Solar System wrote a book containing the phrase, ‘Pale Blue Dot’ in 1996. I will quote a paragraph from that iconic book: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam”. Hence, nothing else matters, absolutely nothing else, we need to save the pale blue dot.
I listen to podcasts and TV talk shows while commuting from office to work and back. No one is talking about the meteor hurtling towards us. “Maholliati Tabdeeli” as a phrase, has gate crashed in the lexicon and has been discussed but not often enough, not deeply enough. It is still remote to us and our ‘national discourse’. I believe that climate change is the only thing that we should be talking about.
The Public Sector Development Program or PSDP (2024-25), the Development budget of Federal Government in easier terms, has allocated 5256.96 million PKR to Climate Change Division and 244.55 million PKR were spend until January 2025 by Climate Change Division. Climate Change Division’s utilization rate until January was 5%. These numbers indicate many things, but ‘inefficiency’ stares back at you like the ‘abyss stares back’. This piece is not about bureaucratic inefficiencies or other problems, the real problem is that we are not focusing on the hurtling meteor. The government has other priorities and rightfully so it is handling or trying to handle these challenges, however the absence of threat perception is also glaring from the abyss.
We as a society are glued to cell phones, getting entertained, getting angry, getting hysterical, sledgehammering values like decency, respect and tolerance; always looking down. We have become slaves to a tool, which now defines us. We as a society are not looking up at the hurtling meteor.
I am sure there is more awareness in the new generation about climate change but the awareness remains on the fringes because it is not a talked about issue around the dining table, hujras, dera and other social gatherings. I am also sceptic that this awareness of and about climate change has permeated through the curriculum in private schools and in public schools. I hope it has. I sincerely hope.
The hurtling meteor of climate change will impact and change the way we live, if we live or those of us who survive. The threat is real and it is here; Imagine it!