Saving the planet with Death-Metal     

There is a death metal band hailing from France that sings about the greener things in life. Not marijuana, but of the Earth, its nature and its climate. They call themselves ‘Gojira’.

Death metal, for people who don’t know, is a sub-genre of metal that upon hearing makes most Indian parents disown their children. It’s dark, it’s heavy, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, which is highly strange for this country of more than a billion tea lovers.

But for the people who love metal, Gojira is one of the best modern acts out there with a solid act that speaks highly about climate change and the human condition.

The dire state of our planet comes alive in the following lyrics from a song Born in winter which tells the tale of humanity struggling in a nuclear winter (a catastrophic event that is precipitated upon the use of nuclear bombs which renders our planet in a cold, desolate state).

Before all things reborn again

You learn the painful breath of time

Cold morning stretches out your arms

To the mighty warmth of one golden sun

Seems all have gone insane for gold

All was created out of the night

We’re all born from the burst of a star

Climate change has been a recurring cause of concern. Since the glaring effects of global warming and deforestation began to draw our attention, everybody from engineers to science educators have been pondering over this crisis.

In her 2008 paper titled ‘Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions’, Susan Solomon, a noted climate scientist, discussed how the after-effects of carbon dioxide emissions in the past have already fixed its course for the future.

Over the 20th century, the atmospheric concentrations of the key greenhouse gases have increased due to human activities. It has now been ascertained that the atmospheric temperature increase caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide may not decrease even if carbon emission were to cease completely, which in the real world, is not going to happen.

It is believed by some scientists that even if we were to try to stop the depletion of the ozone layer by solar radiation management, the carbon emissions shall continue to increase. Future carbon dioxide emissions in the 21st century will, therefore, lead to adverse climate change on both short and long time scales and would essentially be irreversible.

Carbon emissions to date have already altered the climate for at least a thousand years to come. Aside from the chemical changes, the physical alterations that have already been made are deemed irreversible as well. What this essentially means is that the changes made to the Earth’s climate have now been fixed for the next 1000 years.

The day you’ll come to life you’ll realize

Expanding force of life where you belong

And in the winter cold, with opened eyes

You’ll find the strength to fight and stand upright

What can we, as a species, do? Climate change has been treated more or less like an impending doom that will consume us all when the time comes, somewhat like the portrayal of winter in Game of Thrones.

Now, these ‘solutions’ are mostly remedies of what we can do. Most of the greenhouse gas emissions come from energy usage that includes electricity generation, heating, transport and various other uses of energy. If we are to beat climate change, we need to revolutionise how we use energy in a general sense.

One of the ways to do this is by shying away from the use of fossil fuels like coal or gas to renewable sources like wind, solar, geo-thermal and hydropower.

One of the things we should be focusing on is expanding renewable energy transitions beyond electricity generation since we have mentioned that energy consumption is much more than just generating electricity. We can also vote for political parties that pledge to implement these targets.

The pursuit of attaining renewable sources of energy should be one of the absolute primary concerns for the betterment of humanity and more money should be invested for using renewable energy in the developing world.

Even though the climate conditions up until the year 3000 have largely been predicted, there are specific meaningful actions we can take beyond the individual level to combat climate change and restrict its after-effects to least amounts of severity as possible.

We are passing down a flawed inheritance to the coming generations; we can at least make sure to not make their experiences unbearable.

One day you’ll walk the world and keep in mind

The heart you’ve been given in wintertime

And through the bitter cold, with opened eyes

You’ll find the strength to fight and stand upright