Pete’s blog

Got an interesting one tonight, going to talk about both the HIV pandemic and climate change, and in the way I love best, at the same time I am also going to be talking about personal stuff too

Humans are fantastic at denial, living in the past, not changing with the times, getting stuck in ruts, etc. Simply put we have trouble keeping up with reality. Why am I going to talk about HIV and climate change? Because they are 2 very good examples of exactly that behaviour.

First HIV. In previous mails I have spoken at length about the scale of the problem with which we are faced, particularly in South Africa. HIV is widespread and affects everyone in South Africa, whether directly or indirectly. If you look at the numbers and at the people affected, you cannot deny that HIV is a big part of South African life and will be here to stay until a vaccine is invented. Yet how we deal with HIV and respond to it is like it has only just started to become a problem, that if only we act now we can stop it… “Don’t get HIV, use a condom”, “HIV free generation”, “if you are good and don’t do anything bad you won’t get HIV”… Too late, South Africa has HIV. Yes maybe when there are a small number of infections, you can promote that sort of message. But you reach a point when that message becomes meaningless, alienating and quite often just plain stupid. How do you tell a child who was born with HIV that he should be condom-wise and part of the HIV free generation? How do tell someone who is HIV-negative, but has lost 2 family members to AIDS that they are HIV free? Refusing to face reality can be as obvious as saying South Africa does not have an HIV problem, or that I can never get HIV because I am not poor and I don’t sleep around. But refusing to face reality can also hide itself in our attempts to face reality. Not recognising the actual scale of the problem and not tailoring your response appropriately is just as much a refusal to face reality.

Climate change. Our response to climate change actually has some remarkable similarities to HIV. There are endless debates and arguments about whether climate change is real or just some big made up scare-tactic. We argue about how to prevent climate change, how if we all plant more trees and drive hybrid cars we can bring climate change to a halt. We talk about climate change as if it is this future event that may happen unless we do something about it now… Um… Sorry to tell you this, but climate change has already happened and as a recent study concluded (New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible), there is very little we can do to reverse the damage we have already done. In the same way as we are not at the beginning of the HIV epidemic, we are not at the beginning of climate change, we are in the middle of it. Why hasn’t the weather changed, why haven’t sea levels risen? Well the problem with climate change is that it happens really slowly. We’ve already messed up all the input parameters, it is just taking a bit of time for these to work through the system and to produce a result.

So what part of our attitude and response do we need to change? Well in both cases it is no longer a pending or potential problem. If it was a potential problem then, yes, your response should be to prevent the problem from happening. But in these cases, it is an actual problem, the problem has already happened. Your response is far broader. First you need to prevent the problem from growing further. Use condoms, plant more trees, recycle. To say, “well HIV is such a problem now, I may as well not use a condom” is the equivalent of saying “well since climate change is inevitable, I may as well drive my gas-guzzling 4×4”. Yes we have a problem, but problems can always be worse. Secondly you need to teach people how to live with the problem. Your mother or friend has HIV, how do you interact with them? You have HIV, what do you need to do, how do interact with people? What are all the different ways that you can contract HIV? How do you treat HIV? Similarly with climate change: which areas are going to be affected? How do we help them adapt and deal with the problems? How can we counter these effects? And thirdly and most importantly, we must always look to solving the problem. Finding that vaccine, finding a cure, finding a way to reverse all the CO2 we’ve pumped into the atmosphere, finding a way to live in a sustainable balance with the earth.

So in summary how do you face reality in three easy steps? Prevent, live with, and cure. Prevent and cure are the two sides we cling so desperately to. Because if we are not going to deny a problem, then we must at least have hope. Prevention and finding a cure are expressions of hope, hope that we can stop the problem, hope that we can fix the problem, hope that we can reverse the problem. Yet the most critical component is often left out – living with the problem. We focus so much on prevention and cure that we do not see the damage that is occurring around us. We fail to see the problem itself. Addressing how to live with a problem means you have to acknowledge and accept that you do actually have a problem and that it is not going away anytime soon.

And see this as an evolution. Firstly put all your effort and energy into prevention. If you prevent a problem, you’ll never have to live with it or cure it. But if that does not work and your problem grows, then spend more and more effort into living with the problem. This means adapting to the problem, controlling the problem and limiting its damage. Then lastly, when you have a cure for the problem, put all your effort into that cure to get rid of the problem as fast as possible.

Well have fun thinking about all the HIV and climate change messages you see. See how they fit into my framework. And have a little fun applying that framework to your own personal problems too.