Reflections: Titanic, Wall St, and Climate Change

Titanic, Wall Street, and Climate Change? What do these 3 things have anything to do with each other?

So Andrew and I recently watched "The Titanic: The Final Word" by James Cameron on NatGeo. With the 100 year anniversary upon us, there has been much talk about the tragedy of the Titanic, including the release of the new Titanic movie. What really hit home for me was the last 2 minutes of the video documentary where James Cameron eloquently delivers his analogy on the Titanic with Wall Street and with our next crisis, climate change. I cannot agree more with his take on this. The transcript is below - the message really sent a chill down my spine and saddens me that this is, in fact, the reality we live in...

There's something about the Titanic. For me, it's so much more than just simply an exercise in forensic archeology. Part of the Titanic parable is of arrogance, of hubris, of the sense that we’re too big to fail. Well, where have we heard that one before?

There was this big machine, this human system that was pushing forward with so much momentum that it couldn’t turn, it couldn’t stop in time to avert a disaster. And that’s what we have right now.

Within that human system on board that ship, if you want to make it a microcosm of the world, you have different classes: you’ve got first class, second class, third class. In our world right now you’ve got developed nations, undeveloped nations.

You’ve got the starving millions who are going to be the ones most affected by the next iceberg that we hit, which is going to be climate change. We can see that iceberg ahead of us right now, but we can’t turn.

We can’t turn because of the momentum of the system, the political momentum, the business momentum. There too many people making money out of the system, the way the system works right now and those people frankly have their hands on the levers of power and aren’t ready to let them go.

Until they do, we will not be able to turn to miss that iceberg and we’re going to hit it, and when we hit it, the rich are still going to be able to get their access to food, to arable land, to water and so on. It’s going to be poor, it’s going to be the steerage that are going to be impacted. It’s the same with Titanic.

I think that’s why this story will always fascinate people. Because it’s a perfect little encapsulation of the world, and all social spectra, but until our lives are really put at risk, the moment of truth, we don’t know what we would do. And that’s my final word.

-James Cameron