“The Wire” Guide For The 2020 Climate Warrior

2020 is a critical year for the fight on climate change. To act effectively on this messy problem we’ll have to do some things differently as right now we’re losing this war. But what exactly? I decided to watch “The Wire”, hoping this excellent TV show will provide me with inspiration and some ideas on how to win this fight.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

2020 is going to be an important year for the fight on climate change. Not that 2019 wasn’t important, but 2020 is not only a new year, but also the beginning of a new decade, so maybe it can also provide an opportunity to open a new page in our efforts to win this fight.

I feel 2019 was a critical moment, where we finally saw more mainstream resistance against the inaction on climate change, but even when we’re ending the year with Greta Thunberg celebrated worldwide, including on the cover of Time Magazine as the person of the year, we are (as Thunberg herself admits) still losing this war. You need to go no further than the website CO2.earth to see the values for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (412.75ppm two days ago compared to 408.70ppm a year ago) to get a sense on how we’re still moving in the wrong direction.

So what should we do in 2020 to fight climate change effectively? I wanted to add my two cents (similarly to last year), and was looking for inspiration. Finally, I decided to use “The Wire” as my starting point. I’ve been watching it again lately and it is not only one of the best TV shows ever made, but also a great perspective on the messiness of life, something that I find missing in the climate change discourse.

Each episode of “The Wire” starts with an epigraph — “a quote from the episode that appears at the end of the opening credits”. I decided to use five of these epigraphs as sources of inspiration to offer five recommendations for the brave climate…