A thought experiment: what should be our priorities when we finally “declare war” on climate change and the destruction of nature

The Romans had a formal system of declaring war, the ritual of rerum repetitio. A fetial, a special priest, wearing a woollen hairband would make demands of the enemy in its lands. If the enemy had not responded in 33 days then the Roman Senate would declare war, and the fetial would return to the enemy’s land and throw a javelin.Many environmentalists have demanded governments and the United Nations to “declare war” on climate change, and David Attenborough said on the BBC in 2019: “If we have not taken dramatic action within the next decade we could face irreversible damage to the natural world and the collapse of our societies.”1 We have been making demands in our woollen headbands for decades, but now is the time to throw the javelin. A declaration of war gives governments remarkable powers like requiring young men to fight and die, rationing food and petrol,…
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