AFTER engrossing negotiations between 195 parties grappling with the basic question of how to fund climate action on the last day of COP 29, I found reprieve while strolling along the main Boulevard in Baku, across the bank of the Caspian Lake. As I asked for some coffee, a migratory couple of Western Siberian Cranes suddenly hovered above the edge of the boulevard. Tucked between Alpine and sub-tropical variations, Azerbaijan offers a diverse winter stopover along their Western Flyway, stretching from their breeding grounds in Russia and Kazakhstan, through the Volga Delta, along the Western Coast of the Caspian Sea, and on to Iran. Known for their elegant courtship dances, majestic bows, and leaps, Siberian Cranes are one of the most critically endangered species.
As sensitive responders to hydrological fluctuations, the spatiotemporal metrics of crane habitats – from Poyang Lake and the Arctic Tundra to the Indian Ocean – serve as a great indicator of ecological stability. Their connection with Earth is special, as they use their innate navigation compass, aligned with Earth’s magnetic field, during their migrations. They dance to the rhythm of the winds, with or without a partner, at any time, bringing their head and neck forward from a vertical position to where the head reaches down and back between their legs. The call of these birds varied from the trumpeting of other cranes – a goose-like, high-pitched, unison whistle, duets between paired males and females with distinguished frequencies.
I felt an unsolicited sarcasm in their calls as they not only mocked my day-long weariness but also broke the homocentric construct of everything for a while, including the superficiality of human linguistic affairs, like using the phrase “Conference of Parties.” “For centuries, you destroyed our shared home with absolute consensus and impunity. Now, you wrangle every year to fix the mess created by your limitless sense of superiority. Yet, you exclude all those who live, breed, nest, and reproduce without extorting this beautiful planet like you do. The worst part of your criminal narcissism is that you still consider your own species, locked in your self-created borders, as the only ‘Parties.’ We do not live in cavities like you do. We fly thousands of miles and touch every nerve of this ecosystem. We own it more than you by every definition of ownership. We face snowstorms, dehydration, starvation, and the threat of predation by you. We are at the edge of extinction, whereas you crowd this planet with billions more at the turn of every century. You need atomic bombs, factories, missiles, tunnels, millions of cars, and thousands of aircraft to survive. Every step you take towards your luxury is an expression of arrogance towards this cosmos, its glaciers, oceans, forests, and mountains. Oh, human, we are the real party to Climate; you are just the perpetrators.”
The entropic gravity of this call drifted my mind away from the homocentric traps of cognition. For centuries, all major streaks of religion and philosophy have pedestalized humans at the centre stage of the universe. Human generations have been systematically and consistently indoctrinated in their homes, schools, and societies to believe they are special – the principal heirs of heaven, deputies of the divine, the only mindful beings in the scheme of creation, rendering them the master subject, while everything else is relegated to object status, to be observed, judged, and exploited. This sense of exclusivity has resulted in humans becoming indifferent to other patterns of existence around them, cultivating a disproportionate pomposity and a self-congratulatory perception that leaves humans incapable of conceiving a coherent understanding of beingness as a whole.
Throughout history, most major intellectual traditions have shared a human-centered worldview. This perspective sees humans as the sole observers and interpreters of truth, and the primary beneficiaries of growth and happiness. Examples include the Hebrew Scriptures, Greek skepticism, Roman stoicism, Descartes’ rationalism, British empiricism, Marxist materialism, and American pragmatism. Despite their major differences, these traditions have a common feature: they have largely prioritized human experience and interpretation of that experience. However, a small but diverse group of thinkers—such as Ibn-e-Arabi, Spinoza, Hegel, Nietzsche, Arne Naess, Heidegger, Roger Scruton, Warwick Fox, Robert Kaplan, and Bill Devall—tried to explore the intricate synchronicity of human psychic, aesthetic, and political conditions with the natural world. Similarly, on a spiritual level, various Eastern philosophies—such as Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana Buddhism, Sufism, and Taoism—also propose an integrated understanding of existence through non-dualism and universal consciousness. Another shared feature among homocentric philosophies, such as Platonism and the Abrahamic and Vedic religions, is their metaphysics, which considers this world an illusionary and transitional expression, holding that reality is hereafter, unseen, and supernatural.
Gradually, these two features evolved into an epistemology that neglected the importance of relational and historical togetherness of human condition and the universe—eventually proven by the degeneracies and excesses of human behavior towards other species and their derogatory approach towards the Earth, particularly in the post-Industrial era. Everything on Earth, including humans themselves, has become a resource to fuel human exceptionalism, their luxury here and hereafter.
As my mind reeled with these thoughts, the cranes soared effortlessly, and the warmth of my coffee surrendered to the chill of the Caspian winds. I realized that climate action extends far beyond funding. A disturbing oversight has pervaded human intellectual discourse. For effective climate action, humans must dismantle the subject-object conception of their relationship with ecosystems and neutralize the ingrained narcissism. They need a new epistemological framework—capable of acknowledging the intrinsic agency of non-human entities as an integral part of a super-consciousness that includes humans themselves, a unity felt by Van Gogh when he was painting Starry Night. To achieve the Paris Agreement goals, humans need to revolutionize the way new generations perceive themselves and the universe through radical transformation in language and foundations of educational psychology. Advancements in Quantum Field Theory may provide more scientific reasons in the future for a fundamental shift in human interpretation of mind and matter, one that challenges traditional human exceptionalism through the principles of entanglement and system thinking. This paradigm shift is crucial, as our current approach to climate action risks being counterproductive. The “Human First” approach—exemplified by President Trump’s “America First” policy, when he pulled his country out of the Paris Agreement—is a luxury we can no longer afford. It is time to redefine our relationship with the natural world and adopt a new worldview that prioritizes the well-being of all beings and the planet, together as one unity.
The Author is a columnist and member of UNFCCC and ICAN. He taught Public Policy in the National Defence University of Pakistan.
