As I sat in front of my laptop, familiarizing myself with Blackboard Collaborate in my first class of the fall 2020 semester, Professor Horace Campbell confronted our class with a new and intimidating phrase: “a paradigm shift.” The COVID-19 pandemic would destabilize and disorient existing power structures in ways that we could not yet imagine.

Hearing such a dramatic and somber warning from someone who had been studying the world since before even my parents were born was a sobering realization. Our generation will be forced to live in an unfamiliar world, and less than two years after I was presented with this prediction, my faith in Professor Campbell’s wisdom has only deepened.

The world is changing radically in both the short and long term — as young people, we must work to present a determined focus and unity in the face of these challenges. Of course, it is difficult and potentially irresponsible to attempt to specifically define how the world will change. Nonetheless, I would say that the shifting of global paradigms can be interpreted through breaches of long-standing precedents.

The most notable breaking of a long-standing precedent in global politics has been Russia’s invasion of Ukraine almost a month ago. While Russia has banned the words “war” and “invasion,” this is a large-scale effort to fully dominate and control Ukraine, under the guise of “denazification” — a historically weighted concept.

While Russia has invaded other countries like Georgia in the recent past, this ongoing war shows a brutality and cruelty that represents a shocking change in the existing global power balance. This invasion of Ukraine has been hardest on the millions of Ukrainian citizens who have been targeted by the Russian military, but it has also destabilized global power balances.

The primary response to the invasion has been some of the harshest sanctions ever imposed on a country as large as Russia. Despite this, the massive Russian energy sector has caused economic turbulence in the United States and has forced American allies and rivals alike to either tow the line or opportunistically pursue relationships with Russia. In the cases of some perceived allies like India and the United Arab Emirates, ambition has aligned them with Vladimir Putin’s regime.

While all of this may seem overly complicated or specific, the point is simple: the next few years will likely bring major changes in how world leaders make decisions, and almost always to the detriment of the U.S.-dominated paradigm for global power that the past several generations have grown accustomed to. This could mean both large-scale bloody conflicts and grasps at justice in an unjust world. Change at this scale isn’t good or bad — it’s both.

When I reflected on this concept of a “paradigm shift,” I was reminded of a far more terrifying phrase that a family friend once told me when explaining the grim nature of our climate crisis: “You won’t retire into an armchair.” By the time that our generation is old enough to sit back and retire, the world will be damaged not just beyond repair but recognition.

It is shocking how desensitized everyone conscious of the climate crisis has become of its encroaching advancement. In just the past few days, there was an unprecedented warming on the North and South poles — temperatures rising 40 C or 100 F above the temperatures expected, even after factoring in the climate crisis. It is not an exaggeration to say that events like these, paired with the well-documented trends, cause experts to wonder if it’s even possible to save ourselves anymore.

By 2030 — a date near enough to conceptualize — the world’s ecosystems will be collapsing, flooding will inundate vast low-lying areas, natural disasters will increase significantly in frequency and intensity. Hundreds of millions of climate refugees will trigger violent conflicts over resources, with death at a scale that is terrifying to imagine. By 2030, most current Syracuse students will be young professionals, likely looking to purchase real estate and likely with young children.

Even today, beyond the climate crisis and within the relatively safety of American borders, our domestic politics have been shrouded in such fear and distrust that three in five Americans fear that the 2024 presidential election will bring unprecedented violence. Trust in the sanctity of democratic elections — largely continuous since 1800 — appears to be disintegrating.

Instinctively, anyone would want to push these predictions out of their minds — of course we will live the kinds of lives that our parents have, of course our children will grow up with hope and opportunity. But our generation has been cursed with a vast disparity between what we have been promised and what we have been given.

In writing all of these dramatic predictions, I fear that I will be written off as overdramatic or neurotic. Living in fear of tomorrow is not an option. Our only path forward is to take ownership of it. We must sternly evaluate our own priorities — refusing to collaborate with one another on fixing the world could be catastrophic. Regardless of how we identify ourselves or perceive others, the truth is that we are all here on Earth together and that is not changing.

But where do we start? Modern politics depends on us being distracted — we need to remain informed, and we need to be loud. Even entrenched business lobbying interests in world governments can be forced to change by political unrest. Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela among many others have achieved justice in ways that seemed impossible at the time. We must work together to demand change that matters.

The climate crisis is a great example of this — timelines proposed for energy reform are so long-term that they will be eclipsed by the impacts of the climate crisis. America’s Tennessee Valley Authority proposed hitting “net zero” emissions by 2050, a date by which at least 20 million Bangladeshi people will have lost their homes. Meaningful change must be swift and intense. Green alternatives and holding multinational corporations accountable for their massive responsibilities in this crisis must be prioritized for areas of the world that are rapidly industrializing.

Our lives will be hard. Our challenges will be terrifying. We cannot admit defeat, and we cannot distract ourselves with hedonism that is increasingly accessible for young people. We must prove ourselves to be focused and energetic in the face of these challenges. I am excited to share this world and this challenge with all of you.

Patrick Fox is a Junior International Relations Major. His column appear bi-weekly and he can be reached at pfox02@syr.edu.

Published on March 20, 2022 at 10:45 pm