I LOVE the 1980s television show MacGyver.
MacGyver was the adaptable man. In every episode he’d solve a tough problem with whatever he found at hand. He made a police siren out of a cellphone ring and a comb. A watch crystal, a map light lens and a rolled up newspaper became a telescope. The French would call MacGyver a bricoleur.
Scientists tell us that kind of adaptability will be essential if we are to survive projected climate change scenarios. Rising sea levels will flood our low-lying coastal cities where 10 percent of the world’s population lives. Atmospheric water vapour, by far the most common and powerful greenhouse gas, will increase as the globe warms up the oceans. More vapour traps more heat. It’s a vicious circle.
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Reducing our carbon dioxide emissions will slow it down but if it can’t be reversed, our survival will depend on our ability to adapt to a tough new world.
That’s why it is so important to preserve the lore and skills of rural and remote communities. The Inuit are a stunning example of adaptability. They have lived for thousands of years in fiercely uninhabitable environments. Yet, with incredible ingenuity, they fashioned a life out of bits of bone, skin, moss and ice.
Even today, that resourcefulness keeps them alive. They will ride a snowmobile across hundreds of miles of sea ice to visit relatives, knowing that the only mechanic available is themselves, that needed parts will have to be jury-rigged from whatever is at hand.
Farm families have historically been bricoleurs. My uncle was ingenious at fixing tractors and combines with baling twine, chicken wire and old machine parts. The women took bits of old clothes and fabric scraps and turned those wildly different colours and shapes of cloth into beautifully patterned quilts. They found a way to make do with what they had. They were creative and self-reliant.
Urban life is much more fragile and dependent. The long hot summer of 2003 was a good lesson. In a warming world, cities get extra hot because of the urban heat island effect.
When the power grid crashed across northeastern Canada and the United States in mid-August, air conditioners were a prime contributor. In just nine seconds, millions of people were rendered helpless. Without the grid, they could not secure food or water, let alone keep cool.
In Europe the record heat, ironically due to a lack of air conditioning in French nursing homes, led to the death of 35,000 people.
In Canada the loss of power on that scale in the middle of a -25 C winter storm could have been equally deadly.ÂÂ
The future of our nation, perhaps our species, may depend on preserving the skills of bricoleurs. They are not common anymore, even in rural communities. Farms are much more dependent on electricity, natural gas, fertilizers and other external inputs than 50 years ago.
But the memory of how to make do in tough times persists. Let’s find a way to preserve that memory, relearn those skills. It could be rural folks who save the human race.
Cam Harder is associate professor of systematic theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Saskatoon. He can be contacted at crharder@sasktel.net
