My Quantum Leap

The UN has called for a quantum leap in ambitions for 2035 climate mitigation targets. To help generate transformative change, I’m getting ready for my own quantum leap...

Off the track

We are off track. The UN’s new Emissions Gap Report 2024 (“No more hot air… please!”) shows that greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 1.3% since 2022, setting a new record of 57.1 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in 2023. In other words, 57.1 trillion kilograms of CO₂. That’s bananas!

Actually, it’s the equivalent of producing and transporting between 285 and 342 trillion bananas. If that is hard to digest or feels out-of-this-world, it’s like launching about 20.4 million rockets to the moon. In one year.

The impacts and consequences of these emissions are visible every day, with the floods in Spain as the latest eye-popping example. The gap between where we are heading and where we want to go is widening, so the UN report calls for governments to make a “quantum leap in ambition.”

I love it! Metaphors matter, and I’m happy to see that the Secretary-General frequently calls for quantum leaps, whether in relation to climate action, peacebuilding, or financial support for vulnerable nations. But what does this mean in practice?

Quantum leaps

In physics, a quantum jump or “leap” refers to a seemingly discontinuous change of an electron in an atom or molecule from one energy level to another. The word seemingly is important here, as researchers have been exploring the nature of quantum leaps for a long time, including whether the apparent discontinuities are, in fact, extremely rapid quantum trajectories.

Metaphorically, a quantum leap refers to rapid, substantial, and transformative change in the state of a system. The Secretary-General’s appeal for a “quantum leap in ambition” refers to his desire for a dramatic shift in ambitions by governments who will soon be submitting their nationally determined contributions for mitigation targets to meet by 2035. But does this quantum metaphor help to address the massive gap between rhetoric and reality?

In Quantum Language and the Migration of Scientific Concepts, Jennifer Burwell writes about the nomadic use of quantum terminology “to support everything from novel methodologies in literary criticism, to new and post-New Age associations of the quantum with Eastern mysticism, to reconceptualizations of global politics.” She considers the many ways that it can be adapted “to reflect particular social, political, and cultural needs and expectations, as well as specific constellations of hopes and anxieties.” Burwell is skeptical to the ubiquitous use of quantum terms and concepts when there are perfectly good everyday alternatives.

Reality and Dreams

I have both hopes and anxieties, and I’m interested in whether the metaphors, methods, and meanings of quantum physics and quantum social science can help us respond better to the multiple global challenges we’re facing today. And I’m constantly thinking about what this means for me, personally. I talk a lot about mattering, yet still wonder whether what I’m doing matters. Is it time for me to close my own gap between rhetoric and reality?

Last week I visited Arizona State University to give the inaugural Elizabeth A. Wentz Graduate College Distinguished Lecture Series. I talked to graduate students about why “you matter more than you think.”

I have known Libby Wentz since we were graduate students at Penn State University. It was fun reminiscing about an adventure we had in 1994, when she planned to join me for fieldwork in the Lacandona Rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico. Before traveling to the Chajul biology station, we decided to spend New Year’s Eve in San Cristóbal de las Casas. January 1st turned out to be the start of the Zapatista Uprising — a decades-long revolution that challenges neoliberalism, colonialism, and patriarchy.

I learned of the uprising when I woke up early to make a phone call at the reception. I then went upstairs and told Libby that there were guerrillas in the main square or zócalo. Her eyes widened. “I dreamed that last night,” she said.

My fieldwork on tropical deforestation and climate change was temporarily interrupted, but the experience triggered years of reflection on the potential for social change. As the Zapatista’s Subcomandante Marcos once said:

In our dreams we have seen another world, an honest world, a world decidedly more fair than the one in which we now live. We saw that in this world there was no need for armies; peace, justice and liberty were so common that no one talked about them as far-off concepts, but as things such as bread, birds, air, water, like book and voice.

Fast forward thirty years, and Libby Wentz is taking me to Dreamscape Learn, an action lab at Arizona State University. The lab uses virtual reality as a narrative storytelling tool to enhance the undergraduate science curriculum. They are currently working on a series of virtual reality exercises to help students learn about global climate change. The modules will “make the abstract more concrete,” ironically by transcending time and space and going into the atoms. As Dr Peter Schlosser describes it:

Let them land somewhere on the planet and feel what the temperature is like. Well, in most places, they find that it is actually too warm,” …. Then let them measure what is in the atmosphere. They very quickly will see that there is too high a concentration of greenhouse gases. Then, they can study the nature of the molecules [such as CO₂ or methane]. You can even let them go into molecules of water to see their structure.

Fascinating! After trying some of the biology and chemistry modules, Libby had us put on backpacks, sensors, and goggles then took us on an “Indiana Jones” type of adventure. In this virtual reality, I had to make a classical leap to get across some planks. Immersed in a story that felt both virtual and real, I thought about what it means, in reality, to take a quantum leap.

My Quantum Leap

The growing gap between climate change rhetoric and reality is concerning, and it is clear that more of the same will not produce different results. This is especially true in a world of increasing political and social polarization, where wealth and power are concentrated and mental health challenges are alarmingly high, especially among youth. If I truly believe that what we do now matters in every moment, what do [I/we] need to do differently to close this gap?

I love teaching, research, and working with so many brilliant and caring people in academia. But I recognize that it is time for me to take a quantum leap. Next year I will retire from the University of Oslo so that I have more space and time to focus on writing, reading, speaking, and scaling transformative change — not as a dream, but as a reality. What this looks like remains uncertain, but it will include working with cCHANGE to generate transformations that matter. And I’ll continue to write this newsletter on quantum social change because it is challenging and fun.

Intraconnected author Dan Siegel reminds me that I’m not going into retirement, but “preferment” — which means doing what I feel matters most. This is not an abrupt leap for me, but a quantum jump “off the track.” The classical track, that is. If the UN Secretary-General needs help in realizing his quantum leap, I’m ready!

CONNECTION

Let us be quantum,
entangled across spacetime,
hearts and minds as one.

— Shohini Ghose

Images: nobeastsofierce / Shutterstock (and photos from Elizabeth Wentz)

Poem: © Shohini Ghose (published in You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World)