In 1939, after a slow, steady and massive post-WWI military buildup, Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Nazi Germany invaded Poland — a country that was, up to that point, an independent and sovereign nation.

Unimagined destruction of both public and private property, as well as a horrific civilian death toll, followed the invasion as the rest of the world looked on helplessly.

Poland was a peaceful country with no intention of attacking or of perpetrating violence against any other country. The attack by the USSR and Germany was both unprovoked and pernicious.

We all know that what followed over the next six years was a global calamity that took tens of millions of lives, caused hundreds of billions of dollars in damages, ruined countless lives (imagine surviving Auschwitz and then just moving on with your life…), and wreaked unimaginable havoc on the Earth’s environment.

I sometimes wonder what our world would look like today if we, the human race, had spent all of the time, money, brainpower and energy to improve our planet and our societies during those war years rather than raining down destruction.

In 2022, after having experienced two world wars and countless smaller regional wars, one would think that we’d had enough, that we —the human race — would understand the consequences of war and that we would all do whatever was needed to not start another one. And yet….

In a recent commentary, I wrote about how we, as a nation, made personal sacrifices and even gave up some of our constitutional freedoms and liberties in order to keep the world free from Fascism. Under the most perilous and drastic conditions, we actually did it. The whole world banded together in recognizing that we had no choice: we had to stop the unrestrained violent takeover of the world by Germany.

I also pointed out that, in 2020, we were confronted by another enemy: COVID-19. Were we going to rally and unite again? To defeat this common and vicious enemy? We had the biotechnology to defeat this nefarious enemy but, as we now know, our response to the pandemic was hardly one of solidarity.

In 2022, we continue to face another equally nefarious enemy: global climate change. After decades of careful study and broad consensus in the scientific community, we all know that, not only is climate change happening but that it is wreaking catastrophic havoc across our planet — on both the human population and on the plants and animals everywhere. We’ve seen many in-your-face examples of the on-the-ground consequences of rising temperatures, from floods and droughts to fires and sea-level rise.

Yet, are we united? As a global community? Are we committed in solidarity in the fight to control our CO2 emissions? To literally save our planet?

When I watch old films of WWII and see the tanks, ships and bombers all burning petroleum in their efforts to destroy the enemy, I think about all of the energy that’s being consumed and the pollution spewed, and the destruction left in their wake. And then I think of the real enemy that we all face and wonder why we don’t recognize it.

During the past few days, the Russian army has been leveling hundreds of buildings and destroying the infrastructure in cities across Ukraine using diesel tanks and trucks, firing missiles manufactured using massive amounts of oil, gas and coal, jets roaring across the sky in a haze of kerosene exhaust dropping thousands of bombs—all created using carbon-producing energies.

Not only has the Russian army used up vast amounts of oil manufacturing the weapons of war and the subsequent CO2 pollution, but now all of those buildings and infrastructure have to be rebuilt using … right: more oil, gas and coal.

The saddest part of all is that this fiasco was 100% preventable.

As much as the human toll is appalling — and also 100% preventable — I am focusing here on the most existential crisis that we have ever faced on our planet. And given our tepid response to it, I feel like we are not only not on our way to defeating this common global enemy, but on the contrary, we are hardly even addressing it.

Russia’s invasion of its neighbor — for reasons that elude me — demonstrates that we, as an international community, do not recognize our true enemy, the one that will cost us dearly and can slowly destroy us all in a matter of decades. We are not working in solidarity to defeat climate change by mustering all of our technologies and ingenuities and passions to avert a disaster unlike any that we’ve ever experienced. Instead, we are still fighting each other.

In these perilous times, we are not Russians or Ukrainians, we’re not Americans or Chinese or Taliban or Boko Haram. We, as a global community, must set aside our differences — political, religious, cultural, geographical — and we must come together to rally our collective forces to combat and defeat this common enemy. And we must do it now. We don’t have the time or energy to waste on any other battles. In 2022, climate change is the only battle.

Is there a chance that we — the human race — can really slow, stop and reverse the incessant warming of our precious planet? Can we survive the torrential rains predicted for the future? Will our farms continue to grow the astounding quantities of food that have sustained us for centuries? Will we be able to prevent disastrous conflagrations in our forests around the globe — now threatening even Siberia? Can we possibly prevent the seas from drowning Miami, New York and the Seychelles?

If we haven’t learned the clear lessons from history about violence and war by now, then the answer is probably no.

— Scott Durkee is a freelance factotum, artist and winemaker. He lives on Maury Island.