Last week brought grim news about climate change, with the latest scientific assessments recognising that the 1.5 degree temperature increase, which was set as a goal in the Paris climate agreement, will now inevitably be breached. Another critical study showed that the climate impacts from what we have already put into the atmosphere will hit home far quicker and harder than most earlier models had predicted.
Perhaps the scariest thing was that the news cycles barely paused to register these developments, as if people are too stunned by everything else going on in the world to notice. Or that they’ve heard it all before and prefer to believe those sceptical political voices who are sowing division and doubt for their own short-term electoral gain.
In this vital decade of change, we are like a football team going into half-time 3-1 down, against a side that is full of certainty and mocking derision. There is a real risk the focus will turn to just managing the damage and not on making the evolutionary leap we need to make to address the root cause of the crisis.
While the sceptics are full of swagger, I don’t believe they will win out in the end. The vast majority of people are still deeply worried about the issue and want it addressed. It is not as if there can be any winners in this contest because every country is at risk. And that underlying common cause should help us turn things around.
Although the situation is dire and global emissions continue to rise, the one score in our favour is that some core climate solutions are coming much faster than predicted. Clean energy technologies such as solar and battery power are expanding at an exponential pace. We can also see how quickly biodiversity bounces back when good, nature-based solutions are put in place. Change is hard, but once ramped up we can increasingly see how it will help us all build healthier and stronger local communities, while also addressing the global threat.
The three scores against us are all own goals that can be overturned given the right political will. The first relates to the fact that while investments in the clean and green revolution are happening in the US, Europe and China, the rest of the developing world, where the investment is needed most, is lagging behind. We know we need to raise $1.3 trillion (€1.1 trillion) of climate finance in developing countries each year to close that gap. Agreeing the necessary commitments and mechanisms to deliver this finance should not be an impossible task, given it amounts to less than 1 per cent of the $115 trillion global economy. Failure to deliver should not be a negotiating option.
The second own goal is that some political parties and businesses are delaying the transition to protect their profits or shore up their electoral base. The solution here has to be to stick to the commitments and transparency mechanisms already required under the Paris climate agreement. We need to start here at home by agreeing to the targeted 90 per cent reduction in emissions by 2040, which the European Commission has proposed. At the same time, we should support international trade and investment agreements that favour countries and businesses who are joining the effort.
[ Capitalism is incompatible with any kind of human flourishing on this planetOpens in new window ]
The third and perhaps most critical thing we need to reverse is the way in which the climate issue has become part of a wider cultural war. We need governments to ensure that there is a just transition so that no one is left behind and the public has faith in what is happening. This will help the political centre to hold. We will also need a wider perspective because the cultural war has deep foundations, which cannot simply be ignored. No amount of economic argument or technological optimism alone is going to motivate us to meet the scale of the challenge ahead. It is time for artists, philosophers and theologians to stand up and help inspire and direct our actions. We need an alternative narrative that better addresses the underlying fears the reactionary side is able to feed off.
That fightback could start today in London, where the Brazilian COP presidency is hosting the first of six global ethical stock-take events to look creatively at how we can tackle disinformation and promote new business models and cultural and spiritual perspectives.
[ There are several ingenious tacks we can take to help cut our emissionsOpens in new window ]
Brazil is putting forward a concept it calls the “mutirão”, which comes from its indigenous culture and signifies a community coming together to work on a shared task, much like our own tradition of working on a meitheal. If we can get the culture right, then people will show up – and the politics and policies will surely follow.
