Here’s some climate punditry on the fascinating match of climate action hope vs climate disaster despair (0-3 after half time)
Jonathan Porritt argues that scientists are being too ‘glass half full’ about the empty glass currently representing our hopes of 1.5-degrees. In striking language there’s a parallel drawn between the panglossian protestations of still being time to save the planet, and a new form of denial. He recalls Boris Johnson’s claim to ‘sort out climate once and for all’ with a disparate policy pledges, cosmetically arranged as a Ten Point Plan (mostly feeble, now failing or forgotten) but in a tone of complacency that this can be solved easily.
More glass-half-full-ism from Fatih Birol at the IEA who reminds us in the FT that “Amid all the climate gloom, let’s not ignore the good news” which could come across like a football manager reflecting on the team’s heaviest defeat by recognising all the positive performances from the youngsters in the second half.
The battle between “there’s still time climate action” vs “deal with the disaster ahead” is slightly more nuanced. The impacts of increasing concentrations of climate-inducing pollution in the atmosphere are simply nothing like the effects they are likely to have as they cross planetary boundaries and trigger reinforcing feedback loops. And likewise the rather pedestrian progress we have witnessed on climate action so far is a misleading predictor of the future now that sustainable solutions are reaching their positive tipping points.
Switching sporting metaphors, in the climate triathlon “game” the “swimming-race” of emissions reductions (“climate action” lost that leg) has now passed the baton to the “bike race” (planetary boundary vs sustainable technology tipping points) where “climate action” has a lot of catching up to do, and despite it’s new bike being fitted with the flywheel of endogenous growth, it’s unlikely to make up ground fast enough to avert us from the Squid Game finale of climate disaster management that we inevitably now need to prepare for.
Unless, it would seem, you’re in the financial system. US Fed Governor Christopher Waller says that climate risks weren’t “sufficiently unique or material to merit special treatment relative to other risks.” Because we’ve all seen risks seen as ‘existential’ and ‘irreversible’ within ‘centuries and millennia’ roll past us before, haven’t we. Haven’t we? It’s the kind of confusion which can’t differentiate between blips, crises and a collapse – lumping them all together in one bucket and prioritising them on the basis of who’s shouting the loudest. The chain of inaction is passed to bank CEOs who say they are “not the climate police” . These CEOs are playing a dangerous game in the “bike race” phase of climate action – both financing the shiny new green bikes, whilst at the same time sponsoring “Team Fossil” who are taking off the tyres to burn them for profits (where’s the VAR decision going to come from to book them for that?). So whilst banks might not be the climate police right now, when we get to the endgame they will be the lifeboat service – and if you’re one of the vulnerable then you’re not getting a ticket.
And even if you are banking on the life-raft to bring you to safety, the waters by then will be much worse than they are now. By then we’ll have even more to worry about than “too much poo in the water” (as the Oxford boat race crew complained last week) and we’ll wake up to the realisation we forgot to invest in any paddles.
Porritt’s argument is that optimism has not been a sufficient motivator and we’re losing the behavioural battle badly. On balance, I’d keep hope on the pitch -it’s a mercurial player that can turn a game… but there’s a bunch of big substitutions and changes to the system we’re playing to have any decent chance in the second half.
Picture credit to the Football Association, taken from their flood guide – comprehensive, although strangely, no mention of climate.