My MP, Anthony Browne, recently posted a blog on Conservative Home with the title “Climate change. The more involved I have got, the more optimistic I have become...”
I’m very glad he decided to write directly about the crisis, and I agree with many of his points. For example, I agree that there are many reasons for optimism. Of course, how you feel about the climate and ecological crisis very much depends on the lens through which you are viewing it. If you are a mother in rural Somalia, where the worst drought in 40 years is leaving millions without food, you might well be feeling less than optimistic. Similarly, if you are a scientist studying the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is losing ice at a rate of 270 billion tons per year, or a native of Kiribati, a Pacific Island nation destined to be the first in the modern world to be swallowed by increasing storm surges, you could be excused for being a tiny bit un-cheery.
On the other hand, if you are an entrepreneur working on a transformative and potentially lucrative new technology, like the world’s most powerful wind turbine, which Mr Browne mentions in his post, you will be much more aware of the possibilities. As Mr Browne says, we do have the solutions to hand. Organisations like the Drawdown project have identified more than one hundred of the most effective strategies and technologies – including many which are nature based - which will, if implemented rapidly, lead to “Drawdown” of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere - and it is working globally to encourage their rollout. And though global emissions have continued to rise year on year despite the promises of the Paris Agreement, the progress made by large emitters like the UK and the EU is making a difference - there is reason to believe we are approaching the inflection point where emissions will begin to fall.
I also agree with Mr Browne that “pessimistic fatalism” and “counsel[s] of despair” are harmful to our children, and where they go mainstream they are terrorising many people into apathy. It’s also true that if you go on to any environmental forum online you will find those who prefer scaremongering to positive action and push conspiracies about how all the possible solutions will only be worse than the problem, because humans are basically sh**te.
However, I hope Mr Browne is also aware that once you get out of the toxic online environment, and engage with actual climate activists, you will find some of the most dynamic, solutions oriented, reasonable and well-informed people on the planet. The radicals, zealots and keyboard warriors do not, in my experience of ten years as an independent activist, represent the movement as a whole, which encompasses local eco groups, churches, professional societies and people from every age and social demographic. So it was very disappointing to read Mr Browne’s dismissal of Extinction Rebellion’s recent peaceful and joyful multi-organisation demonstration in London (see photos below) as the self-righteous posturing of a Doomsday cult. It is so misinformed that it leaves me unable to take Mr Browne’s views seriously. And that is a sad state of affairs.
So let’s put a few things into perspective.
Mr Browne’s cheery optimism comes despite the fact that he has consistently voted against new legislation aimed at tackling the UK’s emissions.
There’s evidence that taking steps to reduce emissions makes people happier, not more depressed. A low-carbon lifestyle, for example, is “more likely to involve routines—like balanced eating or hybrid working—that are known to maximize our individual happiness levels”. Research is also supporting the idea that “taking steps to protect the environment makes us feel good by fulfilling basic psychological needs, such as the sense that we are making a useful contribution to the world or acting on our own values and concerns.”
There’s a fine line between “pessimistic fatalism” and optimistic fatalism, which is a weakness Mr Browne may be prone to. In a letter to me about the EU Retained Laws Bill, Mr Browne made the odd assertion that leaving the EU would “enable us to legislate to discriminate in favour of bird and plant species that would otherwise be vulnerable to non-native species better suited to the changing climate.” In other words, our native birds are going to be out-competed by non-native species more suited to our altered climate, and his jolly solution is to legislate for…what exactly? Fighting natural adaptation to protect our native species? Instead of fighting climate change?
While there is every reason to be hopeful that we will eventually solve the problem of climate change, and do so while restoring our planet’s natural systems, we are a very long way from being out of the woods. In order to get out, we need everyone to play their part, and most importantly, we need the system change that will allow us to pivot from an extractive, linear (take stuff out of the ground, transport it across the globe, use it for a short time, dump it in landfill), inequitable (those who do the least actual work get the most benefit) and rapaciously destructive system, to a circular, restorative, distributive one. And this is not just an activist’s opinions. The Government commissioned Dasgupta Review on The Economics of Biodiversity and former Bank of England chief Mark Carney both came to similar conclusions last year, conclusions which were, sadly, pretty much ignored.
Our current trajectory, if not deflected, is, sorry Mr Browne, genuinely disastrous. We are currently on track to reach in the neighbourhood of 2.7 degrees of global warming. We’re now at just under 1.5. Every tenth of a degree has an effect, so, if you can face it, let your imagination go to what an additional 1.2 degrees is going to mean for extreme weather events, crop failures, mass migration, killer heat waves and sea level rise. Not to mention our native birds, bees and trees.
So, yes, we absolutely can still change our trajectory with immediate, strong action. But if Mr Browne and his party colleagues continue to reject the need for system change, which has to come from the top, while ignoring or ridiculing those who care the most, no amount of techno-boosterism will get the job done. We will not solve the global environmental problem. And the children he is so worried about traumatizing will be truly stuffed.
