Over 195 countries ratified the 2015 Paris Agreement, pledging to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels” and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C. However, a 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report projected that global temperatures will rise by 3.2°C by the end of the century. This scenario would devastate the human food supply, displace billions of people due to sea level rise and salinisation of ground water and trigger numerous other environmental disasters.
Exceeding the agreed limit risks breaching multiple key climate tipping points, where positive feedback mechanisms lead to runaway climate change. One such tipping point is the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), an ocean current system that regulates the Earth’s climate. The AMOC collapse, predicted to happen sometime between 2025 and 2095, would be sudden, irreversible and catastrophic. It would plunge the average temperature in London by 10°C and drop temperatures in some places in Europe by 30°C.
This would devastate ecosystems, collapse food production in Western Europe and lead to mass displacement of people, famine and inevitable resource wars. Given these risks, why are we still pursuing policies that contribute to fossil fuel dependence?
Popular support for climate action
The 2024 Peoples’ Climate Vote, a survey carried out by the United Nations Development Programme and the University of Oxford, asked over 1.2 million people in 77 countries, 15 questions about their views on climate change. The survey, which represents 87% of the world’s population, found that 80% of people wanted their government to do more on climate change.
Some 69% of respondents said that it was already affecting their major life decisions, and 72% wanted their countries to move quickly away from fossil fuels. In the UK, these numbers were 84%, 47% and 76%, respectively. This study shows that people globally, and in the UK, say they support climate action. However, we are seeing very little progress toward meaningful reductions in emissions. Why?
Given the almost universal concern about climate change, one might assume that individuals would require little encouragement to embrace measures that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, interventions to change climate beliefs and behaviour have been tested on 60,000 people globally, with mixed results. Interventions either lead to no change or disengagement from climate mitigation actions.
Emission reductions were considered so unlikely that it was not proposed as a metric to measure. Presenting evidence of the catastrophic consequences of climate change increased belief in the emergency but paradoxically decreased climate mitigation behaviours. This may be learned helplessness: people find climate change so overwhelming that individual action seems futile.
Individuals’ response to the climate emergency
Individuals alive today will suffer the consequences of climate change but very few are significantly reducing their emissions. There are many reasons for this. Reducing personal emissions is hard and people don’t want to do it. Emission reductions are neither fun nor sexy. They turn winners into losers.
In developed countries, individuals are locked into systems that rely on fossil fuels to meet basic needs such as food, shelter, warmth and mobility. Although some low-emission alternatives exist, they are often more expensive and so may only be accessible to the wealthy.
Once basic needs are met, it would appear be easy to reduce emissions by simply not engaging in discretionary emissive activities. Switching to a plant-based diet is cheaper and healthier than eating meat and greatly reduces food emissions. However, global meat consumption is growing. Air travel is another major emitter of GHG, but the number of airports and flights continues to grow.
Short-term gains beat long-term consequences
These behaviours are tied to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, particularly the need for financial security, self-esteem and belonging. Consumption choices, such as owning a big house, a flashy car and enjoying exotic holidays; are deeply intertwined with self-worth, social status and desirability as a mate.
Conspicuous consumption, particularly in men, is a mating display that signals the ability to invest in children. Over thousands of years, natural selection has reinforced this instinct; but now it is working against our survival as a species. Our continued existence relies on us consuming much less, not more.
Parents make sacrifices for their children, but it appears that reducing their emissions is not one of them. Given the harm their children will experience, this seems irrational. Many behaviours are innate, and short-term gains beat long-term consequences. The desire to display mate value and social status are important in the here and now, whereas the worst impacts of global warming are perceived as distant or theoretical. Natural selection has programmed us to produce able children now and trust them to solve future problems. Climate change, although an existential threat, belongs in an uncertain future and does not have the same tangible urgency as loss of esteem in the present.
Barriers to reducing emissions
The wealthy and the poor both have barriers to reducing emissions. The richest 1% emit 16% of global emissions, due to their high consumption lifestyles – but their damaging behaviours are tied to their social status.
The poor are far more numerous and have even greater barriers to reducing their emissions. Often, they are just getting by and any changes to the way they live would jeopardise this. They certainly do not have the resources to pay more for lower emission alternatives to the things they require to live. People at all levels of wealth use any discretionary spending to assert their esteem.
Governments’ response to the climate emergency
The British government, along with most others, claims that its first duty is to is to “keep citizens safe and secure”. Climate change is the greatest threat to this safety and security and so people may reasonably expect that their governments would be quick to reduce emissions to zero. However, even after 29 COP summits, governments have promised little and achieved even less. Why?
Governments face many barriers to climate action. Democratic governments face losing office if they try to force people to change their behaviours in ways that reduce their esteem. Very minor behavioural interventions, such as restricting the advertising of unhealthy foods, are met with intense resistance.
As a result, governments restrict their interventions to those that maintain the status quo, such as decarbonising the electricity grid or promoting electric vehicles. These policies allow governments to claim action on climate change without people changing their behaviour. Global studies have shown that people support climate action if it is seen to maintain the status quo.
Purposefully barking up the wrong tree?
Government promotion of carbon capture and storage and blue hydrogen technology also reflect this tendency. These technologies receive significant public funding but have never been economically viable at scale. Fossil fuel companies benefit greatly from these technologies as they prolong the use of fossil fuels. Their influence over political decisions ensures that policies prioritise these technological fixes over more effective measures, such as encouraging microgeneration or energy efficiency improvements, that lack the big industry links.
Government’s first duty of national security is addressed by maintaining a military. The military-industrial complex, a massive consumer of resources wielding huge power and influence on governments, driving an annual, global, military spend around 2% of GDP. Funding a military and voter services requires growing tax receipts, leading to governments obsession with economic growth regardless of environmental damage. These forces are in direct opposition to the required transition to sustainability and global cooperation.
Local authority responses to the climate emergency
Local authorities also face significant challenges. In 2019, Hull City Council unanimously declared a climate emergency, committing to Hull being carbon neutral by 2030. However, over five years on, Hull’s emissions are actually rising. To achieve carbon neutrality, Hull would require huge changes to its infrastructure, including retrofitting buildings with insulation, replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, installing solar panels on every suitable roof and developing electrified mass-transit systems. The cost of this would be more than the annual GDP of the region and many necessary decisions would be politically unpalatable.
Hull’s situation is reflective of the issues facing local governments across the UK. Over 600 local authorities have declared climate emergencies and most have set net-zero targets. None of the regional targets are likely to be met. Even minor changes, such as reallocating road space to active travellers, spark massive opposition. Local politicians understand that supporting climate action is popular on paper but enacting the necessary changes is politically risky and unpopular. As a result, most councils continue to support the status quo, where unsustainable practices persist despite public declarations of commitment to action on climate change.
The future of the climate emergency
Given the numerous, huge barriers to emission reduction at all scales of human social structures, it is extremely unlikely that we will avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. The Earth is already nearing, or may have passed, several critical tipping points. There is a real danger that runaway climate change processes will take hold, and our planet will transition to some new climate state that is very unlikely to support human life.
Even if this process takes millennia, the coming century will see societal breakdown driven by declines in global food production, displacement of vast numbers of climate refugees, and resource wars. Already, a large majority in Europe believe that civilisation as we know it will collapse in coming years. There is very little that most people can do, other than prepare for the worst and try to adapt as best they can.
