It is nice to think that the countries of the United Nations have agreed that we will reach net zero by 2050 and will be able to limit the increase in global temperatures to less than 1.5 degrees, so the changes to our climate will be small and manageable. Unfortunately, what it is nice to think and what it is accurate to think are two very different things.
When world leaders came together in Paris in 2015 and set that target there was a brief moment of hope that the conclusions of our best scientists had been listened to and understood, and that there would be action of sufficient scale and urgency to fend off chaotic and extreme climate change. It is now clear that the target will be missed.
Paris plans for limiting change in tatters
There have, of course, been some useful actions and some genuine progress. Unfortunately, globally, they have never been of sufficient urgency or on a remotely adequate scale. The pre-industrial level of CO2 in the atmosphere fluctuated around an average of 225 parts per million. It currently stands at 420ppm. Even the Paris plan meant Carbon Dioxide levels would keep on increasing for the next 26 years before global temperature rises started to level off and perhaps begin to fall a few years later. That plan is now in tatters.
Global sea temperatures at the surface have smashed all records over the past 18 months and are now a full degree higher than they have ever been in human history. None of the experts expected that to happen so rapidly. It is earlier than their worst case predictions. Across the whole of the past 12 months air temperatures have been consistently above the 1.5 degree target. Twenty six years early. This was in an El Nino year so it is just possible that temperatures will dip back down below that level for part of the next couple of years, but the trend is erratically but relentlessly upwards.
Land loss is now inevitable
Temperatures such as these are high enough to make it inevitable that we will lose great chunks of low-lying agricultural land and wide areas of major cities, such as London. They are sufficient to result in the inundation of most nuclear power stations built on estuaries. That would include many that the current UK government and the Labour opposition are committed to building and operating, long after the sea level rises occur.
In any logical world the approach of such truly apocalyptic problems would focus minds and lead to heroic actions as we all face up to the impossibility of sustaining our current lifestyles and the urgency of the need for change. What seems to be happening instead is that a lot of people are getting angry at scientists and environmentalists for suggesting that things need to change. A wall of money is being spent by those who profit from the old ways to persuade people it is OK to move slowly and cautiously.
Voters seem too likely to vote for the status quo
If we look at the UK opinion polls and the probable voting patterns at the next election, it seems highly likely that more people are going to vote to do nothing than to take action at the speed required. Reform UK is of the firm opinion that Britain shouldn’t waste money chasing net zero targets. Whilst Pushing that view they have risen rapidly in the polls to reach 12% at the time of writing. The Green Party of England and Wales stands at 6.3%.
Labour, which has been firmly ahead for months, has done its soundings on public views and Keir Starmer gives every impression of having decided that there aren’t enough votes in being committed to spending £28bn a year on tackling the problem. He has chosen instead to nail his colours to the mast of increasing defence spending, while squandering billions of the modest levels of ‘green’ investment he is committed to make on the clumsy vanity project of overpriced new nuclear power stations.
The worry is that politicians are following public opinion more than they are leading it, and that public opinion is being driven by very well-funded lobbyists. There don’t seem to be enough votes in doing what is necessary. It is easier to seek popularity by telling people that things can carry on more or less as normal.
Even popular policies are moving too slowly
Even investments which save money, such as significant and sustained grants to insulate buildings, increasing incentives for off-peak energy use or using every large roof to generate electricity, are happening at astonishingly slow paces. The switch to electric cars is an obvious way for drivers to save money every time they avoid filling up with petrol and a switch to reliable cheap public transport is even better. Both solutions are being systematically rubbished in the press with people being told a lot more about the inconvenience and real cost of both than they are about the scale of the opportunity. New homes are still being built without solar panels or heat exchange units.
There are things happening which are promising. China is already producing good quality electric cars with a long range that cost under $10,000, and already has much of its comparatively excellent public transport system powered by electricity. Many tropical countries are focusing hard on decentralising energy generation and powering their homes and businesses using cheap sunlight.
Those changes are unfortunately happening too slowly, and are being accompanied by a drift towards Western lifestyles of heavy meat consumption, increased demand for consumer goods and greater pressure on the environment.
Campaigning needs to focus on imminent disaster
It is therefore necessary to switch the focus of much of our environmental campaigning. There is no point in telling people that we can prevent severe climate change, because it is already too late. We can still make massive differences to how bad it is going to be, but it simply isn’t honest to tell people that the changes are going to be manageable and the chaos is going to be limited.
We have to start planning for significant collapses in global food production, serious problems of water shortage, fires and desertification. At the same time there will be other years and other places in which the problem will be floods, intense winds and coastal storm surges which destroy land, food and buildings. That means higher food prices globally and increasing movements of desperate refugees.
Food security a major risk – particularly in Britain
In such circumstances local food security has to move to the top of the agenda. Every time Britain has been faced with a major war it has struggled to feed itself – people have had to try to “dig for victory”. It would be foolish and reckless in the extreme to move into a period of increasingly erratic climate change and food supply depending on the smug assumption that it will always be possible to buy roughly half of our food from abroad.
The most practical thing we can do to prepare our country to survive the coming chaos is to pump serious investment into agriculture. That means serious subsidies for sustainable practices and proper controls over imports from countries with low standards. The only safe strategy for surviving in an increasingly insecure world of climate chaos is to support our farmers to produce close to 100% of the food we need in ways that don’t increase that chaos. That will only start to happen when more of the public ask our politicians to make sure that our children and our adults can eat well, eat responsibly and eat locally.
It is now clear that attempts to limit the damage of climate change are not going to work. If we are serious about facing up to the consequences we need to start thinking hard and long about how we are going to make sure we can feed ourselves.
