Look at the Earth from Mars or Venus, and it wouldn’t be hard to spot the biggest problem facing its inhabitants. From the vantage point of our barren planetary neighbours, where life is ruled out by a punishing climate, the potentially runaway rise in the temperature of our habitat would rank unambiguously as our gravest peril.
But as Britain, or more accurately the Conservative Party, picks a new prime minister, the climate is hardly registering. The defining issue—the thing that one candidate refused to rule out suspending parliament to achieve—is establishing unilateral control over aspects of trade policy by an entirely arbitrary date.
It is easy, and fair, to mock the Tories for their solipsistic fixations. But in truth, the failure to grapple with the looming climate catastrophe and all it might mean—flooded cities, parched rivers, displaced millions—is not the preserve of any one party, or indeed any one country.
School strikes and the activist group Extinction Rebellion have, through gluing themselves to the trains and other antics, recently created more of a conversation about climate, and reaffirmed the value of peacefully disruptive protest along the way. And yet the reality is that most of us are still a million miles from the climate conversation we ought to be having, a conversation with big implications for the way we live, work and travel. On TV, away from the news, climate change crops up only half as often as the subject of picnics, as Alice Bell reports.
The deepest problem may be that climate change is not the kind of phenomenon that the human mind has evolved to regard as a clear and present threat. It is not yet, at least in any ordinary use of the word, a crisis in day-to-day British life. The damage is diffuse, and the worst of it is delayed. The weather has always varied, so it is never possible to say with certainty that a particular hurricane or drought might not have happened anyway. The evidence is subtle and statistical. In sum, getting Earthlings to care as much as Martians would think they should is bound to be a challenge. And it’s all the more difficult when material conditions remain miserable for so many.
That last insight is the starting point for the former climate secretary and Labour leader, Ed Miliband, as he issues a passionate call for a Green New Deal. Assent will only be won for overhauling our economy in the way that the climate requires, he says, if the potential opportunities to spread prosperity and create meaningful work are vigorously seized. We need to rekindle something of the same energy, faith in the possible and spirit of solidarity that, he believes, helped Britain to win the Second World War.
But will restlessly pursuing economic growth advance or impede the mission? The former BP boss, John Browne, and Jason Hickel of the LSE thrash out that question, with Hickel insisting that it is time to accept hard ecological limits on what we consume. Browne counters that it is only with the help of advancing technology and rising prosperity that humanity will be in a position to protect its home.
"Political structures will affect a nation's ability to talk sensibly about climate"It is not only economics but also political structures that determine a nation’s ability to talk sensibly about climate, and indeed anything else. Those structures are almost audibly creaking in Britain today.
While many jumped to dance on the graves of the main parties after the debacle of the Euro-elections, Eliane Glaser is worried about the frailty of institutions that have done important work in framing debates and regulating inevitable conflict. Prospect makes no apology for returning to the question of the UK’s strange and shapeless constitution. Lawyer David Allen Green points to a recent Supreme Court judgment showing that liberties are sometimes better protected than reformers imagine. But he still worries about the lack of guarantees. Meanwhile, Rory Stewart argues that Britain’s busked political ground rules have worked historically only because they co-existed with a culture of compromise. Should the current polarisation continue, he believes we will have to rethink the whole approach.
That is a striking conclusion for a Conservative politician to reach, but then these are extraordinary political times. Rebooting our governance is a precondition for the UK to engage effectively on the biggest questions—up to and including saving the world.
