It would appear that the whole climate change debate is taking an (unpredicted?) turn for the worse and sustainability as a core goal is under pressure from all sides… People in positions of power in multiple countries are denying the significance of the whole issue and reversing directions on key climate initiatives… So I thought I’d give some thoughts on why that is and what it might mean?
Firstly, nothing fundamental has changed in the science to my knowledge, and I do try to keep up with that stuff. We continue to increase the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and by connection its dissolution into the oceans. Temperatures on average are increasing at rates comparable to the trends we modelled and show no signs of bucking that trend. Dependent on your levels of optimism you may disagree but my solid opinion is that we are not even close to on track for a next-zero 2050, and certainly not on track with the progress needed for 2030… basically nothing’s changed in the climate change “real world”…
What has changed over the last few years, culminating in the recent slew of anti-sustainability messaging and actions, is the global economy and security situation. Initiated by extreme economic actions necessitated by the COVID pandemic and a shift in the international status-quo, global governments have more recently been locked in a struggle with inflation, borrowing loads, security concerns and a generally dissatisfied populace.
This public dissatisfaction could with some rigor be identified as the route cause of our climate about-face. Green has somehow become synonymous with expensive, has been increasingly painted as unnecessary and unreliable, and its support has become increasingly partisan. In those circumstances, allocating budgets to support such activities becomes more “optional” at best, or at its most corruptive a thing to be cut in a show of apparent strength against those climate change fakers… so, so, disappointing.
Populism has emerged powerfully. This philosophy prefers to tear-down rather than build-up, excels as sewing distrust and anger, and exploits those that are already having a pretty tough time. I’d love to think we’re smarter than to fall for the ‘good old days’, “I’ll fix it overnight”, “I’m not an immigrant therefore I’m better than you” silly arguments, but maybe not?
I guess my points here are that the old times were not necessarily the good old times, fixes to big international problems don’t come without pain and travails and compromise, and a focus on any particular groups sole welfare in sacrifice of all others is not a path to stability and success… it is though an easy way to get millions of likes on your X/Facebook/Instagram/TikTok…
It's also easy to forget the level of efforts made by COVID governments to both fight the virus and the resultant impacts of the virus, and address an almost overnight global energy market redesign. Whilst these were not managed without mistakes, I shudder to think what the outcome would have been in the “good old days” without the technology available and level of cooperation that was displayed.
The main issue for our purposes here is the resultant dearth of cash left for expensive to fix, long term, easy to push-down-the-road challenges like a “trivial” few degrees of average warming. Global public debt is up at around $100T USD, about 25% of which was borrowed to get us through the pandemic. In this rising populist climate where people have an understandable and sometimes aggressive desire for a better life and want it as quickly as possible, many governments just don’t have the financial depth to make that happen. And what does that lead to? Well, the increasingly common answer seems to be to take one heck of a vigorous kick at the sustainability can, turn about-face as quickly as possible and deny that there was ever actually a can in the first place. I hope you can join me in seeing the danger in that approach.
We need to reach that panacea place where being sustainable is not a hardship and is a compelling financial choice.
The answer is to perhaps (and this is really difficult to admit for a sustainability person) for governments to drive sustainable solutions where they help the economy or security, and to accept that sometimes we can’t do that; traditional solutions have a place. We need to accept that all solutions are still in play, and economics will always have a very prominent position in decision making. (I can hear you shouting now but roll with me for a few lines more!)… So, here’s the message and the call to action… The challenge for sustainability technologists going forward is to accept, however grudgingly we do so, that this is our reality. We then need to make it unconscionably stupid to choose anything but the sustainable option. How? By making our solutions work reliably, make them great value for money, and make them in every way superior to their unsustainable options. “Sustainable expensive” will just not work going forward, and to fight that conclusion is defining madness.
The answer is not and cannot ever be to go into full reverse. We have to remove that as an option by being better at doing the task; it is up to us sustainable developers to roll our sleeves up, refine our thinking and strategy and make that happen in every aspect of what we do. If we don’t, we lose, plain as that.
Lawrence Krauss puts it really nicely when he says (apologies for the inexactitude of this quote but you’ll get the point still no doubt) “I liken climate change denying to the Dirty Harry films, when Clint Eastwood draws a gun that may or may not be loaded, points it at the criminal and says you feeling lucky punk?”… per my previous blog, what do you lose by admitting it’s a real problem that needs to be fixed? But here is the refinement to that thinking if we want to succeed – add to the statement “as long as it is comparatively and immediately affordable”. That should be the sustainability mantra going forward. It certainly will be in my team.
If we accept the challenge and deliver the right technology at the right price point, perhaps we can speed up the fix of the global economy by making cheap energy and materials ubiquitous, and in that way help to calm down the international political temperature as well as the climate one.