Talking about politics when the house is on fire

“Ladies and gentlemen, COP26 begins in Glasgow tomorrow”, announced Prince Charles. “Quite literally, it is the last chance saloon. We must now translate fine words into still finer actions.”

One year on, and policymakers, diplomats and NGOs from around the globe are meeting for COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, to build on the pledges of the previous year. These included agreements to limit global heating to an average 1.5C above pre-industrial times (currently at around 1.2C, and a step up from limiting it to 2C as agreed in Paris, 2015).

But have they been allowed back into the last chance saloon? Or will there be a failure to match the now-familiar rhetoric of “time running out” with commitments to real action to address the climate crisis?

Last orders please

To answer that question, let’s turn back to Charles, now King of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Realms. Despite being a vocal campaigner for environmentalism and green ideas, Charles III was effectively banned from attending COP27 by the two British Prime Ministers, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. While the government cited the need for the monarch to appear politically neutral, it was a strange turn that possibly reflects the UK’s abandonment of climate change leadership after COP26.

Earlier this year, Boris Johnson (then Prime Minister), announced new North Sea gas and oil licences and plans for a new coal mine in Cumbria. Liz Truss embraced fracking to the extent that it ultimately cost her the support of her MPs, while Sunak was belatedly humiliated into attending COP27 after announcing he was “too busy”. So what happened to all those fine words?

Events, dear boy, events

The UK isn’t the only one struggling to honour its commitments. Countries across the world are battling a whirlwind of pressures. The ongoing effects of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have sent prices of energy, food and fertilisers through the roof, plunging many citizens and developing countries into further debt. Inflation, rising interest rates and a cost-of-living crisis have turned minds away, understandably, from difficult noble-minded action on climate change to simply getting through the year in one piece. The Collins Dictionary has made permacrisis its word of the year – ‘an extended period of instability and insecurity’.

While Charles talked of needing finer actions, many politicians seem to have taken the side of pragmatic inaction. This may be the last chance saloon, so the argument for inaction goes, but the world right now cannot afford to make the radical, drastic measures needed to fund a sustainable transition to green energies, prepare societies to adapt for the impacts of climate change, and support developing countries through green finance to decarbonise their economies. With a global recession on its way, climate action has fallen down the political agenda.

So is that that, then? Not quite.

There have been two important developments that could change everything.

Our house is on fire

The first is that there has been a paradigm shift in how climate change is understood and reported.

This year, the IPCC (the body of scientists that meet to review and write reports about the latest climate science) demonstrated that climate change is having ‘widespread and pervasive’ impacts, some which are now ‘irreversible’. But whereas in the past their reports were rather careful and equivocal about locating blame or sounding too political, the tone this year has shifted to the need for urgent action.

What’s more, climate change is no longer narrated as something bad but faraway in the distant future. It’s happening now. Extreme weather, droughts, wildfires, floods and famines are now daily occurrences across the globe. The last eight years have been the hottest on record. This year, climate change-related flooding in Pakistan displaced 7.9 million people. Eastern Africa is experiencing the worst drought in forty years, putting 146 million people at risk of extreme hunger – more than the population of the UK, France and Republic of Ireland combined. Closer to home, G8 countries like Germany, France, Italy, the UK and US have all witnessed far more extreme weather events in the last year, like droughts, storms and floods, than ever before. The IPCC have warned that 3.6 billion people are highly vulnerable, nearly half of the world’s population.

Which leads to the second big development.

Whether or not policymakers agree much at COP27, and the signs are not promising, the way the public thinks about the climate crisis has also changed. Greta Thunberg spoke for many when she said that ‘our house is on fire’. (Greta also notably skipped attending COP27). People around the world are marching through streets, blocking roads and skipping school to stop fossil fuels, protest against air pollution and fight for a more sustainable world. While many of us are not doing that, we are still worrying about the present and the future.

So, what are we going to do? There is now scientific consensus that the climate crisis is here. The solution is widely agreed: cut greenhouse emissions now, offer substantial climate finance to enable developing countries to decarbonise, and fund adaptations to the new reality. But scientists can’t do this. It requires immediate political action and green investment at a massive level. Only national governments have the power and resources to command such a change in direction.

We are only at the beginning of the climate crisis. It is set to become the defining global challenge of the 21^st century. Politicians are, understandably perhaps, struggling with translating those fine words into action. But what might be the cost to them otherwise? They will find out at the ballot box – and beyond.

This article is an opinion piece that was been written by Dan Taylor, Lecturer in Social and Political Thought, as a response to a call for articles from our OU colleagues, that relate to climate change from their own disciplinary or lived experience.