Happy New Year!
2016 promises to be the year of climate mobilisation.
2016 promises to be the year of climate mobilisation.
There is some good news, bad news, and then some more good news...
Good News!
The Paris Climate Conference reached an agreement between 195 countries
that the new target would be 1.5 degrees of warming. (This in itself is a critical breakthrough in
terms of a shared global understanding of the climate crisis). This has significant impacts, for a start it
might just mean that island nations like Tuvalu
and Kiribati
will survive. But more significantly it
means that the wealthier nations must change their climate strategies to meet
the target. When the maths is done the
conclusion will be realised; that ALL further global warming is extremely dangerous,
and there is no carbon budget left to burn.
In truth we have to race out of fossil fuels as quickly as humanly
possible. By 2025 or 2030 at the latest. (In a later post I will explain the maths in
more detail)
Bad News!
The target might have changed, but the talking has
stopped. The UK
in particular is not re-assessing its climate strategy in the light of Paris. Quite the opposite, the first decisions the
government made were to reduce the feed-in-tariff and to frack under national
parks and world heritage sites. And,
once again, the government and media have failed to make the connection between
unprecedented flooding and climate change.
Good News!
But it's not all bad news.
The political ground on climate is shifting. The Guardian newspaper has a specific
campaign on climate change. The Paris Climate talks mobilised hundreds of
thousands of people across the globe. The Committee on Climate Change is
getting more angry about the government's failure to act. The Environment Agency, the Quakers and many
Local Authorities have agreed to divest from Fossil Fuels. 50 cities in the UK
have agreed to go zero carbon. Pope
Francis has warned that humanity is "at the limit of a suicide". The anti-fracking movement is growing ever
stronger. Deluged communities in Carlisle,
Manchester, Leeds,
York and elsewhere are starting to
see the links between flooding and climate change.
We are at the brink of a World War II scale mobilisation on
climate. We have to be. The time for talking has ended and the time
for action has begun. Make 2016 the year
you decide personally to make this happen.
There are many climate worriers out there, we need to convert them to
become Climate Warriors.
