The climate change many.

Six years ago on December 12th 2015 I was in Paris at COP21 as the world's governments adopted the Paris Agreement to address climate change. I wrote to mark the "good day", noting that it included "reference for the first time to keeping global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels," that it was far from a solution but it was a good start, "and better, maybe a lot better, than was hoped for." And it was all those things. And we had a long way to go but there was reason to feel encouraged. And it's important to celebrate the good moments and allow space so they can generate energy to continue the struggle.

Now, a month shy of six years later, the Glasgow pact was agreed at COP26 on 13th November. It makes some progress, possibly, but not enough, nothing like enough. The people who know, who are most harmed today by climate change impacts and who should be in charge of the process to stop the climate emergency mainly condemned the deal. Some Indigenous peoples called it a death sentence and some Pacific delegates branded it a monumental failure. For a while after the conference ended it felt to me like a non-event, and then it felt depressing and discouraging. Yet in the last week I have felt hopeful. It's very clear that most people in the world believe climate change is a very serious problem, that most people want a solution to the climate crisis, and want it soon, and that most people want much more radical and constructive solutions than anything proposed by governments and business. I feel that there is already a clear majority, in fact an enormous majority of the world's people who want to address climate change as the emergency it is. And as the injustice it is. COP26 was never going to solve it, no COP can, although its massive, peaceful, legal and truly global multilateral negotiating and agreement process is still valuable and important to maintain. But COP26 has helped even more people to see even more sharply that it and the words of government leaders are not anything like sufficient to address climate change. The change is going to come from the world's people. Not through individual behaviour change, as businesses and most governments would like us to focus on, while continuing to fuel the capitalist system that is destroying the planet and human life. But through radical change of the economic, production, energy and social systems that currently benefit the very, very few at the cost of the lives and health of most of humanity and the life-sustaining capacity of our planet. We need to change those systems. And it is ‘us’, the very many, the most of humanity, who are going to have to make those changes happen. I feel hopeful because I feel that this message is beginning to be accepted more widely.

What I have found to be less accepted or understood is that the few have to be stopped. There are a relatively tiny number of people, companies and governments who have historically done most of the damage, and released most of the carbon, and they and their inheritors are continuing to extract the fossil fuel, burn it or sell it, while damaging ecosystems and nature. They benefit hugely from their actions, and they also, of course, obstruct efforts to make them act differently. And this tiny majority are in conflict with the vast majority who are harmed by climate change and want it to be addressed. Everyone is by no means equal when it comes to their responsibility for climate change, and individuals have vastly different power to address it. The uncomfortable reality is that the actions of this tiny minority are extremely dangerous to the lives of the majority, and they cannot be allowed to continue acting in this destructive way.

Ending the climate emergency is going to mean ending the power of this tiny elite of political and economic ‘leaders’. It will require preventing them from engaging in this incredibly destructive behaviour, which they believe they are entitled to do. They have built extensive systems to protect themselves and their behaviour, the same dominant systems that have to be dismantled to end climate change. They have a long history of violently opposing even moderate curbs on their activity. This is the real fight about climate change. The powerful, immensely destructive minority has to be stopped and the peaceful, constructive majority have to reclaim the power to create the better world they want. It’s not going to be easy. It is going to require taking, making, claiming and wielding power which the majority actually already have but don’t realise they possess and aren’t (yet) that good at using. It should be non-violent but it will have to be forceful, because the minority are not going to give up their privilege and benefits unless they are made to. We can make this happen, I think we have to if we want a chance not just of a “1.5 world” but of a habitable planet and a decent life for all humans. I feel hopeful today because I think most of humanity wants this better world. And after the many climate extreme events of the last few years, the experience of the Covid pandemic, and COP26 as the latest refusal by the current ‘leaders’ to do what is needed, I am hopeful because more and more of us are realising that we have to be the ones that make it happen.