Climate Change: The Missing Voice

The Best for Britain Wire invited me to contribute an article on the outcome of the recent COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil. But what matters most in the struggle to restore a safe climate is not the mountains of text that emerge from each successive COP. It is the level of ambition reflected in the text. That is set by politics in the participant countries, including – critically – by the generation whose adult lives will be dominated by the consequences of climate change and our failure to act sooner to head them off. Their voice is still largely missing. To illustrate this, I’d like to share my contribution to a conversation with a group of young people, mostly aged 18-25, at Kew Gardens last month.

We really do need the COPs, but I’d rather be here with you than in Belem. Because we’ve got to be honest. We’re losing, not winning. In the UK we’re trapped on a bus, pottering along at 20mph, full of raucous passengers. There’s Ed, in one of the front seats, urging the driver to get up to 40mph. By the door in front of him - he’s just got on - is Zack, crying “faster, faster” but it’s not quite clear how fast he wants us to go.

Sitting together further back are Kier, Rachel and Morgan, anxiety etched on their faces. “Not so fast” they mutter, 15 mph is quite enough. And behind them looking indignant is Kemi, demanding that the driver slow down to a snail’s pace and head for a different destination while he’s about it. Drowning them all out in the back seats is the awkward squad. Yes it’s the Pied Piper of Clacton and his unruly henchpeople. “You know what?” he bellows. “We’ve had enough of this. Everyone’s sick of it. Let’s just stop the bus and get off right here!”

It’s all just distraction. What’s really needed is to get the bus up to 90mph, and to do that very quickly.

Climate change is not fundamentally about the environment or even the economy. It’s not about technology or investment. Climate change is about justice: because the people most exposed to its harmful consequences are the very people who have done the least to bring those consequences down on us, and who are least equipped to cope with them.

And above all it’s about power. Power in a fossil-free world – who has it, how it is exercised – will look very different to power in today’s fossil dependent world. And if it’s about power it’s about politics, because politics is the only way we have of making choices peacefully together.

But in normal politics, we negotiate with each other, and we set the deadlines in that negotiation. Climate change isn’t like that. Nature cannot be negotiated with, it’s implacable. The only deadlines Nature knows are those it sets itself. No society, no country, no political party or movement, has yet fully grasped what that means for how we manage our affairs.

Moreover in any transition the incumbents start off with the advantage. They are embedded. They have the resources and the access. They cling to the status quo, they can’t help it. Our task is to prise open their fingers so we can start pulling the levers the right direction.

To make matters worse, here in the UK, around Europe, in America and elsewhere, dark forces are gathering. They seek to divide us, not bring us together. They blame outsiders for our problems, and deny their humanity. They deal in anger and performative cruelty not love and compassion. If those forces prevail, we’ll fail: not only on climate change but on everything else as well. Whatever else we do we must defeat them. We must do whatever it takes, as we’ve done in the past.

And here’s the thing. In politics there is nothing more valuable than moral authority. The exploiter, the dictator, the imperialist: all crave moral authority and try to lay claim to it, so that they can at least pretend that what they do is not for themselves or their family or people like them; it is for everyone. My generation, which still has many of the levers in its hands, used to have moral authority. But we’ve squandered it. We are passing on to you a prospect that is worse – much worse – than the one to which we looked forward when we were your age. That’s on us and it should make us rather humble.

But nobody has more moral authority than you and your generation. You have it in abundance because over the whole of your lives you will have to suffer the consequences of our mistakes. Some of those who currently have power understand that. Why else did a mentor of the US Vice President recently denounce Greta Thunberg as the “Antichrist”? I know, it sounds ridiculous, but he really did. That’s not scorn; it’s fear. Your moral authority, if you can deploy it effectively as a political resource, gives your generation enormous power – game changing power.

I can’t presume to tell you how to do that. For each one of you it will depend on your passions, on what you know and feel thirsty to know, on whom you can see around you, on who can see you and amplify your voice and your actions.

But whatever you do, be demanding, be difficult, be noisy. Act with generosity of spirit, even for your adversary. Never allow yourself to become intoxicated by the adrenaline of the moment. Make sure you understand the likely consequences of your actions, for others and for yourself, and are ready to take responsibility for them. And ask yourself: of all the worthwhile things you could do, which could make the biggest difference. Then agitate. Organise. Mount campaigns. Infiltrate the corridors of power. Whether on the outside or on the inside make your voice heard.

If you think our government should protect your right to take part in peaceful protest, not threaten you with prison, make sure they understand that they betray not only themselves but also your entire generation. A Labour government! There wouldn’t even be a Labour Party without the right over centuries to peaceful, even if sometimes disruptive, protest. If we live today in a decent, tolerant, civilised country we mustn’t forget how it was built.

If you think it’s wrong for our government to pander to the basest reflexes in our national character, and the politicians who ruthlessly inflame them, with policies on immigration and asylum that are an affront to the life-enhancing diversity in this room, policies that try and fail to disguise cruelty under a flimsy cloak of false compassion: if you think that’s wrong then say so, make them feel the shame that they impose on all of us by demanding that we allow such policies to be enacted in our name.

And if you think we should tackle climate change by celebrating Nature not by declaring war on it, not by stigmatizing it with ignorant, cynical tropes that reduce fragile ecosystems to the contents of a witch’s cauldron: if that’s what you think then don’t let them get away with it. The climate emergency and the ecological emergency are the same emergency. You can’t deal with one at the expense of the other.

And above all, don’t be patronised. Don’t let anyone fob you off. My generation, yes, has seen and done more than yours. But we should make that experience available in support of your ambition, not use it as an excuse to try and make you settle for less than we all know needs to be done.

Some people, in an attempt to temper your ambition, may tell you “politics is the art of the possible”. It isn’t. Politics at its best is about expanding the limits of the possible. Politics at its best is what we need today, and it’s what we can still have if you unleash the power that is in your hands.

John Ashton was the Special Representative for Climate Change for three UK Foreign Secretaries from 2006-12. He is an independent speaker and writer, and a cofounder of E3G (www.e3g.org).