Last weekend as the world leaders gathered in Glasgow
for the COP26 summit enjoyed their half-time oranges I joined activists in my hometown
of Stoke-on-Trent to call for words to be turned into action.
It was an instructive experience on several levels,
none of which left me feeling all that comfortable.
As is the way with such things we stood in the square
outside the town hall, a small island of banners and placards being, mostly,
ignored by the shoppers rushing around us on the hunt for a bargain.
Later we marched through the town, in one of those
ironies life throws up, in the teeth of a freezing rainstorm. One wag noticing
out blue hands clutching banners called out “bet you’d welcome some global
warming mate”. Boom! Tish!
What was more noticeable was how many people managed
to ignore us, even though we were accompanied by someone banging a drum loud
enough to be heard in the next county.
We Brits have form when it comes to things like that,
however much room an elephant takes up in the drawing room we can easily make
ourselves believe it isn’t there. As with Nelly, so with a small, but vocal,
peloton of protesters.
In relation to climate change this is surprising
though since figures published by the Office for National Statistics this week
three quarters of people in the UK are ‘worried’ about climate change [1].
Surveyed in October 75% of adults who responded said
they were ‘very worried’ about climate change, with women (79%) reporting being
more concerned about the issue than men (72%). The ONS describe the gap as ‘statistically
significant’, I bow to their superior knowledge of such things. To me it looks
like neither are sleeping easily just now, and with good reason.
Despite the promises being made in Glasgow the Climate
Action Tracker backed by scientific institutions from around the world warned
this week that the world is 2.4C of warming, surpassing the 1.5C limit nations
have committed to.
At the same time the UK’s Meteorological Office warned
that a billion people could be impacted is global temperatures rise by 2C above
pre-industrial levels.
Speaking to the BBC about the warnings international
Director for Greenpeace Jennifer Morgan said "This new
calculation is like a telescope trained on an asteroid heading for Earth. It's
a devastating report that in any sane world would cause governments in Glasgow
to immediately set aside their differences and work with uncompromising vigour
for a deal to save our common future [2]”.
So why
aren’t more of us screaming if we are all so worried? At the moment much of the
public are acting like characters in a B-movie who refuse to see the monster
rising from the depths or the saucers swooping down from a clear blue sky. We
the activists who try to raise the issue are cast in the role of ‘cranks’ spoiling
everyone else’s fun with our pesky concerns.
The fault,
I’d suggest, lies at the door of a political climate that has become as damaged
as the physical one over the past four decades.
Shopping has triumphed over politics with many
people feeling at a level so deep they don’t consciously recognise it that they
have no real agency over their lives. The only role they can play is that of a
passive consumer proving their worth through ownership of ever more stuff,
every atom of which has been equipped with built in dissatisfaction to keep
them keen.
There
is a saying that if you put a frog in a pot of water on a stove and turn the
heat up slowly enough it won’t notice that its being boiled alive. Applied to a
whole planet that moves from metaphor into being the stuff of nightmares.
We are
the frog, the water around us is starting to bubble alarmingly, there is, just
about, the possibility of our being able to jump out and turn down the gas, if
we act now.
The question
is are we willing or even capable of opening our eyes and putting down our
shopping bags in time to do so?
[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59220687
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