If this was real, someone would be doing something about it

In 1992 the first climate conference took place in Rio, the world came together in a monumental moment to declare their desire to tackle global warming. They agreed to take action under the precautionary principle — meaning they would act as if the world was under the threat of climate disaster without the waiting for the slow process of scientific proof.

I was not active in 1992, in fact, I was still in primary school still living in the innocence and ignorance of life before the knowledge of the Climate and Biodiversity Emergency we are in. I was unconscious until the last years of the first decade of the 21st century, post my university days.

In those early years, I heard the same retort of ‘If this was real, someone would be doing something about it’. As Rio showed, there plenty of people doing plenty of things about it. Actually, the brightest minds of our age were highlighting the impending doom that faced us. Unfortunately, there were a lot of other people, many more, at least more effectively organised, that were doing all in their powers to belittle, dismiss and blatantly destroy the truth of Global Warming and Climate Change.

The tragedy is that in those early days, the days of the Kyoto Protocol (the first of the global targets we missed), there was a real and tangible chance to de-carbonise. There were multiple legitimate plans for the transition. Offering a step change to bring down emissions in a controlled and managed way. These were matched with campaigns like 10:10 — to bring down our emissions by 10% by 2010. After this was missed, it moved to 20:20 — to bring them down by 20% by 2020. As target after target was missed the game of lengthening the timescale hidden behind an ever-increasing target began. Until we find ourselves today aiming for a change in 2050, just distant enough to delay any urgency.

As each target is missed the game of imagining the future shifts with it. In the early 2000s, we still had the confidence to envision a future of abundance and happiness — a globally connected world of shared resources and circular economies that is inhabited by 10 billion humans and a flourishing wildlife population. Of communities living in harmony with each other with beautiful well being, endless knowledge, healthy bodies and interconnected relationships across the planet.

We had the 100-Month Club warning us of the timeline in which the change was needed, The Transition Movement building these communities and helping us with the vision, Venus Project designing future cities, 350.org giving us a target to aim towards with our emission cuts. All this was not enough, as the myth of the markets was able to hoodwink it all and seduce us with ever-increasing shiny new toys to distract our senses. Then, as we should have been up in arms with the inaction they used fear against us. The fear and anger we should have been feeling, the rage we should have been using to scream for the injustice of the climate and biodiversity emergency, was instead used to reinforce its destruction.

So where are we now! The visioning has gone. A mist of despair has replaced it. The happy world of abundance has been replaced with the subtle suggestion that lingers under all the global reports being released. The IPCC continues to underplay the situation within the conservative restraints imposed within the language of science. Although, you do not need to look far or interrupt the footnotes to begin to see what it is really saying. We are already at 1.1 degrees of warming and over 415 ppm of CO2 equivalent. The target of 1.5 degrees, the torchbearer of a safe target, is suggested still as a possibility but when you look at the feedback loops and tipping points that we are too close to realising and currently missing from the reports the picture we are faced with is perilous at best and hopeless at worse.

In the early days, there were these mystical moments we needed to prevent at all costs, the tipping points at which there was no coming back from, so bad they might even kill the Gaia (our living planet). They were the melting of the Arctic ice, releasing methane from the permafrost and the destruction of the rainforests. The Arctic melting is happening quicker predicted, the permafrosts have started to melt and the point of no return for the Amazon is approaching. These are close now, in 2019, not the distant edges of the end the century as foreseen.

So how does our vision of the future look in this scenario? The outcome only really seems to be in doubt if you limit the timescale. The idea of billions of deaths, starvation and environmental devastation is only debatable if you keep the time scale within the next political cycle. If you look at the current trajectory in centuries it all becomes inevitable — and this means the timeline of your grandchildren and their grandchild.

The future then looks like one on a planet that can only sustain half a billion people. A world of instability, of devastating weather patterns, of deserts, of major inhabitable landmasses, of dead acidic seas and many other horrors we are unable to even imagine. This is the truth that needs to be told. Not so people can be scared but so we can start having real conversations as to how we want to deal with this and how much of it can be prevented.

I believe that the utopian planet I used to dream about has gone, we have just left it too late. I also believe that the planet that is possible is closer to that than the other nightmare world above. Although, only if we learn to tell the truth and find a way to have these difficult conversations both with each other and within our structures of power.

Now if I get asked ‘If this was real, someone would be doing something about it’, I say there is. There is a global movement in over 70 countries that are demanding action is taken. There are not hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people all around the world committed to sacrifice all that is need to make this change. I stood with thousands of these rebels in London in October. I sat with them on the roads, I sang with them in the roadblocks and marched with them in the streets. I laughed, cried and loved with them. I sacrificed my freedom and got arrested. I am not proud or happy about this. I am not ashamed either. I am simply desperate and willing to do all it takes to play a positive part in this epic story of humanity.