Monthly Archives: December 2018

Greta Thunberg: My Person of the Year

Greta

Greta Thunberg, who started the School Strike for Climate movement, and is my Person of the Year 2018

For the last few years on this blog I’ve chosen a person and/or a technology to celebrate as the Person of the Year or Technology of the Year. I try and highlight ideas, people and technologies that might help humanity move to a better future, where climate breakdown is averted, mass species extinction halted and where people can live in a peaceful and prosperous manner, without wrecking the planet in the process.

The hydrogen fuel cell is my technology of the year. Lots of companies and research programmes have made important progress over the last twelve months, and many of them I’ve written about. In September I posted two blogs on the subject, here and here, and one in March.

We have the science that informs us we must combat climate change and the technologies to do so. Our planet is dominated by politicians who don’t want to understand the dangers or learn about better ways of doing things. Carbon emissions rose last year, when the science tells us they need to be falling fast.

The biggest and most positive thing to happen over this last year has been the emergence of a new generation of climate activists. In August the 15 year old Swede Greta Thunberg started her school climate strikes, taking every Friday off school to protest outside the Swedish Parliament. Her tweets and videos have gone viral and young people in hundreds of cities around the World have joined her in going on school climate strikes. In October Extinction Rebellion launched its programme of non violent direct action in London, and it too has rapidly become a global phenomena. Linked with these street based activist movements has been the growth of political movements advocating radical action on climate breakdown. In October I blogged about Green Parties gaining ground in elections in Luxembourg, Belgium and Bavaria, and during most of November and December most of my blogs have been about the growth of this climate activism, especially with the emergence of the Sunrise movement, the Justice Democrats and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez since the American Midterm elections in November. In Britain, where our politics in general seems so totally dysfunctional Caroline Lucas seems to be the most popular politician, and the only member of Parliament backed up by policies that might yet avert the worst. If I have to pick one person to represent this global wave of climate activism it would undoubtedly be Greta Thunberg. Do please watch this two minute video of her addressing COP 24 in Katowice, and check-out her Twitter for more news and videos.

The Decline of the BBC

MEPs on Question Time

MEPs on Question Time, over a 5 year period, 35 MEPs appeared, all anti EU fanatics (33 UKIP 2 Tory). Where were the knowledgeable pro EU MEPs? 

The UK is in a political mess. It is more deeply divided, more confused and more misinformed than at any time in my life. I lay the blame for this in large part at the poor quality of our media. The decline in how the BBC covers news and current affairs is of particular concern. I’ve given up with their TV and radio reporting of serious issues, and only scan their website to see what issues they are prioritizing, rather than with the expectation of really learning anything.

How our relations with the rest of Europe have been covered has been dreadful for decades. The above graphic shows the number of MEP’s on the BBC’s flagship Question Time programme over a five year period. All thirty-five times MEP’s appeared on the programme they were anti EU fanatics, thirty-three from UKIP and two anti EU Tories. Most of these anti EU MEPs don’t even turn up to debates and are staggeringly ill-informed and prejudiced. For decades the voices of people who have a deep understanding of the complexities, strengths and weaknesses of the institutions of the EU have been systematically silenced. I’d love to see Molly Scott Cato, the Green Party MEP for the SW England, given as much TV exposure as Farage, then the public would have much better understanding of the real issues. It’s not just the Greens who have some good MEPs who actually have a lot of knowledge of and respect for the EU. All parties, bar UKIP, have such people; it’s just that the BBC and much of the rest of our media ignore them.

George Monbiot wrote an interesting article in the Guardian about how the media like to portray politics as an individual psychodrama. This focus on a ‘cult of personality’ prism through which to view politics obscures the real issues and the impact they will have on ordinary people. In terms of the Brexit debate all the media focus is on will Theresa May survive, will Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg or Jeremy Corbyn be the next prime minister. If Brexit does indeed go ahead it will affect the lives of all of us in the UK in deep and profound ways, which quite frankly are more important than who happens to be in number 10 Downing Street.

One error that the BBC has made is to think that having two opposing views represented is necessary to reflect balance. Over the years every time climate change was discussed they would invite a so called climate sceptic to counter the position of a climate scientist. This distorts reality. Equating someone from an oil industry spin machine dressed up as a ‘think-tank’ and giving it equal weight to someone expressing a factually well informed view of scientific reality is ludicrous. Again, with Brexit, the BBC seems to think it is OK to have someone spout things that are simply factually wrong, as long as at some other point in their programme they have someone else putting a different point of view, even if that too is factually wrong. The job of journalism is to speak truth to power, and this is something the BBC and much of the rest of our media seem to have lost sight of. Whether it is the breaking down of the biosphere, the self inflicted calamity of Brexit or any other serious issue, public understanding of the issues if often woefully poor, and for that the BBC and the media must take some of the blame.

Climate Emergency

Sunrise Movement lobby Congress

Sunrise Movement Lobby Congress for Action on Climate Change

There is an utter disjunction between what science informs us is the predicament humanity finds itself in and what politicians are prepared to do. The science is clear: we need to get to net zero carbon emissions as fast as humanly possible. In the 1970’s we had the opportunity to reduce emissions in a gradual and orderly manner. That window of opportunity is now closed. Now our only hope for continued existence of our species is an almost unimaginably fast reduction in emissions, yet this year emissions increased. If they continue to increase for just a few more years it is simply ‘game-over’ for our species, and countless others. National governments everywhere are failing us. They range from the actively destructive, like USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Brazil to the well intentioned but hopelessly under ambitious such as most of Europe.

As Greta Thunberg has said, our leaders are behaving like children. The thing that gives me most hope is the extraordinary explosion of citizen activism for climate action. The school strikes for Climate that Greta started in August has now spread globally and a whole new generation of activists are taking on leadership roles, many of whom are only children. Linked to this is the growth of the Extinction Rebellion movement, the Sunrise Movement and the Justice Democrats in USA, Green Parties across Europe and many other grassroots movements.

One of the key things these groups are doing is trying to get politicians to declare a Climate Emergency. Many councils in the UK and elsewhere have now done this, and this public acknowledgment of the problem is an important first step. Some of the declarations call for net zero emissions by 2025 or 2030, which is a scientifically necessary goal. Given the best organised and most dedicated local council in the world would probably struggle to achieve this the question then arises, how do we achieve it for the entire global economy, including in those places where governments are most actively hostile to such action. That bigger goal can seem hopeless, but hope is only born through action. Once people see dramatic and positive action in one place it can spread globally at lightning speed.

On Twitter I retweeted someone called Sydney Azari’s Tweet ‘We are on the event horizon of revolutionary change.’ This is an interesting concept. For humanity to survive in any kind of civilized state we need change on a scale and speed never envisaged before, the outcome of which is not knowable in advance, and for which there is no manifesto or political theory. It has to be powerful enough to sweep away dozens of governments, technologies, industries and the whole of global consumer society. What will replace our current systems has to fit within the biological and physical laws of nature.

The COP climate talks in Katowice, Poland, are drawing to a close. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said failing to agree climate action would ‘not only be immoral’ but ‘suicidal’. The path governments are committed to is suicidal. Hope lies out on the streets, with the youth, and with the millions of people trying to build that radically more sustainable future.