Conclusions

A. The Policy Response Needed

Clearly, we are not being honest about the problem the world now faces, described in previous pages as catastrophic climate change with its interconnections to energy use and economic growth. We prefer not to “scare the horses” but talk around the problem without clearly defining it for reasons of short-term political expediency or self-interest. Problem definition typically provides 80 per cent of the solution, so honesty is essential if you are genuine in your endeavours. It needs to be done carefully, setting out both the problem and a solution, but it must be done. Otherwise the result is totally inadequate policies that become impossible to change given the political capital invested in creating them, which is exactly what has happened with successive international negotiations since the original Rio meeting in 1992.

Overall, there is a lack of systems-based thinking in joining the dots of the climate and energy dilemma to form sensible integrated solutions. The result is that the resilience of the global economy, and society, to respond to this threat is badly weakened.

Our market economy in the latter half of the 20th century worked remarkably well. Organizations were born, grew, reached limitations, systemically broke down, reorganized, and were reborn. That was fine provided there was honesty about the challenges being faced and in developing sensible solutions.

However, once denial of those challenges, and of the real solutions, sets in, the resilience of the system to become self-correcting fails, as growth becomes over-extended to the point where the system cannot recover. That is now happening with our high-carbon economies as successive leaders in both politics and business, fail to heed the climate and energy warning signs. Much of this failure stems from the short-termism created by excessive bonus remuneration systems in both business and politics.

This may well end up in catastrophic breakdown, for example, as a result of the bursting of the carbon bubble we are creating on the assumption that the 20th Century high-carbon world will continue. Business and investors are still rushing into unconventional high-carbon resources, developing projects which are fundamentally unsound on both economic and environmental grounds. The impending collapse will be difficult to recover from, as substantial funds will become stranded assets, rather than having been invested in the low-carbon opportunities which represent our future.

B. The Real Challenge – An Emergency Response

Avoiding a 4°C world means emissions in the developed world have to peak within 3-4 years, then decline rapidly, by about 9% per annum — an unprecedented task which requires nothing less than an emergency response.

It is clear that the existing political, corporate and market economy processes will not deliver — either the level of change we need technologically, or in the time that we require it. So we need a circuit breaker to disrupt conventional thinking.

As Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, put it recently: “Today, in 2013, we face an unavoidably radical future. We either continue with rising emissions and reap the radical repercussions of severe climate change, or we acknowledge we have a choice and pursue radical emission reductions. No longer is there a non-radical option. Moreover, low-carbon supply technologies cannot deliver the necessary rate of emission reductions – they need to be complemented with rapid, deep and early reductions in energy consumption.” ⁵⁸

Thus the context of the debate has to change quickly, and we have to be brutally honest about the problem. Whereupon the cry will inevitably go out: “The government must do something”! But the governments are not necessarily going to do anything. Experience over the last 20 years tells us that adversarial politics, in Western democracies at least, is incapable of handling an issue this complex without serious outside pressure.

Therefore, we have to build coalitions of champions, from progressive thinkers who are prepared to speak out from whatever segment of society. For example, community groups, progressive corporates, the military, academia and levels of government who are prepared to honestly face the facts. Also,the super-national organizations; virtually every major super-national organization, including the UN, OECD, IEA, World Bank, IMF, and the WEF – are talking in similar terms about the global emergency we face and they cannot continue to be ignored. These coalitions need to go public, articulating both chal- lenge and solutions, bypassing conventional politics.

We should also create mass movements to spread awareness of the risks of runaway climate change and urgency of action to stop it before it is too late. That could include mobilizing rock and movie stars, film directors, painters and other artists, sport idols as well as statesmen and -women who are independent from daily politics, to speak about a global emergency. Arranging climate change concerts, sport events and documentaries could be a vehicle for achieving more awareness. The above has been done to some extent, but a critical mass has not yet been created as things go as before in terms of CO2 emissions.

Eventually the combination of top down pressure from progressive thinkers and bottom up pressure from communities may force governments to respond. As a French politician in the 1800s, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, said: “There go the people I must follow, for I am their leader”.

We must also mandate the critical policy outcomes. We have to define where we are today, where the science tells us we have to get to, and then commit to the path between the two without further procrastination.

It will not be easy, but we know the solutions; we now need the will to implement them. We believe the process must be initiate largely outside conventional politics because it will not be successful if it becomes embroiled in that system with day-to-day short-term political decision-making dominating. This certainly poses issues for democracy, but there are precedents in such emergency situations. For instance, after the Pearl Harbor the US car industry was completely changed to support the war efforts in a matter of months. Governments can change, and quite fundamentally, when they eventually face reality as it is.

The current situation has major implications for population, as global carrying capacity is going to be severely constrained by natural events as described in this Manifesto, even if we do take emergency action on climate change.

Above all, we must have proactive business leadership, because corporations in the end have to design and implement the solutions. They are well aware of the science; if they’re not, they should be. Local and national corporations have to start thinking and acting globally, understanding also the broader picture laid out for instance in this Manifesto. Business claim to be experts in risk management, but global-regional-local interconnectivity is a new risk they have never previously experienced, requiring very different strategy and management techniques.

In a 4°C world, conventional business and politics are not possible and it is in everybody’s interests to prevent that world happening. We have solutions, but our options are being cut off by inaction and time is extremely short. We need informal groups of progressive leaders to initiate a completely different conversation, building coalitions to trigger genuine emergency action.

This will require the sort of initiatives that were taken in the lead up to World War II, as economies were completely re-orientated in six to 12 months to meet a totally different purpose. That is the challenge that really confronts us. The stakes for humanity are high, we are at a watershed.

As Winston Churchill put it:

“It is no use saying ‘We are doing our best’. Sometimes you have to succeed in doing what is necessary”.