It’s up to us
We’re in a crisis. We might not know the best things to do to get out of it, but we know the one thing we absolutely can’t afford to do: we can’t hope it’ll become someone else’s problem, because that’s what our parents and grand-parents did, and now we’re the last generation left with a decent shout at getting things right.
In a nutshell
Our Earth’s temperature is the way that it is because of our atmosphere. It stops the Earth from being unbearably hot in the day, and fatally cold at night. (The Moon goes from 127°C to –173, as a comparison.) And our atmosphere is the way that it is because of the amount of the chemical element carbon that it contains, mostly as the gas carbon dioxide, CO2. (Other similar gases too, the ‘greenhouse gases’.)
Our Earth’s getting hotter because we’re putting more and more carbon into the atmosphere, trapping more of the Sun’s heat (carbon’s good at that), and at the same time destroying the ways in which the Earth takes carbon out of the air (mostly the plants, they eat carbon).
We’re sort of spending the Earth’s money faster than it can earn it.
It matters that the atmosphere’s getting hotter, because as it gets hotter the weather and the way water moves around the world don’t work the way we need them to. It matters because diseases start being able to survive and food stops being able to grow. Because many of our bodies won’t cope with permanent rises in temperature, and we’ll die.
We won’t cope with a planet that’s changing as much and as fast as we’re making it change.
They tell you to be positive when you write about climate change, but the only positive here is that there’s still time to get out of the way of the worst of it. Humanity is playing chicken with disaster, and there’s still, just about, time to get out of the way.
We have the power
Was it Spider-Man who said with great power there must also come great responsibility? Why is it so important that it’s us who are first to make the big changes? Basically, because we live in Britain. We live in Stroud. It may not seem it, but in world terms, in carbon terms, that makes us wealthy, influential ... and powerful.
We may see ourselves literally as one in a billion – in billions of people – but not everyone in the world makes the same difference, and the difference we can make here is huge. (Check out your footprint.)
We live in a time of stunning world inequality. Oxfam reckon that between 1990 and 2015:
The richest 10% of humanity was responsible for 52% of the carbon.
The richest 1% by themselves for over 15%, more than twice the entire poorest 50%.
The 40% in the world ‘middle class’ for 41%.
And the gap’s getting bigger:
The richest 5% caused over a third (37%) of the total growth in carbon.
46% by the richest 10%.
And that includes us.
I don’t feel like one of the 10%
If you’re a solicitor, airline pilot, building project manager or electrical engineer, you’ve made it into the world’s Top 1%. If you’re a sales director, doctor or dentist, you’re well in. Accountant? Top 3%. Bricklayer, carpet fitter, police officer, web designer – all of you Top 4. If you’re a tyre fitter, a pizza chef, a paramedic, or a translator, you’re Top 5.
A nanny, a teaching assistant, a pharmacy assistant, you still all make the Top 8%.
The average UK wage in 2021 was £26,193 a year, which puts the average Brit in the global top 4.4%, earning 11 times the global middle wage.
It might not feel like we’re wealthy, and very many of us aren’t, the Food Bank proves that, but all of us have got far more impact on some of the richest and most wasteful people and businesses in the world than any number of people in poorer countries.
All of us can be smart in how we use what money we have got and the time we can spare, and spend it if not with the businesses that are doing the most good in the world, then the ones that are doing the least harm. They’re businesses; they follow the money. Lead them where we need them to go with yours.
At the very least we can all vote and call for a responsible government that isn’t collapsing the bridge out from under our feet that we all need to cross to the safe side of the climate and nature crisis we’re in.
(Typical wages from Jobted. Average UK wage from StandOut CV. Tax calculations from UK Tax Calculators. Global wealth rankings from Giving What We Can.)
The targets for Stroud
The Tyndall Centre in Manchester develops sustainable answers to the problems of climate change. One of the things it does is to figure out where different places in Britain stand with the carbon they’re causing. In August 2021 they did Stroud.
Basically, this is where we are:
On 2017 numbers, Stroud will have caused its fair share of all the carbon the world can afford to make by 2027.
Stroud needs to cut at least 13.6% of its carbon each year. (18.5% if you go on the strength of our local economy.)
We need to reach zero or near zero carbon no later than 2041. (The longer it takes to make cuts, the sooner that date gets.)
Our biggest target is flying and shipping, not just in personal travel, but because so much of the stuff we buy comes from so far away.
We need low-carbon, local electricity.
We need to use our landscape to take more carbon out of the air.