We hear a lot about the causes of climate change. The evils of the coal-worshipping industrial revolution, building us a world entirely dependent on burning fossil fuels, slowly thickening the deadly blanket of gases in the atmosphere that lock heat in.  Didn’t they think about the consequences? 

Well no… it was a revolution! They were innovative and ambitious and they transformed the quality of life of pretty much everyone on the planet.  They didn’t know about the Greenhouse Effect, and they couldn’t predict the floods, hurricanes and forest fires that would come.  It’s not the pioneers of the industrial age who should be feeling guilty. It’s me.

On Friday afternoon I saw The Age of Stupid – a painful experience.  Not painful in the skin-crawling, teeth-grinding, ‘why am I watching this terrible Ben Stiller movie’ sense – painful because it hit that nerve in me which woke me up to the fact that every day I do nothing positive to change this, is another day towards the day that it really is too late. 

 

Franny Armstrong may not have told me a lot of stuff I didn’t already know, but she bundled it all up and threw it at me in a way that acted like a bucket of cold water to the face… 

WAKE UP, STUPID – it’s YOU who has to fix this!

It’s us – all of us.  We have to act and we have to do it now.

The financial crisis that we find ourselves in now might seem like a hindrance - let’s just get out of this recession and then we’ll think about the climate - right?  Actually, when a global economic crisis coincides with a global environmental crisis there is a massive opportunity that we mustn’t waste – here’s the chance to make the change and shift to a new green economy.

The facts are there to suggest that, actually, investing in ‘green’ will generate a stronger, more sustainable economy with much greater job opportunities.  For example, The Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute report “Green Recovery” states that a $100 billion green investment over 2 years will generate four times the number of jobs as the same investment in the oil industry.  

To an extent this is already happening.  The UNEP publication “Green Jobs” says that changing patterns of employment and investment due to efforts made to reduce climate change are already generating new jobs across various sectors and economies and continued investment in the renewable energy sector is expected to generate 20 million additional jobs between now and 2030.

And this isn’t just about increased funding for cutting-edge research into new technology.  We already have the tools to start the transition to low carbon. We just need to pump some cash into it to make it fly.

The scale of investment required has been estimated in the UNEP Global Green New Deal policy brief as $750 billion - a quarter of the $3 trillion of stimulus packages around the world.  And this investment should be coupled with some fundamental public policy changes, at both national and international levels.  The UNEP brief outlines the types of changes required on both scales.  More specifically, the Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP) details 180 policy changes which the new U.S. president must make in order to facilitate the transition to a green economy.

In short, it can be done; we just have to do it.

I don’t know if this is something I should admit, but deep down inside me, somewhere underneath the love of flying to exotic countries and the convenience of driving a petrol-fuelled car and all those other carbon-hungry things I take for granted, there’s a part of me that finds this really exciting. 

 

Since the days of watching the 90s cartoon Captain Planet (“he’s our hero – gonna take pollution down to zero”) I told everyone I met I wanted to save the world.  Now, with the human race on a trajectory to self-destruction… I think we might just have to!

This Saturday, 28th March 2009, at 8:30pm it’s WWF’s Earth Hour - your chance to show you give a damn.  Sign up and switch off.