I think we have all the tools we need now
to stave off real terrible climate suffering.
I think the problem is essentially a problem
of political economy.
It used to be the case that there was a kind
of strong economic conventional wisdom that
said that action on climate would be quite
expensive, both in the sense of upfront investment
and in the sense of foregoing economic growth,
because you'd have to say stop burning coal
before the coal plant was actually ready for
retirement.
But there's a huge amount of new research
in this area that reverses that logic completely,
which says that faster action on climate would
offer huge economic payoffs in a quite short
term way.
There was one big study in 2018 that said
we could add $26 trillion to the global economy
just by 2030 through rapid decarbonisation.
I think that estimate might be a little rosy,
but it suggests just how completely this conventional
wisdom has flipped just in the last few years.
I don't think that understanding has yet risen
up to the level of our policymakers, who are
still a little bit bound by the earlier perspective
that we'd have to forego economic growth to
take action, but I think it will get to them
soon, and I think our policy and our politics
will change actually quite dramatically when
that happens.
So I don't think it's a question of money.
I really think it's a question of political
will.
Through the green energy we have now, through
the knowledge we have about infrastructure
and agriculture, it is within our power to
take action and avert our worst case outcomes.
It will always be the case that what damage
is being done to the planet, we are doing
ourselves.
That is a sign of just how much power we have
over the climate, and we could channel that
power towards action against global warming,
rather than in the direction of more carbon
emissions.
We'd be in a much better place.
And at the moment there's great excitement
and movement on climate.
I'm heartened by that.
I think there's reason for optimism.
But it's not happening fast enough.
We really need to take action very, very quickly.
The Secretary General of the UN says that
we need a global mobilization against climate
at the scale of World War II beginning this
year, 2019.
And so when the numbers of people who believe
in climate change and are worried about it,
they've jumped 15 points in a few years.
That's incredible.
It's almost unheard of in political science.
By the measure of political science, that
change is happening very fast.
But we need much faster change even than that.
We need to start right now, and our politics
is not yet responsive at that level.
