June was the hottest month on record globally. Heat waves are tearing through Europe and the United States. Torrential rain led to floods in America and throughout Asia. Drought in Uruguay has left the poorest with no water supply.
Extreme weather events so numerous they can hardly be listed. Some 10 million acres burned in the United States, 30 million in Canada. Australia has swung from having three years of torrential rain and floods to the hottest, driest year on record.
“Climate change is out of control,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres when data showed that average world temperatures in the previous seven days pointed to the hottest week on record. “If we persist in delaying key measures that are needed, I think we are moving into a catastrophic situation.”
So how did governments respond to this cry from the heart? Rishi Sunak’s government abandoned its commitment to net zero funding for countries affected by climate change. Labour leader Keir Starmer told Just Stop Oil protesters that he is “on the side of economic growth” after putting his party’s climate action plan on the back burner.
The International Energy Agency warned before the Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 that no new oil and gas exploration should take place if the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures.
But now both main UK parties are committed to enabling new North Sea oil and gas production. The government has delayed allowing Equinor (the Norwegian national oil corporation) to start producing from the Rosebank oil field east of Shetland, with reserves of around 500 million barrels. But it seems inevitable they will do it after the July recess. And Starmer is now on board with that.
The same story across the world. The Indian capital Delhi (and beyond) flooded when the River Yamuna reached its highest ever level and the levees were breached. More than 100 people are dead and thousands of homes and businesses destroyed. But the Indian government had more important things to focus on like overseeing the launch of the country’s first moon rocket.
Japan’s test space rocket launched in the same week unfortunately blew up – distracting attention from rain and massive floods.
A heat dome is covering the southern United States. People are dropping dead from the heat, and the poorest who can’t afford air conditioning are sweltering in their homes, having been told to stay off the streets.
But the Biden Administration has auctioned off more licences for oil and gas drilling than Trump. They have permitted 1.6 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico with more to come, and also licensed the so-called “Willow Project”, where Conoco Phillips will drill in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.
In March this year, the International Panel on Climate Change published a summary report, which stated as one of the key headlines:
Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health (very high confidence). There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all (very high confidence). Climate resilient development integrates adaptation and mitigation to advance sustainable development for all, and is enabled by increased international cooperation including improved access to adequate financial resources, particularly for vulnerable regions, sectors and groups, and inclusive governance and coordinated policies (high confidence). The choices and actions implemented in this decade will have impacts now and for thousands of years (high confidence).
But it seems that governments just have to get on with the important things – busy, busy, busy.
This is quite simply a global insult to the people of the planet, and you could say, to nature itself. There is nothing that will make these governments act on the climate emergency. And that is because they do not exist to do that. They exist to enable global corporations to continue business as usual and they plan to go right on doing that.
The ultimate insult, the final nail in the coffin of UN climate talks, came when it was announced that Sultan Al Jaber, boss of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc), the 12th largest oil company in the world, will chair the COP28 meeting in Dubai later this year.
This is what Al Jaber told an oil industry meeting: “The oil and gas industry will have to invest over $600bn every year until 2030 just to keep up with the expected demand. Renewable energy is the fastest growing segment of the energy mix but oil and gas is still the biggest and will be for decades to come. The future is clean but it is not here yet. We must make progress with pragmatism.” This is the exact opposite of what the IPCC is arguing.
Campaigners and activists, particularly of the younger generation, are desperately and bravely trying to defend humanity and the planet with civil disobedience and protests. Governments respond by passing draconian anti-protest laws.
Just Stop Oil and Insulate Britain campaigners are serving long jail sentences and often held in prison for weeks, even months, before coming to trial. Two campaigners were jailed for seven weeks by a judge because they defied his instruction not to mention climate change in their defence.
Others are taking governments to court, trying to show that inaction on climate change breaks laws on environmental protection and human rights. The campaign group Uplift plan on court action if the Tories approve Rosebank.
However, these campaigns are focused on achieving the impossible – that is making governments change course. What we actually need is a new economic and social order, where the people of the planet determine how energy is produced, how it is used and what it is used for – in other words an economic transformation ending production for profit.
But that means that we also have to bring about a new political order, because our governments and the corporations that call the tune are determined not to change the economic model, disgusting as it is.
Extinction Rebellion had the right idea when they spoke about the need for local assemblies but the proposal needs to be developed and expanded. Linking the climate crisis to all the things people are facing – the cost of living, rising interest rates, poverty, the destruction of the NHS – would be a way ahead.
There has to be a political alternative which the election next year will not deliver. Bringing climate activists, public sector strikers, local campaigns on everything from education and drug deaths to child poverty together into a mass movement for change would be a way of filling the political vacuum (and the political vacuity).
The organisational form for this change is up for discussion, but could be the formation of popular assemblies, where we could challenge the existing state with a view to making a transition to real democracy. Repeated across the planet, in a wave like Occupy and the Arab Spring, but learning the lessons of those experiences, can hold the answer to humanity’s survival.