Time to reset the clock on climate crisis

It is a sobering thought that the dip in carbon dioxide emissions over the last 12 months, falling up to 17% due to the pandemic, meant the world was back to 2006 levels for the year. The same year incidentally that Sir Nicholas Stern's prophetic report for the UK government advised that if we acted then crisis could be averted and to delay would cost more. Sir Nicholas's words were largely ignored, as humanity continued consuming more and dashing like lemmings toward the cliff edge. Humanity continues to consume more, choking up the very planet we depend upon for life. The avalanche of plastic, both in land and across oceans offers a very good example of this process in action. The political class have begun to stir, resulting in the Paris agreement in 2015. But as Greta Thurnberg points out, they have then failed to deliver on those promises. At local level there have been climate emergencies declared but time is running out. Covid has shown what a crisis really looks like and the mobilisation needed to counter it, The government has moved to invest in the development of green infrastructure but is it too little too late? Following the 2008 financial crisis there were radical measures taken to kick start the economy. Among these were the feed in tariff scheme to encourage people to put solar panels on their roofs. There was a big take up. Polluting cars were taken off the roads in their thousands. Then though came the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition. Conservative leader David Cameron made much of his green credentials, being pictured famously with huskies in Greenland but the empty promises were exposed once he got in office, later being quoted as calling for “the ditching of the green crap.” The feed in tariff and other progressive moves have been phased out by a series of Conservative governments. The green economy is where the jobs, as well as the future of the planet reside. Wanstead Climate Action recently highlighted how green jobs could help replace job lost over the period of the pandemic. Thousands of jobs can be created in this sector in Redbridge and beyond across East London. The Green New Deal UK has estimated that 1.2 million green jobs could be created across the UK over the next two years at a cost of £68 billion. The opportunity is there to create good jobs as part of a move into the growing sector of sustainable living. The climate crisis is on us. The Covid pandemic offers an opportunity to take stock and reset the clock. Part of that process must involve fundamentally changing the way in which we live. This means making real change in the way we live and work, failure to so means lurching ever closer to that precipice.