We need proactive governments to save our climate

June 28, 2024

As Julian Cribb observes, we have, for 9,000 years, been living in a uniquely stable climate. Within current lifetimes urban consumers in developed economies have lost all awareness of the risk to them of famine. But this risk is real: the UN Food Program is calling a global food crisis. This situation will exacerbate as the changing climate reduces crop yields further. As Cribb reports, irreversible tipping points are already being crossed with permafrost melting, seabed methane dissolving, and more.

Developed-world governments seem to assume that they can trim their climate policy sails to the changing political wind, but climatic conditions, and failing crops, are unlikely to respond within a convenient electoral timeframe. People may be resigned to accepting fires and floods as localised natural disasters, but famine strikes more widely and can present an imminent existential threat to an entire population.

If governments fail to act quickly to limit the existential threats climate change, and avert global famine, social cohesion could collapse. The Earth’s fate already hangs in the balance: only urgent reduction of carbon emissions can save it. Only proactive government can achieve those reductions. Without these now, as Cribb notes, our planetary goose will surely be cooked.