Alarm bell ringers not heard enough by politicians

Logical arguments aren’t doing enough to force governments to take meaningful climate action.   Over decades, thousands of scientists have painted an ever-bleaker picture of the horror we are driving towards, but our crash course remains set.   In that time, economists, insurers, doctors, environmental campaigners and innumerable other experts have all begun to ring the alarm bells over the cascading crises which would be addressed by slashing emissions, moving to clean energy and transport and returning more land and sea to nature.   Yet politicians stubbornly incentivise further fossil fuel production, locking in untold suffering for much of the life on our planet.   Today, a lot of this political posturing is rooted in what we recognise today as “the culture war”.

Politicians are experts at prising apart divisions or using distractions when it comes to the pursuit of power, and in doing so, force smaller party divides into uncrossable ideological gulfs.

 They have a much less impressive record when it comes to taking the initiative to move beyond not just their own comfort zones, but beyond the immediate opportunities for profiteering in the short term – in this case through deep and longstanding ties with the fossil fuel industry.

 In order to counter this power, those wishing to save what remains of the natural world must move beyond the logical reasons for saving it, and help foster a new, positive, ideological-divide-crossing cultural identity in which the natural world is celebrated, and fossil fuels, and the excuses under which they continue to be made available, are reviled.