“Climate change has never received the crisis treatment from our
leaders, despite the fact that it carries the risk of destroying lives
on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings.
The cuts to our greenhouse gas emissions that scientists tell us are
necessary in order to greatly reduce the risk of catastrophe are treated
as nothing more than gentle suggestions, actions that can be put off
pretty much indefinitely. Clearly, what gets declared a crisis is an
expression of power and priorities as much as hard facts. But we need
not be spectators in all this: politicians aren’t the only ones with the
power to declare a crisis. Mass movements of regular people can declare
one too.
Slavery wasn’t a
crisis for British and American elites until abolitionism turned it into
one. Racial discrimination wasn’t a crisis until the civil rights
movement turned it into one. Sex discrimination wasn’t a crisis until
feminism turned it into one. Apartheid wasn’t a crisis until the
anti-apartheid movement turned it into one.
In the very same
way, if enough of us stop looking away and decide that climate change is
a crisis worthy of Marshall Plan levels of response, then it will
become one, and the political class will have to respond.”
As
she points out in the book, no one is out there to save us and
certainly not our political and business leaders (I shudder to use the
word "leader" in this context) so it is incumbent upon the public to
lead on the issue of the environment.
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