Climate change: what needs to be done

If we are to meet the challenge of generating political will, the climate conversation must involve everyone, from all professions and all walks of life. Political will is built into the base of society; it is not something that you can manufacture in the headlines or leave to those politicians we increasingly distrust.⇓

Our analysis of the climate issue is unusually clear. We know exactly what we need to do—construct a carbon neutral global energy system by the middle of the century.

We know how to do it—all the technologies and engineering knowledge we need to get there by that time are already available. We know we can afford it—the International Energy Agency estimated last year that the net cost of doing so might add only a couple of trillion dollars to what we will be investing in energy anyway over the next 25 years. That is a few tens of billions of dollars a year—I used to think that was a lot of money until the bankers taught me otherwise.

What we do not know is how to put the technology and capital together in a timely manner. Doing that will require political will. Political will is built by making clear the connection between what is happening to the climate and all the other interests and preoccupations that concern us in our daily lives. Health and security are two of the most important of those preoccupations. One of the bigger barriers to building the necessary political will is the tendency of the climate conversation to fall too quickly into the elephant trap of mind numbing detail and impenetrable acronyms. Far too often the climate narrative is framed in a way that …