As the latest Bond movie makes clear, there’s No Time To Die. We’re all so busy coping with life - startling energy bills increase (mine jumps from £380 a year to £521) or figuring out what to eat now £20 a week has been scythed off Universal Credit – that it’s hard to focus on making our leaders cut carbon to keep global warming below 1.5C.
If you were told you needed to lose weight in nine years’ time, would you: (a) start now, (b) put it off, (c) assume you’ll figure something out when the deadline’s a bit closer? At the last big climate meeting, held in Paris, to forestall world leaders’ tendency to pick that third choice, the 169 signatory countries were asked to create their own carbon-cutting plans, known as NDCs.
NDCs are plans with big promises: the UK has to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 72 per cent by 2030 and play its “fair share” in the global effort to end extreme poverty via the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals. Most plans have deadlines in 2025 and 2030, though China aims to be net zero by 2060.
Here in Islington we have a zero carbon policy for 2030, but without a massive insulating roll out and gas boiler replacement, for social and private housing, it is way off track. To help us focus Islington wants people to #BeTheSolution during its Greener Together Festival from October 18-29, see islingtonlife.london/togethergreener
“How can we sort out this climate crisis?” asks my neighbour, Jane. That’s easy: there are plenty of lifestyle changes to try, but we also need our governments to insulate; end built-in obsolescence; stop opening new coal mines and switch from neo-liberalism to a circular economy. Jane thinks bringing deadlines forward would focus minds.
We’ve solved the climate crisis over a sandwich, but I hope to find out many other ideas when I join Brake The Cycle to pedal 400 miles from London to Glasgow for the COP26 meeting next month.
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