We need to become comfortable making uncomfortable decisions if we don't want to rely on carbon removal to prevent climate catastrophe
We've grown accustomed to limitless consumption but will likely need to rekindle some wartime spirit of personal and national sacrifice to get a handle on the climate crisis
We didn’t know this at the time, but one of the most important by-products of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK was the normalisation of individual sacrifice for the greater good. What transpired in the years which followed was a surprise to many but for those steeped in the climate science over the past couple of decades: the accumulating climate crisis was fast becoming a pandemic and emergency action was needed.
The UK was just months before its latest general election in which the Conservatives, but for the Blair/Brown years, were defending their half a century stranglehold on power. Research published a decade earlier in 2019 illustrated the climate task at hand. Committed emissions from existing infrastructure - power plants, industrial facilities, transport, residential and commercial infrastructure, if operated for their economic lifetimes, would emit 658 billion tonnes of CO2 - far exceeding the 420 billion tonne carbon budget suggested by the IPCC in 2018 to have a likely chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. While the 2020’s were supposed to be the decade of climate action, it turned out to be more like the decade of climate discussion with little to show for it. In the aftermath of the hotly contested 2024 election, we saw what could only be desribed as a political reckoning and the birth of a new, centrist and pragmatic ‘climate first’ political movement, which would forever change the lifestyles of those in the UK and across the world.
Even with the commitment to ban new fossil-powered cars from 2030 and the drive to install heat pumps, the emissions of existing gas-fired boilers in millions of homes and the status symbol of gas-guzzling SUV’s from early in the decade were baked in. With a rapidly electrifying grid, the discussion started shifting to what consumers needed to do to not further accentuate the impeding climate catastrophe. This new climate movement, prompted not by the ‘Gen Z’ who had largely become dissilusioned and apathetic to the fight, but the youngest millenials who brought a renewed practical approach, putting forward once inconceivable climate policies which were now politically palatable and quickly gained popular support.
While large consumer purchasing decisions traditionally received the attention, lifestyle choices were rapidly coming to the fore, especially in light of carbon pricing which was largely seen as too lax and not having the desired effect fast enough. It all started with a proposed ban on frequent flier programs, which the Murdoch media quickly termed ‘the climate hysteria nanny state’. There were policy proposals for the new nanny state to encroach even further. World War III had been avoided but not the battle against climate change - that was only hotting up, literally. Talk of meat rations were back on the table - we couldn’t afford to divert resources away from our rapidly dwindling carbon budget to appease the meat and two veg of yesteryear.
Discussion of rations would go even further: air travel and restricting the use of existing petrol or diesel powered vehicles were also being actively discussed in this new political reality. The ration revolt against the new climate movement was real, but a growing majority of the British people, and across the world, grew to recognise that personal sacrifices were necessary for the greater good of addressing the climate crisis if we didn’t have to gamble on mass carbon removal to bring us back from the brink of disaster.
Lockdowns to get a handle on the Covid-19 pandemic were still fresh in memory, and had shaped the way we lived, worked and interacted in the years which followed. Now it was the climate’s turn - the world would not end if we ate only one portion of meat per week and took one flight per year. We’d ultimately be better for it. This thinking slowly permeated not just across the UK but the entire world. The mainstream political discourse and popular sentiment shifted to one of collective responsibility; especially as the climate crisis generation came of age into roles of political influence, brought this new climate movement to political victory in the UK’s 2029 election, and ultimately a new chapter in global collective action on climate.
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