A long time ago, when I was a child growing up in Yorkshire, and there was no internet, no social media, no mobile phone, no 24/7 news channels, no Sky Sports, I had to wait till the morning paper arrived to learn how my cricket team had fared.
Three years in a row, 1966-1968, Yorkshire won the County Championship, making this nine-to-11-year-old very happy, and making heroes of Geoff Boycott, Brian Close, Freddie Trueman, Ray Illingworth and more.
Indeed, though in general I don’t subscribe to the “never meet your heroes” theory of life – I played with Diego Maradona, don’t you know, and his heroism grew with every moment we spent together – perhaps Boycott is an exception to my rule. I got to know him later in life… fair to say his political views are a tough listen.
I tell this not to satisfy my habit of mentioning Maradona at least once every day, but to tell you that after reading the cricket scores first thing in the morning, I would then turn the page to the weather reports. In addition to being obsessed with the cricket, I was interested to see if Tiree, the Hebridean island my father came from, and which we visited each year, was maintaining its crown as the sunniest place in Britain. Most summer days, it did.
But what I remember above all was how the “hottest place in Britain”, usually in the south of England, tended to be in the low-to-mid-70s Fahrenheit.
My own children are all in their 30s now, and just as they cannot really imagine a world without the internet, social media, mobile phone, 24/7 news and Sky Sports, so the idea that 72 degrees (22 Celsius in new money) was considered “hot” feels like something from another age. Which it was.
Follow the news, and it is tempting to think we are living in the Age of Trump. Listen to the tech bro Masters of the Universe, and you might think we are living through the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Watch the spread of autocracy, and maybe it is the end of democracy that will define this period of history. Let’s hope not.
But surely, what we are actually living through is the Age of the Climate Crisis and, as the EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen said rather terrifyingly when we spoke last week, we might already have passed the point of no return.
Suggested Reading
My airport row with a Trump supporter
Also, have you noticed – oh yes, I can always find a Brexit angle – how the people who most volubly reject the idea that global warming is the threat that clearly it is are by and large those who told us 10 years ago that leaving the European Union was going to make our lives so much better?
The facts point clearly to the judgment that Brexit was a failure; the facts point clearly to a pending catastrophe on the climate front, yet somehow the self-same people manage to con enough of their fellow citizens into believing that self-harm – economic and political in the case of Brexit, existential so far as the climate goes – is really good for them.
Maybe it is the Age of Unreality we are living through. Whatever we call it, it is bloody dangerous, and there is an especially hot place in hell awaiting those who, for their own political or financial interests, lie, cheat and try to fool us all, simply to stop the inexorable clean transition so they can sell the last molecule of oil, gas and coal for a profit, damn the consequences. Memo to Saint Peter – call it the Brexit/Climate corner.
So, according to the Lancet Countdown Report, extreme heat kills an average of one person per minute (more in recent days). The World Bank, meanwhile, reckons an additional 15 million people will die in low- and middle-income countries from climate-related causes by 2050 if current trends continue.
All the more shocking, then, that so many politicians, chief among them the US president, and Richard Stupid Tice here, boost the climate-denial cause. However, for all the noise they make, not only are they on the wrong side of history; they are on the wrong side of public opinion, too.
I am indebted to the Potential Energy Coalition for their report, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which analysed the views of 83,000 people in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy and Canada. In all of those countries, despite the issue falling down the political and media agenda, support for action on the climate, and a belief that the crisis is real, have remained very strong.
In Trump’s US, 88% say climate change is real and happening, 69% support immediate government action, and 72% support immediate action to build more clean energy. In the UK, the figures are even higher, including among people on the right.
What the report also highlights, however, is that the communications on climate need to change. The phrase “net zero” (note to self) is little understood, and not much loved. Talk of bans, mandates and disruption likewise does little to shift the dial of public opinion. Happily, it is when we highlight the brutal realities of climate change – risk to life, oceans and nature, greater deadly pollution, disastrous consequences for health, impact on affordability, threat to energy security, and to future generations – that support for action rises, by as much as 10 percentage points, across the six countries studied.
Suggested Reading
My journey to see what makes the Finns so happy
The dial has moved backward in part because of the organised and well-funded campaigning of the fossil fuel industry, and the political and rhetorical power of people like Trump doing their dirty work for them. It has led to a fall in confidence among those on the other side of the argument, despite the advantage of having right on their side. Another parallel with Brexit there… the campaign having been won by liars and charlatans, the losers broadly gave up the fight. That has not served us well. A similar approach on climate would be a whole lot more damaging. Time to fight back harder on both.
The media in France, where I was for a couple of days last week, was wall-to-wall weather, with a bit of World Cup thrown in, including the sad news that French coach Didier Deschamps had to miss their final group game to fly home on learning that his mother had died.
The climate debate threw up yet one more issue for polarisation… air conditioning! Hard right leader Marine Le Pen is in favour of a huge national AC installation plan; hard left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is against, saying it will lead to even greater carbon emissions. I would love to know if there is anything, anything at all, on which they might actually agree.
What a delight to interview BBC Russia editor Steve Rosenberg on The Rest Is Politics LEADING last week, not just for his insights into life under Vladimir Putin, but for his love of music. Steve, like me an ABBA devotee, is a gifted pianist, and a huge fan of the Eurovision Song Contest. Each year he creates his own piece of music based on all the entries, which are, let’s be honest, of variable quality.
But I wonder whether we might have a new and very exciting addition to the Eurovision scene. Canada has become a full member of the European Broadcasting Union, and so is eligible to enter the song contest. Call up Céline Dion, Canada. Surefire winner. And then next step, apply to join not just the EBU, but the EU itself. Douze points all round.
