Is there a climate emergency?

There used to be a consensus that there is a ´climate emergency’. This consensus has now broken down as witnessed by the recent Council decisions to rescind their climate emergency declarations.

Here is a quick summary of the arguments on both sides.

The view that climate change is an emergency is founded on scientific evidence that the predicted changes in climate will have catastrophic impacts on how we live. Greenhouse gas emissions are also cumulative and this means we will reach tipping points that can’t be reversed. An example would be the melting of the Greenland ice sheet which could cause sea levels to rise by a few metres. If we don’t take action now we won’t be able to stop the worst impacts occurring.

It is also argued that we are already seeing changes that are serious threats to wildlife and biodiversity, farming, food supplies and national security. Even the strongest opponents of the idea of a ´climate emergency’ have to concede that we are seeing very unusual events throughout the world and in Suffolk climate change is, for example, a significant problem for our farmers.

There are a number of different arguments being used to claim that climate change is not an emergency but interestingly they don’t attempt to challenge the argument about the potential consequences.

The process of climate change has been taking place over decades so the argument is that it can’t be an emergency as it is effectively a day to day ‘business as usual problem’.

It is argued that net zero dogma is also enabling some poor decision making. There is clearly legitimate debate about the merits of any particular policy area and a lot of the current solutions can appear remote from the concerns of communities. The scientific argument is that we must radically reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in total - how we do it is an open debate.

Another argument is that constant treatment of climate change as an emergency is not good for people’s mental health and is creating a constant state of anxiety especially for younger people. This is something we need to avoid though it’s difficult to know how the worry over uncertainty can ever be eliminated.

It’s often stated that the UK only accounts for 1% of global emissions so it doesn’t make much difference what we do compared to somewhere like China. There is no doubt that each person and each country only has a minor role to play but little can happen unless there is collective action on a global scale. In fact China with its vast population ranks in the middle of the top 20 industrial nations per person only a bit above the UK. Moreover we have effectively outsourced a lot of our emissions to China.

Wherever you stand on this argument it is sobering to think we will never live through a period where the climate will be as stable as it has been over the last decade.