THE LEX COLUMN

Special edition: part 5 of 5

Journalists didn’t help much, at first. They framed news with what businessmen thought possible, and even when they weren’t being quoted, industry-funded denialists found an echo chamber. Allegedly radical papers ran ads for airlines, which were set to account for a third of British emissions by 2050. And the only solutions they touted were hopelessly piecemeal. As scientists warned, the contrast with apocalyptic news reports made public action seem “futile and in some cases too late to make a difference.” It wasn’t. We just had to dare to become radical. Once growth as we knew it was toast, and the economy crumbled, our paradigm was shifting by itself.

When the news agenda switched to public service, it helped activists reframe debate. Appeals to materialism were ditched in favour of empathy, for each other and our children as much as the growing proportion of have-nots. Rather than distracting us with lifestyle porn, newspapers made pin-ups of campaigners. There were no magic answers, but neglected research went mainstream, making common-sense policies more viable. The government promptly adopted them, and regime change started at home. Even investors accepted that human life was worth more than making money.

We, the people, had more power than our leaders led us to believe. Not only could we do things differently, we could do our bit to make us make them make us. We didn’t have to dream up new solutions; we just had to see that they were needed, and accept the painful truth that change was coming, like it or not. You can’t solve a problem with the mindset that spawned it. As pennies dropped with the pound, protest snowballed, and mass movements rolled it out constructively. Another world was possible, eventually. We only had to find the will to make it.