THE LEX COLUMN

Special edition: part 1 of 5

If environmentalism had been a simple fad, we wouldn’t have lived to have others. Thankfully reason prevailed: it wasn’t just about fluffy animals. Faced with the likelihood of temperatures rising six degrees in our lifetimes, and rendering half the planet uninhabitable, human beings finally saw sense. The last time the world had warmed so much, and so quickly, was more than 250 million years ago, when almost everything died. This time, scientists warned, it could mean the end of billions of us.

For generations, we’d played Russian roulette with carbon, burning the uniquely dense energy stored in oil, gas and coal. We didn’t do this because we were mean, blind or indifferent to each other and our habitat. We may have been these things, and more, but we were also lucky. At least those of us were who enjoyed all the benefits of cheap energy: freedom of movement, freedom from cold and freedom from hunger, never mind the prospects for getting rich. Little wonder so few people felt like changing.

What made our age The Age of Stupid was how long we carried on deluding ourselves. For decades, it was clear where this was leading us, yet no one who had the power to change things did much to stop it. Of course, they met, and debated and wept, in some cases. But this was diplomacy at its worst: the lowest common denominator of cowardice. Leaders kept discussing what they thought was possible politically, not what science and human survival demanded. And they did this despite mounting evidence, which government reports compiled, and duly airbrushed out of policymaking.

Instead of decreasing as quickly as possible, emissions of greenhouse gases kept on rising. Our way of life had to change, in less than a decade, or the world’s warming climate would run away with itself. By 2009, some feared it might be already. Others said we could only prepare for the worst. It wasn’t a call to prayer exactly, but we did need faith, above all in ourselves.

That didn’t mean depending on hope, though without it things would have been hopeless. It still boggles the mind that we had to force our so-called leaders to act, since all the facts were out there to grasp. But this was the trap our civilisation had set itself: we knew everything except the way to save ourselves. And that was where ordinary people came in. Enough, millions said, and dominoes fell, starting with runways and coal-fired power plants, such as Kingsnorth, that made government promises so empty.

Everyone seemed to think it was someone else’s job to find an answer. The state deferred to companies, which waited to be told what to do. But when imaginations were stirred, consensus emerged. Our illusions about growth were shattered anyway, though we didn’t want to face the implications. At first, we were paralysed by fear, and greed, and every other excuse we could dream up for apathy. Just like the people who ran the world.

Yet if we wanted one to live on in the future, we had to stop spouting hot air, and start doing something more constructive. Asking what was the easy bit: we had to stop emitting carbon yesterday. The real answers were all in the how. We were the problem as well as the solution. None of us could do much alone, but unless we changed our own lives nothing would change. So we had to get the rules changed for all of us, and pledge to do something drastic if governments didn’t. That’s how a deal was struck in Denmark in December 2009.

So what is to be done now, people ask. Exactly what the public did before: uphold the Copenhagen Consensus. Be realistic and demand “the impossible” till it happens. And if it doesn’t, take action directly.