The devastating Los Angeles firestorms show that climate realities are relentlessly becoming more extreme. Deniers dispute the science. But scientists warn that things will get even worse.
That means the public everywhere need ever firmer advice and guidance on what to do and how to prepare. But governments and corporates are still far from active enough in shaping the thinking and preparedness needed.
Baroness Julia Brown is Vice Chair of the UK Climate Change Committee. As LA’s fires still raged [Friday 10 January 2024]. she emphasised on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One the urgent need for a new narrative with a “clear view of what targets the government is aiming for”.
“We need to tell people about the solutions and not just depress them with the scale of the problem”, she urges. “Anxiety isn’t moving the dial in the right direction”.
While warnings about the escalating risks are crucial, they must be paired with hopeful, actionable messages for what must be done. These must inspire change and achievable solutions rather than despair. “Measurable objectives” must be defined urgently.
Presenter:
First of all, your reaction to the news about 2024 and bursting through, or going over, that 1.5 degree mark.
Baroness Brown:
The journal Nature at the beginning of this week said that the average global temperature in 2023 was off the record. There was a huge step up from 2022 to 2023. Now in 2024 it’s gone up further still, even though I think many of the climate scientists were thinking we might start to see the temperature dropping a bit in 2024.
So clearly it is hugely disappointing. It underlines the fact that we are very likely to hit that 1.5 degrees persistently before we reach 2030.
This emphasizes the urgency for action on both mitigation—reducing emissions—and adaptation – preparing ourselves for the changing weather.
Presenter:
Adaptation is one of the areas that you are an expert on, and that you are working on with the Climate Change Committee. How would you score the UK’s government’s efforts so far?
Baroness Brown:
We have a new government, and they haven’t yet pronounced on it. We were very disappointed with the third National Adaptation Programme from the previous government, and [we] made very strong recommendations back in March last year that it needed to be improved.
We absolutely need the government to give the country a strong vision for what a well-adapted UK looks like. That vision needs to have measurable objectives.
It needs to enable both citizens and businesses to know what the government will do to protect us from the changing climate. Also what we have to do ourselves, because government can’t do everything.
Some of that we have to take responsibility for ourselves. But unless we have a clear view of what targets the government is aiming for it’s very difficult for people to understand what it is they might need to be doing.
Presenter:
Looking at the practicalities of adaptation. [In Los Angeles] there’s an astonishing estimate of $150 billion worth of losses because of fires —fires which it is widely said have been heated up, or made more intense, by climate change. Do you foresee in the near future [the] impossibility of placing people in certain areas? For example, saying Los Angeles is
simply uninhabitable, or here in Britain, saying that some coastal areas are no longer practical for habitation?
Baroness Brown:
I think that will be true. We already have that situation off the coast of Wales, where the sea level rise and the increasing storminess mean there are places where it’s not going to be feasible to protect people living there in the future.
But we can do good things with that. We can reinstate wetlands and ensure that we give land back to nature, improving biodiversity and actually creating wonderful places for people to visit, even if we can’t use those places for people to live. So we need plans that enable us to make the best of these changes and even gain some benefits from them.
Presenter:
People of a certain age – and I think that’s probably you and me in particular – will remember an arc of alarm about climate change. There was an awful lot of alarm and what felt like action early on. [But] it now seems as if the calls from scientists are falling on somewhat deaf ears. It’s rather difficult now to get through to people about the changes that are happening and the threats. Are you concerned about the messaging and whether or not people are still listening?
Baroness Brown:
I’m very concerned about that. I’m very concerned because we know it is making our young people very anxious. But I’m also concerned that while we’re making people anxious, we don’t appear to be making them take action.
The Environment Agency does regular surveys of people’s preparedness for flooding—people who live in flood risk areas. The most recent survey for our last report on the UK’s preparedness suggested that people were less prepared than they had been in the previous survey.
Now, that’s one data point and not necessarily a trend. But it certainly says that all of this information and anxiety isn’t moving the dial in the
right direction. It certainly isn’t making people more likely to take action, and that is really worrying.
Presenter:
Do you have any thoughts on how that could be changed?
Baroness Brown:
I think we have to give people hope. I think, you know, all of these things are worrying. And of course, telling people about the awful things that might happen is dismal. People do tend to shut down when faced with such negativity.
So I think we need to show them the positives that could come if we take the right actions.
For example, many of our cities are significantly at risk from surface water flooding. The latest analysis from the Environment Agency shows an increase in risk. But addressing that risk means creating more parks and more green spaces in our city centres, which is a real positive for the people who live there.
We need to tell people about the solutions and not just depress them with the scale of the problem.
This transcript has been lightly edited.
Listen to the whole interview HERE>
