Chapter Fifteen - Climate Risk And The Policy Discourse

Summary

“The best way to predict your future is to invent it.”

—Computer scientist Alan Kay

As I write this final chapter in mid-summer of 2022, the world is embroiled in geopolitical and financial instability from the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war on Ukraine. In the midst of this instability, we are seeing the inevitable clash between alarming proclamations about the climate crisis, the priorities of food and energy and poverty reduction, and the costs and difficulties of transitioning to net-zero CO₂ emissions.

Recent headlines include:

• • “German cities impose cold showers and turn off lights amid Russian gas crisis”

• • “Hungary declares state of emergency over threat of energy shortages”

• • “Almost half of UK adults fear falling into fuel poverty before the years end”

• • “The West's Green Delusions Empowered Putin”

• • “Russia's war is the end of climate policy as we know it”

• • “Trudeau moves forward with fertilizer reduction climate policy”

• • “Why Dutch farmers are protesting over emissions cuts”

• • “Ireland debates a 30% emissions cap on farmers”

• • “Green dogma behind fall of Sri Lanka”

• • “Rich countries’ climate policies are colonialism in green”

• • “Barbados Resists Climate Colonialism in an Effort to Survive the Costs of Global Warming”

• • “African nations expected to make case for big rise in fossil fuel output”

• • “UN climate talks end in stalemate and ‘hypocrisy’ allegation”

How to respond to the climate “crisis” in the midst of genuine crises associated with food and energy shortages and the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is best reflected by the response of the New Zealand government. In defending its decision to issue fossil fuel prospecting permits in spite of declaring a climate emergency, the New Zealand government stated that the climate crisis was “insufficient” to halt oil and gas exploration. Climate change is indeed a crisis of insufficient weight that is now being all but ignored by many countries as they grapple with the basic human needs for energy and food.

In 2015, the world's nations agreed on a set of 17 interlinked Sustainable Development Goals to support future global development.16 These goals include, in ranked order:

1. No poverty

2. Zero hunger

7. Affordable and clean energy

13. Climate action

Should one element of Goal 13, related to net-zero emissions, trump the higher priority goals of poverty and hunger and the availability of energy?