The Earth from space. Photograph: Corbis
Stirring stuff in G2 today about how we've got 100 months from today before we "could reach a tipping point that sees the beginnings of runaway climate change" - should we not act urgently to curb our greenhouse gas emissions.
The call to arms is written by Andrew Simms and Dr Victoria Johnson from the New Economics Foundation, a thinktank (or rather a "do"-tank, as it likes to say) that "believes in economics as if people and the planet mattered". It forms a central plank of the Green New Deal, an attempt launched last week by a series of environmentalists and economists, including the Guardian's economics editor Larry Elliott, to kickstart serious reforms "the like of which has not, yet, been considered by politicians".
As the group pointed out in its launch press release, these are exceptional times:
The global economy is facing a 'triple crunch': a combination of a credit-fuelled financial crisis, accelerating climate change and soaring energy prices underpinned by encroaching peak oil. It is increasingly clear that these three overlapping events threaten to develop into a perfect storm, the like of which has not been seen since the great depression, with potentially devastating consequences.
One Hundreds Months aims to stir us from our collective slumber by, as the authors say, metaphorically shouting "fire" in the theatre:
Wherever you find yourself in life, there's nothing like a deadline to get things done. There is now a different clock to watch than the one on the office wall at work. Contrary to being a counsel of despair, it tells us that everything we do from now matters. And, possibly more so than at any other time in recent history.
Look to history, they say. We have faced many great challenges before and, ultimately, rallied round to see them off:
Under different circumstances, Britain achieved astonishing things whilst preparing for, fighting and recovering from the second world war. In just six years between 1938 and 1944, the economy was re-engineered and there were dramatic cuts in resource use and household consumption.
These coincided with rising life expectancy and falling infant mortality. We consumed less of almost everything, but ate more healthily and used our disposable income on what, today, we might call 'low-carbon good times'. The public largely assented to measures to curb consumption because they understood the need for action and that any restrictions were to ensure, 'the fairest possible distribution of the necessities and comforts of daily life.'
If you agree that climate change is a clear and present danger, then it's hard to argue against the vast majority of what the Green New Dealers are saying. But will we - a super-cynical, self-centric society - really be moved by this sort of Churchillian rhetoric?
Is it a sensible strategy to set headline-grabbing, conveniently rounded deadlines such as One Hundred Months? Is there a danger of crying wolf and only reinforcing the current political inertia that prevents us from enacting the meaningful and urgent changes so evidently required? What will be the catalyst that ultimately motivates this change?
