Introducing the National Climate and Nature Emergency Briefing to a packed Westminster Central Hall last Thursday morning. Chris Packham noted that this was the first briefing of its kind, aiming to present the facts from eminent scientists aimed at “decision makers”; MPs, Local Authority, business, faith and union leaders, cultural influencers, so that the state of the crisis can be fully appreciated and acted upon with the level of urgency that it demands.

It is little short of a scandal that this briefing had to be generated from the bottom up, when it is an obligation of all countries that have signed the Paris Agreement – under Article 12 – to educate their population on the nature and state of the crisis and the measures needed to deal with it. This should be being done by the government, and by the media.

The follow up campaigning from this Briefing is aimed at getting them to do just that, putting a similar event on all major TV channels with a proper level of government support. Everyone should sign their letter demanding that. Link here.

Packham stressed the importance of following the science, and noted the failures to do so that have just come out in the Covid inquiry. The delay to the first lockdown against scientific advice. The “eat out to help out” scheme, devised by Rishi Sunak in the Treasury, with no scientific input at all, both of which led to unecessary deaths. In the case of climate breakdown, ignoring the science will repeat the history, but this time as even more of a tragedy and even less of a farce.

There were nine speakers emphasising different aspects of the crisis, which overlapped in places. I’m summarising here, with a few additional comments.

Professor Natalie Seddon argued that Nature should be seen as “critical national infrastructure”. The UK is in the bottom 10% of most nature depleted countries, with an overall decline of 19% in wildlfie abundance since 1970, only 3% of land area protected and only 25% of peatlands, 14% of rivers and 7% of woodlands considered to be in a healthy condition.

Without the restoration of peatlands and wetlands and measures in urban areas like Copenhagen’s Sponge Parks, the 5 million properties currently at risk of flooding will grow in number and frequency of risk.

The benefits for mental, and physical, health from access to nature and urban green space is recognised by the more than 50% of people who think that the government isn’t doing enough to regenerate it; and the paradox of trying to “build, baby build” by removing environmental regulations on developers is that nature depletion through short termist eco system degradation damages GDP.

Professor Kevin Anderson laid out the bare bones of Greenhouse gas emissions in a way that pointed to the intense weather, social, economic and political turbulence we are heading into at pace.

He noted that the range of variation in GHG emisisons during the ice ages, from deepest ice age to warm interglacial periods, was no more tha 100 parts per million (PPM). During the Anthropocene, the entire period from about 10,000 years ago to the last two centuries, the variation was no more than 20 PPM. Since 1750, the increase has been from 280 PPM to 425 PPM – 145 PPM (half as much again as between ice age and interglacial) in just 300 years. And its still rising. The central – absurd – contention of climate change denial is that this has no impact.

An average global temperature rise of 2C will be extermely dangerous. Current climate impacts are at 1.4C. Getting to 3C or 4C poses generalised social and economic breakdown and war.

The remaining “Carbon Budget”, the amount of total extra emissions allowed before a temperature limit is breached is 130 Gigatonnes for 1.5C. At present rates of emisison, that will be breached in three years. It is 530 GT for 2C. That will be breached in 13 years at current emissions. Current projections are that emissions will begin to fall this decade, but at a rate far too slow to avoid these breaches.

Emissions would have to fall 20% a year to save 1.5C and 8% a year for 2C.

The UK tends to be self congratulatory about its record, but has only reduced emissions at a rate of 0.6% a year since 1990. To meet an equitable target, as a wealthy country with a long record of carbon emisisons that are way higher than its global fair share, it would have to reach zero carbon emissions by 2039 and reduce them at a rate of 13% a year to get there. On this basis, the Net Zero by 2050 target allows the UK to have three times its fair share of carbon emissions; so a bit more humility about “global leadership” might be in order.

Doing this requires the right kind of technology and changes in social norms.

We need to go flat out for renewable energy, electric transport and insualtion, while avoiding “delay technologies” like Carbon Capture and Storage (which has been hyped for thirty years but only managed to sequester 0.03% of fossil fuel emissions in 2024). These tend to be high cost (for us) and high profit (for owners).

The damage done by the discretionary income of high income, high emitting people has to be confronted as we need a society of “private sufficiency and public luxury”, as “it is now too late for non-radical futures”.

Professor Hayley Fowler examined oncoming weather impacts, pointing out that the climate we have now is “the least extreme climate you will experience in your lifetime” and that, so far, both rainstorms and heatwaves have been more intense than models have predicted.

Mega storms, in which 8 months worth of rain falls in a few days, are becoming more common. The damage done is unimaginable until it happens.

By 2050, on current trajectories, 1 in 4 homes would be at risk of flooding

Our current infrastructure is built for a world that no longer exists. So, if adaptation to whats coming isn’t built into all planning, we will be in a state of permanent crisis management, as “natural” disasters pile up and intensify. So, every pound spent now to avert as much of this as possible will save many pounds in having to deal with it.

Professor Tim Lenton explored Tipping Points. These are sudden dramatic shifts for the worse just from carrying on doing business as usual. As we are currently at 1.4C additional average global heating and heading for 1.5C by 2030, we are already seeing drastic impacts on coral reefs, the Amazon and methane emissions from melting permafrost in the Arctic. All these together have the potential for a runaway scale of emissions that will be beyond our ability to mitigate.

The biggest and most apocalyptic of these is the risk of overturning the Gulf Stream (AMOC), as the Greenland Ice Shelf pours billions of tonnes of cold fresh water into the North West Atlantic. All surveys show that the AMOC is weakening. The only question is how much and how fast. Some climate models for a 2C increase world project a situation in which the Arctic sea ice in February would reach as far as The Wash, average temperatures in London would be -20C – in Edinburgh -50C – with two frozen months in mid Winter. Summers, however, would be hotter than they are now. It would be impossible to grow food and there would be insufficient water to sustain the population in the South East in the Summer. Infrastructure engineered for a temperate climate would buckle under conditions more severe than currently in Irkutsk. That would mean most people from the UK would find themselves climate refugees: looking for a safe place in a world rapidly running out of them, as in this scenario, harvests from bread basket areas would halve.

Countering these prospects are the need to promote positive technological and social tipping points in power generation, transport, and residential emission, with strong mandates to phase out fossil fuel use.

Professor Paul Behrens looked in more detail at Food Supplies, noting that the Syrian civil war resulted from a several years long drought that forced farmers off the land into cities in conditions of precarity and poverty.

At present, the chance of a major crop failure in major bread basket areas is 1 year in every 16. When we get beyond a 1.5C increase, that comes down to 1 year in every 3. At 2C, its every other year. As we are certain to be beyond 1.5C by 2030, we are heading for hungry times – and everything that goes with them.

The UK has had 3 of its 5 worst recorded harvests in the last ten years. 80% of its farmers see climate change as a threat to their futures. At present the UK grows 54% of its food, so 46% is imported. 25% of UK food imports are from the Mediterranean region, which is being hit hard by climate change too.

A third of price inflation in 2023 was driven by climate impacts, helping generate an increasingly febrile politics. 40% of food experts believe widespread civil unrest linked to food shortages is ‘possible or likely’ in the UK within the next 10 years. Over 50 years, nearly 80% of experts believe civil unrest was either possible, more likely than not.

To avert this, we need a sharp shift in diet to eat a lot less meat. A mostly plant based diet would cut about 60% of UK agricultural emissions and free up a lot of land to grow more food as, at present in the UK, more than half of agricultural land is devoted to animal farming. This would also have positive health impacts, saving the NHS £55 million a year and his remark “if we don’t adapt, it will be forced upon us” drew a spontaneous round of applause.

This point was reinforced by Professor Hugh Montgomery’s contribution on Health, who noted that a shift to a plant based diet and more active travel would have a positive impact on strokes and cardiovascular, cancer, lung diseases, diabetes, and most other common illnesses and causes of death. At the same time, a consequent reduction on obesity could save the NHS up to £126 billion a year.

He also stressed that, as an emergency doctor, when faced with an emergency “you don’t treat it with words and homeopathy” and you have to be very frank with patients about what their situation is and whether they are prepared for the struggle to get through it.

He noted that actuaries, not climate scientists, have assessed that, in a 3C world there is a likelihood of 4 billion deaths from socio political failure (almost 1 in every 2 people) and concluded that we need “transformational change”.

At present, the food industry is concerned that it cannot rely on “predictability of supply”.

This was again underlined by Lt General Richard Nugee, speaking on National Security, who noted that food inflation is already at 4.9% and cited Alfred Henry Lewis’s 1906 remark that “There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.” He argued that climate change is a “threat multiplier” that parts of the world are becoming uninsurable and there is a grave risk of “cascading crises” which erode trust and social solidarity, overwhelming governments and undermining consent, leading to an ungovernable state. In this he echoed the assessment of the US military in 2019 that, as climate impacts broke down US society, the armed forces would be drawn in, first as emergency support, but inexorably taking on state functions as civil society broke down and, eventually, overwhelmed themselves.

More problematic was his stolid framing within the UKs current “defence” orthodoxy, enshrined in the Strategic Defence Review; which cements the UK’s alliance with the United States which, under the Trump adminstration, is a complete rogue state on climate; seeking “global energy dominance” by doubling down on fossil fuels and trying to drag the rest of the world down with it. Any country that allies with that, and everything that flows from it, is part of the problem.

While he hinted that “authoritarian populism” is a threat to “Western Democracy”, he did not specify whether he was referring to Trump and Farage as enemies within, or whether this was code for the conventional “rising powers” narrative directed at Russian and China that underpins the SDR – possibly both. This left him with an impossible contradiction; that its possible to spend an additional £77 billion a year on “defence” – the amount required to meet 5% of GDP – and at the same time invest enough to avert climate disaster within our existing economic system. It isn’t. And simply asserting that we “must” doesn’t resolve it. A choice has to be made between a military confrontation of choice, and global cooperation to avert climate breakdown and, as the General said himself. “Climate change is a threat now; and one thing I was taught in the military is that you have to face the threat in front of you as it actually is, not how you’d wish it to be”.

Professor Angela Francis looked at the economics of transformation, noting that “the status quo can seem attractive, even if its a dangerous place to be”, but the cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of action; and it won’t be cheaper later.

The All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Committee projection is that the UK’s current Net Zero by 2050 pathway would cost just 0.02% of GDP.

A fast transition would save the global economy $12 trillion of damage. A slow transition just $6 Trillion. No transition… just takes the hit.

An example of this is that energy price inflation would have been 11% lower had we made a faster shift to heat pumps. So, the damage from delay is already being felt.

She stressed that market economics takes the environment for granted. Stable weather. Fresh water. Free pollinators. Fertile soil. And that without regulation, any investment comes as an additional cost. So, strict regulation is essential.

Faced with the consequences of their actions, fossil fuel companies, could have diversified and shifted. Orsted is an example of one that has. But most haven’t, and are digging in on their core product, because fossil fuels are very profitable. We therefore need a massive, permanent windfall tax to make it less so.

Her final point that the transition has to be made to work for “low and middle income” people was underlined by Tessa Khan from Uplift, who noted that the decline of the North Sea, with half the jobs going in the last 15 years even as new investment continued, has to be met by a structured plan for transition to decent jobs in renewable energy and that electrification has to be more affordable than the status quo.

This can be done. Half the UKs recessions since the 1970s have been caused by fossil fuel price spikes. The cost of subsidising the spike in gas prices at the start of the Ukraine war was £64 billion and the additional costs to households and busiensses was another £60 billion. The UK is still dependent on gas to heat over 80% of its homes.

In an energy system based on renewables the fuel inputs from the sun and the wind are free forever. Prices for renewable technologies are falling steeply. Down 50% for offshore wind and 70% for solar and 80% for battery storage in the last ten years.

Renewables are more efficient that fossil fuels. A typical ICE car will only use 25% of its fuel to actually move its wheels and the FF system as a whole wastes about 2/3 of the energy that goes into it.

But, at this point, we need a lot of upfront investment to make the shift; upgrading the grid, shifting to heat pumps. That is a matter of political priorities and energy bills can be restructured to match the lower costs of renewable energy generation.

The governments plan for a million clean energy jobs in the electrification of our energy system needs investment to make it work comparable to the wholesale shift from town gas to natural gas that was done in just under ten years in the 60s and 70s.

A point nudged at here is that this would require the state to take back control of the sectors needed to do this. In the 60s, British Gas was a nationalised company. In the same period it was possible to build hundreds of thousands of affordable council homes because Local Authorities had substantial Direct Labour Organisations (and most architects worked for LAs). When Angela Francis talked of the need for “trusted” companies to carry out the wholesale insulation of housing that we need, she begged the question of which companies they might be – given the fragmentation and fly by night character of far too much of the current UK construction sector. To do the job, we need the right tools. We can’t do it with the broken ones we have.

Professor Tim Berners Lee, chairing and summing up set a challenge to “reset the national conversation” using the clips of the speeches and upcoming film that will be put on tour in the Spring arguing that the “survival of society” depends on a “WW2 level of leadership”, but that the necessary emergency legislation and investment will need consistent public pressure to challenge the misinformation and gaslighting and force the pace so that the UK can “come together and lead the world out of trouble…along with other proactive countries”. Although framed in traditional unreconstructed nostalgic British narratives (that terrible yearning to “lead the world”, when the UK did so much damage the last time it tried to) that recognition that that would have to be done with “other proactive countries” hints at a dawning recognition that geopolitical alignments will have to shift to respond adequately to the imperatives of the climate emergency.

He ended with the point that “hope is a dicipline” which, together with Brian Eno’s remark from the floor that “movements catch fire when they recognise themselves” are good thoughts to sustain us.

There is a further urgent point, implied by the Briefing but not explored by it. Kevin Anderson’s point about the pace at which climate limits are being breached overlaps with the impacts on food supply and severe weather impacts which are already developing. These warnings have usually been posed to political leaders as warnings. This is what will happen if you don’t react enough. The student protests before the pandemic had a similar focus. Here’s the truth. Act on it. These impacts are already beginning, and whatever is done now they are likely to deepen in the immediate future. This poses serious economic and political disruption.

The purpose of political formations like Reform, or Tommy Robinson’s current – here and elsewhere – and the reason they are so lavishly funded by the likes of Musk, is to make sure that the political response to that combines climate denial and xenophobia, to take the heat off the people who have caused the crisis and make us fight each other instead.

This poses a challenge to the labour movement both on how we resist this and, in conditions of social crisis, how we collectivise a response based on solidarity – whether thats to food shortages (which are usually managed by the market with price increases that further impoverish the poorest but could be addressed by rationing policed by unions taking control of resources in supermarkets and warehouses, in the event government doesn’t step up) or whole communities inundated by floods (which private insurance will no longer cover).

This is a link to the materials from the Briefing which can be used to get discussions going with people you know.