Around my parents’ home on England’s south coast, global warming is proceeding so benignly that French champagne houses are buying up tracts of local hillsides. Trends like this have helped to temper the global north’s response to climate change over the last 30 years. “Global warming is a terrible thing,” we tell ourselves. “But its main victims will tragically be in the poorer countries. Canadian mangoes anyone?”
Harrowing images of Australian bushfires and Californian wildfires should be blowing a hole in such complacency. But they also crystallise how hard it is for democracies to mobilise public action. If images of Sydney enshrouded in smoke, or Napa Valley in flames, cannot arouse the voter’s imagination, what will? Those hoping the world’s wealthiest countries will take more of a lead on climate change must confront three hard truths.
The first is that politicians struggle to look beyond the electoral cycle. It is hard enough for a government to invest in education, which can take years to show results. It is that much more difficult to take unpopular actions to reduce carbon dioxide output that might take generations to bear fruit, and even then go unrecognised.