Super 2021 the future of everything depends on it

protecting planet earth is critical to

the future of

everything but if you focus on the

campaigning mantra of the green movement

you’d be forgiven for thinking that for

environmentalists the key to that future

is clinging to the past

stop hs2 ban fracking no third runways

ban plastic straws neonicotinoids and

chinese lanterns

stand with extinction rebellion and

bring london life to a halt

at first glance the green movement can

give the impression it’s all about

stopping things from happening and

returning to a simpler way of life

we call for curbs on international trade

in commodities like soya

cocoa beef and leather that drive

deforestation

and we call instead for localism and

fewer food miles

we oppose fast fashion and consumerism

and ask people to remember how to reuse

repair and recycle we draw lines on maps

that become protected areas and we

designate features within them to

preserve

even the name conservationist speaks of

a movement that’s all about

yesterday stop stop stop

and there’s no doubt about it we have to

look after our planet

better for the future of our society and

that means halting and reversing some of

the biggest trends associated with

modernity

we can’t go on living the way we have if

we want to go on living

for decades our demands on the earth

have exceeded our world’s ability to

sustain itself

we already use the equivalent of 1.7

earth’s worth of natural resources

and our use of materials is expected to

double by 2050.

so the most urgent priority for the

future of our planet is putting in place

the legal frameworks we need to halt

and reverse that train of destruction

and this was meant to be a big year for

stopping things

super 2020 the year the nations of the

world come together to strike three new

environmental agreements to secure the

future of our planet

first of all in lisbon portugal a global

oceans treaty

to protect the high seas

believe it or not there’s no

international agreement for protecting

our ocean in the area beyond national

jurisdiction

that’s 95 of our ocean completely

unprotected

[Music]

talks are intended to agree a new legal

instrument to protect areas of the ocean

from human activities for the first time

and then in kunming china there was

meant to be a new agreement

under the convention on biological

diversity to halt and reverse the

relentless decline of wildlife

that’s really been going for a century

now

these talks are intended to strike a new

more accountable and

action-focused target to halt species

decline in the next

10 years and protect 30 percent of our

land and sea for nature

all across the globe and in glasgow

scotland we were meant to agree new

climate change targets to limit global

warming

to 1.5 degrees

each of these areas is essential for

human prosperity in its own right

and crucially they’re also completely

interdependent

we’ll never solve climate change if we

continue to trawl up the blue carbon

locked in our seabed

or burn our forests and peatlands we’ll

never bring

life back to our terrestrial fresh water

and marine ecosystems

unless we curb co2 emissions and halt

climate change

so this was meant to be the year when

new deals were reached

to stop over exploitation of our ocean

to stop the destruction of habitats and

species to stop emissions of greenhouse

gases from causing

runaway climate change

so far then not much to break the

caricature of us environmentalists with

our hair

shirts and stop signs but take a closer

look

and you find that the political social

and scientific efforts

needed to put the brakes on

environmental catastrophe is a rocket

boost for progress

the first and most obvious way is that

technology can be a cure as well as a

cause of environmental harm

tackling those environmental risks has

been a powerful driver of innovation

that will bring

far wider benefits in response to

climate change policy trillions of

pounds of investment have poured into

clean energy innovation

renewable energy continues to become

cheaper and more readily available at

every scale

and this environmental innovation could

have amazing social benefits for the

billion people across the globe

without access to electricity countries

in the most

energy-hungry places on earth like

sub-saharan africa and the caribbean

could make the most of wind and solar to

create a much more accessible

and egalitarian energy system that

breaks people’s reliance

on the government and on a centralized

grid we’re living

through a green industrial revolution

but more exciting than technological

change is the social and political

innovation being born out of

environmental need

environmental thinking is reshaping

political economics to forge

ever more complex closer international

deals that delve deeper into national

sovereignty

and deeper into individual life than

ever before

and to get that right the international

political system needs to change

to puncture the political assumptions

that have developed over centuries and

have become ingrained in the idea of the

post-war nation-state

with almost exclusive say and

sovereignty over what happens within its

borders

it’s a simple but central insight of

environmental politics that the natural

world knows no borders

so nor must environmental action

a ton of carbon is a ton of carbon

wherever on earth it’s emitted

air and water pollution don’t respect

national boundaries and birds

no no borders

probably the most powerful illustration

of this interdependence is the fact that

i’m recording this video on my computer

right now

international society has been brought

to its knees by an

anthropogenic environmental disaster a

pandemic that has its roots

in our dysfunctional relationship with

nature

this terrible year of death lockdown and

losses can be attributed in part

to humanity’s over-exploitation of our

natural world

the same activities that drive

environmental destruction bring wildlife

livestock people and pathogens into

closer contact

making parts of our planet into petri

dishes for disease

we know that industrial farming the

illegal wildlife trade and deforestation

all multiply the chances that a calamity

like this will happen and happen again

we also know that risks like zoonotic

disease are just one player

in a whole cast of anthropogenic

environmental villains waiting in the

wings

earlier this year the world economic

forum reported that the top

five risks to the global economy now are

all environmental challenges

greenhouse gas emissions agricultural

intensification and overfishing are all

gradually stacking the odds against us

so to succeed those global deals i

mentioned will have to reach into the

letter of the law

and the fabric of society in very novel

ways

of course there have been important

international agreements in the past

but the ubiquity of action needed to

comply with those three treaties on the

table is like nothing humanity has

ever accomplished before each of the

three international conventions has

close to 200 countries signed up

of the globe and perhaps

the most extraordinary thing is this

most of the benefits that this action

will be

bring won’t be enjoyed just by people

we’ve never met

on the other side of the globe that

they’ll they’ll be enjoyed by people who

haven’t even been

born yet this is a concept of

intergenerational justice that stretches

the conventional economic and social

assumption that people care mostly for

themselves

plenty for their immediate kids and kin

but much less

for unknown people in an unknown future

this idea of equity between generations

is developing as a rule of international

law building on the idea of sustainable

development

first set out in the 1980s development

which meets the needs of the current

generation

without compromising the ability of

future generations to meet their own

needs

that concept might sound like common

sense

but to deliver it is a radical

proposition it means

overcoming short-term industry in

politics which has traditionally been

governed by electoral cycles that last

just a handful of years

groundbreaking environmental legislation

like the uk climate change act of 2008

set legally binding long-term targets to

eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by

2050 with milestones along the way

forcing politicians to think further

than the next election

and now under pressure for environmental

campaigners

our government’s considering setting

similar long-term legally binding

targets for air water waste and wildlife

will be legally obliged to curb our

consumption stay

to benefit future generations

and these legal principles are becoming

embedded in international and national

law

appearing in multilateral agreements in

the eu

a key and now in national statute too

in stopping ourselves from doing harm

today we’re making progress in political

considerations beyond borders and

between generations that could improve

the way we cooperate

and work together in areas far beyond

climate change

and similar changes are taking place in

the way we structure our money

and markets and measure our success

that assumption that temporal distance

between people leads

to inversely inverse proportion about

how much they care

is embedded in conventional economic

thought

in other words current generations will

value present consumption

over the need to save for future

generations

but modern environmental economics is

starting to revise that thinking

lord stern’s review of the economics of

climate change was groundbreaking

in assigning a low discount rate

reducing the weighting the economic

calculations give to present value over

future value

and now the work of the review of the

economics of biodiversity could play the

same role

in revolutionizing the way we think

about long-term investment

in nature these approaches

are also being reflected regularly on on

the ground applications like

customers increasing willingness to pay

higher energy bills or water bills today

to avoid future environmental harm

and these changes are leading to further

innovations that will have positive

effects

well beyond the environmental field

one of the best ways we have to reduce

environmental harm

is to structure markets better to

account for their costs

internalizing environmental damage in

the price of products

this will have the effect of rebalancing

injustices that have been taking place

for hundreds of years for far too long

pollution has been treated as free a

chemical company that

dumps effluent in a river can take its

products to market and make a profit

without bearing

any of the costs of disposal or the harm

that might be caused to people and

wildlife downstream

but on the other hand a farmer who goes

above and beyond the rules to manage his

farm to sequester extra carbon or

provide habitat for wildlife

is rarely rewarded for the extra

benefits she might provide

now though we’re getting better at

structuring markets to rebalance the

system

emerging principles of polluter pays and

the providers is

paid are being realized in real law

policies like agri-environment schemes

that pay farmers for public benefit

but pollution taxes like the landfill

levy the plastic bag tax carbon pricing

and extended producer

responsibility for packaging are all

helping to reshape markets

to reward those who provide public good

and ensure on the other hand

harm is properly accounted for

pricing that damage into the cost of

products moves the invisible hand so

that markets

guide consumers toward more ethical

choices

they make the nature-based choice the

natural choice

and the need to do that on a more

systemic basis is helping to drive new

ways

thinking about the way we measure our

success as a society

it’s been obvious for a while now that

gross domestic products gdp is a

pretty narrow way to account for how

well we’re doing

and bhutan famously led the world with

its shift to measuring gross domestic

happiness

this has since inspired well-being

indices around the globe

most notably in new zealand’s well-being

budget last year

and environmental thinking is helping to

catalyze those changes

in traditional gdp measures burning oil

and gas

chopping down pristine forests or mining

the untouched deep seabed

all add to our score in reality of

course those

apparent profits are simply borrowing

from the future storing up environmental

costs

and nature is a loan shock borrow too

much for too long

an interest rate will be repaid high in

fire floods and lost livelihoods

new measures of environmental success

look instead to the value of ecosystem

recovery to the health of environmental

assets and to people’s equitable access

to a healthy environment

as a way of accounting for unnatural

riches

and these changes aren’t just

environmentally beneficial they’re

socially progressive

helping to shift us away from the cold

capitalism of consumerism

toward a fairer model that can help

ensure people thrive along with our

natural world

for me tackling environmental injustice

is the mission of our generation

it’s a scandal even in a rich country

like the uk

40 000 people die prematurely each year

from air pollution

the people’s chance of access to a

healthy natural environment is skewed by

race and social class

that excessive consumption today could

lead to a suffering for billions of

people in future generations who can’t

speak up for themselves

rebalancing our relationship with nature

will help to rebalance these social

injustices

and to do so we’ll need to develop new

ways of structuring multilateral

multi-generational political agreements

and new ways of organizing our money and

our markets

so what comes next the brilliant

birdlife international

has just launched a campaign to make a

healthy natural environment

a human right i think the rights-based

approach

to ensuring that everyone can drink

clean water breathe pure air and live in

a thriving natural environment

has great promise it also has a pleasing

symmetry

as innovative rights-based law that can

have its roots in older ways of thinking

that have

even attributed rights to nature itself

but whatever happens next year will be a

turning point

coronavirus has thoroughly put paid to

super 2020

instead we’ve had yet more reminders of

why these talks are so vital

2020 is on course to be the hottest year

for the earth’s surface since reliable

records began in the mid-1800s

david attenborough brought us extinction

the facts a warning of the sixth mass

extinction with a million

of the eight million species on earth at

risk of disappearing

and coronavirus has shown us that

there’s a direct line of sight between

the consumption choices we make here at

home

and the health of ecosystems in the

economy around the globe

these problems are like nothing humanity

has faced before

but nor has any generation stood so

ready to face the challenge

with the technical economic and

political innovation that’s racing

forward with our efforts to avert

environmental disaster the talks next

year are crucial

they’ll be difficult but there can also

be

a springboard for improvements in our

way of life that go far beyond

environmental prosperity

we’ve missed super 2020 so let’s make it

a spectacular 2021. the future of

everything

depends on it