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