Demand Climate Truth – The Future Depends On It

by Ben Rawlence, CEO of Black Mountains College

Sign This Petition – it could be the most important petition ever.

Another big international climate change conference has ended, so what? Were you even aware it was going on? What difference will it make anyway?

For the past week, in Baku, Azerbaijan, nearly every country in the world has sent representatives to COP 29: the 29th conference of states parties. This is a mega conference of all the countries around the world that are signatories to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. The Framework is the basic international agreement on climate change which acknowledges that human-caused change is happening and pledges to do something about it.

That ‘something’ has been the subject of intense debate ever since. And many will (rightly) argue that most countries have done very little.

The one-time binding targets were agreed was at the Paris round of the talks, in 2015, where all states agreed to limit their carbon emissions in a process called ‘nationally determined contributions’ to emissions cuts. The treaty, like many international laws, is legally binding on states. It is the basis for the UK’s legally enshrined target of Net Zero emissions by 2050 – passed in an Act of Parliament during the government of Theresa May.

Now, we can argue that emissions reductions are only part of the picture, that they are no happening fast enough, that companies and countries are greenwashing their figures and so on – all of which is true. But at the same time, the UK does have a legally binding commitment. Part of that law – Article 12 of the Paris Agreement – makes plain that emissions reduction is not just about renewable energy or carbon accounting, but it relies on the public knowing and understanding the nature of the crisis and what needs to be done.

It is here that all governments, the UK included, have so spectacularly failed. And it is a failure that undermines everything else they may wish to achieve on climate change.

Article 12 states:

“Parties shall cooperate in taking measures, as appropriate, to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information, recognizing the importance of these steps with respect to enhancing actions under this Agreement.”

What that means is, the governments signing this agreement, understand that if their citizens are not informed and aware of climate change and have access to education and information, then the steps they are committed to taking under the agreement will be that much harder to achieve.

In a recent review, the UN found that no state had taken adequate steps to mainstream climate education or to inform the public about the crisis that is unfolding.

To give one small example from the UK, the government spent close to £1 billion on public information campaigns during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Since 2009, it has spent a grant total of £10 million on similar campaigns about climate change and this was entirely during the final term of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister.

How different would our national debate be if simple facts about climate change were commonly understood? Such as:

• How much carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere for every litre of petrol that is burnt? (Answer: 2.7 kg)
• When did the planet pass the “safe” level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, beyond which scientists cannot guarantee that tipping points will not spontaneously accelerate warming and take it out of human control? (Answer: 1984)
• How many people know that we are certainly headed to over 1.5-2 degrees of warming within a matter if decades and that the UN has said with a high degree of certainty that this means every nation on earth will experience catastrophic floods, heatwaves, crop failures, price spikes and the displacement of millions if not billions of people; i.e. that these things will almost certainly happen within decades (the only uncertainty is will it be next decade or the one after)?
• How many people know that even if we succeed in rapidly cutting emissions and reaching net zero most of the above impacts will occur anyway? (what is needed is urgent investment is food and water security as well as decarbonisation).

This petition is calling on the government to come clean with the public, to explain what is coming and what we can do to prepare.

The government is undoubtedly reluctant because such information would expose how woefully prepared they are. Not to mention the fact that no government want to be the bearer of bad news or the implementer of unpopular policies like lockdowns. But national policy on such a scale is precisely what is needed. And it will be impossible to implement unless and until the government takes a lead in education people about the crisis.

So, sign this petition and let’s try and make Article 12 a reality in the UK: