Prime minister Boris Johnson flanked by Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty (left) and Chief Scientific Advisor Sir Patrick Vallance (right) at a news conference on the Corona virus outbreak at Downing Street on 12th March 2020.
After several years of declaring that they had had enough of experts, the Government now seemingly can't get enough of them. We see Boris Johnson flanked by his top scientists (above) whilst he makes the latest pronouncements on the corona virus crisis, and he is keen to announce that the Government's response should be based on the 'very best science'. There is a special fund of billions of pounds set aside to deal with the crisis, and we will all have to make radical changes to the way that we live our lives in order to get through the crisis. And, aside from panic buying toilet rolls and paracetamol, we all seem to just accept it and comply.
Does all this sound familiar? It should do. It is exactly what environmental campaigners have been advocating that we need to do in response to the climate emergency. However the Government have so far utterly failed to take the action that is required to address the emergency. The trouble is, the only reason that they have acted in response to the corona virus crisis is because it is immediate. We can all see it, it affects us now; and politicians could not survive politically if they failed to act in response to an immediate threat to the lives of their citizens. The reason that they do act in response to the climate emergency is that the threat, although much more serious (it could threaten the very end of human civilisation - https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-climate-change-report-human-civilization-at-risk-extinction-by-2050-new-australian-climate/) it is more remote. 2050 is 30 years away, and that is many electoral cycles away. It is a sad truth that our politicians, with very few exceptions, care far more about their own short-term futures than they do about the long-term survival of humanity. Plus so many of them are tied to vested interests that oppose climate action, and are still making huge profits from exploitation of fossil fuels, and profit trumps hope.
What we need to do is to create such a level of pressure on our Governments that they cannot continue to ignore us. But now we know that they can take radical action in response to a global emergency it will be so much harder for them to refuse to take it in future.
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