Opinion: The UN has told us how big the gap between our promises and actions is- but there’s an attention gap to overcome first

By Ned Remington

The latest annual Emissions Gap Report was published by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on Thursday. The study, entitled ‘No more hot air… please!” outlined the huge gulf between the global goal to keep global warming to 1.5*C above pre-industrial levels, and the outcome of current national policies.

The report was clear: Current climate policies by governments would lead to a global temperature rise of 3.1 degrees by the end of the century, an outcome branded as ‘catastrophic’ by UNEP. Whilst 1.5 degrees remains technically possible, it would require ‘unprecedented’ cuts to global emissions to be announced in the next set of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) which need to be published by early 2025. A ‘G20-led massive globalisation to cut all greenhouse gas emissions, starting today’ is the only way to avoid “debilitating impacts to people, planet and economies.” Yet again, the global scientific community is telling us that we are facing perpetual global decline and economic regression, unless we take extremely radical action.

Such stark warnings in a sane world would win the attention of all the most powerful people on the planet. Kamala Harris and Donald Trump would be critically interrogated on their climate policies in every interview and Town Hall event. The UK, Nigeria, Canada and all other Commonwealth countries would have talked about nothing else at this week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa. Russia, Israel and Iran would halt the nationalist rhetoric to discuss the catastrophic threat to their national security posed by climate change. China, the EU, the African Union and the US would get round a table together and negotiate a radical global transformation of the international financial system. All this would be done with the cooperation of Fortune500 companies and the bankers of Wall Street, London, Beijing and Frankfurt, who understand the looming existential threat to their companies’ profit margins. The report was crystal clear: Averting disaster “would require immediate global mobilisation on a scale and pace only ever seen following a global conflict.” This means immediate, radical, global cooperation on a scale not seen since the end of the Second World War. The idea this time is to cooperate before catastrophe, not after it.

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But of course, that is not what is happening. Climate change is barely discussed in the late stages of the US election. Commonwealth leaders spent their time arguing over historical reparations for colonialism rather than financial support for the green transition and the Loss and Damage Fund. Russia is upping the stakes in its invasion of Ukraine by drafting in North Korean soldiers, and Israel and Iran are bringing the entire Middle East to the brink of war. The world’s richest are protecting their short-term interests, with Elon Musk campaigning for Trump whilst Jeff Bezos intervenes to stop his paper The Washington Post from endorsing Harris. No Western governments complain as BP drops its decarbonisation commitments, and no news organisations feel it is time to report on the hugely polluting and destructive actions of western Multinational Corporations (MNCs) in Low Income Countries and Newly Emerging Economies. The press spend more time vilifying Greta Thunberg for supporting Palestine than they do condemning the hypocrisy of authoritarian petrostates hosting the world’s most important climate summit, 3 years in a row. Life, it seems, goes on as normal, and to an ordinary member of a High-Income Country, the status-quo appears unthreatened.

We know this isn’t the case. Any of the stories by the New Climate Journal can show you that. We are in serious danger as a species and as a planet: The UN has made that clear. For now, it is still technically possible to make good the difference between current policies and the target of 1.5 degrees we need to meet. But first we must urgently bridge the gap between the attention we give to climate change, and the attention our reality deserves.

Ned Remington is the Founder and Editor of the New Climate Journal. They are also a Greenpeace activist and organiser.