Bravery
7 years, 6 days, 2 hours
16 July 2022
The individuals I most admire are those who risk the puzzlement, antipathy and sometimes even the hostility of those around them to say we need to do much more and much faster.
We have all witnessed over the first half of this year the extraordinary bravery of individuals in Ukraine: men and women who have gone from leading normal lives to taking up arms to defend their country, or stayed behind in warzones to look after elderly relatives or provide medical services; soldiers who have exposed themselves to near certain death to defend positions that would delay the Russian advance, and political leaders who refused to be cowed by threats.
A very different kind of bravery, but also deserving of our respect, is the bravery of those who speak up for what is right. And my particular focus this week is those who are finding their voice to challenge inaction on climate change.
It was bravery in August 2018 when Greta Thunberg stayed out of school to draw attention to the climate emergency in front of the Swedish Parliament. The same year in the Extinction Rebellion protests it was bravery for the many individuals who had never done anything like that before to stage peaceful protests by sitting in the middle of roads and block the traffic. Were you one of those who, like me, tacitly admired but were not brave enough to join them?
Now, a few years later, there is more widespread agreement that things need to change, and fast. Yet still we see things improving only incrementally, and rightly fear it is not fast enough. Not fast enough to avoid the 7 year threshold for sure. And to call that out still feels uncomfortable. But we must.
And increasingly I see individuals doing so. The week before last Eric Lombard, Director General of the Caisse des Depôts, (the investment arm of the French state) called for a ban on ‘harmful’ investments. Declaring that ‘the time for radicalism has come’, Eric was quoted as saying ‘The fact that an investment is profitable is no excuse if it is not in line with the trajectory’ of a rise in temperatures limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
He then went further, saying that an investment that does not comply with this objective ‘must absolutely be canceled, removed’, and called for a prohibition of ‘what is harmful even if it is profitable’.
Strong language indeed, and welcome. But the individuals I most admire are those who don’t have the same stage, or necessarily the same power, that Eric may wield, but nonetheless risk the puzzlement, antipathy and sometimes even the hostility of those around them to say we need to do much more and much faster.
I saw that this week in a colleague, who repeatedly challenged a whole room of the indifferent and sceptical. It takes a lot of personal bravery to do that. Yet if even one of those present went away with a new mindset (and there was plenty of evidence that was the case) it was not in vain.
To that colleague, and the many others who are speaking up, a big thank you. You are not alone. And you are on the right side of the future.