What I Believe In
6 years, 9 months, 23 days, 1 hour
30 September 2022
Why am I writing every week for 6 months now an email titled against the remaining time on the carbon clock?
I believe what we are facing is sufficiently, existentially, serious, that we all need to do whatever we can, and with urgency. Feedback suggests I am not alone in believing this but unless we find our voices we all feel alone and impotent. And I passionately believe together we have the power to make the changes the world needs.
So after 6 months of composing these musings, what do I think?
The climate emergency is real. As a former civil servant I don’t use emotive language lightly. I am not simply saying climate change is real (surely we all accept that now). I am saying it is actually an emergency and we need to start acting like we understand that. Recently new ‘tipping points’ research published in Science magazine showed that 4 / 15 of the planetary boundaries will breach at 1.5 degrees, and then it isn’t certain that humankind can control what happens next.
We can’t assume technology will solve it. I was brought up being told the planet would run out of food, and we didn’t, that we would run out of oil, and we didn’t (perhaps unfortunately). This makes us complacent. We are so clever we think some technology that eats carbon out of the atmosphere will rescue us. Maybe, but I am not a natural gambler and risking oblivion of my children (and yours) is not for me a good plan A.
It isn’t just a climate emergency. World income inequality levels are now similar to those at the start of the twentieth century. You don’t need to be a historian of that period (as it happens I am) to appreciate the dramatic social and political upheavals that followed. Communism, nationalisation, the welfare state, death-duties, and the obliteration of the landed gentry and their estates, to name just a few. Today the richest 10% own three-quarters of the world’s wealth, and the poorest 50% own just 2%. Climate change will exacerbate this beyond breaking point, displacing hundreds of millions, fuelling mass migration, and triggering a reaction of even greater prejudice, intolerance, nationalism and armed conflict.
I am an optimist. We can solve this and we must. We all have a role. Each of our own actions matter. But some individuals, and some organisations, are in a position to have transformational impact at national and global scale. KPMG is one of those organisations. Our sheer scale, our global reach, our impact through our clients, our concentration of capability and insight, our thought-leadership, our example, our convening power. All we need to add is our conscience.