What’s in It for Me?
6 years, 6 months, 8 days, 23 hours
13 January 2023
Physically and metaphorically society is a boiling frog.
Last week the World Economic Forum published its Global Risks Report 2023. As in previous years they have shown risks over different time horizons, but this year the opening graphic on page 6 juxtaposes the 2 and 10 year outlooks. In the 2-year, ‘Cost of living crisis’ is top, but unsurprisingly is absent in the 10-year list. Climate and biodiversity risks are scattered across the 2-year outlook, but are bunched together at the top of the 10-year, and joined by the related social disaster of ‘large-scale involuntary migration’. It is a stark reminder of the biggest challenge we face today – not climate change, not cost of living, not geopolitical confrontation – but the MINDSET to do NOW what we have to do to avert an unfolding crisis the effects of which still feel too remote from most individuals’ personal experience. Physically and metaphorically society is a boiling frog.
Then on Friday my heart leaps to read a report that suggests we are starting to get that what we dealing with is not a burden, but an opportunity. It is the independent Review of Net Zero published by the UK government. I recall some worry when the review was announced that it might throw spanners into the net zero spokes. Far from it. Early on it states ‘there is no future economy but a green economy’, and the whole thrust of the report is that UK business, and citizens, will benefit from grasping a net zero future. (Given my background, you will also understand I was rather happy at the statement ‘Infrastructure is the key that will unlock net zero’). There is a part of me that feels it is pretty unedifying if we can only motivate ourselves to protect the future by articulating ‘what’s in it for me’, but perhaps that is such deep-rooted human psychology that if it works, we should be happy it does and go with it.