The disappointing outcomes of the recent COP25 meeting held in Madrid still have not fully been absorbed. I cannot reconcile much of what I read about the rangling, vested interests, stalling tactics and deliberate blocking that took place.
There are clearly growing concerns that climate warming will continue to be a major “crisis” that one can only hope brings us to a united understanding of the need to radically change? Currently, vested interests are blocking the need for a concerted effort to shift our energy from fossil reliant to one based on renewables.
Today we are still caught up in the extremes of denial or over-hype when it comes to the changes demanded and expected from the Paris Agreement (2015) on the changes required to manage our climate crisis. We need to deliver a different message for us to rally around and demand change. We need to find a fresh narrative.
The longer we “fiddle,” the harder this transformation will become to manage our growing needs of more energy, from an increasing world population and maintaining aging infrastructure, still reliant on very outdated central energy grid models and only fossil fuel solutions.
All of this ambition to change the energy system needs a radical approach, lots of fresh thinking, and that underlying coordinated action for all involved to undertake such a journey. The question is, will we, can we?
The societal inhibitor is a real impediment.
Technology-centric innovation can make a difference, but in this case of the Energy Transition, in the end, it is Society that has to demand it, at present, there is more outrage than momentum. At present there is indifference.
Societies still have not been presented with a compelling case for change. Is it when we have more floods, power outages, hurricanes, power and water shortages that we will finally get it at political levels as well as finally forcing those vested interests to admit to the inevitable in transforming our energy supply? The concern is this might be far too late and our plant is in a path that we cannot recover to what we have known, we will only have to tackle the consequences in a rapidly changing world.
To galvanize governments, investors, private organization, and institutions, we need to create these needs of change to become part of the dialogue we need in our fabric of society today, we need to raise global consciousness. To achieve a transformation where we are aiming for a zero-carbon outcome in thirty years is unparallel in ambition.
To undertake this energy transition is as tricky as any global initiative we have taken on before. Our institutions need to be galvanized, not by the voices of science or technology, or by individual governments or private organizations they need the “United voice of all nations through its people.”
A united voice where people demand change and demand Governments construct the new world order, to integrate, coordinate the full gambit of interventions in economic, political, technological and social systems to make this energy value chain realizable as a significant part of reducing the climate crisis of depleting resources, warming temperatures and natural disasters, caused mainly by carbonizing our world.
Can we find this united voice?
It is hard to believe we will at this moment of time but if we fail to unite around resolution for the predicted global climate during the next 12 months we will find it extremely hard to avoid the accesses of global warming, deteriorating air quality and the significant loss of so many species that make up our planet that is endangered today.
In Glasgow from 9th November to 19th November 2020, we have the COP26 (Conference of the parties). It is a pivotal, hugely important meeting, called for under the auspices of the UN’s climate change, serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 16) and the third session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA 3).
Society has to demand the adoption of these agreements in 2020. We can’t afford to push this decision further “down the road”. The narrative for making changes to our energy system needs to be radically different and even more tied to climate issues, security and protection of what we know and should value.
We need to inform far more our immediate priorities, and the reasons why they are critically important otherwise, the energy transition will stall. If this happens we face a very different set of global problems we are not equipped to handle, our survival. This may sound grim and over the top but actually, it will be. It becomes “highly” unpredictable.
