Special guest Lord Stern

We held our second AGM on the evening of 3 August in Elsted’s beautiful village hall. 55 people attended from several surrounding communities - something to do with the fact that we had the great privilege of having Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the 2006 Stern Report on the Economics of Climate Change, as our Guest Speaker. 

Our Chair Veronica Carter got through the business section of the meeting in the record time of 21 minutes, but did manage to report that our membership had risen to 62 and to outline some of the talks and events we managed to hold during the year, including our recent foray into river monitoring. 

District Councillor Jonathan Brown then introduced the cross-bench peer Lord Stern, who started by saying that while he was not 'an alarmist', the situation was 'alarming'. 

He emphasised that we desperately need to stabilise at 1.5 degrees of warming which means we need to reach Net Zero by 2050 and to halve our emissions by 40 to 50 percent by as early as 2030, in only a few years’ time. He said that the world’s infrastructure would double in the next 15 years and we could say goodbye to restricting emissions to 3 more degrees if we are not able to reduce the amount of emissions produced by infrastructure to a far lower rate than we see today. 

To emphasis this point, Lord Stern said that those of us in the room would have seen a rise from 0.6 to 1.1 during our lifetimes, and every 0.1 of warming is exponentially hotter that the previous 0.1. Without much stronger action we shall reach 3 degrees in the next 100 years, a temperature that humanity has never experienced and the Earth itself has not seen for three million years. Two and a half billion people would have to move because of the unsustainable conditions. 

Looking at the new greener technologies that are being developed, Lord Stern said he was an optimist in that 'we can do what needs to be done in time BUT will we?'

He talked about 'the Just Transition' taking in the needs of not only developing countries but also of those workers in our own developed societies who will be faced with dislocation when their industries are no longer viable. But he sees this new way of using our resources as offering a positive and attractive way of life for all with, for example, clean air in our cities: 'and as a country we need to invest in air pumps and insulation for those who cannot afford them. It is a matter of decency and fairness.'

Lord Stern has attended all the COPs since 2006. He saw COP26 as significant because it established a target of 1.5 degrees of warming and there was a massive commitment in trillions of dollars from the private sector - half their assets. There was also a new focus on adaptation and on land, oceans and forests. Methane was mentioned for the first time. China and India were crucial as heavy coal users and China and the USA had made a rare joint statement of intent. 

Looking to the next few years, Lord Stern admitted that the next two to three years will be a challenge because of the war in Europe, but if this means keeping a few coal sites open temporarily, it should not mean recommitting to fossil fuels. 

He says so much of what needs to happen will be in the community, and political activism needs to step up a gear. 'Be active politically,' he urged, 'and communicate effectively. Educate yourselves so that you can educate others. Over the next two years, we need to be strong and clear in our lobbying of politicians. Activism has never been so important. These are very important years.'

As a professor at The London School of Economics, Lord Stern is inspired by his students who are giving him great hope for the future: 'they don’t want to work for or be customers of destructive companies. They look carefully into where they will invest their time and money. They are not interested in the technologies of the last century and how they travel, eat and heat their homes are all affected by the climate crisis. And this is having an effect on the companies they come into contact with.'

'But,' he concluded, 'it is still too slow, emissions are still going up. We have the resources and technologies we need to meet this challenge, but WILL WE?'