Climate Leadership In A Multipolar New World Order

a new book titled Climate Justice. Jonathon, can you please share with us the general thrust of your new book, Climate Justice? When will you publish the book? The book will be published in July, so not very far away now. And as you say, Stephen, I've been working on this for the last year or more with young activists involved in the direct action campaigning of Just Stop Oil. Obviously, Just Stop Oil is a controversial

organization. It excites a lot of very divergent views about tactics in today's climate movement, with some people understanding the deep motivation behind what Just Stop Oil does, but suspicious of or nervous about some of the tactics used. So for me, being able to engage directly with many of those people involved in those actions nine of whom have spent time in prison during the course of the last year, either on sentence or on remand, has been actually

a remarkable experience for me. I mean, really energizing to spend time with a group of incredibly principled, bright, forward-looking individuals, nearly all of them under the age of 28. And to see things through their eyes, Stephen, that's basically what I think

intergenerational justice asks of us. is that we don't just see things through our own eyes, but we're prepared to put ourselves in the shoes of other people, in this instance, young people looking forward to the second half of this century, not just the next couple of decades, and to see things differently as a consequence of doing that. You very kindly shared with me the outline of your book, Climate Justice, and this caught

my eye. It is as follows, and I quote, Even though governments have just as much access to the whole truth about accelerating climate change as campaigners, they have mostly chosen to double down on institutional denial, not so much denying the science as denying its implications and rejecting the case for accelerated radical change. Please explain what you mean by institutional denial in terms an ordinary

person can understand. What are the most effective strategies for overcoming denial of climate change and fostering policy action? 2050. We can't. We have to do what we need I think one of the biggest changes that we've seen, Stephen, over the last decade or more, is that those people who once used to deny the science of climate change, the actual empirical evidence about the way in which many aspects of our climate and our planet are changing, that doesn't happen very much

these days. It still does in America. You've still got a strong overt climate denial movement in America led, if you can call it that, by President Trump himself. But elsewhere in the world, outright science-based denialism or anti-science doesn't really exist. But what we see is a refusal to accept what that science is actually telling us about the speed with which we now need to change our model of progress, our economy, the way in which we create growth and development for

people, and so on. And that's where the denial is, not around the science itself, but a denial as to the way in which we need now to accept what that science is really telling. So we don't have decades to play with. We have very few years left to do what we really need to do. We have to use all the levers of government to make the changes required in a much shorter period of time than people are talking about. Most people think we can just carry on more or less as usual until

to do in the next decade. And it has to embrace the whole of society. Politicians are very, very bad at engaging with people to explain what is happening, to explain the importance of that for people, families, communities, the country. the whole of humankind, and then to move on from a better engagement with people to laying out the policy options for change in energy policy, transport, in manufacturing, in the whole business of food

and farming. So actually getting to grips with the transformation that is now required. And politicians won't do that. They just aren't doing that engagement work. And that's where the denial lies, unfortunately. You also suggest in the outline that, and I quote, the UK has become the most repressive state among OECD countries. New laws introduced by the Conservative government since 2022 have given the police and the courts unprecedented

powers. the full weight of those new laws, has been seen in action throughout 2024, with defendants in court silenced and multi-year prison sentences regularly handed down. Now, in December 2024, a 77-year-old grandmother was recalled to prison after her wrists were too small for an electronic tag. The UK is by no means unique in its hostility to climate

activism. Jonathon, how can the international community support climate change activists acting, facing legal repression in their own respective countries? There's been a marked shift over the last couple of years in many countries, cracking down on the right to protest about the climate and making it much harder for people to express their their freedom to speak out about these problems and to protest as a consequence

of that. And the UK, the comment I made there, Stephen, the UK unfortunately has introduced some of the most draconian legislation anywhere in the world. So more activists are arrested here in the UK than almost any other country in the world. And The way in which the courts have responded to that has been equally repressive.

So we now have a number of judges here in the UK who won't allow defendants charged with public order, nuisance offences, criminal damage, won't allow those defendants to explain what their motivations were in doing what they did. They won't allow them to talk about climate change. And of course, we've seen very harsh sentences handed down, as you said. I think the international community

has been pretty astonished by that. Michel Forst, who is the UN's Special Rapporteur for Environmental Defenders, has visited the UK on several occasions and has commented explicitly on the way in which the UK now is overreaching has become excessively repressive in trying to eliminate that form of protest in society today and has, through its new acts of parliament, introduced a very hostile regime indeed for people who are deeply concerned about climate change and want to make their

concern known to others. So the international community is alert to what has happened here. It's not the only country. Similarly, in the USA, we've seen really repressive measures introduced at the state level to clamp down

on campaigners. And there's a less friendly atmosphere now about climate protest in many parts of the world, in the European Union, in Australia, in many parts of Africa, for instance, a very lively and I think inspiring group in Uganda, headed up by young people there protesting against the new pipeline,

the East Africa pipeline. And what we've seen, of course, is that these repressive laws just make it harder for the public to understand what's going on, because they're not hearing the truth about it from the principal actors, the main agents involved in protest and dissent. We're doing something new in this episode. I have invited three people to each contribute a question or two. And the first contributor

is Tim Smedley. Tim Smedley is an award-winning sustainability journalist, copywriter, author, and speaker. Tim is also the editor of the New Climate on Medium. The New Climate is the only publication for climate action, covering the environment, biodiversity, net zero, renewable energy, and regeneration approaches. Tim's recent book is The Last Drop, Solving the World's Water Crisis. Tim's questions are as follows. What do you think

about the current duty-bound project? from the new climate, which asks whether climate scientists are now duty bound to engage in activism and direct action in order to get the message heard. And has the cause benefited or suffered as a result of just stop oil protesters acts, such as hurling soup on the glass of a Van Gogh artwork or paint, or powder during athletic events? How can we normalize the cause and bring it into mainstream consciousness at a speed required?

Yes, I really respond to these questions from Tim, Smedley, Stephen, I think they're spot on. It is interesting, there's a big divide in the science, the climate science

community, to be honest. And a growing number of scientists do feel that they are now duty bound to go over and above the work that they do as scientists, as researchers, as advocates for change, as communicators, as educationists, and so on, and to go to the next step and to take part in some kind of civil disobedience, activism of one kind or another. And we have a number of initiatives here. We have scientists rebel. which has been a very important and vocal organization.

And of course, right back at the time of Extinction Rebellion, we had scientists for XR, for Extinction Rebellion, who in fact, Stephen, have just brought out a really interesting new book called Scientists on Survival. And these are the personal testimonies of many individual scientists involved in frontline

activism of that kind. So there's a strong There's a strong group of scientists around the world very involved in this, but it has to be said that the majority of the climate science community does not take part in direct action of that kind and somehow feels that it would weaken their role as authoritative voices in often complex and controversial scientific areas and have felt that that would be inappropriate for them to behave like that. So they do not feel duty-bound.

to extend their existing commitment to the truth being told and heard about the climate by engaging in activity of that kind. And I must admit, I I think Tim would probably back me up here. I asked myself the question, why is it that relatively few scientists still feel called on to do that, to do that stepping up to a higher level of action? They're all so knowledgeable about what's happening. They can see the horrible things

that are waiting us down the track. They know that given the warming we've already put into the atmosphere, that the consequences already for humankind are going to be traumatic and deadly for many hundreds of millions of people. And they can see that if we go on down this path, the consequences are going to be even more apocalyptic than that. So they sit with this truth much more than the

average individual can possibly do. And they're often themselves parents with children or with grandparents or grandparents with grandchildren. So they have a personal stake in this as well. I share in the questioning of why more scientists are not on the front line. Now maybe, and I think this was Tim's second question, maybe they're put off by some of

the tactics of Just Stop Oil. I've met a lot of people who are put off and don't really understand the point of some of the actions that they take, the soup throwing or the activity at Stonehenge or historic places, whatever it might be. And the answer to that isn't simple, Stephen. But the answer is that in this weird world that we live in now, trying to get attention of decision makers to focus on the climate crisis is

unbelievably difficult. I know that because I've taken part in many conventional campaigning initiatives myself and I'm now very involved working with those who say that's not enough, we're not getting that attention and therefore we need to commit to direct action, non-violent direct action as an expression of civil disobedience.

And the truth is that every single one of those actions and a lot of the people you've referred to there Stephen are involved in the 26 young campaigners I've been working with, every single one of those actions is basically saying, look, you have to pay attention to this. It's really urgent. You can't go on ignoring it or at least putting it to one side rather than putting the main focus

upon it. So in an age where attention really matters, where what you can get through the media, the mainstream media, is the mechanism, principle mechanism you have for waking people up to this astonishing crisis. That's why all of those actions are, in my opinion, justified in their own terms and have actually succeeded in jolting a lot of politicians into increased awareness and increased action in some cases than would otherwise have been the case. The second contributor is Barbara Williams,

the Fellow of the RSA in London. Barbara has been a climate and environmental activist since 2019. She has published a book titled, Saving Us from Ourselves, Can We Repair 50 Years of Ecological Overshoot? She also runs a website, Poems for Parliament, a global aspiration for ecological justice. Barbara's questions are as follows. How can we set ourselves incentives to reduce GDP equitably until our global economy is back within the

carrying capacity of earth? And why don't we design economic algorithms that ensure equitable wealth distribution? Well, Barbara's gone to the heart of the issue here, Stephen. There's no question about it. And over those 50 years that she refers to there, the truth is, of course, that the primary model of progress for humankind has been economic growth, increased GDP on a national basis and a global basis, and increased per capita improvements in material

standards of living. That's what lies behind the notion of progress today. We make good things happen by virtue of generating growth in our national economies and therefore in the global economy as a whole. And of course, a lot of benefits have been generated by that kind of growth over 50 years. But what we're now taking stock of is the massive costs. that have been accruing during the course of those five decades. Huge damage done to the climate, to people's communities,

to nature, to biodiversity. And we're beginning now to understand the full extent of that damage. Economists refer to it as externalized costs. the things that aren't paid for in the goods and services that we buy on a daily basis or companies buy as part of their supply chain engagement but which are still real costs in the economy which are paid for by people down the line. I mean, I was just talking about intergenerational justice.

The truth is that climate change is an externalized cost because we haven't paid the real price for the emissions of those greenhouse gases. But future generations will. in big time. So that's the problem, is that our model of economy has promoted growth at all costs. And Barbara's asking, why don't we redesign the global economy so that we eliminate those external costs and we get a much more equitable and sustainable model of economic progress?

And if I knew the answer to that question, I probably wouldn't be sitting here having an enjoyable conversation with you today, Stephen, because I've been banging on about this for 50 years. I joined the Green Party in 1974. So it is exactly the span of my engagement in these things that Barbara is referring to. I think the really difficult bit She mentions there, why don't we just change the algorithms that drive these huge

economic factors? Well, that's, I think, a deliberately a sort of faux-naive question, because Barbara knows the answer to that as well as I do. The truth is that people don't want to make the process of creating and distributing wealth more equitable. The Oxfam report in January this year revealed that there are now 2,739 billionaires in the world today. 2,739 billionaires. And every year we see a significant increase in the number of people who enjoy that, some

might say, excessive level of wealth. And the truth is that over the last 50 years, much more of the wealth created has drifted upwards. to enrich the already super rich in our global economy rather than being equitably shared so that many, many more, hundreds of millions of people would have benefited more fairly as a consequence of the surplus,

the wealth created during that time. So if we want to get to grips with that, we're going to have to address The oligarchy today, these super rich, who of course control an awful lot of our politics today, not just because of their relationship with the politicians themselves, but because of their influence over the global media. A lot of these super-rich billionaires are media owners in their own

right. They control huge media empires. And so they manage the mainstream media content, both print, broadcast, and social media content, in such a way that people remain detached from the consequences of us having allowed such disproportionate wealth extraction schemes to benefit so few at the expense of so many? The final contributor is Emeritus Professor

Rupert Read. Rupert is an academic and a Green Party campaigner, a former spokesman for Extinction Rebellion and the current director of the Climate Majority Project. He has written several books on climate change, his most recent being, Why Climate Breakdown Matters, published in 2022. Professor Reed's questions are as follows. What are the most important things for business people who want to do the right thing to do now? Is

it taking adaptation seriously? lobbying and advocating for much more serious regulation of themselves for climate and nature, telling the truth about how terrible the situation now is. 25 years, trying to get the voice of business Rupert and I are good colleagues, Stephen, we've been around dealing with these issues for a long time and he knows of course that I've spent much of the last 25 years of my life of my work as a sustainability advocate, working with companies, with largely big

businesses rather than small companies. And I did that both through Forum for the Future, of which I was a co-founder in 1996, and through the Prince of Wales' Business and Sustainability Program, which I was also lucky enough to be a co-founder of. So I've spent a huge amount of time over the last more involved in sustainability issues, more

progressive. in the positions they take on not just environmental issues, so biodiversity, climate pollution, but also in social issues around diversity, inclusion, equality, all of those rather controversial things now dismissed by many people on the other side of the Atlantic as woke. And I don't regret spending that time at all. I feel it's been a really important part of my career as a sustainability activist, and I've learned

a lot as a consequence of it. But one of the things I've come to see, and Rupert and I don't necessarily agree about this, is that business is much more limited than you might imagine. Everyone sees these huge companies and thinks, oh my gosh, they've got massive power in the world today, and they can do whatever they want. They can deploy all of their different resources and assets to make change happen. And so they can, if they want

to. But very often, of course, they're bound by their fiduciary duties to their shareholders. They have to honor those fiduciary duties as their primary legal obligation. We now live in a period of capitalism which focuses on shareholder primacy, shareholder first, And very often that is interpreted as needing to maximize profit in the short term, even if the damage done in the long term is of

huge concern to everybody. And that's where we are now at this particular moment in the history of 21st century capitalism, quarter of the way through this century, we're living through a very, very dark period. in the history of capitalism and we've got a resurgence of what I would call the worst kind of capitalism where it's a very small number of people who benefit at the expense of huge majorities. So when Rupert asked me what should they focus on, The answer is, well, they should

do these good things. They should speak out more often. Of course they should. They should use their voice to try and bring about greater awareness. They should use their influence with governments and regulators to get better rules in place. But Rupert knows that isn't what happens. Most of the time, these companies use their lobbying and advocacy power to shift things in their favor, to make it easier for them to generate the dividends, the profits that their shareholders expect. Business

doesn't, by and large. advocate for societal benefit and increased value for ordinary citizens and communities. It advocates for the interests of its primary group, namely its shareholders. So it's quite difficult suggesting that business has a really progressive role to play here, because they are bound by the rules of the countries in which they're

operating. And at the moment, those rules, those laws, those regulations are geared to promoting the interests of shareholders, not to promoting the interests of humankind as a whole, or all of those companies, different stakeholders. So they've got a job to do. That's why I was pleased to be involved in that world for 25, 30 years. But we don't, we can't afford to have any illusions about this. They can't change what they do beyond a certain point until the rules of the game

are changed. And the only people who can change the rules of the game are governments, not businesses, however big and powerful they might be. The title of our podcast is Climate Leadership in a Multipolar New World Order. The Guardian published a powerful editorial on January 10th, 2025, titled, The Guardian's View on the LA Fires. Donald Trump's denial and division fuels climate inaction. It said the following, and I quote, The climate crisis knows no

national borders. Deadly floods in Spain, Hawaii's fires, and East Africa's devastating drought show nowhere is safe from its effects. Countries must work toward the global common interest and beyond their narrow national interests. The scale of the climate emergency is such that there is a case to view all crises through a green lens. Instead, Mr. Trump's denialism works to foment distrust about the science. It's not just aiming to delay the onset of the truth. He wants to

demolish it. Jonathon, in keeping with our podcast theme, What are the psychological and social political factors that contribute to climate change denial? And how can these be effectively countered in the context of a major wildfire event like the one in Los Angeles? I think we have to take stock of the fact that the situation in the U.S. is extraordinary.

The Trump administration has moved with great vigor to destroy much of the alternative energy industry, the renewables, the storage, the whole approach to building a different energy economy. And it's done that, Stephen, we have to spell this out, because Donald Trump promised leaders in the fossil fuel industry, in oil and gas, and in the coal industry during his election campaign, that if he was elected, he would work to promote

their cause. And that would include doing down the energy alternatives that America has in abundance if it wanted to pursue them. So this is a pretty abhorrent example of political venality and corruption at its worst. and it's going to hurt the world. There's no question about that. It will be a problem for as long as it lasts. It won't last, in my opinion, all that long, but it

will be very painful when it does. The reason I say it won't last all that long is because, as you rightly identified with the title of this overall podcast series, Stephen, this is a multipolar world. It's not a world in which America can control everything, and it certainly can't control the response to climate change that we see elsewhere in the world. So right now, for instance, it is fascinating to see what is happening in

China. More than 25 years ago, China decided that the future would be a lower carbon economy, less dependent on fossil fuels, and began to make massive strategic investments in renewable energy, in storage, in electric vehicles, electric buses, and of course, in all of those raw materials that the new renewable energy economy will depend on, including rare earths and precious metals

from elsewhere in the world. So China already leads the world in every single one of these areas by a very long way, by a very long way. Electric vehicles, for instance, we think a lot about Elon Musk and Tesla. Tesla's technology is second rate. in comparison to the technology of Chinese companies like Build Your Dreams and others. Musk claims to be a leader on batteries. He's not a leader at all. He's an absolute laggard. And Tesla is rapidly losing its position as a technology

driver of change. I only mentioned that because in all of these different fields, China is leading the way. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I admire everything that happens in China. I absolutely don't. I find a lot of what China does, particularly in the field of human rights and treatment of its own citizens, absolutely abhorrent. I really find it difficult. to acknowledge China's leadership in this space, in the world of energy and sustainability in general.

But that's the truth and we can't deny that. So when I look at the battle now between Trump who's given up on a decarbonized global economy and China that is the undisputed leader in the decarbonized global economy. This is a clash between the two superpowers in the world today that is massively important and everybody will basically react to that

clash. India, Russia, Brazil, the European Union, else other OECD countries will all find their way through the politics of that new multipolar world in a way that couldn't have been predicted before. So I don't feel I don't feel completely gloomy and depressed by all the awful things going on in America because I know that they can't actually stop some of the revolutionary changes, technology changes that are happening elsewhere. So

we do have that to look forward to. You ask a much more complicated question, Stephen, when it comes to the psychological and socioeconomic factors behind denial. Well, I think we all know that many people find it extremely difficult to confront the physical reality of climate change. It's genuinely scary to consider the consequences. what will happen when climate change accelerates, becomes even worse as the warming continues to build up in the atmosphere and affect ecosystems down here

on planet Earth. We know that's going to get really bad. And a lot of people turn away from that because it's just too painful to contemplate, which is why we have to go on urging that people need to confront that truth. You can't turn away from it. It is happening. It shapes everything in our lives already today, and it will shape it even more powerfully and influentially in the

future. So we have to invite people to come into a space where they can contemplate the reality of what's happening, and then engage in such a way that we can begin to put things right. Interestingly, Stephen, last quick reflection on this, all the 26 young people that I've been working with over the last year, all of them tell me that one of the reasons why they have committed so bravely, in my opinion, to civil disobedience and are prepared to take the consequence for

the actions that they've taken. One of the reasons is that it's only in that kind of action that they can keep despair at bay. And these are young kids in their 20s, and they're already forced to acknowledge that their future through to the end of this century is going to be one that will be traumatically devastated by the impacts of climate change.

So for them, taking that action, being prepared to accept the consequences, of those actions is a necessary part of avoiding the sort of despair and grief that afflicts so many young people today. And I've been very moved, to be honest, to hear at first hand exactly why those actions are such an important part of their own psychological resilience. And finally, Jonathon, please advise our listeners where they may find your new book, Climate Change, when it's finally published.

Well, thank you for that, Stephen. I should have said right at the start of this podcast that, as is often the way when you're writing a book, the title of the book has changed. So that was a title that I had for a long time. And the book is now called Love, Anger and Betrayal. It's an account of the work that I've been doing with these 26 activists.

The love is theirs, as I call it, because they express this deep compassion and empathy for people already affected by climate change and for all the people who will be affected, hundreds of millions who will be affected by climate change in the future, often in countries that have contributed least of the problem. The anger, I must admit, Stephen, is mine. I've been on very good behavior today. I haven't let rip too much about the anger I feel concerning politicians and big

business today. And the betrayal is a generational betrayal. what I feel very strongly that my generation and yours do, I have to say, Stephen, that between us, we've betrayed young people today because their future is going to be so negatively impacted by our inability to take the right decisions at the right time, at the right scale. So the book now is called Love, Anger, and Betrayal. It will be published by the middle of July. It will be available, as you might expect,

on Amazon and elsewhere. And I very much hope, Stephen, once I've got the details of all of that together, that I can send you a press release, and then you can, as it were, help me bring it to the attention of people. Because I really want people to see this more through the eyes of young people. I've written half the book, and they've written the other half. So I've interviewed them at length. I've visited a lot of them in

prison. I've spent time with them. I've asked them to provide a personal account of why they've got to the position they're in at the moment. So it's insight into how a lot of young people, exceptional young people, it's not the norm, I want to stress that, exceptionally young people are responding to the climate crisis. And I hope it'll make an impact as a consequence of that. So Jonathon Porritt, thank you very much for being a guest on this podcast.

Stephen, thank you very much. I've, as always, much enjoyed our conversation. Thank you. This podcast was brought to you by the Kamugasa Challenge in partnership with Democracy in Africa. Democracy in Africa is a platform dedicated to building a bridge between academics, policymakers, practitioners, and citizens. The fourth episode in our leadership series is entitled Exposing Your Blind Spots. the argument for fostering whistleblower voices

to become a successful leader. An interview with Mary Inman, a partner at Whistleblower Partners. The podcast will go live on August 11th, 2025. If you enjoyed this podcast, please click the share button in your app to send this episode to a friend. Thank you very much for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Until next time, goodbye.