Climate change: rich world’s inaction is dooming us all to be boiled frogs

At a time when environmental, economic and political disasters are plaguing the planet, global leaders all seem either distracted or totally absent
Rich countries have a moral duty to take the risk of funding and leading global climate action and addressing social inequities

Andrew Sheng

Published: 8:30pm, 6 Oct 2023

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How do we cope with a seemingly unending series of polycrises facing the world? This summer was the hottest recorded, with regular reports of floods and natural disasters. The artificial intelligence revolution is disrupting jobs and business. The fog of war in Ukraine is so bad that it appears no one knows who is winning or losing, except that thousands are dying or being maimed by the day. Debt is reaching distressing levels, even as interest rates remain high.

Geopolitically, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is calling the world “unhinged” because nothing was agreed at the last UN Security Council meeting, when US President Joe Biden was the sole leader present out of the five permanent members. No one seems to be in charge of global security.

In almost all areas needing global cooperation, such as dealing with recession, food security and AI regulation, trust and action are lacking. So far, only 12 per cent of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030 have been met.

This feeling of dystopia means that few can trust any leader to guide us out of the looming apocalypse. The issues are so multidimensional that no single solution is adequate. Global warming is complex, and climate change is simultaneously altering humanity and the planet. There is no silver bullet because it involves human behavioural change that is hard-wired to excessive consumption that increases carbon emissions and ecological destruction.

Even as scientists were warning about the physical dimension of climate change, economists were sanguine because they thought the solution was through the state imposing carbon taxes or through trading carbon credits so the market would solve the problem. Since businesses control politics, many governments have refused to impose carbon taxes. Without governments to impose the right regulations, carbon markets are in disarray and could be seen as outright scams.

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What are we to do? The state or the market are top-down solutions, whereas throughout history, mass change has often been bottom-up through diverse societies and communities finding their own way out of natural or human challenges, sometimes through revolution.

British historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilisation evolved through “challenge and response”. Civilisations will fail when their elite refuse to deal with the challenges of natural disasters or social corruption and injustice.

Most people do not understand why they have to fix carbon emissions while their daily priority is to earn enough to feed their families. Politicians have not made clear that protecting our well-being and the planet’s well-being are one and the same.

Pope Francis made mention of this in his latest Apostolic Exhortation, in which he said “our care for one another and our care for the earth are intimately bound together”. Quite rightly, he sees dealing with climate change as a moral challenge.

However, he also recognised that our current technocratic paradigm seeking limitless growth and economic power has gone awry: “The ethical decadence of real power is disguised thanks to marketing and false information, useful tools in the hands of those with greater resources to employ them to shape public opinion.”

Pope Francis pauses during the General Congregation of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican on October 4. Photo: EPA-EFE

Change management is not rocket science. Corporate management consultants know that transforming business models involves shared values, ownership of the need for change, a strategy to effect change and institutional reforms that encourage the change. The complexity facing global change is the scale and diverse scope of communities, cultures and values with different resources and history.

Ultimately, any change involves sacrifice and trade-offs, which is why it requires leaders who will take risks and also raise funding to carry out the transformation. Since climate disasters affect the poor the most, we need to address how to raise incomes to alleviate social inequality while at the same time tackling the stresses on the environment.

As the book Buying Time for Climate Action showed, technical and organisational know-how, as well as global funding, are readily available to achieve the SDGs. Most of the know-how exists in universities and businesses but is not available readily for the millions of villages and small social activists to effect change.

It is my opinion that the profit model of business has ignored climate change for too long. It took years for the business sector to realise that climate change is not an expense reducing their profits but instead a profit opportunity. As long as firms are still making money because central banks are willing to print money to sustain the profit illusion, little is likely to change.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (left) and Minister of Justice Gunnar Strommer hold a press conference in Stockholm on September 29. Sweden and other European countries are backing away from their commitments to overseas development aid. Photo: EPA-EFE

Rich countries have become more selfish and protective of the status quo. Even Sweden, formerly an exemplar of funding development aid, is backing away from its commitment to provide 0.7 per cent of GDP in annual overseas development aid amid pressure from its new right-wing government. Other European countries are doing the same.

Are we apes fighting over a burning planet? The rich must be willing to take the risk of funding and leading global climate action and addressing social inequities. The corruption of morality by the rich elite is exactly what has fuelled the decline and fall of civilisations.

If political leaders and business captains are not willing to listen to the Pope’s plea to his global flock and essentially anyone with a moral conscience, we are all doomed to be boiled frogs.

Andrew Sheng is a former central banker who writes on global issues from an Asian perspective