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The Observer
25.08.19 Climate emergencyindustrial nation is on track to
meet its commitments under Paris.
My own hope is that I see almost
half of our global emissions being
produced by two countries – the
US and China. Maybe it’s naive, but
I hope a cooperative pact can be
reached between the two countries
like the nuclear non-proliferation
agreements that were made
between the U S and Russia in the
cold war. The two nations remained
rivals but were nevertheless jointlyproblem. There are many cases
of what I think of as climate
hypocrisy, for example, Canada
declaring a climate emergency and
then the very next day approving a
new oil pipeline.
Each individual nation could
be quite aggressive in their
decarbonisation and yet be living
through the exact same climate
that there would be if they took
no action unless the rest of the
world followed suit. No majorDavid
Wallace-
Wells
The journalist and
author talks to Ian
Tucker about the climate
crisis, migration and
compassion – and how
the US and China will be
key to averting disaster
David Wallace-Wells is deputy editor
of New York magazine. In July 2017,
he wrote a long-form essay about the
dire prospects for civilisation caused
by the climate crisis. It became the
most read article in the history of
the magazine and led to a book,
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of
the Future , which is being published
in paperback in September.
Th e fi rst line of your book state s: “It is
worse, much worse, than you think.”
If you were sitting down to write the
book again, would you be inserting
another “much” into that sentence?
I still think the public aren’t as
concerned as they should be about
some of the scary stuff that’s
possible this century. But I do think
things have changed quite a bit.
And I also think the politics have
changed. When I turned in the book
in September, nobody had heard
of Greta Thunberg. Nobody had
heard of Extinction Rebellion. In
the US, very few people had heard
of Sunrise. And Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez had not even been elected.
In the United States, you have a
climate crisis denier as president, yet
areas of the country are experiencing
frequent fl ooding, more forest fi res
and rises in average temperature of
more than 2C. How do you explain
this?
Actually, it’s quite striking how
many Americans do believe climate
change is happening. [Democratic
presidential nominee] Jay Inslee says
75% of voters want action, compared
with 63% 12 months ago – that
is remarkable. There was a piece
earlier this month in the New York
Times about how for many young
Republicans, it is their top issue.Th ere seems to be a division in the
US Democratic nomination race
between candidates who advocate
wholesale system change such as
the Green New Deal and others who
favour a more incremental progress
because they claim that’s the only
way to get laws passed. Which is
the most eff ective approach?
I ncremental policy simply isn’t
going to be adequate to avoid
really terrible levels of warming- b ut ambitious legislation has to
go through the Senate and I don’t
think there’s a scenario where a
Democratic president takes offi ce in
2021 with more than 60 Democratic
votes [a three-fi fths majority ].
On the other hand, the last few
administrations have gotten quite
creative in how to use what’s called
“budget reconciliation”, which you
can use to pass stuff through the
Senate with only 51 votes [a simple
majority] by defi ning legislation
as essentially budget -based. That’s
one reason why you see so many of
the Democrats’ plans are essentially
investment programmes.
Inslee has been more ambitious
in putting forward details about
how he would regulate the fossil
fuel business but some of the other
campaigns have basically just put
forward a sort of Green New Deal
or green Marshall Plan – a massive
spending programme directed at
green energy projects.We can agree to decarbonise – re think
agriculture, aim for a meatless diet and
so on – but we don’t live in a global,
centrali sed command-and-control
economy. Every country has its own
political interests. How do you make
the world take collective action?
That’s harder than the technologicalDavid Wallace-Wells: ‘Incremental
policy isn’t going to be adequate.’
Linda Nylind/The Guardian