Asian Angle | Cop28: governments must take drastic action on climate, not pander to the public, or we’re all doomed to boil

Statements such as the above are rarely uttered by politicians for fear of scaring the public. A week into Cop28 and the headlines are dominated by reports about arguments between rich and poor countries over where the money is going to come from, accusations about denial of the science, the practicality of phasing out fossil fuels fast enough, and some feel-good reports about small-scale actions or grand schemes.

Governments need to cut through all this noise and waste no time in understanding that all actions start at home, and there is much they need to do urgently to redesign the way their economies are structured and how people live.

This means rejecting “softly-softly” approaches to the greatest threat facing societies around the world. Governments need reminding that beating Covid-19 was heavily reliant on the fact that people were frightened, and thus came together and endured hardship and sacrifices in unprecedented ways. The public was fully engaged in the collective struggle, down to voluntary testing to protect others.

This allowed governments to then develop a road map, print vast amounts of money as needed and leverage the private sector to assist, with this collective approach geared towards protecting the public good.

What the public now deserves is a plan that is brutally honest, even draconian, but which makes it very clear we either act in a dramatic fashion to address climate change impacts or risk the reality that our lives and those of the next generation are going to be miserable. It is as simple as that.

We should not be afraid of people being afraid. When humans are scared and fearful, they will stop believing in fantasy solutions and instead get practical, adapt, and create previously unthinkable remedies to save themselves.