George Clarke wonders how on earth our plans to deal with the climate crisis are going.
2024 was quite a year!
There were more elections across the globe than ever, and this level of transition always bring turbulence.
At the same time all these political twists and turns, changes of government, changes of policies are all happening in a world dominated by social media, which in my humble view seems to have spiralled out of control in the last few years.
It is difficult to know what is real, unreal, truth or lies. And, in the wrong hands, social media is definitely being used as a weapon, particularly by extreme factions.
We are now being flooded by a tsunami of information every day, 24 hours a day.
And let’s be honest so much of that information is pretty terrible. From the bland and boring to the negative and toxic, even the manipulated.
It is often difficult to make sense of it and most of the content is so poor I often wonder why it is even appearing on my phone.
Finding balanced, true and informative content is often difficult.
With no escape from 24-hour news and it seems no escape from social media, we are surrounded by relentless ‘media noise’, negative news and everyone is battling to shout the loudest.
The problem then is that there are so many voices shouting for attention, that so many issues are struggling to be heard.
This means that many of us don’t even hear about some of the important things that are happening out there.
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Sorting out our priorities
It is so important that we acknowledge our collective battle to reverse climate change and to make sure this battle to save the planet doesn’t fall off the radar.
Over the last 10-15 years many surveys and polls would show that our No.1 priority was climate change and saving the planet.
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case. Inflation and the cost-of-living crisis and the fears of a receding economy tops most polls.
Of course, this is understandable too when people are feeling the economic strain, but it is not good that climate change is sliding down the league table of people’s priorities.
This is my big fear - reversing climate change doesn’t seem to be a priority for the developed world at the moment.
Self-interest is starting to dominate and there are even individuals, governments and political voices out there who say that spending money on climate change is not important right now.
My big fear is that reversing climate change doesn’t seem to be a priority at the moment.
I realise that media interest in certain subjects comes and goes with the rising tides.
I realise that we as human beings have different priorities at different times in order to survive.
But, protecting the planet cannot be a fashion that is very popular with us one minute and then virtually ignored the next.
Protecting the planet is vital for the future of our species. There are politicians within our own parliament who say we cannot afford to be green at the moment.
We cannot be selfish and rinse the planet of everything it’s has to offer now, only for generations to suffer terribly in the future. That is a destructive path to humankind suicide.
Of course, we should relentlessly strive for global peace. But, at the same time we must do everything we possibly can to secure the future of our planet. We should never give up hope for both.
In his last message to the scouts, Sir Robert Baden-Powell said: “try to leave this world a little better than you found it”.
Wise words indeed. But all of us, together, must try harder.
For the full-length version of this article, visit les.mitsubishielectric.co.uk/the-hub
George Clarke is a TV presenter, architect, writer and Ecodan Ambassador for Mitsubishi Electric
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