Yesterday, I attended one of the most honest and, hopefully, galvanising events on the environmental crisis that I’ve ever been to – and I’ve been to quite a few. Two big guns of UK climate messaging, Tony Juniper, CBE, and Mike Berners-Lee, were together to talk about their new books, Just Earth and A Climate of Truth, respectively, and I kind of hope things will never be the same.[1]
In personality they seemed very different: Juniper measured and deliberate, Berners-Lee passionate, evangelical, sitting forward in his chair and searching out the eyes of members of the audience. But as Berners-Lee pointed out in his introduction, both their books had reached the same conclusion: the metacrisis - a crisis of everything, everywhere, all at once - is upon us, it is an existential threat to humanity, and the window in which solutions are possible is closing fast.
That wasn’t news to me. But it’s not a message I hear in public, in our political discourse or mainstream media. I hear it in podcasts like Breaking Down: Collapse, Planet Critical, Sarah Wilson’s Wild or Nate Hagens’ The Great Simplification. I read about it in the r/collapse subreddit (527k members). And it’s been Extinction Rebellion’s message from the start. But to see two members of what I would call the mainstream, sitting in front of an audience of 200 in the Cambridge Union as part of the Cambridge Literary Festival, and to hear the truth being spoken out loud…it felt new. It felt important.
Berners-Lee laid out the elements of the crisis: the mass extinction of species which is happening faster and affecting more living things than at any time in the earth’s history since a meteor wiped out the dinosaurs 85 million years ago; uncontrolled pollution, particularly of plastics, which are now found everywhere on earth, including Antarctica and inside human brains, with as yet unknown effects; soil depletion reducing crop yields; water conflicts, such as the one brewing on the Indian/Pakistani border; ocean acidification; threats to democracy; and so on and so forth, across nearly every system, human, physical and ecological. Then he asked the audience a question – did they think he had overegged the problem? The unanimous answer was no. The audience understood the gravity of the situation.
How, then, as George Monbiot put it in the title to one of his books, did we get into this mess? And how do we get out again? Berners-Lee’s book focuses on honesty. Politicians, advertisers, corporate boards and the media need to start facing – and telling - the truth. That we can’t keep consuming resources and growing – as defined, at any rate, by economic growth metrics - on a finite planet. That we’ll be just fine without single use plastics. That the fossil fuel industry has manipulated the COP process from the beginning (go see the play Kyoto at Sohoplace for a bitter but surprisingly entertaining rundown of that history).
Juniper, on the other hand, emphasises justice. That it’s not fair to expect developing nations to bear the same decarbonisation burden as the developed world, which has been emitting greenhouse gases for 200 years, and which still, on a per capita basis, has an enormous carbon footprint. Nor is it fair to act like everyone in the developed world bears an equal responsibility. Oxfam’s Senior Climate Justice Policy Advisor, Chiara Liguori, pointed out in 2023 that: “It would take about 1,500 years for someone in the bottom 99 per cent to produce as much carbon as the richest billionaires do in a year.”[2]
I have to confess, at this point in the conversation I was feeling a bit angry. It all felt a bit top-down. How can I stop the fossil fuel industry from influencing governments, or the media from publishing what sells instead of what people need to hear? How can I influence the government of the USA or Brazil or China? How can I stop Bezos and Musk from pursuing their toxic agendas of sending pop stars to space or colonies to Mars?
But these two wrapped it up rather well. First of all, Berners-Lee said, we need to understand that we do have solutions for all these problems. It will be hard. It’s not impossible. We have to start growing better things instead of just the most profitable. Things like Wellbeing. Renewable energy. Equality. Biodiversity. Clean Air. Childcare provision. Healthy food. Safe streets.
Juniper pointed out that the most important thing we as individuals can do is pay attention and talk about the crisis. Acknowledge it. Face it. At work, at home, in your community. Do the little bits you can. Refuse consumption you don’t need. Vote for politicians who tell the truth as a first order of business. Stand up for a just transition. Reconnect with nature and discover our place in it and of it. Protest, volunteer, share, repair. Prepare your kids for a less luxurious but much more purposeful life. Feel the fear and do it anyway. Be determined.
The only wrong thing we can do right now is nothing. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins sums up how I, for one, feel right now:
“Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist -slack they may be - these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.”
Please share your thoughts below.
Michelle Golder, April 2025
[1] In case you’re unfamiliar, Tony Juniper is the current chair of Natural England, has worked with or for many of the most important global and national conservation organisations, including Friends of the Earth, Birdlife, The Wildlife Trust, and Fauna and Flora International, is a Fellow with the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), and is the author of many books. Mike Berners-Lee is probably best known as the author of the influential books How Bad are Bananas? and There Is No Planet B and is a Professor at Lancaster University. He’s also the brother of Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet.
[2] https://www.oxfam.org.uk/media/press-releases/richest-1-emit-as-much-planet-heating-pollution-as-two-thirds-of-humanity-oxfam/