by Vanora Bennett, TES Contributor

Climate change attracts two kinds of opinion, it would seem: reasonable and other. In the first category, Gillian Tett argues in the Financial Times that central banks are slowly recognizing that global warming is a financial stability risk.

• End-March San Francisco Federal Reserve board’s economics letter argues that climate change will have increasingly important effects on US economy.

• This builds on a change of approach started in 2015 by Mark Carney, governor of Bank of England, who first said climate change had become a financial stability risk.

• Hippy posturing? Two years ago the Bank of England, Banque de France and People’s Bank of China joined in creating Network for Greening the Financial System. It now has 24 central banks and regulators as members, covering half of global GDP and 2/3 of the global systemically important banks and insurers. The only notable holdouts left are Brazil and the US. Tett argues that the San Francisco letter was a sign of seething rebelliousness in the US against the Trump Administration stance on climate change.

• NGFS published report after meeting in Paris last week explaining why climate a financial stability risk. Worldwide economic costs from natural disasters have exceeded 30-year average of $140 billion per annum in 7 of the last 10 years”. But it also admits there is a fog of opacity about climate impact models – but it could take years to clear the fog.

• Still, the NGFS report is a watershed – change from environment finance being driven by do-gooders to being driven by those concerned not to do bad, by managing risk effectively.

• Risk management taking climate change into account will bring more need for good systems of green accounting, measurement and advice. Trillions of dollars of capital will be affected. This may not be as exciting as the Extinction Rebellion climate protests in London and Paris – but Tett argues that these moves by grey-suited financiers will have more impact: “Grey can also be green”.

The Guardian view of UK’s climate responsibility is rather more extreme, calling for a zero emission target before the target date of 2050. Yes, that’s right: according to the Guardian the world’s fifth largest economy needs to reduce net carbon emissions to zero within twent, requiring (wait for it) massive government outlays for greening measures.

• Activists are changing the discourse on climate change. UK politicians must respond with policies that meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C, argues the Guardian in an editorial. 

• Protest group Extinction Rebellion’s 10 days of protest in the UK about climate change have had an impact – more media mentions, more discussion of their demand to stop net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2025 – a much more ambitious goal than the current official UK goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80%+ by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.

• Last year’s UN IPCC report said that to limit warming to 1.5C, global emissions must reach net zero by 2050. Next week the UK Committee on Climate Change is expected to recommend that the government goes further than its 80% reduction target. The Guardian argues that Britain ought to aim to reach the UN’s 2050 goal faster, but not as fast as Extinction Rebellion demands.

• Other countries are doing more. Norway has agreed a zero goal by 2030, Sweden by 2045.

• UK is currently on track to miss its legally binding carbon budgets for decade to 2032. It needs to take the difficult decisions now. Green activism is gathering momentum and has not only shifted global discourse but also put pressure on decision-makers to do more.

“Dare to declare capitalism dead – before it takes us all down with it.”

The headline says it all. George Monbiot, environmental activist and Guardian columnist, argues that the economic system is incompatible with the survival of life on Earth. 

• It’s capitalism itself, not “consumer” or “corporate” or “crony” variants, that is the problem. Why?

1. Capitalism demands perpetual growth, yet perpetual growth on a finite planet leads inexorably to environmental calamity. But capitalism’s defenders say economic growth can be decoupled from the use of material resources as consumption switches from goods to services. True? No, says Monbiot, quoting a paper in the journal New Political Economy by Jason Hickel and Giorgos Kallis which concludes that “green growth” is an illusion. In a system of perpetual growth there must be an extraction zone and a disposal zone – and the scale of activity means the entire planet is becoming a sacrifice zone. We can recover from war or famine but not from the loss of soil and a habitable climate.
2. Capitalism, defined by what Monbiot calls the “bizarre assumption” that a person is entitled to as great a share of the world’s natural wealth as their money can buy, causes dislocations, and truncation of other people’s rights. He cites Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz in the NY Times, trying to distinguish between “good” – wealth-creating – capitalism, and “bad” – wealth-grabbing or extracting rent. This distinction doesn’t exist for environmental matters, Monbiot says – wealth creation is wealth grabbing. Economic growth using material resources means seizing natural wealth from both living systems and future generations.

• Like coal, capitalism has brought benefits but now causes more harm than good. Alternatives are neither feudalism nor state communism, both of which inflicted harm in pursuit of economic growth, and promised a bright tomorrow in exchange for dehumanizing labour now.

• What does a better system look like? Monbiot believes a rough framework is emerging from the environmental thinking of Jeremy Lent, Kate Raworth, Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, Raj Patel and Bill McKibben. Part of the answer lies in the notion of “private sufficiency, public luxury” Another part arises from the creation of a new conception of justice based on principle: every generation, everywhere, shall have an equal right to the enjoyment of natural wealth.

• Monbiot’s view: our task is to identify the best proposals and shape them into a coherent alternative that helps us meet our needs without destroying our home. The question is: do we stop life to allow capitalism to continue, or stop capitalism to allow life to continue?

Vanora Bennett is an Orwell Prize-winning opinion writer and novelist.