Looking for leaders
Authors: None The Lancet Planetary Health
Journal: The Lancet Planetary Health (2019)

A good proportion of our editorial column space this year has been devoted to the stream of scientific reports summarising the full extent of the global climate and biodiversity emergencies we face and the popular movements that have arisen as a result of the lacklustre and frankly insufficient government and business response to these emergencies. Last month saw one of the largest coordinated international demonstrations in history. An estimated six million people took to the streets in the youth led climate strikes timed to try to influence the UN Climate Action Summit in New York. These movements are certainly raising the profile of climate change and the need to rapidly cut emission and reverse ecological degradation. The overall picture from the summit though was disappointing, we still aren't seeing decarbonisation at the scale and pace needed to even have a 50% chance of meeting the Paris Agreements objectives. In particular most of the plans submitted by the major economies lacked sufficient ambition with few national leaders displaying any real idea how they will implement their existing emissions reduction commitments let alone ramp up their ambition. This is perhaps not surprising since the scale of the challenge is large, and it represents a major departure from business as usual thinking and planning. It's all too easy for difficult decisions to be put off for others and for national leaders to blame other nations for not doing enough to curb their emissions. As a concerned citizen seeing our socio-political juggernaut on a collision course and taking little evasive action what options do we have? For many the answer is to rebel. October is set to witness an International Rebellion lead by the group Extinction Rebellion (XR). Many participants are willing to go a stage further than the climate strikers and in addition to taking to the streets to demonstrate the scale of public support for action to avert environmental crises there will be many acts of peaceful civil disobedience. We won't know the scale of these efforts until after this issue is published but events are planned in cities from Toronto, New York, Sydney, Buenos Aries and Istanbul to name just a few. Given how effective previous such rebellions have been in raising the profile of climate and ecological breakdown earlier this year it is hard to imagine this will not have further impact no matter how you might feel about the disruption. It seems those in the highest corridors of power really haven't woken up to how serious these challenges are or how significant the level of public feeling is becoming. The traditional academic approach to policy change is to provide ever more and better information and hope that politicians, legislators and the business community are paying attention and become convinced by the arguments. That approach has proved largely unsuccessful so far, particularly in mobilising climate change mitigation actions, but the combination of public activism backed up with authoritative scientific assessments does seem a powerful one. It's hard to dismiss these activists, even teenagers taking time off school, when the arguments they make are largely a correct representation of the best available science. The protests represent both a counter-culture movement, challenging existing social and economic norms, and an appeal to the conventional authority of science. The IPCC's latest Special Report on the ocean and cryosphere released in September provided an update on the scientific picture since the IPCC's fifth assessment report (AR5) – published in 2013-14. There is little that will surprise those who have read previous reports but it is noteworthy that many changes are occurring at a rate and magnitude erring towards the high end of projected scenarios. The report serves to remind us that everyone depends directly or indirectly on the ocean and cryosphere, and warns that communities in close connection with coastal environments, small islands, polar regions and high mountains are particularly exposed to projected levels of sea level rise, glacier melt and permafrost thaw. The report reiterates the need for urgent and ambitious emissions reductions coupled with sustained and ambitious adaptation actions to avert the climate impacts that are already locked in. If you are concerned about climate change and ecological collapse and their implications for society, there is a great deal of evidence that you are right to be concerned but little conventional leadership in taking the steps necessary to address these issues. What choice do people have left but to peacefully rebel?