When Grumpy saw the future

Scotland’s 2020 Climate Group got its name from the interim targets in Scotland’s Climate Change Act. But they are interim targets. The transition to a low carbon world will take longer and the real hard targets in the Act are for 2050. I will be 59 in 2020 and my time as a senior figure will be drawing to a close (about time, I hear many of you say!) but it is today’s 23 year olds who will be 59 in 2050. It is people in their twenties who will be the leaders running up to 2050. We recognised that reality, a year ago, by setting up a 2050 sub-group for those future leaders and on 26//11/14 they held their first conference.

They kindly invited a grumpy old man like me to give a keynote talk. Faced with over 200 committed and enthusiastic members and guests of the 2050 Group I felt compelled to apologise for my generation. We have lived through an era of unsustainable and unparalleled growth. In my lifetime:

-the world’s population has more than doubled from 3bn to 7.25bn.

-the number of cars on the roads in the UK alone has more than doubled to 32m.

-global oil consumption has nearly tripled to 90million barrels a day.

- we have gone from using about half the earth’s ecological capacity to support the whole of mankind to needing 1.5 earths.

This last point is really alarming because the last time I lookedthere is only one earth. We are, as a species, living beyond our means each and every year. All this combines to mean that ,global emissions of CO₂ have gone up from around 10bn tonnes a year when I was born, to 36bn now. At this rate we will use up the atmospheres capacity to absorb carbon without triggering changes that will undermine human wellbeing in around 20 years.We have a lot to say sorry for.

I also made the point that my generation struggles with new technology. We thought that texting wouldn’t take off, that the internet would get in the way of work, that Twitter was a passing phase and that selfies were pointless. We are either still living in an analogue world or are digital converts. People in their twenties are digital natives.

The challenge to the generation of young leaders is not to make the same mistakes as we have, to embrace technology and put us back on a path to sustainable living. As was said by Chris, the Chair of the 2050 Group, it started out as a sub-group of the 2020 Climate Group but has to become a movement in its own right.

I left the conference a lot less grumpy than when I arrived as I caught a glimpse of the future and was truly impressed.