Michael Russell: The visible facts of climate change will only get worse

Perhaps it is because, like politics, science fiction is about creating a better world, or at the very least averting a worse one. Faced with their daily struggle to achieve that task, even on a modest level, it is therefore little wonder politicians are attracted to a genre in which individual good intentions and determined deeds normally triumph no matter the pitfalls placed in their way.

A regular storyline in sci-fi is impending disaster. All life on our planet is threatened while officialdom is paralysed by incompetence, riven by dispute or undermined by self-serving treachery. As a result, the task of saving humanity devolves – in the end – on to some very ordinary people who reluctantly find themselves doing extraordinary things. Unfortunately that scenario is no longer fiction. We are now living in the early days of a planetary catastrophe and so far the official global reaction at the vital COP26 conference in Glasgow is shaping up to be every bit as dismal as the movie script.

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The problem, though it has complex origins, can be expressed simply. Our world – the only one we have, despite our fictional wishes – is more than a degree warmer than at the end of the 19th century. Increased temperatures, caused by humanity, produce changes in the climate which will affect us all, though some worse than others. The more ineffective we are at limiting those rises, the worse will be the outcome.

On Thursday, the USA published its National Intelligence Estimate on Climate Change. It predicts an increase in global tensions, a greater risk of warfare and much more human suffering as a result of gross and growing inequalities which are exacerbated by climate change.

Of course, there are still those who deny anything is wrong but that is a diminishing problem. The actual fact of climate change is now visible and can only get more so.

The actual immediate problem is two-fold. Firstly, it lies in the difficulty of bringing about change in societies that have become dependent on climate-destroying activity but which are too poor (and often too unequal) to alter their actions without major social and political upheaval.

Secondly, it lies in the narrow self-interest of elites who believe change should only take place at a pace which protects their interests and defends their positions.

Both of these problems need to be tackled and in the case of countries such as coal-exporting Australia they are interlinked. The preferred tools should be diplomacy, persuasion and mutual aid but COP26 president Alok Sharma was never the man to do that (I recall all too clearly his embarrassing attempt to persuade me that the Internal Market Bill was a positive, pro-devolution measure), nor is Boris Johnson.

Moreover, their decision on the carbon-capture project shows that for them internal Tory politics will always predominate.

However, there is the potential for leadership from smaller countries, illustrating by example and willing to share whatever they have to help others. The wellbeing economy governments such as Scotland, with the support and input of the wider Wellbeing Alliance, could be important in that regard, recognising as they do that sustainability and ecological priorities are vital and that prosperity must be measured by means other than crude growth.

But we are going to need more.

Even if we stop the rise in temperature (the Paris Agreement of COP25 talks of keeping it “well below” 2C) we are still going to experience increasingly deleterious effects.

Sea levels have risen 21cm since 1900, with one-third of that in the last 30 years.

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That means that where COP26 is being held is likely be part of the River Clyde within the lifetime of many attending the event, or protesting outside it. It means that the access to my house in Argyll will be underwater at some stage in the foreseeable future, and the homes of some of my friends and neighbours will be swamped.

Yet those are minor matters compared to massive forced migration, increased famine, more intense natural disasters and war.

And they are nothing at all compared to a planet which cannot sustain life because it has been ruined by those who were given it to cherish. So where do we find the ordinary people prepared to do the extraordinary thing of saving the world?

All around us, fortunately, and starting with you and me.

We need to be part of the solution even when there is not yet a solution. We must start to live with the reality of threat uppermost in our minds but also with the confidence that individual effort is the available antidote which will in time move a mountain of indifference, selfishness or special pleading, if we insist upon it doing so.

That means not ignoring or avoiding COP26 but being heard during it, either at one of the many events or online and it means embracing in our lives and lifestyles the intention of the new SNP/Green Government to tackle the issue by placing it at the heart of our politics as they go forward.

Classically, the disaster movie genre results in calamity being averted at the final moment.

We are getting closer to that moment now so it is time each of us played our essential part.

We must make sure that all our deeds and words from now on are focused on securing a planet on which our children and grandchildren can live in peace and prosperity for climate justice has to mean social justice too.

Put bluntly, our very future depends on all of us insisting on it.