Video summary
England is currently facing an unprecedented environmental crisis as the driest July on record has turned its traditionally green landscapes into parched brown fields, with many ponds completely drying up and football pitches resembling a desert. While plant life remains resilient enough to prevent total ecological collapse, this extreme weather pattern makes the reality of climate change undeniably tangible rather than abstract. Despite these visible signs of distress, there has been a notable silence from British politicians who have largely shrugged off the situation with indifference, failing to call for emergency responses or implement urgent measures despite calls from figures like Zac Goldsmith. This political quietude stands in stark contrast to recent history when powerful movements like Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil dominated headlines through disruptive protests, only to see their momentum fade as new organizations have yet to emerge to fill the void.
The decline of visible climate activism is attributed by experts like Adrian Buller to a complex mix of factors including pandemic fatigue, public exhaustion from constant crisis news, and significant shifts in political strategy where major parties are retreating on net zero goals due to electoral pressures or culture war tactics. Media coverage of climate issues has also plummeted by nearly 40% since 2021, further diminishing the perceived urgency among the general public while legislative changes have made protesting more difficult through stricter laws targeting activists as potential terrorists. Some argue that de-politicizing climate change is a strategic move to avoid polarization and win elections, but critics contend that this approach cedes ground to right-wing factions who deny the crisis or frame it solely around culture wars, ultimately failing to address the fundamental need for political engagement on such an existential threat.
Looking toward future solutions, experts suggest that effective climate action must evolve beyond traditional protest tactics and uncritical celebration of renewable energy expansion alone, as massive builds in wind and solar power have not yet significantly reduced global emissions due to rising fossil fuel demand elsewhere. Instead, the focus should shift heavily toward adaptation strategies that address immediate community needs such as protecting workers from extreme heat, improving infrastructure resilience, and integrating climate concerns with broader issues like workplace safety and social justice. By grounding abstract environmental challenges in tangible local realities where people can see and feel the impact of a changing world, movements can rebuild coalitions across different demographics and articulate clear demands that connect climate survival to everyday life rather than leaving it as an isolated political football issue.
Read the full video transcript
England's green and pleasant land has
become a shade of brownie yellow. July
in the UK was the driest on record with
large parts of the south experiencing 0
mm of rain throughout the month. Um
images of Blackheath, commonly usually
verdant, um but now looking positively
parched have been going viral. And the
football fields of Hackney Marshes,
where I walk my dog, now look more like
the Nevada desert. Um luckily, the trees
have stayed green. Um plant life does
still exist in England, and we're not a
desert. Um but many of the ponds have
completely dried up. All of this makes
climate change and the prospect of our
future on a hotter planet less abstract
and more real. Um but this extreme
summer has come alongside a shrug of the
shoulders from Britain's politicians.
And we haven't heard much from them. Now
earlier this week, Zac Goldsmith
attempted to change that. Um he demanded
that Andy Burnham call an emergency
Cobra meeting in response to the
drought. Um Burnham hasn't answered that
call.
It's not just our government, though,
who have responded to this extreme
weather with relative quiet.
In recent history, the UK has had an
incredibly powerful climate protest
movement. Extinction Rebellion, which
became a global phenomenon for climate
action, was founded in the UK. And
between 2021 and 2024, Just Stop Oil um
seemed to be constantly in the news. Um
first for blocking traffic, and then for
throwing soup on famous paintings. And
they also disrupted other arts and
cultural events. Um of course,
Extinction Rebellion has now largely
wound up. Just Stop Oil stopped
campaigning last year. Um they said that
was to focus on sort of supporting
activists either serving or facing jail
time. Um and there haven't been any
obvious new climate movements to take
their place. Now this is a reality the
writer Adrian Buller has lamented this
week in the New Statesman. The subtitle
of the piece reads, "France, Spain, and
England are burning. Where is the
climate movement to resist this
catastrophe?" Now, I thought this was an
interesting question, so I caught up
with Adrian Buller earlier today.
>> It's a strange movement for climate
politics right now. A really weird time
because it feels as though
there's in many ways this kind of
incredibly fertile ground that you could
build action out of. I mean, I think
people are really seeing the escalating
impacts of the climate crisis so vividly
around them, whether that's, you know,
the quite sort of shocking imagery of
these wildfires in France and Spain and
the UK and elsewhere. Um but also in
slightly more kind of mundane quotidian
things that really affect uh sort of
everyone on a very basic level, whether
that's food and energy prices or, you
know, in the heat waves back in June,
you know, getting on
our bus system where there's absolutely
no air conditioning and it's, you know,
mostly ridden by the elderly and you can
see them kind of wilting in 40°
conditions. All these things. So,
there's all sorts of ways in which the
material reality of climate feels more
and more acute as time goes on and yet
we have less and less kind of visible
climate politics, definitely a sort of
absent climate movement relative to the
kind of highs of 2019. Um and it's
really sort of difficult to understand
why that is. I have a sort of all sorts
of speculations. Um
and I think, you know, some of the more
obvious
responses that have been offered,
definitely which have merit, are, you
know, COVID initially kind of crushed
what was a movement high
um
in 2019 when it was sort of the school
strikes, the Sunrise Movement,
Extinction Rebellion in the UK. Um and
nothing like that has been
reconstituted.
Um there's also probably a real sense of
fatigue. I mean, when it comes to
something like climate, the scale and
complexity of this issue is so huge that
you are just kind of like beating your
head against a brick wall. Um and when
it feels like you're achieving little,
it's hard to kind of keep up that
momentum.
I mean, there's also obviously been a
number of crises in the years since that
have rightly captured both media
attention but also, you know, the energy
of movements, not least kind of the mass
mobilization in response to genocide in
Gaza. Um and so those are I think some
more kind of direct uh maybe more
obvious reasons. But I think there's
also kind of more subtle things going on
in the background as well. Um there's
been a real kind of like elite
retrenchment on climate. Um and I mean
that from the perspective of positions
of power. Obviously in the US you have
someone like Trump coming in and and
replacing the Biden administration. Um
but in the UK, you know, Reform, for
example, have made attacking net zero a
real kind of cornerstone of what they
do. And in their sort of desperation to
kind of corner Reform voters, both the
Tories and Labour have uh at times kind
of reflected that, whether that's in the
Conservatives now attacking net zero or
Labour kind of being a bit hush-hush
about their action on climate, sort of
refusing to to lead on it. Um and on the
media front,
there's been a real decline, a sort of
measurable decline, in coverage of
climate as an issue. And and that does
sort of impact public perception of how
serious this is as a crisis.
There's a study by the University of
Colorado that found that since 2021 it's
fallen by nearly 40% in terms of global
news coverage. And that's a massive
decline that, you know, has
implications. And I think as well, and
then I'll I'll stop. I mean, there's so
many things we could diagnose, but
there's been as well, I think, um some
very [clears throat] obvious attacks on
press freedom, particularly in the US
but also civic freedoms in the UK, with
things like, you know, the Police,
Crime, and Sentencing Bill, the Public
Order Act, the treatment of protesters
as terrorists under sentencing law. All
of these things were direct responses to
the sort of climate movement highs of
2019. Those bills were designed in
response to that kind of activism, and
they've been quite effective in in sort
of chilling it. Um so there's a lot of
reasons uh
just to begin with there.
Um, and I think, you know, there are
some serious questions about what a
climate movement that is reconstituted
would actually and could actually look
like at this point.
>> Some people do argue that the I suppose
the decline of a climate movement or the
reduced politicization, let's say, of
the climate is a good thing. So, you
quote in your article um the Searchlight
Institute, which is a centrist and you
quote them saying "The first rule about
solving climate change is don't say
climate change." Um, and I think the
argument there is probably two-fold,
which is if, you know, if you're a
center-left party and you want to win an
election, climate's not a um sort of
winning issue, but also if you're sort
of a a genuine not a genuine, sorry, a a
general generalist climate activist,
let's say, or someone who cares about
the climate, then it's in your interest
for this not to become a polarized
issue, and the climate movement,
obviously very left-coded, um which
might help sort of reform or Trump or
whoever make this into a political
football issue. Um, I take it you don't
agree with Searchlight Institute. So,
sort of tell me why they're wrong.
>> Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think
that there is
a really understandable like instinct at
play there, right? Which is that the
right has been incredibly effective at
turning climate into a culture war
issue, and we are sort of we being like
progressive, centrist, people on the
left, anyone in that kind of spectrum,
we're sort of on the back foot in terms
of responding to that very effective, I
think, polarization of this issue. And
so, in some ways I understand this
instinct that uh they're sort of
arguing. I don't know that even their
own data sort of reflects that argument.
Um, and there's a really great essay in
the Boston Review by someone called
Aaron Regenberg that sort of dissects a
lot of this work um really well, which
is that, you know, there's this sense
that because
uh climate change might not be the
number one immediate priority of certain
voter groups, that it's somehow also
does poorly at the ballot box. And I
just don't think those two things are
are the same. And I think as well, you
know, it always calls to mind to me the
probably like overused Stewart Hall
quote, but the quote that is, you know,
politics doesn't reflect majorities, it
constructs them, right? And so if you
don't treat climate change as a major
political issue, you don't communicate
it as intimately related to things like
the cost of living, your grocery bills,
your ability to ensure your home, your
energy bills,
like wars around the world and and the
volatility of the fossil fuel system,
all of these things. If you fail to make
those connections and you fail to state
it as a political priority, yeah, it
will recede as a political priority. You
are ceding ground to parties of the
right who wish to turn into a culture
war issue, who will use that vacuum to
describe it, to deny it, and to set, you
know, the terms according to their
agenda. And so, yeah, I I don't think
that that is a winning strategy. Um and,
you know, evidence from US, Canada, UK,
across Europe suggests that like even as
public concern has fallen over the past
couple of years as reflected in, you
know, various polls, although, you know,
polls vary as much as they do.
Um there's the vast majority of people
still do care about this as a political
issue and it is a small minority that
would be extra keen on a politician that
opposes climate action. Those figures
remain true and I think failing to
make climate a political issue and to be
very strategic and effective in how we
communicate it is a huge risk and I
don't think just backing off it as an
issue
is a great political strategy and
obviously it's a terrible strategy for,
you know, the planet and all of the life
that lives on it.
>> All of the life matters, doesn't it?
We don't want to lose all of the life.
Um
what difference would it make if there
were a sort of strong climate movement
now? And I suppose importantly, what
would be its demand? What sort of ideas,
issues,
um potential solutions are we not
hearing about because I suppose the
climate movement is currently at a low
ebb.
>> One thing that I've been
thinking about is that probably a
climate movement going forward will have
to look quite different to how it felt
uh and what it looked like in that kind
of high period of 2019. And that's not
to say we jettison all those kind of
traditional protest techniques.
Um but it's it feels increasingly that
there are no easy kind of demands to be
made when it comes to climate. Although
it's still as important as ever that we
get off fossil fuels,
the state of the climate that we're in,
how far off track we are, how extreme
the impacts are becoming day on day,
means that that kind of message
feels really muddy because we also need
to be thinking really seriously about
things like adaptation. You know, we
live now in an increasingly climate
change world. And in the UK, but around
the world, you know, we live in
societies and in infrastructural systems
that are radically ill-equipped for that
world. And so now we're in this kind of
circumstance where that's happening,
where climate is increasingly visibly
connected to issues like global
conflict, um and so it becomes really
hard to know exactly how you articulate
a very clear demand. It's like we're
against the climate crisis, but also
creeping authoritarianism and also
war and genocide. And also we need to
and all of that kind of comes together
in a very complicated way. And so I
think something
that provides a really fertile ground
for action and that can kind of rebuild
coalitions and communities behind and in
support of climate action is actually in
the realm of of adaptation. And by that
I mean, you know, the changes that we
need to make uh to the way that we live,
to the infrastructures, to how we
organize our communities to respond to
this different world that we now live
in. A lot of that you can really sort of
see, touch, and feel. A lot of it is
very embedded in the community. Much of
it relates to, you know, this the fight
for better workplace conditions, whether
that's, you know, workers in the NHS
where systems buckle under extreme heat,
or whether it's, you know, laborers
working outdoors in construction in
extreme heat conditions. There's all
sorts of ways that adaptation links
really intimately to things that people
feel
very strongly about, which they have
strong emotional connections to,
um and which I think can bring in groups
that might otherwise be excluded from,
say, a mass protest movement, um behind
a kind of new form of of climate action.
And I think because those actions,
climate change has a real kind of scale
problem, right? It feels so abstract, uh
both from a temporal perspective, but
also a geographical perspective. And
these are the kind of actions that can
really ground it, um and make it much
more legible to whole different groups
of people. So, while I'm not sort of
saying we shouldn't be hitting the
streets and protesting anymore, I do
think that we need to be evolving the
strategies and and tactics tactics that
that we use.
>> In the piece in the New Statesman,
you're critical of people sort of on the
climate scene hyping progress on green
tech, so particularly wind and and and
solar rollout. Now, obviously, when I
read that, I felt incredibly attacked.
Um so, explain
explain your position. Yeah, I I I I
To be honest, actually, I'd be flattered
if you were thinking of me, but anyway.
What Explain your position there.
>> Yeah, so it's not that I don't think
that we should celebrate wins when they
happen, but it's that I think a lot of
the celebration
of the wins when it comes to sort of the
incredible, like, eye-popping build-out
of renewable energy that we've seen
largely driven by
uh China around the world, um you know,
I think we need to be really clear-eyed
about how and why that's happening and
what it actually means from a climate
perspective, which is kind of really the
the perspective that matters if if what
we're talking about is, you know, the
benefits of of clean energy, although
access is also a huge benefit there.
But, you know, there's a couple things
at play there. One of which is that
climate is not a problem that is solved
just by building a ton of wind turbines
and solar panels. That's a big part of
it. It's definitely not all of it. And
you can really see that in the fact
that, you know,
that massive build-out, impressive as it
is, has yet to really make dents in the
places that matter, which is sort of
materially changing what the energy mix
looks like. We still have uh an
unprecedented amount of fossil fuels in
the mix because aggregate global energy
demand continues to rise.
And as a result, we're also not really
seeing dents in global emissions in the
way that we absolutely need to see for
that to really matter. And so, while it
is a positive story,
I worry both about how it's celebrated
in terms of
prescription of causes. Um, there's a
lot of kind of like, "Oh, well, war has
shown us that fossil fuels are volatile
and made renewable energy a winner, and
like, la-di-da, isn't that great?" Um,
ignoring, I think, a lot of other
underlying trends and causes. But also,
I think it's really we need to be very
careful about uncritically celebrating
it as something that reflects progress
on climate. Because while there has been
incredible progress in renewable energy,
it has yet to translate into real
meaningful impacts on cutting emissions.
And so, it's not that I don't think it's
great, but I think that there's a lot
much more sort of complicated picture uh
when it comes to renewable build-out.