Earthshot: book review

This article appeared in The House magazine, November 2021 edition.

We are undoubtedly living at a crossroads in humanity’s history on this planet. Having

become so dominant a species we are now drastically altering the finely tuned conditions

that enabled us to flourish. To take a sharp about turn, toward a less risky, more

harmonious way of existing, we need to apply the handbrake. In Earthshot the authors,

joined by HRH Prince William and other notable individuals, present a compelling case for

why and how things need to change, couched in an optimistic frame.

Five challenges are set out – the need to cut waste, clean our air, restore our land and our

oceans and stabilise the global climate and the books opens by describing the startling scale

of the impacts, using a combination of well presented data and anecdotal stories. As

someone who has worked on climate change over more than two decades, reading this

fresh account was still both sobering and daunting. But the book is peppered throughout

with stories to inspire hope: individuals who have battled against the odds to deliver

innovations, norms being transformed, signs of systemic change taking root and glimmers of

hope that we can move away from the status quo. There is plenty to support the idea that

having become powerful enough to threaten life on earth, we are also now capable of

problem solving to save ourselves.

Earthshot is as attractive and well written a book as the glamourous, televised awards

ceremony that recently handed out the first five £1million Earthshot prizes. But if I have a

criticism, it’s that both embody a somewhat naïve world view: “that individual effort can

unleash exponential change”. There are plenty of nods to the fact that real change needs to

come through collective action - and indeed two of the award winners were a country and a

city – but the myth of the individual still permeates. Sadly, the unprecedented scale and

pace with which we need to see things turn around, means we do not have time to rely on

innovators, with just-out-of-the-lab ideas, and, more often than not, small scale solutions

will lead to small scale outcomes.

As one prize-winning duo pointed out, commended for their efforts to reseed coral reefs in

the Bahamas, what we actually need is drastic action at a global scale to stop the things that

are threatening the oceans. Across all five areas but most pressingly in climate, we need

internationally co-ordinated and enforced action. And that will only come if the politics of

the short term can be put aside in favour of the long term, if individual national interests

can be subjugated for the common good, if incumbents who have so expertly protected the

status quo, can be stood up to and overridden. In short, we need a new politics of for the

planet – one centred around a true appreciation of the scale of the risks that we can neither

collectively nor individually evade. Yes we can all do something, and yes the innovators and

disruptors can offer hope and inspiration, but the only genuine path to a safe future is via

global agreements, translated into national commitments, translated into large scale

investments across the globe. In that respect, we should be drawing inspiration from the

post-war Marshall plan and Bretton Woods agreement. Putting a man on the moon was a

fine and noble endeavour, but it was largely symbolic and we do not have time for gestures.

Each of us must work to change the politics such that collective action becomes

unstoppable. Earthshot will hopefully reach a whole new audience and will inspire many to

join the fight but we should not be seduced into relying on the individual – even if they are a

future king with all the influence that may bring.