These are mysterious times. Not only is it cool to care, but it’s also the only game in town. Famously, unless we cut emissions now and stop pillaging the Earth, we are toast as a species.
The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change climate report, published last week, makes for bleak reading. But it does contain a few shafts of light. One being that we can at least get our bloated world-ending personal consumption footprints under control; consumer behaviour is factored into the IPCC’s plan for the first time. Indeed, sustainable living needs to be seen as a “status symbol”, the UN body said. Of course, status consumption is normally viewed as eco-hooliganism — traditionally we don’t just want to keep up with the Joneses
