A little less conversation, a little more action

Dana Fisher is the Author of Saving Ourselves: From climate shocks to climate action

Describe your latest book, Saving Ourselves.

It’s a data-driven manifesto, based on 25 years of research on efforts to address the climate crisis.

That research documents the lack of sufficient political progress over the past 30+ years of the climate regime since it began at the Earth Summit in 1992. Countries have made numerous commitments. But greenhouse gas emissions and global temperatures keep rising.

Why haven’t we made more progress, after all this time?

The straight answer is that fossil fuel interests have a stranglehold on decision-making. My research is part of a broader body of literature documenting this fact.

All of the companies connected to the manufacture and distribution of fossil fuel–driven products, including plastics, have privileged access to natural resources and power. As a result, they have not only slowed progress, they have captured the climate regime. Fossil fuel companies, lobbyists, and interests, as well as countries that are basically petro-states, have been dragging their feet, and are fueling and funding climate denial around the world.

Did you attend the COP29 summit in Baku in November?

No, I don't go to climate negotiations anymore. I think they're a waste of carbon. But back when I used to attend, say, in 2015, fossil fuel executives would attend under a different affiliation (so, basically in disguise). They'd be affiliated with a nongovernmental organization, business association, or something. But nowadays, OPEC has its own pavilion at COP. Fossil fuels are prominent at the meeting. That should tell you everything you need to know about what's going to come out of those negotiations.

You argue in Saving Ourselves that society won't take decisive action until we get hit by a climate shock of sufficient duration and intensity that it disrupts our daily lives. If the shock only affects one part of the world, will people everywhere demand action?

I do not believe that an international regime is going to solve the climate crisis. There’s no evidence that the international arena will drive the systemic changes that are needed. Instead, we will see local and national policymaking that drives such change.

Research shows that windows of opportunity open after areas experience disaster, or climate shock. It also shows that people who have personally experienced climate shocks are much more open to taking advantage of their capacity as political actors. So, I expect that the personal experience of risk will push people to work for change at the community level, or at the state, provincial, and national levels. That is where social change happens.

So, it will start local, and then spread?

Yes, eventually it will agglomerate into international-level action. But there are very few examples where an international regime actually solved this type of problem. And there are only a small number of countries, which, if they made decisive changes, could significantly affect the climate crisis. If we saw North America, Europe, India, and China make big changes, for example, that would have a huge effect on the crisis, and on the degree to which we're going to experience future climate shocks. But change will not come from an international-level policy.

What if a climate catastrophe happened somewhere like Bangladesh, and the government there took strong action. Would that have an impact on the world?

No, but it would have an impact on Bangladesh. The climate crisis is hitting in an unequal way. Developing countries are experiencing it first. As a result, the people there are bearing the brunt of it. Unfortunately, there is a very little evidence that action by developing countries will lead to action by developed countries.

Even so, developing countries can cultivate resilience in their communities, so they can handle the catastrophe better; and they can shift away from fossil fuels and stop providing a marketplace for natural gas coming from Norway, the United States, and Canada. As long as the developing world demands fossil fuels, developed countries will keep extracting them.

During COVID, economies worldwide ground to a halt. That was bad for business, but good for the planet. Is that the tradeoff we face?

To some degree, yes. The type of systemic changes we're talking about mean that business-as-usual cannot continue. We will need dramatic shifts in how we generate, consume, and store energy. Until that happens, we'll continue to see greenhouse gas emissions going up, and climate shocks hitting with more frequency and severity, which is what we're seeing already.

We're only teetering around 1.5 degrees at this point. But all the natural science makes it very clear where we're going. As the world warms and climate shocks continue, people will have to change – not necessarily to the degree that we saw during COVID, but I expect that sufficient climate action will require some substantial changes to the way we live our lives.2

Photo courtesy of Robert Leslie / TED

How soon will that happen?

I’m a social scientist, so I take hints about the timeline from my colleagues in the natural sciences. A lot of them say we’re about to pass a number of thresholds and could see cascading disasters because of that. The expectation is that we're talking about the next 10 years or less.

What does the recent U.S. Presidential election augur for climate change?

We're going to see a shift away from all of the climate policymaking the Biden Administration pushed for – which was still insufficient, because during the Biden Administration, the United States became the world’s #1 producer of both natural gas and oil.

I studied energy policy during the first Trump Administration. In his second term, we can expect to see a bigger investment in fossil fuel extraction and the canceling of limitations that were put on fossil fuel extraction. We're already seeing proposals for that.

Is there a case to be made for more fossil fuel extraction?

The Republicans argue that the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to extract more U.S. natural gas and sell it around the world, because (they say) the United States extracts cleaner gas than other countries do. I disagree with that argument, but that's the position of most Republicans in the U.S. Congress, and of the incoming Trump Administration. So, any shift we've seen away from fossil fuels will be limited now, and U.S. carbon emissions will go up. The new administration also will want to cancel incentives to buy electric cars. So, there will be roadblocks to a green energy transition in the United States.

You recently gave a TED Talk where you referred to yourself an as "apocalyptic optimist." Is it hard to stay upbeat?

Some days it is. As I say in the TED Talk, climate records keep getting broken, extreme weather hits, or another round of climate negotiations ends with no measurable effects whatsoever.

But then I see progress being made at the local level: communities vote to phase out natural gas in local buildings and they pressure banks to stop investing in fossil fuel infrastructure. As I see local people investing their time and energy to make communities more capable of withstanding the climate shocks that are yet to come, I'm optimistic once again.