Can't someone else do it?

The problem with climate action

The California wildfires will be the first eye-catching climate change incident of 2025, but probably not the last. The drama of fires, combined with an eye-catching, English-speaking, and broadcast-friendly location, make it an almost perfect news story. The political arguments that it has shaken out have also highlighted the problems with climate action. It is an area where people are very big on concern but limited on follow-through, with blame and excuses flying across the political aisle.

In Britain, such fires do not seem much of a threat. Our own indicators of climate change are there, however. Floods are getting worse. Storms are more severe. Summers hotter. Each season seems to bring with it more superlatives about the weather in a spiral of acceleration, which is almost overwhelming. Last year was our fourth warmest on record, just behind 2022, 2023 and 2014. It would be surprising if 2025 did not score somewhere in the top ten.

The most extreme voices often dominate the politics of climate change. Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, and their outriders present the most apocalyptic progressions of where things might be headed and the most austere and authoritarian routes of presenting it. A handful of voices from the other side, often either plugged into big oil or with one foot in conspiracism camps, present the opposite – that it is all a hoax, a misunderstanding, and that humans aren't to blame at all. Neither really represents where the public is broadly at.

Instead, the politics of the environment are often mired in a confusing mess of hypocrisy and double standards. There is widespread acknowledgement of the risks and causes of climate change. There is a will to combat it but a reluctance to embrace many of the measures necessary. This presents a challenge to policymakers and politicians who want to ride and shape public opinion to either solve environmental issues or win electoral favour.