© mrgao, istockphoto.com

Every week or so, I see some commentator or other calling for a ‘reset’ on Sustainability, Net Zero, the low carbon economy or some other abstract noun. While I suspect most of the uses of ‘reset’ are to simply to get a click-worthy headline, they usually make me smile to myself. Because of course, the climate action movement is not a single entity tightly controlled by some kind of super-committee (well, only in the heads of climate change denying conspiracy theorists) but a big amorphous blob of radically different actors. Corporate energy investors in Texas have very little in common with the ruling National People’s Congress in China, but they’re both pushing the rapid uptake of renewables in their own way. How would both ‘reset’ to the same principles?

But the problem I have with the chorus of ‘reset’ calls is they suggest an element of despair just when we are starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. I am of the strong belief that all the pushback we are seeing against climate action is because push is coming to shove and the fossil-fuel establishment is fighting for its very survival. It is a sign of success, not failure.

Instead of ‘resetting’ per se, we need to keep finding ways of accelerating that progress. Economically, this means removing barriers to Sustainability while ensuring the polluter pays. Technologically, it means stimulating innovation, then backing the winners (electrification is the name of the game!) while abandoning the also rans (I would argue hydrogen and CCS have had quite enough public money). Politically, it means pressing ahead with international agreements and domestic policy as best possible while accepting that perfection is a pipedream – never has ‘the art of the possible’ been more pertinent. For corporations it means aligning their whole value chain to Net Zero. For individuals it means using the levers at our disposal (cash, behaviour, influence, votes) to make low carbon normal.

The indicators are starting to point in the right direction, we just need to turn everything up to 11, rather than trying to switch it off and back on again (and you’d struggle to find the button if you did).