The Year the Dam of Denial Breaks – Ready for the Flood? - by Paul Gilding

This is the year the “dam of denial” will break and the momentum for climate action will become an unstoppable flood.  It will be messy, confusing and endlessly debated but with historical hindsight, 2015 will be the year.  The year the world turned, primarily because the market woke up to the economic threat posed by climate change and the economic opportunity in the inevitable decline of fossil fuels.  That shift will in turn unlock government policy and public opinion because the previous resistance to action argued on economic grounds, will reverse to favor action on economic grounds.
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Despite our obsession with it, the science is now largely irrelevant in this process.  If the scientific evidence was going to shift the system, it would have done so by now – it is after all overwhelmingly clear on the urgency and the risk.  What we have to look for instead is evidence of shifts in the human response, not the ecological one.

In this regard I look to politics and economics.  In both cases there are confusing and contradictory signals, but I think there are grounds to conclude we’re at the edge of something very significant.  I think there are 6 key indicators.

1. The US China Climate deal – how change really occurs
2. Collapse in oil prices
3. Solar price falls set to continue
4. Market prices reflect economic disruption
5. The political power of big business starts to shift sides
6. Physical impacts accelerating and driving economic and security impact

So will these 6 drivers be enough?  Will the economic impacts of collapsing fossil fuels and collapsing cities force the invisible hand of the market to do what governments have failed to do?  Not by itself, but it could tip a system that is primed and ready.  Changing systems requires many interconnected parts to shift.  That’s why in my writing and speaking I try to summarize such complex inter-related drivers – to help us see the whole and recognize emerging patterns.

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