They say every day is a school day and that was certainly the case last week when I and my colleagues were privileged to hear Lord Deben as guest speaker at our annual company conference.
I’d not heard the terms ‘Meism’ or 'Nowism’ before, although they aren’t actually new words and, knowing Lord Deben is a former Tory Minister from Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet, I actually misheard the second reference and thought he was talking about Maoism!
He (John Selwyn-Gummer) came to talk to my colleagues about the need for urgent action to tackle the climate crisis and was focusing on those that continue to focus only on themselves and today, and give no thought to what is happening to our planet.
There is an obsession with wanting everything ‘now’, like we’re all Veruca Salt
Russell Jones Content and communications manager
Worse than terrorism
Lord Deben is a passionate speaker on the need to tackle both the climate crisis and the biodiversity emergency and was chair of the Climate Change Committee for a decade before stepping down last summer.
I already had the chance to listen to him and wrote a previous Hub article when he spoke at our customer conference earlier this year, where he didn’t pull his punches about the challenges ahead. Lord Deben spoke of the certainty of climate change and the certainty that it will only get worse … unless we do something.
The speech to my colleagues was equally stark and Lord Deben was pretty damning about anyone who still denies the urgency of the issues around global warming. He quoted the current Labour Foreign Secretary, David Lammy who says that the climate crisis is more of a fundamental threat than either terrorism or Vladimir Putin.
With both speeches, Lord Deben also sought to assure people that we can actually do something about the situation and it doesn’t have to be a fait accompli. There are ways to decarbonise society and that is where manufacturers such as Mitsubishi Electric, and our customers in the HVAC industry have such an important role to play.
It’s all about me now
His reference to Meism and Nowism focused on how modern society is all about the self which can lead to a disregard of the needs of others, which are superseded by an arrogant and selfish attitude of ‘the world owes me’.
There is also an obsession with wanting (and getting) everything ‘now’, like some sort of collective Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
This can be seen in the rise of delivery services, such as Amazon and Deliveroo, but is also endemic of ignoring tomorrow in terms of the climate crisis.
Lord Deben felt that we rarely see people come together for the common good anymore but that this has to change as we will only tackle the crisis together.
He talked about studies of ice cores from the Antarctic which allow us to look back at world temperatures over hundreds of thousands of years. These show that today’s events are completely unique because temperatures are continuing to climb, and climb, and climb, which has never happened before.
The solutions are here now
Lord Deben ended a fascinating, unscripted and passionate 30-minute speech by focusing on how solutions to the issues we face do already exist, and that there is still time to stop the world from overheating.
Heat pump technology is now proven and available and ready to replace gas and fossil fuel heating, and this will make a significant different in carbon emissions.
There are challenges in energy costs and especially with gas being cheaper than electricity. There is also a need to build a more robust grid across the country, but he was hopeful that the new government was committed to taking on a third ‘ism’ in the form of ‘nimbyism’ (Not In My Back Yard) with promised reforms to the planning system.
There is also the challenge of increasing awareness of heat pumps and the possibilities they offer as there is now a heat pump available for almost any home or business.
That’s right, any building right now. Believe me!
Russell Jones is content and communications manager
