How to avoid hell on earth

Richard Branson is a British business magnate and founder of Virgin Group.

“Humanity has opened the gates of hell,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres during Climate Week in New York. But it is not the moment to abandon all hope – it is time to double down on action and hit the highway to climate health.

Any readers of this or any other responsible publication will be well-versed in perfectly reasonable climate doomsaying, as flooding wreaks havoc, fires rage and hurricanes get increasingly intense across the world.

Political manoeuvring on both sides of the Atlantic could inflame things further. In the US, Congress passed a temporary stopgap funding bill at the weekend to avert a shutdown that still risks stalling the rollout of the largest investment in clean energy in US history. In the UK, pledges to ban sales of gasoline-powered cars and phase out gas boilers have been pushed back, putting net zero goals at risk.

Last month, a progress report from the UN declared that the world was a long way off track from meeting critical targets. Meanwhile, big oil companies such as Shell announced the expansion of fossil fuel production even as they claimed they remained committed to net zero targets.

But the story is incomplete. There is still a way to avoid creating hell on Earth – and we are already on that path. Progress keeps happening – sometimes in spite of, not because of, government policy and focus upon profit over planet. While new barriers may be erected, advancement towards a clean energy future keeps happening.

Back in 2015, I was in France as leaders huddled together in little side rooms and negotiated over the fine details of climate policy. The outlook was bleak and the atmosphere frantic. But what was increasingly looking a hopeless cause eventually turned into the Paris Agreement, the most important international treaty on climate change ever signed. Does it go far enough? No. Should countries missing targets be held more accountable? Yes. But should we lose faith? Absolutely not.

Humans have always thrived when we see crisis as opportunity. From the industrial revolution to the information revolution, the greatest changes have always come at moments of necessity. It will be the same for the renewable energy revolution.

This isn’t wishful thinking - the facts bear it out. Oil demand for cars peaked four years ago, fossil fuel use will peak this decade and internal combustion engine use will peak this year - whether big oil like it or not. Electric vehicles are becoming overwhelmingly popular. Sales rose by 55% last year alone and are estimated by RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute) to make up between two-thirds and 85% of sales by the end of the decade.

2022 was a year of enormous growth for clean energy. Renewable capacity increased by 43%, while solar grew by 56%. For solar, PV and batteries, delivering on manufacturing projects that have already been announced could meet and potentially exceed deployment levels needed to hit net zero targets.

The barriers to progress are many and make an awful lot of noise, but solutions are quietly becoming more available and universal. Most people want to harness the power of the sun and increasingly have the tools to do so. It is critical that everyone has that opportunity in the North and specifically in the global South. Speed is justice – the faster we transition, the more we protect the most vulnerable from the worst impacts of climate change.

If a business isn't competitive, eventually it will cease to exist. Countries and companies that rely on fossil fuels and refuse to innovate find themselves fighting a losing game and know that reform is necessary. Superpowers, from the US to China, are broadly onside.

Renewables, like all technologies, are going through learning curves as they grow. This is not easy. Moore’s Law – that the number of transistors on computer chips doubles every two years – was not easy either, but it changed the world. We have to ensure that the growth of these technologies stays on track, moving up the standard technology S curve. We need governments to remove barriers to change and companies to build the future.

We should remember how far we have already come - and how far we still have to go. But trying to frighten or depress people into action has never worked and isn't about to start now. We need inspiration, perspiration and above all execution.

Don’t abandon hope. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said: “Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Renewable growth is on an exponential path – we all need to work together to make it a highway outta hell.