After reading the 2022 piece ‘Why Is Maui The Right Retirement Destination And What You Need To Prepare’, I wondered how the Maui inhabitants imagined retirement before their world was incinerated. Playing golf on one of their 14 courses? Going on a cruise? Growing food in their yards? Maybe you have the same dream. But how might that look if the water runs out, it’s too dry or wet to grow food, and it’s so hot that the garden spades have melted? Pensions are castles made of sand. I argue that we can’t rely on the arrogant world of finance and people looking forward to their retirements will need societal change to survive.
I think people expect to receive their pensions because they don’t believe things will get that bad. Some workplaces provide pension contributions, giving it that warm fuzzy feeling that everything will be all right, and expecting to get more out than is put in. It all makes sense in a world with a stable and “eternally growing” financial system. But do we really have one? No. A constantly growing economy is a delusion. We are hooked on “hopium”, putting too much faith in the future of finance. It seems to me that putting money into a pension is like setting up a feng shui retirement home on a bounce house.
I get it. People need hope. But many people are clinging on to a daydream, hoping to weather the storm. But floods, droughts, sea-level rise and fires will continue to become more frequent and intense, and today’s politicians investing in new fossil fuels are making them even more frequent and more intense. The current U.S. government approved the Willow oil project, expected to choke out a peak of 180,000 barrels of crude oil a day, and the U.K. government recently announced 100-plus new oil drilling licenses in a “maxing out” policy. This will lead to a future of incredible instability. Forget canceled holidays or collapsed pension schemes; we are flirting with a future where we won’t have enough food and water.
I am not a doomer. The doomer gives up, seeing the forest fire approaching and tells everyone in the village to grab a deck chair and wait to get burnt alive because there’s nothing anyone can do about it; I am saying the forest fire will keep burning until we put it out, and the quicker we do it, the more forest, people and wildlife will be saved. Hard decisions need to be made, or we will face even deadlier consequences.
There are some glimmers of hope. In the U.K., Just Stop Oil’s relentless disruptions may have inspired a U.K. Labour MP to say we should be treating climate change like we are on a “war-footing.” But we can’t just rely on having the ‘right politicians’ to guide us to safety when the changes need to be immediate and our politicians continue to pander to the fossil fuel industry. We need to make it impossible for politicians to ignore the irrefutable science of climate change and continue the perverse fossil fuel love affair.
What do we do? Signing petitions doesn’t work. Talking nicely to politicians doesn’t work. Don’t get me started on recycling. The only thing we have to go on is what has worked in the past: civil resistance. In April 2022, I was arrested for protesting against the U.K. government’s decision to issue over 100 fossil fuel exploration licenses with 30 other scientists. I was scared, I’d never done anything like this before, but I did it because I was more scared of where fossil fuels are taking us. To be clear, activism isn’t just getting arrested. It is also facilitating, designing, supporting and communicating to a level that aims for rapid change. It is working together.
Action is being taken on pensions. The largest pension fund in the U.K. is the USS (the Universities Superannuation Scheme) that currently invests over £570 million in fossil fuels companies, and the DivestUSS campaign aims to end this investment. Other major pension funds have taken this action, such as ABP, the huge Dutch public sector fund, that removed all $15 billion from coal, oil and gas investments in 2021. The same year, New York City’s pension funds achieved successful divestment of $3 billion from fossil fuel reserve owners.
You Must Be Exaggerating
I’m not. The International Energy Agency warned in May 2021 that no new fossil fuels could be constructed to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and yet none of the 195 countries that pledged to this limit are on track.
The U.K.’s Pensions Regulator states “there is no doubt that climate change will continue to pose a core financial risk to business, the economy, and markets for some time to come, but the shift towards low-carbon economies also presents opportunities.” Many pension schemes use models that severely underestimate the risks of climate change, with some even projecting positive economic impacts from a hot-house world where we don’t limit global warming at all .
How Do We Turn This Around?
What do I suggest instead of investing in a private pension? Maybe short-term investments that benefit communities or skills that people will need in the future. Use your money to spread the wealth and to encourage a more robust society in the face of emerging crises. People, especially in high-consuming countries, need to know how to fix things, how to grow food, how to look after each other, some basic first aid, how to consume far less and to treat the world as a holistic system.
Certain things have an immediate impact through individual action: changing our diets and imposing appropriate taxes on private transport could have overnight reductions on chemical pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, pandemic risk, land use and water consumption. Flying is the fastest way to fry the planet, and the dream of limitless flying needs to stay in the clouds. Our imagining of electric, biofuel or hydrogen planes needs to join the flying pigs. Our electronic waste could be reduced enormously with legislation on extending warranties and the right to repair.
But to get there, we need to start forcing that change now, through collaborations that are focused on providing a safe and secure future for everyone. Rather than simply waiting for the next international catastrophe, let’s be proactive and join activist groups that fight for the changes we need. Let’s act now. Our civilization depends upon it.
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