“You are in no position to lecture the public about anything,” Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais told his audience in a pointedly irreverent opening speech on Sunday. By the evening’s end, following statements about the bushfires from actors including Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, he had apparently changed his mind – ending the evening with his own call for donations to the relief efforts. Charitable gifts will no doubt be welcomed by their recipients (a £500,000 pledge by another Australian actor, Nicole Kidman, emerged on the same day). But the evening’s most consequential remarks were those, including Mr Crowe’s and Ms Blanchett’s, that firmly linked the fires to global heating – directly challenging the denialism of the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, who, even in the face of record temperatures and unthinkable devastation, refuses to commit his government to stronger decarbonisation measures, or withdraw his support for coal production and exports.
In an ideal world, it would probably not fall to film stars to advocate for evidence-based policies to protect the planet from catastrophe, particularly when such policies are supported by the UN and scientific institutions around the world. But while speeches and social media posts expressing sympathy for victims of this and other disasters, or promoting fundraisers and campaigns on other issues, are often and easily mocked, it makes more sense to focus on the policy failures that give rise to such efforts than to criticise pop or sports stars for their philanthropic activities, even when these appear clumsy or self-serving.
In the case of the climate emergency, the underlying failures are so grave and numerous as to remain extremely difficult for many people to take in. While denial of global heating itself is finally waning in the face of irrefutable proof, denial of the actions that are necessary to curb it (beginning with a 7.6% cut in emissions, every year for the next decade) is ubiquitous – as can be seen from the simple fact that emissions are still rising. Even as the bushfires dominate global headlines, climate-linked disasters in other parts of the world, such as a threatened famine in Zambia, or the battle for the Amazon being waged in Brazil, struggle to attract a fraction of the same attention.
Anger is a justified response to such blatant climate injustices. Particularly when many of the worst-affected poorer countries are those with the lowest historic greenhouse gas emissions, philanthropy – even if it were forthcoming – would not provide an adequate form of redress. Lasting climate solutions will require a massive reallocation of global resources, with particular emphasis on infrastructure in developing countries. Only governments and international instituti ons have the necessary policymaking levers (hence the importance of the UN climate process).
But where efforts such as those of Australian comedian Celeste Barber, whose bushfires fundraiser has made £20m, offer a reason to hope amid the grief and horror, is in the proof they offer that, when people truly believe that the future is imperilled, they want to help – and understand that this costs money. Politicians around the world should pay attention.
