Adam Ramsay

Humanity’s last little blast of carbon for a millennium or so is being auctioned off to the highest bidder for a simple reason: it’s the rich who have the power to shape such decisions, and deciding those precious allocations through the marketplace suits them just fine.

But once we understand that kleptocracy is a process at the heart of the modern global economy, we see that Britain is a lot worse than it seems at first.

One centralised Parliament is much easier for the likes of Rupert Murdoch to influence than a plethora of local authorities at a scale small enough for people to actually meet up and discuss their needs in person.

The way we’re going to actually solve problems like the UK’s addiction to carbon-intensive infrastructure isn’t through a series of customers paying companies to ‘offset’ their emissions in some scammy scheme. It’s through mass government action.

Greenland, long with other indigenous communities around the world, are starting to lead a fightback against the industrial, extractive capitalism that’s killing the planet.

If the first pillar of climate change negotiations is mitigation – how can we work together to stop carbon emissions? And the second is adaptation – how can we change to cope with the changing climate? Then loss and damage is the third – an idea originally muted in the 1990s by small island states, but gaining increasing traction.