A Climate of Truth, by Mike Berners-Lee

Mike Berners-Lee has spent his career as a researcher and consultant on climate change, as well as authoring the very useful books How Bad Are Bananas? and There is No Planet B. But over the years something has become obvious: knowing what to do is not enough. We have understood climate change for decades. All the solutions are available. What is it that stops us from acting?

A Climate of Truth aims to peel back the layers of what Berners-Lee calls “the polycrisis” to get to “the poisoned heart of the problem.” Behind the interconnected problems of climate, biodiversity loss, pollution, etc, lie more systemic issues. There’s a middle layer to the crisis, tied up in politics, economics, education and the media, the growth imperative. We can’t fix our biggest problems without fixing those first – and they, in turn, are not the core of the problem.

Peel back the layers further, and we get to the central issue: how we think. “To solve the problems that we have created,” writes Berners-Lee, “we need to think in ways that are different from the mindsets that created those problems in the first place.”

What kind of thinking are we talking about? Critical thinking, for a start. Joining things up and seeing the connections. Thinking bigger and longer term, and perhaps most importantly, thinking beyond ourselves – with compassion, and with respect for other people and for the environment.

All of this brings the book to the most important factor in why we haven’t solved our biggest problems, and that is the issue of truth. “Respect for truth”, says Berners-Lee, “is our point of maximum leverage over the outcome of the polycrisis.” Nothing will get done without it, and it is dishonesty that lies behind most climate mistakes. Like insisting that we can grow airports and still meet targets, for example, or that there is such as thing as clean coal. Rishi ‘Seven Bins’ Sunak claiming to have abolished environmental laws that never existed. Or Elon Musk telling the Trump that rising CO2 emissions might give people headaches, but isn’t otherwise a big concern.

It’s not difficult to see that truth has been undermined dramatically in recent years, and lies that would have been a scandal in the past barely ruffle feathers today. It’s harder to see what to do about it, and that’s where A Climate of Truth is excellent. The last few chapters go through how to get truth into politics, into business and into the media. These chapters are full of insights and practical tips, such as five criteria for assessing the integrity of a politician, or how to find a news outlet that you trust. Most of all, we need to be able to hold people to account and demand truth, and there are ways to do that too.

If you’ve read any of Berners-Lee’s previous books, you’ll know what to expect. He writes with clarity and depth of knowledge, anticipating questions and answering them directly. He obviously has more to say than fits into the central argument of the book, so there are multiple appendices to browse too. There’s a good balance of personal actions and institutional changes, leaving readers informed on what they can do without placing the burden of change on individuals. In short, it’s very good, and a vital reminder that when something isn’t working, we need to keep asking why until we get to the heart of the problem.

• You can pick up A Climate of Truth from Earthbound Books