On Nov. 29, my book Climate Capitalism won the business book of the year award at the fifth Green Literature Festival. Here’s my acceptance speech:
Thank you to the organizers of the Green Literature Festival and to the jury of judges for this award. I’m really pleased to receive it and sad that I can’t be there in person with you.
I’d like to take this opportunity to leave you with three messages. They are linked to the three factors that I lay down in Climate Capitalism that are necessary for success in fighting climate change: people, policy and technology.
Let me start with technology, because it’s perhaps the easiest. The vast majority of the emissions problem can be tackled with two steps: electrify as much of the economy as possible and decarbonize electricity. Most of the technologies that India needs to get itself on track to take these two steps now exist, which is more than the solar story I was able to capture in the book through the work that ReNew has done.
Second is policy. When we talk about policy in India, the first thing that comes to mind is that India has to tackle basic issues like corruption, lack of professionalism and votebank politics, before it can turn its policy into effective outcomes. And, yet, India has shown that when it is strategic – geopolitically and economically – then it can make policy work.
That happened in the case of solar through SECI, the Solar Energy Corporation of India. Most recently, India is attempting to do something similar with its rare-earth magnets manufacturing program. For a resource poor country like ours, good policy can make a huge difference despite its many governance challenges.
Third and this is the most important one: people. I grew up in Nashik in Maharashtra, but have spent my adult life since the age of 21 in the UK, the country that is seen as a global climate leader. That’s the case not because it’s a rich country, just look at the US, Canada or Australia – they are not classed as climate leaders. But it happened because there was enough political will among citizens, academics and politicians to have a progressive outlook on climate change.
It is also now the country that is seeing a fracturing of the climate consensus with people feeling the pinch of recent years of inflation. Opportunistic politicians are trying to blame it on climate policies without good reasons. We’ll see if they succeed, but the lesson is clear: if a rich country’s citizens whose basic needs have been met can’t be convinced to care about climate change… something that will certainly impact their lives, what hope do we have in India, a poor country where we are far from meeting basic human needs?
The answer lies in people. Over the past decade, as I’ve covered climate issues around the world, I’ve seen more and more people be engaged with the topic. Not just in cursory ways, such as reading a news story and feeling outraged, but in deep ways, such as dedicating their careers to tackle this problem. This Green Literature Festival is a case in point and I’m so glad to see it’s been going since 2021.
India has no choice but to tackle climate change. India is among the world’s top 10 countries ranked by vulnerability to climate change. It’s the most populous country in the world, which means when the impacts occur we will also see among the greatest damages caused to humans.
So it’s down to people like you to ensure that citizens of India can see why it’s in their benefit to act on climate change and why they must vote in the politicians who understand the urgency to act and why they must choose to do business with firms that are green.
This call for people power might feel particularly hard right now. At a time when citizens barely have a voice against visible air pollution. How can we start to tackle invisible carbon dioxide pollution? Well, that’s the hard challenge we face today and it’s a worthy challenge because the solutions needed to deal with carbon dioxide are often also the solutions that will help people breathe cleaner air pollution, eat more nutritious food, build stronger communities, reduce poverty and create an economy fit for the 21st century. The task is clear and the benefits are immense.
Thank you!
Akshat Rathi 