We’re On A Mission!

Next year marks the halfway point in a ‘decade of action’; a crucial time period for achieving a faster, fairer transition towards low-carbon living and a thriving natural environment. We have only five years left to reach the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, a threshold temperature rise that will turn extreme weather events into the new normal.

We currently face two exponential truths: the impacts of the climate crisis are worsening rapidly; at the same time, positive change is happening faster than we think. Some want us to believe the transformation is stalling – but progress is speeding up not slowing down and we need to move even faster so more people will benefit.

A global coalition of leaders called ‘Mission 2025’ – including city and region mayors, businesses, investors, community and cultural leaders – has launched, urging governments to align their upcoming national climate plans with the Paris Agreement as well as celebrating leadership that people everywhere are taking, at every level.

The coalition has been convened by Groundswell – a collaboration between Global Optimism, the Bezos Earth Fund and Systems Change Lab. In the words of Christiana Figueres, co-founder of Global Optimism and the United Nations lead in achieving the 2015 Paris Agreement, Mission 2025 is a clear rebuttal to everyone claiming that moving faster on tackling the climate crisis is too difficult, too unpopular or too expensive.

Showcasing big-thinking local action and some amazing people and projects, Carbon Copy is part of Mission 2025 UK. Across the UK, local leadership for climate and nature is proving to be powerful and emergent. People want to move faster: over half of all 380 local authority areas have climate action plans with a target of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of this decade, 20 years ahead of the legally-binding national target of 2050.

In the UK, the climate crisis is consistently seen as a concern for ‘everybody’. To tackle this crisis with the urgency and care for others that’s required, what we really need right now is for more people to join in and copy what’s already working. Together with other organisations, we’re on a mission – to move people towards this brighter new normal.