The US President has barely been sworn into office, yet has already started countless hares running with a plethora of executive orders and wild declarations over his desire to own or control Panama, Mexico, Greenland and Canada, to withdraw from the WHO and from the Paris climate agreement, and to threaten trade tariffs to all and sundry. Of course, he is only one manifestation of this style of political leadership, which has gained traction in many countries around the world. For many on-lookers, it is a mystery that anyone would choose to vote for people and parties with such venal, vain and vindictive agendas. It is not good news for reason, or for moderation. And it is also not good news for science.

I worry that the rise in this brand of grand-standing dog-whistle politics is driving a current wave of populist ‘anti-science’ which is being given undue legitimacy and risks taking even more hold as a policy position here and around the world – heralding an era of division, full of blustering opinion and ill-informed posturing.

This matters, because charities like ours, and other scientific and educational bodies like our learned societies, the Universities, Colleges and schools, are here to champion science, to promote intelligent debate, and understanding. In a world of bolshy ignorance and ill-considered opinion we risk losing all that science demands – testing ideas; researching opinions; evidencing policy; considering and challenging action; and reviewing impacts. Science, by its nature, demands a rigour which can go some way to filtering out the rash, the malicious or the mean.

I sense a lot of people are angry, but I’m not sure they know why, and some seem to be eager to channel it at someone. I do sense that this prolonged period of austerity means that everything feels like it is falling apart, and whilst Brexit has cost our economy dear, the imminent threat of US trade tariffs could isolate the UK even further economically. It feels like we are lacking a vision or clear sense of direction and our societies are becoming more and more polarised. Peace requires empathy and compromise not polarisation. It feels vital that we come together around the values we hold most dear or we risk losing them.

Do we not care, or are we simply failing to listen and understand each other better? Has our trust in politicians and institutions diminished to such a degree that we can’t spot the selfish from the benevolent, or distinguish the magnanimous from the megalomaniac? Or have we simply grown too impatient and unempathetic for democracy?

None of this is good news for the climate. Impacts globally are increasingly evident and often worse than modelled. And whilst we have seen some progress, we are still seeing global emissions increase and temperatures rise, and any transition remains perilously underfunded. There are of course many people and institutions working hard to tackle this problem, but it is not getting easier. In the US there are many American states, cities and individuals who are trying to act on climate change, but they are going to have to do it for the foreseeable future with the active obstruction of the Federal Government.

Science demands that we do more to tackle climate change, not brush it under the carpet. And 75% of the public consistently say they want to see more action on climate, but there is a very real risk that we will lurch even further backwards over the next few years. Yet many of these actions, done well, will make peoples’ lives richer, safer and more hopeful.

We need to do more to champion the science, be robust in our demand for better, and bring as many people together as possible to evidence and explain this necessary change, in order to counter this reactionary swing towards anti-science and megalomania. And we need to reflect that clear majority and pull back from any narrative of polarisation and division, or we will find ourselves poorer in every sense of the word.

We have already lost much of the last five years of climate action to Covid and the austerity we have endured since. We cannot afford to lose another five years.

Climate change affects every one of us, and requires a transformation in what we value and how we behave. As such climate action remains one of the best ways to bring people together around a shared and positive agenda for good. We are already seeing some extreme consequences of a 1.5 C increase in average temperatures, and the hotter we let it get, the greater and more costly the likely impacts. It is the future, and the sooner we embrace action to tackle it (and the positive benefits it will bring to most of us) the better.