Small steps are the right way to win the war on global warming

WHEN major problems need a solution, people tend to look for the silver bullet – the one thing that will make a difference at a stroke. Often, however, the answer is found with millions of much more modest measures. That is certainly the case with climate change. While pledges made by the nations of the world at Cop26, now drawing to a close in Glasgow, are grandiose in nature, the delivery of the promises world leaders have given will come about, measure-bymeasure, in far less dramatic fashion.

One of those measures starts operating on November 20, when the newly reopened Dartmoor Line, linking Exeter with Okehampton, takes its first fee-paying passengers on a regular scheduled rail service for almost 50 years.

The 40-minute journey, at a cost of an £8 ticket, is a major breakthrough for those people in West Devon who have campaigned hard to make it happen. For regular commuters who will use the line to get to and from Exeter and for leisure users who want to get to explore Dartmoor without using the car, it is very big news indeed. In global terms, of course, reopening a stretch of rural railway line axed back in the 1970s hardly qualifies as a significant green initiative – but it is just that.

Put together with hundreds of thousands of similar schemes that takes cars off the road and move people from A to B with a far lower carbon footprint, it adds up to a major change in the way the world works. And it does so, crucially, without a return to the Dark Ages of shroud-waving warnings that “the end is nigh.”

It is appropriate, too, that teenager Tom Watts should have designed the logo for the reopened line, featuring a Dartmoor Tor with a walker atop it. Tom, 16, and his fellow students are the generation that has most to lose from a failure to tackle climate change and restrict global warming to within manageable levels. His enthusiasm for rail travel and all the other measures that need to be taken by individuals to slow down climate change are going to play an increasingly large part in making these changes a success.

There is still a yawning gap between the promises made at national leader level to bring down the rate at which the planet is warming and the concrete measures to make that happen. Even if the Cop26 conference ends in a deal to which everyone can sign up, delivering on the promises is far from guaranteed. The pledges made in Paris in 2015 have still not been delivered. That tells its own story.

But small initiatives are the way that this juggernaut or supertanker of a problem can be turned around. A journey of a thousand miles, as the Chinese proverb says, starts with a single step. If everyone, from the campaigners and rail bosses who got the Dartmoor Line reopened to the individuals changing their habits to cut their carbon footprint, take those steps, there is hope that change will come.

This is not about closing down the world and stopping development. It is about innovation and action which keeps the best of what we have now, but operating in a greener, cleaner, way.