get us only partly there (around 40 percent).

The most telling real-world results came from the final stock count. For example, no Felix product is more beloved than its best-selling meatballs, yet with customers encouraged to make decisions on climate value, they remained on the shelves, whereas Felix’s new, plant-based meatball alternatives had sold out. Shoppers had learned that the classic dish they had eaten since childhood might not, after all, be the best option for their own children’s future.

The results told us Felix’s demographic really wanted to shop for climate-friendly food brands, but found the sustainability information too confusing and – perhaps as a result – believed sustainable grocery shopping to be too expensive.Our strategy was clear: Give shoppers better information on the climate impact of Felix products and, in the process, demonstrate how easy it is to make climate-friendly choices when products are clearly labelled. We called it The Climate Store (Klimatbutiken) – the world’s first grocery shop in which the ‘price’ of food would be based on its carbon footprint.

Customers could only pay with a CO2e currency we printed for the occasion, with every shopper given a ‘budget’ of 18.9 kg CO2e to spend – the maximum personal weekly allowance if we are to meet the goals of the 2030 Paris Agreement.

So what can we make of politicians who continue to argue that ‘1.5°C is still alive’? Are they misinformed or are they simply lying?I believe many are in denial about the types of solutions the climate crisis demands. Rather than do the – admittedly – very difficult political work of eking out our supplies of fossil fuels while accelerating a just transition to post-carbon societies, politicians are going all out on technological salvation. This is a new form of climate denial, which involves imagining large-scale carbon dioxide removal that will clean up the carbon pollution that we continue to pump into the atmosphere. While it may seem much safer to stick to the script and say that it is still physically possible to limit warming to no more than 1.5°C, while pointing out that the scale of change demands much more political will, I believe that this can no longer be a credible response to the climate crisis.We have warmed the climate by 1.2°C since pre-industrial periods. If emissions stay flat at current levels, then in around nine years the carbon budget for 1.5°C will be exhausted. And, of course, emissions are not flat – they are surging. 2021 saw the second-largest annual increase ever recorded, driven by the rebound in economic activity after Coronavirus lockdowns. We did not ‘build back better’.The clock has been stuck at five minutes to midnight for decades. Alarms have been continuing to sound. There are only so many times you can hit the snooze button.