“We’re heading for something pretty grim if we don’t wake up and take appropriate action.”
That was the message from sustainability expert and author Mike Berners-Lee (pictured) who has warned that the climate and nature crisis poses an immediate risk to infrastructure, services and national resilience.
Berners-Lee was addressing a room of digital and government leaders at the Government Digital Sustainability Alliance (GDSA) Summit yesterday in London.
He said digital policy in 2026 cannot be separated from the wider environmental crisis. “We’ve arrived in this thing called the Anthropocene – the era in which humans are the biggest thing affecting the whole ecosystem.”
The world is now “so fragile compared to everything we can do to it” he said that poorly judged decisions can create damage the system cannot easily recover from.
“We’re absolutely in an emergency”
Berners-Lee told the audience that decades of scientific evidence leave little room for doubt about the scale of the challenge.
“We know, because we’ve had decades of crystal clear science, that climate change is a huge deal and we need to deal with it at the global level,” he said.
Yet global emissions continue to rise despite years of international negotiations. He criticised the influence of vested interests, describing “very cynical, very dishonest action from well-funded fossil fuel lobbyists who’ve been corrupting COPs right from the word go.”
Referencing a national emergency briefing attended by senior UK figures, he quoted ICU professor and climate activist Hugh Montgomery, who had led the response to the 7/11 London bombings. Montgomery reportedly said: “I know what an emergency looks like. We’re absolutely in one climate and nature. I also know what an emergency response looks like, and we’re not doing it.”
UK infrastructure is already at risk
Berners-Lee’s message was unequivocal to government leaders.
“We heard about extreme weather events that are affecting the UK, and we’re absolutely not ready for it,” he said. “We’re in danger of our national infrastructure catastrophically failing in a way that could take years to bring back.
“This is not just a climate change… thing for people up in other parts of the world. This is affecting us here and now.”
He also pointed to knock-on risks to the economy and public services, including the health system, if climate impacts trigger wider systemic disruption.
Berners-Lee said the tech sector sits at the centre of the challenge. “We’re fantastic at energy and technology. We’re really good at inventing it and creating more of it. But as we create more of it, we need increasing wisdom and care to go with it. And we’re out of kilter at the moment.
“We’re a bit like as a species… kids running around the playground with machines. We don’t quite know how to take care of this stuff.”
Efficiency alone will not make digital sustainable
Berners-Lee also challenged the assumption that more efficient digital systems automatically reduce environmental impact, when cheaper and faster technology tends to increase overall usage, not reduce it.
“The more efficient it gets, the more we do,” he said.
He added that the global footprint of ICT has grown steadily and could grow faster still as demand for digital services and AI increases.
Another key message for policymakers was the importance of reducing overall energy demand, not just switching energy sources.
“The climate doesn’t care how many renewables we get. It only cares how little fossil fuel we burn,” he said.
He warned that renewables can only replace fossil fuels if total energy use falls at the same time. “The biggest thing we need to do is reduce the total amount of energy we use at the global level and at the national level.”
This has direct implications for large-scale digital infrastructure, datacentres and AI workloads, which continue to drive energy demand upward.
A more selective approach to technology
Berners-Lee argued that the next phase of digital development must be more deliberate and values-led.
“Technology is brilliant… it causes so many wonderful things. But under the Anthropocene we need a new relationship with technology,” he said.
He warned that current market dynamics push organisations to adopt new tools whether they are beneficial or not. “We invent a technology… that’s a business opportunity… then the whole industry has to adopt it because otherwise you get left behind.”
For the public sector, he said, the key question should be whether a digital application is genuinely good for people and the planet.
“It’s not good enough to say, ‘This technology can be used for good things.’ We have to be able to say, ‘We’re only going to use it for good things, and we know how to stop it being used for bad things,’” he said.
He also urged digital teams to think carefully about scale and necessity when deploying advanced technologies.
“At the moment… a lot of people are throwing a sledgehammer of AI and machine learning at every problem,” he said, suggesting that simpler, lower-impact solutions are often sufficient.
The focus, he argued, should shift from maximum capability to sufficiency – using the least resource-intensive solution that still delivers real public value.
A call for courage from digital leaders
Berners-Lee predicted that the coming years will shaped by both climate tipping points and social action.
“It is a race between tipping points,” he said, warning of irreversible climate thresholds but also the possibility of a rapid shift in public and institutional response.
He ended with a direct challenge to leaders in the room. “If you’re ever in a meeting where something’s being discussed and it’s not right and it’s not commensurate with the situation we’re in… please do the uncomfortable thing and challenge it.”
Because, he said, the urgency is no longer theoretical: “We all know it… we’re heading for something pretty grim if we don’t wake up and take appropriate action.”
