“Politicians are not telling the right story”: combating climate change is “not a sacrifice” for people

It is “incredible and fantastic” to see young people on the streets protesting as best they can against the inaction of some governments in the face of the climate emergency. Michal Nachmany takes a few minutes to think, and reflects that this is all he has to say. This is how change occurs, this is how some wars came to an end, this is how women gained the right to vote, and slaves achieved its abolition. At the age of 15, he wrote his first letter to a United Nations environmental organization, and he never looked back. At the basis of the transformations, he argues, is the accountability of authorities. It was with this intention that Michal Nachmany founded, in 2021, and today leads Climate Policy Radar. He wants everyone to have access to legislation and be able to demand change effectively, with all the data in the palm of their hand.

A data specialist, he spent a decade at the Grantham Research Institute in London, where he led the development of one of the most comprehensive databases of climate change legislation in the world. The non-profit NGO Climate Policy Radar uses artificial intelligence so that political decision-makers and individual citizens can access, in a simple way, all legislative content, by country and topic, translated into English. But, in an interview with Expresso, the lawyer also presents a “more philosophical” and broader view of political decisions in the face of the climate crisis.