Innovation has always travelled much further than its creators first imagined. What begins as a sketch on a scrap of paper, an experiment in a lab, or a law passed through a parliament, can end up having an impact far beyond the ambitions of the people who first dreamed it up – shaping not just economies, but the health and wellbeing of millions.
Time and again, the biggest breakthroughs in our three countries – the UK, Ireland and Australia – have followed the same path, crossing oceans, changing hands and becoming bigger with every step. Now, as the urgency of the climate and nature crisis hits home, that lesson is one we cannot afford to forget: progress is contagious.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s British invention of the World Wide Web entered billions of homes only because Australian researchers developed Wi-Fi, freeing information from cables and allowing it to travel almost anywhere. London-born scientist Rosalind Franklin’s breakthrough work revealing the structure of DNA helped lay the foundations for Australian surgeon Fiona Wood’s pioneering “spray-on skin”, transforming the lives of burn victims around the world.
Fans of Sir David Attenborough can thank an international chain of innovation: Irish physicist John Joly’s pioneering work in colour photography helped pave the way for Australian cinematographer Jim Frazier’s revolutionary lens technology, allowing Attenborough to bring viewers closer than ever to the hidden lives of the natural world.
Different centuries, different nationalities, different fields, but the same story: one country has an idea, another builds on it, and together they create something far greater than either could have achieved alone.
More than half a century later, the same reality sits at the heart of one of the defining issues of our time. When it comes to climate and nature, progress has never been the work of one country acting alone.
Take the UK’s Climate Change Act, the first legislation of its kind anywhere in the world, which has since helped inspire climate laws and long-term frameworks in more than 60 countries. Australia’s clean energy boom has shown how quickly renewable technologies can scale. Ireland’s renewable energy transformation, with wind now supplying more than a third of its electricity, has demonstrated what is possible when ambition is matched by delivery – cutting emissions while building more resilient, healthier communities.
That cycle of invention, imitation, and improvement matters because we are in the midst of what can only be described as the decisive decade for climate action and for protecting human health at scale. The choices we make won’t just determine whether targets are met; they will define the world future generations live in – the quality of the air they breathe, the safety of the homes they live in, and the risks they face from extreme heat. This decade will shape the next hundred years.
The old question of whether a clean energy future is even possible has been answered. What lies ahead is far more demanding and far more exciting: the work of transforming our economies, modernising our infrastructure, and building a future that previous generations could only imagine.
In a more fragmented political landscape, and at a time when some politicians are talking down a transition that businesses are investing billions to deliver, there is a real risk of losing momentum. That would be a profound mistake.
What lies ahead is far bigger than many of today’s political arguments acknowledge. Across our three countries, we are beginning to witness the early stages of a transformation that future generations may look back on in the same way we look back on antibiotics, mass transport or the arrival of the internet, not just for its scale but how it improved people’s quality of life.
The next decade will not simply determine how we generate power, it will shape where investment flows, which countries attract talent, which industries thrive and what kind of world we create.
That future should fill us with confidence. For too long, climate action has been framed as a story about what we must give up. But in truth, it is one of our greatest public health opportunities; a chance not merely to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, but to build countries that are healthier, more prosperous and more optimistic than those we inherited.
As countries gather at the G7, the G20 and the UN’s major climate chance conference, COP31, in the months ahead, we urge leaders to remember that every generation inherits ideas it did not create and faces a choice: to protect them, improve them and pass them on, or to let them stall. The progress we enjoy today was built by people who chose the former, and the breakthroughs of tomorrow depend on us doing the same.
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