BP: Beyond the Pale
19th June 2010
The continued failure of BP to stem the flow of oil from the deepsea drilling operation off the American gulf coast highlights the real cost of our dependence on oil to keep the modern world running. The amount lost may be a drop in the ocean compared to what is being consumed globally, but the publicity from the ongoing slick washing up on the coast, and oiled seabirds, will be a constant reminder that oil is a dirty fuel, even if we don’t see the carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere from millions of exhaust pipes. Ironically the green movement needs a steady flow of disasters to keep momentum and support, and the BP oil spill, although a tragedy for the people and wildlife affected, will act as a regular reminder over the next few months about the real price of fuel.
Climbing mount improbable
19th June 2010
The election of Green Party Leader Caroline Lucas as the first Green MP is a milestone in the path of the Green Party to power. Many members and supporters must have despaired of ever seeing it happen. Now we are there, a sense of perspective is needed about just what a mountain remains to be climbed.
Support for green policies is fickle, especially in tough economic times. While there is just Ms. Lucas in Parliament the chance of getting more MPs elected is very dependent on her. In Brighton Pavillion ward and Ms. Lucas there was a unique coincidence of a high profile leader and a ward receptive to alternative ideas. Elsewhere the challenge for the Green Party is immensely more difficult was highlighted in the other target wards in Norwich and Lewisham where success proved elusive.
Most local Green Parties, where they exist at all, are a handful of activists slaving in the wilderness. The election of a first Green MP will give them hope, but the challenge ahead should not be underestimated.
A New Resolution
by Colin Inman, Editor
12th January 2010
So. After months, years of build up and hype, and pundits telling us that Copenhagen was our last chance, the UN Climate Conference was an unmitigated failure. Indeed given the huge volumes of greenhouse gases emitted by getting the delegates there, nearly all by plane, the net effect of the conference was probably far worse than if it hadn’t happened at all.
A measure of the failure is that Saudi Arabia and China have professed themselves satisfied with the outcome. Hardly a good sign.
Nothing meaningful has come out of the conference, nothing new, nothing binding, which is exactly what the climate sceptics and vested interests wanted. George Monbiot and Naomi Klein are blaming the Americans, always and easy target. Mark Lynas, that new convert to the alleged benefits of nuclear power, and representing the Maldives government, is blaming the Chinese.
When things go wrong it is always easier to have someone else to blame rather than take any personal responsibility, and in many ways the failure of the conference suits everyone except the protestors and those unfortunate enough to be near the front line of climate change, on the margins of where humanity can survive.
Governments and pundits can blame each other and then carry on business as usual, without having to sell unpalatable lifestyle changes to their electorate. As individuals we can blame governments, without having to ask searching questions about our own lives, meaning that we too can carry on as usual.
What is to be done? Well clearly governments have had their chance and blown it spectacularly. With hindsight if President Obama had given climate change precedence over health care reform it might have made a difference, similarly if he had stayed right though the conference from the start, rather than turning up on the last day to sign a done deal (not), it might have worked out differently. The developed world could have been more generous, although the financial crisis and recessions around the globe did not encourage a spirit of financial generosity. The developing nations can hardly be blamed for wanting to enjoy some of the kicks from the fossil fuel party many of us enjoy. But that is history, and risks drifting into the blame someone else game.
The answer to the question as to what we should do, is that each and everyone one of us should be now examining our own lives, and considering how, if governments will not make the radical cuts in emissions, how we can make them ourselves, by making changes, and yes sacrifices, in how we live to make them ourselves. And it is no good looking for the easy answer to the riposte, “What good is it me changing if everyone else carries on as normal?” That is a copout, an excuse, for if everyone makes the same excuse nothing changes.
We have to make the change happen ourselves, in our local communities, in the words of Ghandi, to "be the change we wish to see in the world”.
The solution is in our own hands, it is empowering, if a very demanding one. Can we do it? Yes we can!
When do we tackle the ecological recession?
8th November 2008
The Bank of England acted decisively on Thursday to cut the base rate by a dramatic 1.5%. It is a move welcomed by business leaders and trade unions, but some have questioned why the cut did not come sooner, and there remain doubts about whether the banks will pass all of the rate on, while fear remains the dominant mood in the sector. However the base rate cut, and recent multi-billion pound baling out of the banks show that institutions can act quickly to tackle the economic crisis.
The question many environmentalists inevitably are asking is why similarly swift action is not being taken to deal with the ecological crisis. The increased target for emissions reduction in the Climate Bill from 60% to 80% has been welcomed but it is just a figure, yet another Government target that will be missed with the usual excuses. If the Government really means business on the environment it must announce the immediate cancellation of the Third Runway proposed for Heathrow Airport, reject the new coal-fired power station proposed for Kingsnorth, and reintroduce the fuel escalator tax on petrol and diesel. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has shown he is a man of steel when it comes to the ecomony, and the surprise Labour win in the Glenrothes byelection will have boosted his standing, largely due to his handling of the banking crisis. Gordon Brown has written a book on the subject of courage. What is needed now is the same courage and decisive action on the environment that we have seen to rescue the economy.
Many scientists are now wondering whether we have already left it too late to save rescue the atmosphere from catastrophic climate change. What a tragedy it would be if we manage, in a few years, to turn the banks and the economy round, see inspirational social change under Barack Obama in America, only to have the whole deal undermined by ecological collapse.
The Failure of Democracy
11th August 2008
It is clear from the absence of any concerted public response in the developed world to the threat of climate change, that there is a lack of appetite for the kind of urgent austerity measures that are needed to reduce greenhouse emissions to a level that will safeguard life on earth. Instead of drastically reducing reliance on cars and stopping air travel, people are more concerned about keeping the price of petrol as low as possible and whether they can afford so many foreign holidays. There is pressure on politicians to reduce fuel duty rather than raise it. The public does not want cut backs, and mainstream politicians are unwilling to take a lead and call for restraint. The Green Party has not swept to power in the face of urgent environmental crises like global warming, the acidification of the oceans, pollution, deforestation, and the accelerating extinction of species. Even where The Green Party has stood candidates, with a few rare exceptions, there has not been a strong swing towards voting for a green future.
Either through a lack of understanding of the science, an unwillingness to face the issues, or apathy, the public is not demanding change. As George Monbiot has pointed out, and others before him, no-one ever rioted for austerity.
Neither is the demand for change coming from politicians, more concerned about re-election in two years time than the long-term impact of a changed climate on future generations. The consequence is that we continue towards a situation where not just other species are threatened by our profligate indulgence at the fossil fuel feast, but where life itself on earth will becoming increasingly imperilled by climate change, with droughts, floods, rising seas, loss of drinking water to millions of people who rely on “fossil” water from underground aquifers and retreating glaciers, and crop failures.
There is clear evidence that democracy has failed as a system of safe-guarding the longer-term future. Democracy gives no voice or vote to future generations or to other species. It rewards decisions that bring short-term benefits while disregarding long-term costs. Democracy fails to address the “tragedy of the commons”, where the earth’s capital of unpolluted oceans, breathable air, life-supporting climate, virgin forests, and the bounty of nature, is exploited by everyone without regard to sustainability. The failure of democracy is a sad one, as in many other respects it has shown itself to have admirable features, particulary when proportional representation has been incorporated to reflect the interests of minority groups. However in the face of catastrophic climate change, democracy has been found failing.
So if democracy has failed to secure a sustainable future, what are the alternatives? State communism in theory has the potential to secure assets from rapacious greed for the benefit of all, but in practice, the Soviet era and modern-day China have seen destruction of the natural environment to the same extent as any capitalist system. Russia is left with a legacy of rotting nuclear facilities, while China has polluted its atmosphere and plundered its own forests and those of its neighbours. China is exploiting its huge coal reserves with all the speed it can, hence the notorious claim that it is building a new coal-fired power station every week. What is the relevance of Kingsnorth power station in Ket in this global context? Similarly, the Burmese junta, while espousing socialism has cashed in on its natural heritage of rainforests just as rapaciously as capitalist Brazil.
This leaves us with looking for other solutions. A dictatorship might deliver a sustainable future but would involve huge loss of personal freedom. There have been examples of benign dictatorships, but they are few and far between. A benign green dictatorship could deliver sustainability by imposing strict environmental controls. Fuel and scarce resources could be rationed, flights banned, bins monitored. However there is no figure on the scene putting themselves forward to lead us from the brink of crisis. Take Al Gore, a man who clearly has the vision to see what needs doing, but who achieved so little when in office. Who else might provide a benign green dictatorship. The deep greens who “walk the walk” are in the main peace-loving vegans, imbued with a love of “Lord of the Rings” mysticism, healing crystals and an idealised concept of an anarcho-primitivist society that is never going to happen. Hardly likely to produce a powerful dictator figure. The meek may inherit the earth but by then it will be in such a state no-one else will want it. Even with a benign dictator there is the real risk that having given up our freedoms for the common good, and having achieved sustainability, those freedoms would never be returned and we would be left with a dictatorship that evolves from benign to something much less pleasant.
So is there any way out of our predicament? Another option would be to keep the democratic principle but adapt it to our carbon-conscious age. We could design a new form of democracy which gives a bloc vote in favour of harsh austerity measures to future generations and other species, a future-proofed democracy that rations scarce resources and uses contraction and convergence to decide on fair shares for all present and future creatures that share our planet. It could be done, and is more attractive that the mass-suicide involved in the present state of affairs, or the alternatives of state communism or a dictatorship.
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Nightmare on Wall Street
Environmentalists, most notably Edward Goldsmith, founder of "The Ecologist", have long warned of the "Limits to Growth". They argue that the Earth has a finite capacity and resources, and rising population and human consumption will come up against those limits, with potentially serious consequences. At the time these warnings were made they were dismissed as alarmist, and technology seemed to offer the means to defy natural systems, and allow the potential for limitless expansion. In Harold Wilson's time in the 1960's, scientists caught up in the white heat of technology promised electricity too cheap to meter. The alarmist predictions did not prove correct, or at least not in the timescale Goldsmith envisaged.
But in the current economic climate of Peak Oil, rising energy prices and inflation, dwindling natural resources, and soaring population, the recent crash in the money markets may be a sign that Goldsmith and others like him were right after all. There are limits to growth, even for the world's greatest economy, and when America catches a cold, the rest of us will too.
Science may yet deliver more growth, through the development of new energy sources and GM technology. But it will have to do so with incredible rapidity to keep pace with Western levels of consumption, to which the developing world aspires. If technology fails to deliver, then the limits of natural systems will impose their own correction, and we are all in for a bumpy ride.
In need of guidance
I have a friend at work. Lovely person, ever so kind to anyone upset or having a bad day. My problem is this. Each year she takes at least three foreign holidays, obviously flying to get there, and pumping out untold tonnes of carbon dioxide in the process. Skiing holiday every winter, and holidays in the sun with the kids.
Should I say something or am I being a killjoy? Her latest eco-crime is the acquisition of a top of the range BMW, equipped with a sat-nav system, which she proudly told the office, costs £2,000. That's right £2,000. Enough to save a village of starving African children, or preserve 5,000 acres of rainforest. But no, the money will be spent on a system that will tell her where she is. No longer is a map sufficient, it has to be a ludicrously expensive, high-tech gadget.
So it occurs to me, that this gadget is a symbol. Not just is my friend lost in a geographical sense, but in a spiritual sense also. I don't claim any superiority in being able to provide spiritual guidance, and I am far from perfect myself. But somehow we need to get the message across to all these "nice" people, that over-consumption in the Western world has consequences, often not for the person doing the consuming, but at the sharp end of climate change, in an Africa desert, or in low-lying Bangladesh. Guidance is needed. And not from a gadget costing £2,000.
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