Tom's fabulous weblog

Wed
11-Jul-2007

only you can save mankind (if not you, who else?)

I went to a great panel debate last night, organised by Green Alliance with Phil Bloomer, Mark Lynas, Julia Hailes and Matthew Taylor arguing for and against the proposition: is it up to politicians to save us? That is, save us from the catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Unlike in many of these sort of events, where the question is crap and quickly becomes irrelevant, this question, aided by a skillful chair, was able to sustain a really interesting discussion. We had a vote at the beginning and the end in which the audience was pretty much split half and half.

The obvious arguments in favour of the proposition were that:

it is only nation states that have access to the levers of power that will permit us to decelerate our course towards destruction,

while much of the public consider global warming an important issue and want something done about it, most individuals are unable to exercise green choices and restraint in the face of massive social and corporate pressures to consume.

One counterargument was that governments and businesses can only turn green with the support of green voters and green consumers, that these must come first. This led to an interesting discussion around to what extent there is a popular concern for green issues and climate change. Some argued that polls show it is only about 10 per cent of the UK population who are concerned about green issues and prepared to change their personal and political behaviour accordingly - in fact, politicians are dragging the public further than they would go normally. Others said this is what politics is for: to provide ambitious leadership, deliver solutions to collective problems by regulating and encouraging individual action, and working to bring public opinion with them.

There was a lot of scepticism about green consumerism: can you address the problems caused by overconsumption and economic growth through more, albeit green, consumption? We need a different sort of economics.

Matthew Taylor's arguments against the proposition were the most interesting. He argued that politicians cannot just make all the key decisions to tackle climate change for us, this will lead to people becoming even more disconnected from the political elite and having no deep rooted enthusiasm for the actions that they need to commit to. People don't always do what they are told to do: the key is to negotiate a settlement between the state and the individual that empowers individuals to act, and frees the human, rather than crushes it. He was basically saying that the issue is too important to be left to politicians alone, which everyone kind of agreed with, just as he agreed that it is basically through politics that a collective solution had to be forged.

The difference in opinion at the end was around the fact that most agreed with Matthew that everyone has to feel empowered to feel responsible for the world and choose to change it in order to bring about truly sustainable long term change, yet Mark Lynas pointed out that we probably don't have time to build a mass global engaged green citizenship. We have ten years, more or less, to avert an impending catastrophe, and politics has to deliver a solution to this, fast.

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Sat
04-Nov-2006

stop climate chaos rally

Images

Matt and I got up early this morning for the Stop Climate Chaos march to Trafalgar Square. We were joining the People & Planet student climate change carnival, where they were aiming to create a moving "weather map" of climate chaos. The idea was to have lots of weather symbols, like clouds and rain clouds and suns with temperatures on them, the sort you see on the weather news, all moving along with a desert samba band at the centre. A bit random, but quite cool compared to most usual marches. We made a giant cloud with lightning bolt placard, relying on Matt's artistic skills. It looked really cool when we'd done it, though it took a couple of hours.

The People & Planet march started at Malet Street, by SOAS, where we met up with Steve W, then once the march had started, Jim, Abbie, Sarah and Juicy all joined us. It was great fun, nice and noisy, and we all ended up in a packed colourful sunny Trafalgar Square, where we found Kal and Andy, and numerous other people here and there.

We didn't stay long for the speeches though, and headed off to the Ship and Shovell, off the Strand near Heaven, to eat pie and drink ale, before a later drunken watching of Borat at Leicester Square...

There was a good George Monbiot speech over at the other march and rally at Grosvenor Square organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change. I can't help but notice the difference between the approach taken by Campaign Against Climate Change, and that taken by Stop Climate Chaos, which is very post-Comic Relief in its style, all celebrity-driven lite campaigning. I hope they are right and this is what is needed to reach a mass audience, but I do doubt their wisdom at the moment...

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