The Politics of Climate Change (17 page)

Figure 5.1  Wide partisan differences exist in the US about global warming

Source:
Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
Little Change in Opinions about Global Warming: Increasing Partisan Divide on Energy Policies
, 27 October 2010; a project of the Pew Research Center

The sixth cluster, labelled the ‘stalled starters', say they don't know much about climate change, and, in any case, lack the means to take any steps to help with the issue – they are mostly from non-affluent backgrounds. Most can't afford a car, but would like to buy one if they could. Finally, the ‘honestly disengaged' are either sceptical about, or indifferent towards, climate change. As one interviewee remarked: ‘Maybe there'll be an environmental disaster, maybe not. Makes no difference to me, I'm just living life the way I want to.'

It follows, the DEFRA report argues, that policy concerned with securing more environmentally responsible behaviour should vary. The ‘positive greens' have a high potential to do
more, and are willing to do so – and, at least to some degree, so are the ‘concerned consumers' and the ‘sideline supporters'. In these instances, policy should be to ‘enable and engage' – it should be aimed at providing the means for individuals to build on the attitudes they already hold. Examples include providing information about how to lower carbon consumption, encouraging community action, improving infrastructure and so on.

For the ‘cautious participants' and the ‘stalled starters', the report says, the emphasis should be not only on enabling and engaging, but, in addition and in particular, on ‘exemplifying'. In the terms I used earlier, people in these groups are worried about free-riding. Community leadership and neighbourhood groups can play a part in reducing the impact of feelings of unfairness about free-riding. As for the ‘sceptics', their attitudes will be harder to sustain if others move the centre of gravity of public opinion onwards. The problem, as far as public policy is concerned, is one of ‘engagement' – how to get such groups to take climate change seriously at all.

DEFRA hosted a ‘citizens' summit' to see how far a deliberative process might shift public attitudes towards global warming and foster lifestyle changes. It formed part of a wider public consultation process as part of the lead-up to the introduction of the Climate Change Bill. A representative group of citizens from different regions in the country took part in a series of workshops. Information packs were provided, and the participants were requested to try out taking steps to reduce their carbon consumption before the final meeting, the ‘summit', took place.

As in wider surveys, the desire for the government to take the lead came through clearly. People feel strongly about the gap they see between what they can do as individuals and the global scope of the problem. At the end of the deliberative process, the proportion of participants who agreed with the statement ‘I am well informed about climate change' more than doubled – 66 per cent at that point claimed to be well informed. The percentage agreeing that ‘action needs to be taken urgently' rose from 65 per cent at the beginning to 82 per cent by the close. Before the workshops started, just over half of the participants agreed that the responsibility for
countering climate change ‘belongs to all of us'. That proportion increased to 83 per cent.

About 40 per cent of emissions in the UK come from domestic sources if one includes household travel. There are many areas of day-to-day conduct where changes in behaviour would help lower this total. DEFRA separates them into ‘one-off purchasing decisions', ‘habitual everyday lifestyle activities', ‘occasional purchasing decisions' and ‘habitual purchasing decisions'. Those in the first category include, for example, installing home insulation or buying a more energy-efficient car. The second consists of such factors as energy consumption in the home and the level of car usage. Occasional purchasing decisions include buying energy-efficient products such as low-energy light bulbs. The fourth category is made up of activities such as the purchase of food and household goods.

The list of day-to-day activities outlined by DEFRA as relevant to reducing emissions is long. Should we be concentrating upon a blanket strategy, focusing on all of them? Many would say so. A proliferation of how-to-do-it books exists on how to reduce one's carbon footprint, and, if the majority of the population were to follow them, the impact upon carbon consumption would be significant.

I am quite hostile to such endeavours, however, no matter how well intentioned they may be. They are based upon a quite unrealistic assumption – that everyone is willing and able to live like the small minority of ‘positive greens' in DEFRA's sample. It is possible that they may even be counter-productive, by actively putting off the majority of citizens from other steps they may take. Giddens's paradox holds. For most of the time and for the majority of citizens, climate change is a back-of-the-mind issue, even if it is a source of worry. It will stay that way unless its consequences become visible and immediate. In the meantime, no strategy is likely to work which concentrates solely upon provoking fear and anxiety, or which is based not only on instructing people to cut down on this or that, but also on expecting them to monitor that process on a continuous basis.

A different approach is needed from that prevalent at the moment. It must place an emphasis on positives as much as on
negatives, and on opportunities rather than on self-induced deprivations. I would set out its main principles as follows.

Incentives must take precedence over all other interventions, including those which are tax-based. ‘No punishment for punishment's sake': in other words, punitive measures should either supply revenue spent directly for environmental purposes, or be linked in a visible way with behaviour change – and preferably both. The drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles, for example, should face heavy tax duties for the privilege, as heavy as is politically feasible, under ‘the polluter pays' principle. Clear and self-evident options for behaviour change are available – switch to smaller cars or drive less.

The positives must dominate. This isn't as difficult as it might sound. Take the issue of making homes more energy-efficient. There are several countries in the world that have managed to make major progress in this respect. How have they done so? Not by trying to scare people, but by emphasizing the advantages of having homes that are snug, protected against the elements and which also save money. An example is what has been achieved in Sweden, which was done by placing a strong emphasis on what was called ‘community, style and comfort'.

Low-carbon practices or inventions that initially have only limited appeal can be fundamentally important if they set trends, or if they are seen as in some way iconic.
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Most initiatives, whether social, economic or technological, are, in the early stages, open only to a small elite. In California, for example, there are long waiting lists for the hydrogen-powered Lifecar, although the first models will be extremely expensive. However, investment in such a car will provide the opportunity to see whether the vehicle could have a wider market, and also gives it an avant-garde cachet. This is what happened with the Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle, nearly a million of which have been sold worldwide. It was a vanguard model in the sense that it stimulated other manufacturers to start producing low-emission vehicles, whether hybrid or not.

Most initiatives that have successfully reduced emissions so far have been driven by the motivation to increase energy efficiency, rather than the desire to limit climate change. This observation applies to whole countries as well as to regions,
cities and the actions of individuals. People are able to grasp and respond to this perspective more easily than to climate change, with all its surrounding debates and complexities; it is not difficult to present energy efficiency in a positive light. What is at issue, as mentioned earlier, is energy efficiency in the economy as a whole, since efficiency gains in one context are of little or no value if savings made are spent on energy-consuming activities elsewhere. The fundamental problem at the moment is to make clean energy sources competitive with fossil fuel energy sources, whether through public provision of subsidies or through technological advance. Utility companies in the US have been offering electricity generated from wind or solar sources to consumers since the late 1990s. Initially, take-up was very small, however, since the prices were not competitive. In early 2006 Xcel Energy in Colorado and Austin Energy in Texas offered tariffs below those of the regular energy sources. Austin Energy encouraged its customers to sign up for 10-year energy contracts, and was able to prosper even when the price of electricity dropped.

The role of technology in promoting low-carbon lifestyles is bound to be considerable. Technological innovation rarely determines what people do, since we often react to it in ways in which its initiators did not suspect. Thus the telephone was invented in 1876 as a signalling device; no one imagined that it would become so intrinsic to our lives as a medium of talk and conversation.
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Yet, at the same time, our lives can change dramatically through such interaction with technology. It is said that we are ‘creatures of habit'. And it is often true, especially if habits become addictive. Yet such is far from always the case – we can change our behaviour quite rapidly and dramatically, as has happened, and on a global level, with the arrival of the internet.

Government should be actively encouraging the creative economy and the creative society, even when these don't seem to have an immediate bearing upon climate change, since creativity has to be the order of the day. Richard Florida, who has written extensively on the subject, argues persuasively that the creative sectors of the economy – where innovation, lateral thinking and enterprise can flourish – are increasingly becoming the driving force of the economy as a whole. Florida rejects
the idea that creativity – the capacity to innovate, to question conventional wisdom – is limited to the few. Creativity is a ‘limitless resource. . . . It's a trait that can't be handed down, and it can't be owned in the traditional sense.'
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R&D investment is important, but in pioneering responses to climate change, we need to be bringing science, the universities and social entrepreneurs closer together.

Step changes or ‘tipping points' aren't confined to the field of climate change science. They apply to social and economic life too – that was the context, in fact, in which the author who popularized the term, Malcolm Gladwell, originally discussed it.
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We should be looking to create tipping points when it comes to the transition to low-carbon lifestyles. From small beginnings, much larger changes can occur when a certain threshold is reached.

Governments have an important role in ‘editing choice', and, in pursuing that aim, they shouldn't be afraid to take on big business when it is necessary to do so. Corporations influence our choices in many direct and indirect ways – the state shouldn't be reluctant to take a leaf out of their book. For instance, supermarkets usually place sweets and chocolates close to the exit, where customers line up to pay for their purchases. The reason is that at that point they are open to impulse buying, having relaxed after making their main purchases. Given the advance of obesity, I see no reason why such a practice shouldn't be either prohibited or actively discouraged (although thus far it has not). How far we should go with choices that affect carbon consumption is a moot point. Some examples of choice editing appear to be completely unobjectionable. Thus, for example, we could propose that heating and air-conditioning should be organized such that everyone knows immediately how much he or she is spending at any given time. The effect would be even more powerful if we knew how our expenditure rated compared to that of our neighbours. A study showed that heavy users made bigger cuts in consumption if a smiling face was inscribed on bills below the average, with a frowning face on the bills of those having higher than average expenditure. Other examples are more complicated. I see no civil liberties issue in cases where our behaviour is already being significantly influenced, or
manipulated, by companies, and where the object of government policy is to counter that influence.
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An example would be when a firm heavily advertises a product or service known to have adverse environmental effects. Should governments go further? The Australian government, for example, has instituted a total ban on all light bulbs that aren't of the low-energy type. Is it justified in doing so? In my view it is, given that the energy gains are substantial, while the difference in other ways between the conventional and low-energy bulbs is negligible. In any case, it is up to governments to explore these boundaries in conjunction with the electorate.