Climatic Scenarios [2007]
This week CNN is consumed by forest fires in California – hey is this climate change or simply bad environmental practice? A neo-hippy guy called in as expert tells us its both.
So how ‘bout that climate change huh?
Truly the hot issue of 2007 – as I predicted round about this time last year. [That’s the trouble with predictions – they carry far more weight in retrospect.]
The current challenge for this topic is to satisfactorily move itself from the clutches of the international Grey Lynn tribe to the heads of people who generally don’t over-think things. [By the way - this is the perfect insult – only GL thinks it’s a really mean thing to say, everyone else thinks it’s a compliment.]
Three takes on the issue:-
Fast Company [September 07] describes how former Sierra Club President Adam Werbach has incurred the wrath of his environmental colleagues first by giving a speech in which he exhorted environmental leaders to stop talking to themselves and find “a new way of connecting sustainability with the aspirations of everyday people”, then by becoming an environmental consultant for Wal-Mart.
His new vision is to make Wal-Mart as well-known for environmental sustainability as Target is for everyman design. His former colleagues think he’s seriously misguided.
In the UK at Marks and Spencer they’ve embraced sustainability in all its guises. The company's environmental policy isbold and heartfelt : “our goal is to make our operations carbon neutral in the next five years and help you and our suppliers cut CO emissions too.”
At the Kensington High Street store [a favourite shopping destination for many of London’s Grey Lynn sub-tribes] every second product is organic and they showcase British beef and lamb because it’s local.
They will label goods that are air freighted and they tell you where the produce came from - though not the packaged goods. [I was going to say there’s food miles for Africa but that would be confusing – as a lot of their fresh vegetables do come from Kenya]. How?
At home, the New Zealand Institute has just put out a paper on climate change, suggesting that New Zealand adopt a “fast follower” strategy in which we take a generally conservative but responsible approach to emissions reduction.
They say: “The same opinion polls that report high levels of concern about global climate change also reveal that only a small proportion of people have changed their personal behaviour in response. For the most part, people are not prepared to pay a premium to purchase lower-emissions goods and services.”
The Institute posits two future scenarios – one a “Steady As She Goes” scenario in which nothing much happens. . .the second : “A Perfect Storm” in which catastrophic loss of life attributed to climate change causes a major panic and generates rapid social change.
They suggest that we position ourselves somewhere in between the two, according to the progress the rest of the world makes – maintaining a responsible policy to reduce emissions but being ready to gear up if it all turns to custard.
National’s John Keys seems to agree, though Labour doesn’t . Both Idealog and Molesworth & Featherston are dismissive. And political comment from the environmental movement suggests that this – along with some “let’s have a cup of tea” talk from Business New Zealand – constitutes a major step backwards.
Let’s take a step back ourselves – though only to gain perspective.
First – I think the Institute is a little hamstrung by some of the assumptions it makes. For example – the “steady as she goes” scenario.
To me, the only way the “steady as she goes” scenario would come true is if climate change isn’t real or its effects around the world are very slight or diffuse. Perhaps the New Zealand Institute didn’t want to say that out loud.
If attitudes about climate change were to continue to change at the same pace as they already have, change would be very rapid indeed. Even a year or so ago, when you asked people about environmental issues, they thought first of pollution.
Now most think first of climate change. That’s an enormous change in a short time. There was a tipping point where attitudes suddenly crystallised - not some slow linear movement over time.
Sure, they may not have done much more than invest in a few long life light bulbs but people are open to suggestion. I just discovered from the Greenpeace website that my power supplier is seriously dirty.
It makes me think differently about them - from generally pretty happy to generally a bit wary in one hit. What would make me change to uber-green Meridian? A good deal, maybe . . . an easy changeover. A promise to forget Project Aqua. Inertia is always the enemy.
The Institute's second assumption is that government shouldn’t lead public opinion on this matter, that someone else – consumers or firms will do that – presumably for rationally self-maximising reasons. [Economists!?! They really need to get out more.]
If climate change really is happening at the rate people like Al Gore suggest, then this isn’t one of those times when we’d want to wait for people to decide for themselves what they want to do or pay for.
Nor would we want to wait for businesses to decide there’s a buck in it and innovate. – most are highly geared to “business as usual”, and not changing unless they have to.
This is like when there’s a threat of war or a real pandemic on the horizon and you want a far-sighted government to have already acted on behalf of the population, in a measured way, before we’d even thought of it, just as they would if there was a threat to our security or safety or the wealth of the nation.
Otherwise, in retrospect we’re all going to be very cross indeed. Just as the English were with Neville Chamberlain.
That said, this is not the same as New Zealand’s big Grey Lynn tribe socio-political victories of the past – the 81 tour, Anti-nuclear New Zealand, and the Smokefree campaign. This isn’t about a single toxic industry or David and Goliath or a set of corroded values.
It’s not really even about damaging personal behaviours [unless you include cows]. And as I've said many times before - this isn't going to be solved by everyone being on their best behaviour for the next 30 years - even if that were possible.
This is about an enormous change of personal behaviour and wealth creation and investment and business strategy across a society. From energy to agriculture and from production to manufacture to transportation.
An enormous change required, not to fix the problem but simply to be part of a global solution that won’t actually work anyway unless someone finds a way for China and India to keep on developing using clean energy.
The Institute is right: New Zealand’s strategy does have to balance opportunity and cost, and to minimise the risks of getting it wrong, because the cost could be so very great and the benefits are dodgy at best.
I mean, it is actually incredibly easy to quickly reduce New Zealand’s carbon footprint. If we don’t want to pay for our greenhouse gas emissions all we need to do is to keep cows and bulls [or cows and herd testers] apart for the foreseeable future.
No new cows. The old ones live out their lives. Keep a few as pets. If you have to choose between that and air travel, who’s going to be on the cow’s side?
Shame that the dairy industry’s doing so well and is so critical to our economy isn’t it? If it wasn’t we could have done one of those compensation things like the Marlborough vineyards did back in the ‘80s with their naff Muller Thurgau grapes. Nice and tidy.
An English guy I interviewed once in Alexandra gave me this classic quote, which I’ve used on many occasions:- “The trouble with New Zealanders – they don’t realise how truly insignificant they really are”.
We don’t and long may we never. But perhaps in this instance, we could try to recognise that this is a problem we can’t solve at home, fighting amongst ourselves about whether to be principled and pure or pragmatic and opportunistic.
Truly, we shouldn't want to be the leader. The last thing this planet needs is for climate change to be an issue that only New Zealand takes seriously. It needs to be an issue that Asia and Europe and the America’s take seriously.
And it is. Especially Europe. And in the New York Times the other day there was an Op Ed about the possibility of blasting sulphates into the atmosphere - to lower the temperature with a perpetual haze of reflective particles.
Very Bruce Willis. You go first America. They're getting there.
So realistically - if we want to save the world – and we do, because we like it – it’s probably best to get out there and try to understand how people in other countries see things and what they know and don’t know and what they will do and won’t do – and help them to do things that make a difference for them AND us.
And we should try and do it a bit better than the first world has done with AIDS in Africa.
Then, even if the" steady as she goes" scenario does turn out to be closer to the truth and it all goes a bit millennium bug on us, well at least we’d have the air points.
Cheers
Jill
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Jill Caldwell is Director of Windshift Communications Ltd. Click Here to contact Jill directly This is a free monthly newsletter provided to direct subscribers only. No further use is made of subscriber information. [Copyright Windshift Communications Ltd 2007]
Distribute [unchanged] with impunity. Quote with attribution.
"it is actually incredibly easy to quickly reduce New Zealand’s carbon footprint."
