Alex Steffen has delivered a TED talk in Edinburgh looking at the shareable future of cities. It is essentially a summary of views from the excellent but defunct Worldchanging website – If we can’t generate enough clean energy to replace fossil fuels then we must stop and think of alternative solutions. For Steffen, one such solution is walkable urbanism. He advocates planning, building and refabricating cities so that they are high-density and, by virtue, more sustainable.
The problem I have with Steffen’s utopian vision for the city of the future, is that it is top-down and prescriptive. It provides answers to some important questions but fails to countenance the possibility that people may not want to live in high-density areas.
Last month there was a protest against staging the Olympic Equestrian events in Greenwich Park by NOGOE.
Like many others, I was quick to judge the protest as a classic case of Nimbyism. Through rose-tinted glasses, I saw the Olympics as a wholly positive thing for London. In the midst of recession, the regeneration of some of the most deprived areas of our city – so I thought – could only reap benefits. The ‘greenest games ever’ would bring communities together and inspire Londoners to get active.
Having seen the consequences of staging the Equestrian events in Greenwich Park up close and personal, I have softened my stance considerably. Much of the grass behind the Queen’s House is ruined and some areas of the Park are still fenced off to the public. This, despite initial assurances that disruption and damage to the Park would be minimal.
We were also told that the London Olympics would be the first ‘Sustainable Games’. According to the Olympic website:
sustainability’ is far more than being ‘green’. It’s ingrained into our thinking – from the way we plan, build and work, buy, to the way we play, socialise and travel; ultimately everything that we do.
So why then, instead of the original 20% renewable energy target, have Locog downgraded their pledge to just 9%? And why has Locog refused to commit to making the Games plastic-bag free?
I am glad to see that the Greener Upon Thames campaign group has launched an e-petition urging Locog to ban the use of plastic bags in all Olympic venues.
Here are some other suggestions that I think could make a positive impact next summer.
Richard Heinberg’s new book, The End of Growth, is generating a lot of publicity. It claims that, despite what many politicians and policymakers are saying, growth will not return to the major economies. The enormous sums that governments around the world have spent trying to stimulate growth during the recession have brought no meaningful gains. For Heinberg, the very idea of ‘perpetual growth’, shared by both Keynesian New Deal economics and trickle-down Reagonomics, is over.
Heinberg claims it is unlikely that developed economies will adapt to this new reality voluntarily or anytime soon. In fact, governments, corporations and large-scale institutions will most likely try to obstruct changes to the status quo. As a consequence, Heinberg focuses on what individuals and local communities can do to help with the transition towards a zero growth economy.
I find myself firmly on the ‘growth is good’ side of the debate. This article, by Daniel Ben-Ami, sums up my position. Up to a point.
Contributors to Dale & Co., the new collaborative current affairs blog, might have editorial independence over their articles but it doesn’t look as though many of them have an inclination towards discussing the ‘greatest challenge’ facing the world today, climate change.
In fact, after three weeks and hundreds of posts from hundreds of contributors from across the political spectrum, climate change has barely registered as an issue at all.
There was a post by ‘wine expert’ and self-styled ‘environmental entrepreneur’ Jerry Lockspeiser, lamenting how the wine industry may suffer due to global warming.
Another post under the ‘climate’ category looked at Christopher Monckton’s recent trip down under. It is written by Shane Stone, a name within the Australian Liberal Party, who praises Monckton and recommends he be appointed to the House of Lords. That’s the same ‘eccentric’ Christopher Monckton who disputes that there is a correlation between increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and climate change.
To his detractors, Monckton is referred to as an irrational ‘denier’. To his allies, he is a rational ‘skeptic’. I subscribe to neither of these labels. I find both to be crude and misleading.
I highlight the two labels to demonstrate just how polarised the climate debate is at present. It is this polarisation that has fed the mistrust of many environmentalists. We monitor the mainstream media with beady eyes and try to call out misrepresentation of climate data whenever we see it.
So, I apologise in advance if this post reads as slightly neurotic, but I am genuinely curious as to whether there is an editorial decision at Dale & Co to marginalise climate change as an issue.
Speak in plain English. We have to stop being a closed shop and start talking to people. That means fewer acronyms and clearer explanations of scientific terms and concepts. After all, many newspaper readers will only give an article a cursory glance before deciding whether or not to read it in full. If it is littered with terms like Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), they may flick straight to the next page.
Listen, engage and do not judge others for the decisions they make. People choose to shop in large multinational supermarkets because they are cheap and convenient. Buying fresh, organic, free-range produce from the local farmers’ market is simply not an option for most people.
Keep it real. Statistics, percentages and diagrams are important, but what about the human element? How will the figures represented in the graph affect me and my world?
Be practical. Talking in abstract terms about climate change can be difficult to relate to. How can people make a difference either as individuals, communities or as part of larger organisations?
Emphasise the positives. There is a sense of climate fatigue. This isn’t because people don’t care, but they have been overwhelmed by stories of flooding, drought and melting icecaps. For good measure, report and analyse green success stories.
Here are my top ten green books. Some of the choices may seem rather tenuous and they feature in no particular order.
1. Amartya Sen – The Idea of Justice
Sen proposes a fundamental shift in the focus of economics, from the means or material wealth of individuals, to the actual opportunities they possess in order to do things they value. Factors such as age, gender, disability, one’s physical environment and social climate can have an impact on the quality of life or capabilities of individuals and entire communities. The idea that GDP can act as the sole marker of success is finally laid bare.
2. Nassim Nicholas Taleb – The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
For Taleb, Black Swan Events are unforeseeable, they have major, wide reaching repercussions, and after having been recorded, many people attempt to rationalise the event with hindsight. It is the randomness of events, and our inability to predict outcome that animates Taleb the most. Ultimately, he advocates a society that is able to weather such events.
3. James Scott – Seeing Like a State
The ‘high-modernist’ ideology and resulting policies of the previous century were top-down and harmed many of the people they were supposed to help. Scott argues that in order for schemes to improve the human condition to flourish, they must consider local conditions and specialist knowledge, or metis.
4. Rachel Botsman – What’s Mine Is Yours
Botsman has tapped into the times with this book. She describes an explosion in sharing, swapping, trading and renting due to the internet and peer-to-peer technologies. This new way of consuming, according to Botsman, is very similar to how we did things in the days before ultra-consumerism. At last, ‘we’re becoming smart and social again’. Once you’ve finished reading this book, register with the CC website and ‘recycle’ it for others to enjoy.
5. Ayn Rand – Atlas Shrugged
The Randian hero, personified by the character John Galt in Atlas Shrugged, is I suspect the antithesis of what most environmentalists would aspire to. But it’s important to know your enemy. And better the devil you know etc. Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism completely rejects the idea of altruistic behaviour – ‘rational self-interest’ is king. Frightening stuff.
6. Ryszard Kapuściński – The Soccer War
Kapuscinski takes us to the heart of countless revolutions, coups, civil wars and hotspots across the emerging ‘Third World’ of the 1960s. Many of these conflicts are the result of disputes over who controls what natural resources. Kapuscinski writes a ‘new kind of literature’ – one ‘by foot’. He dismisses the traditional ‘fabricated narrator describing a fabricated reality’ and favours an explicitly personal style. For Kapuscinski, writing is only authentic if it is being lived. I wish there was more of this style of writing from contemporary environmental correspondents.
8. David MacKay – Sustainable Energy (Without the Hot Air)
Where are we going to get our energy from in the near future? This book probes this question with plenty of numbers and data. An entertaining and informative primer.
9. Jonathon Porritt – Capitalism as if the World Matters
Porritt holds an unashamedly reformist position. If capitalism is still the only economic game in town, then we need to make it work. Our fixation with growth is unhealthy and Porritt offers some compelling solutions to the current free-market approach.
10. Stewart Brand – Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto
Some of the holy cows of environmentalism are demolished in this book. Brand is refreshingly solutions-orientated and therefore offers prescriptions as well as diagnosis to issues. A welcome manifesto that rebukes the glut of pessimistic material that has prevailed in recent years.
People may not take a cucumber crisis very seriously, but they should. It is representative of a wider problem that exists within our globalized economy.
If a cucumber is contaminated in Spain, it has grave consequences for multiple countries. One result is that the lever of the export machine becomes momentarily jammed. Cucumbers from Spain are rejected by other countries. The farmer, the packer, the shift supervisor and the company overseeing the distribution of cucumbers lose out. The free flow of perishable goods is interrupted. Shoppers from Berlin to Brno may become anxious and avoid buying Spanish cucumbers. They might even steer clear of them altogether for a period of time.
OK, not a travesty. But cucumbers are only, if you’ll excuse the salad based pun, the tip of the iceberg.
The grounding or disruption to freight flights also reveals just how reliant some countries are on exporting single commodities. This is a ludicrous situation. Countries that possess the natural conditions or resources to grow a range of crops or produce materials domestically have been restricted in doing so. Instead, they channel most of their resources, time, labour and expertise into exporting a single commodity. The words eggs and basket spring to mind. When things go wrong, as they frequently do, the pain is intensified by the fact that there is nothing to fall back on. No plan B, let alone a Plan C.
The global economy can be dynamic when it works but it is also susceptible to disruption when a small cog in the machine temporarily jams. We cannot predict when such jams will occur or how consequential they will be. It is important, however, that we are aware of their potential and do not think – as many so-called experts did in the pre-recession boom years – that the status quo is infallible. In fact, the one thing we can be sure of is the uncertainty of the future.
With this in mind, I reach for my well-thumbed copy of Keynes’ General Theory.
[G]enuinely world-leading in its breadth and ambition. It will impose legally binding targets requiring the UK to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50 per cent by 2050 and 60 per cent by 2030, in the process ensuring that the country’s electricity infrastructure is all but decarbonised within 20 years.
If the plan is enacted fully, the UK will generate 40 per cent of its energy from renewables and 40 per cent from nuclear by 2030, the remaining 20 per cent coming from relatively clean fossil fuel power plants, many of which will feature carbon capture and storage technology
Moreover, by 2025, 2.6 million homes will have highly energy efficient heat pumps, and almost a third of new cars will be electric. Every component of the economy will face similar levels of revolutionary change, ensuring that the UK will almost certainly become one of the world’s premier low carbon economies, generating billions of pounds a year from exporting green technologies and expertise.
Certainly, Cameron deserves praise for his boldness in passing the budget. However, the Osborne-Cable alliance did win some important concessions. As Joss Garman points out at Left Foot Forward:
[I]t appears that whilst the government will accept the CCC’s advice on the scale of the carbon targets for the mid-late 2020s, they won’t accept the recommendation that short term cuts need to be increased.
Understandably, some will rightly point out that it’s convenient for the prime minister to agree to a 50% cut in UK emissions by 2025 – when he’s unlikely to still be in power, but to reject the advice of raising the 2020 target. Equally, it is understood that government will announce tomorrow it will rely on carbon offsets to a greater extent than is recommended by the climate committee.
This is a classic case of politics influencing policy. But no matter what some doom merchants may say in tomorrow’s papers, be in no doubt, this remains a radical piece of climate legislation. It commits to concrete action. It is to be welcomed.
Last week, I made a trip down to Brighton. As you can see, it was a beautiful sunny day. Whilst strolling down the promenade, I came across a series of billboards put up by The Co-operative. I had a camera at the ready so I started to snap away.
I’ve said before on this blog, I don’t think negative campaigning works – especially when it is so abstract and removed from everyday life. So next time, why not show alternative (and realistic) visions for a more sustainable future? Brighton has plenty of potential.
A year ago we were pleased when you made the commitment to make yours the ‘greenest government ever’. It was a great ambition, with some promising policies in the Coalition Agreement and the early cancellation of the third runway at Heathrow to back it up.
Twelve months on your Government’s performance is less impressive. There have been some significant positive steps including the decision to set up a green investment bank, a commitment to a Natural Environment White Paper following UK leadership at the biodiversity convention at Nagoya, and the decisions to fund the demonstration of carbon capture and storage and renewable heat. During the same period, however, we have fallen from 3rd to 13th on the international league table of attractiveness to clean energy investors because of perceived uncertainty about the direction of UK policy. There have also been some real set-backs, most notably the lack of protection for wildlife and the countryside in the reform of the land use planning system and the view that there should be a default ‘yes’ to new development; the delay in borrowing powers for the green investment bank; the weakening of the zero carbon homes policy; and the inclusion of all environmental protection law in the ‘red tape challenge’.
Our view is that your Government started with a strong sense of purpose on the environment but is now in danger of losing its way. Getting back on track will require strong leadership from you and your colleagues. This means putting green growth at the heart of your economic recovery strategy; prioritising stronger environmental protection in your proposals for localism and land use planning; committing resources to restoring the health of the UK’s land and sea; and placing international climate finance and natural resource security at the forefront of your Government’s foreign policy.
Most critically we urge you to set out the case that a green economy is central to the future prosperity of the UK and not a cost to be endlessly debated and watered down, as if it were a luxury. As a first step in doing this, and to create clarity for investors and citizens about the UK’s direction, we would urge you to accept the key recommendations of the CCC’s fourth carbon budget report.
We believe there is still scope for your Government to be the greenest ever, but it will require both urgency and resolve. We are committed to playing our part in helping the UK achieve a prosperous green economy and stand ready to work with your Government to achieve this.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew Spencer, Director, Green Alliance
Loretta Minghella, Director, Christian Aid
John Sauven, Chief Executive, Greenpeace UK
Mike Clarke, Chief Executive, RSPB
David Nussbaum, Chief Executive, WWF UK
Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive, Oxfam GB
Shaun Spiers, Chief Executive, Campaign to Protect Rural England
Stephen Joseph, Chief Executive Officer, Campaign for Better Transport
Andy Atkins, Executive Director, Friends of the Earth
David Baldock, Executive Director, IEEP
Stephanie Hilborne, Chief Executive, Wildlife Trusts
Martin Warren, Chief Executive, Butterfly Conservation
Victoria Chester, Chief Executive, Plantlife
Martin Spray, Chief Executive, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust
Sue Holden, Chief Executive, Woodland Trust
