OK, we have taken the first step - everybody (well, almost everybody) acknowledges that climate change is a big problem and that we have to cut our carbon emissions drastically to deal with it. That's the easy bit, and it's taken 25 years. Now we have to agree on what to do and - harder still - actually do it.
George Marshall argues, in a paper published in September 2005 that climate change is a problem uniquely formulated to be as difficult as possible for the human race to deal with. Firstly, societies faced with a collective moral responsibility invariably retreat into denial. There are pressures to conform, in this case to the 'business as usual' buy-in to conspicuous consumption. There is what Marshall calls the 'bystander effect', where multiple witnesses to a crime or disaster each wait for someone else to make the first move. The more witnesses there are, the more the argument "nobody else is doing anything so why should I?" appeals. Finally there is the sense of loss, akin to bereavement, involved in thinking that the world is about to change in ways that will take away many of the things that we currently take for granted; better not to think of that until it happens. Before we even begin to tackle climate change, we need to confront these common psychological problems and find ways of overcoming them.
Marshall does not even begin to address the political problem which we covered in an earlier blog (Oct 26th) of how politicians overcome their inbuilt drive to look no further than the next election, not to mention the difficulty of confronting the powerful lobbies for business as usual, some of whom may be major funders of the party. That question loomed large this week with the inclusion of a Climate Change Bill in the Queen's Speech, but one which the environmental lobby - myself included - characterised immediately as inadequate.
I should say straight away that to even get this far is a major step forward. A bill will be presented to Parliament which will have the objective of cutting CO2 emissions by 60% by 2050. That's serious stuff, but there are two problems. Since that target was first bandied about the science has moved on, and even such a huge cut - and even assuming everybody else did their bit too - looks like it won't do the job. George Monbiot talks of 90% by 2030. Even if everybody got behind that with a real wartime spirit it looks a pretty tough target to hit, and that not only looks unlikely given George Marshall's analysis, but it also brings us to the second part of the problem with the Climate Change Bill: the government proposes to set the final target and review progress only every five years. Anybody who has followed the government's (any government's) record on hitting targets will know immediately how disastrous that idea would be. The usual response to finding that slippage is occurring is either to move the goalposts or abolish the target altogether. Stopping them doing that with annual targets will be hard enough, with five years (and at least one general election) between each review means major slippage is guaranteed. With the entire future of the human race hanging in the balance that just won't do.
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