Transcript Why society needs to change - Tom Barker - Support CAT

Why society needs to change
- maybe it is (?)
CAT Members Conference,
October 2014
Tom Barker
The beginnings of the green
movement
With apologies to Eve Balfour
• Human scale;
• Small
communities;
• Challenged
globalisation
before the word
was coined;
• ‘Cult of bigness’;
• Meshed with
E.F.Schumacher.
1957
• Questioned
the status quo;
• Extermination
of insects,
birds and
mammals by
agriculture;
• Shocked the
world.
1962
• Depletion of
resources;
• Environmental debt;
• Social & political
shock;
• 750,000 copies, 17
languages, debated
in Parliament;
• Led directly to the
creation of the
green movement.
1972
• Why
sustainability?
• Social, economic
and environmental
reasons for
change;
• The third
environmental
best-seller.
1973
• “ I recall clearly the
autumn day in 1973 when
I threaded my way up
through the thick
rhododendrons from
what is now the car park
to the level area where
the Centre for
Alternative Technology
(or The Quarry as it is
popularly known) now
stands.”
Gerard Morgan-Grenville,
Founder of CAT.
1909 – 1994
1907 – 1964
1928 - 2009
1911 - 1977
What was the response?
• Kohr – minor academic shuffling of
papers;
• Carson – shock, denial, outrage, DDT;
• Goldsmith – horror, study & industrial economic – political denial;
• Schumacher – popular and media
acceptance, economic & political
dismissal.
1989 Euro-election
• Labour 6 million votes (39%): 45 MEPs;
• Conservative 5 million votes (33%): 32
MEPs;
• Greens > 2 million votes (15%): no MEPs;
• Lib Dems <1 million votes (6%): no MEPs;
• SNP 0.5 million votes (3%): 1 MEP;
• No UKIP (National Front got 1,500
votes).
i.e. the Greens won!
The enemy
within!
The response?
Conferences, ‘Think Tanks’, research:
• ‘There is a real problem and the public
recognise it’;
• What action can we take to avert an
environmental disaster?
What can
• ‘Campaign of
we do about
misinformation, slurs,
the threat
scare stories in the press
from the
and overall: ‘greenwash’
Greens?
Stepping up another gear
The Rio ‘Earth Summit’
aka United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development (UNCED)
• 116 Heads of State, 172 governments:
– alternatives to fossil fuels;
– Climate Change Convention;
– moves away from private cars;
– protection of indigenous peoples;
• Led to:
Remember
the leaves?
– Kyoto Protocol;
– Convention on Biological Diversity.
Grey versus Green
The Stern Review
on the Economics of Climate Change, 2006
• Gordon Brown: “Climate Change? – let’s
ask the economists”;
• Nick Stern (Vice-President World Bank)
“Blimey, it’s serious!”:
– Climate change will be expensive;
– It will ruin the economy
– It’s much cheaper to mitigate;
• The Stern Review converted Nick Stern
(now Chair: Grantham Inst. CC, LSE).
Zero Carbon Britain
TEEB - a ‘Stern-like review’ of
ecosystem services
Aims:
• Inform economic policy (about
its impacts);
• Incorporate nature’s values into
policy, planning & economics;
• Find ways to integrate ecology &
economics;
• Speak to the economists, industrialists and
politicians who are unaware of the connections
between what they do and the consequent loss
of nature.
Government listens to academics
Academic interest
(in the peer-reviewed literature)
• Slow interest, increased after
books & reports 1950s-1970s;
• More so after climate change
was evident;
• Government interest
follows academic conclusions;
• Increased after Rio and
Kyoto;
• What is the science saying
now?
Academic confirmation
of the importance of environmental change
Google Scholar results for terms
Sustainability "climate change“;
120000
1970-71: 107;
100000
80000
1980-81: 306;
1990-91: 1,960; 60000
40000
2000-01: 15,600:
20000
2010-11: 111,000;
0
In one year
1970 1980 1990 2000 2010
Meanwhile
1990 - 2008
CO2 emissions of developing countries
doubled (Annex A stabilised), but ....
CO2 in imported goods to Annex A
countries ~ doubled (Peters et al 2011);
Global emissions rate increase: 65%
(industry), 17% (inefficient fuel use), +
18% (decline in C sinks) (Canadell et al. 2007);
Already-built infrastructure will emit
496 Gt CO2 between 2010-2060, forcing
warming of 1.3oC (~430 ppm) (Davis et al. 2010)
(Doesn’t include feedbacks)
Wiki Commons
Published
Sept 2014
• 2013 CO2 conc. were 142% of pre-industrial; CH4 (60%
anthro): 253%; N2O (40% anthro): 121%;
• CO2  2012-2013 greatest since 1984 – fastest for 30y;
• Between 1990 and 2013: 34%  in radiative forcing
(80% CO2;NOAA Annual GHG Index);
• Ocean acidification appears unprecedented for the last
300 Ma;
“The laws of physics are non-negotiable .... We have the
knowledge and we have the tools for action to try keep
temperature increases within 2°C” WMO Sec-Gen Michel Jarraud
1990
baseline.
a) All GHGs BAU;
b) = CO2 BAU but 80%  of other anthropogenic GHGs;
c) = 80%  in CO2 but others GHGs BAU;
d) = 80%  in all anthro GHGs
Is the establishment
catching up?
“The government will ...”
• The Carbon Plan: Delivering
our low carbon future (UK govt. 2011);
• “Insulation, condensing boilers,
heat pumps, ‘green’ jobs, cheaper energy
bills, new efficient cars, nuclear, Carbon
Capture & Storage” – many of the things
that CAT has been saying for 40 years,
but 20 years too late;
• CO2e reached 479 ppm in 2013; 130 ppm
too high, and it’s still rising fast.
Huffington Post
What are academics saying now?
(Conclusions of Beddoe et al 2009)
• Worldviews, institutions and technologies all
need to change;
• Need to avoid locked-in thinking and decisionmaking;
• Should create a new cultural context to
maximise sustainability & well-being;
• A whole system approach at multiple scales is
required, aimed at sustainable quality of life &
natural capital, not unlimited growth;
• A transition will occur anyway, driven by crises.
We have to manage it, not be buffered by it.
A whole system approach?
• ‘Fundamental societal transformations are
required’ (Eriksen et al. 2011).
• ‘Today’s environmental problems require
x10 factor change, thus deep-structural
change’ (Roggema et al. 2012);
• ‘Challenges of climate change are such
that many familiar ways of life & patterns
of consumption are fundamentally
unsustainable.... new forms of living,
working, and playing will have to take hold
across all sectors of society’ (Shove 2010).
IPCC 2014
• Resilience adaptation is not
seen as enough;
• Purpose of transformation
is to create climateresilient social and
economic structures;
• Options are incremental
and transformational
adaptation.
Incremental or transformational?
e.g. in agriculture (Park et al. 2012):
• Incremental adaptors use: limited data,
reactive actions to maintain systems, harvest
earlier, drought-tolerant varieties, efficient
use of water. Satisfy investors (short term).
• Transformative adaptors use: more
information for decisions, weigh up stressors,
manage drivers of change, question long-term
viability. Relocate to cooler areas to win longterm contracts, purchase additional plots in
cooler areas, then adopt incremental actions.
What does societal or cultural
transformation mean?
• Effective responses to climate change entail
parallel processes of decay and the radical
unmaking of unsustainability (Geels 2008);
• We need to simultaneously make new and erode
old ways of life (Shove 2010);
• Transformation is a change in the fundamental
attributes of natural & human systems. It could
reflect strengthened, altered, or aligned
paradigms, goals, or values. It is sustainable, &
includes poverty reduction (IPCC 2014).
Deep-cultural change as part of
adaptating to environmental change
• Transformational change is an essential part
of society’s adaptive and mitigative response
to climate change;
• We need to critically re-evaluate existing
structures, institutions, habits & priorities in
terms of climate change risks;
• Some transformation will be forced on society
(as a last resort), some will be voluntary,
positive and anticipatory.
(Rickards Nature Climate Change 2013)
Deep cultural change? or ‘Windfall’?
• Some see it as a market opportunity:
– Opening up of Greenland & Antarctic;
– Sea water desalination;
– Floating islands;
– Snow making machines;
– Protective walls;
• Big profits, for some;
• Other options for creative
entrepreneurism?
• Who will governments be backing?
Another turning point?
‘Liverpool One’
Academics
favour
‘Old
economics’ increasingly
is being undermined
by
‘new’, e.g. Stern,
TEEB, academics. Will
sustainability;
governments
heed the call?
Will governments?