thinkingstring.com

A response to Dave Hampton’s excellent and thoughtful case for the “YES” argument.

Its important I think to not confuse the causal relationship that exists between the electorate and elected, and the very real need for the latter to use the power that they uniquely wield to make structural changes to the workings of the society in which we live.

We can debate the degree to which the elected are influenced by the actions of the constituency, both on polling day and on all the other days in between. Days the people may choose to spend not in comfortable pursuit of middle-class distractions but rather in a passionate expression of their belief for governmental or corporate action and change.

We can debate who wags whom and where the ultimate power to influence the view of reality that both the politicians and the people hold – I would argue that the media super-barons have at least one cheek ensconced on the throne of power with their proven ability to make or break a candidate’s aspirations, their demonstrated willingness to take sides on an issue, and their role as lenses of the world and its priorities for most citizens.

But what we ought not debate, and what we should accept as pragmatism is that as long as we accept that the sole answer to avoiding catastrophic levels of environmental degradation is for individuals to make personal and non binding pledges of action then the chances of our ultimate success are slim. That is not to say that we should just be sitting by, wondering why things aren’t the way we’d like to find them to be. It is important for us to take an active role in building the world we wish to live in. We get the world we make.

It is a simple recognition of reality that achieving the 80-90% emissions cuts that climate scientists advise are necessary requires changes to the system. Never mind dealing with the other pressing environmental issues we face such as water supply, land degradation, and the genocide of species.

To achieve emissions cuts of that magnitude then no less than transport choices, electricity generation and distribution methods, urban planning, construction methods and materials, and what food we eat must all be addressed. The reality is while a minority may care enough about an issue to make personal pledges, and to stick to them, the vast majority will go with the flow.

I may pledge to walk or cycle, but on a cold, wet and windy day most people just think I am an idiot. Or worse; someone with no money or no aspirations. I may elect to have a staycation, but in the time I have taken to type this much eight jumbo passenger planes have passed through my view on their descent to Heathrow.

As long as the default choice is the status quo with regards to housing, transport, energy supply and food supplies, locked in a behavioural framework where success is defined by a larger house, a larger car and ideally one that is endorsed by Top Gear, more overseas holidays and more consumption of throwaway stuff, then the reality is that the majority will blindly follow those choices. Meanwhile, developing nations and the next generation – those who will inhabit the world we deliver to them are being educated to aspire to repeat our mistakes, locking us into another thirty years heading in an unsustainable direction.

The premise of making personal pledges is to recognise that the status quo is broken and that the default sets of choices have something wrong with them. That is entirely a good thing – the more people who lift their eyes from the motoring or travel lift out of their paper and take a moment to think “Is it a good and worthwhile decision in the grander scheme of things that I fly the family to Florida so that the kids can eat popcorn and ride a roller coaster at Disney Land?” the better. However we do not have the timeframe available to us now to allow us to hold minority choices to be the strategic answer that will lead to ultimate success.

We need systemic changes that deliver default choices to the majority so that without pledges or other conscious action on their behalf their ecological footprint is sustainable. The power to deliver those changes lies not in the hands of a minority of average private citizens, no matter how vocal, passionate and committed they are. It lies in the hands of those making the macro financial and legislative structures that shape the world we live in.

Debate we can on how to best achieve the attention and action amongst our elected leaders. However it is to be pragmatic to recognise that success lies not in a minority swimming against the stream, it lies in changing the course of the river. Ten thousand people could sit in peaceful protest in Heathrow’s terminals tomorrow, but until the system stops classifying their actions as illegal, until the media brands them not as “Enemies of the economy” but rather “National heroes”, and until the majority of public opinion has some degree of empathy for their actions it will all be just a blip soon lost in time and significance as the status quo resumes.

We do not have time for the luxury of optimism. We have time only for bold thinking enabled through pragmatic execution. The time for despair may yet come, but it is not upon us yet as we are still “this side” of the historical record; a record that will document whether we lived through the age of stupidity or the age of grand deliverance.

Al Tepper of OOFFOO has organised a little online debate, inspired by the release of Franny Armstrong’s The Age of Stupid.

The question to hand is this: “Is there time to fight climate change without government regulation?”

Al says: We all encounter cynics when it comes to being green and with the global launch of the 10:10 campaign we thought it would be a great idea to debate whether or not individuals can make enough changes to tackle climate change or whether ultimately we need governments to regulate our way out of this mess. Is the carrot enough or do we need the stick?

Joining us to get the debate started are two great green voices: Simon Perry, Sustainalyst @ Thinking String & Dave Hampton aka The Carbon Coach (his latest newsletter is very relevant).

The original debate posting, together with reader comments can be found here.

What isn’t surprising is that America hammered home a ground stake yesterday at the G8 Summit with the declaration that they will commit to an 80% reduction in GHG emissions, achieved by 2050. The idea that the Obama administration would take such a direction crystallised on the evening of October 2nd, 2008 in St. Louis Illinois.

On that evening the then Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and the current Vice President Joe Biden primped, positioned and even occasionally answered a question during the Vice Presidential (nominee) televised debate. Biden, in response to a question regarding the causes of climate change responded; “It’s man made, it’s clearly man-made. That’s why the polar ice caps are melting”.

For those paying attention, this was a watershed moment – remembering that every answer given in that debate must have been subject to intense preparatory deliberation by an expert team of policy setters and massagers of messaging. Biden’s answer unequivocally nailed a sign on the wall pointing to the direction the administration would take. Here we are, some nine months later, and the bright spark Biden gave voice to that night has gestated in the G8 announcement.

And yet, like a newborn child, there is both an infinity of possibility and the great potential for tragedy all wrapped up in the same bundle. The G8 announcement, designed to spur developing countries like China and India into making similarly far reaching commitments, is problematic in that it fails to set aggressive commitments for interim emissions targets. Climate scientists would like to see developed nations achieve 50% emissions cuts by 2020, on the way to the overall 80% cuts three decades later. The announcement also courted controversy for the failure to concretely specify the baseline year against which relative targets are calculated – “OK…I’ll cut 80%. 80% of what though?” So…dramatic progress, but the devil remains in the details.

If the announcement isn’t a complete surprise then, is there anything that is? There’s certainly no surprise in the fact that 99% of the western world will get up today and do exactly the same things that they did yesterday, even if they read the newspaper headlines regarding the announcement as they crunch through their morning bowl of cereal. They’ll eat the same food, use the same transport method to get to work or drop little Mary-Jane and Muhammad at the local school, and book the same holiday destination regardless. An infinitesimal number of people will internalise the news and begin to think how their lives might be different if conducted such that they generate only 20% (or less, depending on the baseline year) of emissions than they do today.

Similarly, business leaders will generally have the same meetings they otherwise would have had. Focussing not on the method by which they may achieve profitable operations with 80% less emissions, but instead on this quarter and this year. Product Managers, Vice Presidents of Futurology and other foretellers of the future will spend the day dreaming up two-dot-oh this and three-dot-oh that, mashed up, twittered and iPhone ready for all. Ministers of Education, School Principals and Teachers will pull out the same textbooks and all give no thought as to how to enable the room full of fresh-faced 9 year olds with an education suitable to successfully progress and contribute to an economic model that is undergoing a fundamental shift throughout the duration of their future working lives. The 9 year olds of today are the 50 year olds of 2050. They are generation of Emissions Transitioners – the Digital Immigrants of the carbon-down age. Their lives will be defined not by the rhetoric of the 2009 G8 Summit, but by the continued action of many throughout the coming forty years.

Perhaps the surprise then, if there is any, is simply the degree to which the minutia of planning necessary to actually enact structural change has thus far failed to materialise. To have the head and the mouthpiece of the dog bark is one thing, but to have the body react requires specific directions to be sent to the nerves and muscles that initiate and coordinate action. It is high time that detailed consideration is given to how change will be achieved and successfully guided and governed along the way.

Clearly the necessary structures to accommodate and encourage change remain illusive – preceding the G8 announcement by just a few days was the news that an ambitious plan to generate 4,000 megawatts of wind farm electricity in the USA was being mothballed. The project was cancelled, according to the chairman of BP Capital Management due to fact that “transmission issues and the problem with the capital markets make (the scheme) unfeasible at this point”. The country that does achieve such a plan for renewable energy generation and distribution will be the first to lay claim to the pole position in the rankings of countries decoupled from the pollution, profit, violence and warfare associated with oil production in many parts of the world.

A high game of brinkmanship therefore continues to be played amongst the world’s leaders. At stake is nothing less than the shape of the geopolitical stage and the economic ordering of the winners and losers in the “green economy”. Mixed in amongst that is the question of what sort of everyday opportunities and decisions will be available to everyone alive today who is 45 years of age or less – for we are the generations of transitional action. L’Aquila may rumble with the aftershocks of tectonic discontent, but it is the aftershocks from the 80% announcement that will rumble far longer and with far more potential reach.

The scope of change required to meet the GHG reduction targets currently being set is enormous. Targets of 80% reductions (by 2050) are even today being labelled “minimum” as new evidence emerges that the IPCC (et al) calculations, predictions and calls for action err on the side of optimism. Indeed, there is emerging evidence of the need for large-scale sequestration of existing atmospheric GHG concentrations, supporting a “> 100%” net decline in anthropogenic emission rates.

Regardless of whether the required target is 80%, 110% or otherwise, it is clear that given the reliance on emission heavy activities, energy sources and construction materials the degree of required change will be disruptive. Achieving the required GHG cuts will require a mixture of direct and indirect market interventions. Direct intervention will generally be in the form of regulation that controls, limits, and apportions polluting activities. Indirect intervention will be achieved through pricing in and accounting for those factors, which are currently regarded as market externalities. As a result, the current assumptions that make supply chain choices et al what they are today will shift seismically, leading to a new reality. Achieving that new reality involves changing the energy supply/consumption model - creating the requirement for new skills, while inherently also requiring behavioural and system changes in order for the change to gain momentum and to be successful.

The bulk of any country’s school systems are utterly unprepared to adequately equip those currently being educated by it with regards to climate change science, overall environmental degradation, resource depletion. This is largely due to a twin failure of government policy failure and a lack of meaningful parental and social pressure. Due to that fact, almost no schools have given adequate thought toward any potential curriculum changes designed to better provide graduating students with the practical and theoretical skills that will be useful in a world struggling to implement the changes necessary to avoid catastrophic ecosystem failure. In short, the majority of any country’s education systems are failing in their duty to provide today’s students with the skills and knowledge required for survival and success in the future.

The required responses to climate change are framed over the coming four to five decades. Unless the students of today are set on a different path and enabled to actively take part in supporting these changes the time at which social inertia is overcome will be further delayed. Climate change predictions and science indicate that urgent action is required and further delay will be catastrophic.

It is worth being mindful of the fact that the impacts of climate change will be felt over an extended period of time (albeit one measured in very human time scales). The same is of true of the implementation of the required changes to the behaviour of people, to our processes, and our use of technology. Given that the GHG reduction targets are framed over a 40+ year timeframe we would do well to recognise that those individuals in our school systems in 2009 will be the business leaders, workers, and adult members of society of 2050. The skills that they will need to have will be different than those valued today.

The cross-generational shift of valued skill sets is not an unknown phenomenon; society’s history since the industrial revolution is littered with examples of tectonic technology shifts making long valued skill-sets obsolete within a single decade. Over the last 30 or so years we have seen this phenomena within almost every business and organisation – manifesting itself as the widespread use of ICT (Information Communications Technology) has moved from EDP back office processing and academic research to being a ubiquitous face of commerce and daily activity. The terms “digital natives”, “digital immigrants”, and “digital ignorant” have been coined to refer to the various generations moving through the workforces of the 1980s through today, and their relative comfort levels with ICT.

Mirroring the way that we have seen the emergence of the Digital Native, we will see an evolution in the understanding of climate change and effective avoidance strategies in future generations. Such a change however, will not occur by itself. Inherent inertia must be overcome, and a thoughtful and planned approach taken toward guiding the path of development.

Borrowing from this idea of “Digital Natives”, and recognising also that the skills required to enact the changes necessary to meet the GHG reduction targets will be different again from those that will be useful in the longer term, the labels “emission ignorants”, “emission transitioners”, and “emission adepts” are useful ones - capturing the essence of the required shifts in skills sets over time.

Emission ignorants are those who remain unaware of either the facts of climate change, or the scope of the necessary changes. A subset of the Ignorants may be moved to the Transitioner category through education.
Emission Transitioners are those individuals who will play an active role in enabling the necessary GHG emission reductions. They are a visible minority today and their waxing influence will straddle the decades between now and the current emission reduction target date of 2050. The activities of Transitioners will be defined as one of “dealing with change” as they seek to understand the scope of the necessary changes, and then unravel the current organisational and structural behaviours and systems, replacing them with the new.

Emission Adepts will eventually replace Emission Transitioners. Adepts will live in a world where the majority of the necessary changes have already occurred. As the economic externalities of emissions have been internalised, the basic assumptions that drive every day activity will also have changed. In essence, Adepts will have internalised those assumptions and will live within a society, an economic model, and a world that has structurally adapted to the new reality.

Those that are the relative “early transitioners” must apply their individual and collective skills toward to the efforts to better understand our current state, the needs of the future, and the efforts to communicate and engage with the Emissions Ignorants. Co-operation is key between academia, business, and political parties if we are to harvest the skill sets that currently exist in the marketplace, and to move ahead with the pace and accuracy required. An effective sharing of academic knowledge related to climate change will accelerate and broaden awareness and knowledge in society at large, amongst business leaders, and regulators. Meanwhile, academia will benefit from further understanding the evolving needs of the marketplace and therefore in what ways and at what pace curriculum should alter. Nimbleness will be highly important, though it is currently lacking.

Read more here in a whitepaper entitled “Setting the framework for skills change” (PDF format).  Setting the framework for skills change considers the need for an evolving set of practical and theoretical skills amongst the workforce and the broader community in order to support an adequate response to climate change.

Fog high above London. Boardroom type table Orbited by a dozen or so suited individuals to which any of the following might apply, but all would be modestly denied…clever, thoughtful, experienced, connected, influential, knowledgeable,passionate, engaged. And I got to be there too. The scene is important I think as a form of context for understanding the fascinating nature of the conversation around the table.

Suited business professionals and members of the industry analyst community (some whom scrub up OK too) engaging in a passionate and informed discussion regarding the need to consider the re-engineering of the long established and pervasive capitalist system. Specifically, to examine how we can recognise and reward the value associated with a steady state economic (and business) model, as opposed to only rewarding a constant growth model as we have for the last 500 years or so.

The serious proposal being that the current systemic economic crisis and associated recessions are an opportunity to start on a new direction, especially given the nexus of the economy, climate change and looming petroleum supply shortages.The conversations themselves are fascinating to listen to, and a privilege to have the opportunity to engage with. What is truly interesting however is the type of people having them, and what that signals as far as the debate on climate change has come.

Valuing a mature sustained state economic model will highlight the value of efficiencies in the service delivery production chain. Currently efficiiencies are only lightly rewarded, at best second to margin growth derived through territory expansion. The correct valuation of efficiency gains would be enabled to no small degree by including the currently externalised economic, social and ecological costs associated with an activity into the financial balance sheet where it all belongs.

Those still debating whether climate change exists, or pointing to sunspots as the cause have unfortunately been left behind in the debate. It is critical to remember that that group is large in size (arguably the majority) , and non optional as far as the need to include them as we further engage, educate and encourage appropriate action around climate change.

Who said what around the table shall remain unattributed for now, but it was all good and thank you everyone.

Thank you and kudos to BT for organising the event, inviting us all along, and having the maturity to encourage unbridled discussion.

More.

Please.

Sometime in the next one thousand, four hundred and fifty eight days its all going to get really ugly. There will be no single day of reckoning, but rather a wave of reckonings - somewhere around 303,824,640 of them. According to no less an authority than the CIA 303,824,640 was the USA population back in mid 2008, though there have been a few burials and births since then so perhaps this piece of intelligence, like so many others from the CIA should be taken with just a pinch of salt.

Arguably more than a few have already tipped into the realisation of just what is in store for them should the newly elected US President, Barack Hussein Obama II actually bring into reality the promise of a low carbon economy. Most however are still dazed by the spectacle of the inauguration to give it real thought. Carrying on his shoulders the hope of so many Americans (and no small number of the majority of the world’s population i.e. the rest of us) that he can steer the USA away from its socially, morally, and physically destructive ways, President Obama cocoons many from the reality of what those changes might mean for them. When they’re told, or when they find that they can’t do today what they could do yesterday, stand well clear ladies and gentleman of the spinning fan blades.

The Obama/Biden administration is the first to unequivocally state that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is reality, and that it represents a major risk for the survival of life. While there have arguably been many missed opportunities to say more on the subject during the 2007/2008 election cycle and during the limbo days since the election it is worth quoting again from the Vice Presidential debate of 2008:

“MODERATOR: Senator (Biden), what is true and what is false about the causes (of global warming)?
BIDEN: Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden — Governor Palin and Joe Biden. If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That’s the cause. That’s why the polar icecap is melting.”

Obama gave further nod to the road ahead when, in his inauguration speech he said:
“And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.”

On those scores the Obama/Biden ticket would have got my vote (had I been entitled to one), though in fairness to my Inner Sceptic I should hasten to add that action is what will make the difference not words. And it is that action which brings me back to my original thesis: its going to get real ugly some time during the next four years.

Of those three hundred and three odd million American people there are very few who really get what those words might mean to them and their daily lives. It is one thing to hear the words, it is another to listen to them, it is yet another thing to internalise them and absorb the implications. The challenge ahead no longer lies with convincing a nation’s leader of the reality of AGW, the challenge ahead lies in bringing the citizenry of that country along the same road. I suspect that for most, it is today somewhat akin to the cynical exercise of going to Church on Sundays. Being inspired by the rhetoric of the preacher, washing out the stains of a few sinful acts in the confessional, praying with heartfelt earnestness for the redemption of those who have lost the way on the true path…and then going right back to the same shit way of living by Sunday evening.

So sometime during the next four years, those 303,824,640 or so people are going to find that navigating the road ahead involves their participation. The problem hasn’t been solved by a newly elected President dropping one sentence into his inauguration speech. The problem won’t be solved the by Washington twiddling a knob or two on the economic and social control panels that mysteriously manages (or not) the ebbs of flows of the macro economic maelstrom. Nor will it be solved by changing a light bulb or two, turning down the thermostat a degree, and manufacturing the same old stuff in the same old way but with a nod toward any resulting device having a better energy efficiency than last year’s model.

Obama’s implementation of his campaign words will instead involve changes in the running of every day American life. And seeing as so many other countries are followers and imitators of that social and economic model a lot of other lives too. Yours. Mine. Your neighbours. Your parents and your friends. What we drive, whether we drive. Where we holiday and how we get there. What we eat, how that food is grown and where it is grown - and therefore when it is available. Where and how we design our communities and buildings. How we define success and freedom and how we reward it. What our expectations for economic and social growth are. Which businesses make sense. Which businesses need to be deliberately shut down. These are just a few of the smaller questions that we must address as we enact change.

Some of them have undoubtedly already twigged. A largish number who perhaps already have one of these plastered on the back of their Chevy Suburban. Any slick talkin’ Dem-o-crat who tries to wrestle the keys for their Chevy from their clenched fist and swap it for the electronic keyfob for a shiny new Prius (or even a Chevy Volt) is probably going to find themselves staring down the barrel of a constitutionally legal firearm. These people are going to resist with every braincell, every dollar, every decision, and perhaps even with their physical might any effort to have them change their day to day way of life.

There are to be counted also the relatively small number of people who already truly understand the personal implications of dealing with AGW. They have proactively made personal decisions, and have set themselves on a course somewhat different to the day to day path followed by mainstream. They are the Eco-Amish. They already walk. They already eat a little differently. They already holiday locally. They already teach their children that unbridled economic expansion derived from profligate consumption of fossil fuels might well be mainstream, but it is also a truly dangerous thing.

Then there are the rest of them. To quote the newly elected President - change is coming. What worries me isn’t whether the newly installed US administration says and believes those words, it is whether the everyman understands the truth of those same words. And most importantly, whether the everyman accepts the change to them that delivering on those words means.

Hang on for the ride, this is where it gets really interesting.

Earlier in June I posted this quote from John Wyndham. The intervening ten or so days has just reinforced the appropriateness of the quote, in my mind. Both the IEA, and Alexey Miller, who is the head of the Kremlin-owned gas giant Gazprom, are pointing to the likelihood of $250 a barrel oil prices. Much hand wringing and protesting by truck drivers all over the place. The drivers are even choking on their jasmine rice in Thailand, though whether a “drive-slow” or a “traffic blockade” would be noticed in Bangkok is another question.

Meanwhile, in my native Australia petrol is now at A$1.60 a litre and predicted to head to A$2.00. The Australian government of Kevin Rudd, which was voted in only last year and promptly signed up Australia belatedly to the Kyoto protocol, doesn’t have the bravery to say what needs to be said: “Price reflects supply, and what we’re seeing now is a harbinger of what a carbon emission restricted economy and lifestyle will look like”.

This is why, to me, a carbon-down future is not an issue for technology. The highest barriers we will need to overcome are those in people’s minds. Mind you, we can’t blame them. Governments the world over have known about the reality and risks of climate change for at least twenty years, while Hubbert predicted global peak oil in the 1950s. Economic policy, education curriculum, and a lack of bravery and honesty by politicians have wrapped humanity in a warm(ing) comforter blanket of high energy dependency.

On the weekend I met up with some friends. The teenage son of one couple said that his high school science teacher says that global warming is caused by sunspots. I choked on my beer (we were having a quick rest and refreshment halfway through a bike ride), while I quickly jotted down the name of his school so I can make sure I don’t send my kids there. No doubt it would be regarded as inappropriate meddling to make the reality of anthropogenic climate change a required aspect of the next generation’s eduction. Pity, as they are going to have to live with the consequences of the choices and actions of today’s workforce and government.