Franny Armstrong and Team Stupid today launched the campaign 10:10 - on the back of the release of the film The Age of Stupid. The film (which this author has not yet seen) spices up a documentary on oil and climate change with a fictional, backward glance in time at the present day. It is designed to be no less than a catalyst for change in the attitude of viewers regarding the reality and urgency of climate change, and thus one that inspires meaningful action across a broad front. The film’s production, distribution and funding models are themselves innovative - and that too has helped form a buzz around the film. Meanwhile, the associated 10:10 campaign is an attempt to get individuals and corporations to sign-up to a pledge to reduce their GHG emissions by 10% (over 2009) levels by the end of calendar year 2010. So while the film is intended to galvanise action, the campaign is intended to provide the framework for execution. I sincerely wish both the film and the campaign the best of success.
However it pains me however honesty compels me to say that I also ultimately believe that neither effort will make a difference to the course we are on.
Here’s why…
We are well beyond the point where simple changes to everyday behaviours are going to make any meaningful difference to climate outcomes. That’s not to say that there aren’t a long list of good things that can’t be done at an individual level - from the choice of lighting and building environmental control methods to the selection of green energy producers. There are nearly as many lists of methods regarding “how to drop 10% of your emissions” as there are tonnes of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere every year. We have no shortage of knowledge with regards to what needs to be done. What we lack is any broad interest in actually making those changes and making them stick.
Of course, that lack of interest is what both the movie and the campaign are attempting to address. But it won’t work - there is too much momentum built into the system of doing things for the change to occur. Honestly - of all the people I know I can’t think of a single person who is today not already switched onto the idea of the need to reduce their own reduce emissions who is likely to change opinion now to meaningfully internalise the need to alter behaviour. Note the emphasis - I do know people who are doing their darnedest to make a difference, both in their own lives and in the broader community and business world. However of all the intelligent, successful and everyday people I know, living everyday lives I see no evidence whatsoever that the message on climate change is sinking in. Of course they are all aware of all the little things that I happen to do at a personal and professional level - however all that is relegated to either being something that is regarded as endearing and quirky personal characteristics (and thus forgiveable) or the “Well that’s just all about work…let’s talk about something meaningful like the great deal I can get on a new sports car since the recession.”
The all too obvious answer of course is to interject with the suggestion that if a sports car is needed then perhaps a Telsa Roadster might be a better environmental choice than an AMG modified Mercedes. However the real, strategic answer is “How about cycling, walking, or catching the train instead.” Its the difference between the tactical choice and the strategic direction and lets be honest, we’re not gearing up for it. After all, in order to make enough of a difference that we avert further climate change we don’t need 10% of film goers to elect to watch The Age of Stupid, and then have 10% of them not only to sign onto the 10:10 pledge but to also actually achieve the committed reductions. We need more like 50% of the developed world’s population to make and then deliver on that commitment, while supporting the developing nations in a wide variety of ways such that they do not fill the resulting emissions reductions with their own GHG fuelled economic growth.
The question is “What’s stopping us getting there? Surely a people-powered social change such as that of the 10:10 commitment will overcome the inertia?” Actually, its hard to believe that it will. Realistically speaking there is little to point to which would indicate that the carrot approach of market forces alone will set the appropriate path and pace for change. Cutting through to the “bottom line” we can actually say that market forces have proven to be utterly ineffective at delivering a low carbon economy. Only a bloody great big stick approach involving market intervention of a dramatic kind is likely to alter that outcome, and there is much to point to support the case that such market intervention is unlikely to occur.
Take the USA. Obama’s administration does I think get climate change, as well as understanding that a path toward a low carbon economy provides opportunities for a renewal of US economic fortunes. However one needs to look no further than the debate - if we can sensibly call it that - in the US concerning the health care system to find an example of the ability of the US population overall (stirred on by Republican Party agitators) to violently insist on retaining a status quo that is both already enormously damaging to human health and fiscal responsibility, as well being forecast to cause far greater economic exposure down the track. There are plenty of parallels between how the US health care debate is playing out and how events would unfold if the administration attempted the necessary market interventions required to reduce the USA’s by 10% next year, with further dramatic changes scheduled annually thereafter. Rest assured that bipartisanship will be sunk deeper than the Good Ship Titanic if the Democratic Party administration took that path. The chance to play politics on the issue of climate change and by doing so to place a Republican leader back in the White House in 2012 will override the longer returns to humanity that come from avoiding a greater than 2c degree rise in global temperatures by 2050.
Meanwhile in the UK there is consensus amongst all but the Brown family that the Tories will form the next UK government. Even the most ardent of Labour supporters can smell the paint fumes from the writing that is on the wall on this one. From the perspective of the government in waiting there are therefore no significant votes to be had in taking a more hardline approach to climate change than has already been mooted. Cameron has done green and almost certainly has recognised that he doesn’t need the incremental votes of the 10:10 pledged voting public to achieve power. Look no further than the very real absence of a detailed plan from Camp Cameron on how to achieve real structural change regarding climate change (hint to London’s Conservative Mayor, Boris Johnson - it makes no difference to climate outcomes if Heathrow expansion is cancelled in favour of a runway in the middle of the Thames).
Meanwhile down in Australia the debate between the incumbent Rudd government and the Liberal opposition over the details and implementation timetable of the proposed Climate Bill is raging. The Rudd administration, seeking to exploit the currently shambolic leadership of the opposition party has flirted with the idea of pushing the question of the adoption of the bill - which has thus far been blocked by Liberal Party opposition - through to a double dissolution election. Doing so would deliver both the opportunity to strike politically while the opposition is weak, outside of the standard election cycle (thus extending the overall potential duration of the Rudd government term of power), while giving all the appearance of taking action, while actually avoiding the pain of making real change. The latter is in fact the only guaranteed outcome of the whole process as there isn’t a climate scientist of any repute who has looked at the proposed Australian bill who feels it commits Australia to the necessary level of emissions cuts. Politics over real climate action again.
If all that sounds awfully cynical let me hold up some examples to ponder of where phenomenally important decisions and agendas have been pushed through by the government of the day. The following list is not, to be absolutely clear, meant to be representative of what have been good decisions. There are merely examples of the lengths that government will go to when they really want to achieve an end.
Exhibit one: The Iraq Invasion. When George W. Bush wanted to topple Saddam Hussein he co-opted no less than Tony Blair, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Colin Powell, and most of the USA/UK/Australian media in a campaign of popular and political persuasion both audacious in its scope as it was inevitable in its outcome. The general citizenry were lied to regarding the evidence for WMDs, and when none were found the raison d’être for the war was conveniently changed. When hundreds of thousands of protesters voiced their opposition to the invasion they were ignored (something to keep in mind if 10:10 does in fact succeed in drumming up widespread ground-up calls for action on climate change).
Exhibit Two: When in 1999 the question of whether Australia ought to become a republic could be ignored no longer as a question of federal political importance no less than a national referendum was held to put the issue to the public vote. Some would say that the outcome was manipulated by the structure of the actual referendum questions citizens could reply to - but like the Iraq War the point isn’t necessarily about the rights and wrongs of the process, its more to do with the fact that when an issue is deemed important enough to be brought to the voting public’s consideration a process and will exists to do so.
Exhibit Three: During 2008 and into this year as the economies of the world collapsed governments have not pulled back from a degree of market intervention that is without precedent. Money is being printed in the US and the UK. Banks have been nationalised, car companies and airlines bailed out. Indeed the outcome of the 2008 US election cycle ultimately hinged on the question of how the nascent government would address the failing economy and the rapidly growing ranks of the unemployed and homeless. You can bet too that as the dust clears from the market collapse that a whole slew of new regulations will be introduced designed to tighten up fiscal and corporate governance in the hope of avoiding a repeat. So we have widespread extraordinary intervention already, and we’ll get a whole lot more intervention in the form of ordinary legislation later.
The 10:10 campaign, for all the good it will do, and for all the good intentions of those behind it exists solely because there is a leadership vacuum on the issue of climate change from the only people who can truly make the strategic and structural changes required - the collective governments of the G8 nations and those of India, China and other major emerging large GHG emitters. People power alone is not enough to sway the outcome - those protests that have already taken place continue to be dismissed as the Greenie Fringe. Our elected leaders have the capacity and track record in manipulating widespread public opinion on the occasions that they wish to. When that fails they simply claim the mantle of electoral mandate in order to override a minority of public dissent in the secure knowledge that the majority are too distracted to really care anyway. Simply put - we won’t achieve the necessary GHG emissions cuts without structural changes to the global economy; to society; to transportation and housing; and to the balance of fairness of the world’s economic systems without deep market intervention. And we won’t achieve that without a degree of leadership so far utterly absent on this issue.
We can be honest. Or we can continue to be collectively stupid. The status quo may win votes and avoid an uncomfortable degree of change, but only history will honestly judge the degree of the stupidity of the age in which we live.
