Forgive me if this post is inappropriately "general discussion." Many of us are involved in promoting the sort of individual-level behaviors the author disparages as an inadequate response to global climate change. I have found myself wondering the same thing lately, and I'm curious about others' response to the author's argument.
The Independent (UK)
February 21, 2008
We'll Save the Planet Only if We're Forced To
by Johann Hari
Do you check every item you buy to make sure it is green and planet-friendly? Do you buy carbon offsets every time you fly? Stop. It is time to be honest: green consumerism is at best a draining distraction, and at worst a con. While the planet's fever gets worse by the week, we are guzzling down green-coloured placebos and calling it action. There is another way. Our reaction to global warming has gone in waves. First we were in blank denial: how can releasing an odourless, colourless gas change the climate so dramatically? Now we are in a phase of displacement: we assume we can shop our way out of global warming, by shovelling a few new lightbulbs and some carbon offsets into our shopping basket. This is a self-harming delusion. It's hard to give a sense of the contrast today between the magnitude of our problem, and the weediness of our response so far. But the best way is offered by the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen. He explains that until 10,000 years ago, the planet's climate would fluctuate violently: sometimes it would veer by 12 degrees centigrade in just a decade. This meant it was impossible to develop agriculture. Crops couldn't be cultivated in this climatic chaos, so human beings were stuck as a tiny smattering of hunter-gatherers. But then the climate settled down into safe parameters - and humans could settle down too. This period is called the Holocene, and it meant that for the first time, we could develop farming and cities. Everything we know as human civilisation is thanks to this unprecedented period of climatic stability. Today, we are bringing this era to an end. By pumping vast amounts of warming gases into the atmosphere, we are creating a new era: the Anthropocene, in which man makes the weather. There is an imminent danger of it bursting beyond these safe parameters, and bringing about a return to the violent, volatile variations that prevented our ancestors from progressing beyond spears and sticks. Those are the stakes. Every week, there is greater evidence that we are nudging further from our safety zone. The hottest year of the 20th century - 1947 - is now merely the average for the 21st century. And what are we doing? Many good, well-intentioned people are beginning to grasp this problem - and then assuming green consumerism is the only answer to hand. They shop around for items that have not been freighted thousands of miles to make it to their supermarket shelves. They change their lightbulbs. They turn down the thermostat a few degrees. They make sure they buy products that don't sit on electricty-burning standby all day. They buy the more energy-efficient cars, and scorn SUV drivers. I don't want to attack these people. They are an absolutely essential part of any solution. But we have to be honest. This is not even the beginning of a solution - and by pouring so much energy into it, we may actually be forestalling the real solution. I know a huge number of people who are sincerely worried about global warming, but they assume they have Done Their Bit through these shifted consumption patterns. The truth is: you Haven't. In reality, dispersed consumer choices are not going to keep the climate this side of a disastrous temperature rise. The only way that can ever happen is by governments legislating to force us all - green and anti-green - to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily. It is not enough for you to change your bulbs. Everyone has to change their bulbs. It is not enough for you to eat less meat. Everyone has to eat less meat. It is not enough for you to fly less. Everyone has to fly less. (And yes, I hate these facts as much as you do. But I will hate the reality of runaway global warming even more.) The only way we will get to the situation where we are all required by law to burn fewer greenhouse gases is if enough people pressure the government, demanding it. Green consumer choices often drain away peoples political energies to do this. You have a limited amount of time to spend on any political cause. If you have an hour a week to dedicate to acting on global warming, and you spend it scouring the supermarket shelves for the product shipped the shortest distance, that time and energy is gone; you feel you've done what you can. Part of you might also assume: I've made these choices; other people will too; in time, we'll all be persuaded. But we don't have time. There is a much better way for you to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Every minute you would have spent shopping around for a greener choice, you should spend volunteering for Greenpeace, or Friends of the Earth, or Plane Stupid, or the Campaign Against Climate Change. Every hundred-pound premium you would spend to buy a greener product, donate it to them instead. Why? Because by becoming part of this collective action - rather than by clinging to dispersed personal choices - you will help to change the law, so everyone will have to be greener, not just nice people like you. It works. Green campaigners from Australia to Canada to Japan have successfully banned the old lightbulbs, so only the energy-saving lightbulbs are on offer there now. Green campaigners have prompted the Mayor of London to force SUV drivers to pay a punitive 6,000-a-year premium to drive through our city, forcing many of them to shift to greener cars. These are the first tiny steps towards banning - or massively restricting - the other technologies that are unleashing Weather of Mass Destruction. Of course, some sincere and well-intentioned people have libertarian concerns about this approach at first glance. Why should we force people to choose the green option? Isn't it better to rely on persuasion and voluntary choice? But even the most hardcore libertarians agree that your personal liberty ends where you actively harm the liberty of another person. Greenhouse gas emissions are undeniably harming tens of millions of people - and endangering the ground on which all human liberty rests: a stable and safe climate. Just as no libertarian would argue you should have the right to buy and fire a nuclear weapon, no libertarian should argue you have the right to burn unlimited greenhouse gases. Once confronted with this argument, the only people who cling to a libertarian defence of fossil fuels are people who take money from the fossil fuel industry itself, like Spiked Online. They have to scrape together any old excuse. So enough with the placebos. Enough with the fake-libertarian excuses. As the climate that sustains human life unravels around us, we are long past the moment when we need real medicine - and the only one we have is hard government legislation.
We'll Save the Planet Only if We're Forced To
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Individual efforts lend authenticity to advocacy, in the eyes of both the public and government officials. When I speak with a government official, I speak with some "authority" because of the various actions I have taken in my own life -- e.g. founding a food coop that only sells local foods, superinsulating my house, growing 100 different varieties of useful or edible plants on my former lawns, etc. People are attracted by that example, and as they change their own lives, they also become more effective advocates for political change. Further, reality is much more complex than Mr. Hari suggests. It is common in this era to think that "politics is everything" and that culture/religion/society/economics are totally subordinate to the political. But that is not an accurate description of reality. As is often the case, the answer is not "either-or", but rather "both-and". My urban ag and food coop efforts detract not a single moment from my political advocacies, which are many. If the government saves the planet, it will only be because We the People got out in front and led our "leaders" to the table and forced them to sit down and do something useful. You can't lead from the front if there is no difference between your personal lifestyle and the lifestyles of the greedy and highly consumptive.
Bob Waldrop,
president
Oklahoma Food Cooperative
www.oklahomafood.coop
www.energyconservationinfo.org
It is my perspective that an important element if missing from the article. Small, individual actions are targeted at breaking the pattern of paralysis, eco-phobia and disempowerment. There may only be a minimal DIRECT gain to the environment but, by stimulating a sense of empowerment, it is my experience that small actions lead to big ones - greener voting, leading to greener policy, leading to green directives. Surely there must be research that supports this. Especially with children, this appears to be powerful with their potentially becoming those who reject the consumer paradigm / economy based only on $.
Jackie Hildering
Biologist / Marine Educator
Earthling Enterprises
Box 1347;
Port McNeill; B.C.; V0N 2R0
Tel/Fax: 250-956-3525
Top Island Econauts Dive Club
[email protected]
Box 48;
Port McNeill; B.C.; V0N 2R0
www.econauts.org
I agree with the views of Bob and Jackie, that we need both ground-level actions and lobbying for legislative action. Firstly, if I convince my neighbour to adopt a few actions which will lighten his footprint, then he becomes, in his mind, "the type of person who cares about the environment". The next time he is asked to vote for a politician promising/threatening legislative change, through the wonders of cognitive dissonance and our inbuilt need for consistency, he is more likely to support the change. Second, change that we perceive we have a choice in is more powerful than that which is forced upon us. (See Osbaldiston & Shelton, "Promoting internalized motivation for environmentally responsible behavior"). Having said that, I think time is running out to "convert" everybody, and we are going to have to get legislative. But that legislation stands a better chance of getting supported if we are also working at grassroots level getting people on board, one tonne of carbon at a time.
Cheers
Tim Cotter
AWAKE
56 Bloomfield Rd,
Ascot Vale,
Melbourne, VIC 3032, Australia
Tel: (+61 3) 9370 0273
Fax: (+61 3) 9370 0276
Mobile: (+61) 0404 212 903
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.awake.com.au
Hi Jackie,
Small, individual actions are targeted at breaking the pattern of paralysis, eco-phobia and disempowerment. There may only be a minimal DIRECT gain to the environment but, by stimulating a sense of empowerment, it is my experience that small actions lead to big ones I fully agree with you, and with others who have responded in a like vein. Your queries are fairly well addressed by Greer in: whose author analyses the situation quite thoroughly and goes on to persuade that the answer lies with "communities" in various forms and formats. It also provides Hope, which is something denied by the doom-mongers who advocate "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die". However, there is without doubt a need for simultaneous legislation, if only to protect community projects against those who wish that their chosen life-styles be not disturbed or threatened. I firmly believe that this whole matter needs approaching both from the bottom up and from the top down, simultaneously and comprehensively. Otherwise we will indeed spend a lot of effort achieving pathetically inadequate results to which only the converted will have contributed anyway.
Elizabeth Griffin
(Victoria, Canada)
I tend to agree with all of the above. I remember first encountering this tension between individual and collective action in the early 1970s when a friend said he was boycotting bananas in opposition to the oppressive role of United Fruit in Central America. I asked, is there a concerted movement to boycott bananas? Will United Fruit notice that you didn't buy any bananas? The answers were no and no - but he didn't have the time or interest to organize a boycott but wanted to raise awareness by talking about it. There is a continuum of action and effectiveness from individual, personal actions to voluntary, coordinated action (individual & collective) and on to mandated action (individual and collective). There can be benefits to individuals from personal actions they take - in terms of how one feels about oneself, regarding one's credibility and as a visible example to others. I think many of us would like to think (whether libertarian, anarchist or otherwise) that humans are smart enough to act intelligently collectively without coercion; relying primarily on information, education and shared understanding. Unfortunately, there are too many instances where history doesn't provide support to this view. Mr. Hari is also correct that in very many cases government has not acted until pushed to do so by citizens. This has been the case whether it was the abolition of slavery, protecting worker's rights, winning woman suffrage, winning civil rights, establishing environmental protection or a host of other issues. Another anecdote - I remember my mother commenting years ago that while liberal/Democratic types (in the US) were spending their time flattening cans, removing labels and sorting bottles for recycling the conservative/Republican types were spending their time taking over the world. What Mr. Hari raises, in part, is a discussion of ends and means.
http://www.amazon.com/Ends-means-inquiry-employed-realization/dp/B0006ANVCI
http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/infodocs/people/pp-huxley1.html
Many people can and do put time into both personal and political efforts; many feel that the personal is political. I'd say it is best when one can integrate the two but if it is an either/or situation for you at least it is a good sign that you are thinking about it. Continuing with the recycling example, it could be said that because enough people started recycling as individuals AND enough people put the effort into organizing the efforts of individual recyclers that voluntary associations of recyclers were formed which THEN were able to lobby local governments to first provide universal voluntary curbside recycling pick-up. Innovations in pricing and going to single stream (separation occurs at the recycling facility) will mean that everyone is recycling whether they know it or not and whether they want to or not. At that point my mother's concern is addressed when people of all political stripes are spending roughly the same amount of time and energy recycling - but everyone is recycling. The individual recyclers, the organizers, NGOs, demonstrators, lobbyists and government representatives and staffers all played their parts. I'd say keep up the personal actions, talk about them - point out that your Prius is more fuel efficient than your previous car - but that it still burns only fossil fuel so it is only a small first step toward a carbon neutral lifestyle - same basic story with compact fluorescents lights - mine are still powered primarily (~80%) by coal - so they are but a first step. I disagree with Mr. Hari on one point. I'd say that individual actions ARE the beginning of a solution. The critical component is to see and promote them as just that, a beginning rather than a solution - that, to tackle this very large issue, all of our beginnings must become a part of a concerted, organized, institutionalized global collective effort to build sustainable human cultures. Perhaps the critical point is to emphasize that individual action is a first step, that understanding that is important and that supporting those who are working on coordinating individual action and pressing for institutionalizing sustainable practices is step two - supporting such organizations with our time and/or money is key. How about a message on each Prius, CFL, etc. asking users to go to a web site that discusses a larger strategy for addressing climate change and looks at what different organizations play what parts in the strategy that they can choose to support - to take their engagement with climate change to step two? If the manufacturers can't be convinced to include such a message about the importance of the bigger picture - there are a multitude alternate ways to get that message out. http://www.peacemagazine.org/198.htm
David Cook
Tim - spot on. Of course we're going to need draconian action. Anyone who even partially understands what we're facing would understand that. But part of making the legislative structure that we need actually come to pass, we need to encourage more and more to engage, understand, and make a fuss - and that process may start with a light bulb. We can't buy our way out of this, agreed - and those trends are hugely frustrating. (We're grappling here with a developer trying to make "the greenest airport in Europe...!!). But don't stop trying to change behaviour in the absence of the law that will force it change, for God's sake. Here at CoaST We work with one business at a time - and now they're a whole network of businesses, and they're influencing other whole networks of businesses. It can become exponential. And that's what affects the policy makers. And besides - once the legislative hell starts, those who have started to understand it, with their own tiny changes, will be much quicker to back it and make it work, than those who were never encouraged to change their light bulbs.
Hi Allegra
I couldn't agree with Hari more, except that he doesn't go far enough. Contraction and convergence are the only reasonable *first* step, and that means rationing, where every person on earth gets a fair share of planetary resources (which means a *lot* less for us Amero-Anglo-Euro types). This would include considerations for non-human life forms, both flora and fauna. The Centre for Alternative Technology came up with a plan last summer - Zero Carbon Britain (http://www.zerocarbonbritain.org), zero carbon emissions in the UK in twenty years, with practical steps for doing it, and a global justice perspective in the mix. Even that is too little, as James Hansen is now saying that 350 ppm is the safe CO2 maximum, and we're at 384+ - though in fact the only level that we know *for sure* is safe is the pre-industrial early holocene 280 ppm (which we could get to in a few years if we decided to do so - for example, see Holistic Management International - http://www.holisticmanagement.org) Mostly we're spinning our wheels with well-intended but ultimately symbolic actions like recycling (which is really down-cycling, merely postponing the trip to the landfill - see William McDonough's work), low-carbon diets, lightbulb replacement, Priuses, etc. It makes us feel better for some odd reason as we tumble down the precipice. All of this is in service to our culture - now gone global - of empire and exponential consumption. Apparently cultures throughout history - and ours is no exception - are hard put to envision, let alone act to prevent, their own demise. Most go the eat-drink-merry route rather than the sane though arguably inconvenient path of wisdom.
Cheers,
Adam
781 674-2339