Scotland on Sunday article

Posted on December 8, 2009

Our friends at Scotland on Sunday asked for a view on the last ten years, from an environmetnal perspective. Here’s what we sent them:

As we prepare to enter the second decade of the 21st century, and as the Scottish Parliament ends its celebration of the first ten years of devolution, it is easy to forget just how much progress has been made towards a recognition of the issues which the Green movement has brought to the table, both globally and locally.

At the beginning of the decade the environment was seen by most politicians as just one minor issue among many, despite the early spike in Green votes in 1989. Indeed, during the first debate MSPs held on transport issues climate change was mentioned only once, but it was still not seen as a reason to refrain from big increases in road building. Peak oil, the fact of finite supplies, was still dismissed as a fringe idea by the oil companies which privately knew better, and energy debates in Scotland were typically just sterile disagreements about the ownership of the North Sea’s fossil fuel assets, rather than the sustainability of burning the stuff until it was all gone.

But the turn of the millennium saw the UK’s first Green parliamentarians elected too, in the now familiar shape of Robin Harper here in Scotland, then joined by Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert representing English regions in Europe.

In wider activism, the road and runway protests of the previous decade inspired a broader range of environmental direct action, with targets including genetically modified crops and the arms trade. For many activists these issues joined the dots between straightforward environmental causes and the social and economic consequences of corporate power. Links developed with those who were campaigning on other aspects of global justice such as health and trade reform; many people who eventually joined the Make Poverty History movement began their political journey with the anti-GM movement and an awareness of food politics.

In the global political arena these were also the early days of the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first serious attempt to secure a political deal on climate change. While it’s abundantly clear now that the emission limits established in that deal were wildly inadequate, the significance of placing climate change onto the world’s political agenda can’t be understated. This was the achievement of the third global conference on climate change, and as we approach the fifteenth this month in Copenhagen it shouldn’t be forgotten that the early groundwork had to start somewhere – Kyoto might not have met the high expectations, but without it we’d be in a far worse position today. The EU ratified the Protocol just two years into the decade, but the treaty didn’t come into force until 2005, something which seems hard to believe now.

These middle years of this decade provided crucial impetus for urgent action on climate change, with 2006 seeing both Al Gore’s surprise box office hit ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, and the publication of the landmark Stern Review. They spoke to different audiences, Gore presenting the public with perhaps the first film you could describe as “conviction powerpoint”, and Lord Stern addressing his arguments to the world’s economists and Governments, but each helped to bring a wider group of people to the cause.

Environmental organisations and campaigners have long said that every part of society needs to play its part, including governments, businesses, communities and individuals, and these two pieces of work did more to turn that into a reality than anything before. It’s hard to imagine private sector voices calling for bold cuts in emissions if Lord Stern hadn’t made his hard-headed case in the language the business community spoke: every pound spent now on going low-carbon will repay itself five times over.

Even the US began to wake up to climate change, and long before the anti-science Bush administration was wound up, several state governors and city mayors had begun to put some of their own political capital on the line for the sake of tackling emissions. By the time American voters were choosing the party nominees for the 2008 election, all the serious front runners were committed to binding cuts and all accepted US responsibility on the issue.

If the progress made in the middle of the 2000s was promising, it’s pretty clear that the end of the decade has seen a troubling reversal. It sometimes seems that the stronger the scientific case becomes, the more irrational opposition is generated in the media debate. Most Governments remain committed to a scientific approach, even if few are ready to take action to meet their targets, and in the UK the conspiracy theories are confined to the far right of politics.

However, this month’s sacking of the Australian Liberal Party leader, replaced by a man opposed to even a modest carbon trading scheme, shows that countries with coal will always find political room for those who want to burn it.

In the UK too, action to start making real-world cuts has been painfully hard to achieve. The recession, which, like the collapse of the Soviet Union, may result in a short-term slowing of emissions, has served to distract many from the long term job of building the low-carbon economy which Stern advocated. Even the clearest opportunities to link emission cuts to economic recovery have not been taken – few people would have predicted that a Scottish Budget would fall on the issue of loft insulation, but energy efficiency remains to this day the best climate change policy we’ve never had – and the pressure on Budgets may well squeeze long term investment in low carbon infrastructure as Governments of all parties continue to put the short term first.

Indeed despite the realities of the world’s energy problems coming into sharper focus every year, it’s still down to activists to challenge decisions at UK and Scottish level, like the approval of new coal-fired power stations, aviation expansion and the continuation of other 20th-century mistakes. Thankfully the energy and dedication seen in previous decades of direct action is still alive, as seen among the Climate Campers and others.

Just as critical for the wider environmental movement is the danger of distracting the world from the host of other issues, many of which are made worse by climate change but which are seen as separate battles to fight. The overharvesting of fish stocks around the world, the impact of deforestation, the loss of biodiversity, and a thousand forms of local pollution and environmental damage which hit the world’s poorest people hardest; these are issues which never went away. Indeed they continue to grow while the world’s attention is fixed on climate change and economic turmoil.

As the good, the bad and the ugly of the political world head to Copenhagen for the last great diplomatic circus of the decade, we’re left with a familiar question: will it make any difference?

The best way to guarantee failure is not to try, but leaving it to the politicians – of whatever party – is a pretty surefire promise of failure too. The Scottish Climate Act did go further than the Government wanted, but not because MSPs suddenly became a nobler body of people. It was strengthened above all because of people-power. Academics, campaign groups, business voices, trades unions, community groups, churches, and tens of thousands of ordinary people called for stronger measures. Without them we wouldn’t have the legislation we have, and unless those many voices continue to act together and call for bold action we won’t turn the targets into a reality either.

I still believe that humanity will opt for survival, but our stunted democracy won’t be up to the job unless real people set the challenge loudly, clearly and consistently. The future of this movement, as we move into another dangerous decade, is in your hands.

1 Comment

1. Couldn’t agree more, Patrick.

   One could say that since The Club of Rome tried to wake us up in 1972 things have moved slowly, too slow; fine, but then speed is a result of acceleration.

   With Hopenhagen on I would like to refer to a report that NEW SCIENTIST published more than a year ago: “How our economy is killing the Earth.”

   The quintessence is to not reduce the impact discussion to headlines like “CO2″, “Global Warming”, “Climate Change” or “Copenhagen”. You will find the report
   here (http://pierrejoris.com/blog/?p=653)
   or just inhale the charts
   here (http://efficiencymeetssustainability.blogspot.com/2009/12/dont-reduce-human-impact-to-global.html)

   There is much, much more to sustainability than reducing GHGs; and for the sceptics: if a problem is man made, man can reverse it; if it is not man made, man ought to take the necessary precautions; common sense dictates that; it includes scepticism, but more so discussion, passion and the common sense that does see seven billion humans having an impact.

   Christian A. Wittke

   Comment by Christian A. Wittke — December 8, 2009 @ 7:40 pm