Right now, it is quite hard to recall that the biggest crisis facing humanity arises as a result of climate change. Discussion of the issue has been largely crowded out by reports of humanity's inhumanity, whether in Israel and Gaza, or at the Covid inquiry, or in the creation of destitution as a consequence of deliberate government policy. We should not ignore it though, and the difficulty of tackling it. This is the biggest humanitarian crisis of all, just waiting to happen.
So this is the question of the day:
Will the public ever accept that serious changes in behaviour are required if we are to manage climate change?
- Not until it is too late (67%, 179 Votes)
- Yes (17%, 46 Votes)
- No (11%, 28 Votes)
- I don't know (5%, 13 Votes)
Total Voters: 266
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My answer is only through good and persuasive leadership and appropriate legislation and funding. Sadly these things seem to be absent from current political life.
I don’t think it’s the public that are the problem. I think they’re largely on board but they’re reliant on the leadership (or lack thereof) from government who seem to be doing worse than nothing by reversing policies that were aimed at reducing carbon and climate impacts, in favour of policies that enrich their already rich sponsors, at the cost of everything else.
You could argue that by inflicting destitution and poverty on large swathes of the population, this has the side effect of reducing carbon emissions as people are just too damn poor to consume or emit to their previous levels, so we get the behavioural change by force rather than by choice. But of course, it isn’t really the poor and the nouveau poor who are the major emitters, so the impact of their enforced poverty will not swing the pendulum far enough back to avert catastrophe.
There are still plenty of actions that people can take now to reduce their climate impact which, although, even at scale across the population, will still be insufficient to prevent the horror that is to come, will at least mean we can say we did what was in our power to do. Beyond that, it seems the government and the rich are intent on tying our hands at every turn, most effectively by locking us into a FPTP voting system that kills of any real possibility of lasting or meaningful change.
And at local level, supermarkets make it impossible to avoid packaging and utilise the cheapest ingredients that have the highest climate impact whilst forcing us to make ever longer journeys as stores close or aggregate into larger out of town locations. Public transport is prohibitively expensive and in many cases, impractical because it doesn’t run at the times or frequencies that people need it to. And of course, we mustn’t forget the malign and insidious impact of social media, pervading our consciousness and manipulating our behaviour in ways that are both subtle and terrifying in their reach. We are fools if we believe that government or business have our best interests at heart – they only have eyes on what little money we have, and once they’ve prized the last coppers from our fingers, they will turn their gaze elsewhere – much like the Eye of Sauron – leaving nothing but scorched earth in their wake.
Thanks
Again, I think that I’m going to come down on the side of ‘the people’ and point out the deplorable way in which they have been lied to about emissions over the years.
Car manufacturers have hidden poor emissions for years by lying about real emission rates; car manufacturers have also been involved in the setting of emission rates in countries (the oxymoron of ‘self regulation’ proving to be untenable yet again). Watch the documentary ‘Bikes Versus Cars’ on Netflix.
And now, we have an economy (low wage, high interest, state hands off, poor infrastructure) that makes it harder to change from carbon to electric.
So a better and fairer question would be ‘ Have people been enabled to accept and act upon the serious changes in behaviour required to save the planet?’.
The answer is flatly no.
The market has failed to provide the right level of information to consumers about what they have been buying.
The market has failed to price the new technology at a price point to promote change and wider take up.
The government has failed to provide the infrastructure needed for change (charging points etc.,) and seems to think the market will provide it.
The government has failed to promote other greener means of transport and also price that in a way that makes it attractive (train fares now are just silly).
The markets cannot price credit needed to purchase vehicles at a reasonable rate because of greed and also the stupid BoE.
These failures could all be called ‘nudge policies’ if they were addressed. But the government would rather use nudge policies to get you to take poorly paid work instead and seek private health care.
I feel sorry for us all to be honest because this is a crap way to live. It’s exploitative and abusive. I find that ordinary people mostly want to do the right the thing when they can.
And forgive me – I did not even mention our addiction to air travel and the way the true cost of that is hidden, nor the strange incentives it attracts (for example, retail and duty free shopping).
Agreed
I have long ago given that one up
I fear Not until it is too late.
The parts of the World that have democratically elected governments will find it the hardest IMO. This is because people really do not vote for reducing their standards of living, or rather they do not vote for what they believe will reduce their standards of living (which explains why people vote Tory even though they do indeed end up with reduced living standards!).
You can’t run a democracy when you are at war, and we are at war with nature, and therefore ourselves since we obviously are part of nature.
As another of your blog posts today points out, it is easy to elect charlatans who promise us all cake.
If the public don’t accept this, economists will be largely to blame.
Most of the readership of this blog is fully aware of the monumental stupidity of mainstream economists on the climate crisis, but they’re none the less likely to benefit from reading a recent, brilliant article spelling this out in great detail:
Christopher Ketcham, ‘When Idiots Savants do Climate Economics’, https://theintercept.com/2023/10/29/william-nordhaus-climate-economics/.
Some would say it’s already too late.
But I answered ‘yes’, with the proviso that we eventually have strong leadership from the government on this issue. People have herd instinct – they don’t easily go out on a limb if their peers and others they observe around them aren’t doing the same. For example, jetting abroad on holidays (sometimes more than once a year) is still considered a desirable and laudable goal, judging by the frequent conversations on this topic I overhear at work.
It may be a big unlikely fantasy given the current state of UK politics, but I do strongly believe that if government would just provide strong nudges in the right direction, then people would adjust their expectations and follow suit. Small example: remember the fuss about compulsory seat-belt wearing in cars? It soon became a non-issue after everyone knuckled down to this new fact of life.
But, at the moment of course political figures seem to prefer to turn even relatively minor environmental measures, such as low emission zones, into a culture war battleground.
WIthout strong leadership from government the problem cannot be addressed. All we can do as individuals and concerned groups is advise, lobby, and protest. And government seems determined to ignore the first two activities, and criminalise the third.
What will it take to get us out onto the streets to protest in hundreds of thousands we have seen over the past three weeks?
Rupert Murdoch is good at knowing which stories will attract readers and therefore advertisers. I judge him to be wrong to believe that he is good at judging very much else. I would put the combination of the arrogance and ignorance of newspaper owners into the frame.
Governments could restrict their power – which includes the power to delude and distract.
I think the polls are showing greatly increased support for climate change measures – but getting that translated into an elected government – not sure. If a green new deal type offer was presented to the electorate making it clear that lifestyle will have to change but that there will be lots of new opporutitnies, jobs, green cities, healthier food etc etc – might just work.
As usual George Montbiot – shows vividly that this is beyond urgent and that we may have already past the tipping point(s)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/31/flickering-earth-systems-warning-act-now-rishi-sunak-north-sea
Call me a reluctant “too late-er.”
While politicians in the USA are backed so extensively by climate deniers, that’ll be the lead taken by our politicians and their backers, by the owners of the media and their newspapers, and by those too comfortable to change. The younger voters who I imagine are less reliant on old media may change that, but they’re not a majority yet.
As noted here and elsewhere, these are systemic problems. I cannot individually do what I need to as my actions would be unsupported systemically and would bankrupt me. A system that creates a problem cannot also solve it, as noted here, George Monbiot is clear (and thoroughly evidenced) on this point. Burning fossil fuels, converting forests and land and water into consumable products and locations for industry and entertainment is unsustainable, whatever energy source we use. As George Monbiot has also noted, the assault on nature is full spectrum, not only climate. Systemically, virtually everyone has to provide/make, distribute, sell goods/services in order to live. We divert direct support to one another via the market – we can only have support services (health, education, care) once we have economic growth. If I unilaterally decide to not participate in this, I will become destitute, my hand is forced. We also know that, just 1 percent of people consume over 30 percent of the world’s resources, and it is the 0.1 percent who make up the bulk of that. There are easy wins apart from the fact of a system that deliberately disempowers and blocks collective decision making and action.
Timothy Bartel
Thanks for the link, I’ve shared it as it puts it all in one place:
Doughnut economics;
The problem of Peer Review;
The lack of real life common sense from most economists.