Anyone doing the usual hellish trawl of Cardiff’s shopping metropolis on Saturday will not have failed to notice that something has changed. How much it affects you, of course, will depend on your existing eco-credentials, or at least your penchant for a rucksack. Yes, the carrier bag charge – mighty symbol of a new green Wales – has arrived, and shop assistants everywhere are tiring already of the need to remind us.
Don’t let my soupçon of sarcasm give you the wrong idea: the 5p charge is clearly A Good Idea. We should doubtless be proud that our newly-empowered lawmakers have decided to follow the example of Ireland, albeit at a lower rate and without any of the new funds entering public coffers. It’s just that one might argue – as George Monbiot did at the weekend – that in the grand scheme of environmental sustainability, it isn’t really that big a deal.
The Federation of Small Businesses was determined to make a stand against it all, even though consumers themselves seemed supportive. “There's a lot of confusion and I think it will take a long time for people to get used to the charge,” they noted, a comment which could hardly be translated into rage by even the hardiest of tabloid headline writers. The Western Mail did, however, manage to make a “storm” out of the fact that the Welsh Local Government Association doubted the law’s enforceability.
The real importance of this law is that it will prove, once again, that legislation is better than regulation if you want the nation to change its lifestyle. We’ve seen it with the decline in smoking, and with the ban on using our phones when driving. On the flip side, one look at our hopelessly inadequate response to the obesity crisis is enough to tell us that so-called ‘self-regulation’ by the food industry simply doesn’t work.
But charging for carrier bags is painless. It will take a few weeks, or months at most, for everyone to accept it as a fact of life and take reusable bags wherever they go. No-one makes a big sacrifice. Dealing with the ramifications of climate change on a bigger scale is where the real challenge lies.
Oxfam recently reported that the Horn of Africa, already suffering a devastating drought which has killed thousands and forced nearly a million Somalis to leave their homes, faces a likely temperature increase of 3-4°C by 2080-2099 relative to 1980-1999. Quoting a Royal Society report, they predicted a 20% decline in yields in maize crops and up to 50% in bean crops. That’s just one region of one continent, but Somalia is one of the poorest and least stable countries in the world. The effects of climate change, as we are continually reminded by NGOs desperate for swifter global action, will be felt most keenly by those who have the least resources to cope.
It’s not even as if our governments fundamentally disagree on the science of climate change. Last December in Cancun, nearly every member state of the UN agreed on a whole range of principles including cutting carbon emissions, helping developing countries to deploy cleaner energy, and getting a grip on the destruction of rainforests. But it’s the political leadership back home, after the inspiring words have been spoken on the world stage, that is lacking.
Here in our cosseted world of the developed North, we have still not come terms with the fact that dealing with climate change really is going to mean making sacrifices. We can dream all we like about fleets of electric cars, vast investments in renewable energy, or the wholesale dismantling of global capitalism to make way for some kind of pastoral localist idyll. But in real world politics, what will really make the change will be when world leaders are brave enough to stand up and start saying, “Sorry – this is going to hurt.”
No more cheap flights. Big increases in taxation for private cars and investment in sustainable transport. Public campaigns to eat less meat. Until governments start speaking up for these kinds of steps – and there are many more – we, the public, are unlikely to adopt the wholesale change of mindset that will be necessary if we really mean business. Climate change is likely to be the defining issue of the twenty-first century – politically and socially as well as environmentally – and we need our public figures to face up to it. Like the Poor Laws or the start of the welfare state – but a global issue in an unprecedentedly globalised world – we need a wholesale change in our society’s narrative. Individuals and communities will contribute in important ways, but we need the political weight and financial wherewithal of our governments to make the really big changes.
I do believe that this change will come: it has to. But as mitigation of climate change fades inexorably into adaptation to its reality, we can only hope that it will happen sooner rather than later.
7 comments:
Charging for plastic bags is certainly good for the retailers - you schlep the bags to the shop for them, or if you don't they make a profit on them. But what the hell, I can see the environmental arguments against the proliferation of placcy bags - they have to go in landfills and take a long time to biodegrade. That's a good old-fashioned environmental argument, one that someone who doesn't hate western capitalist civilisation - and its attendant evils of historically unprecedented peace, prosperity and life expectancy - can really dig.
I quite agree!
(By the way, the retailers aren't allowed to keep the 5p. They're supposed to give it to charity.)
Oh, hang on - am I being accused of "hating western civilisation"? Gracious. My point here is to give the plastic bag charge its due praise while pointing out that it does nothing like enough to combat climate change. Which is basically, well, true, regardless of who or what you hate.
I'd like to know what austerity laws that you, if you were King of the World for a day, would like to impose on the poor old Britons of 2011 in order to set an example to the Chinese and Indians of 2020 in the hope of saving the Somalis of 2099 from a possible 3 degree temperature rise.
Or are you implying (correctly) in your lament that the zeitgeist has left that line of logic behind?
Famines are caused by bad or wicked government. It could be 3 degrees colder in 2099 and the Somalis will still be quite capable of contriving famines. If I were King of the World for a day I would give the Somalis the rule of law, representative democracy, individual property rights and freedom of trade. By 2099 there could be cheap EasyJet flights to Mogadishu carrying sixth-generation Anglo-Somali tourists to big shiny Dubai style hotels, with aircon to keep out the extra heat.
Bad governance is one cause of famine, not the cause. I'd also give Somalia the things you'd give - but while all of that is taking years or decades to happen, people will still be dying of malnutrition and unable to grow crops. Which is why development aid is a vital contribution from Western governments - we don't say, "Well, until we've sorted out democracy and property rights, we won't help build hospitals."
Numerous studies show that it's people in the developing world who will suffer most from the effects of climate change. And the principle that developed countries should bear a greater part of the burden in sorting it out is now well established. (Although in fact, China already invests more than any country in renewable energy.)
It's pretty hard to argue that tackling climate change - both by mitigating it happening and adapting to its effects - should not be a global priority. The fact that doing so won't solve all global issues doesn't negate its importance.
Anything could be 'a priority'. What are the laws (not 'self-regulations') that you want to impose and how hard do you want to enforce them? I ask because I'm interested to ascertain the level of fanaticism here.
It's the norm for proponents of the standard left-wing package views to dismiss any dissent as not just wrong but morally wrong (eg. those not wholly signed up to the progressive consensus on the euro, immigration or new atheism are respectively xenophobic, racist or child indoctrinators). But on climate change it really is clunky. Heretics of even the mildest sort are 'deniers' - a nasty little term with inescapable Holocaust associations. It's considered sufficient to skip the arguments and head straight to the sinister motivations behind them.
The climate is changing, as it has at all times in history and pre-history. It would be very odd to argue that the temperature will never change. What the warmist fanatic does is jump straight from “the climate is changing” to “we must enforce laws”, without acknowledging the very large number of doubtable steps he has skimmed merrily over, including but not limited to:
1. unlike all previous climate change, this one is definitely caused by human carbon emissions. (Here the scientific consensus certainly agrees. But the scientific consensus says a lot of things that turn out, eventually, to be wrong.)
2. the net consequences of warming caused by carbon emissions in the next century will not only be negative but catastrophically so.
3. The best or only solution to these predicted catastrophic consequences is to prevent them by reducing global carbon emissions now.
4. We are capable of formulating, agreeing and enforcing global policies that will enable us to reduce total global carbon emissions in line with what the broad scientific consensus suggests will be sufficient to stave off the catastrophe (Here the record is dismal, even within the EU. Due to the different reduction targets, every ton of carbon that Britain saves with its self-imposed onerous green taxes on manufacturers is emitted elsewhere in the EU by countries with softer rules, including Germany.
5. ...And the carbon-reducing benefits of these laws for the people of the future will definitely outweigh any negative impact they might have on the people alive now
That'll do for now as a list of increasingly dubious propositions. It would be great if we and China and America could happily ditch fossil fuels. For one thing, it would mean we no longer had to be nice to the hideous dictatorships of the Middle East.
But it's the glib statements like “No more cheap flights” that cause alarm. Ok, so going back to a time when only rich people can go abroad on holiday (and drive cars and eat meat, apparently) would be grim enough for us Brits. But it would be rather more than grim for the countless livelihoods dependent on package tourism. I can just see you as British PM, explaining to the Greeks that as well as the generation of poverty euro membership has condemned them to, the scientific consensus requires us to take away your tourist industry, sorry.
Luckily, the zeitgeist is moving away from that sort of boom-time warmist fanaticism and into a time of climate realism. You may have noticed that at the Tory conference George Osborne insisted that we would cut emissions no slower or faster than any other comparable EU member – thus subtly overturning a decade of unilateral British economic self-flagellation.
It's completely disingenuous to suggest that only "fanatics" are proposing urgent action to cut carbon emissions. How about the large majority of the world's governments (making slow progress towards agreement on the details, but progress nonetheless), the world's largest investors, along with major religious groups, a vast swathe of civil society and countless others.
Plus, the World Bank has found that people are in fact ready to make personal sacrifices to achieve it.
Planning for catastrophic warming is a good bet. In the UK, nuclear is probably a good place to start (not sure if that is part of your supposed "package of left-wing views" or not), as well as incentives for public transport and disincentives for cars.
But even then, us "fanatics" aren't arguing only for emissions reductions - a combination of mitigation and adapation techniques are needed.
Anti-disingenuous samizdata.
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