Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There!
Posted Under: Environment,GreenFeed,Protest
I went to a public meeting organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change (CCC) on Saturday. Oh aren’t I so virtuous? What is it about these public meetings about Climate Change that puts people off? It would be easy to blame the doom, the gloom and the knitwear but largely I suspect it’s the fact that most people just don’t like going to public lectures for fun. Shame.
For those of you who couldn’t make it for whatever reason, the atmosphere in the meeting was largely one of anger, resolve and frustration at the (constantly repeated) damning statistics. I often find myself wondering why I go to these things. I’m not one of those people who reads the Daily Mail to satisfy a need to make myself furious, I’m not someone who goes to a horror movie to scare myself stupid – I don’t enjoy being furious and frightened. So why do I go to a Climate Change meeting to feel both? I would say it was evidence of middle-class self flagellation but I would rather unscrew my own fingernails one by one than watch “An Inconvenient Truth” so I’m not totally irredeemable.
Obviously Climate Change is the biggest problem facing all of us, but it’s a problem that seems unreal – it’s almost like being told you owe a billion pounds to the bank – unless you’re Roman Abramovich this figure is so large you can’t even comprehend it. It’s of such magnitude it’s impossible to compare and contrast with your other problems. Much like owing a billion pounds to the bank, it’s all too easy to be lulled into thinking there’s no point even trying to tackle the problem because your efforts won’t even cover the interest (which will of course continue to get worse – much like Climate Change).
After such meetings I’m often left with greater understanding of statistics but also a greater sense of futility. To paraphrase the old Mort Saul joke about JFK: JFK says “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country”, the president’s car goes by and a man in the crowd yells “yeah but what do you want us to do?”. The president stops the car and says: “Do more”.
But more what?
It often seems the world is in a collective state of “Don’t just do something, sit there”. There is very little consensus on Climate Change. Some people believe in it and some don’t (as if it were a faith, something which as Catherine Bennett writes in The Guardian, will only damage the cause), those in the scientific community that do believe in it spend much of their time arguing about the extent of it. The rest of us, like teenagers with rowing parents, have locked ourselves in our rooms and put a record on.
It’s time we faced up to the fact that we are past the stage of information and are now entering the stage of action. Knowing all the facts about Climate Change doesn’t make me sleep better at night, knowing what I can do about it does. In the seeming absence of any powers of decision making among the political elite (not just in this country) it’s time we joined the environmental campaigners and presented the united front that Copenhagen won’t.
The CCC has come up with a mini-manifesto of changes to be achieved in the next year. Some of them I agree with and some of them I don’t but it’s a definite start. So as an addendum to the CCC’s list, I’ve started compiling some ideas. Feel free to chip in with your own and let’s see what we can come up with…
- Volunteer when you can – campaign organisations like CCC, Climate Camp, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace etc rely on volunteers to do basic tasks. You don’t need to own large amounts of knitwear and if you’re unemployed take it from me it’s a lot better than watching The Wright Stuff.
- Even better, if you have money give it to people who are coming up with solutions, or who are campaigning for those that are – buy your friends and family a scientist for Christmas. And don’t waste money on ‘offsetting’ that flight to Malaga. That is not a solution, it’s a penance.
- 45 per cent of carbon emissions come from buildings. We could execute all architects, or we could start supporting those in the construction industry that are making changes. Lobby your local MP and your local council if they use firms with a poor environmental record. Government buildings are almost always the worst offenders for carbon emissions.
- If you’re doing something, bribe people into joining you in your action with chocolate brownies. Works every time (people will even come to public lectures with you as I discovered).
- Go on the Climate Change march on 5th December, and tell people about it (see 4).
Reader Comments
Very, very true. Although given that people are enraged that the banks have been given billions of pounds of ‘taxpayer’s’ money as the media calls it, a concept equally divorced from their everyday lives, you’d think they might be able to get their heads around climate change. People are very good at understanding the importance of a division of labour in producing goods. Seemingly much less so in understanding the division of labour in producing bads.
I personally think the Climate March is a waste of time, and that’s having been on them since 2005. They’re done at the weekend around parliament, but at the weekend there isn’t anyone in parliament to feel the “pressure” of all of these people outside. I know having it during the weekdays prevents families and those who can’t take a day off work from joining, but it would have more impact.
I am at the point of despair about climate change. I’d like to believe that by not going on holiday, cycling, and not using plastic bags I’m really doing something. I suppose one feels like the boy with his finger in the dike. As you hinted, it seems the enormity of the response that would be needed is staggering in comparison with what a single person, or a collection of single people can really do.
And even legislative pressure doesn’t realy seem to address the heart of the matter effectively. Legislation often just results in a cost-shifting exercise: shops are taxed for plastic bags, they charge us for them, and we just absorb the cost. The effect on climate must surely be minimal, and this pattern can probably be observed in many other spheres of climate change legisation. What legislators would have to do inr eality is something they and most people wouldn;t tolerate: short of shutting down the airline industry and turning off the petrol pumps, you sort of wonder if the drip-drip of legislative measures can truly do anything worthwhile.
My real hope is in a) science and technology to reduce drastic human-caused climate change by enabling dramatic lifestyle transition; b) to adapt to climate change should it become a serious problem. Not to be a ‘Denier’ (I’m not), but this wouldn’t be the first time in history we’ve had drastic climate change — point being, humans and nature are probably well-designed to adapt to it, and possibly ill-equipped to do much to drastically alter it. I’m not speaking here as a scientist, but considering whether we’re not clutching at straws in much of what we do to deal with climate change. I think in the heat and passion of the debate, people quickly forget that we’re trying to influence a naturalistic phenomenon (note, I don’t use natural, here, the way a person who denies climate change does, but in a purely descriptive sense). And I’m seriously pessimistic about how far individual action can go there. Reassure me that I’m just being a pessimist…
PS: references to ‘taxpayers’ money’, and the accompanying indigination, always make me chuckle a little. Apart from the fact that it’s not exactly an accurate way of describing where government money comes from, it’s such a disproportionately emotive way of speaking about spending.
What’s wrong with watching the Wright Stuff?